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As they finally set out across the pasture Leela's mood lightened a little. 'I did not feel comfortable there,' she remarked, glancing back at the trees.

'And yet I could see no real threat.'

The Doctor inclined his head slightly and shrugged. 'It was simply a reaction to a new place. It's probably hormonal. Your endocrine system responds to potential danger.'

'You are saying I fear new places.'

'It's perfectly normal,' the Doctor said, offhandedly. 'In your case the warrior training channels it into aggression.'

'You are saying my fear makes me ready to fight.' For once Leela did not react aggressively to being patronised. That was not why I felt uneasy, Doctor,' she said. 'It was not because the place was new to me. I felt as if something was watching. I felt as if something that was not there was watching. You did not feel that.'

The Doctor said, not unkindly, 'You're letting your imagination run away with you.' And he lengthened his stride so that Leela had to jog to keep up.

Despite the hostility of his colleagues Barry Hitchins loved being the Kellerfield Research Fellow in Parapsychology.

It was not that he particularly loved the subject: he didn't. From the beginning he was privately very sceptical. His attitude to telepathy, remote viewing over distance, telekinesis, precognition and all the variations of ESP and mind power so beloved of brain-dead science fiction hacks was not much different from that of the rest of the university. He thought it unlikely that he would find evidence for any of it and if he did find evidence it would probably have been faked.

And as for ley lines, pyramid power, crop circles, standing stones, UFOs and all the wilder imaginings of the Internet conspiracy theorists: he was happy to leave that sort of ludicrous nonsense to New Age throwbacks, credulous X Files fans and the like. Psychics and paranormal manifestations - or ghoulies and ghosties and long long-leggedy beasties and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night as he thought of them - also left him unmoved and unimpressed. Clairvoyants and mediums, table-tappers, card-readers and fortune-tellers, the list of BFTG - bullshit for the gullible -

was apparently endless.

But despite it all, despite his own reservations, despite the barely concealed contempt of those around him, despite the flaky weirdos he was forced to deal with on a regular basis - there was no getting around the fact that he really did enjoy the work. He enjoyed it even more than he had expected to.

You're late,' he said mildly as the two students wandered into the laboratory.

'Sorry,' Tommy Carmodie said, smiling offhandedly and pushing the floppy hair back from his forehead. 'Haven't got a watch any more. Had to pawn it unfortunately.'

'Me too,' Josh Randall murmured. 'Student poverty gets worse by the hour.

As far as I can tell without a watch of course.' Josh was the taller of the two and shaven-headed.

Unlike Tommy, who seemed to have modelled himself on Hugh Grant, Josh never made any attempt to be charming. It obviously did not concern him now, for example, that the watch he was wearing was clearly visible.

'What is it we're doing today?' Tommy asked. 'I seem to have forgotten.'

At an interfaculty meeting not long after his appointment Barry Hitchins had expressed the view that his research was 'going to be more fun than women's heavyweight custard wrestling. Not blancmange wrestling, but then nothing comes close to that, as I'm sure you'll all agree. Especially if it's the pink blancmange.' Bill Parnaby had laughed but he had been the only one. Everyone else had greeted the comments in frosty silence and Barry had realised that to the label quack practitioner of a pseudoscience he had just managed to add stupid sexist moron. It had been a dumb thing to say, but he had been nervous and he tended to say dumb things when he was nervous. It was no excuse of course. After all, he had degrees in sociology and psychology - not good ones it was true,