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And then he’d stood up.

And player number five, who’d been standing right behind him for ten minutes, said, ‘Joel.’

There was a hard bulge in one of his anorak pockets, sticking into his ribs. He slid his hand carefully down and pulled out the communicator.

He could get up and run, but he was between the soldiers and their helicopter. He could wait for them to come back, on their way back to the chopper, but they might find him — or radio for more soldiers to help in the search.

There was only one thing for it. Slowly and carefully, he brought the communicator up to his frozen face, and hoped to God that player number five wasn’t standing right behind him.

12 Interrogation Blues

‘Come along, granddad,’ said the Caxtarid.

He half-dragged the small man across the landing. Indigo gave an embarrassed smile to a couple heading for the stairs. They sniffed and pushed past the two young men and their inebriated grandfather.

Indigo unlocked the narrow wooden door. Roze pulled the small man up, then walked forward, pushing him through the door into their room. With a sigh of relief, Roze dropped him face first onto the bed.

‘He’s not that heavy,’ said Indigo, locking the door.

‘Yeah, but he’s a dead weight.’

Indigo reached down and rolled the little man over. ‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about,’ he said, looking down at their prisoner.

Roze sat on the bed. The embroidered cover was a strange texture under his fingers. No stranger than anything else here, he thought, shivering in the thin, cold air. He rubbed his eyes. The little man blinked up at them, sleepily.

‘Caxtarids,’ he murmured.

Roze started back. ‘How’d he know that?’

‘He knows a lot of things,’ said Indigo. He reached down beside the bed and picked up his rucksack.

‘I’ve got to get these contact lenses out,’ said Roze, as Indigo rummaged in the bag for his tape recorder. He wandered into the tiny bathroom, with its smell of lavender and mould. ‘Can you hang on a minute?’

‘We need to get on with it before he wakes up,’ said Indigo. He blew into the microphone, puffs from his cheeks, watching the sound levels. ‘Okay,’ he said, sliding up next to their captive. ‘What’s your name?’

Dreamily, the Doctor told him.

Roze called out, ‘Must be hard getting that on the front of an envelope.’ He plucked out the second contact lens, trying not to flinch, and slipped it into its little wet container.

‘Very funny,’ Indigo was saying. ‘And what’s today’s date?’

‘The eleventh of December, nineteen eighty-three.’

Roze tilted his head, looking at himself in the mirror.

Were his roots starting to show? Indigo might be able to get away with his metallic red hair, but two people with the same dye job... it was a shame about the contacts. The sparkling red and gold of his irises looked good with the black hair.

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Three.’

‘All right. Looks as though it’s working.’ Indigo glanced up as Roze came back out of the bathroom. ‘If we have to leave in a hurry, you’re in trouble.’

Roze felt in his shirt pocket for a pair of sunglasses, just in case. ‘It’s not like he’s a big threat...’ He sat down on the bed, and started emptying the man’s pockets in case there was anything useful there.

‘Okay, Doctor,’ said Indigo. The little man’s eyelids fluttered, and Indigo gave him a shove to wake him up a bit.

‘Let’s move on to the harder questions. Where are we from?’

‘Lalande 21185 in Ursa Major,’ said the Doctor. ‘At least, that’s what they call it here.’

Keys, coins from a dozen different planets, bits of technology held together with gaffer tape. Roze picked up a little black box with flashing lights, turned it around in his hands. Didn’t do anything. It was all just junk.

‘When did you visit our planet?’

‘Eight Lalandan years ago.’

‘What did you do there?’

The Doctor’s eyes grew cloudy with remembering.

‘Stopped the virus.’

‘Can you tell me more about that?’

Roze said, ‘I thought you said we had to get on with it.’

Indigo snapped his fingers at him, and Roze