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'Maybe you should try being nice to her,' said Liz. 'That normally works.'

Mark stopped dancing. 'Liz, I -'

'Shhhh.' she cooed, taking his arms from around her neck. 'Don't spoil it, or say something you don't mean. Now, you'll have to excuse me for a minute. I'd better go and break up the Doctor and Professor Trainor, or else they'll still be talking at daybreak'

The Doctor had been introduced to Professor Trainor by Liz right at the start of the party, and, once she had flitted off somewhere else, conversation had swiftly turned to the Doctor's and Liz's work for UNIT Never one to let the Official Secrets Act get in the way of a good story, the Doctor had given Trainor an insider's view of the Cyber invasion, the Nestene attack, the Eocene crisis, and the aborted Inferno project, all of which Trainor knew little about.

'So, you have actually had direct contact with alien life forms?' asked the professor. 'I've heard Ian Chesterton talk about you often, but I always took some of his ideas with a pinch of salt'

'Chesterton's problem was his scepticism, funnily enough.' said the Doctor fondly about his old friend. 'I ran into him at Greg and Petra Sutton's wedding earlier in the year, but we didn't have much time to talk. Is he still working for NASA?'

'Yes.' said the professor. 'I met him and Barbara in London last month. I told him that I hoped to meet you soon, and he said I should ask you about Vortis.'

'He did, did he?' asked the Doctor with a stifled laugh. 'I always said he was a rapscallion. How's their little boy?' he asked, changing the subject with indecent haste.

'Very well.' The professor began to ask him about something else, but the Doctor's attention was distracted by the model of the Neptune probe that was on Mark Wilson's mantelpiece.

'A very impressive piece of work,' the Doctor noted.

'You should see the original,' said the professor. The Doctor appreciated Trainor's sense of humour. He always found himself drawn to intelligent people who had a spark of personality about them. Too often he'd encountered academics with lots of brain but little soul.

'I'm fascinated by the propulsion system,' noted the Doctor as he and the professor moved towards the model.

'Indeed. I worked for almost five years on the specifications, but to be fair much of what we achieved is down to Rachel Jensen. An unsung heroine on the project and, I don't mind telling you, a genius on the quiet.'

'I don't think I know her,' stated the Doctor.

'Really? She speaks highly of you,' replied Trainor.

'Anyway, once we'd created a system that could handle the fuel load, the actual design of the craft was easy. We used some of the Russian data collected by their German scientists, and the rocket specifications of the Americans and their German scientists...'

'And they gave it to our German scientists,' continued the Doctor with a resigned smile. 'I met Von Braun in Texas last year when I did a recruitment tour. Sordid little man, I thought. Brilliant mind, of course...'

'I know what you mean' Trainor nodded. 'Isn't that often the way with great thinkers? The scope for abuse of their knowledge is enormous. I still remember seeing the photographs of Dachau and thinking.' One day, I could be responsible for something like this.'

'It's a risk we all take, said the Doctor. 'Science is the domain of the naive and consequently prey to the tyranny of evil men.'

'Exactly,' replied the professor. 'And we have to be so careful these days. The media have created an artificial hysteria where space exploration is concerned. The public are uncertain if we should be restarting manned space flights for fear of what we'll find. They now expect every scientist to be governed only by the very worst motivations imaginable. I mean, after the Carrington debacle we've had to reassure them that we aren't all power-crazed megalomaniacs who want to rule the universe!'

At this point Liz joined them with a broad grin. 'Glad to see you two are getting along,' she said.

Trainor