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By Root 539 0

his surly expression, whipped out his glasses and jumped into full‐on Sherlock Holmes mode, examining every inch of the outside of the cage, going down on hands and knees to peer closely at the floor surrounding it. Then he went over the inside with a fine‐tooth comb, and if Martha thought he’d hesitated just the tiniest bit before climbing in, she’d never have dreamt of mentioning it. Anyway, she’d probably imagined it.

‘Any clues, Ace Ventura?’ she asked, as he clambered out.

‘Apart from the footprints, the cigar ash and the signed confession?’ he said.

‘Yes, apart from those.’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Not really.’ He pointed at a small keypad at the top of the cage. ‘I take it that controls the stasis field?’

Tommy nodded. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief covered with little print dinosaurs, which he tossed into the box. Then his fingers dashed out a series of numbers at lightning speed on the keypad. The missing wall shimmered into existence and the descent of the still‐floating handkerchief was suddenly arrested; it hung there in mid‐air, a snapshot of time.

They stared at the frozen hankie for a few moments, then Tommy reached out and tapped the pad again – Martha mechanically noted the numbers: 5, 7, 9, 3, 1, 0, 0, 8 – and the box’s front vanished as quickly as it had appeared; the handkerchief floated gently down to the floor, from where Tommy picked it up and blew his nose noisily,

The Doctor reached up to the keypad. ‘No sign of tampering,’ he said. ‘How many people know the access codes?’

‘Just the six of us, the Earthers,’ said Tommy slowly, suddenly looking worried.

‘And Eve,’ added Rix. ‘And, really, we’ve never bothered to keep them that secret.’

‘But only the Earthers could switch off the movement sensors,’ Tommy pointed out. The only time they went off was when you arrived here, Doctor.’ Was he only just realising that he and his colleagues were the main suspects, or was it a double bluff to remove suspicion by inviting it so openly?

‘Sensors!’ the Doctor cried suddenly. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before? Come on, everyone, we’re wasting our time here! Back to Eve’s office!’

He dived off, calling ‘No time to lose!’ over his shoulder. Martha jogged to keep up. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s up? Something about those movement sensor things?’

‘Nope,’ he replied, not slowing down. ‘Not them. Remember that bank of lights? Alerts every time a population gets down to one. Presumably once that creature is in stasis, the alert disappears. But what if it’s reactivated?’

Martha ‘oh’ed in understanding. ‘So once the rhino was removed from stasis, its warning light would come on again.’

‘Yup.’

‘And if we can track down the rhino, we might be able to find whoever nicked it.’

‘Yup.’

Martha thought about it. ‘But what if it’s dead?’

The Doctor did a running shrug. ‘Then this won’t work. But it’s only been gone, ooh, twenty minutes max? Hope springs eternal, Agent Jones, hope springs eternal.’

The Doctor’s unerring direction sense brought them back to the exit, and he raced down the corridor and through the foyer while Tommy, Rix and Martha struggled to keep up. By the time they reached Eve’s office, the Doctor had already burst in. Ignoring Eve’s obvious disapproval of his unheralded entry, he launched into an explanation of his theory.

Luckily, Eve caught on at once, and her frown vanished. ‘I should have thought of that,’ she said. ‘But the alerts are in chronological order; it never crossed my mind to go back through past extinctions…’

‘No time for tears,’ the Doctor told her, although anyone who looked less likely to break down crying Martha couldn’t imagine. The Doctor ducked behind the desk and pulled back the wall panel to reveal the warning system. He and Eve bent over it as Martha, Tommy and Rix looked on anxiously.

‘Yes!’ The Doctor looked up, beaming. Even Eve was smiling in delight.

‘You’ve found it?’ asked Martha. The Doctor clicked his fingers in mock modesty.