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Martha wasn’t really worried. After all, she hadn’t exactly committed a crime, and anyway, the Doctor would soon straighten everything out. So she was a bit surprised when, after Celia had explained to Eve that Martha was an impostor, Eve ordered security guards to arrest her and lock her up.

‘Hey! I want to talk to the Doctor!’ Martha called.

But Eve’s voice came back over the tiny, tinny speaker: ‘The Doctor is indisposed.’ Now what did that mean? One thing Martha did know, she wasn’t going to meekly submit to being stuck in prison for however many months.

Time had been passing at the museum while they were gone, and it was now open for business. Martha thought this was a good thing, because Celia probably wouldn’t expect her to make a fuss in front of all the visitors – and she certainly wouldn’t expect her to clobber the newly arrived security guard and make a run for it.

But that’s just what Martha did.

I ran. I’ve always been a good runner, anyway, and I’ve had quite a lot of practice since meeting the Doctor, so, even though Celia and the guards know this place better than me, I still managed to evade them. Hurrah for me! Ducking and dodging and hiding are also things I’ve got better at recently.

Mind you, I didn’t really know what to do after I’d finished the running and the hiding et cetera. Museum big as a planet and all that, it doesn’t really narrow down your options. I still had the pendant, yes, but as I only knew the coordinates for the places I’d already been to, like the doorless warehouse and the Vietnamese market – none of which contained the Doctor – that was very much a last resort. The only thing I could think of was to try to make my way back to the TARDIS, although what I would do when I got there I didn’t have a clue, unless the Doctor was leaning out of the door waving at me – unlikely, but I cherished a hope anyway. Ms Optimist, that’s me.

The TARDIS was still in the Earth section, as far as I knew, and the great thing about being on the run in a museum open to the public is that everywhere is signposted. So, despite the size of the place, all I had to do was pick up a guidebook and follow the directions to the dodo. And as the clock had ticked round to opening time, it meant that (a) I didn’t have to worry about movement sensors or anything, and (b) there were members of the general public around to act as camouflage. I say general public; there was as much variety in them as in the exhibits: lizard‐men and one‐eyed green creatures with dodgy haircuts and some jelly‐like blobs that didn’t seem to have any eyes, but must have been able to see the exhibits somehow as they were commenting loudly on them.

It was also reassuring to know that there weren’t CCTV cameras hidden around, so unless I actually ran into a guard or one of the Earthers I’d met earlier, I was pretty much invisible. Actually, a guard did pass me at one point, looking suspicious, but I cunningly grabbed a nearby small lizard‐child and started to lecture it on the Steller’s sea cow (poor confused child, it now thinks that Earth is full of Sea Farms, containing Sea Pigs, Sea Chickens and Sea Sheep giving Sea Wool for Sea Sweaters), and that seemed to put him off the scent.

But it did make me think a bit. There’s me joking, but I’m actually seeing a Steller’s sea cow, something wiped out in the eighteenth century, according to the ISpyder book. I’m seeing all these things that no one else of my time will ever see. Funny how quickly you take things for granted, going ‘oh, there’s a passenger pigeon, there’s a Tasmanian tiger, there’s a woolly mammoth: I suppose it’s hard to put them in context. I mean, a lot of the things here seem to be, you know, everyday sorts of frogs, or birds, or mice. Like the turtle – if I’d stumbled across one on Earth, I wouldn’t have had a clue they were unique, otherwise extinct creatures – after all, there are hundreds of thousands of frogs and birds and mice on Earth and I’d only recognise