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By Root 477 0

of girls, half a dozen or so, sitting on the sand in the shade of some palm trees and smiling a welcome. Absolute stunners, all of them, thought the Brigadier; there was something about a tanned female figure in a bikini – or half a bikini, some of them! As he sat down with them on the hot sand, he tried to work out what to say, casting his mind back to the wilder days of his youth when he had acquired a number of very fruitful chat-up techniques. But before he could open his mouth, he suddenly became aware of his legs, as he stretched them out in front of him.

‘Good Heavens above!’

‘What is it?’ he heard the Doctor say.

‘Those aren’t my legs! Those are not my legs!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Since when have I painted my toenails pink? Those are female legs for Pete’s sake; and yet they’re my legs – but they’re not, if you see what I mean.’

Utterly disorientated, the Brigadier made a great effort and raised the phantom hand at the back of his mind and pulled off the headset.

In an instant, the beach was nothing but a memory and he was back with the Doctor, blinking at the change of light; hearing the cries of wonder coming from the other couches.

‘Extraordinary experience,’ he said. ‘Bit beyond my ken, if you follow me, but quite fascinating. Here, you’d better have a go.’

But before the Doctor could take the headset from him, Sarah’s head appeared round the door.

‘Psst?’ she said.

‘And that’s all he said?’ asked the Doctor when Sarah had got them outside and told them what had happened.

‘It was all he had time for,’ she said.

‘What was he like, this fellow?’ said the Brigadier.

‘Bit of an oik, actually,’ said Jeremy.

Well, really! Sarah thought. How snobbish could you get? Giving Jeremy a reproving look, which obviously went right past him, she explained that the man was nothing of the kind – just that he had a London accent; sort of Cockney.

‘Grebber, by Jove,’ said the Brigadier.

The Doctor said nothing. He walked a short distance away from them, where he seemed to be in close contemplation of a nearby bush covered with silver roses.

After a minute or so, he turned round. His face was grave.

‘This merely confirms what I feel about this place,’ he said. ‘It could pose a serious threat. There’s danger here.’

‘What, you mean the monsters?’ said the Brigadier.

‘No, no, no,’ the Doctor said impatiently. ‘I’m talking about real danger. It’s this place. This ER. This

“Experienced Reality”.’

If it was true that the Doctor was over seven hundred years old (and that’s what he’d told Sarah) it was perhaps fair enough that he treated the Brigadier like an adolescent schoolboy – and really the Brigadier took it very well when the Doctor told him that he was talking rubbish saying that ER was only another form of telly.

‘Even if you consider it in that light, how many people are there who have to have a nightly fix of their favourite soap operas?’ he said. ‘As harmless as being addicted to the caffeine in a cup of coffee, you might think. Well, television is to ER as caffeine is to heroin! Think, man!

Think how it must work!’

‘Haven’t the foggiest. How does it work?’

The Doctor explained that at first he’d assumed it must be a subtle form of suggestion; a type of electronic hypnotism which merely provided the seed of an experience, which the subject’s own brain expanded.

‘Two things gave me the clue, however. Firstly, the way the program went its own way, no matter how much you tried to change it; and secondly, Lethbridge-Stewart, your painted toenails.’

‘Painted toenails! The Brigadier?’ In spite of herself, Sarah couldn’t help giggling.

‘Yes, well,’ the Brigadier said gruffly, ‘we won’t go into that.’

‘Oh yes, we will,’ said the Doctor. ‘Don’t you see?

Somebody had those experiences. Somebody went to Epsom races with a sensory transmitter implanted in his brain. The same with the woman on the beach. Every sense impression she had was transmitted to a polygraph recorder. And those sense impressions were reproduced in the Brigadier’s brain, even down to the scent of the flowers.’

‘Bougainvillaea!