Part 8 (1/2)

Ben shrugged. 'Yeah, well, that proves everything then, doesn't it?' He rolled his eyes.

The Doctor was almost dancing about with poorly contained impatience. 'We're just wasting time,' he complained. He stared at the two Daleks, barely visible through the hatch in the capsule. 'Of course, as the Examiner I could always order them to destroy the Daleks.'

'Can you?' Polly asked eagerly. That would at least remove one of their problems. Whoever this person was and Polly couldn't decide whether she believed him or not if those creatures were Daleks, then they had to be destroyed. Mind you, if this stranger was lying about being the Doctor then he might just be lying about those things being Daleks as well. Maybe he only wanted them to believe that those machines were Daleks so they'd help him to destroy them. For all she knew, that could be why he was here. In which case, it was up to her and Ben to stop him from doing that. Her head was aching from all of the suspicions and uncertainties.

'I can try,' the little man answered. 'I must try.'

Ben grinned. 'Tell you what I think,' he offered.

The Doctor smiled back. 'I'd be most interested.'

'You wouldn't have done some funny kind of switch with the Doctor?' Ben asked. 'Just so you could get on this planet and make some sort of trouble here? Like over that?' He gestured at the capsule.

The stranger sighed and shook his head. 'Ben, for goodness sake, get your priorities right! The Daleks are more important than your childish suspicions.'

Ben grinned again, as if he'd proved his point. 'Yeah, but you see if I'd said a thing like that to the real Doctor, he'd have bitten my head off.' He shook his head. 'You're a phoney and you know it. Why not just admit it?'

The little man stared at Polly. Gently, she added: 'Tell us the truth. Please.'

'The truth is,' he replied crossly, 'the truth is whatever you choose to believe. But I am am the Doctor.' the Doctor.'

Before Ben could say anything else, the door slammed open. Lesterson strode in, his hair in a mess. He'd obviously been wakened from his rest. Beside him walked his a.s.sistant, Resno, who'd spotted Ben in the lab and had seized his chance to alert his boss.

'What do you think you're doing?' Lesterson snarled.

'Who gave you permission? You've no right to be in here, no right at all!'

The Doctor pulled the Examiner's ID from his pocket and virtually slapped it against the lens of the scientist's gla.s.ses. 'On the contrary, I have every right, and shouting doesn't help. Read this. Aloud.'

'Accord every access,' Lesterson read, reluctantly.

'Exactly,' the Doctor agreed. 'And it doesn't say ”except for Lesterson's laboratory”, does it?' Then, looking vaguely worried, he started to examine the pa.s.s. 'Unless it's in the fine print'

Knowing that he'd lost that battle, Lesterson tried a different tack. 'I should have been asked first,' he complained.

The Doctor gave an incredulous grunt. 'Why? So that you could hide the other two Daleks?' Without waiting for a reply, he rounded on Ben. 'What did you notice first when you looked in that capsule?' he demanded.

'Eh?' Ben hadn't been expecting this. 'Er, well, the Daleks.'

Sounding like a lawyer in a bad TV show, the Doctor asked, 'And you were astounded?'

'Well, yes.'

'Intrigued?'

'Er '

The Doctor whirled around to point an accusatory finger at Lesterson. 'Yet you you haven't even given the capsule a second glance! The inner door - which you claimed not to know how to open - is now open and you can see right in. But you didn't even look! Why? Because you've already been in there and seen them. Where's the third Dalek?' haven't even given the capsule a second glance! The inner door - which you claimed not to know how to open - is now open and you can see right in. But you didn't even look! Why? Because you've already been in there and seen them. Where's the third Dalek?'

Lesterson tried to look innocent. He didn't do a very good job of it, however. Ben thought he could take lessons from the so-called Doctor. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' Lesterson said.

'You opened the capsule without permission,' the Doctor said. 'You found that second door and opened it.

You discovered the three Daleks. You took one of them away and hid it. I want it back!'

'Those are all lies!' Lesterson protested.

'They're not lies,' the Doctor insisted. The door to the laboratory opened and Bragen strode in, accompanied by one of his inevitable guards. The Doctor didn't seem to even notice the intrusion. His whole attention was centred on Lesterson. 'You knew how to open the capsule too easily. Because you'd already done it.'

'Oh, thank you!' the scientist said sarcastically. 'It doesn't seem to have occurred to you how much time it took me to measure every single inch of the surface and '

'Stop it, stop it, stop it!' the Doctor cried, like a baby having a tantrum. When Lesterson fell silent, the Doctor glared at him. 'I want the third Dalek. Where is it?'

Bragen stepped forward, determined to control whatever was happening here. 'May I ask what this is all about?' he asked coldly.

Polly gave him her very best smile. 'We opened the inner door to the capsule only to discover Lesterson had already been inside.'

For the first time Bragen looked across at the capsule.

His eyes widened as he saw the inner door now open.

The Doctor pointed to Bragen's astonished look. 'That's how you'd have reacted if you were telling the truth,' he informed Lesterson. 'You're playing about with things you don't understand.'

Realizing there was no further point in lying, Lesterson said defiantly, 'All right. I admit it, I was in there'

'And you nicked a Dalek!' Ben accused.

'Dalek?' Bragen was rapidly losing his grip on the situation, which was doing little to improve his temper.

'Do you know what Daleks are?' the Doctor asked, almost in tears. He couldn't come right out and ask them what year this was. That would ruin any credibility he had in their eyes. He had been hoping almost praying that it was some time after the Daleks had invaded the Earth.

'I presume it's the name you've given to those two metal creations,' Lesterson replied, deflating the Doctor's hopes completely. Humanity on Earth had not yet met the Daleks.

'Yes,' the Doctor agreed. 'And they're worse than anything you can possibly imagine in a million years!'

'Lumps of metal,' Lesterson scoffed. 'They're quite inactive.'

Recalling the scratching sounds that he'd heard in the capsule made Ben shudder. 'That's what you think, mate,'

he said.