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The Brigadier was on holiday. Doris had insisted. Somewhere that UNIT couldn't get hold of him, even in dire emergencies, just for a couple of weeks. It was hardly too much to ask, not when he had technically been retired for years, so they had rented a cottage in the middle of Exmoor, and here they were.
Everything was working out splendidly so far. The sun had shone, mostly tempered with a light breeze, and they had pottered about, visiting local beauty spots and National Trust sites, with the odd cream tea for a treat, and they had plans for nothing more hair-raising during the following week than to stop by the nearest garden centre on the way home.
The Brigadier settled down on a deckchair in the garden with a comfortable sigh and pulled out his book. He'd been reading the dratted thing for six months before at home. Here, he'd almost finished it in less than six days. Amazing what a difference a bit of peace and quiet made.
If he thought somewhere deep inside that it was perhaps a little too peaceful and quiet, he knew better than to tempt fate by voicing that aloud.
Fate nevertheless heard anyway. He had barely opened the book to the last chapter, when there was an almighty bang and a flash from next door's garden. A piece of metal debris flew over the fence and embedded itself in the lawn in the middle of a clump of daisies.
The Brigadier made the mistake of trying to jump up from the deck chair, inevitably leading to an undignified few moments disentangling himself from its clutches. He'd just managed to do so when a head appeared over the side of the fence.
"Hello! Nothing to worry about—only a totally controlled explosion over here! Cross my heart and hope to die." The blonde woman leant her arms on the top of the dividing fence. She had smudges of soot on her face. "Absolutely won't happen again." She disappeared, before almost immediately popping back up. "Well, almost absolutely. At least 96 and a half per cent sure on that. Bye!"
He coughed. "Can I be of any help, madam? I do have some experience with explosives. I was in the army, you know."
"Wait!" She returned to stare and then her face lit with a manic grin. She waved wildly at him. "Brigadier! It's me! Gosh. What are the odds?"
The Brigadier looked at the complete stranger. After revolving the facts in his mind, only one possibility presented itself to him, preposterous though it ought to have been.
"Good grief," he said eventually. "Doctor, that's not you, is it?" Doris was going to kill him. Although, if he knew the Doctor, she'd probably have to get in line behind a bunch of bloodthirsty aliens first.
"Yes! I can't believe you recognised me." She gestured with one hand at herself. "I mean, look! I'm a woman now."
"So I see. Is that—er—did the regeneration go all right?"
"Oh, yeah. This is completely normal for Time Lords. Don't know how I didn't get around to it sooner."
The Brigadier crossed over to the fence. "Doctor, not that I'm not delighted to see you—in any form—but Doris and I are supposed to be on holiday. What the hell are you doing here if you weren't looking for me?"
"Tracked some weird readings to this time and place, but I couldn't get to the bottom of them. Thought I'd make some trouble—see if I could startle some sort of activity out of whoever or whatever is causing them."
"It's rather a coincidence, this happening during the very fortnight that Doris and I are staying here, isn't it?"
The Doctor surveyed him more seriously. "I'd say so. Probability right off the scale. I think whatever caused my weird readings is after you, Brigadier."
"After me?"
"Well," said the Doctor, "you have helped stop a whole score of would-be alien invaders. Take it from me, some of them get tetchy about that sort of thing. One time all my enemies teamed up against me at once and shut me in a box."
"Good grief. All of them?" He gave a slight smile. "Well, you seem to have survived. As usual."
"Yeah. Didn't take," she said and sniffed. "Okay, right—stand by, Alistair, I'm coming round! I'll go over your place with the old sonic and my thingamajig for detecting tetra-scale emissions. Have this sorted in a jiffy. It'll be just like old times!"
The Brigadier nodded. "Thank you, Doctor. I shall go and warn Doris."
Doris refrained from trying to murder him before any lurking aliens got a chance, if only because the Doctor's latest companions—three of them—proved very tactful and sympathetic about the business, especially on the subject of unnecessary explosions that had caused Doris to drop a tray and shatter half a tea set, which the Lethbridge-Stewarts would no doubt have to pay for.
"I can't take you anywhere," was all Doris said after Graham, Yaz, and Ryan had gone back next door, but she sounded more resigned than furious. "What is the Doctor doing now?"
The Brigadier looked at the window. The Doctor was circling the house with a large grey and red boxlike gadget in her hands. It looked as if it had been constructed from a motley assortment of items from the kitchen drawer. She frowned down at it and every so often when it beeped especially loudly, she lifted her head, wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue before diving down into the shrubbery for a few seconds.
"Don't ask me," he said. "Something about looking for traces of alien technology."
"Hmm. Do you think those charming friends of hers would like some lunch?"
"I'd imagine so."
Damned nuisance, the Brigadier added to himself, as he returned to watched the Doctor through the window. She was now squatting on the pavement outside the house and hitting her makeshift gadget repeatedly on the concrete.
He had to admit, it was the most interesting thing that had happened all week. He never had been very good at holidays. Which had rather been Doris's point in the first place. He decided to go out there and give the Doctor a hand.
The Brigadier strode out of the front door and immediately collided with the Doctor, now racing back towards the house. She clutched at him to keep them from falling over. "Brigadier! We've got ten seconds! Get everyone out now!"
"Well," said the Brigadier eventually, as the six of them studied the smoking remains of two beautiful seventeenth century Exmoor cottages. "I must say, it does rather put the broken crockery problem into perspective."
"Alistair!" said Doris. "How are we going to explain this?"
He put an arm around her. "Don't worry. I'll get onto Geneva and let them smooth things over. They owe me that much."
"I should thank you, of course," Doris said to the Doctor. "I am very glad we weren't inside when it went up."
The Doctor, liberally covered in soot, beamed a smutty smile. "You're welcome," she said. She surveyed her handiwork with apparent satisfaction, and then frowned one more time over her gadget-box. "Yep. That seems to have done it. You ought to be safe now, Brigadier."
"I'm glad to hear it," said the Brigadier. They needed lunch, clearing up, and he had better get hold of a telephone. His mobile was presumably melted plastic somewhere in the former cottage. There really was only one thing to be done. He drew himself up, and rose to the occasion: "Come on—we'd best go down the pub. I'll buy you a pint, Doctor."
"Ooh," she said, "great. Ginger beer?"
"Anything you like! Just try to refrain from burning the place down while we're there."