Private Robin Sanford of the 14th Wiltshire (Ringstone) Battalion Home Guard took one final look over his shoulder to check that no one was watching him, then leaned forward and struck a match on the rough dry-stone wall.
As the match head flared into sputtering life, and he raised it to the tip of his hastily constructed roll-up, a gruff, gravelly voice boomed from the darkness behind him.
‘Those things are going to be the death of you, Private Sanford. That’s assuming that I don’t kill you first, of course.’
Cursing his luck, Sanford let the cigarette drop into the mud, crushing it under the heel of his boot and snapping to attention as Sergeant Desmond Hughes stepped into the stone circle.
‘Just what do you think that you are doing, Private?’ The sergeant’s voice growled like distant thunder.
‘Thought I heard something, sir!’
‘Oh, really?’ The sergeant thrust his face close to Sanford’s, until their noses were practically touching. ‘And just what was it that you thought you heard, you horrible little man?’
‘A wheezing, groaning noise, sir!’
‘A wheezing, groaning noise?’
‘Yes, sir! And I think I saw a flashing light. Thought that I should check.’ He gave the sergeant a cheeky grin. ‘Might be that spaceship that Mr Churchill is always telling us to look out for.’
The sergeant took a long look around the moonlit fields. ‘Well, I don’t see any spaceships or flashing lights, Private. And the only wheezing and groaning that I want to hear is from you helping the rest of the men unload our top-secret government experiment from the truck! Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘Well then, hurry along! At the double!’
As Sanford turned away, Sergeant Hughes stopped him.
‘Private Sanford …’
‘Sir?’
‘Stay alert. There’s something a bit queer about all this. Doesn’t smell right to me. Just … Just keep your eyes open.’
Puzzled, Sanford just nodded, and then hurried away to where the rest of his battalion were struggling to unstrap the huge metal bell from the back of a Scammell truck.
Sergeant Hughes took one last look around the field. Apart from the restless shuffling of the cows it was as quiet as the grave. He gave a scornful sniff. ‘Wheezing, groaning noise, my hat.’
Turning the collar of his coat up against the strengthening wind, the sergeant went to re-join his men.
Crouched amongst the cows in the field, the Doctor watched as the sergeant vanished into the inky blackness. Hunched in the grass alongside him, Charlie Bevan was still trying to come to grips with what had just happened to him.
‘It really worked,’ he said, more to himself than anyone else. ‘We really have gone back in time, haven’t we?’
‘It’s 21 March 1944,’ said the Doctor calmly. ‘I told you that I needed to find out exactly what happened here on that day.’
‘And I thought you meant finding a decent library or something.’ Charlie’s voice was starting to become slightly hysterical. The Doctor turned to face him, placing a hand firmly on his shoulder.
‘Constable. I realise that you have been through a lot over the last couple of hours, but I need you to stay calm and stay focused.’
Charlie pulled his now filthy handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his face and took a deep breath. ‘So, we’re going to try and stop them doing whatever it is they’re about to do, I suppose?’
The Doctor’s face grew stern. ‘The events of tonight are already part of history. Immutable. We cannot change one moment of what is about to happen, do you understand me? We are observers, nothing more.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Well, I suppose it can’t be any more dangerous than where we were before, eh?’ he said with a nervous smile.
The Doctor just stared at him.
Charlie’s smile faded. ‘Oh …’
The Doctor pointed to the stone circle. ‘Back in your time, one of those stones has been replaced with a concrete bollard. There is a plaque on it. Can you recall what is written on that plaque?’
Charlie shrugged, puzzled by the question. ‘The history of the stones. When they were built and why, the reason why there are only a few of them left …’ He tailed off with the sudden realisation of what he was saying. ‘The circle was destroyed during a German bombing raid during the Second World War!’
The Doctor nodded, and then raised a bony finger to point at the overcast sky. From above the clouds, Charlie could hear the distant drone of a plane.
Sergeant Hughes heard the plane too. He made his way back towards the village, glancing nervously at where half a dozen men were unloading the Bell onto a trolley. As he did so, he could make out the shape of one of the 90cm carbon arc searchlight units, sitting in the centre of the village green.
‘Private Sanford!’ he bellowed.
Sanford hurried over, with the perpetual expression of a man who had just being caught doing something he shouldn’t have. ‘Sergeant?’
‘Why isn’t that light over at the decoy site?’
Being spotted from the air had always been a risk. They were maintaining a complete blackout in the village, but there was only so far that could go. When they fired up the Bell, the purple glow that it created was likely to be seen for miles. Intelligence reports indicated that the Germans had some idea of what they were up to, and roughly where, so it had been decided that the best way to ensure the safety of the test site was to set up a decoy site several miles away. Hughes had sent a team out into the middle of nowhere with instructions to construct something that would look right from the air, and then illuminate it with searchlights. With any luck the Luftwaffe would waste all their bombs destroying several square miles of Salisbury Plain.
‘Private Gould thought they had enough, sir,’ explained Sanford. ‘Spoke to them half an hour ago. Said that they have enough to light the place up like it’s Christmas. They even managed to find an old church bell to finish things off. It should fool Jerry properly!’
Hughes grunted. ‘Well, you can tell Private Gould that if I wanted him to start using his initiative I’d have asked for it! I want that light shifted as soon as he’s able. If this cloud cover gets any thinner and that spotter plane comes over again then I want Jerry to be able to see that decoy site from the Moon.’
‘Sir!’ Sanford hurried off to the RT room they had set up in the village hall. As he did so, a big, black Austin staff car pulled up into the village green and the thin figure of a young man emerged from the rear door.
Hughes cursed under his breath. ‘Great. The egghead. Just what we need.’
Picking his way cautiously along the mud track towards the stone circle, the man made his way over to where the sergeant was waiting.
‘Sergeant Hughes! Why isn’t this machine in position yet? It should have been on the ground ten minutes ago.’
‘My men are working on it now, Professor.’
‘The timings are crucial, Sergeant!’ The professor glared at him from behind wire-rimmed spectacles. ‘If we don’t turn on this machine at the exact moment of the vernal equinox …’
‘I am well aware of that, sir,’ said the sergeant firmly. ‘But ground conditions have meant that it has taken slightly longer than anticipated to get the control vehicle into position. I have drafted in extra men to make up the time lost. And there was a fifteen-minute contingency.’
The professor made a disgruntled ‘harrumphing’ noise, and then took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry to snap, sergeant. I realise that you are doing your best under difficult conditions.’
‘Would you like to check the controls, sir?’ Hughes gestured to a large grey vehicle parked a few hundred metres from the circle.
The scientist nodded and the two men started to make their way across the wet grass. ‘I gather that the equipment was heavier than you had expected.’
‘Considerably. We didn’t have anything big enough to shift it, other than one of the local tractors, and I didn’t really want to involve civilians unless it was absolutely necessary. In the end we borrowed a converted Matador from the RAF boys at Lyneham.’
The two men stepped to one side as a soldier hurried past them, unfurling thick cable from a drum.
‘Where are the civilians, by the way?’ asked the professor. ‘I saw no one on the drive in.’
‘Evacuated to Chippenham. We’ve let Military Intelligence deal with the details and cover story. And good luck to them, the locals are a feisty bunch.’
‘They’ll thank us for it in the morning, Sergeant. By tomorrow, the eyes of the entire world will be on the village of Ringstone.’
The professor reached out for the door handle of the control vehicle.
As he did so, Sergeant Hughes rushed forward to stop him. ‘No, sir! Don’t!’
It was too late. The door swung open and brilliant yellow light lit up the field around them.
As the light from the open doorway illuminated the scene in front of them, Charlie Bevan gave a gasp of disbelief.
‘That’s not possible!’
The Doctor twisted around to look at him. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘That man …’
‘The scientist?’
‘Doctor, I know who that is!’
‘Well done. So you know some of your local history.’
‘No, you don’t understand. I’ve met him. He was standing in front of me less than three days ago. That’s the man who owns the industrial estate outside Ringstone. That’s Jason Clearfield.’