THE DOCTOR WAS nosing around the ruined spectrograph, examining the innards with the aid of a slender metal probe that occasionally whirred, buzzed and lit up. He had told Clare it was a sonic screwdriver. Clare had so many objections to that, but she pushed them to the back of her mind and got on with carbon-dating the book using her own equipment in the far corner.
‘Quite incredible,’ muttered the Doctor.
Clare nodded. ‘The book has no discernible atomic structure whatsoever, Doctor.’ No other man – or indeed woman – had ever reduced her to the role of lab assistant. For some reason, she found she didn’t mind. It felt perfectly natural to be handing him tools and test tubes and asking helpful questions, as if it was something that you just did with the Doctor.
He looked up from the spectrograph and pocketed the sonic screwdriver. ‘Simple pseudo-stasis,’ he said airily. ‘The more interesting thing is this.’ He tapped the spectrograph. ‘The book must have stored up vast amounts of sub-atomic energy and suddenly released them when the machine was activated. Now does anything strike you about that?’
‘A few things,’ said Clare. ‘What in particular?’
‘In particular,’ he said, ‘that’s a very odd way for a book to behave.’
‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ said Clare.
The Doctor raised a finger importantly. ‘Aha! Never underestimate the obvious!’
‘But what does that tell us?’
‘Nothing,’ said the Doctor, equally grandly, ‘obviously.’
Clare could tell he was waiting for her to say And what does that tell us, Doctor? So she said, ‘And what does that tell us, Doctor?’
He grinned. ‘Obviously it was meant to tell us nothing, which is exactly the opposite function of a book. Therefore—’
Clare cut him off. ‘It isn’t a book!’
He smiled encouragingly. ‘So what is it?’
A teleprinter over in Clare’s corner chattered into life, the results of the carbon-dating test. She crossed over and tore off the strip of paper. ‘Twenty thousand years,’ she said slowly. She picked up the book in her other hand and stared at it wonderingly. ‘Doctor, this book is twenty thousand years old!’ Her mind was suddenly full of ridiculous thoughts about aliens and/or Atlantis.
The Doctor peered over her shoulder at the print-out and pointed. ‘Look there.’
Clare gulped. ‘A minus sign. Minus twenty thousand years…’ She looked helplessly up at him. ‘What does that mean, Doctor?’
‘It means,’ he said, ‘not only that the book is not a book, but that time is running backwards over it.’ His features took on a particularly stern and forbidding aspect. ‘I think I’d better return it to my friends as soon as possible, don’t you?’
He held out a hand.
Clare knew that if she handed the book to him she would never see him or it again. An entire new world of amazing possibilities would be closed to her for ever, and she would wonder to the end of her days about the last crazy twenty minutes. On top of that, Chris would probably go ballistic over the loss to science and the forfeiture of his amazing, if accidental, discovery.
But somehow, Clare knew, the book wanted to go with the Doctor. It felt the same way about him as she did. He was the right pair of hands.
So she handed it over.
For the first time, the Doctor touched the book. Clare watched as, the moment it touched his skin, he flinched and stood back, his eyes closing involuntarily. A seraphic smile formed on his lips. What was he seeing, she wondered?
Then his eyes opened and he waved cheerily to her. ‘Thank you, Clare Keightley. It’s been a pleasure working with you. I’ve rather missed your sort.’
‘Can’t I come with you?’ Clare protested.
‘I think it’ll be much safer if you stay here and wait for your friend Parsons,’ said the Doctor. ‘Goodbye! Sorry we didn’t get to do any running!’
And then he burst out of the lab and was gone.