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for a few minutes. ‘You’re just a kid! Shut up! Stop saying that!’
    ‘But I. . . ’ Solin stopped. Martha looked up to see fury flooding his face. Then, chagrined, he turned on his heel and marched back into the dining room.
    Oh, well handled Martha, she congratulated herself. She followed him, feeling dreadful for laughing, and found she was just in time to be served a helping of the most extravagant trifle she had ever seen. The Doctor winked at her, already tucking in. Tiermann seemed furious still. His wife looked serene, watching her robot eat dessert for her. And Solin had been excused from the table.
    I could do without the poor kid getting a crush, Martha thought.
    Crushes could be awkward. In fact, it was best to avoid having them completely, as she herself knew.
    The Doctor was refusing to go to bed. He wasn’t, he said, in the least bit sleepy.
    The rest of the household had retired some time ago, replete and yawning. He watched with some amazement as they all drifted off to their luxurious quarters, bidding each other sweet dreams. He wanted to shake them! This was their last complete night in this house, and they were treating the whole exodus-running-away thing as if they were setting off on a jolly holiday.
    ‘Make yourself at home, Doctor,’ Tiermann had told him. ‘Stay up as long as you like. The robots will bring you anything you require.’
    He watched them go, and said good night, and didn’t even try to get Tiermann involved in a last-minute argument. In fact, as he told Martha, before she drifted off to her own room, he wasn’t sure why he had tried so hard to pick a fight with Tiermann. ‘Something about the bloke gets up my nose, though,’ the Doctor said.
    At bedtime, even Solin had been as subdued as his mother, nodding a stiffly formal goodnight to their guests. ‘What’s the matter with 32

    him?’ the Doctor asked Martha. She shrugged and blushed and the Doctor grinned. ‘Was it when you went out on the veranda? Did he declare his undying love for you, Martha? Did he?’
    ‘Shut up,’ she frowned, and hit him with a cushion. ‘Poor kid. He’s like a newly hatched chick, latching onto the first face he sees. . . ’
    ‘Ahh, it’s sweet,’ laughed the Doctor, and Martha rolled her eyes.
    ‘Hey, what about old Ma Tiermann, eh? The elegant Amanda? How weird is she, eh?’
    ‘Ssh! Keep your voice down!’ Martha knew that the Doctor’s voice could carry. She dreaded the idea of Amanda overhearing him.
    ‘But. . . how weird, eh? She even had a robot eating her dinner for her!’ Another thought seemed to strike him as he paced up and down the marble floor. ‘She’s just way too cosseted and primped up. They all are. How do they expect to survive in the real world, out there?’
    Martha shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But they’re going to have to, aren’t they? Pretty soon.’ Then she stretched and yawned and told him she was off to her bed now.
    ‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘I’m staying up. I’m going to have a little think for a while. I’m not sleepy at all yet.’
    Martha left him then, dead on her feet. The Doctor hardly ever seemed to need a full night’s sleep. She didn’t know how he managed, careering around at full speed like he did, gabbling away at full tilt.
    Well, she thought, I’m not a Time Lord, and I need to get my rest, and try out that fantastic bedroom. . . And so off she went, leaving the Doctor poking around and exploring the Dreamhome.
    Of course, the Doctor had a plan. He was staying up for a very particular reason.
    He waited till everyone was gone, and the house was quite still, and he imagined that everyone was settled down. He bided his time by examining the strange, alien knick-knacks on the shelves, and glancing through the leather-bound books in the library. ‘It’s a library of all the most boring books in the cosmos. . . ’ he whispered. And it was true! He had never seen such a dull bunch. ‘It’s a temple of soporific