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a man who having told a lie was now in the enviable position of being able to tell the truth—or what he believed was the truth. ‘He’s trying to fool you, sir. They were Dragons all right. We saw them with our own eyes.’
    Gardiner looked at the Doctor. ‘Well?’
    ‘These men’s minds were attacked by some sort of hallucinatory device,’ explained the Doctor. ‘They’re still suffering from the after-effects, trying to fit us into the pattern of their delusions.’
    ‘I see,’ said Captain Gardiner, not believing a word of it. ‘And where do you fit?’
    The Doctor ignored the question. ‘It was some kind of ultrasonic sound wave,’ he went on. ‘They thought they were seeing Draconians when in fact the ship was attacked by a completely different life form.’
    ‘Ogrons,’ said Jo, presuming the Captain would instantly understand what that meant.
    The Doctor scowled at her. ‘I wouldn’t try to explain everything, not all at once.’
    Captain Gardiner said dismissively, ‘Either you are both raving mad or extremely dangerous.’ He looked down at the two pilots again. ‘Get up.’
    Hardy and Stewart struggled to their feet, sheepishly avoiding the Doctor’s eyes.
    ‘I’ll put two men on board to take this ship back to Earth,’ said Captain Gardiner. He turned to one of his soldiers who crowded behind him now in the air-lock. ‘These two “stowaways”, lock them in the hold and put a guard on them.’
    Soldiers sprang forward to seize the Doctor and Jo.
    Jo protested, ‘But we haven’t done anything!’
    ‘You can explain that to Earth Security,’ said Captain Gardiner crisply. ‘But I don’t expect they’ll believe a word of it.’
    The Doctor and Jo sat on upturned crates in the cubicle where they had been imprisoned before. Jo got up and looked through the door grille. ‘There’s a soldier watching the door.’
    The Doctor remained where he was. ‘That’s what he’s there for.’
    She turned to him, urgency in her voice. ‘Right. We’ll give it a few minutes, then I’ll start groaning and saying I’m ill, and when he comes in you can use your Venusian Karate.’
    ‘Then what?’
    She continued, full of enthusiasm. ‘Well, we can take his gun and go to the flight deck and hi-jack the spaceship and force them to take us to Earth.’
    ‘Jo, this ship is going to Earth.’
    ‘That’s a point.’ She considered. ‘Well what are we going to do, then?’
    ‘Why don’t you stop bobbing about, sit down and let me think?’
    Crushed, Jo returned to her upturned crate and sat down. For a full half minute she was silent, as the Doctor had requested. Then, ‘Doctor?’
    ‘Mm?’
    ‘Now that it’s all over and the Ogrons have gone, why don’t those crewmen remember what really happened?’
    ‘They’ve constructed a new kind of reality,’ explained the Doctor. ‘The true facts have been erased from their minds.’
    ‘But they’re telling lies about us.’
    ‘Partly lies, Jo, and partly what they believe to be the truth. They’re desperately trying to fit us into their version of things. It must have been very strange for them when we suddenly appeared.’
    ‘But we didn’t,’ she said. ‘Two Draconians appeared —at least, that’s what they thought.’
    ‘When we get to Earth,’ said the Doctor, ‘we have to reach someone in authority, someone whose mind isn’t closed.’
    ‘Closed to what?’
    ‘These people believe Draconians are attacking their spaceships, but we know it’s Ogrons. We also know that Ogron’s haven’t the intelligence to set up this hallucinatory device that fools everyone.’
    ‘And after that,’ said Jo, ‘all we have to do is to find the TARDIS and then we can go home. You make it sound very simple.’ She sighed and settled down to wait.
    The President and General Williams looked at the face of an Earth guard on the President’s desk videophone.
    ‘I am speaking from the cargo ship,’ said the guard, a lieutenant called Kemp.