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am a traveller,’ he announced, lamely. ‘I had lost my way, and I saw the light.’
    Very likely, I must say. He didn’t look as if he’d seen the light. Odysseus snorted, to indicate his opinion of this closely reasoned alibi.
    ‘Come,’ he said, having concluded the snort, ‘at least you are the god Apollo to walk invisible past sentries?’
    Steven attempted injured innocence. ‘What sentries?’ he inquired, ‘I saw no sentries.’
    ‘Did you not? Well, maybe they are sleeping – and with a knife between their ribs, I’ll wager! Shall we go seek them together? Or would that be a foolish waste of time? Well, the light attracted you, you say? Then little moth, go singe your wings.’
    Of course, no twelve stone man likes to be called ‘little moth’
    – but there’s not much he can do about it, if he’s hurtling through a tent-flap, like an arrow from a bow. So he let the remark pass for the moment, and presently found himself in the centre of a circle of surprised but interested faces – one of whom, he was glad to notice, was the Doctor. Nevertheless – difficult, the whole thing.
    ‘And who is it this time?’ asked Agamemnon, reasonably enough. His tea was being constantly interrupted by one air-borne, hand-hurled stranger after another.
    Odysseus positively purred with complacent triumph. ‘My prisoner, the god Apollo,’ he announced, smiling. So might Pythagoras have murmured QED, on finding he could balance an equation with the best of them. ‘Achilles, will you not worship him? Fall to your knees? He is, of course, another Trojan spy –
     
    but of such undoubted divinity that he must be spared.’ He was enjoying his little moment. Steven did his best to spoil it for him.
    ‘I’m not a Trojan,’ he asserted firmly, ‘I did tell you I’m a traveller – well, a sort of traveller – and I lost my way.’
    Well, it did get a laugh, but not the sort he wanted, by any means. Sarcastic, it was. They looked as if they’d heard that one before. In danger, he realised, of losing his audience, he appealed to the Doctor. ‘Look here, you seem to have made friends quickly enough. Explain who I am, can’t you?’
    ‘Ah,’ chirrupped Odysseus, ‘so you do know each other then? In that case no further explanation is necessary. You must certainly be from Olympus and the gods are always welcome. I ask your pardon. Drop in any time.’
    ‘Well,’ enquired Agamemnon of the Doctor, packing a wealth of menace into the syllable, ‘have you nothing to say?’
    Surprisingly, especially to Steven, the Doctor looked puzzled.
    ‘I have never seen this man before in my life!’ he lied stoutly, with a dismissive wave of his ham-bone, ‘He is, of course, merely trying to trick you.’
    Steven, for his part, looked as if he’d aways expected his ears sometimes to deceive him – and now his friends were adopting the same policy.
    ‘How can you sit there,’ he stammered, ‘and deny –’ Words failed him, and just as well too, because Agamemnon had heard quite enough of them to be going on with...
    ‘Silence,’ he barked, clarifying this position. ‘Take him away, Odysseus. Why must I be troubled with every petty, pestilential prisoner? First cut out his tongue for insolence, then make an end!’
    But Odysseus was after bigger game. ‘Softly now. Suppose we are mistaken, and the man is just an innocent traveller, as he told us? I could never sleep easily again, were I to kill him while any doubt remained. Remorse would gnaw at my vitals – and I wouldn’t want that. All-seeing Zeus – this man who presumptiously claimed your friendship... is he a spy or not?’
    The Doctor looked bored with the whole subject. ‘I neither know nor care. I must say, it looks very much as if he is.’
    ‘And shall he be put to death?’
    ‘I would strongly advise it,’ recommended the Doctor, blandly, ‘it would be very much safer, on the whole. Can’t be too careful, can you?’
    An air of business having