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"Hey!" Jamie's voice shouted. "Over here, ye daft lummox!" Gia, zigzagging in the direction of the gate, guessed that Jamie was trying to distract the bull. Somehow, she didn't think it would work. Sooner or later, he'd concentrate on one target at a time, and right now that seemed to be her. She staggered on the uneven ground, losing valuable time. She could almost feel the bull breathing down her neck... "Take that!" Zoë's voice shouted, and a shower of soil and pebbles rained down around her. She risked a quick glance at the stile; three figures were standing on it. "Zoë," one of them said. Gia recognised Isobel's voice. "You're supposed to be aiming at the bull." "I was," Zoë protested. "Better luck next time." She raised her voice. "Gia, make for the hedge. Try and climb over it." Gia lost no time in complying. She was near the edge of the field now, and with a last desperate effort she managed to jump the ditch at the edge and scramble into the hedge, the thorns tearing at her hands and clothes. Behind her, she could hear the shouted instructions. "Over here, Jamie!" "You lot, try and get him tae come this way." "Good shot! Right between the eyes!" "Anyone got any more stones?" "Take your shirt off! Wave it at him!" "Here he comes..." Gia, still tangled in the hedge, managed to look over her shoulder. Jamie, Isobel and Victoria were now surrounding the patiently plodding man, while Zoë was on her hands and knees near the stile picking up ammunition. The bull was within a few feet of Gia; he gave her a long look, as if wondering whether or not to press home his victory. Victoria's arm moved rapidly, and the bull jumped as if stung. He turned, and charged at the presumed source of the attack. He covered the ground in next to no time, his course neatly intersecting that of the man, who had not paid him the slightest attention all this time. The two figures seemed to merge. The man's arms moved with the same rapidity Gia had seen before, when he had flung Jamie and Zoë away. But the bull was a much bigger and tougher target. This time, the man ended up flying through the air. As he stood up, there was an undeniable gleam of metal where his clothes and synthetic flesh had been torn away. The bull shook his head menacingly and resumed the attack. Gia was still watching when she felt a hand on her arm. "Are you all right?" Zoë's voice asked. "Just scratches," Gia said. "I could use a bit of help getting down." Getting out of the hedge was a much longer and more awkward process than getting into it had been. But eventually, she was back at ground level. "What about you?" she asked. Zoë rubbed her leg. "It's bruised here," she said. "Right on the tibia. I can walk, but it hurts if I try to run." "Don't try. Lean on me if you need to." The two made it back to the stile at around the same time that the other three, having given the bull a wide berth, also reached it. One by one, they climbed onto the stile and looked back. Most of them stayed on the fence, watching, but Victoria quickly turned away. Even though there wasn't any blood, and the courier looked less human with each passing second, there was still something unnerving about the way it twitched and jerked under the bull's trampling hooves. "That's it for him," Isobel said. "Serve him right. He could have killed any of us." "Seconded," Zoë said. "And I told you he wasn't human." She turned her scrutiny on Jamie, looking rather as she might when inspecting a malfunctioning radio telescope. "What was all that about taking my shirt off?" "Well, it's red," Jamie began. "Everybody knows bulls --" "Are colourblind, Jamie. You know that as well as I do. Was this really about distracting the bull?" Jamie adopted an expression of wounded innocence. "Of course it was," he said. "What else d'ye think it could have been?" The radio telescope, Zoë's expression suggested, would have been on the scrapheap by now. "I rather wondered," she said, "if it was a cunning plan to ogle my underwear." "Wouldn't put it past him," Isobel said. "Come to think of it," Victoria added, "neither would I." "Och, now that's just not fair--" "Can we get back to business?" Gia said. "This was a smuggling run, or so we thought. If that man, or robot, or whatever, was the courier, what was in that box he was carrying?" Jamie pointed. "It's down there." Except for Victoria, they looked. The box lay, open, close to the shattered remains of the courier. A device had fallen out. Originally it had been hand-sized, silver and black, roughly rectangular with protrusions around the edges. Now, it was a collection of smashed circuit boards and broken lumps of plastic. "I wonder if it was one of those book scanners," Zoë said. "You know, Torchwood have got one. It can pick locks as well." "Probably full of stolen data, too," Gia said. "If that thing can scan a library it wouldn't balk at a few million sets of bank details and signatures." Isobel whistled. "Just imagine what that would fetch on the black market. No wonder whoever it was decided to try and smuggle one in." "Whoever it was," Zoe said. "We still don't know who that is, do we? Was that man Henry any help?" "None. He said he'd only ever spoken with the one man. The others kept their masks on the whole time and didn't speak." "Did you believe him?" "I wouldn't go that far. Victoria, what do you--" Isobel, who'd turned to face Victoria, suddenly looked past her. "Hey, is that something burning over there?" Everyone looked round. A few fields away, the tree which Victoria had climbed was now surrounded by a thick column of smoke. At its base, the flicker of flame could be seen. "I think one of the batteries must have shorted," Gia said. "Primitive technology. First sign of trouble and it bursts into flames." Victoria sighed. "Unless we can put it out ourselves, we'll need to call the fire brigade. Everything we seem to do today just seems to make matters worse." "Could you unpack that a little?" Victoria began to count on her fingers. "So far today we've destroyed a café, a motorised bicycle, a robot smuggler, and the device he was smuggling." "And my telephone," Zoë reminded her. "Thank you, Zoë. And your telephone. We have also left our vehicle miles away obstructing a road, flooded the cellar of an hotel, alienated the local police, fraudulently blocked another road, set fire to a tree, and let a dangerous bull out of his field. And with what result? We have no proof that any smuggling ever took place, and would be hard pressed to explain our actions to anyone, let alone the authorities." "When you put it like that..." Isobel looked around. "I think the question to ask ourselves is: What would the Doctor do in this situation?" "Easy," Jamie said. "Get in the TARDIS and take off before anyone found out." "Sounds like a plan. Come on, let's pick up Samantha and get out of here. Didn't that lad at the garage say there was a station near here? We could catch a train and be back in Nameless by lunchtime." Isobel was already walking purposefully back toward the road. With varying degrees of reluctance, the others followed her. "Really," Victoria said. "I believe you have no sense of responsibility at all." Isobel cheerfully shook her head. "None. Look, if you're worried we can tell UNIT when we get back, and they'll handle the cleanup." "Or Torchwood," Jamie suggested. "Then they'll cause so much damage that no-one'll notice what we've done." "Good idea. Come along, everyone." They crossed the field at a gentle walk, but as they climbed over the gate into the road, they found themselves in the presence of several police constables, Samantha and Henry (both handcuffed), and Sergeant Peters. "Now then," the latter said. "What's all this?" Chapter 10: Helping The Police With Their Inquiries
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