No Time Like the Past Read Online Free PDF Page A

they have sheep outside, but in case my lady has a lapdog or similar …’ He flourished a small aerosol.
    ‘Not pepper,’ I warned. The last thing we wanted was a pack of hysterical, sneezing, panic-stricken spaniels yelping all over the house.
    ‘No, it’s something the professor knocked up. It’s quite harmless. It just … confuses them.’
    ‘Well in that case, for God’s sake don’t spray it on Peterson.’
    ‘Don’t spray it at all,’ warned Peterson. ‘Remember the professor’s hair lacquer?’
    He had a point.
    Responding to the many complaints from female historians about the difficulties of managing the enormous lengths of hair with which they were cursed, the professor had given the problem some thought and then announced the invention of a hairspray guaranteed to hold in place even the most unruly locks. Delighted historians had given it a go until the whole lot was confiscated by Dr Bairstow when it was discovered to be so inflammable you couldn’t even walk under a streetlight without featuring in the next scientific paper on spontaneous human combustion.
    I interrupted the discussion between Peterson and Markham who had gone on to dispute exactly who had been responsible for the small fire in the copse behind our big barn, and why Peterson couldn’t land a pod without bumping it, which was threatening to become wide-ranging and noisy.
    ‘The sun’s going down. I’m going to decontaminate now,’ and operated the lamp. The cold blue light glowed and I felt the hairs on my arms shiver.
    ‘I swear that bloody thing makes you sterile,’ muttered Markham.
    Nobody fell over a sheep. A minor miracle in itself.
    The moon came up, sending long blue shadows over silver grass. We flitted from tree to tree in a magical landscape. The woods came down much closer to the house than in our time and we hugged the treeline as far as we could.
    I’m not sure we needed to. There were no signs of life anywhere. No lights showed from the blank windows. No dogs barked. Even the stables seemed deserted. Had Sir Rupert taken all his horses off to war? Not even leaving his wife the working horses for the land?
    We paused for a final check before approaching the house.
    ‘This is suspiciously easy,’ murmured Peterson. ‘Are we even sure anyone’s at home?’
    ‘We’re not sure of anything,’ I whispered, which was true. Our assignments usually had a stated purpose. To observe the fall of Troy. To carry out an in-depth study of the Cretaceous period. To catch a glimpse of Isaac Newton. Today we’d just turned up. To see what, if anything, happened next. To solve a mystery we weren’t sure even existed. And, of course, to discover why something or someone only Markham could see kept falling from the roof.
     It seemed likely that out here in the country, the household went to bed at sunset and rose at dawn. The house certainly looked bedded down for the night.
    ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Before we lose the moonlight.’
    We made a final dash to the side of the house, standing in its shadow as clouds scudded across the sky. The wind felt cool on my face.
    Peterson and Markham felt around the windows while I kept watch. They didn’t seem to be having any luck until suddenly, in the dark, I heard a quiet tinkle of broken glass.
    ‘What?’ I said, managing an outraged whisper with no trouble at all.
    ‘Relax,’ said Markham. ‘I was doing this when I was in my cradle.’
    ‘What?’ said Peterson. Ditto with the whisper.
    ‘That’s why I had to join the army.’
    ‘You’re a felon?’ It takes talent to hiss when there isn’t a single ‘s’ in the sentence.
    ‘Well, yes. Aren’t you?’
    ‘You had to join the army?’ persisted Peterson.
    ‘Yeah. It was that or – something else.’ He was working the catch. ‘Served under Major Guthrie. Didn’t you know? There we go.’
    He eased open a small window.
    We paused for irate householders, watchdogs, patrolling servants, crying children,