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The PC had opened the back door of the car. "You can do that at the station, sir."

The Doctor seemed lost for words again. Already half in the car, he shot a pleading glance at Ace. She stood firm. "Oi, Mrs Plod, do you know who he is? I mean, do you know who you're talking to?"

"The Prince of Wales, luv. I don't care. Just get in, will you?"

The TARDIS beacon boomed out its warning.

Ace saw the road begin to stretch away towards a dazzling far point. But as it stretched, the glare on the horizon crept closer like a predatory sun.

It wasn't real. She was certain it wasn't real. It was meant to drive them inside the TARDIS.

She made a grab at the Doctor's hat. Out of its depths, she produced a whole pack of ID, credit and playing cards. "Look," she said, fishing out the UNIT pass that actually had the Doctor's face on it. It had been a gift from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart some time in the future, and was not specifically date stamped.

The WPC looked at the card. "So?" she said.

Perivale's new sun drew inexorably nearer, bleaching the colour from everything caught in its glare.

"Doctor!"

"I know." His eyes hardened with concentration as he addressed his captors. "Contact your police station. Get them to dial the card's ID code number on a telephone. You will find it immensely helpful - and so will I," he added. He was suddenly fully authoritarian again. So controlled and clipped that Ace knew their lives depended on it.

The PC ran a finger around the inside of his collar. It was getting hot. "Now look, sir . . ."

"Just ring the number."

"We need more proof than this."

"Ring the number, constable. Thank you very much."

The fireball was now less than two hundred metres away, seething white and looming above the dwarfed houses. The police officers remained oblivious.

"It's nothing like a phone number."

"Oh, don't bother then. Spend the rest of your short and fruitless careers pounding the same beat, wondering what might have happened."

The WPC leaned into the car. "If you won't do it . . ." she complained in exasperation. She reached for the handset and the Doctor climbed out of the car again. Ace caught him as he stumbled with exhaustion and helped him back to his clinging place on the side of the TARDIS.

Boom, repeated the beacon.

They stared as a nearby tree rocked on its roots in the glare, moving its branches like many monstrous arms. Tremors ran along the street like ripples on a concave pool. The tree exploded in flame.

The Doctor closed his eyes. "Don't move, Ace."

"What are you doing?" hissed Ace.

"Not thinking," he said. "That's the only way we'll ever get in now . . . if the door still exists at all."

The PC stood a little way off, spindly against the blaze of white, watching them intently. The molecular haze swirled around him in a chromatic maelstrom. His silhouette rubbed at its eyes as if they were strained. In the car, the policewoman was saying, "I know it's a crazy number, sarge. But they could be bigwigs or something. Just do us a favour and try it."

Boom, went the beacon. Boom, echoed the houses. Perivale shuddered.

The blaze of the fireball expanded to fill the whole blinding sky. Reality was in white-out. A blank page or canvas.

There was a moment's silence in which the policeman looked down at his hand and saw the fingers lengthen into grey talons. What he had not seen before, he noticed now and started to scream.

A telephone rang, an old-fashioned jangle that sliced through the dreamscape like a harsh and violent knife. Staring out at the road, the Doctor lunged backwards with his hand, instinctively finding the handle that he could not uncover by looking. The alcove in the TARDIS's door opened and he pulled out the phone he had never seen before.

"Yes," he snapped. "It's me." He grabbed Ace's arm with his other hand and held it so tightly it hurt.

She yelled a protest. The suburban road vanished as the darkness of the alcove seemed to furl round them like an envelope. They were pulled in.

A moment of pitch black that curled in their stomachs.