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"But I don't understand." She pointed to the doors. "We just heard it through there."

"It's disturbed the TARDIS parameters. Time echoes back and forth across the dimensional interfaces. It was there. It's already been here." He looked helpless. "The TARDIS is in crisis. This intruder . . . !" his voice rose in a crescendo of anger, and then dropped again. "It's destroyed my understanding of the ship. Now we may never find a way out again."

"How's it got in?" She began to stare round the console room, expecting some hideous monstrosity to come lurching out of the shadows. "You never use the manual anyway."

"Not for simple tasks. But the TARDIS is an immeasurably complex machine: Its maintenance needs expertise in everything from plumbing to psychology."

"But you must know how to work it. You built it."

He threw down the ruined volume in exasperation and began to pull other books from the chest. Their pages were intact.

"Look at this. You'd think it knew exactly what it wanted."

At the back of the chest, a hole had been torn. A veneer of slime clung to the splinters. A path of glistening imprints led from the back of the chest to a small gap in the walls where the dimensions of the TARDIS were not quite flush with one another.

The Doctor probed the slime with the metal rod. "A single line of oval mucous exudations. Consistent with some sort of monopod mollusc."

"So it's loose in here with us."

The Doctor sank down on to a chair. His face was weary and sullen. "It could be anywhere in the ship."

"So we'll find it and get rid of it."

"Don't you understand, Ace? It could be a datavore."

"A what?"

"Omnivores, Kronovores, Haemovores. This creature might have the ability to ingest information like food. It may feed on knowledge."

"You think it's going to try and take over the TARDIS."

"My TARDIS. Using inside information stolen from me! That's why we were summoned back. There's no knowing what damage it could do — worming its way into the systems. The whole ship could disintegrate in the process."

An insistent trill sounded from the console. The central column shuddered as it rose and fell in its placement. Ace left the Doctor in his chair and studied the panels.

"What co-ordinates did you set when we left Earth?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Somewhere secluded. The Ballard system in the Green Dragon Nebula."

"Because they're all on zero."

"What?" He was beside her in a second, scanning the instruments from over her shoulder. Every dial and readout was dead, yet the engines still droned and the glass column undulated with their flight.

"No!" With a cry of anger, he ducked under the spread of the console. Ace followed and saw him tentatively open the inspection panel in the support column.

Inside, lights twinkled along sheaves of fibres like impulses moving on a nervous system. Set in the heart of the synthetic ganglia was a row of glass rods, each filled with silver liquid. The Doctor tapped at one of the rods with a pencil. A droplet of mercury fell from one end and splashed on the edge of the hatch, spraying a hundred silvered globules across the floor.

"Now the fluid links are playing up," complained the Doctor. "There's only vestigial power reaching the console."

The console room lights dimmed noticeably and the energetics on the fibres slowed to a trickle. The note of the engines began to grind effortfully down. Ace shivered. There was a sudden chill in the air.

"The power's draining away," muttered the Doctor. "We're already down to candlepower." He had begun to systematically test each instrument on the console.

Nothing responded. The console was as good as dead.

"Perhaps the thing eats energy as well," Ace suggested and immediately regretted it. "Look, I mean there must be secondary supply. A spare."

"There used to be a secondary control room."

"Yes?"

"But I think it might have got deleted. I certainly haven't seen it for a while."

"I'm not surprised with the state of those corridors."

He walked to the inner door and stared into the darkening depths