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He pointed a tiny finger upwards as the spinning object bore inexorably in upon them.

Ace had waited ten minutes by the Jibert Cathcode clock and that was enough. She had tried to look at her book, but the dim light strained her eyes and the words strained her brain.

She tried to doze. Her head was too busy. The silence got on her nerves, but the incessant tick of the clock in the silence was worse. There were things she wanted from outside the console room: food and a drink and a bath. She stood in the open doorway and looked out into the darkened corridor.

The TARDIS had become a cold place. The air had taken on a damp chill that cloyed wet in her lungs. What was she afraid of? She had only to cross the passage, but the cold darkness out there was like a wall.

She drew back into the room. Still no life in the console. The rotting manual lay where the Doctor had dropped it. Behind the chest, the track of slimy prints still glistened. It might be her imagination, but the gap in the walls looked a little wider and taller. She was sure she had heard it crack slightly, as if the dimensions of the ship itself were slipping apart.

Then the scrabbling started again. It was still there, behind the doors, where it had first been.

She crossed to stare at the doors. It wasn't an echo in the dimensions. She could see the doors give slightly as whatever it was pressed against them from the outside.

But it couldn't be out there and inside simultaneously. The Doctor was wrong, unless there was more than one of the creatures.

She ran back to the console. There was a small receiver point on one panel which might act as an intercom system. She pressed the button beside it. "Doctor? Doctor, if you can hear me, please get back here now. It's up here in the control room. Doctor, I need help."

There was a sudden click. Ace was startled by a small hatch that opened on the panel. Out of it, like a newspaper popping through a letter box, rose a scroll of grey parchment tied with a silver ribbon.

Behind the doors, the scrabbling scraping increased in its industry.

Ace lifted out the scroll and the hatch snapped shut again. The console was as dead as before. The scroll was dusty, like something abandoned for centuries deep beneath the desk of an ancient mummified solicitor. Ace's fingers fumbled with the knotted ribbon, but the tangle slipped undone easily and the parchment unrolled across the console in front of her.

It was grey and empty. There was not a mark on the paper, yet when she looked directly at the surface, it almost seemed to fall away from her. There was a sparkle somewhere in its grey depths. Somehow it was important. Why else would it have appeared? She knew she had to get it to the Doctor.

She rolled the parchment tight and tangled the ribbon around it. Picking up the Doctor's jacket, she hunted through its seemingly bottomless pockets. Amongst the jumble of gadgets and sweet papers, she eventually found a pocket torch. It lit like a searchlight.

The scrabbling had not relented. She could see the doors moving under its attack. And when she looked at the gap in the walls, it was definitely larger. It gave a splitting noise and she saw a fine hairline crack spreading across that section of the wall. There were other cracks too, at points all around the circular room.

She pulled on her own jacket against the cold and shone the torch out of the door. It threw a harsh glare. The wrong kind of light, too cold for these normally warm passageways, and when she glanced behind, her own shadow was huge and menacing up the wall.

Like something following her.

She slid the parchment into an inside pocket and headed into the depths of the TARDIS.

Even by torchlight, the ship was getting ramshackle. Ace figured that if the Doctor spent less time playing the roles of Great Intriguer and self-appointed Nanny to the Universe, he might get his time machine into some semblance of running order. As it was, he only appeared to effect repairs when it became imperative, which usually meant life-threatening. In occasional