• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She suddenly realized the purpose of the Jibert Cathcode Troisième in the console room — a one constant indicator of how their and the ship's personal time progressed.

There was a deep rumble from further along the corridor. Shining her torch ahead, she edged forward. Something moved on the corner of the light and then sprang out in front of her.

The cat, if it was the same creature she had seen on Ealing Broadway, had grown larger. Big as an urban night-time tom cat. King of the alley. Its silvered body shimmering, throwing back the light, moving with a muscular, liquid smoothness that didn't look real.

It splayed its paws and arched its back. Its tail swung angrily from side to side.

Ace slid backwards. The cat didn't belong here. It was out of place. It belonged in a different reality. It bared its teeth and hissed.

She kept the animal directly in the torch beam, groping blindly behind her as she edged back. The cat came on, its eyes fixed on her. It spat, but she was staring at the corridor beyond it — the passage down which she would just have gone. The walls were slowly rippling. As she watched, they dissolved into a slow-churning ferment of dimensional dementia.

The cat yowled and crouched back as if to pounce. Ace turned and ran — it was like running uphill as the world was sucked past her. She made to grab at the bicycle, but its handles slipped through her fingers and the machine slid towards the approaching whirlpool of dissolving walls.

As she ran forward, she felt herself falling. She hit the floor and skidded along the length of the corridor. Something slammed hard behind her. She stared back and saw a new wall in the torchlight blocking off the way she had come. She clambered to her feet. The cat was gone, but she could still hear the churning beyond the walls, and through it she thought she heard voices. A muddle of voices calling out in distress.

Other walls were sliding like ghosts through the dark corridor. There were cries from the shadows. She glimpsed half-figures like wraiths, their arms outstretched in desperation. Another ship, its shapes tilting absurdly and spinning. And now the real walls were tilting in to trap her. "Doctor!" she yelled and put her head down and ran.

The whole superstructure of the TARDIS shook around her, but she ran blind, instinct drawing her upwards. She spun a corner and found herself back in the console room.

There was no one there. No Doctor.

Ace clung to the edge of the console to get her breath back. The door slammed of its own accord. Beyond it, there was a dull roar like a storm beating against the room.

If the Doctor was right, she was safe here — at home. But if the TARDIS was breaking up, how was she to save him? She rammed her hand into her pocket. The scroll was still lodged there and she had the key to the ship. She didn't dare think that he had bequeathed his TARDIS to her. She stood alone, trying to pull any sense out of her predicament. She wanted the Doctor back, that was all.

Across the console, the double doors were bulging with pressure from outside. The scrabbling behind them had intensified. Cracks ran across their surfaces and little slivers of material dropped like shattered eggshell. A segment split and Ace glimpsed something grey and slimy that writhed inside.

She struck at the panel, desperately trying to force something to work. The scanner screens slid jerkily open and Ace stared in bewilderment at the display.

The scanner in the console room showed the console room and the scanner in that console room showed the console room and the scanner in that console room showed the console room and the scanner in that console room showed . . .

More fragments of the eggshell door fell away as the newborn creature inside began to force its way out.

With a whirr, the Jibert Cathcode Troisième clock prepared to strike the hour. It never completed its task.

The ghost shapes slid through the contours of the console room. Anguished faces from another ship. The grinding of overlaid realities. The birth scream of the monster.