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This was clearly all too much for them to take in – although Joyce was struggling to get a grasp on it all herself.

‘I’ll go through first,’ Ace said. ‘Joyce, can you make sure Connie and Jessie go through OK and then follow them?

There’s a chance that the place will be crawling with staff when we get back, so you need to get Connie and Jessie to safety, and you need to find the Doctor. Tell him what’s happened – that there’s a transmat in the cellar that leads to a spaceship. Got that?’

Joyce nodded, still bristling slightly from being ordered about.

‘Right – see you on the other side.’ With a deep breath, Ace took a couple of steps forwards and vanished. Joyce winced as Jessie gave a shriek.

Through the gap in the treatment room door, the Doctor saw a man who fitted not only Claudette’s description, but Norma’s too: thin, nervous, pale skin, bald head. As he left his room, Sooal glanced up and down the corridor suspiciously. For a moment, the Doctor almost felt those albino eyes burning into him. And then the moment was past: Sooal looked at a small, greenish device in the palm of his hand and set off down the stairs.

But there was something else he’d noticed about him –

something that Ace hadn’t mentioned. Perhaps Claudette hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t thought it was worth commenting on.

Something that he felt sure must be important. He slipped out of the treatment room and padded to the top of the stairs. He paused, momentarily, before silently descending the stone steps.

‘What’s happening?’ demanded Sooal as he stood over the prone figure of Megan. She gave a groan and looked up at him. The right-hand side of her face was bruised, and there was dried blood under her nose. She was sprawled on the floor of the basement kitchen at the foot of the rear stairs, like a broken toy.

‘That little bitch!’ she hissed, her voice distorted by her swollen lip. She touched it tenderly and winced.

‘Who? What’s been going on? I come down here to find out who’s been disconnecting the processors, and find you taking a nap!’ ‘Who has? Where?’

Sooal gave a snort of disgust. ‘Aboard the ship,’ he said slowly, waving his datapad at her. ‘Someone has been disconnecting the processors. We’ve lost three of them in the past half hour.’

‘It’s her! It must be!’

‘So what happened?’

‘She must have ambushed me – hit me with. .’ She glanced around, and saw a huge, cast-iron pan on its side on the floor, a few yards away. ‘With that. It must have been her. Or her grandad.’

‘What are you wittering about? Who?’

‘They came to look round yesterday – a girl and her grandad.

Her name was Ace or something stupid, and she called him “the Doctor” – a real dotty old duffer. I knew there was something odd about them. They vanished during tea – Enid said she’d seen them wandering around.’

Sooal’s jaw clenched. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me about them?’

Megan glared back at him, clearly not intending to be intimidated by him. ‘Why should I have done? I thought they were just a girl and her grandfather, looking around the place.’

‘If you’d remember what we’re doing here instead of acting out the comic role that you spend most of your time practising, then you’d have kept an eye on them.’

‘It puts the humans at their ease and keeps them coming back. If it wasn’t for me, you’d have no patients here. Perhaps you should take a few social skills lessons yourself – no wonder you need to keep yourself hidden away in that attic –’

She flinched as he raised his hand. But after a moment, he lowered it and turned away. ‘I suggest,’ he said, barely containing his anger, ‘that you find them. I’m going to the ship to find out what’s happened there.’

‘And if they’re on board?’

Sooal patted his pocket where the outline of a bulbous gun was dearly visible. ‘Then I’ll take a leaf out of your book, and try out a new role for myself – that of executioner.’

In the laboratory, less than thirty feet away, Ace materialized in mid-stride out of thin air and dropped instinctively into