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Nina waited while seconds crawled by. She couldn't see into the box, but she could imagine the Doctor holding his breath behind the door, waiting to see which of them would give up first. So it came as a greater shock when she heard his voice call as from a great distance:

'Aren't you even going to look, Nina?'

Her heart gave an enormous wallop and tried to turn over under her ribs. Why did he sound as if he were in a huge, echoing room? It must be a trick; he had sound equipment in there —

'Nina. If you don't look, you'll never find out.'

She couldn't argue. It had gone too far now; she had to know. Had to ... She moved forward, leaned tremulously into the box —

The cry she let out was a blend of shock, fright and sheer inability to believe. Then Nina burst into tears.

'My dear girl!' The Doctor was beside her, an arm around her shoulders, and she pressed her face against his shirt and cried as all the tension and uncertainty that had been building up in her for days was suddenly and mercifully unleashed. She had a vague impression of being led to a comfortable armchair and helped to sit down, but when she tried to look up she had to hide her face again because the whole thing was so impossible. She had stepped into a space which couldn't by any stretch of the imagination be more than a metre square, and found herself in a vast, rambling room like a set from a Victorian costume drama, with wood panelling and paintings, and sofas and — and —

The Doctor said soothingly, 'A cup of tea would help. It really would.'

'Y...' Nina hiccoughed, gulped. 'Y-yes ... I th-think it might.'

All right. Now she knew for certain. The Doctor wasn't mad, because he had proved to her, beyond the 'shadow of doubt' she had been looking for, that everything he had told her in the bistro last night was true. If anyone was mad, it could only be herself. In which case, all this was a hallucination. In which case none of it mattered a damn. So she might as well go along with it from here on.

Nina finished her second helping of tea and put the delicate porcelain cup back on its saucer. She was very glad she had managed not to break it; it looked expensive. Then she pushed nervous fingers through her hair and for the first time really took in the interior of the TARDIS.

Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. The Doctor had explained it to her, but she knew she would never fully grasp it unless she spent the next twenty years studying quantum physics, and even then ... Suffice it to say that the outside and the inside of the TARDIS occupied a completely different set of dimensions, that followed completely different physical laws. Or something. The end result was, effectively, a cross between a space ship and a time machine. And it came from a planet called Gallifrey, which was located — oh, never mind where it was; the distances were too mind-boggling. The Doctor came from Gallifrey too, and he was a Time Lord. Which meant he could – sort of – control time. Or if not actually control it, at least move through it, in any direction, so that ...

Confusion filled Nina's mind again like a thick sea-fog, and she gave up trying to understand the details. Keep it simple, she thought. Facts. They were what mattered. The Doctor was an alien from outer space, and he had come here because his instruments had detected an anomaly in the ... what was it? ... space-time continuum, that was right. A kind of 'blip', that told him something was awry. He had traced it to Earth, pinpointed it to this village, and had come to investigate. His readings told him that there was something here that should not exist on Earth. And this something was a substance that caused a fundamental, and potentially dangerous, clash. That something was Ruth. And Steve thought Ruth was human, and was dating her.

She heard a footstep and looked up to see the Doctor standing beside her. 'Feeling better?' he asked.

'Mm.' Nina nodded. 'Yes. Thank you. Nice tea.' She giggled. 'I've worked