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'Oh, stable,' he said. 'Yes, quite definitely stable. Look, I'll show you.'

He operated a number of controls and a pearly haze began to form around the double doors that now stood wide open, revealing only blackness beyond. Sam blinked and tried to readjust her vision, but the doors refused to come into focus.The effect was not dissimilar to that of a painting left out in the rain, except for the fact that small sparks of energy were flickering around their edges like fireflies.

All at once Emmeline jabbed a finger at the TARDIS scanner screen and cried,'Look!'

Sam turned her attention from the doors to the scanner. On the screen she saw a huge silvery shape dragging itself from the Thames and up on to the towpath, water streaming from its sides. Its savage head was weaving from side to side in a way that reminded Sam oddly of a toddler responding to a piece of music.

'Here they come,' cried the Doctor almost gleefully.

Though Sam watched the first Skarasen enter the TARDIS she wasn't entirely sure how it had done so.What appeared to happen was that the dark energy around the doors suddenly became agitated, dancing and sparking with light.Then there was a rush of silver, a kind of draining, sucking noise, and suddenly the Skarasen was there, its head stretching up on its sinewy neck towards the cobwebby darkness that Sam had always supposed must conceal a ceiling too high to be perceived.

Emmeline and her father clutched at each other as the creature looked around, then lumbered forward, its claws clattering on the floor. It opened its mouth and Sam braced herself, expecting its shattering roar to all but burst her eardrums in the relatively confined space. However, instead of roaring, the Skarasen uttered an extraordinary crooning sound that seemed to provide a peculiarly appropriate accompaniment to the electronic burble that had drawn it here.

'It's singing,' Sam said in wonder.

'The summoning signal acts as an aural sedative,' said the Doctor. 'It penetrates directly to the aggression centres in the Skarasen's brain and nullifies them.'

The energy haze around the door became agitated again and another, smaller, Skarasen appeared. It all but collided with the first Skarasen, but rather than retaliating, the larger creature simply ambled forward to give the newcomer room. This Skarasen too opened its mouth and crooned in response to the signal.

'They're quite sweet when they're not eating people, aren't they?' said Sam.

Over the course of the next half-hour more and more Skarasen appeared, until eventually they were entering the TARDIS at the rate of around two a minute.Though the console room was vast, it was not long before it was full of Skarasen, the creatures pressed together as closely as cattle in a truck.

'You'd better open the inner doors,Tuval,' the Doctor said.'Let them wander around a bit.They won't come to any harm.'

'They won't, but what about the TARDIS?' said Sam. 'I don't want them going in my room, trampling all over my stuff.'

'Stuff can always be replaced, Sam,' said the Doctor. 'My motto is never become too attached to anything.'

'Does that include people?' she asked.

'Besides, you'll have closed your door so you've got nothing to worry about,' the Doctor said, ignoring the question.

She looked indignant.'How do you know I'll have closed my door?'

'Human teenagers always do. Very secretive creatures.'

'Not unlike Time Lords then,' said Sam. 'Or at least, one particular Time Lord I could mention, who's standing not a million miles away.'

Tuval used a number of levers on the console to open the inner doors, and then set the mass inversion wave around them using a series of buttons like blue typewriter keys indicated by the Doctor. As soon as the dark haze began to appear around the doors, the Skarasen began to filter out into other parts of the TARDIS. For the next ninety minutes the creatures continued to file in through the main doors until at last the number of new arrivals started to dwindle. A few remaining stragglers appeared