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‘What did he mean?’ asked Ty. ‘About the reproduction.’ ‘I’m not sure,’ replied the Doctor. ‘But you have to admit – it didn’t sound good, did it? I mean, one of those things is bad enough. But if it’s planning on reproducing. . . ’ He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the now-placid surface of the water.

Ty looked at the otters, standing along the bank. Their faces were blank, but she could feel their eyes boring into them.

‘Now what?’ she said.

‘Well,’ said the Doctor, ruffling his hair. ‘My guess is that the otters are still following their instructions to guide us down to the water and not let us retreat. And if we try to move, I suspect that they’ll have a pretty good go at tearing us limb from limb.’

He scratched his chin.

‘What we could really do with now is a miracle.’

‘A miracle?’ scoffed Ty, watching the otters as they stood, teeth bared, all around them.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor firmly. ‘A miracle. A miracle a bit like that one.’

He was staring over Ty’s shoulder. She turned to see what he was looking at.

Over the crest of the hill, whooping and shouting fit to scare cattle, was Martha Jones – accompanied by the dirtiest dozen of otters Ty had ever seen – all screeching and squealing and leaping up and down as they came.

‘You have got to be kidding,’ Ty gasped.

Martha had been no less amazed herself, as she stood at the brow of the hill, accompanied by the otters, and watched the dangling figure of a man, supported by a whopping great tentacle, crash back into the water.

She’d arrived just in time to see the end of what looked like a show-down between the ‘man’ and the Doctor and Ty, down at the edge of the water. The Doctor had raised his arm and fired what looked like a tiny gun at the puppet-man. Seconds later, it had all been over. Well, apart from the fact that Ty and the Doctor were now surrounded by dozens of otters, hemming them in, trapping them on the mud.

‘Do something!’ Martha urged her furry friends. ‘Help them!’ An outbreak of squeaking broke out amongst the otters at her feet, interspersed with odd words: ‘Call them!’, ‘Help them!’, ‘Talk! Talk!’

‘Will they understand you?’ she asked the otters.

‘They?’ the one with the smudged ear repeated whilst his (her?

Martha hadn’t thought to check what sex he was – and, to be quite honest, couldn’t tell even now) fellows squeaked and chattered.

Martha pointed to the otters surrounding the Doctor and Ty.

‘Can you talk to them? You – talk? To them?’ She jabbed her hands back and forth frantically, like an inadequately prepared foreign tourist.

But the smudgey-eared one stared at her. ‘Talk, no,’ he squeaked.

Martha’s shoulders fell. ‘Shout, yes!’ he added.

‘Shout?’

‘Yes – can shout. Might scare.’

‘Nice one!’ cried Martha, reaching down to stroke his head – but he pulled back, a look of alarm on his little bear-face. ‘Might scare is good! Definitely might-scare! Shout,’ she added. ‘Oh yes!’

And so, like some sort of wild woman, shrieking and wailing, she went. Martha led her band of equally wild otters over the hill and down the slope towards the Doctor and Ty.

Analysing it later, the Doctor coolly said that he wasn’t really surprised that the zombie otters took notice of them. Yeah, Doctor. Right.

The slime-thing’s chemical control was a blunt instrument, not capable of subtle programming: ‘Bring humans! Guard humans! Don’t let humans go!’ That sort of thing. It hadn’t counted on other otters jumping in to start issuing commands, never mind commands that conflicted with its own.

As the guard-otters saw – and, more importantly, heard – Martha’s little strike-force hurtling down the slope, they began to move, glancing at each other, quivering in their little furry boots, giving every impression of being confused.

In amongst all the squeaks and cries her otters bellowed, Martha heard the odd word: ‘Run!’ and ‘Hide!’ and ‘Water-teeth coming!’

What ‘water-teeth’ were, Martha could only imagine – probably some predator that hid in the swamps and of which the otters were mor-tally afraid. It was this latter that seemed to