It’s like 3D. I love 3D! Especially the cardboard red and green glasses. Anyway, it creates a hologram of you, where you are, here with us, and vice versa, so we all seem to be in the same room.’

‘It’s really freaky,’ said Amy, poking her fingers into Rory’s face.

‘Again, stop it,’ he said. He looked back at the Doctor. ‘What’s going on, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘There’s something really bad happening in this town. There’s this thing—’

‘With red eyes!’ Vesta blurted.

‘Yes, red eyes,’ Rory agreed.

‘That would be an Ice Warrior,’ the Doctor nodded, suddenly more serious. ‘I’m sorry to say, there’s more than one of them around. It is a real problem, Rory.

They’re a threat to the Morphans, to all human life on Hereafter. We’ve got to work together to stop them.

Throw a spanner in their works.’

‘How?’ asked Rory.

‘First things first. You need to get the Morphans ready,’ the Doctor told him. ‘The Ice Warriors are mobilising. They could strike at any moment.’

‘Is Elect Groan there, Vesta?’ asked Bel. ‘Can you fetch him? Any other members of the council…

Chaunce, Old Winnowner, anyone? They have to hear about this.’

‘They’re all in the Incrypt, consulting the word of Guide,’ said Vesta.

‘Now that is very interesting,’ said the Doctor.

‘Go and fetch them, Vesta!’ Bel urged. ‘Hurry now!’

Vesta nodded, and darted away. Sol was still staring in wonder at the luminous figures.

‘Doctor?’ said Rory.

‘Yes, Rory?’

‘I - hang on. Amy, seriously, stop poking your fingers through my nose. Doctor, why are you talking so urgently?’

‘Am I?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Yeah,’ said Rory. ‘It’s almost like… you haven’t got very much time.’

‘Well, there’s no time like the present!’ the Doctor enthused. He really wasn’t very good at lying sometimes.

‘Doctor…’ said Rory, a cautioning note sounding in his voice. His take me seriously voice.

‘What?’ ask the Doctor.

‘What’s that high-pitched noise?’ asked Rory.

In the hologram field deep under Firmer Number Two, the Doctor looked back at the shimmering, lifesized image of his friend and shifted uncomfortably.

The noise of the focused sonic drill was steadily getting louder.

‘Hang on, Rory,’ the Doctor said. ‘Stay right there.’

He walked out of the glow of the hologram field and over to the open hatch. The noise was echoing down the corridor. The Ice Warriors were already cutting through the second of the hatches that the Doctor and his companions had locked in their path.

‘Samewell?’ he called.

The young man ran over to join him.

‘Keep watch here,’ the Doctor told him. ‘As soon as the Ice Warriors appear through that door down there, yell out so we know about it, and then lock this hatch.

It’ll slow them down again.’

‘Guide is my witness, I understand,’ Samewell said.

‘As soon as you’ve done that, I want you to take Amy and Bel out the other way, out the way you scouted. Got it?’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘It’s important.’

‘Cat A. I understand. Where will you be while this is happening?’ Samewell asked.

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ the Doctor said. ‘But I need you to lead the way so you can open the doors with your hand.’

‘Ah,’ said Samewell, nodding. ‘Right. Got you.’

The Doctor left Samewell standing watch at the door and walked back into the hologram field.

Amy and Rory were face to face, looking at each other.

‘I was really worried about you,’ Rory said to her.

‘And I was worried about you,’ she replied. ‘You only went back for a coat. How hard is that?’

‘Uh, I think you got captured while I was getting a coat,’ said Rory, ‘so this whole series of disasters started with you.’

‘It started with the TARDIS missing Christmas by about a bajillion years, actually,’ replied Amy.

‘Well, I was really worried anyway,’ said Rory. He raised his hand, palm open, fingers slightly spread, as though he was pressing it against a window pane. Amy echoed the gesture with her left hand, so they could

‘touch’ hands through the holographic medium. An elasticated mitten dangled from her cuff.

Their hands passed through one another. They both stepped back sharply, shaking their heads.

‘I thought that would be, like, really sweet,’ said Rory, disappointed. ‘I thought it would be a proper moment, like in those films when the hero’s in jail, and the girl visits him, and they put their hands up on either side of the glass partition of the visitor’s cubicle? You know, like that?’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘But it was just a bit creepy,’ he said.

‘It really was,’ she agreed.

Rory saw the Doctor reappear.

‘What is that noise, Doctor?’ he asked.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said the Doctor cheerfully.

‘He’s just saying that so you won’t worry,’ said Amy.

‘What is that noise?’ asked Rory.

‘The Ice Warrior Men are drilling through doors to get at us,’ Amy told him.

‘What?’ Rory asked, very alarmed.

The Doctor looked at Amy. His shoulders drooped and he sighed sadly.

‘It’s not even like it’s a difficult name to remember, like Jagrafess or Castrovalva,’ the Doctor said to her. ‘I mean, a friend of mine just made it up on the spot. Ice Warriors. It’s simple. It’s not hard. Why are you having such trouble with it?’

‘Probably the stress of the situation,’ Amy snapped.

‘Is she telling the truth?’ Rory asked the Doctor.

‘Not at all,’ replied the Doctor. ‘The word “men” has never had anything to do with their name. They’re just plain Ice Warriors.’

‘God help me… Are they drilling through the door, Doctor?’ asked Rory insistently, trying his best not to shout.

‘They are doing that,’ the Doctor admitted.

‘Doctor! You’ve got to get out of there!’ said Rory.

‘Has Vesta gone to get the council?’

‘Yes,’ said Rory.

‘Well, we haven’t really got time to wait for them to come back,’ said the Doctor thoughtfully. ‘Listen, Rory, it’s actually all very simple. The Ice Warriors want this planet. They want to conquer it and colonise it. They want to take it from the Morphans. But they need it to be colder. Tons colder. They don’t want the Morphans warming it up to make it all Earth-like. Their idea of Earth-like isn’t like the Morphans’ idea of Earth-like, and—’

‘Skip that part, Doctor,’ Amy advised.

‘OK, Rory,’ said the Doctor, focusing. ‘The crucial point is that the Ice Warriors have sabotaged the terraformer systems. They’ve reset them to plunge Hereafter into an ice age.’

‘Hence the sudden winters,’ said Rory.

‘Exactly,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘An ice age will suit the Ice Warriors just fine, but it will wipe the Morphans out. I’m not prepared to allow that. So… I’m going to sabotage the Ice Warriors’ sabotage, Rory. I’m going to undo what they’ve done, and accelerate the global warming processes of the terraformers. I’m going to make Hereafter a very uncomfortable place for any Ice Warriors to be.’

‘OK,’ Rory nodded.

A sudden bang reverberated down the corridor outside.

‘They’re through, Doctor!’ Samewell yelled from the door.

‘Close that hatch, Samewell,’ the Doctor shouted back, ‘and get everybody through into the next room like I told you to!’

‘Yes, Doctor!’ Samewell replied. He put his hand on the palm-checker and the hatch slammed shut.

‘Sorry. Really running short on time,’ the Doctor said, turning back to Rory. ‘Like I said, I need to reset the terraformers, but they’re a huge and very complicated set of systems. I don’t want to cause a global disaster by, you know, fiddling around. I need plans or schematics to work from. Rory, all the Morphans I’ve met keep mentioning “Guide”. Guide, as I understand it, has principles that they live by.