Mae took a deep breath and sighed. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Until I hear a better explanation for what’s going on around here – they’re aliens, but not from Mars!’

The Doctor beamed. ‘That’s the spirit.’

‘So what now?’

‘We have to get inside the TARDIS.’

‘TARDIS?’ asked Mae.

‘His blue box,’ said Clara. She turned to the Doctor. ‘How do we get past the freaky face and its mental tentacles?’

‘Oi!’ scolded the Doctor. ‘Get your own cool phrase!’ He thought for a second. ‘The face is made of mud, so we take a tip from Clara and …’ He darted across the corridor and bathed the lock of a door marked ‘Janitor’ in pulsing green light from the sonic. There was a faint click, and the door swung open to reveal a mop, bucket and industrial-sized cans of liquid soap. ‘Voila!’

‘You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?’ said Clara.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘I certainly hope not.’

The trio armed themselves with cleaning supplies and filled the bucket with water from a cracked sink fixed to the rear wall of the closet. ‘OK,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘On three … Three!’

They leapt around the corner together, the head bulging out of the mud stain again, screaming in rage at the sight of them. ‘Watch out for the mental tentacles,’ warned the Doctor, trying to control the face with his screwdriver. ‘Don’t let them attach themselves to you.’

‘Now!’ cried Clara – and Mae hoisted up the bucket of now soapy water, tossing it all over the front of the TARDIS and smothering the writhing, angry head in suds. Clara brought the mop down hard, pushing against the now pliable skull of the Shroud and pushing back into the door.

‘Almost there!’ yelled the Doctor, stepping closer to the shrinking face and turning the sonic up a notch. Clara began to mop furiously at the stain as muddy water lapped around their feet until – eventually – the stain and the face were gone.

‘Yes!’ exclaimed Clara and Mae together, dropping the mop and bucket in order to hug. The Doctor raised his hand for a high five, realised he wasn’t going to get one, and pretended to stretch.

‘OK,’ he said, slipping his screwdriver away. ‘Let’s get to Mae’s office and the bottom of all this …’ He unlocked the TARDIS and darted inside, racing for the console.

Clara stepped back to allow Mae to go inside next. The reporter stood, mouth agape as the impossibility of it all swept over her. ‘It’s … It’s bigger on the inside!’ she gawped.

‘Careful,’ said Clara quietly, joining her and closing the door. ‘Don’t let him hear you talk about her that way. You’ll never hear the end of it.’

Mae watched as Clara hurried to join the Doctor in the centre of the room at some sort of – well, she had no words to describe what it was. Some kind of six-sided desk covered in buttons, switches and levers. She approached cautiously.

‘Hang on,’ said Clara. ‘I thought the helmet thing was kaput?’

‘Helmic regulator,’ corrected the Doctor, his fingers twitching like an eager secretary waiting to take dictation, ‘and it is, but we don’t need it for this journey.’

‘What is this place?’ asked Mae, taking a step forward, but not quite daring to approach the console.

‘The TARDIS!’ beamed the Doctor, puffing out his chest. ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Isn’t she lovely?’

‘It’s a spaceship,’ Clara elaborated, giving him a look. ‘And a time machine – all rolled into one. Although, it’s not a time machine at the moment. He thinks I made the TARDIS cry, so that bit’s not working now.’

‘But she can still do all the space stuff!’ the Doctor pointed out.

Mae looked nervously from the Doctor to Clara and back again. ‘You don’t work at the hospital, do you?’ she asked, edging away. ‘You’re in the hospital. The psychiatric ward! That’s why I can’t understand a word either of you says!’

She stopped as an idea cascaded over her. ‘Oh, my God! I’m in the psych ward with you, aren’t I? All those faces – they’re all in my head. I’ve gone mad!’

The Doctor hurried over to Mae and took her hand. Then he pinched the skin on the back of it.

‘Ow!’

‘See,’ the Doctor smiled. ‘You’re not imagining anything. I know it’s a lot to take in, but this is all actually happening.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. And what Clara said was true. The TARDIS can’t travel through time until I repair her, but she can move across space. To the furthest reaches of the universe. Now, where did you first see Grandma Betty’s face this morning?’

‘On my desk, at my office.’

‘Which is …?’

‘The Morning News. Young Street. About four miles away.’

The Doctor blinked. ‘Four miles?’ Mae nodded.

‘Yes, well – that’s not even trying, is it?’ muttered the Doctor, dropping Mae’s hand and heading back to the console. ‘Still – it’ll give the old girl a bit of fresh air …’ He tapped the address into the keyboard. ‘Dallas Morning News … Young Street … Dallas, Texas …’ He switched to another of the six sides to attack a series of switches and toggles, spinning like a bow-legged ballerina as he did so. ‘Fuelling the thermo buffer, flash updating the nano-ram, and let’s give it a bit of choke as it’s cold out there today!’

He winked to Mae, then threw back the flight lever …

VWOR-VWO-VWO-VWO-WO-WO-WO-WO-W-W-W-W-W!

The TARDIS engines rose and fell like a car with a dying battery.

‘What?’ The Doctor flipped a few more switches, then tried the lever again.

VWOR-VWOR-VWOR-VWO-VWO-VWO-VWO-WO-WO-WO-WO-W-W-W-W!

‘No, no, no!’

‘You can’t blame this one on me!’ snapped Clara.

The Doctor turned to reply, but resorted instead to wagging his forefinger like a stern teacher. He went back to fiddling with the controls.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ asked Mae.

‘There’s nothing wrong,’ said the Doctor, exasperated. ‘She just won’t take off.’

Mae smiled. ‘So it can’t travel in space, either?’

‘Yes, she can,’ cried the Doctor, ‘but something is stopping us from dematerialising.’ He raced round to the monitor and switched it on, crossing his fingers that he wouldn’t be confronted by another face from the past. The screen hissed for a second, then burst into life. ‘There!’ he said, jabbing a long finger at the screen. ‘That’s what’s affecting us.’

Both Clara and Mae hurried to join him.

‘Is that the Earth?’ Mae asked, looking up at the monitor.

‘A live picture,’ confirmed the Doctor. ‘I’ve hacked into a camera on one of the Sputnik satellites.’

‘But that planet has rings around it,’ said Mae. ‘That looks like Saturn, not the Earth.’

‘Those aren’t rings,’ explained the Doctor. ‘It’s a wormhole, or one end of it, at least.’ He flicked the monitor off and rested his forehead against the screen. ‘That’s why the TARDIS won’t take off. It’s just too dangerous.’

‘But in all the sci-fi books I’ve ever read, a wormhole is like a tunnel through space,’ said Clara.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes, yes, very good.’

‘And the end of that one is surrounding the whole planet?’

The Doctor began to make shapes with his fingers in the air. ‘Imagine a giant doughnut,’ he said, waving his hand in an exaggerated circle, then suddenly scrubbing it out. ‘Actually, don’t. It’s nothing like that. Forget the doughnut. It’s more like a scotch egg. Anyway – the point is that there is a wormhole connected to the Earth, leading from … somewhere.’

‘Is that how the Shroud are getting here?’ asked Mae.

‘I’d bet my bow tie on it,’ said the Doctor. ‘And you saw them first at your desk this morning. I need to get a look at that desk.’

‘But the TARDIS won’t take off,’ said Clara.

The Doctor arched an eyebrow ‘Then we need to find another mode of transport …’

Chapter 6

It turned out to be quite easy to steal the ambulance. The driver was already distracted, staring sadly into a face which had pushed its way out of the gravel edging to the parking lot. So all the Doctor had to do was sonic the engine into life and they were away. Mae gave him directions to the newspaper office.