‘We’re going to,’ Warren assured her. He reached inside his jacket and pulled his gun from its holster.

‘Take that.’

Clara took the gun awkwardly, and wrapped her hand around the polished wooden grip on the handle. She kept her finger away from the trigger. Warren nodded and began to drive once more.

Steering the ambulance was proving tricky. The ice-cold rain was freezing on top of the snow already lying on the ground, and the vehicle was drifting from side to side occasionally catching one of the mounds of snow beside them and releasing a torrent of white powder.

‘It’s getting wider,’ said Warren, pulling the wheel gently to the right to correct a slight skid. ‘If it keeps up like this, we’ll be able to turn back in a few minutes.’

‘Stop!’ cried Clara suddenly.

Warren hit the brakes, but the ambulance slid on a few yards, gently bumping to a stop against one of the path’s snowy walls.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Out there,’ said Clara, pointing through the windscreen. ‘There’s something in front of us.’

Warren wiped the condensation from the inside of the window and tried to see what Clara was looking at. A gust of wind cleared the rain to one side for a split second and he saw it. ‘A mound of snow,’ he said. ‘Well spotted. If we’d run into that we wouldn’t be going anywhere. I’ll clear it.’

He grabbed the piece of wood that had once decorated the inside of the door and began to climb out.

‘Be careful,’ said Clara.

Warren nodded, and stepped back out into the cold. Clara watched as he approached the pile of snow, his figure lit up in the ambulance’s headlights. Then without warning – the snow began to move. It rose up into the air and turned to face the FBI agent.

It wasn’t a mound of snow. It was a pure white bear.

Warren stared up at the creature in horror. Now standing on its hind legs, the bear was at least twelve feet in height, and it had razor-sharp tusks protruding from the corners of its mouth – a sabre-toothed polar bear.

The animal roared, the sound reverberating deep in Warren’s stomach. He wanted to run. To turn and jump back into the ambulance and drive away as fast as he could. But he couldn’t move. He was rooted to the spot with fear. This was where it would all end. On some alien planet where no one would ever find his body – if there was much left of it to find after this massive bear had finished with him, that was.

The bear lumbered towards Warren, and he suddenly found his feet. He walked backwards, keeping his eyes on the bear holding up the piece of panelling from the ambulance door as though it could protect him from the animal’s teeth and claws – but it was all he had.

One swipe of the bear’s massive paw split the wood in two, sending Warren stumbling, his feet sliding on the ice. He glanced quickly to his left and right – looking for an escape route. But all he could see was more snow. If he tried to run. The creature would be on him in seconds.

He felt the back of his legs bump against something hard. The front bumper of the ambulance. He reached back to feel around on the vehicle’s bonnet with his fingertips, trying to work out which door he was closest to. The engine was still running, and the metal felt warm beneath his fingers. Warren wondered briefly whether the sensation was the last feeling he would ever have.

Just a few feet away now, the bear continued to lumber towards him, still raised up on its back legs. It roared once more and lashed out with its paw, sharp talons cutting through the material of Warren’s jacket, and then—

Bang!

The bear started as a gunshot rang out, but it didn’t take long to regain its nerve. It roared angrily and continued to lurch forward.

Bang!

This time the bear paused. Warren finally found the power to move and spun round to find Clara standing in the rain behind him, gun aimed at the animal.

‘Get back in the ambulance,’ he ordered, running for the driver’s door. Another roar echoed out from the hills of snow over to his right. Then another – from the left. The bear had friends, and the gunshots had attracted their attention.

Clara and Warren leapt back into the ambulance and slammed the doors. Warren revved the engine, driving forward straight at the angry bear. He caught it on its left leg, sending it spinning and losing the remaining wing mirror in the process. The burst of speed put the ambulance into a spin and he fought with the wheel, trying to keep the vehicle from smashing into one of the snow banks.

To Clara’s amazement, the ambulance spun exactly 180 degrees, and they found that they were now facing back in the direction of the Doctor and Mae. She and Warren allowed themselves a brief smile, and then they were off, swerving around the now unmoving figure of the bear they had hit, and gaining speed. They were on their way back to help.

And then a huge paw tipped with long, off-white claws exploded through the window beside her.

Chapter 11

‘You’re from another planet?’ Wobblebottom paused in the midst of lighting the fire in the grate and turned to look at the Doctor, who was pacing up and down, his feet squelching with every step.

They were in a sparse, yet agreeable living room which lay behind a door further along the underground tunnel. As with the bedroom they had seen, the walls, ceiling and floor were all made of metal. Four armchairs sat in a semicircle facing the fire, their material was well worn but, as Mae sank into one at the invitation of the clowns, she discovered they were very comfortable.

‘We’re from two other planets, if you want to be technical about it,’ said the Doctor. ‘But Earth will do for now. What planet is this?’

‘You don’t know?’ asked Flip Flop. ‘Not a clue,’ beamed the Doctor. ‘That’s half the fun of it.’

‘This is Semtis,’ said Wobblebottom, turning his attention back to the fire. He made sure the wood was burning properly, then stepped aside to allow the Doctor and Mae to get closer to the flames.

‘Semtis!’ exclaimed the Doctor, holding his soggy trouser legs in front of the fire. ‘Gosh! If I remember correctly – and it’s very rare that I don’t remember everything correctly – that’s in the top left-hand corner of the Andromeda galaxy, from the point of view of Earth, that is. You are a long way from home, Mae.’

‘We’re in another galaxy?’ said Mae, holding her palms out towards the warming flames.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Two and a half million light years from your own. Or less if you wait a bit, they’re due to collide in about …’ He checked his watch. ‘Four billion years’ time.’

Mae blinked, clearly not convinced. ‘And the people here just happen to be humans, who speak English?’

‘Humans are pretty much universal,’ the Doctor pointed out. ‘And it’ll be the TARDIS that’s translating for us. It may be over two and a half million light years away but, if you go via the wormhole, it’s just a couple of miles. Easily within translation range.’

‘Wormhole?’ asked Wobblebottom.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Connecting Semtis and Earth. It’s how we got here.’ He stripped off his jacket and lay it in front of the fire to dry it out. ‘Just what I needed – another soggy bow tie moment. Seems to be happening a lot lately.’

Mae leaned forward, holding her palms towards the roaring fire. ‘I prefer it down here to out there.’

‘It’s lovely,’ said the Doctor to the clowns. ‘But we can’t stay for long. We have to find our friends, and I want to talk to someone here about the Shroud.’

Flip Flop winced at the name. ‘The Shroud destroyed our world,’ he said. ‘Turned us into a society of tribes – like the Wanters you encountered outside.’

‘You called them that before,’ said Mae. ‘What are “Wanters”?’

Wobblebottom sat forward on his chair, his face grim, despite the painted-on smile. ‘It was around the end of the last season that we started seeing faces,’ he explained. ‘Just in patterns on our walls, or in cracks on the ice clinging to the window panes. All people who had died. People we missed. And then the women in blue appeared.’