‘They’re gone?’

‘All thanks to you, sir,’ said Keating. ‘Wait here – I think I can hear the doctor outside.’ He hurried out through the ward door.

General West slumped back against his pillows. He’d gotten rid of the faces himself? An entire Russian attack repelled by his hand? Then why couldn’t he remember any of it? He had to get back to his office and read up on the paperwork. Pulling back the covers, he swung his legs off the bed.

‘General West!’ cried a female voice. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Dr Mairi Ellison strode up to the bed, a fierce expression etched across her features.

The General froze at the commanding tone. ‘I have to go back to work, madam,’ he said.

‘Madam?’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Don’t you “madam” me! I am your medical consultant, and you are under strict instructions not to move from that bed for at least another two days!’

‘Two days?’ the General rumbled. ‘I can’t lie here for two days! I’ve got work to do.’

‘Actually, sir – you haven’t,’ said Captain Keating.

‘What on earth are you talking about, Keating?’

Dr Ellison turned to Keating. ‘This is what I was referring to,’ she said. ‘Loss of memory as a result of the chemical attack.’

The General’s cheeks flushed. ‘Chemical attack? What chemical attack?’

‘The, er … chemical attack the faces launched just before you blasted them off the face of the planet, sir,’ said Keating.

‘Oh yes,’ muttered General West to himself. ‘That chemical attack. Of course.’

Dr Ellison collected the chart from the end of the General’s bed and began to make some notes. The General watched her carefully, his mind racing.

‘Do you know, Keating,’ he said eventually. ‘I think I deserve a holiday after saving the day like that. And I do remember saving the day quite clearly.’

‘I doubt anyone in Washington would deny you a period of leave, sir,’ said Captain Keating. ‘In fact, there was mention of this battle being the highlight of your career. And that, if you were to retire now, there could even be a parade of some description in your honour.’

‘A parade, you say?’ said the General, lifting his head up. ‘With ticker tape, do you think?’

‘I would say there would almost certainly be ticker tape, sir.’

General West lay back against his pillows with a smile. Retire? Well, he was certainly due some rest and relaxation after everything he’d just been through. He could go hunting. He’d always wanted to slap on a plaid cap and spend the weekend shooting innocent creatures in the forest. People got so upset when you shot a fellow human being these days – even a Russian – but they positively encouraged you to blast a barrel or two into the side of a stag. And then there was the matter of a ticker tape parade …

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Maybe I will retire …’

‘That’s wonderful to hear, General!’ said Captain Keating with a smile. ‘Is there anything I can get you before you change your mind? Coffee, perhaps?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the General brightly. ‘Coffee would be wonderful.’

Captain Keating joined Dr Ellison at the foot of the bed where the General couldn’t see her slip a small vial of sedative into his hand.

‘One coffee coming right up, General West.’

22 October 1962

The Doctor and Clara stood in the doorway to the TARDIS and watched as Mae approached her grandmother’s bed. The old woman opened her eyes, delighted to find her granddaughter smiling down at her.

‘How long does she have?’ asked Clara.

‘A couple of days,’ the Doctor replied.

‘And that’s why you agreed to break all your rules about travelling back along someone’s timeline?’

‘Rules are meant to be broken,’ said the Doctor. ‘Besides, the Mae from this time period is busy with newspaper work in Washington and can’t get a flight back. Not now I’ve temporarily jammed the radar at Dulles International Airport, at least. Who’ll know?’

Clara smiled. ‘You will.’

‘I’ll try to cope.’

They stood in silence for a while. Mae and her grandmother were holding hands and laughing together.

‘How did you do it?’ asked Clara.

The Doctor turned to her. ‘How did I do what?’

‘Push the Shroud from your mind. There were millions of tentacles in there, all attacking you. How did you free yourself from them so the Clowns could tie them together?’

‘The same way I got them in there in the first place,’ said the Doctor. ‘By thinking of my friends.’

‘If your friends mean that much to you, then you’re a very lucky man,’ said Clara.

‘I know,’ smiled the Doctor.

‘Want to know what this friend is thinking right now?’

‘What?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Is it that you’d like to be taller? Because I think you should be taller. When I hug you, I can feel your breath on my chest. It’s weird.’

‘No!’ exclaimed Clara, giving the Doctor a playful punch on the arm. ‘I think you’ll find that I’m normal height. It’s you that’s all lanky and stringy.’

‘Stringy?’

‘It’s like looking at you in one of those fairground mirrors sometimes,’ said Clara. She turned and stepped back into the TARDIS. ‘No, I’m wondering if there were any more of those giant Shroud things floating around the universe.’

The Doctor smiled to himself, then his eyes grew wide as what Clara had said finally sunk in. He opened his mouth to call Mae back to the TARDIS, then paused. Fishing Warren’s coin from his pocket, he flipped it and checked the result.

‘Tails,’ he said to himself. ‘No need to rush.’

30 September 3006

Bev Sanford shuffled forward with the rest of the queue towards the entrance to the President’s Deck, trying unsuccessfully to remove the sticky price tag from her bunch of freshblooms™. These things were supposed to peel off easily, but they never did. Now the already cheap plastic wrapped around the artificial stems looked worse than before. The woman in front of her was holding a beautiful bouquet of white roses and lilies. They were real flowers, too. Where the hell had she got those on Station Epsilon? Nowhere legal, that’s for sure.

Bev had visited three separate sell-stalls this morning – all of which were sold out of freshblooms™ – before resorting to the last bunch in the bucket outside the android refuelling station. Of course, if Jeff had bothered to get his lazy butt out of bed, he could have taken her to the hypermarket on the mall level first thing.

She’d only invited him over because she’d not wanted to be alone last night. He hadn’t remembered, of course, but it was exactly a year since her mum had finally lost her battle with cancer, and Bev had spent the entire day at work feeling as though she was outside her own body, looking in. Everyone around her seemed to be carrying on with their lives as though it was just another day – which, she accepted, for them it was.

What she needed was a distraction, an evening of fun to take her mind off things. In the end, however, all she got was a cold syntho-meat takeaway (which she had paid for herself), short shrift on the bottle of recycled wine and part way into the second episode of Jeff’s Galaxy’s Greatest Pod Crashes vid-disc before his snoring meant she couldn’t hear the view-screen any more.

He was still out of it when she’d turned the radio on for something to pass the time while the coffee autoheated this morning. That’s when she’d heard the news. Attackers had breached security during the night and shot President Winza dead. She’d just announced a crackdown on illegal gambling and smuggling on Epsilon, and this was how the scum she wanted off the decks had reacted.

Bev was almost at the front of the queue now. The woman with the roses had produced a white teddy bear to go with them, and was busy writing a message into a matching ‘With Condolences’ card. More black-market products, but no one would say anything about them. Not today.