1

The Doctor lay on his back with his head inside the TARDIS console. Ace stood beside him, holding an armful of tools she didn’t recognise. They weren’t heavy but they were awkward.

‘Pass me the magnetic de-interlacer,’ said the Doctor, his arm stretched up expectantly.

‘The what?’ asked Ace.

‘The metal tube with the red ball on the end.’

Ace had to juggle the tools in her arms so that she didn’t drop the lot before she carefully extracted the correct one and placed it in the Doctor’s hand.

‘Professor, what, exactly, are you doing?’ she asked with a frown.

‘I’m reconfiguring the chrono-dynamic tensor to have a non-orthogonal phase angle,’ he said as if that made everything clear. ‘Now I need a tachyon filter. Please.’ Once again, a hand emerged, its fingers wriggling.

Ace examined the tools she still held. She hoped that one would be conveniently labelled ‘tachyon filter’. No such luck.

The empty hand waved impatiently.

‘OK, which one is that?’ she asked, frustrated. Give her something to blow up with Nitro-9 explosives and she was fine, but for delicate tinkering with a time machine she was beyond useless.

‘The sparkly tube with the ghostly blue glow inside,’ came the muffled answer. The Doctor’s fingers were now jiggling so fast they were a blur.

Ace found the tool and placed it in the Doctor’s waiting hand. Her eyes drifted up to the viewscreen. For over a week now it had been showing the same thing. Fog! Not real fog, of course – they were in space – but a nebulous, ever-changing multicoloured fuzziness. Every now and then some piece of space junk would drift into view for a few seconds before disappearing again into the murk. And the TARDIS wasn’t the only ship stuck here. Occasionally a whole spaceship would appear among the debris. Some were tiny shuttlecraft, others were vast star-liners, but they all shared one thing, the TARDIS included: they were well and truly trapped. The Doctor had already pointed out a number of now-obsolete vessels that must have been here for centuries, maybe even millennia. Ace was ready to climb the walls. Eight days trapped in this one place was more than enough for her.

‘When you get us out of here, will all the other ships be released too?’ she asked.

The Doctor popped his head out and looked up at her. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m afraid not. The Temporal Plexus is like cosmic quicksand. You can pull yourself out – maybe – but everyone else stays stuck unless they work out how to escape for themselves.’

‘Can’t we do something to help them?’ The idea of leaving all the others behind just didn’t sit well with Ace.

‘It isn’t guaranteed that we can get ourselves out of this, never mind anyone else.’ The Doctor’s head disappeared back into the console.

The fog cleared briefly on the viewscreen, and Ace thought she saw a familiar shape. She peered intently.

‘I need the quantum stabiliser,’ said the headless Doctor.

‘Yeah, just a minute.’ Ace stared at the screen. As if she had willed it, the fog cleared again and she saw it. A police box …

‘Do all Time Lords have TARDISes?’ she asked as the tendrils of space fog closed in again.

‘Yes,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Though most don’t use them. They prefer to sit on Gallifrey looking important. Why?’

‘I just saw another one.’

‘Where?’

‘Out there.’

The Doctor stood up, dusted off his hands and came to stand beside her, looking at the screen. Apart from the ever-shifting, multicoloured space fog there was nothing else to see.

‘What makes you think it was a TARDIS?’

‘Duh! Because it looked like a police box.’

‘My dear Ace, not all TARDISes look like police boxes. Only this one does – ever since the old girl’s chameleon circuit got a bit stuck.’

‘But I definitely saw –’

‘Then it was a temporal echo. Space and time are so mixed up around here that what you saw might’ve been us ten minutes ago or maybe a decade from now.’

‘We won’t really be stuck here for that long, will we?’ Ace asked, aghast.

‘Well, not if I have anything to do with it,’ said the Doctor with a confident smile, before returning to the console.

Ace sighed deeply. It was all right for the Professor. A year in the TARDIS probably passed for him like an hour for people on Earth. The TARDIS was huge, and there were enough wonders inside it to keep anyone amused for a lifetime. There was a library, the computers, alien treasures from a thousand worlds and a swimming pool, but Ace hated being cooped up, no matter how interesting the cage. She needed to get out. NOW!

Ace turned off the viewscreen. ‘What happens if you can’t get us out?’ she asked, squatting down.

There was a pause that was just a little too long for comfort. The Doctor lifted his head.

‘It won’t come to that.’ He winked. Ace wasn’t convinced. Three days had passed since the Doctor had played his wretched spoons. That in itself told Ace that they were in BIG trouble.

Ten minutes later, he stood up and pushed the quantum stabiliser into the top pocket of his rumpled beige jacket. He gently laid his hands on the console and bowed his head. He might have just been checking one of the instruments, but it looked to Ace suspiciously like he was reassuring the TARDIS. Then he flicked two switches, closed his eyes and pulled a big lever. The Time Rotor – the glowing glass column in the centre of the console – started to rise and fall and Ace heard the familiar whooshing, wheezing, screeching noise as the TARDIS started to dematerialise.

‘Yes!’ The Doctor punched the air in glee and his face broke into a huge grin. Ace was just about to join in with the celebrating when a shudder ran through the entire TARDIS. Without warning, the Time Rotor dimmed and stalled. Complete silence.

‘What happened?’ said Ace. ‘Are we free?’

The Doctor ran around the console checking instruments, a deep frown cutting into his face. After a few seconds he stopped. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m afraid we’re anything but free.’

Ace’s heart sank. She didn’t want to end up like the other ships she’d seen, imprisoned like a mosquito in amber for all time.

‘So what’s the next cunning plan then?’ Ace asked. ‘More reconfiguring?’ She held out the magnetic de-interlacer, her eyebrows raised hopefully.

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m afraid I’ve rather run out of cunning plans.’

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the TARDIS and switched on the viewscreen. He stared at it as if seeking inspiration, then turned back to the console, his hands playing with the ends of the paisley-patterned scarf he liked to wear.

‘Come on, Professor,’ said Ace. ‘You never run out of cunning plans. Are you telling me you haven’t got something else up your sleeve?’

The Doctor’s face was a study in frustration. Ace couldn’t believe it. Had the Doctor really got into a situation he couldn’t get out of? But then his face cleared, his eyes widened and hope flickered within them.

‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’ Ace grinned. ‘Dazzle me then!’

‘I might have an inkling of a plan,’ he said quietly. ‘But it’s really more desperate than cunning.’

At that moment, Ace would have taken anything. ‘Which is …?’

‘It may be possible to get out of here. The Plexus is gravitationally anchored to a star … so if I can make that star go nova …’

‘What star?’

‘The nearest one, the one that’s just –’ he waved vaguely – ‘over there … thataway.’ The Doctor busied himself again, muttering as he went.

‘Er, isn’t blowing up a star just a tad dangerous?’ Ace asked.

‘Not if you do it carefully.’

Carefully? How exactly did that work? Ace knew her way around explosives and even carried a handy supply of Nitro-9 bombs in her backpack, but safely blowing up an entire star was way outside the scope of her imagination. The Doctor spent a few more minutes adjusting, tinkering, checking. Ace felt absolutely helpless. All she could do was watch.

‘Doctor, talk to me,’ Ace pleaded.

‘I’m going to send a phased pulse into the nearest star, but I have to time this exactly right or I’ll make things worse, not better,’ said the Doctor.

Could things get worse? ‘Then make sure you get it right,’ Ace advised.

‘Thanks! I hadn’t thought of that,’ the Doctor said drily. ‘Well, here goes nothing! Hold on tight.’

Ace grabbed the console, bracing herself as best she could. The Doctor threw a switch.

A blinding light was followed by a sudden series of bone-jarring jolts. Both the Doctor and his companion were thrown to the floor. The TARDIS shook so violently that Ace’s head slammed into the edge of the console – and it hurt. A lot! It took a few seconds for the ringing in Ace’s ears to subside. As she slowly got back on her feet, she became aware of a clanging noise – a sort of deep, slow, discordant bonging, like a wonky grandfather clock striking the hour.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, alarmed.

‘Not something you ever want to hear,’ replied the Doctor, frantically checking the instruments. ‘It’s the Cloister Bell. It’s what the TARDIS does instead of screaming blue murder when something really bad happens!’

‘Like what? Please tell me that we got out of the Plexus this time,’ said Ace.

‘Oh yes! We’re out of the Plexus,’ said the Doctor. ‘But …’

‘Where are we?’

The Doctor studied the navigational panel. His closed mouth moved back and forth as he chewed over their dilemma.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he finally admitted.