Whilst our visitor lay prone upon the couch – with Strax fanning his fevered brow – the Mistress and I took off to the darkroom. I’d made something of a hobby of photography and was pretty good, though I do say so meself. Though not many of my plates was suitable for publication, if you see what I mean. The darkroom was bathed in red, as ever. Little did I know how crimson-stained this whole adventure was to be!

I had made print after print off Mr Thursday’s Optogram and pegged them up over the chemical baths. ‘I’ve made it bigger and bigger but that don’t mean it’s very impressive.’

‘Story of my life,’ said Madam. She looked down the line at the pictures, the shadowy figure getting clearer and clearer in each.

I took out the last print from the bath and pegged it up. It was dripping wet – but the image was finally clear. I gave a low whistle. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ I cried. ‘I think, Madam, that we’d better make plans to head north!’

Madam Vastra peered at the photograph and saw what I saw. The impossible image was a familiar face. A skinny blighter with a chiselled chin, his clawed hand held out, his eyes wide open in a sort of dumb horror.

THE DOCTOR!

Chapter the Fifth

‘Satanic Mills’

EXTRACT FROM DATA CORE – 7900 – XVL COMMANDER STRAX

Total obedience to the Edicts of Sontar has been essential to my being since my hatching. This is simply the way of all things. There was not much in the way of recreation for younglings as I recall (and nothing like the pointless and disgusting process here on this stupid planet which they call childhood. A protracted period of doing not very much, as far as I can see, except to play with miniature versions of themselves or throws stones at bottles on walls. And, occasionally, me.)

Obviously, being cloned, we were not little at all, springing fully formed from the Hatching Spheres and going straight into basic training beneath the harsh rays of the Sontar sun. Little or no allowance was made for the freshness and softness of our brains. I recall those days very well – as well I might since they were burnt into my memories as a permanent subroutine in order to avoid mission failure. Here, though, within the privacy of this data core (impossible to access by any other than myself and guarded by Shiravian pin-mines and a touch-sensitive phial of Spit-Adder venom so don’t try!) I will admit that I felt a little … afraid.