Ace picked up a two mugs of tea and crossed to the Doctor’s side. ‘I might have guessed that you’d know what it was just by looking.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Three years I’ve been trying to hack into old UNIT files trying to find out where this thing came from. I should have just phoned you up and asked.’

‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor quietly. ‘Always up for a phone call …’

There was an awkward pause as they sipped at their tea, each of them waiting for the other to say something more. It was the Doctor who broke the silence, turning her attention back to the pod.

‘I seem to remember that these pods come with a wiggly, little silver interface thingy?’

‘I call it the Squidget.’

‘Squidget! Fab. I’m assuming that that’s now inside the shuttle your boyfriend is piloting?’

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ said Ace firmly. ‘At least not any more.’

‘But you trust him?’

‘Yes, totally.’

‘Good.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘I look forward to meeting him properly.’

Determined not to let the Doctor start poking around in her private life, Ace changed the subject. ‘So how did you lot end up on board that ship?’ she asked. ‘How did you know it was there?’

‘I picked up a strange transmission whilst the TARDIS was in flight,’ explained the Doctor. ‘Unidentifiable, alien, apparently ancient. Had to come and have a shufti, didn’t I?’

‘Well it suddenly appeared out of nowhere as far as everyone on Earth was concerned, 24 hours ago. I’m guessing that it was cloaked and that someone switched that cloak off … You?’

‘Ha! See, it couldn’t have been me!’ said Graham, hurrying over to join them. ‘I was looking for a light switch, pulled a wrong lever-thing.’

‘Of course!’ the Doctor cried.

Graham looked vindicated. ‘Of course it wasn’t me?’

‘Of course it was.’ She frowned and nodded thoughtfully. ‘But it suggests there must be time dilation moving through the station’s circuitry. You switched off the shields and the effect was felt a day earlier. Verrrrrrry interesting …’

‘Yeah, the world’s powers thought so too,’ Ace said wryly. ‘God knows how many probes they’re preparing to send up right now, that’s why me and Will had to move so fast. Did you find anyone on board?’

The Doctor shook her head. ‘Deserted. And believe me, we spent hours wandering those corridors.’

‘Yeah, coz Granddad here got himself lost!’ Ryan had joined them beside the pod now. ‘And we had to find him.’

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ said Graham indignantly. ‘All those corridors looked the same! I said we should have been roped together.’

Ace kept to the point. ‘Any idea what it’s doing here? Where it came from?’