If anything, the kitchen was in a worse state than the shop had been. The Doctor’s entire prize cooking gear was busted, bent and thrown all over the floor. The large kitchen table was still in place, with the little pool of liquid time continuing the bathe the room with its ongoing lightshow, but the framework of equipment was gone, probably mixed in with the debris on the floor.

Then they saw him. The Doctor.

He was not anywhere they would have thought to look initially. He was a metre off the ground, and partially encased in some unpleasant-looking green substance. His head was free, but lolled at an angle.

Nick immediately stepped over to him. ‘He’s still breathing,’ he called back. Grabbing at the green stuff that was holding the Doctor to the wall, Nick gave it a tentative tug. The gunk did not give, so he laid his donger down on the floor, grabbed the stuff with both hands, and put all his strength into yanking the Doctor down. It did not work.

‘Ow.’ Nick looked down at his hands, which were now stinging slightly. ‘I think this stuff is acidic. We have to get the Doctor out of it, now!’

Alf joined Nick. ‘I think you’re right – look at the Doctor’s face. Something’s been irritating his skin.’ Where she was indicating, above the Doctor’s beard, his skin was red from inflammation and slightly blistered. Reaching down, Alf drew her knife from its boot-sheath. ‘I’ll try to cut the Doctor free. Have a look and see if you can find a kitchen knife to help with.’

Leaving her to it, Nick turned back around. ‘Uh, Alf…’

What he saw was an enormous eye, surrounded by tentacles, protruding out from underneath the kitchen table. With Nick’s gaze upon it, the eye blinked once and the creature launched itself at Nick from under the table, a high-pitched howl echoing around the room.

Then the screaming mass of tentacles hit him.




Memory is a funny thing. If you ask a group of people who have experienced the same event to tell you what happened individually, they will give you different answers.

For Alf, memories of that incident largely relate to the fight itself. In combat, you could not allow things to distract you; otherwise you would end up dead. Firstly, you size up your opponent. The creature that was attacking Nick appeared to be a species similar to the Alpha Centaurians or, less likely, the Ossobans. However, neither of those races is known to exhibit such aggression. Six limbs would represent the main form of attack and the principle problem in defending against it. It was about human-size, so it could not just be knocked out of the way easily.

Alf allowed herself a moment of self-reproach for not checking the room thoroughly before going to the Doctor’s aid. She bent down, briefly, and saw that the underside of the table saw scored where the creature had held on to it, and that there were not any more of them there. Then she picked up her chair leg and joined combat.

For Nick, the main memory is of Alf. After the writhing ball of tentacles had hit him in the chest, knocking him to the floor, the next thing he had seen was Alf laying into the creature’s single eye with a lump of wood. One thing you could never say about Alf was that she wasn’t shy when it came to a bit of biffo. She had made a good choice, too – the creature immediately fell back, bringing tentacles up to protect its eye. This left its body exposed, which allowed Alf to step in closer and knife it. The thing then started flailing about with its tentacles.

She’s doing this for me, thought Nick, risking her life with hardly a second thought. He grabbed his donger and went to help.

For the Doctor, the first thing he remembered was that he needed to get a new alarm clock – that ululating wail had woken him, but it was far from the most pleasant noise to awake to. Then he realised that he was not in bed, and that he was not hearing an alarm. He opened his eyes and saw Nick and Alf and what looked to be some primitive ancestor of the Alpha Centaurians fighting each other.

That creature was the thing he had seen just before being knocked out. If it was some kind of early Alpha Centaurian then… ‘Nick! Alf! That creature has come out of the pool of liquid time!’

‘I’m not sure that helps, Doctor,’ called Nick back to him.

‘What comes out can go back in… Besides, we don’t know what role it may have played in the history of the planet. If it gets killed, it may cause a paradox!’

‘Gotcha, Doctor,’ called Alf as she beat at a tentacle that was crushing her against the body of the creature. She must have found a weak spot, because it unwound itself and withdrew sharply. ‘Nick, aim for the eye! It’s most vulnerable there, I think.’

Following Alf’s lead, Nick proceeded to beat the creature around the eye with his donger. Its endeavours to hold down its opponents were hindered by impaired vision, as the enormous eyelid flicked shut repeatedly to prevent the blunt objects striking the surface of the eye directly. The previous fierce cry of the creature was replaced by a distressed keening, and it began to draw itself back under the table.

This path of retreat was soon foiled by Alf who, chair leg in one hand and a dented wok in the other, alternately struck the creature and issued metallic clanging sounds, attacking the creature’s hearing while its sight was impaired by the rain of blows upon its solitary eye.

The creature scrambled back on top of the table, which Nick mentally reassessed the sturdiness of, and its tormentors drove it back towards the pool of liquid time. Initially one tentacle sank into the pool an impossible depth, and the creature seemed to recognise a possible escape route. Nick and Alf were delighted when the whole body of the creature inexplicably sank into the puddle.

They looked into the pool and could see a scene from Alpha Centauri’s past, with the creature scuttling down a pebbly beach and disappearing into the ocean. ‘Did you see?’ asked Alf. ‘It was the thing that was here, it had the knife wound I gave it in its side!’

‘If you’ve finished using that puddle as a magic window,’ called a voice from the other side of the room, ‘I’d appreciate a little assistance in extricating myself from a sticky situation.’

‘Oops, sorry Doctor,’ said Nick and ran across the room.

Alf sauntered casually after him, unsheathing her Draconian dagger once more. ‘So, what was that thing and how did you get stuck to the wall?’ she asked as she commenced cutting through the sticky substance.

‘That? Unless I’m much mistaken, that was an earlier form of the current dominant life form of this planet. A mostly harmless creature, although its culinary habits leave a lot to be desired. This substance, for instance, is part of its normal feeding routine. It causes some breakdown of the flesh, which allows it to cultivate a primitive form of lubloodal for later consumption. They were the largest of the creatures on this planet, and aren’t used to their prey fighting back.’

‘And it came out of the pool?’ asked Nick.

‘So I surmised. It appears that the liquid time isn’t simply a window on the past – or, rather, it is more like a window than I imagined, allowing things to pass through it. It isn’t safe to be left out like that in case something else comes through.’

By this time the Doctor had had the majority of the creature’s secretion cut through and was free again. ‘I’ll just be one moment,’ he said and popped up the stairs to the sleeping quarters. Shortly after, he came back down stairs again holding the lava lamp from his bedside table. He advanced on the sink, unscrewed the top of it, and poured the contents down the drain. Smiling triumphantly, he crossed the room to the table.

‘You’re going to put the liquid time in that? What do you think, the spirit of the ’60s will keep it under control?’ asked Alf, sarcasm almost dripping from her words.

‘This is no ordinary lava lamp, Alf,’ countered the Doctor. ‘It was originally from the TARDIS, in the room of my old companion Polly. It survived the destruction of the TARDIS on Ossobos, and Nick and I brought it here with us.’ He picked up a spatula from the floor of the kitchen, and started to scrape the liquid time into the empty lamp bottle. ‘Because it was formed in the TARDIS, it is made of time-resistant material. If this stuff is time-active, which it appears to be, it shouldn’t have any effect.’ He screwed the lid back on.




That night, Nick lay awake while Alf slept beside him. He was thinking about the Doctor stuck to the wall and the Centauri primitive pouncing on him. They would both have been dead if it was not for Alf.

Alf.

His thoughts always came back to her. Every part of his life seemed better with her in it. When he thought about how he nearly threw it all away on Gidi… He shuddered.

She had asked him to marry her and, like the fool he was, he had put off giving her an answer. So she waited for him to make up his mind. He knew that some day she would stop waiting, and if he let that day come then he was an even bigger fool than he had ever thought…

He thought about Oscar living a diminished life in Paris after his luck had run out, and about himself in a similar position.

Then he kissed Alf awake to give her his answer.