"My starship is parked outside." Trylyan replied.

"Don't you start. Ceridwen's been winding me up all evening."

"If you don't believe me take a look."

Sarayu looked outside the pub, and there standing in the snow was one of the most famous Dr Who icons, the blue London police box. Sarayu wanted to know all about how Trylyan managed to return and find her way to the Otherworld.

"All I can remember is waking up one morning in a Sirian starship that spoke German. Now my German leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not sure if the Sirians would have appreciated it if I had said, 'Nehmen Sie mich bitte zu Ihrem Führer.' So I said, 'Ik bin ein Berliner.' in the hope that they had a sense of humor. With that the ship's computer synthesized a doughnut for me, which I thought was rather nice. I checked the dictionary program in my iPhone, and said, 'Ich will nach Hause. Darf ich diesen Raumschiff ausleihen.' To my surprise, the ship's computer said 'Ja.' and so here I am."

"You just borrowed their spaceship?"

"That's right, and it's quite a smart piece of kit I can tell you. Sure beats the Heart of Gold."

"What's the last thing you can remember before you fell asleep?"

Trylyan took a sip of mead, and moved over nearer to the fireplace.

"Sorry, Sarayu. I need to warm my bum a bit. The last thing I remember was sitting in Starbucks near the Washington Monument."

"OMG! After that you don't remember a thing?"

"Nope. Why, did I miss anything?"

At that point Ceridwen came over and Sarayu introduced her.

"Did you have a good trip?" she asked.

"Terrific, thanks."

"You brought the starship with you?"

Sarayu looked a bit perplexed. Ceridwen seemed to know a bit more than she was letting on.

"Do you know what day it is?" Sarayu asked Trylyan, who quite obviously didn't, and so she pulled out her iPhone to find out.

"Nice to see you're also using Android now." said Sarayu.

Trylyan looked at her smartphone. It was a HTC Hero Android.

"What the photon! Where did that come from?"

Sarayu put her hand in her pocket.

"We have the same phone now." she said, only they didn't because hers was missing.

"That's funny. I could have sworn I brought my phone with me."

Trylyan in the meantime had figured out that she was holding Sarayu's HTC Hero.

"It seems your phone found its way onto a starship." she said. "You didn't borrow the same starship as well, by any chance?"

"Curiouser and curiouser." said Alphonse, who had been following their conversation. "Check the phone's log."

"It was last used on February 2. That's a week tomorrow. That's insane."

"No it isn't." said Ceridwen. "Trylyan has accomplished her mission. Now she has to return to Heliopolis and pick up the other members of the Great Pesedjet, the Ennead." Ceridwen had been reading Trylyan's thoughts and memories. It turned out that when they had traveled to the wormhole in a week's time (sorry, but there seems to be a lack of tenses in English grammar suitable for time travelers) they had fallen into a mirror anomaly, that sent them back to Ancient Egypt, some time after 2500 BC. Arriving in a Sirian flying saucer, they had been mistaken for gods who came from the sky. Now they were marooned in the past until Trylyan could return to fetch them.

"That could be tricky." Trylyan tried to explain. As an astrophysicist she knew that spacetime anomalies could be unpredictable, and there was no guarantee that she could return to the exact same place and time.

"None of you can come with me, except for Marvin. Otherwise you run the risk of meeting yourselves."

"I'll come with you." said Sir Harri.

"It could be dangerous. If you meet yourself, who knows what could happen."

"I'm only a ghost. If I have to go somehow, then I would rather go down fighting on a rescue mission."

"Very well." said Ceridwen. "But you guys will have to hurry. I can only keep the mirror effect stable for a short time."

"You'll need to travel forward in time a week." said Sarayu.

"Keep it simple." suggested Alphonse, and asked Ceridwen if she could stabilize the mirror effect on February 2.

"That should be possible." she said. "Just let me know when that is. The Otherworld runs on the old Julian calender still."

"January 23 to you then."

With that Alphonse went to the bar and got a large jug of mead.

"What will happen if I fail." Trylyan asked Ceridwen.

"You won't." said Ceridwen, knowing that if she did, they were all doomed.