The Maelstrom

The Maelstrom was

It's described as, and I quote:

"for the weird orange and verdant green pulsating beyond the bus' windows. The time winds came shrieking through the gaps and cracks in the bus' outer skin, and Panda raised his voice to explain that they were now travelling through the Maelstrom - a kind of meta-dimension that offered the discerning traveller a shortcut between destinations"

"To Simon, the strange effects outside looked rather like the murky water left by an artist washing his brushes. There was the same swirling effect, too - a kind of whirlpool of colour through which the bus was zig-zagging"

"Next thing, the double decker was lurching into the Maelstrom once more, where the time storms raged and, when he looked, Simon could glimpse strange figures and faces in the ethereal green and orange mist. Or was he imagining it from fatigue? They were like ghosts out there, flaunting themselves and jeering at the lit up windows of the bus. Panda - having given up his omelette attempt - noticed what Simon was staring at and prodded his shoulder.

'Don't even look at them, Simon. They are the Roadkill. The spectres and victims of millennia of time travel. Those who came a cropper as they tried to harness the mysteries of time. If they latch onto you they will transfix you with the basilisk stare... they will command you to open our doors and let them aboard...'"

defined by Iris Wildthyme in a letter to her companion Panda as "that mysterious region in which Space and Time are completely buggered up". (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love) It was one of the mediums through which one could travel through Time. (PROSE: Elementary, My Dear Sheila) similar to the Time Vortex (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) or the Very Fabric of Time and Space. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)

Trying to meet Panda in 1979 Paris, Iris Wildthyme set the coordinates in the Celestial Omnibus but "went a bit off-kilter" while traversing the Maelstrom. As a result, she ended up on a jungle planet where assembled galactic delegates were awaiting some evil space robots, instead. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)