'What?' he said, as innocently as he could.

'There's people still in there,' she said.

'Yeah,' said the Doctor.

An' they can get out an' we can't get in.'

'Yeah.'

'S'not fair,' she said.

The Doctor nodded kindly. 'Life often isn't,' he said. 'It's one of those things.'

'What we gonna do, Joss?' asked Archie.

Joss considered, scratching her hairy chin with a paw. 'We gotta even things up a bit,' she said. She ushered Archie and the Doctor back along the passageway towards the ballroom. Then she turned and fired her gun at the ceiling above the door to the engine room. She kept her claws on the trigger, so that a sustained burst of pink energy crashed into the woodwork. Wisps of smoke began to curl from the ceiling. Then there was a flicker of bright flame –

And shumm!

A heavy metal fire door crashed down in front of them, blocking their view of the corridor.

'Ooh, clever,' cooed the Doctor. He wrapped at the fire door with a knuckle. It bonged with a low, heavy note. 'The fire doors have locked off the corridor, so no one can get through.'

'None can get in,' agreed Joss. And none can get out. S'fair that way.'

A stalemate,' said the Doctor.

'Speak for yourself,' warned Archie, prodding him with his gun.

'Them engineers will 'ave to eat some time,' said Joss. 'We'll let 'em get 'ungry and then we talk terms.'

The Doctor thought it best not to explain about the time difference in the engine room; the badger pirates could starve the engineers for days and days, but to the engineers themselves it would only seem like a few hours. He also wondered if the engineers ate food, what with their having no mouths. Perhaps they just plugged themselves into the mains, so that blocking the door wouldn't bother them.

'Right,' said the Doctor. 'Well that was fun. Now I was going to have a word with the captain, and then I thought I'd—'

Joss poked him with her gun. 'You're not leaving my sight, starshine,' she told him.

'OK,' said the Doctor, gently moving the gun aside so that it didn't point right at him. 'You drive. So where are we going?'

'You're gonna sit in the bar wiv' all the uvva prisoners,' said Joss.

'That sounds very sociable,' said the Doctor. He was itching to find out if Martha was OK, so there didn't seem much point in protesting.

Archie and Joss escorted him back up the corridor, left, left again and then right, and up the wide staircase into the dining room. They passed through the door at the back of the room into the small cocktail lounge. Another gruff-looking badger pirate guarded about a dozen egg-shaped, tentacled Balumin prisoners, who huddled in front of the great bay window that looked out on to the Ogidi Galaxy. Martha was nowhere to be seen. The Doctor bit his lip. If the badgers didn't hold her prisoner, she might still be hiding somewhere. He didn't want to get her in trouble by asking if they'd seen her.

'This is cosy,' he said. 'You must be Dash. Joss and Archie have been telling me all about you.'

The third badger pirate leered at him. He had the same gold earring in his left ear, and the same skull and crossbones on the chest of his spacesuit. He seemed older and surlier than his two comrades.

'Aye,' he leered, with the same gruff Hampshire accent. 'And who are you?'

Archie nudged Joss in the ribs. 'We never asked his name!' he said.

'That's OK,' said the Doctor. 'You had more important things to worry about. Hello. I'm the Doctor. I'm not important. Not in that way, anyway. How's everybody here?'

The Balumin murmured quietly that they were mostly fine. For all they were being held prisoner, they looked rather at home. They wore the latest fashions and held pretty drinks in their tentacles. If anything, it was the three badger pirates who looked totally out of place. The cocktail lounge was a place for wearing ties.

Joss explained to Dash about the door to the engine room. Dash listened keenly, all the time watching the Doctor. The Doctor tried not to notice; Dash seemed the brightest of this bunch. While the badgers talked about him, the Doctor wandered over to the Balumin prisoners.

'You're sure everyone is all right?' he said. They tutted and said they were fine, rather rudely. All right, thought the Doctor, you can rescue yourselves.

A bright orange Balumin woman of late middle age came over, offering him a plate of cheese and pineapple on sticks.

'Thanks very much,' he said, taking two sticks at once. 'Can't remember the last time I had these.'

'I'm Mrs Wingsworth,' the Balumin lady explained, not nearly as rudely as the other passengers. 'You'll be Martha's friend the Doctor.'

'Silence!' roared Dash from across the room.

The Doctor said nothing but nodded at Mrs Wingsworth. She only laughed and rolled her large eyes.

'Oh, don't worry yourself about these poor lambs, dear,' she said, fluttering a tentacle at the badgers. 'They're just a bit of a nuisance.'

'I'm warning you,' growled Dash, pointing his gun at her.

'See what I mean, dear?' said Mrs Wingsworth lightly, again offering the plate of cheese and pineapple sticks to the Doctor. 'Have another of these. You look like you need filling up.'

'I really don't think you should antagonise them,' the Doctor told her. 'They've got big guns and stuff like that.'

'Oh, I know!' she said. 'It really is such a bore.'

Dash stalked over to prod Mrs Wingsworth with a hairy paw.

'What you call me?' he seethed.

'I'm sure she didn't mean it,' said the Doctor gently. Dash turned to him angrily, but the Doctor held his gaze. After a moment, Dash's shoulders sagged.

'We're not boars, we're badgers,' he said.

'I know that,' said the Doctor. 'I'll tell her.'

'Good.' Dash glared at Mrs Wingsworth, then shuffled back to his comrades.

'You need to be careful,' the Doctor told Mrs Wingsworth quietly. And she laughed, loudly so the badgers would hear. The Doctor thought she might even have done it on purpose.

'But they really are such bores!' she said.

'What!?' roared Dash.

'Now wait—' said the Doctor.

'Oh they are,' said Mrs Wingsworth. 'You know they are.'

'Right,' said Dash, raising his heavy gun at her.

'She didn't mean it,' said the Doctor.

'Oh, I did, dear!' laughed Mrs Wingsworth.

'No, don't!' said the Doctor.

Too late. Dash fired the heavy gun and Mrs Wingsworth was soon engulfed in the dazzling pink light. She just had time to roll her eyes wearily at the Doctor and say, 'You see?'

Then the light consumed her utterly.

FIVE

More than three hours earlier, the tentacled alien passengers huddled together protectively. They wrapped their tentacles tight around one another, and the screams they'd let out when Gabriel was killed slowly fell away to a murmur. They weren't going to be any help, thought Martha. She was all there was.

She stepped forward. 'Who are you?' she asked the badgers.

'Name's Dashiel,' said the badger who'd killed Gabriel. He waved a bony, hairy paw at his counterparts. 'That's Jocelyn, and that's Archibald.' Martha couldn't suppress a smile. 'What?' Dashiel growled.

'Nothing,' said Martha. 'Was it middle-class parents?'

'We don't have parents!' said Archibald, the other male badger from behind her. He seemed a lot younger than the other two. 'We was grown in a lab.'

Archibald,' Dashiel chided. 'She dun't need to know that.' He didn't sound, thought Martha, like someone doing an impression of a pirate – all "me hearties" and "shiver me timbers". They were like the teenagers loitering outside the Co-op in the evening, because they had nowhere better to go. Yet the guns were real, and the passengers were terrified. And they'd just disintegrated Gabriel for no reason. She had to take this seriously.