'No,' laughed the Doctor. 'The stasis wave in between us and the ship. Seen a few of 'em in my time, of course. But that one's just a corker.'

The captain, the handsome man beside her and Martha all scrutinised the wall screen that showed the pirate ship.

'I can't see anything,' said Martha.

'No?' said the Doctor. 'Try these?' He handed her his glasses. She put them on, but everything was a blur.

'I think,' said Martha, handing him back the glasses, 'this is going to be one of those last-of-the-you-know-what things.'

'Nah,' said the Doctor. 'You just need to widen your perspective. Captain, you wanna set your screens to show Kodicek fluctuations of zero point one and bigger.'

The captain nodded to the slender brunette working at the horseshoe of computers, who worked one of the controls. There was a gasp from those watching the screens. Where the pirate ship and its plume of boarding vessels had looked frozen in time, now they could see it caught in the tendrils of a twinkling, pink-blue haze. The computers added lines through the haze, like the pattern iron filings made around a magnet.

'We're at the heart of it,' explained the Doctor, pointing out how the contours were packed more closely together nearer their own position. 'They're just on the periphery.' When no one responded he added, 'That just means the edge.'

'And it's atemporal mismatch?' asked the captain. It was funny, thought Martha, but there was something about the Doctor that people always trusted, especially those in authority. He had a way of talking to them at their level. No, it wasn't trust, she realised. They saw he could be useful, like he could do their homework for them.

'Yeah,' said the Doctor. 'At least, it's your computers' representation of it. You find yourself facing the stuff close up, it looks like cold scrambled egg. And feels a lot like it, too.'

'Suggestions?' the captain asked her crew, as if retaking charge. Martha could see the Doctor torn between butting in with the right answer and hearing what the humans had to say.

'Some kind of temporal leak,' suggested the brunette. 'A side effect of the drive.'

'Perhaps the pirate ship is just occupying the point of space-time we wanted to pass through,' said another.

'Or they've got some kind of repulsion device that negates the effects of the drive,' said someone else.

The captain considered these suggestions, then turned to the Doctor. 'I suppose you have your own ideas?' she asked.

'Oh yeah,' said the Doctor. 'But you were all doing so well!' And then he knotted his eyebrows together. 'I'm sorry, I don't know your name.'

'I'm Captain Georgina Wet-Eleven, Second Mid Dynasty.'

'Hello Captain Georgina,' said the Doctor, shaking her warmly by the hand. 'I'm the Doctor and this is my friend—'

'Thank you,' said Captain Georgina sourly. 'I got your names before.' She glanced quickly at Martha. Martha, not really sure what else to do, rolled her eyes, as if the Doctor was always like this. Which he was. But the gesture didn't seem to go down too well with the captain, who remained entirely stony faced. Martha felt a bit silly.

'I'm waiting, Doctor,' Captain Georgina said. 'You were going to explain what happened.'

'Oh yeah, that,' said the Doctor airily. 'Well let's start from first principles. You were flying along, minding your own business, and then these pirates attacked you.'

'Correct,' said Captain Georgina.

'Only,' said the Doctor, 'you've got this clever new drive you can use, so you give the order.'

'It hadn't been tested before,' said the captain. 'But in the circumstances it seemed the best thing to do.'

'Well, yeah,' said the Doctor. He leaned forward, speaking softly. 'You've got the safety of the passengers to think about, haven't you, captain?'

The captain snorted, wrinkling her nose at him prettily. 'What are you insinuating?' she said.

'Me?' said the Doctor. 'Nothing. I wouldn't know how. Anyway, you stick the drive on as quick as you can – but not before one pirate capsule has already got here. And there's a whopping great bang and you're all stuck in this room. Yeah?'

'What makes you think that we're stuck in the room?' said Captain Georgina.

'Oh,' said the Doctor, glancing back at the wall of cold scrambled egg that blocked the door back out to the sleeping quarters. 'Er, have you tried the doors?'

The man with the moustache who had first accosted them went over to the doors. He prodded then punched then shot at the wall of cold scrambled egg. It did not yield to him.

'We're trapped!' he said, with that same note of whinging that Martha had noticed before. He might look all handsome, she thought, but he'd drive you mad as a boyfriend.

'Phew,' said the Doctor. 'That could have been embarrassing.'

'What is this material?' asked Captain Georgina, her eyes narrowed with concern.

'Well,' said the Doctor.

'It stops you getting out the door,' said Martha.

The Doctor laughed. 'You and your technical explanations!' he said.

'I see,' said Captain Georgina. 'But that is hardly a problem. The transmat remains operational.' She indicated the booth in one corner of the room, the twin of the one Martha had seen all that time ago in the starship's engine rooms.

'Doctor!' she said, stopping herself from saying more, that now they could get back to the TARDIS. Captain Georgina didn't need to know such detail.

'Yes,' said the Doctor. 'Have you tried the transmat in the last day or so?' he asked the captain.

'I used it this morning,' said the handsome man with the moustache. 'I noted no discrepancies or errors.' He couldn't help, though, glancing down at himself just to check that he was all there. Martha shuddered at the thought of what would happen if there was a problem when you were in the middle of transmatting yourself somewhere.

'Oh,' said the Doctor, looking confused. 'That's a bit of a surprise. I thought it wouldn't be working.'

But a thought had struck Martha. 'How long's it been since the pirates attacked?'

The pretty brunette checked the read-out on the screen in front of her. 'Four minutes and fourteen seconds,' she said.

The Doctor was grinning at Martha. 'Oh, that's brilliant,' he said to her. 'We're in a different pocket of time because of the wall of scrambled egg. So it's been hours and hours for the rest of the ship, and just four minutes . . . twenty-two seconds up here!'

'Which is why they haven't checked the doors or whether the transmat works,' said Martha.

'You're saying,' said Captain Georgina gravely, 'that we're sand-banked in time?'

'Oh, good analogy!' cooed the Doctor. 'I'm adding that one to the list. Yes, the Brilliant is sand-banked in time, and so it's like the rest of the universe is frozen. Which is what you see on your screens. In fact, they're just carrying on as usual and you're the ones who look like you disappeared.'

The crew considered this. 'It could offer a major tactical advantage,' suggested the handsome man.

'Possibly,' said the captain.

'Well not really,' said the Doctor. 'You can't move like this, can you? Can't do anything, really. Except make conversation and eat canapés.'

'Have you got any canapés?' Martha asked the handsome man with the handlebar moustache.

'Not here,' he told her. 'But they have them in the cocktail lounge. Which apparently we can't get to.'

'No,' said Martha. 'Sorry about that. I'm Martha by the way.'

'Thomas,' said the handsome man. 'Er. Aide-to-Captain Thomas Five-Shoelace, Slow Station Settlement.'

'Aw,' said the Doctor. 'I've been to Slow Station. Did the thing of jumping off the orbital tower and free-falling to the surface!'

'I think everyone does that,' said Thomas.

'All right,' said Captain Georgina, impatiently. 'I think your explanation matches the available evidence and what we know about the experimental drive. Even if it is unusual.'