'Yeah,' said Jocelyn. Dashiel glared at her.

'We dun't talk 'bout the client,' said Archibald. 'It's con-fiden'-shawl.' Again he spoke the last word with great care.

'Oh that's right,' said the Doctor. 'You've gotta protect your clients. Imagine how embarrassed they'd be if anyone found out what they were up to!'

'Yeah,' said Dashiel, though he didn't seem quite sure what he had just agreed with. Martha could see his brain struggling to understand.

'They don't own you,' she told him. 'No one owns anyone.'

'Hah!' laughed Dashiel, and then his eyes narrowed as he realised it wasn't a joke.

'How can something like this happen?' she asked the Doctor. 'How can it be allowed to happen?'

'You really want to know?' asked the Doctor.

'No,' said Dashiel earnestly.

'Yes,' said Martha. 'We have to face this stuff.'

'People like this lot,' said the Doctor, waving a hand at the imprisoned human crew and not quite including Martha with them, 'live like the whole universe is there solely for their entertainment. They trash their own planet and, despite years of evidence and warnings, all kinds of species die out.'

'Badgers,' said Jocelyn quietly.

'Yeah,' the Doctor admitted. 'I'm sorry.'

'S'OK,' said Jocelyn.

'But not all the humans were the same,' said the Doctor. 'There are ones who were different and cared. And they did their best to gather loads of DNA records and set up a library of all the extinct species they could. One day, they said, humanity would know better and then they could recreate all the wildlife.'

'So why didn't they?' asked Martha. 'Why not make the badgers like badgers used to be?'

'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'On some worlds they did. But not on very many.'

'Ain't no profit, is there?' said Dashiel, shrugging.

'They were much more useful as badger-human mixes,' said the Doctor. 'Then they could be sent out to work.'

'That's . . .' said Martha. 'It's so bad I don't know what it is.'

'It's market forces,' stated Captain Georgina, from over by the door.

'These three,' said the Doctor, indicating the badgers, 'get their genes from the Western European badger, like the ones you'd get in England. Dies out in your lifetime.' He grinned. 'The Latin name for the Western European badger is Meles meles meles. I always liked that one! So I guess the human/badger mash-up would be Homo sapiens sapiens meles meles meles!' Martha just eyed him wearily. 'Oh,' said the Doctor. 'Well, I think that's funny, even if no one else does.'

'I'm sorry,' Martha told the badgers. She thought of the miserable lives that these badger pirates had had, where simple things like cheese and tea seemed like amazing wonders.

'She's right though,' said Dashiel, gesturing towards Captain Georgina. 'We ain't as good as them.'

'See?' said Captain Georgina. 'They know that we're better. So it's not right to keep us locked up.'

'Better?' laughed the Doctor. 'They caught you in their spaceship, despite your clever disguise. They stopped you before you could use the experimental drive. And now they're free and you're not. So who's got most points?'

Captain Georgina glowered at him, but she said nothing further.

'What disguise?' asked Martha. 'You said they had a disguise.'

'Oh,' said the Doctor. 'The Brilliant isn't a luxury cruiser. The crew here clearly don't give a stuff about the passengers. It's the robots that are programmed to look after them.'

'It's a cover,' said Martha, horrified. 'You were using them as a shield. It's just about the experimental drive!'

'That is a security issue,' said Captain Georgina testily. She seemed small and impotent where she stood, the cage that held her not even visible. 'I can neither confirm nor deny the allegation.'

'Bet you wouldn't have tested the experimental drive if the passengers had been humans,' said the Doctor.

Captain Georgina bridled at this. 'There's a war coming,' she said. 'Billions of people's lives are at stake. There have to be priorities.'

'As long as they're not your sort,' Martha said to her, utterly disgusted.

'Our sort,' corrected Captain Georgina. 'You're humans, too.'

'Lucky us,' said Martha. The Doctor ignored the captain, busy again with the controls. Martha, though, couldn't turn her back on the captain. She felt she had to stare her down, making her look away first. As if that would somehow win the moral point.

'I don't like it either, but it had to be done,' said Captain Georgina eventually. And she looked away.

Martha joined the Doctor and Dashiel at the horseshoe of computers. Dashiel seemed transfixed by the screen that showed the spiky, peach-shaped pirate spaceship. 'Can we call the Mandelbrot from 'ere?' he asked the Doctor.

The Doctor laughed. 'Is that what your ship is called?' he asked.

'The Mandelbrot Sett,' said Dashiel. 'Yeah.'

'It's a pun!' laughed the Doctor.

'No,' said Dashiel. 'It's a spaceship.'

'Well anyway,' said the Doctor. 'You can't call them. We're still subject to the stasis field. They're in another time zone entirely.'

Dashiel considered this. 'Good,' he said.

'Captain Florence is scary,' explained Archibald. 'An' she won't like any of this stuff.'

'We can stay 'ere,' said Jocelyn.

'What, for ever?' asked Martha.

'Yeah,' said Archie. 'We brung food.' He rummaged in the front of his spacesuit and withdrew a silver tray. Dashiel and Jocelyn also had silver trays tucked into their spacesuits, and they placed the three trays down on the horseshoe of computers.

'Count to somethin',' said Dashiel, closing his eyes tightly. 'One . . . um, another one . . .'

Martha looked to the Doctor, who had also closed his eyes. When she looked back at the trays they were filled with canapés. Archibald had brought the tray that held infinite cheese and pineapple sticks. He offered them to Martha.

'Thank you,' she said.

When Archibald had offered the tray to the Doctor and his two comrades, he headed over to the human crew, still imprisoned by the door. He prodded the invisible wall of rubber with his hairy paw, then looked back at the Doctor.

'Are you sure about this?' asked the Doctor, surprised.

'Yeah,' said Archibald.

'And what about you, captain?' the Doctor asked Captain Georgina.

The captain was staring at Archibald, just a foot in front of her. Her expression was impossible to read. And then, to Martha's amazement, the captain simply sighed.

'We can agree to a truce,' she said. 'There's not much else we can do.'

'Brilliant!' said the Doctor and worked the controls. Captain Georgina reached out a hand tentatively, expecting to still meet the invisible wall of rubber. She lifted one cheese and pineapple stick from Archibald's tray, then nodded to him curtly.

'Thank you,' she said.

'You take 'em,' said Archibald, pressing the whole tray into her hands. 'I'll get the blini pizzas.'

He hurried back to the horseshoe of computer desks, and so missed seeing what he'd just achieved. Captain Georgina held the tray of cheese and pineapple sticks and, without thinking about it, offered them to Thomas, stood beside her. Martha could see the look in his eyes – it wouldn't do to refuse the captain. So he took a cheese and pineapple stick, and soon the captain was serving all the crew. Archibald hurried back with the tray of blinis, and Jocelyn joined him with the tray of sausage rolls. Soon a pleasant little party atmosphere was going. And since the badgers and the captain were serving the food, it seemed nobody quite dared question why they weren't fighting any more.

'They're all friends,' said Martha, amazed. She turned to the Doctor, who was busy with the computers.

'Yeah,' he said, not looking up. 'If they can't kill each other they might as well just get along. At least until something happens to change the status quo.' His long skinny fingers danced across the controls, the information on the screens changing too rapidly for Martha to keep up.