'I've an ex-boyfriend you should explain that to,' said Martha.

'Before or after he's an ex?' he said.

For a moment Martha could see the Doctor turning up on a rainy night in 2005 and sorting out one particular row. 'OK,' she said, unsettled by what she'd just been offered. 'It's just a world of messy and complicated, yeah?'

'That's it,' said the Doctor. 'I hate all that tricky continuity stuff.'

'We just have to accept the hand we're dealt,' said Captain Georgina.

'No cheating,' said Archibald.

'Well...' said the Doctor, and his eyes glittered. 'Our real problem is how we get out of this mess without changing history. Which needs us to be very clever indeed. If only we had someone with an innate understanding of the space-time continuum. Someone with several lifetimes' experience doing this sort of thing.'

'Oh,' said Martha laughing. 'You mean like the last of the Time Lords?'

'Yeah, I think he'd do,' grinned the Doctor. 'If only we could find him.'

'I see,' said Captain Georgina. 'You can help us, can you?'

'Can you?' added Martha.

The Doctor met her eye. 'I'm working on it,' he said.

He continued to work on the transmat booth for hours. Archibald and Captain Georgina eventually left him to it and went back to the canapé-scoffing party. Martha felt torn between joining them and staying with the Doctor.

'You want anything to eat?' she said. He didn't even seem to hear her.

She made her way over to the human crew and badgers. They all seemed to be having fun, chatting, telling jokes and stories, and generally not giving a stuff about the problems facing them. Thomas made an unsubtle effort to impress Martha with a story about how fast he liked to drive. Archibald, grinning with new confidence, told the old joke about why pirates are called pirates. And Captain Georgina responded to this with a light and tinkling laugh. Martha smiled to herself. Was Archibald flirting? Was Captain Georgina? Did they even know themselves?

Only she and the Doctor seemed bothered that the ship might explode at any moment. Or maybe they were all just making the most of whatever time they had left. She felt glad for the three badgers, so clearly loving every minute of it. But she was also envious of them, and their ability to fit in. It wasn't just being from Earth that made her an outsider. Now she'd met the Doctor she couldn't just stand idle.

And that was when it struck her. They had a chance. Or at least, they had a choice. A choice between just waiting for the Brilliant to explode and daring to brave the pirates.

Archie,' she said.

Archibald grinned at her. 'What you get,' he said, 'if you cross a robot with a pirate?'

'Never mind that now,' she told him. 'I need your help.'

'OK,' he said.

'What do you think the rest of your lot would make of the canapés?' she asked him.

'Huh,' he said. 'They'd like the cheese ones best.'

'What is it?' asked Captain Georgina. 'Have you thought of something we can do?' Around her, other people's conversations died down. The party had been a pretence; they were all desperate to escape.

'Yeah, I think so,' said Martha. 'I think we have a chance. If we can get out of the loop, we just need Archie, Joss and Dash to tell their friends what they found here. The food, the drink, a whole different way of living.'

'But they want the experimental drive!' said Thomas.

'No,' said Martha. 'Whoever's hiring them does. And while they do what they're told, the badgers are just slaves.'

'No one,' said Dashiel slowly, 'owns anyone.'

'Exactly!' said Martha. 'That's what you have to tell them!'

No one said anything. The badgers looked at one another, the humans watched with bated breath. And then Martha jumped at a voice that came from right behind her.

'I think that's brilliant,' said the Doctor.

'Yeah?' said Martha, swelling with pride.

'Oh yeah,' said the Doctor. 'Double A-star and probably a badge.'

'But will it work?' asked Captain Georgina.

'Oh,' said the Doctor, 'who knows? But you've got a choice between certain death and a small hope of surviving. You're a clever lady, you work out the maths.'

And you can get us out of the loop?' she asked.

'Oh yeah,' said the Doctor. 'Easy. I just need to get down to the engine rooms and swap some stuff around. I've got some equipment down there which can help.'

'But how will you get there when the transmat isn't working?' asked Martha.

'Well, it's not working quite like it should be,' admitted the Doctor. 'But I've been talking to it. And I think we've reached an accommodation.'

'Doctor,' said Martha, carefully. 'You're not going to do anything dangerous, are you?'

'Of course I am,' he said.

'If anything goes wrong...' said Martha.

'Then we take the consequences,' he finished for her. 'That's how it works.'

'You can program the engines from here,' Captain Georgina told him.

'I already have done,' said the Doctor quickly. He seemed pleased to move on from Martha's concern for his safety. 'But I need the systems up here and the stuff down there to be doing slightly different things. That's how we jump-start the ship. It's quite clever, really.'

'So we're going down to the engine rooms?' asked Martha, already making her way over to the transmit booth.

'Er,' said the Doctor. 'I am,' he said. 'I kind of need you to stay here.'

'Oh,' said Martha. 'OK, whatever you want.'

'Really?' he said, surprised.

'Well it's going to be important, isn't it?' she asked.

'Oh yeah,' said the Doctor, a little too quickly. 'I need you to be up here watching.'

'Watching what?' she said, looking back at the horseshoe of computers. 'I don't know how these controls work.'

'Not the controls. I don't wholly trust the badgers. And I really don't trust the crew.' He grinned. 'I quite liked Mrs Wingsworth.'

But something in his eyes didn't feel quite right. She folded her arms. 'What?' she said.

'What?' he said back at her, feigning innocence.

'There's something, isn't there?' she said. 'You're going to tell me.'

'All right,' he sighed. 'The transmat might not be much fun. It's meant to be instantaneous but we know there's some kind of delay. And if I'm lucky I won't notice while I'm inside it...'

'But if you do?' asked Martha, her eyes wide in horror. She didn't know quite how a transmat worked but imagined him scrambled like the eggy material that still blocked the doorway.

'Oh, I'll pull together,' he said lightly. Before she could stop him he'd opened the door of the transmat, was inside and at the controls. 'Play nicely while I'm gone,' he said.

'But Doctor,' she said, tugging on the door which refused to open. 'I don't even know what you're going to do!'

'You know what?' said the Doctor. 'Neither do I.' He grinned. 'Ah well. Sure I'll think of something.' And with a pop he vanished from the booth.

TWELVE

It didn't hurt quite as much as he'd expected. Yes, it hurt a lot. And yes, a human being would never have survived. A transmat machine takes you apart and puts you back together again, but the whole thing is over so quickly you shouldn't even notice. This one had taken its time. The Doctor had felt himself being slowly reassembled, an agonising torture where there was not enough of him to scream. But as he emerged from the transmat booth into the dark, noisy engine rooms, he felt pretty much OK.

His legs buckled underneath him, and he fell face first onto the floor.

He struggled to get up again and found his limbs weren't quite responding. His arms and legs tingled with pins and needles, like they did when he regenerated. Perhaps that's what he'd done, his body responding automatically to being pulled apart. He struggled to reach a hand up to his face. His fingers prodded familiar skin, tight over prominent bones. He had the same thick hair and long, furry sideburns and, though his mouth tasted all peculiar, his teeth seemed to be the same shape they'd been before. So, he was still the same man for the moment. But it said a lot about what he'd just been through that he'd not been sure.