Mrs Wingsworth didn't scream. She stood tall and sure and haughty as the pink light dazzled round her. Martha watched appalled until there was nothing of Mrs Wingsworth left to see.

SIX

More than three hours later, the Doctor stood in the same cocktail lounge watching the space where until a moment before Mrs Wingsworth had stood. The air was rich with a stink of roasted lemons, and wisps of ash floated from the ceiling, but only the Doctor seemed in any way bothered about what had just taken place.

'You disintegrated her!' he said, appalled.

'Yeah,' said Dash. 'S'only language these lot unnerstand.'

The Doctor blinked at him. 'You disintegrated her!' he said again.

Dashiel grinned. 'You catch on quick,' he said.

The other Balumin prisoners huddled by the bay window, though not from fear, the Doctor noticed. They really didn't seem to give a stuff that Mrs Wingsworth had just been killed and that it might be any one of them next. He ran a hand through his thick hair, not caring that it probably made it all stick up oddly.

'Right,' he said, addressing the badger pirates. 'Well maybe before anyone else gets hurt we can discuss what it is you lot want. From us, from the Brilliant, from life in general if you like.' He grinned at them.

Dash regarded him coolly. 'We gotta mission,' he said.

'That's good,' said the Doctor. 'Something to work towards. I like that.'

Dash nodded but said nothing further. The Doctor could see he was going to need some prompting.

'Your mission wouldn't be to pinch the Brilliant's experimental drive, would it?' he said. The badgers stared at him.

'Yeah,' said Archie.

'No,' said Dash at the same time. He glared at Archie, then said to the Doctor, 'It might be.'

'Figured,' said the Doctor. 'It's what I'd be after, if I was a pirate.'

Dash leered at him. 'We ain't pirates,' he said. 'We're entrepreneurs.'

'Oh right,' said the Doctor. 'Sorry, I always get those two the wrong way round. Pirates are the ones with the suits and pink shirts, aren't they? Anyway. I'm thirsty. Aren't you lot thirsty, what with all the entrepreneur-ing? Is there anywhere round here we can get a drink?' He looked all round him quickly and then made out like he'd only just seen the long bar that stretched down one side of the cocktail lounge. 'Ooh!' he said, making his way over to inspect the menu the machine barman offered him. 'A bar! Brilliant! Watchoo all having?'

A long mirror hung behind the bar. In the reflection, the Doctor could see the badgers watching him uncertainly. He hoped to wrong-foot them, keep their attention on him, stop them killing any more of the Balumin prisoners. 'Come on,' he said when the badgers made no move to name the drinks they wanted. 'It's my round. I'm gonna have a blue one.' He pointed to the branka juice on the menu. 'One of those, please,' he asked the barman.

The machine barman smoothly retrieved a branka fruit from a bowl, extended a shiny blade from its skinny arm and in a blur of quick, precise activity chopped the fruit into tiny pieces. 'You wanna watch this guy at work,' the Doctor told the badgers. 'It's like an art or something.'

Archie came over to join him at the bar, but rather than choosing a drink he prodded the Doctor in the arm with one of his long and jagged claws.

'Ow,' said the Doctor.

'We're bored of cocktails,' said Archie, making it sound like a threat. Perhaps, thought the Doctor, they weren't allowed to drink while they were out rampaging. These things had to have a certain discipline, didn't they?

'That's a point,' he said. 'I think I'm bored with them too. Hold the juice, barman.' The machine had long since stopped chopping and now stood perfectly still, poised with the glass of thick, blue liquid in its metal hand. It took the Doctor's command entirely literally, and held on to the glass until someone told it otherwise. Machines, thought the Doctor, could be dim like that.

He turned to Archie. 'So,' he said breezily. 'What else is there that isn't cocktails?'

Archie grinned at him. 'We got canapés,' he said. Sure enough, trays full of elegant finger food were laid out at the other end of the bar, by the bay window.

'Cor,' said the Doctor, 'they do look exciting, don't they?' He leant closer in to Archie for a conspiratorial whisper. 'Which ones do you recommend?'

Archie considered. 'The ones with the sticks,' he said. 'They're good.'

The Doctor scratched at his chin as he nodded, considering this advice. He made his way slowly to the other end of the bar and, looking up to make sure Archie was still watching, took one of the cheese and pineapple sticks. He then tried to put the whole thing in his mouth.

Alarmed, Archie hurried over. 'You don't eat the sticks!' he said.

The Doctor removed the cheese and pineapple stick from his mouth and scrutinised it closely, as if trying to make sense of its workings. If in doubt, he thought, always play it stupid. It put people – and, he hoped, badger-faced pirates – at their ease.

'Like this,' said Archie, grabbing his own cheese and pineapple stick. The Doctor watched him as he nimbly ate the pineapple and then the cheese from around the stick, and then did his best to copy the procedure – careful to make it look like he'd never done this before. If he could put Archie at his ease, make him drop his guard... One chunk of pineapple escaped him, slipped down his chin and slapped into the carpet between his trainers.

'Oops,' said the Doctor. 'It's pretty tricky, this.'

'Yeah,' said Archie, helping himself to another cheese and pineapple stick.

Archie!' growled Dash, still by the door back into the ballroom, still brandishing his heavy gun. 'I said no more. You'll be sick.'

'I don't feel sick,' said Archie.

'Do what Dash says,' growled Joss. The Doctor watched Archie put his cheese and pineapple stick back on the tray behind them. He turned back to say something to Dash, and then a sudden thought struck him. He looked back at the tray, on which the cheese and pineapple sticks were crowded. There was no space to fit any more on the tray. There was no empty space from the two cheese and pineapple sticks he and Archie had eaten.

He glanced up at the robot barman, still at the other end of the bar, still holding the glass of branka juice until someone told it not to. It had not nipped over to top up the cheese and pineapple sticks. The Doctor looked again at the tray and then around it at the fittings on the bar. No, he could discern no transmat technologies or any other clever doodads which might automatically replenish the tray.

'Good, innit?' said Archie.

'Very good,' said the Doctor. 'And no matter what you eat, the food just keeps coming?'

'Yeah,' said Archie. An' we eat a lot.'

'It's true, dear,' said Mrs Wingsworth as she walked into the cocktail lounge, brushing past Dash and Joss. 'They've been gorging themselves for hours!'

'You,' snarled Dash, 'get wiv the others.'

'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Wingsworth in a mocking, singsong voice. Dash and Joss kept their guns trained on her, but didn't seem surprised to see her. Neither, noted the Doctor, did the other Balumin prisoners.

'Er,' said the Doctor. 'I don't mean to be rude, but didn't I see you die?'

'Oh that,' said Mrs Wingsworth, batting a tentacle at him like his question were some irksome insect.

'It's annoying,' growled Archie.

'Yes, it is a bit of a nuisance, isn't it?' agreed Mrs Wingsworth. 'Every time they shoot one of us down, we just wake up in our berths. It's an outrage, you know.'

'I can imagine,' said the Doctor, baffled.

'They're really not what we were promised,' Mrs Wingsworth continued. 'We're meant to be first class. And they've given us tiny spaces!' She was talking about the berths, the Doctor realised, not about having been killed.