'OK,' she said, not feeling very much better. She took a deep breath and braced herself, like this was a fairground ride.

'And don't wander off,' said the Doctor.

She stuck her tongue out at him and walked boldly right into the strange material.

The scrambled egg material closed tightly around her, cold and rubbery and awful. Martha pushed on through.

She emerged blinking into a narrow corridor, all dark and varnished wood, with plush, red carpet underfoot. You could tell there had been money spent on it, sure, but the corridor felt cramped and not very extravagant. Someone as tall as the Doctor would have trouble standing up straight.

There was none of the eggy material on her – she was entirely clean. She glanced briefly up and down the corridor to check nobody was coming. Martha itched to explore further but she knew that the moment she did the Doctor would pop through the scrambled egg behind her and only roll his eyes. So she settled down on the floor to wait for him. Her back rested against the smooth, hard wood. She checked her watch; it was a little after two in the morning. Time didn't mean much when you travelled with the Doctor.

The floor and walls vibrated gently with power, and in the pit of her stomach Martha could feel that the ship was moving. She pressed a hand against the skin of scrambled egg that blocked the way back into the engine rooms. It felt warm and slightly sticky, but it did not yield.

She shivered with sudden fear. Of course, she thought, there just wasn't any way that she could be separated from him for ever. If the door didn't work, he could use the teleporter thing. Whatever it took, the Doctor would find a way back to her. She had complete faith in that.

But it was still taking him ages. Martha found that she was bored. 'Come on,' she told the wall of cold scrambled egg. 'I'll give you five minutes and then I'm going to explore.'

'Are you quite well, madam?' said a voice she didn't know.

Martha looked round quickly, to see her own face reflected back at her. She looked a little surprised.

'I do beg your forgiveness,' said the polished metal robot, backing away from her smoothly. His tone made it sound as if when he spoke he was also raising one eyebrow, as if it were all her fault. He wasn't like the robots of Milky-Pink City; while they had been all keen-to-please, he sounded well-schooled and sarcastic. Martha looked him quickly up and down.

'You're some kind of waiter?' she said.

'Really, madam, you're too kind,' said the robot drolly. 'I am a starship's steward.'

'Course you are,' said Martha, getting quickly to her feet. The robot made no move to assist her. He was a bit shorter than she was and even skinnier, his chrome surfaces sparkling brightly. And she found him somehow unsettling. It took a moment for her to realise that he hadn't been built to seem like a man in a suit. Not even the Doctor with his skinny arms and legs could fit inside so slender a body. The robots of Milky-Pink City had been built with bigger bones, so as not to freak out the humans.

'Might I enquire as to your berth number, madam?' the robot asked her wearily. She got the feeling it spent a lot of time rounding up lost passengers.

'My what?' said Martha. 'Sorry, I'm new around here.'

Somewhere off in the distance, Martha felt sure she heard a crash. Not a crash like the ship changing gear or anything. A crash like something going wrong.

The robot didn't seem to notice, though. It stared at her with unmoving, metal eyes.

'Your berth number, madam,' it repeated. 'It will be on your key-fob and on the door to your berth.'

'Oh!' said Martha. 'Like my room number?'

'Indeed, madam,' said the robot.

'Oh, well, I'm not—' She was about to say that she wasn't a passenger, but had a sudden thought. 'What do you do with stowaways round here?'

The robot stood up a little straighten 'Checking,' he said. After a moment that seemed to suggest it had delved through a vast bank of memory, it continued: 'There is no precedent for dealing with stowaways aboard the Brilliant, madam. Yet the regulations state that our first priority is to our passengers' safety. So in such an instance the crew are authorised in the use of deadly force.'

'Right,' said Martha. 'You'd kill them?'

'We would be authorised to do so. Might I enquire as to your berth number, madam?'

'Oh, right,' she said. 'It's Twenty-Eight.' That was the sonic screwdriver setting the Doctor had used on the scrambled egg. Maybe it was lucky.

'Checking,' said the robot.

Martha waited for it to conclude that she was a liar and a threat to the passengers. She couldn't see if it had any weapons, but perhaps it fired lasers out of its eyes. Martha had met a couple of species who could do stuff like that.

'I do apologise, Ms Malinka,' said the robot. 'I shall remember your name from now on.'

'That's OK,' said Martha nervously. 'But really, call me Martha.'

'As you wish, Ms Martha,' said the robot.

Again there was a crash from somewhere else on the ship, possibly upstairs. It definitely wasn't anything good. Again the robot seemed not to notice. Martha gave it the benefit of the doubt, worried that if she started asking questions she'd make the robot suspicious.

'And have you got a name?' she said. 'Since we're being all informal.'

The robot bowed. 'My designation is "Gabriel".'

'Hello, Gabriel,' said Martha easily. 'Glad we got that sorted.'

'Indeed, Ms Martha,' said Gabriel. He seemed to be waiting for something. Martha couldn't think what it was. She found it unnerving being watched at the best of times, but this bloke, with his impossibly skinny body and a head that worked like a mirror, was really something else.

'What?' she said.

'Might I get you an aperitif, Ms Martha?' said Gabriel.

That'd be nice,' said Martha. 'What have you got?'

'It might be best were you to accompany me to the cocktail lounge, Ms Martha. Then you can choose from our extensive menu.'

'Ah,' said Martha. 'Thing is, I'm waiting on this bloke.'

'I am programmed with discretion parameters, Ms Martha,' said Gabriel.

'No! Nothing like that! You're as bad as my mum.'

'I do apologise, Ms Martha.'

'He's just this bloke. Nothing special. Nothing, you know... And I'm meant to wait for him.' She grinned. 'Could you just go and fetch me a cocktail?'

'I regret we are not advised to encourage passengers to take drinks out of the cocktail lounge, Ms Martha.'

'It's a health and safety thing, is it?'

The third crash was much more noticeable; the whole ship lurched under their feet. Martha collided with the very hard, dark wood of the wall. Gabriel swayed expertly in time with the lurching, and remained coolly on his feet.

'No, Ms Martha,' he said. 'They might spill them.'

'And that would make a mess of your lovely carpets, I suppose,' she said.

'More importantly, it would inconvenience the passengers, Ms Martha.'

Martha sighed. It wasn't merely that she'd said she wouldn't wander off. After all, the Doctor would expect her to use her initiative. Especially since, with all these crashes, there had to be something going on. But things always had to be so complicated, didn't they? She wanted to ask the robot what that was all about, but feared it might show she wasn't a passenger. And then the robot might kill her.

So she had to go along with him, though she had no way to tell the Doctor where she had got to. Martha had never really been one for handbags, mostly because she kept losing them, but right now a pen and a bit of paper would have been quite useful.

'If I might make a suggestion, Ms Martha,' said Gabriel. 'Once you have accompanied me to the cocktail lounge, I would be happy to return here. I could wait on the gentleman and explain to him where you are.'