2

I just stand there, not sure what to do. I’m frightened – everyone’s frightened – but at least, for the first time in months, I’m not the only one who’s scared.

The purple barista has three of her six hands covering her mouth, staring down at the corpse in horror.

‘The last cup of coffee!’ the Graske yells, throwing itself to the floor to lap up the spreading puddle. Coffee does different things to different creatures. For most of us, it wakes us up, makes us more alert, gives us focus. For some, though, it’s a sedative, sending them into a gentle sleep. For others, it’s a hallucinogen. And for a few, like the little Graske who now staggers off with a stupid grin on its face, it seems to actually induce a jolt of pure happiness.

The Doctor looks down and seems surprised to find the body still there. ‘Hello? Someone ought to do something about that.’

‘Call a doctor!’ the barista says.

He sighs. ‘Oh well, that’s me then. The Doctor, at your service. I suppose she didn’t die of natural causes.’ He suddenly appears to have had a thought. ‘Unless you poisoned her. Did you poison her?’

The barista looks as flummoxed as I feel.

Overhead, a speaker springs to life, intoning: ‘ATTENTION. A LIFE FORM IS NO LONGER TRACKING. ERROR IN THE CONTROL CENTRE DETECTED. THE SPACE STATION IS CLOSED UNTIL DATA IS COLLECTED. NO SHIPS ARE TO LEAVE OR LAND WITHOUT PERMISSION. ACCESS TO COFFEE-PROCESSING AREA IS RESTRICTED.’

The other coffee-shop patrons seem to be suddenly thrust out of shock and into panic. A few are trying to comm their ships. Several rush out, only to return a few moments later to report that the corridors have been sealed. People pull out various communication devices. The Terileptil draws a conch shell from beneath his cloak and shouts into it, sounding annoyed.

‘Isn’t someone coming to investigate?’ a pig-nosed man asks.

The barista is speaking on a comm. She turns to him, clearly frustrated. ‘There aren’t that many people on the station. It’s mostly robots. They’re sending someone from the planet, but it’s going to take hours.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ says a Silurian woman in worker’s overalls.

‘Poisoning isn’t natural causes,’ I point out to the Doctor, because someone should.

The Doctor looks surprised. ‘There’s something about you that I like. And you’ve met me before, which speaks to the good company you keep. So you’ll have to be my companion while we solve this mystery.’

‘I’ll be your what?’

‘Yes, it’s easy stuff. Just help me, remind me how brilliant I am, notice things that I’ve already noticed, ask me questions whose answers are so blazingly obvious that it would never have occurred to me to explain. Up for it?’

‘Uh,’ I say. Above us, the lights flicker. ‘Are you really the Doctor? The same one that came to the Research Colony on Collabria? To the crèche? Because you seem a little different …’

He peers at me with clear, bright eyes framed by those disturbingly unruly eyebrows. ‘I am absolutely sure that I’m the Doctor. Are you sure that you’re … whatever your name is?’

‘So you remember me?’ I ask hopefully. ‘78351?’

He looks at me quizzically. ‘I’m afraid not. Did you change your hair?’

I touch one hand to my bare head and frown.

‘No matter.’ He whirls towards the body, pulling out a device from the inside pocket of his coat.

I stumble back, until I realise it’s not a weapon. He waves it over the body until it emits an odd sound.

‘Hmmm,’ he says, muttering to himself. ‘Most humans – even newly dead ones – emit a dim light. Something to do with free radicals. But this body doesn’t.’ He runs his glowing thingamajiggy over the body. ‘No light. No heat. Did you know that, even in the year one hundred trillion, people still drink coffee?

‘Is it the shadows that did this? No, not the Vashta Nerada; they’d take everything. Might be a Plasmavore; there are plenty of bendy straws in here. But the body hasn’t lost blood, just adrenaline – cortisol. Its adrenal glands are completely stripped. No, no, this has to be something else, something new.’

‘What does all that mean?’ I ask.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Really settling into your new role. Good. Something took all her delicious, freshly caffeinated energy.’

‘You were the one standing right next to her,’ says the Blowfish with the eye patch. ‘Maybe you’re the one who killed her.’

People draw closer, some of them vibrating slightly, clutching cups that hold only the dregs of coffee. Everyone wants a scapegoat and the Doctor – even I notice – is behaving a little oddly.

He doesn’t help his case by moving around with his thingamajiggy, scanning everyone. ‘Sonic screwdriver,’ he says, when people try to back away. ‘Just checking.’

‘Checking for what?’ asks a Tivolian with tiny brass glasses. He appears annoyed by the murder and prepared to be even more annoyed by the investigation.

‘There was a scientist here …’ I start, but I don’t know how to explain the man in the hospital mask. Besides, I have no evidence that he had anything to do with the murder. I couldn’t even prove he was in the room. It’s probably for the best that no one pays me any attention.

The lights overhead flicker again and a chorus of stifled screams rises from a dozen mouths.

‘We have to keep the lights on,’ I say faintly, but the Doctor continues ignoring me. He’s scanning the Tivolian in the brass glasses.

‘I may be a suspect,’ the Doctor informs the crowd finally. ‘But we’re all suspects. The question is, which one of us had a motive?’

‘Well, she was holding the last cup of coffee,’ says one of the onlookers.

The Doctor’s eyebrows twitch. I don’t think he considers that a motive, although it sounds pretty convincing to me.

‘Which of you knew her?’ asks the Blowfish with the eye patch. ‘She wasn’t here alone.’

Several of the beings in the room turn to one another. After a few moments, it becomes clear that they’re mostly looking at a soldier in a military uniform similar to the one the deceased is wearing.

‘I knew her,’ the soldier says, clearing her throat. She looks nervous, which makes her seem guilty. I remember seeing her staring gloomily at her beverage. ‘We were on the same ship. She’d come over to get a second round of mochas.’

‘I heard them arguing,’ a Cat Woman says, claw pointing accusingly.

‘It wasn’t about anything important. We were talking about shift changes. She kept taking the plum hours – that’s all. She was going to get me an extra shot of espresso to make up for it.’

Now everyone is paying attention to the soldier. The whole jittery, over-caffeinated crowd. Everyone – except the Doctor. He waves his screwdriver-thing in the air and then looks at some kind of read-out. He continues talking to himself, under his breath.

‘What does coffee do? Raises your heart rate. Widens blood vessels. Boosts brain activity. Neural excitation – yes, that would make for a lot of energy.’ Then, after a few moments, he turns to the barista and raises his voice. ‘When the lights came back on, what exactly did you see? Be precise.’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I guess it seemed like she was clutching her chest – up by her heart. Or maybe higher – closer to her neck.’

I want to ask the barista if she saw the scientist in the hospital mask, but I don’t think I should interrupt.

‘Interesting,’ says the Doctor, pulling away a bit of the victim’s collar to peer at her skin. ‘Yes, I see. So either someone stabbed her with two very tiny swords or something bit her. Which changes the question somewhat. OK, who has a motive and also two tiny swords? Everyone turn out your pockets.’

‘Doctor,’ I say.

He looks up at me placidly. ‘Yes?’

At that moment, the lights go out again.