‘What happened?’ asked Ogmunee, the moment that Mesanth and Li’ian materialised.

‘View screen on,’ Li’ian barked. ‘Show me the station!’

Ogmunee pulled a sniffy face but turned to the display controls anyway.

‘Oh,’ he said, suddenly remembering something. ‘This thing I took from the Doctor.’ He picked up a shiny red sphere, the size of a tangerine, from the console. ‘I’ve not been able to open it. It’s just started flashing. Any idea what it—’

In the vacuum of space, exploding spaceships make no sound: there’s no air to carry the vibration. But anyone watching the Dark Light wouldn’t have needed to hear it to know what immense energies had just been liberated.

Within the red sphere, a magnetic containment field cut out, and a few billion atoms of matter were allowed, at long last, to mingle with a few billion atoms of antimatter. It was like long-lost friends meeting at a party. A very loud, very noisy party. The sort of party that has the neighbours banging on the walls.

A flower of intense blue-white light erupted at the front of the ship, expanding like a star, expanding outwards and outwards, consuming the rest of the vessel in less than a second, blasting the remains far, far out into space until, like dying sparks, they flickered and went dark.

Not even looking at Mother’s screen, not wanting to know the exact moment that her life ended, just wanting it to be quick and painless, Donna pressed herself against the Doctor in a hug that nearly knocked him off his feet. She buried her face in his chest, holding her breath, waiting for the end.

As she waited, she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and looked up to see the Doctor looking down at her. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

‘Oh you git!’ she said after a moment, pulling away and punching him in the chest. ‘It was a bluff, wasn’t it?’ She stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘You complete and utter git!’

‘No,’ he said, the smile subsiding. ‘It wasn’t. And yes, I probably am.’ He grinned rakishly. ‘A bit.’

Donna looked up at Mother. Her screen had vanished. She looked around. Everyone was either staring in shock or just looking puzzled. And of them all, Boonie looked the most puzzled.

‘How did you…?’ he said to Mother.

‘She didn’t,’ answered the Doctor, popping on his specs and slipping past them to enter the room where Li’ian and Mesanth had been working on the activator. They followed him in.

‘So we’re all dead and this is… the final upload?’ whispered Weiou. He glanced at the Doctor and then, magically, a pair of glasses just like the Doctor’s, appeared on his cartoon face. He reached out to touch a wall as if he thought his fingers might go through it. ‘Oh my.’

‘If it is,’ said the Doctor, playing with the controls, ‘it’s a bit unimaginative, isn’t it? There!’ He waved at a screen on the console.

The screen showed the blackness of space, peppered with a few cold, hard stars.

‘What’s that, then?’ asked Weiou.

‘That’s what’s left of the Cult of Shining Darkness. Ironic, eh?’

‘Uh?’ Weiou leaned back to look up at him, peering over his specs.

‘They’ve gone?’ said Kellique. ‘Where?’

‘Where we’re all going to go in the end.’ The Doctor sounded almost regretful.

‘They’re dead?’ asked Donna.

The Doctor just narrowed his lips.

‘The bomb,’ said Boonie. ‘Mother’s bomb. It was on their ship, wasn’t it?’

‘I did tell Ogmunee that he really, really didn’t want it,’ said the Doctor, but there was no humour in his voice. ‘But some people just won’t listen, will they?’

‘How?’ Boonie shook his head. ‘I mean, when…?’

‘When I found it inside her. It didn’t fit. Not just physically, but it was all wrong for her. So I…’ He pulled a slightly sheepish face. ‘Pocketed it. She didn’t even notice it was there, never mind when it wasn’t. And then Ogmunee took it off me.’

Donna’s eyes went wide.

‘Can I just say,’ she said, ‘that if you’re ever checking me over and decide to remove one of my internal organs, on a whim, I’ll have you struck off.’ She fixed him with a twinkly glare. ‘You remember that, Doctor.’

‘That’s one thing you can say for organic life forms – they don’t cope well with having bits of them taken out.’ The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘Still…Live by the sword, die by the sword.’

A heavy silence descended on them all as they stared at the screen. Suddenly, the Doctor leaned forward and squinted at it, before his fingers did a little dance over the keyboard. The image leaped towards them: floating in the midst of the darkness was a familiar, welcoming shape.

‘Thank god!’ sighed Donna, staring at the tumbling blue box. ‘I was trying to work out how to tell you that I’d lost the TARDIS.’

‘She’s a hard thing to lose – we can use one of the station’s shuttles to pick her up. And sooner rather than later. Wouldn’t want her falling into Sentilli, now, would we?’

Donna linked her arm with the Doctor’s. ‘No, we wouldn’t. Let’s go home, yeah?’

‘Home,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘Give me a few minutes to get the engines going – we’ll send this thing back into Sentilli without its shields on. It’ll be gone before you know it. And after we collect the TARDIS and a quick stop-off to take our friends back to their homes, I think the old Milky Way beckons, don’t you? Where’s it going to be, ladies and gentlemen? Uhlala? Dallendaf? Or…’

‘Pasquite!’ cried Weiou suddenly. ‘Let’s go to Pasquite! Can we? Can we?’

‘What’s on Pasquite?’ asked the Doctor.

Weiou rolled his eyes behind his fake glasses.

‘D’uh!’ he said. ‘Only the bestest machine theme park in the galaxy. They’ve got a simulator that shows you what it’s like to be organic – all that Squidgie stuff. It’s really gruesome, with blood and innards and sick and—’

The Doctor raised a hand to cut the little robot off. ‘Sounds rather fun! Pasquite it is,’ he grinned.