Thebe had loomed large in the cockpit window, looking to Trix like giant squashed doughnut.  There Was quite a bite taken out of it too - a huge impact crater radiating out over almost half its barren surface.

'Miracle it wasn't smashed to smithereens,' she'd remarked.

'Aggregate body,' the Doctor murmured, 'like a rubble pile.  Good at absorbing shocks; the trauma of impact was confined to the local area.'  He looked pensive.  'Speaking of the local area, I hope our shields hold out.'

Trix jumped.  'We're not under attack, are we?'

'Oh yes.  From that.' He gestured at Jupiter's fat, striped face beyond Thebe.  'At this range its magnetic field is slinging out enough radiation to kill us both in less than a second.  The ship's generating a counter-field to repel it.  I only hope the base is.'

The Blazar HQ was a sloping construction, built like a barnacle within a smaller crater.  The landing pad was littered with small spaceships, but one craft towered above the rest, a dull silver arrowhead.  A long flexible pipe joined the ship and the building together.

'He's nabbed the main docking tube,' observed the Doctor, almost scratching the paintwork of the ships either side as he squeezed into a parking spot.  'That's the way in the crew would use, still, we're not proud.  The ancillary port for deliveries will do us.'

And here they were.  Another giant ribbed pipe had unrolled like the mother of all condoms to fit snugly over Falsh's airlock, stiffening artificial gravity.  Trix was trailing after the Doctor as they entered the base through the tradesmen's entrance.  She glanced around at the silver ribbed walls and shivered; she felt she was walking down some metal monster's throat.  At least it wasn't transparent, reminding her that just outside was a super-enormous planet stuffed so fat with gas and iron and energy that it spent the whole time pumping out practically everything that was bad for you - except chocolate, typically.

'So, that ship out there,' Trix hissed.  'Bad guys?'

'A deputation of fixers,' the Doctor surmised.  'Fixing things for Falsh Industries so that no one here can tell the truth about what really happened.'

'But, then, if we're too late -'

'We may be just in time,' the Doctor countered, quickening s step.  'If we hurry.'

They reached a scratched, metallic bulkhead with a grubby keypad set beside it.  In the time a slurred computer voice asked them to key-in authorisation codes, the Doctor had produced the sonic screwdriver and had got them in regardless.

The lights were low but adjusted themselves to a higher level as they entered a waiting area of some kind.  Trix only hoped the temperature would follow suit - it was like a freezer here.  The furniture - what little there was of it - was white, lightweight and plastic.  The metal walls were bare save for one; SHIPMENTS was spelled out in large glowing letters above a doorway.

I suppose the crew loaded up supplies from here,' said the Doctor, walking through into a well-stocked storage bay and gesturing around.  'Explosives, launchers, heat spikes...'

'Come again?'

'A lot of the matter out there is superchilled ice, packed with dissolved metallic salts.  So the best way to collect it is to warm things up and have a jar handy.'

'Come a long way since candles and pickaxes, haven't we?' said Trix, as she took in the chunky landscape of burnished metal crates, dotted about at random like a child's discarded building blocks.  'Don't think much of this storage system'

'Stuff's arranged in a simple grid matrix for vertical lifting and transportation.  All done by robotic drones, I'd imagine.'  He stared up at the flat, featureless roof where a number of large silver discs were huddling silently.  "Mere you go.  Magnetised I should imagine.  Humankind is such a lazy animal'

'Well, I don't intend to lounge around here,' Trix announced.  The hovering discs gave her the creeps.

So did the faint whining noise up ahead.  A door opening.