Buried deep in the bowels of asteroid HJ786 is a public house, set up for the miners who live out there and dig through the asteroid, extracting the rocks and minerals which the high-tech civilisation of the solar system needs. I sat alone in a corner, nursing my pint of draught Guinness and observing the staff and the clientele carefully, hoping that I could write a piece the boss — also my editor — would find publishable. She was good at her job, demanding and very experienced. Rumour had it that she had been around the Galaxy more than once, as we say these days. On the wall behind the bar was a large sign proclaiming “DEVLINS — The deepest and most remote Irish Pub in the Solar System!”, which it certainly was.

There weren’t many entities for me to observe. Behind the bar was a human called Devlin. He was the owner of the establishment. He was busy staring at his tablet. As I’d discovered earlier when I arrived and approached the bar for service, he was as Irish as expected with a name like Devlin and he was reading an e-book. He poured the Guinness with a loving hand, took my credits and then returned with rapt attention to his reading. If the current number of customers in the bar was anywhere near normal, I suspected that Devlin got through a lot of books. I would have to talk to him for the article, but for the moment I was content to drink my Guinness and watch the only other occupants of the bar. They were far more interesting.

They sat at a table in the corner opposite me. There were six of them and they were Silurians. They were tall, strongly built, reptilian and green. Silurians had long been hired by the mining companies for work at the asteroids. They were big and strong and could work long hours. From my current viewpoint I could see that they could also drink hard. In the middle of the table was a very large bottle of Jovian vodka, which is very fiery stuff. They had got to the point where they were regularly filling their glasses, making a toast to some absent friend, and then draining those glasses. There was also some sound coming from them that might just have been singing. Devlin had told me that they were already on their second bottle.

I had been a bit worried about any trouble they might cause, but Devlin had pointed out the Judoon sitting quietly on a seat in an alcove at one end of the bar. Judoon are quiet, big, and forceful and to human eyes look like rhinoceroses in suits of armour. They were the Galactic police force and this one was equipped with a neuronic whip that would be able to subdue just about any living creature.

I switched on my tablet and started writing my article. I was only into the second sentence when there was a wheezing and grinding noise from across the bar. A large blue box just appeared, neatly filling the space between the floor and the ceiling. Seconds later a tall humanoid walked out of a door in the box. He had a wild bunch of curly hair on his head and was wearing one of the biggest grins I had ever seen. Notable was the strange mixture of clothes that he wore, including a very long multi-coloured scarf that he surely didn’t really need in this atmosphere. He looked around the bar, walked up to Devlin and, with the grin still very much in place, said, “Hello. I'm the Doctor. This isn’t Raffles Hotel in Singapore in 1947, is it?”

“No,” replied Devlin. “It’s Devlin’s Bar in Asteroid HJ786 and it’s 2147.”

“Ah, well in that case,” said the tall stranger. “I’ll have to reset the coordinates.”

A young woman walked out of the box to stand beside him. She was middle-height with black hair and she looked up at her companion. “Well, Doctor,” she said. “You’ve done it again. Isn’t it time you actually learned to navigate the Tardis properly?”

“Sarah,” he said, “I got the last two digits of the year right. Doesn”t that show willing?” The grin stayed firmly in place as he waited for her response.

They looked at each other briefly as clearly something non-vocal passed between them. They then turned and went back into the blue box, the door closing behind them. Again the wheezing and grinding noise sounded and the box disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared. There was nothing there, which was strange, because I had half expected the Doctor’s grin to slowly fade away.

Devlin and I looked at each other and then at the Silurians, but I don’t think they’d noticed anything. They mostly looked to be falling-down drunk already.

As one of the Silurians who could still walk made his crabbed way to the bar and ordered a third bottle, I considered my article. I had a problem. If I put the blue box into my article, the boss would blue-pencil it, as nobody would believe it, particularly if I added an extra truth — that the young woman had looked remarkably like a thirty-years-younger version of my editor — Sarah Jane Smith.