The bar was deserted, save for the dead body and looked disused. The crew clustered round the prone form, showing various degrees of interest. Kaylee and Inara stood well back huddled together, looking spooked. Zoë and Hat hung over the body curiously and Mal and Simon hunkered down next to it.

“Well,” Mal leaned over and poked the body, “appears to be a stiff. Any further thoughts, Doc? Coprsification well advanced or whatever?”

Simon knelt by the body, lifting up a hand, checking for vital signs. “Well, he’s certainly dead. Not long though, I’d guess . . .“

“What, a coupla days?” queried Mal.

Simon looked up at Mal seriously. “More like a couple of hours!”

“Reavers?” Zoë’s voice was business-like with an edge of fear.

Mal shook his head. “Nope this ain’t their work. This was done by regla’r folks shootin’ at each other.” He fingered a neat bullet wound to the left-hand side of the skull. There were two more bloodier wounds to the chest.

“’Sides”, pointed out Hat, looking critically at the dead man, “there ain’t no desecration and such, Reavers tend to really live it up with a corpse, have some fun, if you take my meanin’.”

“I do” said Mal, catching her eye and holding it for a spell, “though I wouldn’t name it “fun” as such.” He turned to the others. “But we’ve got no call to get nervous. We’ve all seen what Reavers do to a body and Hat’s right, this ain’t got the look of it.”

“Well, what’s . . ” began Zoë, when a noise from behind the long central bar of the saloon had them all whipping round, Zoë and Mal cocking their guns in anticipation.

“Can I get you folks a drink?” asked an old man wryly, shuffling out from behind the bar. “You all looks like you could use one, after your close encounter with Curly, there!” He laughed,a gurgling noise which turned halfway into a cough. He was dressed in the worst type of settler garb, making up for the thinness of garments and skins by a peculiar layering, with the result that he looked like nothing less that a heap of rags and