by Toby Frost
Smith carried the tray to the dining table, ducking under the lampshade. Rhianna finished shoving most of the clutter to the far end and they sat down to receive the status report.
Carveth stood up and cleared her throat. She opened her in-flight logbook, which would have looked more impressive had it not been decorated with stickers of ponies and rainbows.
‘Status report, revised,’ she announced. ‘We’re stuffed.’ She closed the logbook and sat down.
‘Any details?’ Smith asked.
‘Alright then. Basically, I’d say we’ve passed the stage of being merely inconvenienced and are now moving into the realm of being totally buggered. Should the buggeration continue, I’m anticipating us losing not just paddle but canoe very shortly, leaving us floundering helplessly in the filthy rapids of a certain malodorous creek.’
Smith thought it over. ‘Thanks. Now, call me pedantic, but can this spaceship still fly through space?’
‘Barely. We can move, but very slowly. Faster than light’s only just working, and pushing it harder will risk the gears blowing up. Any slower and pensioners will start overtaking us.’
Smith sipped his tea. The badness of the news was allayed by the moral fibre flowing from the teapot. This sort of thing, that lesser men might interpret as a disaster, might have potential for great things. Quite what the things might be other than horror and dismay, he was not sure, but all in good time.
Rhianna said, ‘Well, everyone, let’s try to be positive. Did you know that in China opportunity and crisis are represented by the same character?’
‘Sounds like a rum character to me,’ Smith replied. ‘If I was Chinese, I wouldn’t let him on board.’
‘Character as in a single word,’ Rhianna said.
‘Oppicrisis?’ Suruk suggested.
‘So we need repairs,’ Smith said. ‘That much is clear.’
Carveth nodded. ‘Big repairs. We need a space dock.’
‘Right.’ Smith reached behind his chair and took out the AA map book of space. ‘The second matter I want to discuss is the vehicle that attacked our ships. Clearly, this was an enemy vessel… happy to blast our automated convoy into scrap but too cowardly to fight a British craft face-to-face.’
Carveth sighed. ‘Actually, boss, I think the reason they didn’t fight us was because they thought we were scrap. Also, I’m glad they didn’t because we have no guns. But, whatever they were, they came out of nowhere. Nothing on visual or scanners before all that light and.. well, there they were.’
‘Do you think they’re nearby?’
‘I don’t know. But active stealth uses up power like nobody’s business. If that ship’s anything normal, it can’t be far away.’
Smith thought of the craft: the blue flash from which it had appeared; the blood, spikes and chains draped across the front; the unearthly light pulsing around the controls. That sounded far from normal – but then, much of space did technically qualify as abroad. He opened the map and began to leaf through the pages for the appropriate quadrant.
‘If the enemy is still in the vicinity, men,’ he said, half to the map book, ‘we must proceed with caution. Carveth, I need you to rig the engines to get us to our destination quickly and quietly. If the enemy analyses our progress, we should look no more suspicious than a very fast rock. A meteor, say. We need to get to a spaceport, have the ship repaired and get back in space. Then we’ll find the buggers who wrecked our convoy and blast them into the next galaxy. Page thirty-eight. .’
He found the right page and laid the map book on the table. ‘Right. We’re somewhere on this page, in the black bit between the stars. We need to go here – the edge of the Tannhauser Anomaly.’ He leaned in, peering at the tiny words under the symbol. ‘It looks alright, but… well…’
Smith straightened up. His face was grim. He swallowed hard and set his jaw. ‘Gentlemen, I have bad news.’
In the absence of any actual gentlemen, Rhianna, Carveth and Suruk watched him intensely. His eyes were hard as he took a deep, fortifying swig of tea.
‘I know I’ve asked a lot of you in the past. Together we have been to the darkest corners of space and encountered some of the strangest and most terrible beings known to man. We have done battle with vicious Ghasts, crazed Edenites and savage lemming men on a dozen worlds. We have seen and overcome the depths of madness and depravity. But now I must ask you to follow me once more, as we make contact with Tannhauser station and its inhabitants. I do not know what we will encounter there, but I am certain that it will take every drop of our moral fibre to emerge with our bodies and souls intact.
‘Crew, we are going to Europe.’
Dinner for Two
It was a bright cold day in April and the clock was striking thirteen as the repairmen began fixing it. Eric Lint, his collar pulled up tight against his jawline, cupped his hand around his cigarette and said ‘Bollocks’ into the wind. He strode across the grass towards the thin row of tents at the top of the common, where a banner reading Little Binley Village Fete and Family Fun Day flapped like a dying fish.
Slowly he toured the stalls, determined to wring some joy from each. He bought a piece of cake, a sausage in a bun and half a pint of bitter in a plastic glass. He discovered that there was nothing worth buying at the white elephant stand and that he was too tall to have a ride in the village fire engine. Finally, after ignoring the maypole and nearly losing a finger to a grumpy pig in the petting zoo, he turned to the last stand of all.
‘Want to guess the weight of the cake?’ asked the girl behind the table. Apart from the knife scars down one cheek, she looked like a typical young member of the Women’s Institute.
Lint, whose operatives knew him as W, made a show of looking at the cake. ‘Eighteen pounds four ounces,’ he replied.
The woman nodded. ‘They’re out the back.’
‘Thanks. Nice twinset,’ W added, and he strode to the tent at the back of the fete.
He opened the door and an ominously smiling man in spectacles neatly frisked him as he stepped inside. Around the edge of the tent sat three others: George Benson, Assistant Director of Outdoor Recreation for the Service; Hereward Khan, who ran the outfit’s Acquisitions and Transport Department; and Aloysius Roth, whose bloodstained hands pulled the strings behind the Colonial Service Overseas Chess Team and Social Club.
‘Glad you could join us, W,’ Benson said. He was small, spectacled and sad-looking, with a deep, rich voice that seemed to come out of someone larger than himself.
‘A pleasure,’ W replied. He took a sip of his bitter and lowered himself awkwardly into a seat.
‘A potential problem has arisen,’ Khan declared, stroking the waxed tips of his moustache. ‘We need your department’s help.’
W nodded. A list of the galaxy’s most villainous riff-raff appeared in his mind: ruthless Ghast legions, zealots from the Democratic Republic of New Eden, crazed, sadistic lemming men of Yull.
‘Gladly. I’m always happy to introduce the turkey of oppression to the raw onion of British justice,’ he said, making an explanatory gesture.
Khan nodded to Roth. ‘I told you he was keen.’
Benson leaned across to him. ‘My colleague’s department,’ he said, gesturing towards W, ‘were it to actually exist, would have carried out some excellent work over the past few months. Remember the Edenite Minister of Propaganda? Had the manpower existed in any official way, it’s my colleague here you’d have to thank for taking him off the air.’
Roth raised one thick white eyebrow. ‘That was your work?’
‘The concept of objective truth is the cornerstone of human liberty,’ W said, crossing his legs.
‘Only by protecting truth can we hope to retain the gentleness and decency of British life.’
‘So what happened to him?’
‘We hanged the bastard.’ W shrugged. ‘He received a fair and balanced trial, followed by a fair and somewhat less balanced execution. So what do you need done?’
&n
bsp; ‘Very soon, we finalise the treaty with the Vorl,’ Benson replied. He removed his glasses and started polishing them on his tie. ‘Practically every allied nation will be there to witness it and pledge support, including the Vorl themselves. Also in attendance will be the mystics of Khlangar. By themselves, the Khlangari are pretty negligible. They do, however, have strong links to the Voidani space whales, who appear to protect them for reasons unknown. We want them on-side. An alliance like that would be almost unbeatable.’
‘I see. And where is it taking place?’
‘On a metrological station and recycling plant orbiting the gaseous planet Signus Four, which is to be renamed Wellington Prime for the event.’
‘What’s it called now?’
‘Gas and Rubbish Central. Perhaps not ideal for an international treaty. The place is fortified – originally to keep the rubbish in, rather than the rubbish out, but don’t tell the delegates that – but an event like this can’t stay secret forever.’
‘I see.’
‘We’ll need additional security,’ Benson explained. ‘It’s not enough for us to sit back and wait for Gertie to attack. We need good fellows out there on the alert, actively seeking out threats.’
W said, ‘Smith sounds like the man for the job. He’s got a nose for trouble. And a moustache for danger.’
Hereward Khan leaned forward, making his plastic chair creak alarmingly. He was a massive man, as tough and blubbery as an elephant seal. ‘No can do,’ he replied. ‘Smith is on convoy work. We thought he deserved a rest.’
‘Have you considered asking the other secret services?’
The appalled spluttering that followed suggested that they had indeed considered the other services. ‘Those oiks?’ Khan demanded.
Benson’s glasses had misted up. ‘Oh dear no,’ he said. ‘No, no. They’d only steal the sandwiches.’
‘And the furniture.’
Roth leaned close. ‘You know what I heard about the other services?’ he whispered. ‘Some of them aren’t even Oxbridge. To think of it, an entire secret service gone. . redbrick.’ He shuddered violently.
‘Gentlemen, please.’ W’s eyes narrowed. The tiny rollup in the corner of his mouth rose like an accusing finger. ‘What matters here is skill, not background. My own people are chosen for ability, not origin. Most of them think a Cambridge punt is a particularly nasty way of incapacitating someone. What matters here –’ and his eyes took on a fanatical gleam – ‘is the preservation of justice and common decency. We use the best tool for the job – and my men are the best tools in the business.’
There was a moment’s pause. ‘We thought about Wainscott,’ Benson said.
W took a sip of beer to hide his expression. True, Major Wainscott was an expert at seeking out danger. The major had crossed half the galaxy and most of its inhabitants whilst looking for trouble and had found quite a lot of it in some very surprising places. But leaving Wainscott with a bevy of foreign delegates? Surely that was putting a shark in charge of a swimming pool.
‘He has a reputation for working discreetly,’ Benson explained.
‘I’ll have words,’ W said, remembering that for Wainscott, ‘discreet work’ was something you did to enemy sentries. ‘But the major is on holiday, you know. Dartmoor.’
‘Dartmoor, eh? Didn’t he go there a couple of years ago?’
W frowned. Wainscott’s last trip to the West had been less a matter of going away as of being put away. ‘Er, you mean Broadmoor. That wasn’t a holiday, as such. More, ah, rest care.’
‘Well, in galactic terms, Dartmoor’s just down the road. Splendid.’
W reflected that it wasn’t so much the distance that would be the problem so much as figuring out which badger sett Wainscott was using as his base of operations. He had received a postcard a month ago, explaining that the major had been accepted by the badgers as one of their own and that he was having a great time making crossbows out of roadkill.
‘We knew you were the chap for the job,’ Khan said, leaning back. His chair creaked like a galleon in a storm. ‘I’ll see to it that you get transport and supplies.’
W stood up. ‘I’ll find Wainscott and head out. Goodbye, gentlemen. Oh – and of course I wasn’t here, and I didn’t say any of this.’
‘Naturally,’ Benson replied. ‘Would you like a piece of cake to take with you?’
W shook his head. ‘At eighteen pound four ounces, it's probably a little heavy for my tastes.’
*
‘So,’ Rhianna said as she put the tea things away, ‘is this the first time Suruk’s ever. . er. . had children?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Smith replied. ‘You could ask him, although I’m not sure he’d remember. The M’Lak don’t really care about their young.’ Rhianna passed him the biscuit tin and he reached up to put it on the shelf. ‘In fact, when I first met Suruk he was convinced that jelly babies were the human larval stage.’
‘That’s a shame. Is their culture too patriarchal to allow them to engage properly with their children?’
‘Not really. Engage with those things and you’d probably lose a limb. Young Morlocks are like a cross between a frog and a piranha. I’d advise wearing something a bit more solid than flip-flops if you’re going in the engine room soon. A suit of armour, perhaps.’ He frowned. ‘I hope it doesn’t take too long to get to Tannhauser. The last thing we need when we arrive in Europe is a bunch of killer frogs chewing through the hull.’
‘Well then,’ Rhianna said, ‘it sounds like we’ll get to spend some time together, at last.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Anything in particular you’d like to do?’
Smith recognised that look. ‘Scrabble?’
‘I was thinking of something a little more. . adult,’ she replied.
‘Rude Scrabble! Excellent plan, old girl!’ Smith rubbed his hands together. ‘Wait a moment.
Where’re the others?’
‘They’re in the hold. They’ll be okay for a while, won’t they?’
Smith shrugged. ‘Oh yes. So long as they don’t blow up the ship or drink bleach, they’ll be fine.’
*
‘Gah!’ Suruk clutched his throat and staggered across the hold. Gargling, he fell to his knees, rolled onto one side and lay still.
Carveth looked down at him. ‘Sounds like death?’
‘It is death!’ Suruk exclaimed from the floor.
‘So the first word of this film is death, and the second is like oboe.’
‘Well done!’ Suruk climbed upright. ‘Indeed it is Death Oboe. Truly, you are wise in the way of charades.’
‘I see,’ Carveth said. ‘I’ve never heard of Death Oboe.’
‘Really? It is a great favourite of my people. It is a remake of an old Earth film named Pretty Woman. The knife-fight on top of a grand piano is notorious.’
Carveth sighed. ‘Can’t you do a film we’ve both heard of?’
‘Very well. How about Brief Encounters of the Third Kind?’
‘Alright, that sounds – no, you’ve just told me what it is! Look, let’s try something else.’ Suruk was not well-adapted to word games: it had taken thirty minutes to explain to him that honour was not Animal, Vegetable or Mineral.
‘Very well. Tell me about Europe. Is it truly the worst place in the galaxy?’
Carveth sat down on the aluminium teachest at the rear of the hold. ‘Well, it’s hard to say. I mean, the Ghast homeworld’s probably worse, Yullia too, but Europe. . well, I’ve never seen the Captain so worried about meeting our allies before. And given that our allies include Major Wainscott and your family, that can’t be good.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve never been. But from what the captain says, it’s one big country, divided up into little states. France and Germany are the main ones, but there are others. They live in different sorts of houses depending on which country they’re from. Smith says the Germans have very modern houses, and the French live in castles called gateaux.’
Suruk nodded. ‘Strange. I hear that in Sw
itzerland, people live in cartons. Is it true that Europe is a peaceful and cultured place?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose –’
‘Excellent! Let us conquer it!’
‘Um, no. Europe’s on our side. Pretty much.’
Suruk rubbed his chin thoughtfully, after moving his mandibles out the way. ‘Troubling. We shall have to proceed with caution. I shall examine my phrasebook.’
‘You’ve got a phrasebook?’
‘Of course. It would be rude to pick fights in English.’
*
Smith sighed deeply and pushed away the Scrabble board. ‘Well,’ he announced, ‘that was excellent. Good work, Rhianna: I didn’t expect you to get ‘quibble’ on a triple word score. Although I’m not sure it is actually a rude word.’
‘It isn’t,’ she replied. Rhianna looked down at the Scrabble board and shook her head. ‘You know, when I suggested we do something more adult, I didn’t really mean making rude words on the Scrabble board.’
‘Oh,’ Smith said. He peered at her. He felt much like a competitor in a decathlon who has heard the whistle blow without knowing the order of the events. He was obviously meant to guess something.
She was clearly not entirely happy, but he had no idea about what. Dimly, it occurred to him that she might have taken him to her cabin for something entirely different. Damn!
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, standing up. ‘I misunderstood. Never mind, we can have a bit of the other later on. Right now I really need a sleep.’
‘Right,’ Rhianna said. ‘You go and do that. I’ll just meditate.’
Stepping outside, he nearly bumped into Carveth.
‘Question, Boss… When we get to France, will we have time to go to the duty free?’
‘I doubt it. Besides, it’ll just be full of chocolate and frilly pants. Nothing we might need.’
‘I need those! Come on, Boss, let me go. I’ll buy something for Rhianna, so you can give it to her on her birthday.’
‘Oh, all right then,’ Smith said, and he headed to his room.
