The Worst Man on Mars

by Mark Roman

  THE WORST MAN ON MARS

  “This is a very enjoyable manuscript. It bounces along, funny and silly and wicked by turns, and fits into a well-established genre ...”

  – HarperCollins Publishers

  “Very inventive, imaginative, and funny from cover to cover.”

  – Kevin Bergeron, author of In a Cat’s Eye

  “A brilliantly funny and cleverly conceived work.”

  – Rob Gregson, author of Unreliable Histories

  “The funniest sci-fi I’ve ever read … and I don’t even like sci-fi!”

  – Frank Kusy, author of Rupee Millionaires

  Chapter 10, The Rovers Return, was shortlisted in the short story category of the Yeovil Literary Prize 2014.

  Chapter 1, The Back Seat Kids, was shortlisted in the Booksie First Chapter Writing Contest, 2016.

  Also by Mark Roman

  THE ULTIMATE INFERIOR BEINGS

  The Worst Man on Mars

  by

  Mark Roman & Corben Duke

  Illustrations by Corben Duke

  Published by Grand Mal Press

  www.grandmalpress.com

  “It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.” (Ray Bradbury)

  CONTENTS

  Map

  PART 1

  1. The Back Seat Kids

  2. The King’s Peach

  3. The Impotence of Being Harnessed

  4. Permission Impossible

  5. The Hanging Gaskets of BioDome

  6. Fagin It

  7. Meet the Flint Stoners

  8. Something Picky This Way comes

  9. The Arch of Progress

  10. The Rovers Return

  11. Gone with the Wind Spirits

  12. An InspectaBot Calls

  13. Tarquin the Spotter

  14. Don’t Mention the Door

  15. Hat Stands to Reason

  16. The Elfin Marbles

  17. In a Tube

  18. 2029: A Space Body Scene

  19. In a Spaceship, Everyone Can Hear You Scream

  20. Unequal and Inapposite Reactions

  21. Lost it in Space

  22. Love, factually?

  23. Poles Together

  24. Furiouser and Furiouser

  25. Lifts and Separates

  26. The Knicker Man

  27. A Room with a Small View

  28. The Man who Fell to Mars

  29. One Giant Heap for Mankind

  30. Berk and Mare

  PART 2

  1. Heaven and Girth

  2. Memories are Made of Bits

  3. Bad Air Day

  4. A Severe Case of RAMnesia

  5. Dope on a Rope

  6. Subtotal Recall

  7. Dome Alone

  8. No Place Like Home

  9. Ma’s Army

  10. The Creative Splurge

  11. The Call of the Mild

  12. The Not-so Famous Five

  13. Feeling Down

  14. Brokk, Paper, Schisms

  15. Who Ate All the Pies?

  16. The Qualm Before the Storm

  17. The Printer of Our Discontent

  18. Nothing Like a Nice Cup of Tea

  19. The Old Man and the Tea

  20. Helmut’s Story

  21. Mutiny on the Botany

  22. The Bad Matters Tea Party

  23. Phishing for Clues

  24. The Fellowship of the King

  25. Grave Matters

  26. Wind Up

  27. Breakfast at Stiffer Knees

  28. Texts and the Single Girl

  29. Game of Throw-ins

  PART 3

  1. Mars Bard

  2. Pseudy Garlands

  3. A Touch of Wind

  4. Thrifty Shades of Grey

  5. Clueless in the Shuttle

  6. The King of Rock and Hole

  7. His Awful Wedded Wife

  8. Before the Big Bang

  9. The Mars Debating Society

  10. Doctor, No!

  11. German Weasels

  12. Street-fighter’s Ride to the Galaxy

  EPILOGUE

  Authors’ Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Map

  Part 1

  1. The Back Seat Kids

  08:30, 24th March 2029 – 46, Culpepper Drive, Huddersfield, Yorkshire

  Whenever retired science teacher Malcolm Brimble got a ‘bad feeling in his water’ it was usually a pretty accurate portent of doom. For eight months, in spite of some powerful antibiotics, the feeling had been worsening.

  “It’s going to be a disaster, Barb,” he moaned through the open door of their en suite bathroom.

  “They’re saying it’s looking good,” Barbara countered. She was perched on the end of the bed, nursing two freshly made mugs of tea and staring at the TV. The pictures from Mayflower III, in orbit above Mars, showed the crew of Britain’s first manned mission to the Red Planet high-fiving one another.

  Malcolm looked up from his ablutions and caught sight of the shaven-headed Mission Commander Flint Dugdale. “No, I can’t look at him!” He nudged the bathroom door shut to block the offending view of Dugdale spraying the contents of a can of Stallion lager into the zero-G atmosphere.

  “People change,” his wife called through the door.

  “Not that one. Not him. Five years I had him. Bottom of the bottom science set.”

  “Come on, he was a teenager. The mission’s so close now; what could possibly go wrong?”

  Malcolm cracked the door open. “I think you’re forgetting the Beagle 2 disaster.”

  “You don’t know for sure he was responsible.”

  Malcolm snorted. Flushing the toilet, he strode out of the bathroom and across the bedroom, pausing only to grab a pair of oily overalls as he took himself off to the garage.

  “Don’t forget your tea,” Barbara shouted after him. Too late, he had already made it downstairs and out the front door.

  As she followed her husband with his mug, the TV transmission cut to a commercial break. An astronaut holding a can of lager was perched on the back of a rearing horse, set against the backdrop of a red desert. “Stallion, sponsors of Who Wants to go to Mars,” said the voiceover. The handsome space-cowboy lifted his visor and took a gulp from his can before thrusting the label towards the camera. “Stallion extra-strength lager. Putting men on Mars.”

  In the garage, Barbara found Malcolm in familiar pose: on his back with his Hush-Puppied feet poking out from under the jacked-up MG Midget Mk III sports car that was his pride and joy.

  “No use hiding under there, you silly old goat,” she said, heading for the business end of the car.

  The sound of his wife’s approaching flip-flops made Malcolm retreat even further under the protective mass of the vehicle.

  She toe-poked his protruding feet. “Listen. You should be proud of yourself. In a few hours’ time, one of your former pupils will be the first man on Mars. You’re a neighbourhood celebrity. I’d milk it if I were you.”

  “Celebrity, my foot! What happens when the mission goes pear-shaped because Dugdale doesn’t know one end of an Ion Drive from the other? What will they say about his science teacher then?”

  Barbara sighed. Peering through the open bonnet, past the high tension leads, spark plugs and coolant hoses, she could just make out the oily scowl on his face.

  “That school trip to Stevenage in 2002 still haunts me, Barb.”

  “That was twenty-seven years ago, dear.”

  “Single-handedly, he destroyed Beagle 2. I know it.”

  Malcolm’s mind drifted back to the Airbus, Defence and Space Establishment in Steve
nage. The trip to see the construction of the Beagle 2 Mars lander had seemed to go off smoothly, despite the continual misbehaviour of the thirteen-year-old hoodies in his charge. Back then, before cynicism had set in, Malcolm believed he could turn even the roughest of Grimley Comprehensive’s pupils into potential scientists. In particular, he’d regarded Flint Dugdale as something of a Challenge.

  On the way back to Huddersfield, the coach had been stopped by the police following a display of mooning from the back seat. A weary-looking Malcolm had stood alongside the police officers as they searched the gang of undersized thugs for drugs, weapons and stolen goods. He barely batted an eyelid at the stash of contraband emerging from their pockets. But there was no hiding his shock at the small collection of space-age locknuts that had been discovered on the young Dugdale, hidden inside a packet of cigarettes tucked into his left sock. Malcolm had been too stunned to say anything, wondering how – and from where – Dugdale had obtained those fixings.

  The bad feelings in his water had started soon after and quickly turned into a guilty obsession with the Beagle 2 mission. He found himself following every update, every newsflash, dreading the worst. And, sure enough, on Christmas Day 2003, contact with the lander had been lost during its descent to Mars.

  For years Malcolm had been plagued by nightmares, convinced the young hooligan had removed some vital fixings. And then, one cold January morning in 2015, he awoke to hear his radio alarm announce that the lonely little lander had been spotted on Mars, its petal-like solar panel still closed due to failed, or missing, fixings. Solid evidence, as far as he was concerned, that Dugdale had sabotaged the mission.

  And now, by some monstrous twist of fate, that same boy had grown into the man in charge of the spaceship carrying the first group of colonists to Mars. How could that be? Malcolm asked himself, not for the first time. How had they allowed Dugdale to take over after the commander’s death? Malcolm could only think that the brute had somehow bullied his way into command.

  Barbara tutted at the distant stare in her husband’s eyes and searched for a conveniently flat surface on which to deposit his morning cuppa. Malcolm snapped out of his trance and shook his head as he became aware of her plans. “No, not on there!” he cried.

  Too late. She had plonked the mug on top of the car battery, sloshing hot tea over the terminals and causing sparks of electricity to snap, crackle and pop.

  Malcolm groaned and laid his head back on the cold, hard concrete as he gazed past the drips to watch his wife flip-flopping her way through the open garage doors and across the lawn. Next door, he could see the lovey-dovey couple making last minute adjustments to their Union Jack bunting. A street party had been scheduled to coincide with the descent to Mars. Malcolm heard the woman call out from the top of a stepladder being steadied by her husband. “Hiya, Babs. Not long now. Malcolm must be so proud to think he taught the first man on Mars!”

  “Oh, yes,” answered Barbara with a cheerful wave. “Chuffed to bits.”

  Under the MG Midget Mk III Malcolm grimaced. “First man on Mars? Worst man on Mars, more like!”

  2. The King’s Peach

  20:21 The previous day – Mayflower III

  The spaceship’s Assembly Room was unusually packed. Mission Commander Flint Dugdale was seated directly in front of the vast TV screen, his greasy hand wrapped around the remote control and his legs spread wide apart. Normally his predilection for darts, snooker and monster-truck racing drove the other personnel away, but right now they were strapped into the cinema-style seating and buzzing with anticipation. The forthcoming programme was a special broadcast, direct from Buckingham Palace. The King himself was to deliver a personal message to the prospective Mars colonists in a programme titled ‘A Very British Mission’.

  As yet another lager advert commenced, Dugdale shook a fist at the screen and roared in his broad Yorkshire accent, “Gerron wi’ it!” He sat, his bloated belly pointing upwards, in the middle of the three front-row seats reserved for crew. On the back of his seat the gold embossed name of ‘Mission Commander Chad Lionheart’ had been crossed through with a thick marker pen and ‘Commandur Dugdale’ scrawled in its place. Rows two to four were for the Mars colonists.

  Dugdale scratched between his legs with one hand and twirled a fat finger in his ear with the other as crewmember Lieutenant Zak Johnston floated in zero-G into the Assembly Room and made for the front row.

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n. Permish to land?” asked Zak, indicating one of the empty seats.

  Flint reached under his chair and pulled out a four-pack of Stallion extra-strong lager and a jumbo bag of Cheesy Watnots. He placed them in the middle of the empty seat Zak was pointing to and snapped the seatbelt into its clip to stop his booty drifting away. “Seat’s taken. Chuff off,” he growled.

  Zak glided around the front, keeping out of range of his commanding officer, and made for the seat on the opposite side. Flint lifted his left leg over the armrest so that his steel toe-capped Doc Marten boot rested across the other empty place.

  “No probleemo, Captain Nemo. I’ll just float here, shall I?” said Zak.

  Dugdale didn’t react, so Zak belted himself into one of the empty seats in row 2. Po-faced, tight-lipped Harry Fortune in row 3 now found himself directly behind a bush of free-floating and widely spread dreadlocks. Harry, former stand-up comedian-turned-poet, and the mission’s token celebrity, leaned forward and tapped the Medusa-haired lieutenant on the shoulder. “You do realize I can’t see a thing because of your hair.”

  Zak, having turned with a jolt, studied the comedian’s thin mouth as he spoke. Although not clinically deaf he had great difficulty hearing much of what went on around him. The ear wax in his auditory canals, together with his earphones, meant that he only registered the very loudest sounds above the steady beat of his personal music directory. He had come to rely on very poor lip-reading skills to understand what was being said. “You want me to sing Love is in the Air?” he enquired.

  Sitting next to Harry was Miss Emily Leach, daughter of zillionaire nonagenarian mining tycoon Sir Geoffrey Leach. The heavily perfumed middle-aged lady butted in. “Oh, I love that song. Please sing it, Mr Zak!”

  “Soz, Lady Em, that song is alien to this mammalian.”

  “Surely not!” she exclaimed. And then, as if to mete out punishment for such ignorance of a classic, she let rip with a shrill, ear-jarring voice that, to her tin ear, perfectly matched the song in her head. All eyes stared at her. A single backward glare from the commander cut her off in mid-note and made her face redden. Meekly she resumed sipping Earl Grey from a dainty bone china cup. The cup had been ‘adapted’ for zero-G by the addition of a cheap plastic lid and a vivid-green curly straw. Just as attention was drifting away from her, and her face was returning to its former paleness, she made an embarrassing cup-draining slurp as she sucked up the last dregs, causing her face to flush once more.

  Sitting behind Emily was the diminutive Tarquin Brush, only ten years old but already smarter than most of the others. On his knee was ‘Mr Snuggles’, the robot he had assembled during the journey using wiring and circuits pilfered from around the ship. Tarquin’s smiling mother, Delphinia Brush, gave his hand a warm squeeze, proud that her little soldier could have built such a clever robot. Around her shoulders lay the comforting arm of husband Brian Brush, a man rarely far from her side. Both had the nerdy look and spectacles of planetary scientists, which is what they were.

  “About friggin’ time!” exclaimed Dugdale as the programme’s opening titles finally appeared on the screen.

  Hardly anyone batted an eyelid at the commander’s bad language. Only Delphinia Brush reacted by placing her protective hands over Tarquin’s innocent little ears.

  On screen, the credits cleared and a panning shot showed what appeared to be a dense rain forest. An elderly gentleman emerged from behind the leaves of a large banana tree wearing a three-piece tweed suit and matching flat cap. Looking somewhat incongruous in the jungl
e terrain, he sported a brass plant-sprayer in one hand and a fine walking cane in the other. As he stepped out of the tree’s shadow he was instantly recognizable by his drooping elephantine ears, anteater nose and deep-set pebble eyes. He removed his hat to reveal a scabrous scalp long since deserted by its mutinous hair.

  Commander Dugdale fumbled to unclip his seat belt, all the time gazing reverently up at the screen. He stood to attention.

  “Ayeup, you lot. Gerr’off yer fat bums ‘n show some respect for t’friggin’ King!” Having stood up too aggressively he found himself drifting, head-first, for the ceiling.

  “That’s just great,” mumbled Harry Fortune, “Now I can’t see the screen at all.”

  “Shhh!” beseeched Emily Leach.

  Meanwhile, King Charles III was gesturing up at the huge glass roof above his head. “Simply splendid, isn’t it,” he was saying, letting the words escape through tightly clenched jaws. “A replica of Decimus Burton’s Temperate House. The original is in Kew Gardens, of course, but one had this exact copy built in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.” He paused to swat a tiny fly away. “During the past eight months, while Mayflower III and its valiant personnel, have been racing towards the Red Planet, I have found myself drawn here more and more. A place to meditate and consider the Universe above. Indeed, I often find my mind drifting across interplanetary space to Mars, and the vast BioDome of Botany Base where, very soon, the first Martian colonists will be standing. I imagine it looking something like this.” The king swept his arm in a wide arc to indicate the lush vegetation surrounding him.

  “Botany Base,” he mused. “Built not by humans, but by a small army of fiendishly clever British robots sent ahead by the National Astronomical Flight Agency. Five years they have toiled, and the result is a tribute to British engineering, British technology and British knowhow.”