POL-TEE (CO-PILOT): Those two-armed stuck-up monkey cousins make me puke ! They’re all [MIMICKING] Ooooh! Look at us with all our water, and our frozen poles and our equatorial warmth, and everywhere in between [LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘temperate’ . Wouldn’t last two minutes on [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] Mercury!
TEE-POL: No, they’d be like: ‘Ooooh, my feet have literally caught fire in the scorching rays unfiltered by the atmosphere.’
POL-TEE: Bloody ‘atmosphere’! Jammy bastards! [LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘We’ve got an ‘atmosphere’ ! I can’t wait for the heat death of the Universe, when the sodding Sun turns to a big red giant and literally incinerates the smug bastards while they’re having their ‘cups of tea’ and their ‘pizza pies’ and their ‘beef quesadillas’!
TEE-POL: Oh, yes, [ LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘cups of tea’! They don’t have to put up with liquids that boil so fiercely they could melt your shoes, or frozen so solid, when you try to drink them, they stick to your skin and you literally have to rip your own lips off just to get sustenance!
POL-TEE: Shut up!
TEE-POL: You shut up, you [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]!
POL-TEE: Shut Upppp! There’s a transmission coming in!
QUANDERHORN: Professor Darius Quanderhorn here, speaking on behalf of the Human Race, via a remote link somewhere on the road to Carlisle. Alien vessel: we wish you no harm. Just follow the signals and this space beacon will guide you safely down to our planet, which we call ‘Earth’, where we can discuss peaceful co-operation between our two great peoples.
TEE-POL: What did he say?
POL-TEE: Didn’t understand a [ PROFANITY EXPUNGED] word, the stuck-up Terranean ponce. Let him have it!
[MASSIVE SALVO OF WEAPON FIRE. HUGE EXPLOSION. TINY FRAGMENTS OF BEACON DEBRIS SPATTERING ON THE VIEWPORTS.]
TEE-POL: Ha ha ha! Got it right up the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. That bastard beacon is now space dust!
POL-TEE: Look out, here comes their moon!
TEE-POL: Oh, yes, [LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘We’ve got a mooooooon ! Mercury hasn’t got a moon, but we’ve got a great big [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] of a moon.’
POL-TEE: We’re coming in too fast, you dick! Swerve! Swerve!
TEE-POL: I am swerving, you daft [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. What d’you call this, if it’s not a swerve?
POL-TEE: It’s a crap swerve.
TEE-POL: Oh, you think you can pilot this better, do you? Here, here, put on the pilot sucker. Here it is!
POL-TEE: Put it back on, you stupid [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. You’re going to kill us all.
[SHIP GOES INTO SPIRAL DEATH DIVE]
POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].
TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].
POL-TEE: Activate the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] shields!
TEE-POL: Oh yes! The [ PROFANITY EXPUNGED] shields should easily repel an entire [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] moon , you dozy [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]-wit!
POL-TEE: Better get into the escape pods, then.
TEE-POL: Where the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] escape pods?
POL-TEE: You were supposed to load the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] escape pods!
TEE-POL: What am I? Head of [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] escape pods?
POL-TEE: Yes, you [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are! It’s embroidered on your [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] pocket!
TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].
POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].
[DEATH SPIRAL WHINE INCREASES]
POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].
TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].
POL-TEE: Right. It’s parachute time.
TEE-POL: Where the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] parachutes?
POL-TEE: You were supposed to pack the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] parachutes!
TEE-POL: What am I? Head of [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] parachutes as well now?
POL-TEE: Yes, you [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are! It’s embroidered on your other [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] pocket!
TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].
POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. I’m getting out of here!
TEE-POL: No! Don’t open that hatch! We’ll both be sucked out into [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] space!
POL-TEE: You stay if you want, you kamikaze [SHORT PROFANITY EXPUNGED], I’m bailing.
[HATCH OPENS – RUSH OF WIND]
TEE-POL & POL-TEE: Ohhh - [MULTIPLE PROFANITIES EXPUNGED]!
[RECORDING ENDS]
* Translated by Gargantua, the Linguaphonic Quanderlator, at an unknown later date. This document is outside the chronology of the main sequence of events, but it offers an interesting insight into the origins of the Star Clipper and we make no apologies for its inclusion. But we do apologise about the language, and have tried to shelter you from the more toe-curling instances.
Chapter Twenty
The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (deserted), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952
Call vet re: boiler foot rot.
Students! Don’t like ’em. The duplicates is all that age now, which means, of course, they knows everything . They’re all busy drinking Woodpecker cider, smoking stinking French cigarettes and reading John Paul Satire while playing the bongos. ’Cept for the Martian, who’s obsessed with reading The Will to Power by Neacher whilst listening to Vargner. I hates the music, but I do like them pigtailed blondes in horned helmets and pointy metal breasts on the record sleeves. Can’t get enough of high culture, meself.
In other words, at this stage the duplicate crew is pests. On the whole, I tries to avoid them. I just shovels in the fags and the cider and the Valderma antiseptic balm, and leaves ’em to sort themselves out.
The Prof’s none too interested, neither. At least, not for the moment. He’s busy looking for that bloomin’ rat of his. Somehow, the little blighter’s managed to escape from his maze. It must have been a fairly elaborate escape and all: he left behind a dummy rat made of matchsticks and bird droppings.
While he’s busy running round calling, ‘Here, Ratty! Here’s a nice piece of cheese for you,’ I cough to draw his attention. ‘If everything’s OK, sir, I’ll just pop to the front desk to see if that intruder photograph’s arrived.’ Truth is, I’m well behind in my begging letters, and I needs to go through the obituaries again.
He doesn’t look up from his searching, or even put down the cattle prod and the gunny sack. ‘Yes, Jenkins, that would be—’
And blow me, if yet another bloomin’ tocsin doesn’t start up.
‘ Alert! Alien spaceship approaching Earth rapidly. ’
Well, the Prof drops the prod and the bag now, and runs straight into the Space Defence Operations Centre, with me on his tail. He’s busy switching on screens and turning on radars, oscilloscopes, cosmic arrays and, for some reason, Workers’ Playtime on the Home Service.
‘What idiot turned that godawful music on?’ he yells.
‘Sorry, sir, I’ll get rid of it at once.’
‘You know I hate Anne Shelton.’
I didn’t, but I clocks it for future reference.
‘ Alien spaceship now entering Earth’s exosphere. ’
‘Punch it up on Gargantua, the Giant Space Tellyscoppyscreen, Delores.’
‘ Initialising. ’
The seven-inch screen starts up. We watch the little light in the middle for a bit.
‘ Valves warming up. ’
‘Oh, come onnnnn .’ The Prof taps the desk impatiently.
‘ Valves still warming up. ’
Then, all of a sudden, the picture blossoms out from the centre. There’s this huge ship powering towards us with a really angry-looking face. I’m sure I’ve seen its kind before . . . but I can’t place where.
‘Dammit, Jenkins: looks like a Mercurian Star Clipper!’
Oh yes. I remembers now. Mercurians! Don’t like ’em. ‘Shall I activate the peace beacon, sir?’
‘If you recall, Jenkins, the last lot of hooligans in one of those vessels blasted the previous peace beacon to space dust.’
‘So they did, Professor. What shall we do then, sir? They’re getting closer.’
‘Can we afford to give them the benefit of the doubt a second time?’
‘It’s hardly my place to say, sir, but I don’t trust them slippery snarky swines. Not one inch.’
‘I hate to say it, Jenkins, but I’m afraid you’re right. For the security of the whole planet there’s only one course of action we can take. Actuate Gargantua, the Dangerous Giant Space Laser.’
I glances over at him. There’s this strange look in his eyes I ain’t never seen before. What he’s suggesting is not only a potential Act of Interplanetary War, it’s also premeditated cold-blooded murder. On the other hand, they is only aliens.
The actual firing barrel of the Dangerous Giant Space Laser is up there in orbit of course, but we controls it from a remote gunnery panel right here. So, I takes a deep breath, marches over to the laser vault door, selects the key on my fob and puts it in the upper lock. The Prof puts his own key in the lower one, and we nods, and turns them in unison.
I heave open the door, and there she is: the Dangerous Giant Space Laser Control Turret, in all her terrible glory. It’s enough to give any red-blooded Englishman a stirring. And I don’t mean in his breast.
‘ Alien vessel breaching thermosphere. ’
I shins up into the seat and straps meself in. A circle of blue lights burst into life around the pedestal base, and the target overlay illuminates all orange and pretty and plots out the course of the target vessel. ‘Got ’em in my sights, sir,’ I says.
The Professor looks uncommon grave. Normally something like this wouldn’t give him pause for a moment. Eventually, he says: ‘We really have no choice, Jenkins. No choice, I’m afraid.’
‘ Alien vessel penetrating mesosphere. ’
On the screen, the huge orbiting solar-powered laser barrel turns majestically in space towards its prey, and begins to initiate its warm-up sequence.
‘ Alien vessel entering stratosphere. ’
This shakes the Prof out of his funk. ‘We can’t let them breach the troposphere, Jenkins. You’ll have to blast them.’
Now, I’m not saying I enjoy pressing the button on this thing, ’cos that might make me sound like a sicko, and this is a weighty business. Still, ready to do my solemn duty, I pops a humbug in my mouth, starts humming ‘Rule Britannia’, and flexes my index finger in small circles over the trigger. ‘Locked on target, sir.’
‘What are you waiting for, man? Fire.’ He turns and leaves the room quietly muttering ‘Dammit,’ under his breath.
I lets ’em have it.
The explosion! It’s like Guy Fawkes Night round at the Aga Khan’s in the middle of the Blitz in Hiroshima. When the blast clears, there’s nothing left at all.
Absolutely nothing.
Not even the splattered remains of unidentifiable organs.
Chapter Twenty-One
News strip recovered from Quanderhorn’s Telemergency Print-O-Gram, 4.53 p.m., 5th January, 1952
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three minutes earlier, from the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66
‘We’ve done it!’ I cheered. ‘We’re safe! We’re free-falling back to Earth.’ Somebody started screaming, ‘We’re free-falling back to Earth! ’
‘Please pull yourself together, Brian,’ Gemma chided. ‘We’re going to need all our energy to get sufficiently furious to power the landing rockets.’
Suddenly, the lights all glowed a brighter red and a peculiar sound erupted from speakers somewhere.
‘It’s a red alert!’ I called.
‘Well, of course,’ Guuuurk drawled. ‘Have you seen this ship? What other kind of alert could it be?’
‘I think it’s about as red as a red alert can get. Even here.’
The sound erupted again.
‘Pardon me,’ Troy apologised.
‘That’s not you, Troy,’ Gemma said.
‘Are you sure? It sounds like me when I’ve burrowed into too many cabbage leaves.’
The sound again.
‘Pardon me.’
Gemma was scouring the readouts. ‘I think the ship may have detected some sort of threat.’
I could make neither head nor tail of the displays. ‘What’s it saying on this screen, Guuuurk?’
‘Oh, yes. Because all aliens must know each other, I can magically read Mercurian now.’
‘I’m sorry, but it’s just gibberish to us.’
‘It’s gibberish to me, too.’ He started feeling under the desk. ‘I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this – we’ll have to use the emotional interface.’
Gemma and I stared at him blankly. Troy also stared blankly, but I don’t think he was joining in with us.
‘Very big on emotions, the Mercurians, remember?’ Guuuurk answered our gapes. ‘So they use one of these . . .’
He found what he was looking for under the console and tugged out a flexible tube, like a cross between a slimy octopus tentacle and a vacuum cleaner hose with a plunger on the end. It was, of course, red.
I eyed it with deep suspicion. It seemed to be secreting a sort of gloopy gunk from the end and making a slight slurping noise. ‘What are we supposed to do with that?’
‘ You? ’ Guuuurk threw back his head and laughed. ‘Your puny Terranean minds wouldn’t be able to cope with the forces of overwhelming mental strain. Leave it to a Martian.’
With another derisory laugh, he attached the sucker in the middle of his forehead between his top two eyes. Instantly, his expression fell and his head deflated with a terrible trumping noise.
‘ AAAAAAArgh! Fear! Fear! Fear!’
Troy yelled: ‘Unplug him, quick!’
‘Fear! Fear! Fear!’
‘No,’ Gemma insisted. ‘We need to know what’s happening.’
Guuuurk managed to twist his head round sufficiently to shoot her a look of intense hatred. ‘Fear! Fear! Fear! Terror! Gut-wrenching horror! Argh! Argh! Please! Please unplug . . . Fear!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Gemma reached for the plunger.
‘Fear! Fear! Overpowering dread!’
She tugged the sucker off Guuuurk’s forehead with a hideous ripping sound. He collapsed to the deck, but his head started to reinflate reassuringly.
‘I didn’t completely get the entire nuances and subtleties of the message,’ he said, pretending to ignore the rivulets of sweat cascading from his swelling forehead, ‘but I’m going to go right out on a limb here, and say: something quite frightening is happening.’
Gemma looked at me. ‘We’ll have to plug Brian in.’
‘Oh!’ I wasn’t entirely sure I was up to that. ‘Me? Really?’
‘Well, I’m not likely to have much luck with an emotional interface, am I? And we can hardly leave it to Troy. No offence, Troy.’
‘Why,’ Troy asked belligerently, ‘would I know a fence ? I’m a person .’
‘Yup,’ I nodded, ‘you’ve convinced me.’
And without any ceremony, she jammed the sucker onto my brow.
Chapter Twenty-Three
From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66
All at once, the scene before me melted away into a fog. I perceived the ship as an entity, flying through the atmosphere.
Then I was the ship itself.
I was zipping happily downwards towards the beautiful blue Earth, the rushing atmosphere just beginning to caress my hull, warming me up pleasantly. It looked nice and welcoming down there, and I was looking forward to firing my splendid retro-rockets for a smooth and luscious landing. Then a strange feeling overtook me . . .
‘Hmmm,’ I said, quite unconsciously. ‘That’s slightly annoying.’
Somewhere off in the distance, I heard Guuuurk exclaim ‘What?’ as if affronted.
The strange sensation seemed to be emanating from somewhere a little below, and off my starboard bow. The feeling was . . .
‘What is i
t, Brian?’ I heard Gemma ask through the haze.
. . . a threat! There was a threat of some kind. My vision tunnelled into the darkness and I saw it! A floating platform. A huge tubular pipe, ringed with oscillating neon-esque ellipses. A cannon!
‘It’s . . . it’s some kind of huge space gun.’
I heard the disbelief in Gemma’s voice: ‘Not the Professor’s Dangerous Giant Space Laser!’
‘Fear!’ Guuuurk shouted. ‘Fear! Fear! Stomach-churning panic!’
Gemma pointed out tartly that Guuuurk wasn’t even connected any more.
‘I don’t need to be,’ he shot back, then squeaked quietly under his breath. ‘Fear! Fear!’
‘It’s rotating towards us,’ I warned. I was starting to sense growing anxiety.
‘Don’t worry,’ Troy piped up. ‘Pops would never fire at us!’
‘It’s beginning to power up!’ Extremely worried now.
Gemma said soberly: ‘He doesn’t know it is us.’
‘No, Pops, no!’ Troy yelled very loudly indeed.
‘He can’t hear you, Troy.’
‘Guuuurk!’ the lad shouted, quite disturbed. ‘Quick! Do your thinky-leapy mind thing and tell him.’
The Martian shook his head. ‘I can’t leap into a fully developed mind.’
‘You leapt into mine.’
‘Precisely.’
‘We can see the barrel through the viewport, now,’ Gemma called. ‘Yes – the tip’s starting to glow.’
I tugged off the sucker. The sense of mounting terror immediately drained away.
The Quanderhorn Xperimentations Page 21