Personal Blogs

I had all the crew on the bridge arrested once we had got everybody on board the other vessels in the convoy.  I interrogated them, but they told me nothing about what had caused the malfunction.  I was sure that there had been an act of sabotage, but I could not work out who had carried it out.  There were eight crew-members, and I ordered one of them to be hanged. 

            I have lost four tanks and a helicopter, plus a lot of other material, including food, fuel and ammunition.  I have issued an ordinance saying that any man caught firing off ammunition without an explicit order or justifiable cause to do so will be flogged. 

            I think the main problem will be shells for the remaining tank gun.  There had been space in the large vessel for all the tanks and helicopters, but I decided to divide them between vessels, as a precaution.  My decision to do this has been vindicated.  That is further proof that I have been chosen by Providence.  I cannot at the moment see what the solution to the shortage of shells is, but I am certain that I will find one. 

            We picked up nearly all the prisoners.  I did not issue any special order to save them but, inexplicably, all cabin doors came unlocked, and there was an announcement over the ship’s public address system to say that the ship was sinking and passengers should take to the  life-boats.  A few of them tried to row away to freedom, but we caught up with them. 

            One of the things I had to leave behind when I left the ship was the manuscript of my book on racial politics.  I will have to dictate it to Brunton all over again.  It was 800 pages long.

            This is a set-back, but I will still succeed in conquering this planet.  The Spirit of National Socialism will prevail. 

*

I am Kelvin Stark’s rifle.  I am a Lee Enfield No 4 Mk I.  I was made in 1947 at a Royal Ordnance factory at Maltby in Yorkshire.  Kelvin has told his soldiers that all the rifles they have been issued with were used in World War Two, but that is just propaganda.  I was first used in real fighting during the Malayan Emergency in the late 1940s and 1950s.  When that was over, I was moved back to England, and used for training conscripts who were doing their national service.  After that, I was packed in a crate in rifle grease and put into storage somewhere.  

            I was eventually woken by Kelvin.  He scraped all the solidified grease off me with the blade of a penknife, stripped me down, cleaned me, lubricated me, and put me back together.  He adores me.  He keeps me constantly within reach.  He has a special name for me, but I’m not telling you what it is.  It is our secret. 

            Kelvin is a very good marksman.  I admire him for his concentration.  When he takes aim, he is not thinking about whether he might be in danger, or what he is going to eat for his dinner, or sex, or whether his cause is just: all he thinks about is the target.  I love the way he squeezes my trigger.  He is very gentle, and he has very strong fingers. 

*

I am preparing to depart for I-3, to lead my army into battle.  Today I made a last inspection of the industrial war effort.  I had a look round some factories near Carbonapolis which have become known as “Chemical Alley”.  I saw two things which touched me to the point of tears.

            I went to the factory on my own, and unannounced.  That is the only way that you can really see what is going on.   I was looking at a big, cast-iron digester in a dye-works.  I noticed that it had an improvised blue plaque on it, which bore the following words:  This vessel was used to make the dye for the uniform of King Kelvin the First, enthroned by resolution of the Assembly of Achird-gamma, Commander-in-Chief of Colonial Forces and Field Marshal of the Army.  2143 CE, 3^rd year of the colonisation. 

            I was creeping about, trying to make as little impression as possible, because I did not want people to stop working.  By peeping from behind a row of fume-cupboards, I managed to observe a young man in dye-stained overalls at work without letting him know that he was being watched.  I saw him adding reagents to a large vessel, mixing them, setting the thermostat and starting the stirrer, and making sure the effluents were being extracted correctly.  The man then took his gloves, boots, lab-coat and apron off, made up a small camp bed, with a pillow and a blanket, set his alarm clock for when the process would be complete, and lay down to sleep in the middle of the factory floor.  Nothing else that I have seen has convinced me more of our ultimate victory.

*

This morning I was called to a meeting with the King, Le Roi.  I had no idea what he wanted with me.  What he said was astonishing, but most welcome.  He described his vision of the final confrontation with the enemy.  He told me that he wants cultural diversity to be present at the battle, and to be part of our force.  He said he wanted a wall of noise.  This is not ceremonial: it has a military purpose, which is to strike fear into the enemy. 

            I am now Lieutenant Bourdelle, with a uniform and a rifle.  I wish my father could see me.  I must set to work on my task at once. 

*

Kelvin is getting ready to leave with the army.  He is leaving me in charge of the government.  He said I was the most popular member of the cabinet, which was nice, I suppose.  I hope Violet is going with him.  She hates me, and she gives me the creeps.  Kelvin’s relationship with Violet is the only thing that I don’t like about him.  If I allow myself to dwell on the idea of him having sex with an android, it makes me feel queasy, and so I try not to think about it.  I want to get back with him.  He can’t seriously be having a relationship with that thing.  He must want a relationship with a real, human woman, surely.  I know he is a bit strange, but he’s not a weirdo. 

            Oh, god, I hope he doesn’t get killed.  You can see that he is not taking this conflict seriously.  He is convinced that he is indestructible.  He thinks he is like James Bond.  He thinks that everything that happens on this planet is his story, and therefore, he can’t be killed by anything, because if his life ended, there would be no story.  He’s mad.  I think he has always been like that, but it has got worse since the epidemic.  He thinks that the fact that he had natural immunity to the disease, and the development of the vaccine from his antibodies is some sort of sign that our destiny rests on him.  He won’t admit this, but I am sure it is what he believes.  I hate the very idea of “destiny”.  Stuff happens, that is all.  It doesn’t mean anything.  It isn’t a narrative.  It’s just stuff.  Sometimes people insist on seeing patterns in it, but they aren’t there.  I wish we could just all get on with our lives and stop all this army nonsense.  It is so primitive. 

            If Kelvin does come back alive, I am going to tell him how I feel about him. 

            I have just had another thought.  What if he gets paralysed or brain damaged?  I know what is going to happen.  He will end up with a bullet lodged in his brain or his spinal column, and he will need constant care for the rest of his life as a dribbling imbecile.  

            I’ll hold off on telling him I feel about him until I have assessed what condition he is in.

*

My name is Brian McCann.  I’m a sergeant, and I still think of myself as a sergeant, even though in this army I have been promoted to captain.  Kelvin wants to promote me to colonel, which just doesn’t seem right to me.  His reasoning is that he wants to put me in charge of a regiment (which is our largest unit – we don’t have enough men for divisions). 

            We have a lot of problems.  We have plenty of rifles, and plenty of ammo for them, but we are desperately short of machine-guns and other support weapons.  Holt is working on a kind of Stokes mortar at the moment.  Intelligence suggests that we are going to have to fight tanks and helicopters.  We have no air cover, no anti-aircraft guns, and no anti-tank guns.  Holt, Stark and I had a serious talk about this.  The only gun we have got which can damage a tank is our 10-kilogram field gun.  Holt is working on an armour-penetrating round for this gun.  We are going to mount them on the back of pick-up trucks, to make a primitive kind of tank-destroyer.  Each of these will be instantly knocked out if it gets hit, but they will be very manoeuvrable and, I hope, there will be enough of them for us to outnumber the enemy. 

            The main thing in our favour is the amount of time that the soldiers have spent in training.  Kelvin is a genius for having started the training so long ago, while we were still on The Irish Rover.  The men (and women) aren’t soldiers, because they have had no combat experience, but they can shoot straight, they know how to follow orders, and most of them are reasonably fit. 

            The biggest problem of all is the officers.  Apart from the Gurkhas, who are being kept together as a single unit, any-one with previous military experience has been promoted to Lieutenant or higher, and put in charge of, at least, a platoon.  The superior ones among the raw recruits have been made Lance Corporal or Corporal, and put in charge of sections.  They will probably be all right.  But the ones I am worried about are the inexperienced officers.  I predict a lot of promotions and demotions once we find out what’s what.  Kelvin thinks we can win this war with one big pitch battle.  That is the only really silly thing I have heard him say. 

*

Ben Stewart’s platoon and the girls and I are now established in a set of cosy billets on I-2, near Hardboard City.  We are concealed inside a pine plantation, partly dug-in and camouflaged from the air. 

            I have brought some of my equipment, but I can’t do much research here.  It is time to put to use what I have already come up with.  I have my box of pathogens and toxins, some chemistry apparatus and reagents, a theatre for operating on androids and humans, and a decent optical microscope.  I have had to leave everything else, including my electron microscope, at home. 

            Kelvin is nearby.  He is with the infantry.  They have been digging anti-tank ditches around the perimeter of Hardboard City.  Kelvin’s favourite word at the moment is canalise.  It means to force an enemy attack onto a narrow front in such a way that it can be counter-attacked from the sides.  They are deliberately leaving gaps at certain points between the ditches, to encourage the enemy to attack at those points. 

            The operations centred on Hardboard City will be in a number of stages, and my work will mainly be the first.  I have to convince the enemy, at least for a while, that this wooden town whose tallest structure has three stories is indeed a town, and not a killing zone.  I am allowed to inflict damage on the enemy while I am doing this, but it is only allowed to be in ways that they will not notice straight away, or which have a seemingly innocent explanation.  

            Anna’s ladies will be in the vanguard, but I have a company (three platoons) from the Women’s Regiment and another company from the I-3 Regiment to draw on as well.  That gives me almost a hundred people to use as the “population”.   The story is that the town is new, which is why there is hardly anybody there.  It was built to enable the exploitation of a new goldmine, which is going to be dug nearby.  The gold “ore” is powdered gold bullion which has been fired into the ground with a shotgun.  It is an idea that Kelvin got from an ancient episode of a black and white American serial called Champion the Wonder Horse.  

            I keep looking up where the convoy is.  They are proceeding at a very uniform speed, and are expected to make landfall in three days.  

Name: Andrew Jonathan Downing.  Rank: Major.  I have been captured.  The main objective of my mission has failed.  The mission has now moved into phase two, which I will describe later.  I came here with 39 men, most of whom are dead or wounded, and some of whom, like me, have been captured. 

            We began on I-11 in the Northern Hemisphere, and were transported at great expense by means of light aircraft to a beach on the north coast of I-13, in the tropics of the Southern Hemisphere.  This was the island where satellite surveillance had detected the enemy, after he moved from I-2.  We then travelled through the jungle on foot, taking four days to reach the settlement where the enemy was believed to be, and in fact was, billeted.  The jungle was of native, rather than imported, plant-life and was a hostile environment.  There are no native animals on this planet, but the local flora has some large and very bizarre plants which throw seeds with considerable force.  Three of my men were injured by these as we traversed the jungle, but none of them seriously.  The effect on morale was noticeable, but anxiety lifted as soon as we left the forest and came to clearer and more cultivated ground. 

            Our primary mission was to neutralise as many as possible of the enemy’s tanks and helicopters, thereby removing the tactical and material advantages that he held over us.  We conducted surveillance on the settlement and the enemy’s movements.  We found that most of the vehicles were being kept in a large garage, which I decided we would assault at dawn the next morning.  I committed my entire force, in two equal groups: the building had two doors.  The two groups would be attacking in opposite directions, but my men were all battle-hardened troops and could operate without shooting each other.  We had no weapons other than small arms, and so we intended to destroy the vehicles simply by dousing them in petrol and setting fire to it.

            The tanks were old Conqueror Mark IVs, about fifty years old.  I don’t know where they came from, but they seemed to be in full working order – as we found to our cost.  This vehicle has two machine-guns: a 12.7 mm gun at the front, and a 7.62 mm at the rear.  We opened both sets of doors, at the same moment.  We saw no-one inside the building, only the tanks themselves, four of them, and one helicopter, all in a row.  We were then immediately fired upon by one of the tanks: the one nearest the doors.  We were sitting ducks.  Virtually all the casualties we suffered we took in those few moments.  It had simply not entered my head that any of the vehicles should be manned at that time. 

            Superior enemy forces were summoned by the noise, and we were immediately forced to surrender.  I would have fought to the death, had it not been for the secondary objective.

            Before we set off from I-11, my Commander-in-Chief had a word with me, and told me that, if I were captured, he wanted me to do whatever I could to convince the enemy to make for a certain location.  It is a place near the mouth of a river on the east coast of I-3.  He showed me how to draw a map of the area.  It is on a very distinctive, jagged coastline and had been deliberately chosen so that even an idiot could find it.  It has been prepared as a killing zone. 

            I am currently stark naked, and tied to a metal chair with bare metal wire.  I have been alone in here for an hour or so, after the second of what I expect will be a series of beatings.  I have lost four teeth, and am somewhat bruised.  Also, I think my left wrist may be broken. 

            I think I can hear some-one outside the door.  They are coming back. 

            I am going to try to hold out for at least two days, to make it more convincing.  I hope I will still be able to remember the back story. 

*

My name’s Ryan Bartlett, and that’s my little brother, Rod.  We must be the jammiest fuckers on the whole planet.  We went out, right, last night, with a few other blokes, and we were in this like pub place where we’ve been going for a few days now.   We’ve found a barrel of rum and a barrel of this  stuff which is a bit like whisky – really, really, really rough whisky.  Like meths, only it’s the same colour as whisky.  We can drink as much as we like for nothing, except that we have to be on parade at oh-seven-thirty.  We are supposed to be back in our barracks by ten, but nobody bothers about that.  Rod and me worked out that the best way not to get done for being late back to barracks was not to go back at all, and that was when we thought of the idea of sleeping in the tank.  It is cramped, but there’s just enough room on the floor for two bed rolls, if you move the seats out of the way. 

            We’d been doing this for a few days, and Rod had been saying that we were sure to get found out sooner or later, when something happened.  We were in the tank, wide awake – still a bit drunk, actually – and we were talking, quiet like, when we heard some noise.  We looked out of the ports, me in the front and Rod in the back, and we both could see the doors opening.  It was just getting light.  We couldn’t see very well.  Whoever it was had torches with them.  They wouldn’t have known we were there, see. 

            ‘What the fuck are we going to do?’ whispered Rod.

            ‘I don’t know.  I don’t know.’

            ‘Shoot the fuckers.  Shoot ‘em!’  So we did.  We could tell by the uniforms that they weren’t our men.  We mowed ‘em down.  We just mowed ‘em all down.  Well, most of ‘em.  A few of them hit the deck, and we couldn’t hit them then, because they were too close and the guns wouldn’t go down that far.  One of our patrols came, and we stopped firing then.  I think we had finished a whole belt by then, anyway.  I kept shouting to Rod, ‘Fire in bursts!  Remember the training, you daft sod!’  I think he must have damaged the barrel.  He just pulled the trigger and went dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka, like that. 

            Anyway, it doesn’t matter about that, because we are now heroes.  Spalding gave us some bollocks at first about how he wasn’t going to do us for not going back to barracks on time, and he wasn’t going to do us for being drunk, and he wasn’t going to do us for this and that and the other, but then he stopped being an awkward sod and he changed his tune.  He said he was going to call a parade to honour us, and give us both a medal, and stuff.  We’re his golden boys now.   He’s got a place where he keeps some women, and he said he’d let us go there.  He said we could have a woman each.  Loads of blokes have been asking what they have to do to get a shag.  Well, now we know, me and Rod.  “Comfort women”, he called them.  “Shagging” – that’s what I call it.

            Spalding said the best thing was that we’d managed to take some of the enemy alive.  Fuck knows what he’s going to do with them, but I bet it’ll sting.  Cut their bollocks off, probably.  I bet he’ll do it himself.  He’s a weird fuck.  His eyes are funny.  Better not say that to any-one else, though. 

*

I had taken half a day off from training in order to convene a cabinet meeting, when we were interrupted by Chandra, who looked very distressed.  He told me there was a message for me on the video link. 

            ‘Where from?’ I asked.

            ‘From Major Downing, Sir.’

            ‘From Major Downing?  He has missed four reports now, hasn’t he.’  Chandra nodded.  There was a monitor in the meeting-room and so we had a look.

            Downing was naked, tied to a chair, with his head down and bruises and streaks of dried blood all over his body.  A hooded figure stood next to him on each side.

            ‘Downing?’ I said into the microphone.  One of the hooded figures grabbed Downing by the ears, and lifted his head up.  His speech was slurred and indistinct.  His lips were swollen, and he’d lost a lot of teeth.

            ‘This is Major Downing.’ It sounded like Downing, and yet unlike him at the same time.

            ‘Downing, can you tell me…’ I continued, for the want of anything better to say, but Downing either was not listening or could not hear me.  He seemed to be reading from a prepared statement. 

            ‘My men and I have been forced to surrender.  We have been forced to surrender to a superior force – both superior in number, in armaments, and in racial purity. [An enterprising use of the word “both” I thought.] Most of my men are dead, and the rest have been captured.   I am about to hand you over to the leader of…’ Downing’s voice gave way to another.  Whoever was speaking was out of camera-shot.

            ‘I am the leader of the new government of this planet.  In the name of our National Spirit I order you to surrender.  In the name of Wolf, the Leader, I order you to lay down your arms and surrender.’

            ‘What is your name?’ asked Kelvin.

            ‘My name is Wolf.  Are you going to surrender?’

            ‘That’s not a name: it’s a recipe for indigestion.  What is your name?’

            ‘ARE YOU GOING TO SURRENDER?’

            ‘Never.’

            ‘I have all your men you sent here; I have captured them, and I can do anything with them I like.  If you don’t surrender they will be tortured.’

            ‘You mean, they will be tortured some more.’

            ‘WHAT?’

            ‘You have already tortured them.’  I spoke very nonchalantly.  I did not raise my voice, or hurry.  I spoke just the way I normally do.

            ‘ARE YOU TRYING TO ARGUE WITH ME?’

            ‘No, I am telling you that I refuse to surrender.  My cabinet refuses to surrender.  My Army refuses to surrender.  My steel helmet, battledress, my boots and my webbing refuse to surrender.  My dogs, my cats, my chickens and the worms in my garden refuse to surrender.  My vest, pants, socks, handkerchief, and the multiplicity of things I wipe my pert but hairy little arse on refuse to surrender.  My knife, fork and spoon, my egg-cup and my matching condiment set refuse to surrender.  My toast-rack, my teapot and my cafetière  refuse to surrender.  One may go so far as to say that, refusal-to-surrender-wise, a pattern is emerging.  I wouldn’t surrender to you if you were the last Nazi invader left in the universe.’ 

            My interlocutor (still off-screen) did not interrupt me, which is one reason why I blathered on for so long.   

            ‘Well.  Well, then.  Then I suggest you listen to this.’  They attached some kind of mechanical device to Downing’s right hand, which one of the hooded figures proceeded to operate.  There was an agonising grinding noise, followed by the sound of stifled and desperate breathing, while Downing raised his head, and all the vessels in his face and neck stood out as if they would burst.  Eventually,  Downing screamed in pain.  He was obviously trying not to cry out, and so he screamed in short, staccato bursts, until the point where whatever was being done to him overcame him, and he screamed continuously, until a dreadful kind of diminuendo terminated by gurgling and his head falling back down to his chest indicated that the Major had either died or lost consciousness.  Holt, who was sitting next to me, opened his mouth to call out to Downing, but Kelvin sternly and silently signalled to him, and the others, not to utter a word.

            ‘Did you see all that?’ asked the voice on the other end, with apparent glee.

            ‘This conversation is over,’ I announced, and cut the link.

            There was a stunned silence, which was broken when I spoke again. 

            ‘We will now stand and reflect for a moment on the bravery of Major Downing and his men.’ Holt and the other cabinet-members all stood.  I did not know what the others were thinking, but Holt for one looked extremely upset.  I allowed them a short time to consider what had happened – no more than two minutes, and then I signalled for them all to sit down again, and get back to business.

            ‘I know this is a stupid question,’ said Holt, ‘But shouldn’t we have…’  I looked at him for an instant and managed to convey quite clearly, ‘Yes, that is a very stupid question.’

            ‘What was in Downing’s last report before he was captured?’ I asked of  Captain McCann (I was promoting him in stages).  I had already read the report, naturally, but I wanted to refresh my memory.  McCann read it out loud to the meeting.  

            ‘It is impossible to tell whether the enemy has divided his forces between I-13 and I-2.  We have counted approximately one thousand three hundred enemy soldiers and are still counting.  Each man is equipped with an automatic rifle.  There are also units which have rocket-propelled grenades, and light, medium, and heavy machine guns.  All their motorised transport seems to have been stolen from our us.  In other words, they are using some of the old Land Rovers which we brought with us from Earth.  We have counted four tanks, which appear to be Conqueror Mark IIIs or IVs and hence obsolete by Earth standards.  These armoured vehicles seem nevertheless to be mechanically sound.  We have not seen them fire either the 120mm cannon which is the vehicle’s main armament or any of the machine guns which are the secondary armament.  These tanks have been used to bulldoze or demolish many small buildings for no apparent tactical or strategic purpose.  

            ‘We have spotted one helicopter, which is currently being used to search for refugees or resisters in the jungle behind the coastal capital.  This machine also seems to be in good mechanical repair.  It has been observed to fire its machine guns, but we could not discern what the target was and this volley of fire did not seem to inflict any casualties.  Primates from Earth and other animals have been introduced into the jungle and so they may have been the target.

            ‘The standard of uniform appearance and drill of the invader seems to be very poor indeed.  NCOs seem to enforce discipline by physical threats rather than by respect for their authority, and most of the enemy soldiers seem to have an insatiable appetite for alcohol, both night and day.  They waste a good deal of ammunition by firing into the air while they are on patrol, despite repeated warnings not to do so from their superiors.  This seems to be an enemy whose morale will break easily under sustained pressure from a more determined or numerically superior opponent.

            ‘The commanding officer seems to be a man who is about six feet tall, with short, dark hair, who wears a Nazi Swastika armband.  The better presented and more disciplined members of the invading force are evidently members of some kind of political organisation, of which this man is also the leader.  Intelligence suggests that his name is Richard Spalding.’  McCann stopped reading and looked up.  ‘The rest is a lot of stuff about what these bastards have done to the civilian population.’

            ‘I’ll read that later,’ I told him, and I did.  ‘Now, can somebody go and find Violet, please?  I need to speak to her urgently.’

I told Pamela that I was thinking of going on a tour of the other colonies.  She asked when I was expecting us to leave, and I told her I was thinking of going on my own, so that she could stay behind and look after business.  She went mad.  She said, ‘No, no, no.  Not again, you bastard.’  I asked her what she meant by “again”.  She said, ‘You are not going to leave me the same way that you left Violet.’  I said, ‘I have no intention of leaving you.  I am planning to go on a tour and then come back.’  She doesn’t believe me. 

            I’m still going. 

*

You can still call me Paddy, even though I’m the Mayor.  The town doesn’t have a name, yet, but it is growing.  We have got a harbour, a crane, three warehouses (one for food, one for livestock, and one for imperishables), a town hall (of sorts), various shops and houses, and a pub.  The pub has the same name and management as the bar on The Irish Rover called O’Mally’s.  It is popular even with non-drinkers, because it is very well insulated and usually cool, even in our hot climate.  I come here nearly ever day after work.  My more sober-minded clerk, Cecily Johnson, joins me only occasionally.  She is still working at the moment.  Some-one has discovered a new mineral deposit and she is looking over the application for the mine workings.  I think she’s coming over later. 

            The speciality drink here is lager brewed from unrefined sugar-cane juice and served in a glass tankard frosted with ice.  It is the most thirst-quenching drink around. 

            I can hear a strange noise.   It sounds like a helicopter.  There are no helicopters on this planet that I know of.  Yes, it definitely is a

*

I had just finished work for the day, and was walking from the office over to O’Mally’s to have a drink with Paddy, when I heard a helicopter flying low over the town.  I looked up and saw it.  It was dark green and looked like a military helicopter.  Without any warning or apparent cause, the helicopter fired a missile which scored a direct hit on O’Mally’s, and blew the building to pieces in a fireball.  I did not bother to approach the wreckage: nobody could have survived that attack.  I was hit by flying debris.    

            I turned on my heels and ran back to the town hall, where I knew I could communicate with the other colonies.  Just as I got to the front door, I heard an engine.  I looked round and saw a tank driving past the wreckage of O’Mally’s.  I ran upstairs, and got as many of the other town clerks as I could on a video chat session.  This is what I said to them.

            ‘This is Counsellor Cecily Johnson.  I am the town clerk from the main settlement in I-2.  This is an emergency.  This is a life-or-death emergency.  I want to give you some details of what has happened, and I need you to pass them to as many of the other colonies as you can.  Do you understand?’  The faces on the screen all nodded.  ‘Our colony has been invaded.  We are under attack.  I repeat: we are under attack – we are under threat of our lives.  This is not an exercise.  Have you got that?’  They nodded again.

‘The invaders are men in uniforms.  They have armoured vehicles.  They have a helicopter which fires deadly missiles.  They arrived earlier today.  They fired a rocket at a public house in our town called O'Mally's and killed many innocent people, including the Mayor.  Mayor Patrick Fitzgerald is dead.  I repeat –.’  I had to stop for a moment.  ‘Paddy’s dead.  I think about thirty people might have been killed so far.’

            ‘Counsellor Johnson,’ said one of the faces on the screen, a very young chap on I-13 whose name I think is Waverley Diggle, ‘Are you hurt?’ 

            ‘I think I have something lodged in my right shoulder.’

            ‘Well, we need to come and find you: give you some medical treatment.’

            ‘Don’t worry about me, you idiot!  I want you to do something to save this planet and this population.  I can’t talk more now.  I have to escape.’ 

            I grabbed the keys to the safe and ran all the way home.  I threw some things into a rucksack, changed my clothes, and put a lead on Junc’s collar.  Junc is my Labrador (his name is short for injunction).  We headed for the hills.  My shoulder was killing me.

*

As soon as I heard what that lady said, I went straight to see Mr McLean.  He is not the mayor, but he still runs the island.  The mayor is usually drunk at that time of day, anyway, and pretty useless for anything.  The last time I woke him up after he had passed out, he threatened to cut my penis off, the stupid sod. 

            Mr McLean was in his office, as usual.  I don’t think he ever eats or sleeps.  Even when he has a drink he has it while sitting in his office. 

            It was night-time, and the moon was shining.  I could see it reflected in the harbour.  It seemed very peaceful and calm.  It seemed crazy that there was fighting happening on another island. 

            Mr McLean’s “office” is a set of pre-fabs which keeps growing and growing.  It isn’t very nice to look at.  Part of it is a shop, where you can buy just about anything – bananas, carpets, knives, live chickens – all kinds of stuff.  Another part of it always has men in it who are drinking.  I don’t know if it is a pub or a club or what, but they are always there.  When I got there, Mr McLean was writing figures down in a ledger-book by the light of an oil-lamp.  As usual, he was wearing a dirty tracksuit with dog hairs all over it.  For a man who is one of the richest on this planet, he dresses like a tramp. 

            ‘Hello, stranger,’ he said when I went in. ‘What brings you here?  Have you run out of gin?’

            ‘Mr McLean, sir, we’ve got a very serious kind of, er, um, problem.’

            ‘I’m intrigued, my boy.  What kind of problem, and why do you say “we”?’

            ‘It’s a situation, er - it looks like a problem that will be very bad for business.’  I said that because I thought he was not listening properly and I wanted to grab his attention.

            ‘Go on.  What is it?’

            ‘A few minutes ago, I got a call on the video phone from a woman on the next island called Cecily Johnson.’

            ‘Aye, I’ve met her a couple of times.  She’s the lassie you have to deal with if you want to get anything done there.  She’s true to her word, if a wee bit obstructive now and again.’

            ‘Yes, well.  She phoned a few minutes ago to say that her town was under attack by men in uniform, who had gone mad and started firing missiles.  She said they’d blown up a place called O’Mally’s and killed the mayor.’

            ‘They’ve WHAT!’  He sounded so pissed off that I moved two steps backwards without thinking.  I knew that would upset him.  In Mr McLean’s world, the only reason you ever demolish a building is to re-use the materials and put up an even bigger one in its place.  

            Mr McLean took a couple of his men and me into another room, where he had his computer terminal.  Mr McLean never uses the computer unless he has to.  We tried to get in touch with some of Mr McLean’s contacts.  When I left, I think he was still talking to some-one on I-11.  I hope it was Kelvin Stark.  

*

I am more angry with Kelvin than I have ever been since he first mentioned this fucking Alpha Project.  He has pissed off on some “tour” of the other colonies.  He was last heard of heading for I-2, which is on the other side of the world.  He goes away, and we get a message to say that we have been attacked by an unknown force.  We don’t know if the attack on O’Mally’s was perpetrated by terrorists, or gangsters, or a commercial organisation, or a government.  The one time when we need the originator of this charade to provide some leadership, and he isn’t here.  He has no computer or mobile communication device with him, other than the ones I implanted without his knowledge

            I am going to have to contact him via satellite and these devices.  Kelvin is about to hear voices.

            My name is Violet, and I’m back.

My name is Captain Paul Brunton.  I work for Richard Spalding.  He is my Leader.  He is Wolf.   I am commander of his personal bodyguard and his tactical advisor.  I am also an officer in the Racial Guardians.  I have been appointed by Wolf to join him on his special mission.  This is a very great honour, and one that I intend to discharge to the utmost limit of my ability.

            I have a degree in English Literature from Exeter University.  Wolf  has requested me to act as his personal secretary on the voyage to Achird-gamma, and to assist him in writing his great work on racial politics.  Only once in a millennium does a truly seminal work appear, one which propels civilisation in a new direction.  To participate in the creation of such a work is surely a great calling.

            Wolf has instructed us concerning what he expects on the mission.  He has a truly radical vision for the future of the new world. 

            Once we have achieved victory in war over the degenerate colonists, we will examine each individual thoroughly, and allocate each to a racial category.  Those who are racially inferior will be sterilised, and used as slave labour.  Those of Nordic or kindred blood will undergo thorough political indoctrination.  Women of Nordic or kindred blood will be used for breeding.  Members of the other expedition will be eligible to breed if they are of Nordic or kindred blood and demonstrate that they have become imbued with the Spirit of National Socialism.  First choice of women will be given to members of the Racial Guardians.  How many women each man gets will depend on what we find when we get there, and how much of the population survives the war. 

            Wolf’s instructions about his strategy for the war and after the war are very clear.  He wants as few casualties as possible during the subjugation of the other expedition.  This is not out of any concern other than for the size of the labour pool and the breeding pool.  That apart, Wolf says that we will inflict as much harshcdz treatment as possible on the degenerates.  Many of them will be confined to camps and made to work.  Systematic rape will be used as a terror-tactic.  They will need to be taught a very stern lesson that we are superior to them in every way.  Their political and religious leaders will be put on trial and then executed.  We will use torture to interrogate prisoners and also routinely and arbitrarily as a terror-tactic.  We will succeed where Hitler failed: we will build a new world order based on an expanding population of Aryan warrior-farmers who take and guard their own living-space. 

*

My name is Timothy Gonzales.  Back on Earth, I was a Professor of Modern History and Political Science at Mona University in Jamaica.  At the moment, I am making a living mostly by teaching Spanish, but I hope to be busier again in the future.  I am a member of the very informal council which is the nearest thing that this community has to a government.  Doctor Stark is also a member.  People sometimes ask me what I think of Doctor Stark.  That is quite a delicate question, but I will try to answer it as best I can.

            I am virtually certain that Kelvin Stark does not yet realise the magnitude and complexity of what he is letting himself in for.  This mission began as one of the fruits of his fevered imagination.  It is on his initiative that we are all here.  Most of the prospective colonists seem to have a childlike faith in Stark’s ability to master any situation that we may face.  This is in some ways surprising, considering the average level of educational attainment among us.  I have a feeling that people will eventually realise that Stark is a man, just like any other, but, before they do, I think they will try to elevate him as high as they can.  I cannot see that Stark will lift a finger to prevent this, and he may even encourage it.

            The main thing that concerns me about the man is his morals.  He wants to be a public figure; he wants the fame, the influence, the power, the wealth, but he does not realise that, the more famous a man becomes, the more of his freedom he has to sacrifice.  If he has political ambitions (and Stark definitely does have political ambitions) then he must live as if he has no privacy at all: he must live as if some-one is watching his every move, even when he is bed, even when he is in the bathroom.  Stark does not realise this.  I hope, when he eventually discovers it, it is in circumstances that do not destroy him. 

            At least he is educated and fairly intelligent.  The same cannot be said of many leaders from history.

*

I have so many things to think about, sometimes I think my brain is going to overheat.  It is still some way off, but I find myself dwelling more and more on the prospect of our landing on Achird-gamma.  I find it increasingly difficult to face it coldly and rationally.  Half the time, I am convinced that we are all going to die horribly.  The rest of the time, I just can’t wait for us to get there, and to start building the new colony. 

             I use work to absorb myself.  I run my businesses.  I manage my staff.  I participate in the running of the ship.  I design factories and industrial plant, which will be built after we land.  I study the gazetteer of Achird-gamma, and try to commit as much of it as possible to memory.  I read.  And I talk to Pamela. 

            Pamela and I are having the kind of relationship in which we only see each other at the end of the working day.  We live mostly in my cabin, which is slightly larger than Pamela’s.  We don’t sleep together every night, but we do most nights.  Sometimes, a work-related matter brings us into contact during the day, which is a very strange feeling.  We have a strict rule that we don’t allow ourselves to be distracted by physical affection or sex while we are supposed to be working. 

            I have to go into the sick bay soon for surgery.  I don’t want to talk about what it is for.  It is a damned nuisance, given my current workload, but it can’t be helped.  Pamela offered to delegate the running of her businesses so that she will have time to look after me while I recuperate.  I told her that she did not have to do that, but she insisted, and I am grateful for the offer.  I am falling in love with her.  She cares about me.  I know we don’t spend much time together now but, when we do, she looks after me. 

*

I was called before one of these committees that Kelvin sits on the other day, to talk about water resources on Achird-gamma (about which we have hardly any data).  I was sitting there, listening to and answering the committee’s questions, and I was looking at Kelvin.  ‘Shit,’ I thought.  ‘Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.’  I realised that I still love him.  Whatever was going on with him before, I presume he must be over it, because otherwise he would not be with Pamela.  I can’t believe he really loves her. 

            What the hell am I going to do?  You can hardly even get drunk on this ship without seeing a bottle that has Kelvin’s name on it. 

*

It has taken a very elaborate deception in order to get Kelvin to the point where I can make the enhancements to him.  I have built a new simulacrum called Mr Chakrabarty, who is a surgeon and professor of neurology.  Pamela started giving Kelvin drugs to give him blinding headaches (something which he has hardly ever suffered in his life).  A bit of deception via the ship’s intranet prompted Kelvin to go for a series of consultations with Mr Chakrabarty in a part of the ship which is not the real sick bay, and then go for what he thought was an MRI scan in what was in fact a small cargo bay.  The computer-generated image that I had prepared earlier showed that he had some growths in his head.  Mr Chakrabarty told him that the full extent of the surgery would not be known until after it had begun.  He offered Kelvin a consent form, which Kelvin read and correctly understood to mean that anything might happen, short of decapitation.  He signed it.  He had swallowed the deception with the fake doctor and the MRI scan, and he is a risk-taker.  

            The theatre nurses and anaesthetist were a few of Anna’s ladies, heavily disguised.  The operating theatre was in the same bay that had previously housed the fake MRI machine.  Once Kelvin was under the anaesthetic, Mr Chakrabarty went into a dormant state, and the surgery was carried out by Pamela.  

            It took a long time, but appears to have been a complete success.  As well as the implants in his aural and optic nerves, I have also put fifteen small devices in his body: three along his spine, and three along each limb.  This will mean that, when he is within range, I will be able to tell not just where he is, but in what position, and whether he is moving.  No more clandestine shagging for Kelvin.

            It is forty-eight hours since the operation, and Kelvin is now recuperating in his own cabin, looked after by Pamela.  He should be back on his feet in a couple of days, and back at work a few days after that.  

            The biopsy on the growths will show that they were completely benign.

I have joined all the episodes of 'The Companion' together into a single Word document, and converted this into a PDF file.

The PDF file is available on request.  I am not going to post it publicly, but anybody is free to request it.

It is 123 pages long.  The attachment is about 650 kilobytes in size. 

The PDF file can be loaded quite easily into a Kindle or other e-reader. 

Kelvin has started trying to hand out tickets for the pantomime to my girls.  Layla just threw it back in his face.  Kyla, who is a child of the digital age, said she wouldn’t understand it, and so he would be better giving it to some-one else.  The rest just smiled, said, “Aaah,” and threw the ticket in the bin after he had wiped his cock and gone away. 

*

My name is Emile Bourdelle. Most of the rehearsals I have directed so far have a been a disaster – a disaster.  I decided to go along with this English custom because I thought it would be the best way to begin to instil high culture in this colony.  I want theatre to live and breathe among all the people, and not be merely something for the chattering classes, as it was in England.  Start them on something simple, something native to their savage and bestial customs, something they can understand, I thought.  The dramatic equivalent of baby food. 

            Well the infant has proved to have quite a fussy appetite, and had to be force-fed, so to speak, at various times.  With the application of strength and courage, I think we have made a great deal of progress recently.  The company has started to come together.  It is like the point when a sauce Béarnaise thickens and becomes unctuous.  Previously, even when they were acting and singing properly, they were each doing it separately.  Now, they have become a cohesive unit.  I pray that the production will be a success.  If it were not, I would never attempt another one.  If it were to fail, there would be no more theatre and so, if there were no more theatre, there could be no more Emile Bourdelle: I would blow my brains out.  My fate rests on this production.  I have told the company this repeatedly.  I think they understand it now.  Theatre is about many things, but the most important thing in it is love.  If there is no love in theatre, it is a meaningless charade: it is nothing.  I think the members of the company have grown to love me, in the end.  Perhaps we will find out on the opening night.

*

I think I have finally got the hang of this acting lark.  Just call me Prince Charming, or Your Royal Highness, if you prefer.  The art of it seems to be to camp it up as much as possible, just like our “influential and cutting-edge” director.  Behave like a twat, in other words.  Wearing a lot of make-up helps, as does being in the initial stages of sexual arousal and, I must admit, with me, the two states tend to coincide.  Having a leading role in a production is the best excuse in the history of cross-dressing.  I can now even answer the door to my cabin without having to take my face off.  If I am looking too girly, all I have to do is cover myself in cold cream, and everybody just thinks I am doing something to do with the pantomime.  I might go the whole hog and audition for a female part next year.  I wonder if having a reason other than sexual gratification for wearing women’s clothes would destroy its allure. 

            Jessica is being a pain, again.  She is very pretty, but I would never fall in love with her.  I don’t ever have a crush on her.  I can’t even have a proper conversation with her.  All she does is open her mouth, and bring forth a torrent of meaningless twaddle about all the people she knows, which seems to include half the people on board (though I notice that members of the crew are conspicuously under-represented).  Every time I say something, she just says, “Reelly?” I thought she was trying wind me up at first, but it seems to be genuine: she doesn’t know anything.  At all.

            I told her that I would have sex with her if she wanted, and it would be physically passionate, but there was no way that I would ever fall in love with her.  She did not thank me for my honesty.  In fact, she slapped me in the face – quite hard, as a matter of fact – and  started having hysterics.  When she cries, it is just an act, just like everything else she does, but I must say she does it quite convincingly.  On that occasion, she really gave it everything she had.  It was all very stressful and unpleasant.  Emile went mad with me as well (we were on the set, having a break at the time).  He demanded to know in the name of god what I had done to her.  ‘What do you mean, done to her?’ I asked him.  He made it sound as if I had been trying to feel her fanny, or something.  I was in theatrical camp mode, my guard was down, and I was hurt.  Darlings, I can’t tell you how simply ghastly and awful it was.  It quite ruined my intonation in the next scene. 

            Things with Prudence have been a bit strained as well.  She eventually landed the part of the Fairy Godmother.  She turned out to have a bit of amateur dramatic experience, which carried a lot of weight with Emile.  We got there in the end.  With the production, I mean. 

            The fun part was writing the programme notes.  I did them in the style of one of my nonsense news stories from The Rover.

*

The new name for my e-zine – the replacement for My Lips Are Sealed – is Cosmography.  It’s scientific.  I think it’s something to do with star-maps, but that doesn’t matter.  I like it because it is more difficult to take the piss out of than the last one.  I like it even more because people will shorten it to Cosmo, which is really cool.  And the last bit sounds like pornography, which is no bad thing. 

            The hit-rate has been rather disappointing recently.  I am determined to get some copy out of this pantomime.  I will get a juicy story out of it somehow.   Just you watch. 

*

My name’s Augustus Blandshott.  I think –  not certain, but think, am the oldest person on board this vessel.  Seventy-seven.  Egyptologist by training, and printer by trade.  When say “printer”,  mean in the old-fashioned, twentieth-century sense of the word.  Just like the way the word “computer” came to mean a machine but used to mean a person, so the word printer did as well.  Expert on the printing techniques of the early 1900s.  Presses are in one of the ship’s workshops, and am kept quite busy, most of the time.  When we establish the new colony, am hoping to produce own newspaper.  Don’t try to compete with the intranet at the moment, not with everybody having a monitor in their cabin, but think the new colony will need the printed word, and all the more so when it starts to grow. 

            Biggest job recently has been the programmes for the production of Cinderella they are putting on.  Theatre company is called The Roving Players, and they are directed by a chap called Emile Bourdelle.  Think he’s French.  Anyway, he is very temperamental.  Can be a bit difficult to deal with, sometimes, if you get me.  Smells of garlic, all the time – reeks of the stuff, specially when he shouts at you.  Most unpleasant. 

            Think I’ve got one of the programmes here, if you give me half a mo’.  Hang on.  Yes, here the blighter is.  First page is the only sensible part.  Because nobody except the director-wallah had any previous experience of acting or the theatre, all those bits about what productions people had been in before had to be made up.  Damn’ silly if you ask me.  No idea who wrote it.  Anyway, managed to sell a bit of advertising space in the back.  Made quite a packet.  Love the money on this ship.  So quaint and old-fashioned.  Like real money.  You could scratch dirt off a window with it.

*

The Roving Players

present

CINDERELLA

A Pantomime in Two Acts

Director and Producer………………………………………………….….Monsieur Emile Bourdelle

Cinderella……………………………………………………………………….Miss Jessica Springer

Prince Charming……………………………………………………………….…Doctor Kelvin Stark

The Fairy Godmother…………………………………………….…………Doctor Prudence Tadlow

Buttons…………………………………………………………………….…Master Waverley Diggle

The Wicked Stepmother…………………………………..Mister George “aka Georgina” Davenport

The Ugly Sisters……………………...Lance Corporal Jason Bentley, Master Laurence Featherstone

Coachmen, Footmen, Horses, Guests…………………………. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Chorus

            The Producer wishes to acknowledge the gracious assistance and support of Chief Engineer Mister James Holt, and members of his crew. 

            Costumes were provided by Pamela Collins Couture Limited.

            MONSIEUR EMILE BOURDELLE lists Creator of the Universe among his other accomplishments.  Be polite and courteous in your dealings with him because, when we arrive on our new planet, he will be controlling the weather.  Young ladies who might otherwise feel compelled to fall in love with this undoubtedly handsome man should bear in mind that, not only does he bat for the other side, but he keeps wicket, bowls for it and captains it as well – quite regularly and with great vigour, we are led to understand. 

            MISS JESSICA SPRINGER, though we hate to spoil the story for you, ends up as a princess in this production.  Princesses are usually a safe bet in a fairy tale, and it is rumoured that Miss Springer is one of the safest bets in town. 

            DOCTOR KELVIN STARK is fortunate to appear in our company, having recently recovered from joint attacks of rabies, malaria, and bubonic plague.  We had hoped to carry a long interview with this eminent academic, but he frothed at the mouth so copiously that we could not catch what he was saying.  He tried to communicate instead through the interesting medium of scrotal origami but, alas, again, we could not understand him.   It seemed to be just a load of bollocks.

            DOCTOR PRUDENCE TADLOW, when not pursuing her acting career, is a hydro-geologist.  When we asked her to explain what this entails, she said that she sniffs around a lot of holes to see if any of them are wet. 

            MASTER WAVERLEY DIGGLE is named after a railway station because that was where he was conceived.  He has earned many dramatic accolades, most especially for his inspiring interpretation of the part of Moth in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  His is believed to be the first performance in which the character is on stage, soliloquising continuously, for nine hours. 

            MISTER GEORGE DAVENPORT is a lifelong bachelor with a particular fondness for musical theatre.  If your laundry is feeling depressed, he can always be counted on to lift your shirt.  His skin is particularly sensitive, and so he picnics in the shade.  He has travelled extensively in Southern Europe, and is a friend of the Greeks. 

            LANCE CORPORAL JASON BENTLEY is a poof.

            MASTER LAURENCE FEATHERSTONE isn’t made with real feathers or real stone.  He is 100 per cent man-made.  Wash at 30 centigrade.  Do not tumble dry.  Re-shape while still damp. 

*

                                                              SINDERS-GATE

Kelvin Stark caught

with his pants down –

literally.

We thought it would be a normal, family occasion.  Granted, we are on a spaceship.  Granted, we are heading through the cold void of the galaxy at something approaching the speed of light.   Granted, some of our vital systems failed on the opening night of Cinderella.  Granted, this caused mass panic among the ship’s passengers. 

            But none of this prepared us for what we saw.  Disgusting.

*

I will tell you exactly what happened.  Jessica and I were on stage.  It was during one of the lovey-dovey scenes, and I was looking into her eyes.  It was nice.  As a matter of fact, it was really nice.  I had my arms around her, and she was looking up at me, and it seemed, in that theatrical moment, as if we meant it.  That might sound stupid, or unprofessional, but I am telling you how it was.  There was this gorgeous blonde woman, and there I was, and I was being paid to make love to her for the benefit of the audience.  And the audience seemed to love it.  They had clapped in all the right places.  They had laughed in all the right places.  It was like performing to a crowd of nine year-olds, which is exactly what Emile had had in mind. 

            And then it happened.  The lights went out.  The gravity went off.  I have no idea why.  

            I had my arms around Jessica at the time (purely through acting out my part, you understand). 

            We felt alone.  Let me explain why.

            During the performance (this was the first night) the audience had been quite noisy.  We attributed it to their not having been used to going to the theatre for some time (or at all).  I am not saying that they were disruptive, but they just did not seem to settle, even when there was plenty of action on stage. 

            As soon as the power-cut happened, everything went quiet.  It went quiet and weird at the same time.  The weirdness was because of the zero-gravity.  Most of the passengers had never experienced zero-gravity, other than for a brief period during their induction, of which they had no memory. 

            At first, there was silence.  Absolute silence.  The silence itself was the cause of the panic.  We were alone, in the depths of space.  We had no sun.  We had no planet.  We were entirely reliant on technology, and technology had clearly failed us, at least partially.

            I thought for a little while, and I realised that the situation was not very serious.   It might have been inconvenient, but it was not life-threatening. 

            Even though we had started to float around like balloons, we were otherwise unscathed.  If the longitudinal compensators had failed, we would not have known what was happening, because we would have been crushed to pulp within a fraction of a second. 

            Neither did we stop breathing.  Neither did we freeze.  All that happened was that the lights went out (all over the ship, as far as I could tell), and the “terrestrial emulation” gravity failed. 

            I started to float, and I had Jessica Springer in my arms.  She was panicking.  While she panicked, I buried my face in her abundant blonde hair. 

            ‘Oh, god.  What is happening?’

            ‘Some kind of system failure.’

            ‘Are we going to die?  Is this is?

            ‘No.’

            ‘No?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘How do you know?’

            ‘I just know.’

            ‘I’m so scared.’

            ‘I know you are.  I’m here.’

            ‘Hold me.’

            ‘I’m holding you.  I am here.  I am here.’

            ‘Is this really it?’

            ‘Is this what?’

            ‘The end?’

            ‘No, I don’t think so.’

            ‘You don’t think so.’

            ‘No, I don’t think so.’

            ‘That doesn’t sound very reassuring.’

            ‘All right.  Jessica, listen to me.  The lights will come back on.  The gravity will be restored.  Everything will be all right.’

            ‘Really?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘I think we are going to die.’

            ‘Is that what you want?’

            ‘No!’

            ‘Well why talk about it then?  Can’t we just do whatever is best until the systems are restored?’

            ‘What’s that?’

            ‘Well, are you worried and distressed?’

            ‘YES!’

            ‘Well, I could cuddle you.  I’m not nervous.  I am sure everything will be all right.’

            ‘Mm.  Yes.  Cuddle me and say more things like that.’

            ‘I can’t guarantee anything.’

            ‘Do you mean that we might be going to die?’

            ‘No. I don’t mean that.  I just mean that I don’t know how this is going to end.’

            ‘End?’

            ‘Turn out.’

            ‘Oh, Kelvin.’

            ‘Jessica.’

            ‘Do you know that is the first time you have said my name?’

            ‘I am sure it isn’t.’

            ‘Yes, it is.  Since we are going to die…’

            ‘Which we aren’t…’

            ‘Will you get closer to me?’

            ‘Mm.’

            ‘Closer.  Closer.  Much closer.’

            ‘Mm.’

            ‘Closer.  Closer.  Yes.  Yes.  Inside. Do it. Do it now. ’

            I can honestly say that it was not easy at first to fuck a woman to whom I had previously not been particularly attracted in zero gravity and total darkness.  The task was also not made any easier by our costumes, particularly hers, which was voluminous, multi-layered and wired.  

            But fuck her I attempted to do, as best I could.  I wrestled with the costume.  Pamela Collins would have been appalled.  I ripped it open.  I got to her cunt.  I grabbed hold of her with both hands, and worked my cock into her.  We were in mid-air, but we were fucking.  We bumped into a beam. I caught hold of it.  I held her between my arms and held onto the beam with my hands.  This felt more like normal fucking.  We had both just come when, at that very moment,  the systems were restored.  

            We both ended up on the floor.  We didn’t fall, exactly, but we were dragged there as the gravity-generator kicked back in.  Anyway, the upshot was that I was still inside her, and the assembled multitude could see my arse, and everybody knew exactly what we had been doing.  It was (from a kinematic point of view) a graceful descent into notoriety.  

On Saturday I had a long rehearsal, including a lot of singing and dancing, which tired me out.  I went back to my cabin, and had a good long soak in a hot bath.  I sipped some of my new whisky, which has been maturing for one year now and is at the point where it is just about drinkable if you put plenty of ice in it.  Holt and I have designed a portable refrigerator, and have set up a workshop to make them, which is staffed by some of Kerr McLean’s employees.  I now have one of these appliances in my room and it comes in very handy.    While soaking, I occupied myself in trying to think of a name for my Christmas seasonal beer, but I was too fatigued to come up with anything. 

            I tried to do some reading after supper, but I fell asleep with the book still in my hands.

            I had nothing planned for Sunday, apart from a walk round the Temperate Zone and a quick visit to the brewery to make sure the equipment had been cleaned properly from the previous batch.  I went back to my cabin with the intention of reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House from cover-to-cover before bed. 

            I was interrupted by my phone ringing, which is a such a rare event that it took me a minute to work out what it was.  Virtually all my communication is via the ship’s email system, and I set my mobile not to make a noise when I receive one.  I check it whenever I feel like it, which is usually quite frequently.  I tried to work out who it might be, but I was so mystified that I just answered it, but only after it had been ringing for some time. 

            It was Anna. 

            ‘Kelvin, I am wondering if you could do me a favour.’ 

            ‘A favour?’

            ‘Yes.  A favour.’

            ‘What kind of favour?’

            ‘I’ve got some-one new on my books.  She is very new, and in fact has only had one client.’

            ‘Yes?’

            ‘He turned out to be a weirdo.  He paid her, and he wasn’t violent, but she described his behaviour to me and I agree – this client was scarily weird.  I want to make sure that her next is some-one I know I can trust.’

            ‘Are you saying that you want me to book a session with her?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Any special time?’

            ‘Now.’

            ‘Now?’

            ‘Well, as soon as you can be ready.’

            ‘Why now?'

            ‘Well, I don’t usually take bookings on a Sunday, but I don’t want to put her into the normal schedule until her head is a bit more together.’

            ‘You want me to book a session with her, in order to help her get her head together.’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Do I still have to pay?’  The response was silence.  ‘I take it that means that I am still expected to pay.’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘What’s her name?’

            ‘Olivia.  She is auburn, freckly, and quite effervescent.’

            ‘OK.  I’ll do it.  I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

*

            Why now?  Why now?  Why do you think, you stupid, ignorant, thick-headed, moronic, infuriating idiot?  Do you still have to pay?  Do you still have to pay?  Four the sake of four sovereigns, you ask if you still have to pay.  This is not the real payment, Kelvin.  This is not even something on account.  What is four fucking sovereigns to Doctor Kelvin-bloody-bleeding Alexander-twat-Philip bastard-Stark PhD?

*

Olivia buzzed me through the main door and stood in the entrance, Layla-style, in an overcoat and high-heels.  I was expecting her to have little on underneath, and I was right.

            ‘Hello, baby.  How are you today?’

            ‘A bit tired, actually.’

            ‘Ooh, baby.  Come on in and sit down.’  She led me to a large and very comfortable sofa, covered in dark green fabric.  It was new, and I wondered where it had come from.  I guessed that Kerr McLean’s company had made it.  She sat opposite me on one of the upright chairs from the cabin’s dining area, and looked rather uncomfortable.  She was wearing white lingerie, including a basque with suspenders, white stockings with lace tops, a piece of white lace secured around her neck with a brooch, and white court shoes.  She kept tapping her feet.

            ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, suddenly.  ‘I am going to have to take these shoes off.  I borrowed them off Angel and they are at least a whole size too small.  They are killing me.  Ah, that’s better.’  A pause, and then, ‘Do you think I look like a tranny in this outfit?’  I laughed.

            ‘You look absolutely nothing like a tranny.’  She looked relieved.  ‘Would you like me to give you a foot massage?’  I asked her, for want of something better to say.

            ‘Ooh, baby – that would be lovely,’ she declared.  ‘But – hang on a minute – you’re supposed to be the client here.’

            ‘Don’t worry about that.  Just lie down here.’

            She reclined luxuriously on the sofa, which was wide enough for me to sit next to where she lay without sliding onto the floor.  I lifted her stockinged foot onto my lap and slowly began to massage the sole.  She moaned with satisfaction and closed her eyes.  I took my time.  I was just about to move my attention to her other foot, when her head started to loll slightly, and her breathing become very regular.  Suddenly, she sat bolt upright, and looked at a small watch on a very narrow strap on her wrist. 

            ‘I won’t count this towards the hour, you know.’

            ‘Relax,’ I re-assured her.  ‘Just relax.  It doesn’t matter.’  I carried on with the massage.  I rubbed her insteps, and her heels, and each of her toes.  This was the longest I had been in the Starlight room without taking my clothes off or somebody’s touching my penis.

            ‘Ooh, this is good.  Ooh, baby, this is so relaxing.  Mm, I could lie here all day like this – all day.’  There was a noise.  Olivia sat bolt upright again.  ‘Oh, shit.  That’s my phone.  I forgot to turn it off.’  She leaned over,  barely maintaining contact with the sofa, and grabbed the strap of an enormous red leather handbag with chrome buckles.  She fumbled frantically in the depths of the bag, and dug out the phone.  ‘Shit City.  It’s from Anna.  There’s a text as well.’  She pressed some buttons, and looked perplexedly at the screen.  The phone continued to ring.  ‘The call’s for you,’ she said as she handed the instrument to me.  I hate using other people’s phones, almost as much as I hate any-one else touching mine. 

            ‘Hello?’  Olivia lay back, silent, still, and unblinking, with a concerned look on her face.  She looked like a child whose parent was talking on the phone to an irate schoolteacher. 

            ‘Kelvin – Anna here.  I hate to break my policy of never any interruptions, but I just wanted to say – before you got started – that I might not have been clear enough in what I was saying before.’

            ‘Yes?’

            ‘Intercourse.  There has to be intercourse.’  I began to wander to the opposite side of the room.  I clamped the phone to the side of my head as if I needed it to staunch an arterial bleed.

            ‘Sorry?’

            ‘To help her get her head straight – you remember?’

            ‘Er, yes.  I remember.  Of course.’

            ‘Are you OK with that?  She needs cock.’

            ‘Of course.  Of course.’

            ‘Inside her.’

            ‘Indeed.’

            ‘Fuck her, Kelvin.’

            ‘By all means.’

            ‘Fuck her brains out.’

            ‘Oh, yes.  Absolutely.’

            ‘Ram it right up her soaking wet cunt.’

            ‘Goodbye, Anna.  Speak to you again soon. Thank you.’  I rang off.  Olivia seemed no longer nervous, more half-asleep.  She perked up again as soon as I handed the phone back to her.

            ‘What was all that about?  Was it to do with me?’

            ‘Partly.’

            ‘Have I done something wrong?’

            ‘No, not at all.  Everything’s fine.’

            ‘What did she want?’

            ‘She wanted me to do something for her.  For you.  For her.’

            ‘What was it?’

            ‘The instructions were quite vague.  I think she just wanted us to get to know each other better.’

            ‘Better?’

            ‘Er.  More intimately.  You know.  Anyway, where were we?’  I started to massage her feet again, but this time I moved gradually up to her ankles and then up her legs.  After a while, I was kneeling on the floor beside her as she lay on the sofa, and was rubbing the inside of her thighs.  She was moaning with pleasure.  We moved over to the bed and I undressed. I resumed my position next to her, parted her labia, and began licking her clitoris.  She was very wet.  I think she had a mild orgasm.  For the third time during that session, she sat bolt upright and looked at her watch.

            ‘Kelvin, do you want me to wank you off, suck you off, or would you prefer to fuck me?’

            ‘Mm.  Let me think about that for a moment.’  She frowned, her eyes wide.  

            ‘Huh, baby?

            ‘I would very much like to fuck you, please.’  She feigned shock, while continuing to open the condom-drawer and get one out for me.

            ‘What a disgusting way to talk.  You should be ashamed.’

            ‘I am utterly overcome with guilt and remorse – quite prostrated,’ I said, as I sheathed myself, climbed on top of her and slid my pulsating erection inside her.  She pulled her basque down to reveal her smallish, pointy, freckly tits, with very brown nipples.  I fucked her very slowly, very rhythmically, and very hard.  We both grunted in unison with the muscular effort.  By the tenth exclamation, we were both coming strenuously.  

            After a few brief moments for recovery and token exchanges of affection, we wiped up, and I got dressed while Olivia went to turn the shower on.  We had gone slightly over time and she was fretting about it.  I told her not to worry and to let me know if Anna ticked her off about it.  She forgot to ask me for the money.  I left five sovereigns on the coffee table before I let myself out.  As I was shutting the door, I darted back into the room, and deposited another sovereign.

            I sent Anna a text message: Mission accomplished.

*

Mm.  Oh, yes, Kelvin.  You did accomplish that mission very satisfactorily.  You deserve a medal for that.  Ooh, baby.  

The suspense of waiting for Kelvin to take the bait in Operation Fishhook was very nerve-wracking, but at least it gave me the opportunity to catch up with my other work.  I went part-time on my cleaning job and then resigned it altogether as soon as I had had access to all the places where I wanted to plant surveillance devices. 

            I am up to date with the pantomime costumes now, and have started taking orders for other clothes.  The business is quite lucrative.  Pamela has had to improve her own appearance a bit for marketing purposes.  I keep putting my prices up, and yet I gain more and more clients.  I would almost say that my clothes have started to acquire snob-value.  My clients include not just Kelvin (who is a secret client) but Cerise Vallance, some of her wealthier hangers-on, and Jessica Springer.   Jessica is extremely patronising in her manner with me but her money is as good as any-one else’s.  We have no proper system of credit yet (other than hand-written IOUs which I won’t take).  Everything I make is paid for in cash.   

            Pamela is working for Anna and her girls at the moment.  I have made a red, lace brief set and stockings for Layla, and red shoes, and a shiny, aquamarine one with black lace edging and black, patent calf-length stiletto-heeled boots for Kyla.  I have been practising controlling two of them at once.  Getting them to work is one thing, but getting them to pass for human is quite another.  Each simulacrum has a little bit of onboard software which prevents it from freezing, even when I am not sending it any instructions, but it cannot hold a conversation, or carry out any complex activity without me. 

            I got a message two days ago from the program which was monitoring Kelvin’s searches on the intranet.  He finally entered the word “escort”, and found the Starlight Escorts website.  He sent an email requesting a username and password, which Anna sent him.  The time he spent looking at the website was out of all proportion to the amount of material it contains at the moment.  The pages he dwelt on the longest were the “galleries”, which only have four pictures each of Layla and Kyla, all with the face obscured and none of them fully nude.  I watched him via the web-cam on his own workstation while he was doing this, and was surprised to note that he managed to keep his hands away from his person the whole time.  He mostly just sat and moped.  Finally, he rang Anna and requested a booking with Layla for that evening.  Anna told him that both Layla and Kyla were fully booked for the next two days.  He has an appointment for 16:00 tomorrow, with Layla, for one hour.

*

Since I was dumped by Prudence, I have decided to avoid any more relationships, at least until we have landed.   I have come across an escort service run by a woman called Anna.  She has two women available at the moment.  They call themselves Layla and Kyla.  Earlier today I had an appointment with Layla. 

            Anna gave me a lot of instructions over the phone, and told me exactly what route to take to the cabin where Layla was.  She said this was to reduce the chance of any of the clients seeing each other.  The cabin is on Deck 7.  It has a video-phone on the outer door.  I pressed the buzzer and Layla answered in a cheerful voice.  She buzzed me through the outer door and opened the inner one herself.  She was wearing a long coat, which she soon removed, and under which she turned out to be wearing nothing apart from a red brief set.  She is shorter, and much thinner than my normal type, but I found myself captivated by her from the moment I first saw her.  She has a very refined, very youthful face, green eyes, and blonde hair.  She gave me a quick kiss of greeting, but after she had removed her coat, she went to work.  She went on tip-toe in her red court shoes, put her arms round my neck, and gave me a long, very deep and very expert kiss.  She seems to like kissing.  I thought the height difference between us must be making her uncomfortable, and so I sat in an armchair opposite the bed, with Layla on my knee.  We did some more kissing, and she caressed my face and neck with her slender, meticulously-manicured fingers.  She asked me if I wanted a shower, but I had had one immediately before going to see her.  I started to kiss the rest of her body: her neck, her shoulders, her arms, and down towards her breasts.  While I was doing this, she seemed to be glancing at the clock.

            ‘Is it the full hour?’ she asked. 

            ‘Yes.  Do you want the money now?’

            ‘Yes, please.’  I gave her four sovereigns (more than a week’s wages for some workers) which she immediately took into the kitchen area of the cabin and put into some kind of small safe.  When she returned, she took her shoes off and lay down on the bed.  I got undressed and joined her. 

            She seemed content for me to make love to her.  She lay on her front, and I lay half on top of her, supporting as much of my own weight as I could.  I put my hands under her arms, and held her wrists, on which she was resting her head.  I kissed the back of her neck and her shoulders, all over, very slowly and deliberately.  She gave a few small moans, which were lovely to hear.  I gripped her wrists quite firmly, which she seemed to like, and kissed her more passionately.  I realised after a minute that I was thrusting my pelvis against her.  I stopped to remove her brassiere and her knickers.  She lay on her back and lifter herself to help me with the knicker-removal.  Her face had taken on a serious expression which seemed to indicate mounting arousal.   She opened a drawer in the bedside cabinet and took out a condom.  She opened it and put in on me. 

            ‘Screw me,’ she said.  I climbed on top of her, and was pleased to find that she was very wet.  I thrust my cock into her, and it went in easily and comfortably.  I grabbed her wrists again, and held them down on the pillow, above her head.  This gesture, which could so easily have been the prelude to mistreatment, she accepted and seemed to like.  ‘Oh, Kelvin,’ she said, in a voice trembling with feeling that was either genuine, or amazingly good acting.  She emitted a series of small screams. ‘Oh, Kelvin, I’m coming!’ she said, not loudly, but breathlessly.   This was the trigger for me to ejaculate. 

            I carefully withdrew, removed the condom, and tied a knot in it before dropping it in the bin.  She offered me some tissues to wipe myself with.  We then lay back on the bed.  Layla held my hand and kissed me from time-to-time. 

            ‘Do you have another job?’

            ‘Not at the moment.’

            ‘What is your background?’

            ‘Do you mean work-wise?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘I am an archaeologist.’  I did not reply.  ‘Yes, that’s going to be pretty useless in the new colony, isn’t it?’

            ‘Not necessarily.’  We stopped talking for a while.  Layla glanced at the clock again.  We had another eighteen minutes.  She stroked my arm and my chest.  ‘Do you mind if I say something really juvenile and stupid?’  

            ‘Go ahead.’  She looked almost interested.  

            ‘I’m falling in love with you.’

            ‘Oh.’  She looked as if I had slapped her.  

            ‘Is that the wrong thing to say?  I suppose what I am saying is that I would like to see you outside this room.’

            ‘And do what?’

            ‘Well, er…We could start by eating together.’

            ‘Anything involving food would be a problem.  I have a food phobia.  I hardly eat anything, and nothing that most normal people eat.’

            ‘OK.  Well, could we go for a walk round the Farm?’

            ‘I have an abysmal record with arrangements like that.  It sounds nice, but I just wouldn’t turn up.’  That was the end of the conversation.  We both got dressed, Layla into a different set of clothes which made her look a bit like a member of the maintenance team.  I must have been her last appointment for that day.  It was time for her to leave as well as me.  

            In the corridor, I went left, and she went right.  She ran.

            I wonder if there is anywhere on the ship where one could buy jewellery.  I’ll ask some of the people who have been making the props for the pantomime.  

*

I was glad of the sex with Kelvin.  Even vicarious, distant, remotely-controlled sex via an intermediary.   I knew Kelvin would ask Layla for a date.  He is a fool. 

Monsieur Bourdelle has offered me some shares in the production of “Cinderella” in exchange for the costumes I am making.  I asked him if I could see the accounts first, which I thought would make him angry, but he let me see them straight away.  Everything seemed to be in order, and I accepted his offer.  Jessica Springer has been telling everybody that she owns the biggest shareholding, but she doesn’t: she just owns more shares than any other member of the cast.  Even that is because Kelvin has foregone some of the holding he was offered, partly out of generosity, but mostly because he knows he is going to sell lots of drink to the audiences.  He is working on a Christmas seasonal beer which he says should be ready for the opening night.  The production is scheduled to open on 24 December.  The two biggest shareholders are Monsieur Bourdelle himself, and Kerr McLean.  I have recently discovered that if you are on this ship and you don’t know who owns a particular asset which is not part of the vessel, it probably belongs to Kerr McLean. 

            The next three members of the cast who are due to get measured are the Ugly Sisters and the Wicked Stepmother.  Monsieur Bourdelle asked Cerise Vallance if she wanted to be the Wicked Stepmother, which I am told put her nose out of joint.  They have given the part to a man, in keeping with tradition.

            These theatrical costumes provide plenty of very easy places in which to conceal microphones, cams, and data acquisition modules.  Some of the fights among the company are quite funny.  

*

The measuring of the Ugly Sisters and Wicked Stepmother is over.  Ugly Sister One was a member of HM Forces who said, predictably, that he auditioned for the part for a bet.  Ugly Sister Two was a young man of ambiguous tastes and orientation.  He was the most difficult one to measure, because he did not seem to know what to expect.  The Wicked Stepmother was an experienced transvestite of mature years and queenly figure: perfect type-casting.  I am making falsies, corsets, a dress, a ball-gown and shoes for all three of them. 

            This set of business transactions was followed by an unexpected incident which has upset me so much that I have had to take a day off work.  Monsieur Bourdelle sent one of his assistants to my cabin to find out how long I would be incapacitated.  I told her I would be back to work tomorrow without fail, and she left me alone.  I don’t know if I will be.

            The unexpected incident began when I was on the set, doing a costume-fitting and re-checking the ambiguous guy’s measurements.  People, including me, were packing up for the day and the set was clearing rapidly.  A man came up to me and asked me a few discreet questions, which culminated in a request to visit my cabin.  There were reasons why I did not want him to visit my cabin, and so I suggested his cabin, to which he agreed.  I took my tape measure, chalk and sewing-box with me. 

            The man became a bit more forthcoming once inside his quarters, though I thought I had a good idea of what he wanted.  To give him his due, he was plain, honest, and fairly unabashed about it all, as well as fairly knowledgeable about dress-making terminology.  He did ask for complete secrecy, which was understandable.  I told him that on Earth I used to work for the Samaritans, which seemed to satisfy him.  These negotiations having been concluded, he stripped down to his boxer shorts and I measured him.  For his peace of mind, I wrote down the measurements but not his name, his cabin number, or the details of the garments he wanted.   Of course, I did not even need to write down the measurements, because I had committed them to my electronic memory.  He offered to pay me a deposit, which I refused.

            While I was making up his order, I took out another similar garment which I had brought from Earth, and which I habitually kept in my cabin, not in my goods containers or my workshop area.  It was useful to compare the old one and the new one as I was doing the sewing to fix the bones in place and draw the bodice into shape.  I had put this work to the top of my schedule, in spite of a backlog of costume-making for the pantomime.  I then had to set to work on the pantomime clothes in some haste, which is probably why I made the mistake.

            The following day, I completed the order after a visit to my workshop.  This was to make his shoes, some parts of which I made with the 3D-printer, and his wig, which used a similar technology to the one I use to make my own hair.  It was an auburn bob.  I also have a sophisticated, programmable loom which I used to make his stockings and gloves. 

            I dashed back to my cabin.  I picked up the pieces I had already prepared, and folded them into a neat package which I wrapped in paper. 

            I knocked gently on the door of the client’s cabin, and found he was at home.  I went in and he closed the door, saying that he would like one final fitting.  I could have done without this, but I went along with it. 

            He indicated the money-bag lying on his desk which contained the payment for the work.  He then stripped down to his skin.  I was not surprised to notice that he had shaved his legs.  This prompted me to believe that he was not in a relationship, which I had already suspected.  I fitted him with the corset I had made him, and then he sat down in front of the mirror while I fitted his wig.  At our previous meeting, I had asked him if he would want false breasts, which he had politely declined.  I watched him put on his stockings.  I helped him with the six clasps of the suspender-straps, and straightened the seams.  He put on his lace briefs.  I asked him if he wanted help with make-up.  He said he was all right, but thanked me. 

            We were both admiring my handiwork, when I realised that I had made a mistake.  The corset he was wearing was not the one I had just made: it was the old one.  He twirled round in front of the mirror.

            “I am very pleased indeed.  This is uncannily like a garment I used to own on Earth.  It is exactly what I was looking for.” 

            I looked at him.  I did not know what to say.  The words stayed inside my head.

            “That is the very garment you used to own on Earth, Kelvin.  By mistake, I picked up the old one I had taken as a memento when I left you.  I remember the night I measured you for it.”

            As soon as I could, I got away, shut the door of my cabin behind me, and began to cry.  I cried for some time.  I don’t know how long.  I must pull myself together.  I have to be back at work tomorrow.  

            ‘Will the accused please stand?  Pamela Collins, you are hereby charged that on the night of 31 October 2137 you did wilfully break a camera belonging to Cerise Vallance, thereby committing criminal damage.  How do you plead?’

            ‘Not guilty, by reason of provocation.’

            ‘Pamela Collins, you are also hereby charged that on the night of 31 October 2137 you did wilfully assault Cerise Vallance.  How do you plead?’

            ‘Not guilty.’

            ‘Prudence Kathryn Zoë Tadlow, you are hereby charged that on the night of 31 October 2137 you did wilfully assault Samantha Dale and Cerise Vallance.  How do you plead?’

            ‘Not guilty.’

            ‘You may be seated.’

            ‘Your Lordship, I appear for both the accused.  I will argue that my clients only struck the alleged victims once they themselves had been viciously assaulted.  I will also argue in Miss Collins’s case that the breaking of the camera was a legitimate action in order to prevent Cerise Vallance from invading Kelvin Stark’s privacy.  The first witness I would like to call is Samantha Dale.’ 

            Samantha Dale was conducted into the courtroom and sworn in.

            ‘Miss Dale, were you present in the Temperate Zone on the night of 31 October?’

            ‘Do you mean was I at the Hallowe’en party?  Yes I was.’

            ‘Do you remember what happened that night?’

            ‘Lots of things.  I tried to get off with this bloke, but he turned me down.’

            ‘What I meant was do you remember a disturbance that took place?’

            ‘Yes.  Me and some of the girls were there with Cerise Vallance.’

            ‘Would you say you were there with any particular object in mind?’

            ‘I think the object Cerise had in mind was Kelvin Stark’s lunchbox.’

            ‘Indeed.  Would I be correct in saying that Miss Vallance had offered you and your friends some kind of inducement to impress yourselves on Doctor Stark?’

            ‘What’s “an inducement”?’

            ‘In short: money.’

            ‘Do I have to answer that question?’

            ‘You do have to answer that question, and you have to tell the whole truth when you answer.  You have to say whether you were offered anything and whether you actually received it.’

            ‘Cerise said she would give me 30 shillings and said she’d pay for new outfits for us, and for our drinks.’

            ‘And what did you have to do in return for this payment?’

            ‘She said she would give me the money if I’d get my tits or my arse out in a picture with Kelvin in it.’

            ‘And have you received this payment?’

            ‘Some of it.  Cerise was really pissed off when her camera was broken, but she said she’d give me 10 shillings as a consolation.’

            ‘And so you admit that you went to the party looking for Doctor Stark, and with the express intention of putting him a compromising situation and eroding his dignity.’

            ‘It was just a bit of fun.’

            ‘Miss Dale, you would be amazed at how many times we hear that phrase uttered in criminal courts.  What was Doctor Stark’s reaction when you and your gang approached him?’

            ‘He tried to ignore us at first, and then he asked us to leave him alone.’

            ‘And did you do as he asked?’

            ‘No.  That was when Cerise started taking pictures and I started flashing.’

            ‘Would I be right in thinking that you had been drinking alcohol that night?’

            ‘Yes: we were blathered.’

            ‘Can you remember how much you had had to drink?’

            ‘I had eleven double vodka and limes.’

            ‘And would you say that is a normal amount for you to drink?’

            ‘On Earth, I used to drink lager and black or cider, but since we left I have gone over to vodka.’

            ‘Indeed.  Well they say it gives you less of a hangover, do they not?  Miss Dale, I understand that you have a nickname.’

            ‘Do I?’

            ‘Indeed.  The one I have in mind is derived from the letters of your surname.’

            ‘Oh, that.  Yes.  That’s right. I do.’

            ‘Can you tell the court what it is?’

            ‘Drunk And Legs Everywhere.’

            ‘You might also be interested to know that we have managed to salvage some of the data from Miss Vallance’s camera.’

            ‘Oh, great.  She will be pleased.’

            ‘Please show Exhibit A on the big screen.  Miss Dale, would you mind describing to the court what is happening on the screen?’

            ‘That’s me, and Cerise, and Charis and Alicia.  That’s Charis and Alicia having a pretend snog next to Kelvin.  That is me trying to kiss Kelvin.  That’s me kneeling down and pretending to give him a blow-job.  That’s me getting up again, just about.  That’s me getting my tits out.  Now I’m shaking them.  Now I’m holding my left tit in both hands and trying to rub my nipple on Kelvin’s chest.  Now I’m doing the same with the right one.  Kelvin has stopped dancing and has his eyes closed.  Now I’ve put my tits away, and I’m standing next to Kelvin with my back to the camera, and I’ve pulled the hem of my mini-dress up and you can see my arse.  Now I have taken Kelvin’s glasses off and I’m rubbing them on my fanny.’

            ‘You are doing what?’

            ‘It is something I saw in a film my ex-boyfriend showed me.’

            ‘Let me get this quite clear.  You have grabbed hold of Doctor Stark's spectacles, and you are rubbing them on your naked vulva.’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Might I ask why?’

            ‘I thought it would be sexy for him to see when I put them back on his face that they were all blurred with cunt-juice.’

            ‘I see.  I notice, Miss Dale, that you did not have to remove any underwear.’

            ‘No, I went fully prepared.’

            ‘With no knickers on.’

            ‘Well it is easier to flash your arse if you go commando.’

            ‘I could not have put it better myself.  Thank you, Miss Dale.  No further questions.’

            ‘Miss Johnson, do you wish to examine this witness?’

            ‘Before I continue, I would just like to confirm to Miss Dale that she is not the one who has been charged with an offence.  Can you tell the court what happened immediately after the sequence of pictures came to an end?’

            ‘Some-one grabbed Cerise’s camera.’

            ‘Can you see the person who did this seated in the court?’

            ‘Yes.  It was her.’

            ‘You are pointing to Pamela Collins.’

            ‘I didn’t know her name, but it was definitely her.’

            ‘Were you surprised when the disturbance started?’

            ‘Yes, very surprised.  We were only having a bit of fun.’

            ‘Did any-one else come onto the dance floor.’

            ‘Yes, Prudence Tadlow came up and grabbed hold of me.  She tried to pull me away from Kelvin.’

            ‘Did she strike you or threaten you?’

            ‘I can’t really remember.  It was all very confusing.’

            ‘Did you suffer any injury?’

            ‘I had a terrible bruise on my knee the next day.  I went to the sick bay about it.  But I can’t be certain how I got it.  Prudence might have kicked me.  She was wearing her diesel-dyke outfit and heavy boots.’

            ‘No further questions, your Lordship.’

            ‘Your Lordship, may I cross-examine the witness?’

            ‘By all means, Mr Mallard.’

            ‘Thank you, your Lordship.  Miss Dale, were you wearing high-heeled shoes on the night in question.’

            ‘Yes, I was wearing my “stripper” shoes.’

            ‘Your “stripper” shoes?’

            ‘Yes, they are strappy and have a built-up sole and seven-inch heels.’

            ‘You were wearing high heels and you had had eleven double vodkas.  It is conceivable that you might have got this bruise because you fell over during the evening?’

            ‘Well they don’t call me Drunk And Legs Everywhere for nothing.’

            ‘Indeed not.  No further questions.’

            None of the other witnesses added anything substantial to Samantha Dale’s testimony.  Mr Justice Fitzgerald considered his decision for thirty minutes before acquitting both defendants, on the condition that Pamela Collins compensate Cerise Vallance for the loss of her camera.  The court also ordered Cerise Vallance to take reasonable steps to seek Kelvin Stark’s permission before photographing him on the remainder of the journey.          

*

“Diesel-dyke” indeed.  Slapper!

*

If that slut-whore-bint touches Kelvin again, I’ll inject her with something nasty.  

My name is Waverley Diggle.  I lied about my age to get onto this ship: I’m only fifteen.  I must be the youngest person on board. 

            Yesterday, all over the ship, there were Hallowe’en parties.  I went to one.  I am sure it was the coolest of the lot.  Kelvin Stark was there.  He had brought out a new beer.  It was amazing.  He calls it Satan’s Wee, and it’s green.  I don’t know what he puts in it to make it like that.  I think it is some kind of herb.  It tastes a bit like that pale green stuff you used to get in Indian restaurants, back on Earth.  The foam on the top is green as well.  It looked revolting at first, but loads of people were drinking it.  I love this ship, and the people on it.  They let me do almost anything I like, including drinking beer.  I had four pints and was quite pissed, but I didn’t throw up.

            I am sure we had the spookiest location.  We had the party in the Farm, in the temperate zone, near the trees.    It was fairly dark, and some-one had put up Hallowe’en-style decorations, like nooses and spiders’ webs and skulls hanging from the trees.   I didn’t have a costume (I just went in my work-clothes) but some of the ones that the other guests were wearing were really fancy.  Some of them had rubber masks on.  I have no idea where they got them.  You could not tell who a lot of people were underneath their masks, but I recognised one of the Frankensteins – it must have been Mr Holt, the engineer, because he was the tallest.  He won the competition for the best costume.  He had real bolts on each side of his neck.  They must have been from his workshop.  Kelvin Stark was dressed as a mad scientist.  He had a big white wig which made him look like that professor guy you always used to see in black-and-white pictures on adverts back on Earth.  He had a great big test tube with some bubbling liquid in the bottom and smoke coming out of it.  When you got your beer, the barman dropped some little pellets in it to make it bubble and smoke like the test tube. 

            Before the music started, Kelvin Stark did a kind of show with weird science stuff in it.  He got a great big cake, and everybody thought he was going to cut it up and give slices of it to a few  of us, but he put it on a big table and then poured some blue liquid over it from a flask which he held with huge, long tongs.  He stood next to a kind of glass wall, and then he put a lighted match on the end of a long pole, and touched it to the cake.  It went up in flames in a split-second.  It absolutely burnt like fuck: I’ve never seen anything like it.  The flames were so high that they singed some of the leaves on the trees.  It was a good job he had some fire-extinguishers nearby.  He did the same thing with a massive pile of what looked like cotton-wool.  It didn’t burn that time.  There was a strange kind of thudding noise, and a puff of smoke, and the cotton-wool exploded.  The air was filled with millions and millions of bits of fluff, which floated around and then fell on the people.  It made us all look as if we were a hundred years old.  Just about the only person who didn’t get covered was Kelvin Stark himself, because he had sheltered behind his glass wall. 

            We had some food, and another drink, and then the music started.  It was while the music was on that the fight broke out. 

            Kelvin Stark was dancing on his own to begin with, and then a big group of women came up to him.  They were dressed in shiny red and black dresses and they had really high shoes on.  Some of them were wearing black makeup, like goths.  They looked as if they had had quite a lot to drink.  They kept trying to talk to him, but he looked as if he just wanted to dance on his own.  He kept looking at a really normal-looking woman who was sitting down and wasn’t wearing fancy dress.  After a few minutes, another woman came over.  She was wearing a devil costume.  She had a long red tail and horns.  I would have expected the costume to come with a trident, but she was carrying a camera instead.  The women in the shiny dresses kept trying to talk to Kelvin Stark, and one of them started rubbing herself against him, which he didn’t seem to like.  I thought the woman was quite fanciable, but you could tell she was pissed, because she kept swaying from side-to-side.  The woman in the devil costume then started taking photographs.  As she took more and more photographs, the women in the shiny dresses got more and more rude.  One of them flashed her tits.  Another flashed her bum, and you could even see a bit of her fanny, but only from the back.  Her bum had a tattoo of a flower on it.  Then they started trying to kiss Kelvin Stark and pull his clothes off.  That was when it kicked off.  The normal-looking woman shot out of her seat and ran onto the dance-floor.  She was followed by another woman: a fat woman who was wearing a boiler-suit and a belt with tools on it.  I thought she was going to whack one of the shiny women with a hammer, but she just tried to pull them away from Kelvin Stark, and the normal woman did, too.  They both got hit in the face.  The normal woman had no expression on her face, but the other one looked really angry.  A full-blown cat-fight broke out.  The normal woman grabbed the camera, chucked it on the floor, and stamped on it.  It was smashed to smithereens, and the devil woman got really mad.  A load of other people arrived, and managed to split them up eventually. 

            I think the women in the fight are in trouble now.  I think they have got to go to court.  They’re going to get well done.  There’s a prison on this ship.  I spent the night in it once, after I’d got pissed and threw up in one of the corridors.  It's well uncomfortable.  

            I hope I’m not called as a witness: I’m not a grasser.  

My name is James Holt.  I am the ship’s Chief Engineer.  Dr Stark has asked me to  write an article for his intranet site which explains how the ship’s propulsion system works.  My heart sank when he told me this was not allowed to contain any equations and must be written in language that an idiot could understand.

            I would say that there are two important principles to grasp.  

            The first, and the easier one, is how the ship’s power plant generates energy.  Our fuel tank is full of liquid methane which we scooped from the surface of Titan.  We heat this up until the methane molecules fall apart and we get carbon (which we don’t need) and hydrogen.  The hydrogen atoms go into a nuclear fusion reactor at very high temperature, where they join together to form helium.  This process generates an enormous amount of energy.  The contents of the fusion reactor are held inside a very strong magnetic field, which is what stops them from flying in all directions and vaporising the ship.  The energy from the fusion reactor is used to power all the ship’s systems, from the air-conditioning to the propulsion unit.  

            Inside the propulsion unit is the device on which our entire ability to reach another solar system is based.  A conventional rocket works by throwing material out of the back of it, and thereby generating forward motion by the reaction against the stuff that is thrown out.  Our vessel (which I will refer to by its unofficial title of The Irish Rover, since that is what everybody calls it) does not work like that.  I will try to explain how it does work by some analogies. 

            Imagine that space-time is a pool of water.  Imagine also that the ship is like an aquatic creature living in that pool of water.  The aquatic creature sucks water into itself and then squirts it out the back, thus driving itself forward.  So does the ship, except that the stuff it squirts is not water, it is space-time.  Consider another analogy.  You are a man trying to get across a large room to a chair on the other side.  The room has a very loosely-laid rug on the floor.  The rug represents space-time.  You can either walk across the rug to get to the chair, which is how vehicles such as cars, aeroplanes and conventional rockets travel, or you can grab the rug and pull it towards you.  What we are doing now is analogous to doing both: we are both flying towards our destination, and pulling ourselves towards it at the same time.  Each little bit of space-time that we compress immediately relaxes back to its original state after we have gone over it but, by that time, we have moved a bit closer to out destination and that is all we are concerned about.

            Dr Stark asked me to say how fast we are travelling.  We reached our maximum speed some time ago, and are currently travelling at about 0.9 of the speed of light.  We re-use the same technology that the ship’s motor relies on to control gravity and inertia and thereby prevent the occupants of the ship from being crushed to death.  If all the systems on board are working properly, the only people who can tell we are moving at all are those who can see an instrument panel or an astrodome (and access to both is restricted to senior members of the crew).  

            Our speed is not the only thing that determines how long it will take for us to reach our destination.  The real distance of 19.4 light years between Earth and the Achird system will seem much less because of the effect I have described.  To an observer on board the ship, the journey will appear to take about four years.  

            Dr Stark has also asked me to explain the changes that the ship will undergo when we prepare to land on Achird-gamma, but I will save that for when we are much nearer our destination.

*

My French tutor is called Pamela Collins, and she is a good teacher: very patient.  She has one rule, which is that no spoken English at all is allowed in class.  If we don’t understand something, we have to express our lack of understanding in French.  There are about ten people in the class, all of about the same ability.  When I am not contributing, I look at Pamela and try to work out what she is about.  I cannot decide whether she is asexual, or the world’s worst lesbian, or just very neglectful of her appearance.  Her clothes look like industrial cleaning rags that have been sewn back together. 

            Since I started attending her classes, I have noticed that she seems to have gravitated towards me in the refectory and the bar.  She doesn’t speak to me.  She doesn’t speak to anybody, but I have started to notice that she is there.  I tend to speak French more enthusiastically when I am slightly drunk.  If I engage her in conversation, she answers, but as soon as I stop, she stops.  She doesn’t drink much, either.  If it weren’t for her language ability, she would be completely unremarkable.  I can’t even visualise what she looks like when she is having an orgasm.  The only thing that Pamela has in common with Violet is the way she writes the letter f. 

            Last night we had a party to celebrate one year on board the ship, and Pamela was there as usual, but still did not contribute any merriment.  I thought for one moment that I had seen a tear fall from her eye, but I may have imagined it.    

*

That party last night was awful.  It was the worst I have felt since I was wearing the wedding dress at the St Martin’s Lane Hotel.  Kelvin, whether he was conscious of it or not, was basking in the glow of his celebrity.  Men were slapping him on the back and shaking his hand, and women were fluttering their eyelashes at him and swooning.  It was nauseating.  You used to be able to rely on Kelvin to behave like a surly teenager on such occasions, and be cold, distant, and uncommunicative.  He used to have no interest in what any-one else said, or did, or thought.  Too much adoration seems to be re-shaping him into a public figure, and I don’t like it.  The only other person who seems to see through him is Prude.  I must admit she went up slightly in my estimation after she made that formal complaint about me.  I have removed all my surveillance devices from her cabin.  I don’t feel threatened by her any more.

            Among all the drinking and dancing last night, the thought that I could not suppress and which made me saddest of all was about Horace.  I allowed myself another little peek at “him”, all four cells of “him”.  For “his” sake, I hope the planet we are heading for turns out to be habitable.  I sometimes look at Kelvin and wonder why we could not have stayed at home.  I remembered the night Horace was conceived, and I allowed myself another tear.  I did feel better for a moment.  I at least had a moment of clarity: I stood up, oxidised all of what little alcohol I had drunk, did a large acetaldehyde burp into the face of the person next to me, and went back to my cabin.  I lay on my bunk, waiting for the sound of Kelvin returning to his, which he did somewhat unsteadily about three hours later.  I can see him as well as hear him if I want, but it is somehow more compelling and often funnier just to listen. 

            He was singing The Irish Rover when he fell through the cabin door, slammed it shut behind him, and tottered into the bathroom.  He remembered to brush his teeth and drink his two tumblers of water (and he still has not worked out why he gets worse hangovers since he stopped living with me).  He took his clothes off, which was quite a struggle, and dropped them all on the floor. I happen to know that his cabin is on Pamela’s job-sheet for tomorrow, and so she might be picking them up.  He crawled into bed, and his singing gradually quietened.  After a while, I thought I could hear him crying again.  He said something, but it was so quiet that, even after applying various transformations to the data, I still can’t make it out.