Blink. Blink. Blink.

Cat stared at the scanner moodily. Kryten had put him on monitoring duty. He watched the blue blip that signified the ship as it winked at the center of the screen, steady as a heartbeat. Every now and again there would be a yellow blip that signified a star, or a few red blips that meant meteors, or a patch of white static for a dust storm. This was about as exciting at the job got, but Cat had become so bored with life on Blue Midget that blip-watching was thrilling in comparison.

Kryten bustled into the cockpit with his breakfast. "Has anything important come up yet?"

The Cat sighed as he accepted the bowl of crispies he was offered. "It almost did, I saw a dust cloud that looked like a girl's cleavage. Then the solar wind blew and it turned into a bald guy's head. That was the end of that fantasy."

"I mean any sign of Starbug?" Kryten asked anxiously.

"Nope." Cat took a half-hearted slurp at his cereal. He'd become bored of crispies, too.

Kryten leaned over him and double-checked the scanner's history. "You seem to be doing fine work here."

"That means I'm ready for the flying bit, right?" Cat prodded.

"We both know we don't have time for that now. Our agreement can come into play after we've located our crewmates." Kryten had insisted much the same thing the day before.

"Are you sure about that? Don't think I don't know you've been washing my bow ties on the sly. They all smell like Clean-O brand's Apple Blossom scent. You use that on everything."

"That is not true, sir," he protested. "I wash with Ocean Breeze on occasion."

"You know what I mean, Ice-cube Head. You've got plenty of time for laundry, but not for me, and that's downright heinous."

"Well, most of the laundry has to wait until I have access to all of my dry-cleaning things, and the industrial size washer. That's another reason to put the flying on hold, as well. Back on Red Dwarf we'll have videos, books, diagrams, flight simulation, not to mention a host of safety measures. It wouldn't do Mr. Lister or Mr. Rimmer any good if we crashed too."

Cat set down his half-eaten breakfast and scratched an insistent bug bite just behind his ear. "We don't even know if they did crash. Maybe they got sucked up by some weird space thingy. One of those black holes could've got them. How long are we gonna look before we admit they're dogfood and go home?"

"Oh, please don't say that, sir. It's too horrible." It was a thought that had been lurking at the back of Kryten's processors for a while now, and that was where he wanted it to stay.

Holly interrupted. "There isn't really that much of a chance of that happening, actually."

"With five black holes in the vicinity?" Kryten asked doubtfully.

Holly appeared uncomfortable. "Well, there may have been slightly less black holes than that. Subtract five, that should get you pretty close."

Cat had to do the math on his fingers. "You mean there weren't any black holes at all? This whole thing's been a wild mouse chase?"

"You could put it that way. I made a tiny scanner-scope misreading," Holly admitted. "You see, there these bits of grit, and they have a funny way of looking a bit like black holes, if you squint really hard, close one eye, and tilt your head a bit. You might have to close another eye to get the full effect."

"You're as dumb as I am, only you've got a stupid hair-cut. I bet you couldn't calculate your way out of a bowl of rice pudding," Cat told her. "Are you sure you have six thousand IQ points?"

"Sure I do!" The computer looked injured. "I just...don't remember where I left them, is all. But look on the bright side, you two: nobody's in any danger of having fallen into any black holes." Holly offered a weak smile, but her encouragement didn't seem to have the desired effect on her erstwhile crew. The Cat seemed to take it as a personal offense, and Kryten looked like he'd just caught a virus. She tried diversion instead. "Oh, look! That's a big energy spike on the scanner. Better check that one out." As soon as they weren't looking, she disappeared.

There was a green blip on the screen, the signal for a planet, with a series of blue rings pulsing out from it. Kryten double-checked the readout in case it was another of Holly's mistakes. "That planet is exerting a powerful force. We should determine what it is."

The planet was a swirl of browns and dark grays, and it kept a close orbit around its sun. Kryten made sure to guide the Midget to the night-time side, for surely daylight on such a world would be dangerously hot. As they flew over the surface, they saw pits scattered far and wide. They varied in size from being roughly half a mile to two miles across. It was from these craters that the readings were coming from, some stronger than others. Kryten chose one of medium size and power to land near.

The cat and the mechanoid disembarked to bath in the light of two moons. Cat was clad once again in his golden space suit, as the very atmosphere had been baked away. Even in night, the place was hot, and the suit's internal temperature regulator had to work hard to keep its occupant cool. Cat took a few steps and found that his body felt heavy and slow. "Hey, what's going on here? It feels like someone poured lead in my boots."

Kryten was approaching the depression slowly, holding out the psi-scan like a cop with a speed detector. "This planet is large one, and it has a greater gravitational pull than we're used to. Both of us are currently experiencing a weight gain of approximately twenty-four percent."

Cat screwed up his face. "No planet does that to my waistline. I think I should go wait in the ship before this gets any worse."

"It has no effect on your size, sir, and it isn't permanent. You'll be back to normal after we've left." Kryten's gears and hydraulics were also feeling the weight increase, and had to work harder for him to walk to the rim. Being made of metal had its drawbacks in the heaviness department.

The crater dropped down sharply some ten feet all around the edges, after which the grade became much less steep to angle gently inwards. The angle increased again near the center, gradually at first, then dipping dramatically down into a deep pock-mark. Kryten referred to the psi-scan. "Ah, this is interesting. Our weight gain here is now at thirty-eight percent. Something in the bottom of this pit seems to have a gravitational pull all of its own."

Cat had to exert himself to join Kryten at the rim for a look. Neither of them knew that they were standing on a thin shelf of earth that was sticking out over the side. Neither of them knew that their combined weight was too much for the overhang to bear. They did know that the dry soil crumbled from beneath them, and they both went tumbling down the side. Kryten went into a dizzying log-roll, and the psi-scan went flying. Cat's face smacked into the front of his helmet as he fell down. Although the incline became less steep after the initial drop, it was covered in loose dry soil and pebbles, and the pull at the bottom of the pit was exerting its own force over them.

The two finally came to a stop where the ground leveled out just before the final drop. Kryten turned his head to see the Cat lying several yards away from him. "Sir, are you alright?"

Cat sat up, but the simple motion was now a difficult one. It seemed like something was trying to push him back down. His nose stung from hitting his helmet, and it was bleeding slowly. He was sore, dazed, and bruised, but not seriously injured. "As long as I don't look in a mirror, I think I'm okay," he called.

Kryten tried to get up, but he could only raise his head slightly, and his arms and legs went no further than a few inches off the ground. The psi-scan was lying a good distance up the hill, so he had to consult his internal systems check for the weight gain percentage. "Sir, we're nearly four times our normal weight here. I can't move!"

Cat was able to move closer to him, but only by dragging himself along on his belly. "I can't do much better, man. How are we gonna get out of here?"

"I know, I'll call Holly. She should be able to autopilot Blue Midget to us and help." Kryten sent out the signal, which went unanswered for several moments. When it was finally picked up, all he received was a recording.

"Hello, you've reached some senile old computer who apparently couldn't calculate her way out of a bowl of rice pudding. If you have any concerns, please forward them to somebody more capable, thank you. There, that'll show them...Oh, end message."

The mechanoid called three more times, all with the same result. "She's not listening! I think you may have offended her."

"I was only kidding! So the Head can't take a joke." Cat dropped his head onto his arms. "How long is she gonna make us wait out here?"

"I don't know, sir, but our situation is a dire one if her tantrum takes very long." Kryten studied the sky, since it was the only thing he had to look at. "Without the psi-scan it's difficult to be exact, but I think dawn should arrive in a few hours. Direct sunlight would roast us alive! At least you're able to move. I suggest you attempt to make it back up to Blue Midget and let Holly know how serious the matter is."

Cat looked up the hill. Under normal circumstances, it would be a light hike, maybe ten or fifteen minutes. It was going to be far heavier exercise now that he felt like he was carrying a small elephant on his back. "Are you sure you don't have some kind of overdrive or something?"

"I would gladly go in your place if I could, Mr. Cat, but I can't. I'll keep trying to contact Holly while you're away. And please remember to come back and get me."

"Yeah, yeah, Mr. Cat do this, Mr. Cat do that. Why's it always gotta be me?" the feline groused as he starting army-crawling up the incline.

Five minutes later, he was exhausted, and stopped to take a break. This was difficult work, and he got along well neither with work nor with things which were difficult. He blew blood from his lips. The rocky ground was hard, even through his space suit. His nose wasn't bleeding any more, but it had dribbled down his face, over his chin and onto his neck, sticky and uncomfortable. A voice interrupted his rest.

"Sir, you need to keep moving!" Kryten called to him. Cat looked back over his shoulder to scowl at the mechanoid and found he'd only managed to get about fifteen feet away from him- discouraging when it felt like he'd just dragged himself a million miles.

Reluctantly, he continued his crawl. The bug bite behind his ear began itching terribly, he was hot and sweaty, and the blood on his face dried, tight and crackly on his skin. He used to think that the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life was pull off tweed, but now Cat was forced to reconsider his idea of the word 'hard'. For one thing, it shouldn't be such a small word. He needed a word for the discomfort and the strain and the effort of making your body do things it didn't want to do, but all he could come up with was 'really really really hard'.

He stopped for another rest, panting in lungfuls of warm, recycled air. Cat kept reminding himself that he needed to keep going in order to avoid becoming a crispy, sun-baked Cat. Of course, if he was dead, he wouldn't feel so miserable any more. But that was no way to go, left lying like a dried up turd in a giant litter-box. He'd never forgive himself. He would definitely keep going. Now. No, maybe after a little bit. He closed his eyes. Not for long, mind you. It was only a small rest, after all...