THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RED DWARF

PART 4

"What the smeg is wrong with you people?" Rimmer demanded, flinching from the swords being thrust in his direction.

Kryten quickly ushered him off the podium. "I'll take it from here, sir."
"Gladly." Rimmer backed slowly away from all the weapons pointed in his direction, and then cowered against the far wall. "Are we tetchy or what?" he mumbled under his breath.
Kryten took up the pointer. Then, not knowing what to do with it, he put it down again. "Since Mr. Rimmer is not an expert in the field of time/space/reality irregularities, we have taken the liberty of bringing on a guest speaker. Someone whom I have been assured is highly intelligent and a gifted speaker. Someone--oh, let's just bring her out. Third Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski!"
There was a smattering of polite applause.

Kochanski entered the room . . .

. . . and stopped dead in her tracks.
She knew these people. Knew them? She'd become enmeshed in the intimate details of their lives, when she was twelve and on a rainy summer holiday.
She let out a squeal of delight.

Rimmer winced and muttered to himself, "We're done for."

"I can't believe it!" Krissie was displaying very unofficerlike behavior as she surveyed her audience. "I've read all the books, and I saw the movies eighty-one times . . ."
"What is she babbling about?" Boromir asked Aragorn, who didn't have a clue.
". . . and I never thought I'd actually see a REAL LIVE HOBBIT!" Her voice hit a pitch that only dogs--and Legolas, who was covering his sensitive Elven ears--could hear. ""I mean, here I am in front of all of you, flesh and blood people right in front of my eyes . . ."
"This is your expert, is it?" Gandalf muttered. "I'm going back to sleep."

"All right," Lister said, "everybody just get a grip, man . . . Now, Kris, if you could get started?"

"Get started? Get started on what?"
Lister sighed. "As I told you, your job is explaining to these fine gentlemen where they are, how they got here, and most important . . . how they're gonna get home."
"Why should they leave so soon?" Her misty-eyed gaze had reached the second row, and was lingering there, trying to decide where to stay.

"Because if they don't it could totally smeg up the fabric of the space-time continuum." Kryten told her.

"Oh. Right." She tried to take her mind off the guy with the amazing eyes, and got down to business.

"All right, here's the first thing you need to know . . ." She then proceeded to elaborate on the concept of outer space. The skutters, deathly afraid for their cybernetic lives if the hobbits got hold them again, took advantage of the speech to sneak out.

The Fellowship were amazed.
Once she got over the drooling fangirlship, Krissie was indeed a compelling speaker. Knowing her audience helped a great deal. She even knew a few words of Elvish. ("Elvish is everywhere," she joked, but unfortunately only Lister got that one.)
"Are there any questions?" she concluded.

"Just one." Frodo said.

He asked the question that Mr. Rimmer had totally brushed off before.
"If we came here . . . could something else come through as well?"

"That depends...."

"We'll have to keep a very close eye on things for now, until we can find out more." It was a scary thought, she had to admit.

"Surely Saruman couldn't have followed us here?" Frodo whispered to Gandalf.

"I don't think so, but he could have sent someone. We shall all have to be on our guard."

"Who's Saruman? "Lister asked. "Is he,like,a loan shark or something?"

Rimmer scoffed. "Lister, read the damn book. Or books. I forget, how many were there?"
Lister looked at him. "Have you read the books?"
"I, um . . . well, I read the first one. Most of it. Rather long and drawn-out, I thought. But I did see the movie."

Kochanski shook her head at both of them. "All right, who wants to join me up here for a little bit?" Her eyes strayed back to the second row, but it was the first row that had their hands up.

"Yes?"
"Can we have food?"

"Didn't you just eat?"
"Yes, but we're nearly running into Elevenses, and if this keeps up we'll miss lunch as well."
Kochanski sighed. "Should we take another break?"

"I'd like to take a break from the whole lot of them permanently." Rimmer muttered under his breath.

Krissie looked at her hologrammatic watch. "All right, then. We'll take a fifteen-minute break, and then do our little audience participation bit." Another glance at the second row, but he was looking away. Their eyes hadn't actually met once during the whole lecture. Damn.
Oh, Krissie knew it couldn't last--they were quite literally from different worlds, after all--but a brief fling couldn't hurt. Even if they couldn't actually touch each other, there were . . . other things. Long walks, and candlelit dinners . . . no, wait, she didn't eat now either. Well, maybe she could watch him eat.

Meanwhile,down in the Red Dwarf's cargo bay...

. . . absolutely nothing happened.
Except for a few skutters cowering in the corner, that is.


"Ship's log . . . I think it's a Thursday. Anyway, it's the next day, and everybody seems to be settling in all right. Once the skutters cleaned up the mess from last night, that is. Memo to self: instruct food dispensers not to serve alcohol to anyone with pointed ears.
"Bit of excitement. Lister used the backup feature to recreate Kochanski. Well, Kochanski's hologram, at any rate. She was supposed to fill our guests in on how they got here, but she took one look and just fell apart. I think she's got a crush on one of them, but I can't tell which one.
"Things are going to get very interesting around here now, that's for sure. Message ends."

(Ooh! Who's Krissie's crush? I left it deliberately vague, but if I get enough votes for someone, he's in. So review already!)