The creature who appeared before them was surprisingly normal looking, if you discounted the shiny jumpsuit and the inflatable hairdo. He was male, blond and had a jaw which formed a perfect right angle – if Ace Rimmer and Dick Tracy had had a burning night of passion, this could have been the result. He was pursed, poised and posing. He was also, it became clear, about as sharp as a melted blancmange.

"Who are you? Why are.." he paused to flick his hair out of his eyes and lost his thread. "Er…who are you?"

"We're sort of …accidental visitors from another universe. We didn't actually mean to come here…"

"…should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque…"

Lister raised an eyebrow. So Rimmer did watch cartoons? He'd have to get his opinion on Wilma Flintstone.

" ..got sucked in by this whirly thing, you know how it is…"

Kryten tutted. Honestly, humans made such straightforward things so complicated.

"Sirs, if you might permit me…Our ship was unwittingly forced through a transreality blur, a portal between the real and the unreal, which physicists theorise may be caused by the freak buffeting of a particular area of space, imparting a kind of increased sensitivity."

Lister and Rimmer worked this out silently and reached the surprising conclusion -space bruise?

On his proud vessel, Ace Tracy* had been listening with a fixed frown. His deep, world weary, blue eyes appeared to weigh up the situation. He scratched his geometrically breathtaking chin.

"…Huh?"

Further explanations were fortunately spared by the sudden arrival of an enemy vessel. A shiny saucer of wobbly menace, it crackled its own transmission onto Ace Tracy's other screen. Although smothered in static, the speaker appeared to be humanoid apart from the green papier mache head in the shape of a giant brain. It wore a purple collar, vast and pointy, on which it kept cutting its chin.

"So, Commander we -blast-  meet at last…and now -ouch- you shall die!"

The brain cackled hysterically for quite a while, pausing only to apply plasters.

"Prepare to be annihilated!"

The screen flicked off. The Commander gave one last wavering look towards the Dwarfers, considering some form of snappy, memorable response, then shrugged and turned with obvious relief to fighting the aliens, an area he was evidently more comfortable with.

"Prepare the laser cannons!" he yelled vigorously to an unseen sidekick, before remembering to switch off.

It was an entertaining battle. The Cat had produced popcorn from somewhere and they watched, enthralled, as the saucer and the squeezy bottle zapped coloured lines at each other. Rimmer insisted on rooting for the Green Brain People even though they were obviously the Bad Guys and therefore doomed. He saluted them, sadly and at length, as they disintegrated into a searing white blur.

They had passed over three planets, all three of which indicated dangerously high levels of radiation. One had been home to an ant so huge that they could not only see it from space but count –and scorch off- the hairs on its antennae. They didn't hang around to see what it felt about the partially bald look, though Holly, getting nostalgic, thought it was rather handsome. Later, lacking an immediate plan of action, they played a spot of cards.

"So, Kryten…you said this is some kind of, what, fiction dump? No, hang on, you said fiction originated here? That doesn't make sense."

Rimmer, surprisingly, backed him up.

"Look, surely a '50's film's dodgy effects would occur because of the available material, not just because in some universe far, far away that happens to be the 'in' look? Back in the twentieth century, film props, special effects, that type of thing, was primitive. Everything had to be done with glue, string and sellotape. And a bit of tinfoil to make it all 'futury'."

Rimmer waggled his hands in a 'futury' type way.

"Perhaps I phrased it badly. A universe like this one starts off as a sort of seed bearing plant. A mushroom ready to disgorge its spores. These seed are violently expulsed, projectile vomited through space and reality, where they home in on intelligent life forms…"

"Intelligent? The Monkeys? Boy, did those seeds spill on stony ground…Uh, do you have Mr. Bun The Baker?"

"We're playing poker, you addlebrained moggy."

"Right. So…Bakers are wild, yeah?"

"…uh…intelligent life forms, where they settle inside the brain and germinate. Most are choked at birth, but a few grow into fully fledged ideas, stories, creations with the potential for a tangible form. When fully grown the essence of the idea returns to its home universe, where it achieves that form, however tacky, badly designed or abhorrent to the laws of physics it may be.

"Royal Flush, sirs."

They digested Kryten's explanation in silence. Where they were was not, in any case, as important as, how did they leave? Planetary exploration would be no fun if the surface was overrun with monsters, with mutated insects, people and vegetables, with psychotic throbbing brains or body snatching pod-people. They could be zapped from the sky in the cross fire of a battle or as target practice for shiny-suited nutters with too many eyebrows.

Lister wasn't too concerned.

"Why can't we just go back through the Bruise? We drifted a little while we were out, but we can't be far away."

"But can we get through it from this side? Can we even find it?"

Rimmer on the other hand was sliding towards a panic attack, with a side order of tension headaches and heart palpitations. He had seen a lot of old movies and had far too much imagination when it came to things like tentacles.

"Holly?"

"Yeah, we should be able to get through it all right.  Easy peasy. It's a patch of weakened space; if you hit it at the right angle it just sort of, squishes open. But finding it could be tricky."

Rimmer breathed in, very deliberately. He'd thought it over.

"Holly, it's a large vermilion spiral. Even if you were wearing sunglasses in a darkened room and squinting, it would still stand out like Lister in a wine bar."

"Ah, on the other side, yeah, it's a big, bright vermilion, spirally thing. But on this side of space it's just…space coloured. Which makes finding it a bit like finding hay in a haystack."

An aura of gloom descended.

* Yes, I could have gone with Dick Rimmer, but I have an uneasy feeling that this somehow makes it NC-17 by suspicion.+

+ So, er, best not read this footnote