CHAPTER ONE:

DRIFTING

Dave Lister, the last member of the human race, groaned and opened his eyes. His head felt like someone had cut off the top with a blunt hacksaw, poured gravel into it, pounded it in with a mallet, and then sewn it on back to front. He rubbed his forehead just to make sure he couldn't feel the stitches, and then began the laborious process of trying to sit up. Below him, pacing the room, Rimmer was speaking loudly in a language Lister couldn't understand. A skutter was holding a book open for him. He paced to one side of the room, paused, snatched a glance at the book, then squinched his eyes shut.

"Aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur."

Lister blinked and managed to prop himself up into a sitting position. "I thought you'd given up on Esperanto."

"This isn't Esperanto you moron, it's Latin," Rimmer replied distractedly, and looked at the book again.

Rubbing his eyes, Lister said, "Why d'you want to learn Latin? No-one speaks it any more."

"So? It's a beautiful language, Lister! Timeless. The language of Virgil, Cicero, and Aristotle! Someone like you could never appreciate the grace and poetry of these ancient words... 'tibi gratius agimus quod nihil fumas'."

"What's that mean?"

Taking a second glance at the book, he replied, "'Thank you for not smoking.'"

Rimmer noticed Lister rubbing his forehead and wincing.

"You got drunk again," he shook his head. "I don't know why you do it to yourself."

"I was celebrating," Lister said defensively.

"Celebrating what?"

"I don't know... I was too drunk to remember. Actually, I think I was playing a drinking game in the cockpit. Like, I'd take a swig of lager for every reddish sort of planetoid that we passed. Problem is, I got so drunk I ended up going around the same planet in circles all night."

Rimmer snorted and shook his head. "Serves you right."

Kryten shuffled into the room with his familiar wonky robotic gait, and wheeled a breakfast tray over to the bunk. Lister leaned over the side.

"Breakfast is served, sir."

"Sorry Kryt, I don't think I could eat anything right now. I feel like crap."

"Ah yes. Mr Rimmer mentioned that you might not be feeling absolutely one hundred percent tickety-boo this morning, so he had me make you an extra special hangover-cure breakfast."

Lister raised his eyes and gave Rimmer a suspicious glance, but the hologram appeared to be deeply interested in the book the skutter was holding. Lister thought it must've been a very amusing book judging from the smirk that had suddenly appeared on his face.

"Rimmer asked you to make me breakfast."

"Yes sir." Kryten grinned with pleasure.

"I'm not going to like this am I?" Lister said.

Kryten gestured towards the serving tray, which contained two large mugs and a plate of food.

"A glass of raw egg, whiskey and orange juice in tomato juice with Tabasco sauce, jalapeno peppers and Vegemite on toast, a pint of water and a cup of raw coffee."

"Rimmer, you're a total smeghead, aren't you?"

Rimmer straightened up from the book he was reading and began pacing again. "What's the matter Listy, lost your appetite? Nothing wrong with that stuff, I've included absolutely every hangover cure there is. Fortes fortuna adiuvat."

"Oh yeah. Have you actually tried any of it?"

"No, but I've heard from other people... who've heard from other people... that it works."

Lister shook his head. "Forget it. I'm not touching that stuff. Kryt, just bring me back a black coffee, hot, in a cup with water, will ya?"

Kryten tried not to look too disappointed. "You don't even want the raw egg, sir?"

Lister shook his head.

"Are you sure? I put a little umbrella in it and everything."

He shook his head again.

Kryten shuffled uncomfortably on his feet and then wheeled the tray away sadly.

"Now you've hurt his feelings," Rimmer said without a trace of sympathy.

Lister limped down the corridor towards the mid-section. His leg ached for some reason he couldn't remember. Perhaps he bumped it last night crawling into bed. He turned a corner and stopped as something wet and soft brushed against his face. He gave a cry of surprise and stumbled backwards, then saw the clotheslines that had been strung from one end of the corridor to the other, and draped with shirts in a blinding array of colours.

"Cat!" Lister shouted.

"Hey, someone call?" the Cat said as he walked jauntily down the corridor from the direction of the eating area.

"Yeah, me. What the smeg is all this?"

"What d'you think, monkey brain? It's laundry day!"

"Yeah, but did you have to take up the whole corridor? Why couldn't you string these up down in the cargo bay or something where no-one has to walk through them?"

"I already did! My suits are in the cargo bay. This corridor's for shirts and socks."

"Cat, take them down."

"What? You gotta be crazy! I was up all night washing this stuff!"

"Find somewhere else for it." He brushed a lavender and pink silk shirt out of his face and pushed through the rest of the clothes on his way towards the mid-section.

As he stepped into the cockpit his attention was immediately grabbed by the appearance of a huge sand-coloured planet filling up half of the viewport window. Looking closer, he noticed that there were a number of small metallic objects seemingly orbiting the planet. Light from a distant sun glinted off them as they revolved slowly against the blackness of space.

"Yo, Kryten, what are those things floating around that planet?"

Kryten was sitting at the long-range scanner and typing in commands to a control panel. "I haven't established that yet, sir. They seem to be giving out some kind of faint electronic signal, but I can't determine anything from it."

Lister slid into his usual seat, brushed some crumbs off it and leaned towards the window.

"Let's get closer to them and have a goosey."

Kryten looked up apprehensively. "Do you really think that's a wise course of action, sir?"

"Why not?" Lister asked, already minutely adjusting the course of Starbug's path.

"Well... we don't know what they are... shouldn't we wait for Mr Rimmer and the Cat?"

"I'm only gonna take us a little closer, Kryten. Take a look at the surface of that planet. It looks like there's some kind of city down there."

Lister steered Starbug closer so that they were facing the planet. They were now relatively close to one of the round metallic objects.

Kryten looked closely at the object and then back at the scanner readout. "Sir, I think we should stay away from that."

"Why?" Lister asked placidly with a glance over his shoulder.

"Do those things remind you of anything?"

Lister shrugged. "No."

"I believe they resemble those things that were frequently used during World War II to sink submarines."

"What... mines?" He glanced back to the softly spinning metal ball, now slightly off to the left of Starbug. Come to think of it, the ball now looked rather ominous as it caught the light of the nearby sun. Tiny lights flickered along its circumference in quick succession. "You think they're mines?"

"I might suggest an evasive course of action, Mr Lister sir."

Lister pulled back hard on the throttle. "God. You're right. What was I thinking?"

Suddenly the controls on the ship went haywire. Kryten's long range scanner started emitting a series of worrying beeps, and the craft failed to respond to Lister's desperate alterations.

"What's going on?" he said loudly. "I can't control it!"

Kryten gave him a worried look, and then began to mash on the ship's internal alarm button. Not even that worked.

"Holly what the hell's going on?!" Lister shouted.

Where Holly's head should have been, there appeared a muddled set of pixels vaguely representing a woman, perhaps as Picasso might have drawn one.

"Hdskuiredkssauk." The image on the monitor said.

"Something's happened to Holly!"

"Sir, we're spinning out of control!" Kryten shouted.

Rimmer lurched into the cockpit, wearing his blue hard-light uniform, and was followed by the Cat.

"What the smeg is going on?!" Rimmer yelled.

"Yeah!" The Cat growled. "If I'd wanted my clothes spun-dry, I would've used the laundry room like everyone else!"

"I'm sorry guys, I wasn't thinking!" Lister panted, and went about flicking switches hastily. Nothing had any effect, and did not slow Starbug's now lethal plummet towards the surface of the planet.

"Would someone like to tell me what's..." Rimmer was cut off as Starbug swayed again, and he was sent hurtling backwards down the steps out of the cockpit door. He emerged a few seconds later, looking bruised. "It's going to be one of those days, isn't it?"

"We're going down fast. Looks like we're going to have to make a crash landing," Lister said breathlessly.

The dusty surface of the planet loomed hugely in the viewport window, and gradually filled it. Then everything went white as they caromed through thick cloud cover.

"Why is it," Rimmer said dangerously, "that anything that CAN go wrong, DOES go wrong. Especially when Lister's driving."

"Hey, gimme a break!" Lister said, his voice rising to a panicked whine. "If I'd known this was gonna happen, I would've stayed in bed!"

"15 seconds to impact," Kryten said. "Brace yourselves!"

"'Brace yourselves?!" Rimmer screamed. "Is that the best plan you've got?"

"Well, the only other plan I have involves curling up into a foetal position and screaming, and given the circumstances I don't think that's going to do us a lot of good."

Rimmer sucked in his breath, about to argue that it sounded like an excellent plan to him, but his eyes widened as he saw the ground rushing up to meet them through the window.

"Does this thing have airbags?" The Cat asked, his voice tinged with panic.

"10 seconds!"

"What are you bozos doing?" A female voice shrieked. "Slow down, slow down!"

Lister's head whipped around so fast he caught himself in the face with his dreadlocks. Squinting, he shouted, "Holly? You're back!"

"And so is the navicomp!" Kryten exclaimed.

"We've got control again!"

"Cat, reverse thrusters, now!"

The Cat hastily followed Lister's commands and the descent of the ship slowed dramatically. So dramatically, in fact, that everyone was forced painfully back in their seats by the sudden change of momentum.

"5 seconds!" Kryten called.

"Cat, can you land us on that flat plain there?"

"I'm doing my best, Buddy!"

Starbug swiftly tilted up so it's nose was no longer pointing at the ground, and cruised gracefully down to the surface, sending up a swirling, dancing cloud of rust-coloured dirt. Then, slowly, it settled down on its beetle-like landing gears and was still. The dust slowly settled around it.

Lister leaned back in his seat, and wiped sweat from his forehead with a leather-gloved hand. "That was too close."

Rimmer started brushing imaginary dust off his suit. "I can't leave you in charge of the ship for 10 smegging minutes, can I? It's like having to babysit a chimpanzee."

"Alright, alright," Lister snapped defensively. "I'm not having a good day. That's all. I made a mistake. It could've happened to anyone."

"Lister, it could only have happened to anyone with an IQ lower than the number of fingers they have on both hands."

Lister gave up arguing and sat, despondent, staring out at the dull, featureless plain stretched out on all sides of them. "What a place to end up. It's like the Sahara Desert. Without the monorail and optional camel rides."

"Let's take a look out there," the Cat suggested.

"One moment sirs, I'll just run a test to determine if the atmosphere is breathable."

"Good. That'll give me time to change." The Cat vacated his seat and disappeared out through the mid-section. Lister sighed and glanced at Holly's monitor, which still seemed to be functioning normally.

"Any idea what those things were, Holly?"

"Well, Kryten was right. They were mines, just not of the exploding kind. It seems like they were placed in the planet's outer atmosphere to disrupt the equipment of any passing ships and send them spinning out of control into space. We happened to be facing towards the planet, which is why we almost crashed. Once we got out of range of the devices though, the equipment and everything came back online."

"So we're ok to take off again? We can get out of here?"

"As long as we can stay far enough away from the mines. If we can find a gap wide enough between them we should be able to fly right through."

"Well that's a relief," Lister sighed, and pushed his hat back on his forehead. "I guess we better see what's out there."