CHAPTER 2:

DISCOVERY

Lister stood beside Starbug a bazookoid tucked uncomfortably into the curve of his arm, and squinted against the glare of the sun at the vast, empty stretch of desert laid out before him like a bland carpet. Eddies of dust danced and swirled in the distance, blew apart, and then formed again further out in the distance. The sky was a pasty, pinkish salmon colour, shot through with streaks of orange. On the far horizon Lister could see a craggy mountain range snaking its way along the curve of the planet's surface.

Apart from that, there was nothing.

He felt someone tap his shoulder, and jumped. He spun around.

"Hey Bud, you're looking in the wrong direction! Check it out," the Cat said, and waltzed around the side of Starbug. Lister followed, and was brought to a halt in mid-stride as he realized what was on the other side of Starbug.

Rimmer, Kryten, Lister and the Cat stood in a huddled bunch in Starbug's shadow, gazing out across the plain at the ruins of a colossal city.

It sat solidly, immovably against the skyline, a framework of ruined buildings, some of them appearing to be only half-built or in states of disrepair. Steel gantries hung loosely from the decrepit structures. It looked as though the city had been deserted for years, decades even. Not a single sign of life or humanity stirred in the streets among the debris of fallen scaffolds and twisted hunks of metal. Everything lay still and silent in the white heat of the sun.

The Dwarf crew crossed the barren plain and entered the outskirts of the city. Here, outlying buildings seemed to be part of a residential district. There were slums- tiny wooden ramshackle huts, their roofs collapsed in like the husks of empty beetle shells. Further in, the buildings rose up out of the slums and formed elegant rows converging in to the centre of the city. Most of the buildings seemed to consist of huge industrial factories. Smoke stacks, now black and long since left unused, formed rows like the pillars of a castle along the edges of a gigantic facility.

They walked down the central street, its gutters lined with dirt and the accumulated filth of years. Here and there were scraps of paper, but the writing on them was illegible.

Lister shook his head for about the 17th time and said, "I can't believe it."

"I don't like it," the Cat said, frowning. "Something doesn't smell right here."

"Yeah. What happened to all the people?"

"It's obvious isn't it," Rimmer said calmly. Inside he was fighting an urge to turn around and run back to Starbug as fast as he could. There was a dry, sour smell on the air he didn't like. "They all decided they'd pack their bags and move somewhere else."

"What? A whole city?"

"Maybe they were driven out. I don't know- climate change, war, disease..."

"Disease?" The Cat said nervously, and put his hand over his nose and mouth.

"Mr Rimmer might have a point," Kryten said, and glanced around. "Those 'mines' we encountered in orbit around the planet might be remnants of some long ago war."

"Great," Lister said, without much enthusiasm. "So we're standing in some sort of gigantic graveyard. That really makes me feel better, Kryts."

"But it doesn't make sense. There's no bodies," Rimmer said, with an apprehensive glance at an odd-shaped lump of junk lying by the side of the road.

They came to the end of the street and turned a corner. Lister was looking at the ground and kept on walking, but the three behind him stopped in their tracks. He raised his head at their collective intake of breath.

Ahead of them the street continued on a gentle decline and then ended in a huge wall of metal. There was some gargantuan object, so huge that only a third of it was visible between the buildings, lying on top of the centre of the city. Whatever buildings had been there before were now presumably crushed beneath it. Lister's eyes ran along the topmost rim of the object, and he glimpsed a small glass-domed structure that reminded him of the observation deck on Red Dwarf. Then he noticed the partly-obscured lettering running along the side of the thing in big white letters.

'S E I D'

"Smeggin' 'ell. Is that what I think it is?"

"It's a ship," Rimmer said, stepping forward, an expression of transfixed wonder on his face. "It must have crashed right on top of the city."

"'Sid'?" the Cat said derisively. "That's a pretty dumb name for a ship. Why not just call it 'Bob' or 'Jenny'?"

"That's not it's name, you gimboid," Rimmer snapped.

Kryten was no longer looking at the ship. He was tapping commands into a hand-held electronic device, and frowning at its readout. "I'm getting an electronic signal from within the ship."

"Any life signs?" Lister asked quickly.

"No."

"But something's still working in there, obviously," Rimmer reflected. "I say we go in and see if it's worth salvaging."

Kryten looked up at the sky. "I estimate it will be dark in about two hours, sirs. We'd better make it quick if we want to leave this planet before nightfall." He paused, for dramatic effect. "Unless you want to spend the night in a 'gigantic graveyard' as Mr Lister so elegantly put it."

Lister hoisted his bazookoid higher on his shoulder. "Let's just get it done. I don't wanna hang around here any longer than I need to."

"Well, after you gentlemen," Rimmer said, smiling, and waved them ahead.

"There's gotta be some way inside," Lister said quietly, standing at the foot of the crashed spacecraft / wall of metal that now towered hundreds of feet above him. To see the top he had to crane his neck back so far he nearly overbalanced.

"There is," Kryten said. "Up there." He pointed, and they noticed a large set of reinforced double doors, the entrance to an airlock no doubt. Trouble was, it was suspended about fifty feet above their heads and the doors were closed.

"Well that's handy," Rimmer muttered. "You'd think they'd have the courtesy to put out a landing ramp."

"This thing has to be full of holes," Lister said, walking over to the door of the nearest building, which was hanging off its hinges at a dangerous angle. "Probably where the ship cut through all these buildings."

He stepped through the door, leaving the others alone in the street.

"What's he doing?" the Cat asked.

Lister poked his head out through the door. "You guys coming or what?"

They picked their way through the rubble strewn across the lobby of a large building. It was immediately obvious that the when it slewed through the city, the ship had cut the building in half. One wall was now missing, replaced instead by the warped and badly dented hull of the spacecraft. Lister climbed over to the hull and tapped on it with his fist.

"Lister," Rimmer said dryly. Lister ignored him and continued tapping the wall, producing a loud, echoey thud that reverberated through the room and quickly got on Rimmer's nerves. "Lister!"

"What?"

"You're not going to find any holes."

"Why not?"

"Lister, that's the hull of a spacecraft. The people who make spacecraft, generally, the people who make things of this size, are going to make sure they don't tear easily."

"It crashed right through a building!" Lister said, barely disguising his incredulity.

"Lister, a building, to something this size, is probably the equivalent of a grazed knee. It wouldn't even break the skin." He gestured at the shiny, pockmarked surface. "You could fire a bazookoid at it and it wouldn't make a dent."

Lister stopped tapping and stood back, thinking. "Well there's gotta be another way in."

"How about the back door?" Rimmer said, raising an eyebrow.

After about an hour or so of fruitless searching, they finally managed to stumble across the cargo bay doors. They had to walk almost two blocks around the side of the ship to reach it. It was wedged into the lower corner of an exposed side of the ship, in a large open area that was previously a courtyard. To their surprise they found one of the two doors missing, and the large open gap that led into the bowels of the ship stared at them like a hungry mouth.

"Nice one, Alphabet Head!" Cat grinned, showing his pointy incisors, and holding his bazookoid smartly by his side. He had chosen a grey satin dinner jacket to match the colour of the weapon. "Since you're so clever, you should be first to step inside."

Rimmer's mouth twitched, in the way it did when he was trying desperately to think of a way out of a bad situation. "There could be anything in there!"

"Exactly," the Cat said, still grinning.

"Sirs, it's perfectly safe, I'm picking up no life signs whatsoever. Of course, the structure might be unstable, and there might be live wires and bits of razor-sharp metal lying around, but apart from that it's perfectly safe."

Rimmer glared at the mechanoid. "You've got to be joking!"

"Rimmer, you're wetter than a pair of swimming instructor's Speedo's. I'll go in first." Lister stepped through the door and was enveloped by the shadows. Gritting his teeth, Rimmer cautiously followed. Kryten stepped in next, tailed by the Cat.

They made their way up the corridor. On either side, numerous doors lined the pale grey walls. Lister looked at the signs over each one as he passed. He felt he had a good idea of where they were on the ship. Its layout was much the same as the Dwarf's, but in the sweeping light from Kryten's chest-mounted torch beam, it was hard to keep his bearings.

Kryten, now leading the group, was following the signal from the computer. "We're getting close now."

They passed a large open door marked 'Medi-Bay'. Lister glanced in and could only make some vague shapes representing an operating table, and a floor-to-ceiling shelf stocked with medical supplies.

"We should check out this room later," Lister said to the others. "There's all kinds of stuff in there."

"We shouldn't dawdle," Rimmer said nervously. "Our main objective is to recover the... whatever it is and get the smeg out of her before it gets dark. We didn't come here to window-shop."

"He's scared," the Cat said mildly, and ignored the snarl Rimmer favoured him with.

"I'm not 'scared'."

"Sure you are."

"Look you stupid-"

"Sirs, please," Kryten interjected. "I can't hear the tracking signal."

"He started it," Rimmer said.

"Both of you, shut up," Lister said with finality. "Kryten, which way?" They had arrived at a T-junction.

"Left," the mechanoid replied, and led the way.