Cazflibs: Thank you to everybody who reviewed. I really appreciated all of your supportive feedback. I especially liked the comments that told me that the characterisation was good and how it fitted into the whole RD situation. I've been trying to be as true to the characters as possible and trying to inject humour wherever I can (bit hard when they're facing suicidal and life-threatening situations but hey, you gotta laugh…)

Seeing as the cliffhanger seemed to infuriate rather than intrigue I will continue with the story sharpish before I get lynched or something similarly unpleasant…

Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat stumbled the last few metres towards the shuttle and collapsed in a less than dignified heap onto the baking sand. Cat begun to pull off his gloves and padded vest thankfully with the others slowly following suit, hoping that their late arrival would be less than conspicuous. No such hope. The seated group were suddenly plunged into shadow, rather graciously in such horrifically hot conditions, as Hutchins ample frame towered over them. Hutchins had become the new squadron leader, replacing Knot after his sudden, unfortunate and curious death, the likes of which the Dwarfers were less than keen to elaborate on.

"You're late," growled the shadow.

The Cat flashed Hutchins a winning smile. "Sorry buddy," he replied, cheerfully. "If I didn't have to stick to my strict preening timetable -"

The remainder of the Cat's sentence was lost in muffling as Kochanski subtly encouraged him to stop talking by leaping onto him and using all of her upper body weight to force his head into the sand. With the Cat, it either had to be a grand gesture or nothing at all. Kryten adopted the Cat's smile and pursued a different, less suicidal tactic.

"Please accept our sincerest apologies, sir," he began, with a voice that could melt butter. "Adverse weather conditions in our particular sector rendered concurrent tasks impossible to complete within a particular timeframe. We therefore conclude that our thirty-minute delay was the result of variables that we cannot effectively envisage. Our apologies once more, sir."

Kryten smiled subtly as he registered the blank look on Hutchins' face. Vocabulary observation over the past two weeks had revealed that Hutchins' brain seemed to face meltdown and require rebooting if faced with a string of polysyllabic utterances in quick succession. In other terms, using loads of big words when talking to him would often shag out his brain to the point that he would drop the subject and move on.

Hutchins blinked. "Well, make sure it doesn't happen again," he concluded less than certainly, wondering whether he had won or lost the argument.

Kochanski released the breath that she had been holding in a tired sigh. "So we're finally ready to get out of here?" she asked, before realising that she was still lying on the Cat's head and not breathing for forty seconds was considered less than healthy. She released him, reluctantly.

After a seven-second mental reboot, Hutchins finally spoke. "Nope. We're still a team down. We've lost radio contact with Team D. Haven't heard from 'em for hours." His massive boots crunched through the gritty sand towards Murphy, the team leader in radio communications.

The Cat spat out a mouthful of sand. "Team D? Isn't that – "

Kochanski locked Kryten's arm in a tight grip. "Lister and Rimmer are still out there?" she cried.

Kryten shook his head. "I don't understand, ma'am, they should be – "

It was then that the group finally heard the repetitive one-sided radio conversation that had been continuing long before their arrival.

"Team D, this is Canary Nest. Do you read me?"

Static.

"Team D, this is Canary Nest. Do you read me?"

Static.

"Team D, this is Canary Nest. Do you read me?"

Static.

Murphy turned to face Hutchins, who had his fists thrust on his non-existent waist. Kochanski felt her heart plummet into her stomach as Hutchins shook his head. The situation was far from rosy. She turned back to share her worry with Kryten, but he had already stood up and walked away from the group. Hunched over his own radio transmitter, he discreetly changed to channel three, desperately trying to gain contact.

"Please, sirs. Please let us know you're all right," he pleaded in an escalating high-pitched whine. "Just let me know that you're safe, Mister Lister. For me?"

But Kryten was met with the same eerie reply. Silence woven with static.

Seeing the Cat with nose in the air, trying to catch a scent or distant noise and finding nothing, Kochanski surveyed the landscape with watery eyes. "Please be safe, Dave," she breathed.

Slowly emerging from the dark recesses of unconsciousness, Lister's mind was less than pleased to find that reality proved to be similarly dark. It had done all this work, trying to restore neural pathways to full working order and look what reality had to offer – nothing but the dim surroundings of an underground cave, which was hardly fitting for a nice, comfortable Saturday morning lie-in…

Lister silenced his brain's verbal diarrhoea and pressed 're-wind' on his addled thought processes. Hang on, he thought. 'Underground cave'?

It was then that he realised that a) he was not having a comfortable lie-in, b) this was not the Tank, and perhaps most important of all, c) this was not a Saturday, but a Thursday. Thursdays were always bad days. Waking up with amnesia after having their memories erased because of Lise Yates? Thursday. Attack of the Polymorph? Thursday. His wedding day? Thursday. The latter case would have been the happiest day of his life, if he hadn't have been married to a bride that looked like, smelled similar to, and had the sex drive and personal hygiene of a male Tibetan yak.

Lister rolled over slowly and groaned as he felt a sharp aching across one side of his ribcage, politely informing him that he'd bruised his ribs fairly badly. He half-sniggered at the irony of a vague memory that fleetingly tickled his mind. He'd taken his padded vest off before the ground collapsed. He applauded his mental recall but smacked his stupidity round the head in equal measure. Rimmer had been right for a change.

The temporary amnesia tossed him another bone. Rimmer had fallen too. Shit.

"Rimmer?" he called out painfully, his bruised ribs scratched along his words like a sharp key along the side of a Mercedes. No reply came.

Lister pulled himself roughly to his feet and immediately yelped and sank to the floor once more. His right ankle was busted too. He tried to shrug it off. Bruised ribs and a busted ankle weren't too bad for such a fall. His mind's eye flashed back to when he'd been trying to stop a gang of blokes in their late twenties from stealing his first car back in Liverpool all those thousands of years ago. He'd ended up in intensive care for over a week. But he was still here.

Despite the pain, he hauled himself upright and scanned the cave as far as the lack of light would allow. Back before the crew got wiped, his safety harness had snapped and he'd plummeted into the cargo bay. He'd broken his spine in three places and spent six weeks in traction. But he was still here.

It was then that he found Rimmer a few metres away, lying face down and blanketed with a fine layer of sand and dust. He'd plummeted some twenty-metres down into the underground caves of a dangerously unfamiliar planet. But he was still here. He carefully rolled Rimmer onto his back and felt his neck for a pulse. He breathed a sigh of relief. They were still here.

P.S - Sorry if it seemed to cut things short but I wanted the next chapter to elaborate a lot more on their predicament, which isn't quite as nice as one would hope (and I really liked the last line of this chapter – it seemed to tail things off nicely). I also realised that several of you were concerned as to whether they had even survived the fall. I'm not mean enough to give you a cliff-hanger and kill one of them off! Too many hilarious squabbles to miss out on if that happened.

P.P.S – I was very pleased to remember that in the episode Thanks for the Memory, the crew actually do wake up on Thursday after having their memories erased. Go me!