Cazflibs: Wow, thank you to everybody who has reviewed so far. I really appreciate all of your feedback so I'm going to do a few personal shoutouts.

Boogle – Thanks for noticing the little details and appreciating the drama and humour.

Br1de-of-Fr3ddy – "Gripping" – wow! That's quite a complement. Hope this grips you!

Zombie Kitty – Shhhhh! Stop giving away what's going to happen next! Thanks for your support.

Sunrise over the Tango Factory – Thank you for complementing my characterisation. Muchly appreciated.

Smeggingitlarge – Why haven't you reviewed chapter 3 eh? Nah only joking, love you really. Always appreciate your kind words.

Aeronq – Argh! Thursday tomorrow! Love you darling.

Now on with the show! I mean, fic.

Lister fished his lucky silver Zippo from his right-hand trouser pocket and with a well-rehearsed flick of the wrist, a small yet hopeful flame sparked into life. He held it towards Rimmer's head, throwing his face into a wash of dancing light and flickering shadow. A jet of air hissed through Lister's teeth as he saw a bloody gash start near the top of Rimmer's left temple and flare up and open into a deep, grime-smeared graze that disappeared into his hairline. Nasty, thought Lister, though probably not as bad as it looks. Once the blood had been washed from his forehead and hair, he'd probably only need butterfly stitches to help it on its way to recovery, three medical stitches tops.

He ran his hand up and down Rimmer's limbs to check for breaks. Finding none, he sat back on his haunches and sighed. He'd probably wake up with one hell of a headache, and a grumpy Rimmer wasn't a quiet Rimmer. Lister pushed himself slowly back to his feet and decided to spend the blissful silence searching for his backpack that had been wrenched from his back around halfway down the fall. It was vital that he located it for their survival. It contained his fags.

After a couple of minutes of unsuccessful searching, Lister heard a weak groan come from the direction of Rimmer's body. Lister cursed silently. He'd hoped to at least have one cigarette to steady his nerves before having to deal with Rimmer.

A string of muffled expletives was followed by Rimmer's first cohesive sentence. "Turn the smegging light on, Lister, I can't see a bloody thing," he mumbled, eyes still closed.

"If there was one, I'd ask you to bloody well do it yourself, ya lazy git," Lister replied glumly, as he continued to fumble in the darkness for his backpack.

Rimmer moaned and slowly rolled onto his front. After a few moments he tried to push himself upright with stiff arms as he opened his eyes fully for the first time. Scraping his knees forward underneath him so that he could kneel, he held a quivering hand up in front of his face. It was a bit too dark and blurry for his liking.

"I feel a bit spaced," he announced, his speech slurring slightly as he put the blurred hand to the throbbing part of his head.

Lister limped towards Rimmer's hunched, shadowy figure, and crouched down to face him as Rimmer pulled away his hand, his fingertips sticky with congealed blood. "I'm bleeding," he muttered, in a voice a bit too calm to be considered normal.

"You'll be fine," Lister replied vacantly as he flicked open the Zippo once more. He held the flame towards Rimmer's face in inspection. Rimmer blinked rapidly before his eyes adjusted to the light. Despite the light flickering close to his eyes, Lister noticed that Rimmer's pupils remained fully dilated. Most likely some form of mild concussion. "Aren't you the clever one, Rimmer?" Lister grinned. "Landing on your smegging head."

"Smeg off," Rimmer replied weakly as he attempted to stand and promptly decided that sitting was better for the time being.

Lister cocked his head to one side. "Not one of the most original retorts I've heard from you, I must admit," he sniggered. "I'm sure you'll get your bearings and your capacity for insulting me back in a few minutes."

Rimmer frowned at Lister as he walked slowly and awkwardly into the gloom and defiantly attempted to stand once more. He wobbled for a few moments before gaining equilibrium – a definite improvement. He wracked his brains for a verbal comeback but the words toppled and fell over one another as if drunk. "Well, you have the…whatsit…of a…thingy – "

"Rimmer, drop it. The moment hurtled by some time ago now."

"Bugger."

Lister had only hobbled five more steps before he heard a heavy thump and tumble from the darkness in Rimmer's vague direction.

"Oh bloody, buggering hell!"

Lister turned. "Are you all right?" he called out.

There was a pause. "I think I've just found your backpack."

Lister stifled a laugh. "There should be a torch in the side pocket," he smirked. He raised his sightless eyes upwards in the direction that he hoped would lead them out. "Let's see where the smegging hell we are."

There was a fumbling sound and a final click before a fierce beam of light thrust its way through the darkness. Lister followed the beam's path behind him where a steep slope of densely packed sand and stone made up the far wall of the cave. The slope was carpeted with loose sand and grit, presumably the crumbled sand from above. As Rimmer stepped towards the slope and leaning forward, threw the beam of light upwards, Lister could see the reason why the two of them hadn't, quite literally, plummeted to their deaths. They would have only free-fallen three or four metres before they hit the tall, steep slope and tumbled down it into this cave. What worried Lister the most was how little light there was. Dark meant deep, and even with the aid of the torch, he could only distantly make out what he hoped was the six-metre wide opening to the planet's surface.

"Ah," was all Rimmer could manage before adding, "this, uh, this doesn't look too promising, does it?"

Lister simply tottered over to his backpack and pulled out the packet of cigarettes. He'd managed to pull one out with his mouth and light it before Rimmer noticed.

"What the smeg are you doing?" Rimmer cried, incredulous.

Lister took the biggest drag he could before replying. "It's a medical, frigging necessity, Rimmer," he mumbled, cigarette balanced precariously between his lips. "I haven't had one since breakfast." Lister pulled the cigarette from his mouth and gave a smoky sigh. "If I don't have one now, I may not be able to convince myself that ripping both of your arms off isn't a good idea."

Wary of the nicotine deprivation-induced violent streak, Rimmer backed down instantly. Instead, he quickly looked at his watch. "Smegging hell, it's almost half-two! We've missed the rendezvous."

Lister flicked off the loose ash impatiently. "I think we have a more than decent excuse, don't you?"

Rimmer rolled his eyes. "I meant that if we've missed the rendezvous then they've probably already started a search for us, right?"

Lister cocked an eyebrow. "With Hutchins in charge? Doubtful. They're never going to find us unless we have – "

Two pairs of eyes lit up simultaneously as they both cried, "the radio transmitter!"

With renewed energy, Rimmer swept the beam of light across the floor, darting it left and right before coming to a sudden halt. "Ah," he uttered, curtly.

"What? You've found it?" Lister stubbed out his cigarette on the nearest stone stalactite. "Send 'em an SOS. They'll track the signal and have us out of here in no time."

Rimmer strode across the cave floor and crouched down. "Which bit do you think we should use to contact them with, eh?" he growled, trying unsuccessfully to suppress his rising frustration. "This pile of broken plastic here or this mangled web of circuitry here?" Rimmer held up tangled knot of wires in the torch beam between his forefinger and thumb before letting them drop to the ground once more.

Lister exhaled forcefully, rubbing his aching eyes. "That makes things interesting, eh?" He replied, philosophically. He didn't even need to look at Rimmer to sense the burning look of disgusted incredulity on his face.

"Interesting?" Rimmer seethed. "Try bloody life-threatening!" He rubbed a gloved hand down his face in some vain attempt to wipe off the panicked look from his features and sunk, unaware, to an awkward seated position. "I believe we are, what is referred to in the business as, completely screwed." The sentence began calmly enough, escalating up the scale, both in speed and pitch, to a plateau of panic.

Lister crouched down beside the ugly twisted pile of shattered plastic and circuitry and began attempts to somehow fix, slot and shove them all together into some form of working order. "Look, don't panic, man. It'll be fine, I promise," he soothed. Inside, a hot flame of anger begged to flare up and out of his mouth, preferably in some form of wonderfully crafted verbal attack. 'Shut the hell up you stupid git' would have worked wonders, but was not entirely useful in this particular situation, especially not for keeping the Queen of Panic under control.

Rimmer shook his head violently, a look of muted mania plastered on his face. "Oh no, no, no, Listy. I'm not panicking. This is just shock." A twisted, bitter laugh escaped from his dry lips. "Once I get my map out, get my bearings and find my way from Shock Street to Panic Place, then I'll start panicking!" Again, the last part of the sentence squealed upwards into a tone that definitely closely resembled insanity.

Lister ceased his pointless attempt at reviving the radio and stared at Rimmer with narrowed eyes and wrinkled nose, wondering just how hard Rimmer had hit his head. "Are you sure you're all right?" he asked carefully.

Rimmer nodded hard and fast. "Oh yes," he began calmly. "I would be absolutely hunky dory if you'd have put the bloody radio back in my bag where it should have been in the first place."

Lister's features hardened. He could see exactly in which direction this particular conversation was heading. Rimmer and the Blame Thing. "Excuse me?" he asked as calmly as his voice would allow.

Rimmer grabbed a handful of the mangled mess that had been the radio and held it up in the torch light once more in illustration of his argument. "If you had put the radio back in my bag, as opposed to just tossing it on the floor like you do with the majority of your crap, then the radio transmitter wouldn't currently resemble a three-dimensional Picasso, would it?" Rimmer threw down his handful and stared back hard.

"Oh clever old Rimmsy, you've cracked it!" Lister cried in as performative a manner as he could summon. He stood a bit too quickly for his throbbing ankle and threw his arms up wildly. "Obviously I didn't put the radio transmitter back in your bag just to spite you." Lister jabbed a venomous forceful finger directly at Rimmer's face.

"Don't you point that thing at me," Rimmer growled audibly, whilst simultaneously, annoyed and thrown off guard, Rimmer batted away Lister's hand forcefully. Both taken aback by this new step into potentially violent retaliation they merely stared at one another defiantly before letting the situation defuse.

A jet of air snorted down Lister's nose, possibly spurting flame at the same moment. "I need to smoke something," he mumbled before returning to his backpack once more.

Once Lister had swaggered, or perhaps limped, away, Rimmer released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He'd never been particularly good at schoolyard scraps. In fact he'd tend to resemble a teenybopper stuck in the middle of a circle pit at a Slipknot gig. He stood silently, taking the torch with him, and walked slightly unsteadily over to the slope from which they fell. It was a good 70 degrees steep but not completely smooth across the surface. There were a number of small jutting rocks and uneven notches that could double up as hand and foot holds. He turned to the tiny red flare in the gloom that signalled both Lister's position and that he had successfully lit up again.

"We could try climbing back up," he said simply.

The red flare moved closer silently until a figure emerged from the darkness with it. "You reckon?" Lister replied with little enthusiasm as he joined Rimmer and glanced upwards. It looked one hell of a difficult climb, and with his busted ankle the chances looked slim. Hell, the chances would look slim if he was asked to climb a flight of stairs. Even if he were fit and able to scale it, it would be a long and dangerous climb. One misplaced foot, one grab of an unstable rock and down you'd come. Unless…

"Unless we didn't have to climb all the way up," Lister mused.

Rimmer stifled the sarcasm that threatened to hijack his voice box and forced himself to listen. After all, God forbid, Lister may be right. "Okay," he murmured, slowly and carefully, scanning his words for any trace of snide tones, "climb up part of the way and do what exactly?"

Lister bit his lip. "Well if one of us climbed up far enough, both to get a clear shot and within range," he turned his head to face Rimmer's puzzled expression, "we could fire up a distress flare."

Rimmer blinked. "That's a good idea," he eventually replied, expressed more with surprise as opposed to confirmation.

Lister's mildly smug smile fell. "Don't sound too shocked, will you?" he muttered.

Rimmer shook his head, bemused. "No, sorry. It's just – " After an awkward pause he dropped the rest of the sentence and strolled down a different tack after a less than subtle clearing of the throat. "Let's do it then," he said brightly.

The two men stared at one another in silence. Neither of them moved. After at least ten seconds of muted conversing through expectant gazes, Rimmer's eyebrows leapt up and clung to one another for comfort. "Me!"

"Of course you, ya smeghead. Who else?" he snorted, "Ray Shanker?"

Rimmer frowned. "Who the hell is Ray Shanker?"

Lister rolled his eyes. "You must know Ray Shanker! Zero-Gee football player? Highest scorer in the – " He paused. "Look, it doesn't matter right now. What matters is that we need to let them know where we are so we can smegging well get out of here and I can't scale a smegging slope with a busted smegging ankle, can I!"

Lister noticed that Rimmer was leaning away from him almost imperceptibly. Eventually, Rimmer sighed. "Fine. I'll try," he huffed. "But you owe me one," he said, wagging a matriarchal finger at Lister as he fetched two flares from Rimmer's backpack.

"Next time I'm stuck in the depths of Hell with you, I'll get the first round in, okay?" Lister shoved the flares into Rimmer's hand, Rimmer handing him the torch with the other. "Now get your arse up there," he added for good measure.

Rimmer shot him a look that could turn men to stone and tucking the flares between his padded vest and jacket, accepted the linked hands positioned on Lister's knee as a boost. Lister pushed him up as hard as he could and grabbing the first feasible handhold, Rimmer began scaling the slope nervously. Trying to think of anything but his terrible fear of heights after reaching around ten metres high, Rimmer forced a weak smile as he continued to pick his way carefully upwards.

"A Claret would be nice," he called down as he reached out for another handhold, which unfortunately turned out to be a rather stubborn rock that refused to hold his weight. The rock cracked out of the slope and tumbled downwards, pulling with it a collection of loose dirt and grit. Throwing his weight instinctively back towards the previous handhold, he gripped onto it with all his might and remained stock still, vowing never to move again for the rest of eternity.

He heard a voice call up from below. "Shit, Rimmer, are you okay?"

"Dandy!" he called back with as much sarcasm as he could inject into one word.

Lister shook his head. If Rimmer couldn't get much further up, the flare was in danger of ricocheting against the walls, starting off another rockslide, which could bury them for good. Rimmer knew this too, but the dirt was beginning to get more and more unstable the further up he climbed. It was now or never.

Leaning forward and using his torso to support his upper body weight, Rimmer pulled off his gloves with his teeth and fumbled for the first flare. Fishing out the first, he pointed it up and aimed in what he hoped would be the centre of the opening to the planet's surface. Satisfied with the aim, he turned his head away and pulled. The flare screamed upwards, and to Rimmer's surprise, actually managed to bounce its way up and out of the distant hole.

"Fan-smegging-tastic! It's out!" He choked happily through the smoke. "It got out!"

Lister punched the air with his fist. "She riiiiiiiiiiiiiiides!" He did a celebration jig as far as his ankle would allow. "Good job, man. Fire the other one to make sure they get the message to get us the smeg out of here."

Rimmer carefully set up the second flare, trying to remember how he secured the first decent aim in his entire life. A mixture of empty prayer and a hell of a lot of beginner's luck was the most likely cocktail. Yet just as he turned his head and released the second flare, the small foothold that had supported both of his feet for several minutes suddenly gave way. Caught off guard, the flare was fired askew as Rimmer yelled out in surprise, dropping the empty canister in order to scrabble for a new handhold as he slipped and skidded down the slope on his front. Securing a particularly densely packed dirt handhold with grime-streaked, bleeding hands some four or five metres from the ground, he ducked his head down quickly as a shower of loose dirt, sand and grit rained down on his helpless frame.

A voice called to him, muffled, as if it were speaking through glass. "Rimmer, get down! The whole thing's gonna go!"

His entire body quivering with shock, Rimmer peered down to see Lister frantically waving at him. Tipping his head upwards slowly once more, he could see the dust clouds descending as the distant opening turned collapsed in on itself and tumbled towards him.

No time to climb down, screamed his instinct. You want to live? Let go. Now!

Rimmer wanted to live. Yes indeedy. Death may have been all well and good for his other self, but not for him. He let go.

Lister watched helplessly as Rimmer slipped, scrabbled and tumbled down the remainder of the slope. Gathering him up almost as soon as he landed at the bottom, Lister hauled him to his feet and stumbled as fast as they both could muster further into the cave. Without slowing their pace, Lister leant down to snatch his backpack from the floor with his free hand and staggered into the dizzying maze of rock that snaked its way underneath the planet's surface.

As the monstrous load of hard-baked sand and loose stone finally thundered down into the small rock opening where they had once been laying, the pair threw themselves to the ground, hands and arms thrust desperately on heads in protection, praying that they had stumbled far enough into the protection of the rock cave.

As the terrible rumbling gave its final roar and slowly died away in a distant echo, Lister glanced back and immediately wished he hadn't. Their primary method of escape had completely collapsed inwards as the wound that they had left on the surface was healed, re-born as an inconspicuous looking sand dune to the passer-by.

Rimmer, grime and blood-stained hands still gripping his face, let out a few jagged breaths, sobbing, half in shock, half in relief.

Lister turned his gaze towards the maze of rock, their new mode of escape, and allowed the single word that he could think of in such a situation to tumble from his dry, dusty lips.

"Smeg."