Chapter 18
Lister at "Mudd Baths" End

Dave Lister, the last human alive by some mysterious quirk of fate had become impregnated and now carries twin boys. A quest to save his unborn offspring and himself from certain death, had led him onto a path, which would lead him to certain death, and quite a miserable one at that, in just over twelve minutes.

"Horrible painful asphyxiation, buried alive on an Asteroid called Fred.
Not exactly the way I would have chosen, had I a choice." Dave thought to himself. "Unless I can somehow manage to escape from this serpentine of intestines and get a fresh oxygen supply pronto, I'm dog meat."
For some unknown reason the rush of mud had seemed to slow down and Lister had managed to grab hold of something solid in the murk. He pounded away at his present "ceiling" with his feet, in a desperate hope to break on through to the other side. But to no avail.

As suddenly as it slowed mud started to move again and Lister was torn from his perch. Not unlike a canary in a house with three cats, and the misses has gone out to the cinema.
Ten minutes.

Fred was currently more active than he had been in years, So much in fact that if good old Fred had any peers who could talk they would tell you the same. Or at least something similar.

Fred was fulfilling a mission. Not a mission that he was happy with. Not something he would brag about in conversation, at least not in polite conversation. All in all it had given him a sense of satisfaction. Asteroids are like the elderly and the permanently baffled, they like to be of use, feel as though their doing something. Contributing something no matter how small. Still it wasn't the island paradise he had always secretly hoped for. Sure he openly rebelled against his mother's wishes, but that is the folly and the innocence of youth, had he it all to do over. "Ah well, what's the use he thought." and doubled the strength of the mudd flow which was currently playing with Lister like he beach ball he was.

Nine minutes
Inside a particularly wide pool, within the belly of the beast as it were, Lister swirled around in slow loose circles. The size of the great flooded cavern he was in slowed the current, allowing Lister a brief respite.
"Think man! Think!" Thought Lister as he frog swam through the green ooze, until he hit something solid.
"Ow!"
Holding on with eyes closed he tried to get a sense of balance, a sensation of the small gravitational pull from the center of Fred.

Eight Minutes.
"O.K. I got it", thought Lister. as he opened his eyes he started groping about the solid parts around his mud pool. Looking for a piece that he could break off.

Seven Minutes.
With the muds flow down to a trickle Dave systematically worked his gloved hands over the solid rock looking for something to give way.

Six minutes.
"Nothing so far all smooth," he thought. His hand was held ever so lightly In place by a light vacuums pulling it towards an unseen fissure in the rock.
"What the smeg?" Lister replied, and pulled his hand out and resumed his searched.

Five Minutes.
Dave was thinking "Nothing! Smeging Hell! All's tighter than a bank managers purse strings", when something came loose. A stalagmite the size of a cricket bat pulled free of it's natural moorings giving him a fighting chance.

Four Minutes.
Returning to the area where again Lister was able to feel the pull from
the fissure's vacuums, he started to work. Guiding his rock like bat with his
right, and pushing inward with his left he resembled a pregnant man
in a space suit ramming a cricket bat sized stalagmite into the side of a cavern wall in slow motion. Through the green gray all around him he couldn't see a thing. But could sense quite as bit.

Three minutes.
Within Dave's space suit it was starting to get warm, and the air ever so stale. Dave did not think about this, he kept hammering onward at the fissure in the rock. Nor did he think about the sweat that was now covering his body. He could feel the effect his constant pounding was having as the vacuums became stronger and stronger. He was close.
"I only hope to smeg that this leads to somewhere." Was all Dave thought.

Two minutes
With a the effort of a water buffalo doing a tap dance while simultaneously having personal relations with a cocker spaniel Lister
broke though to something that could only be called the outside. Unfortunately in his excitement he had rushed and slipped, and the current which was now quite strong pinned him within the very hole he was digging only moments earlier. Green gray mud flowed past him where it could.
Like some over stuffed toy Lister's lower half perturbed sideways outside
a wall of the crater that the Cat was nearing.

"What the hell is that" said the Cat. As a new geyser started out of a wall only a hundred meters away or so, but was quickly blocked up by Lister. The Cat changed his course as to investigate the strain phenomenon.

In abject panic Lister was thrashing about as hard as a pregnant man who is trying not to damage his space suit while simultaneously wedged between life and multiple deaths thorough a wall of an asteroid called Fred in deep space. Which when you come to think about it, really isn't very hard. To Lister he was a wiry fish trying to snap an angler's hundred and fifty pound tension steel shank fishing line.

One minute
A poorly digested piece of cabbage moved through Lister's colon just enough for a small pocket of gas to relieve itself from its current position, and consequently freed the trapped Lister from his hole in the cavern wall.
The pressure had built up quite a bit by this time and Lister was spat out with a great plop an sent flying through space. Strait as a missile towards the unsuspecting Cat.

"Oh !" was Lister the human cannon ball's response.