Author's Notes: And we're back! On the twenty-seventh anniversary of Series VI airing, I give you Series VI of 'The Unlikeliest Pair'! Easily one of my favorite seasons, along with V. I will (hopefully) be posting once a week, every Wednesday.

A click in the darkness. A click in the perfect silence of non-time. Then a second click, followed by the light, which gradually filled the room with a shallow blue beam as the Deep Sleep unit flared into action and began to drop from the ceiling. The unit landed softly on the deck and its hood hissed back, allowing tendrils of smoke to tumble out of the sleep chamber as the body of a slowly waking man sat upright, his face hidden behind a mad explosion of facial hair.

Scratching his chest with one of his six-inch-long fingernails, he looked around. The cabin seemed familiar yet unfamiliar in about equal parts. He knew it intimately and yet hardly knew it at all. Climbing out of the sleep unit, he found his toenails to be just as long as his finger ones, so he walked awkwardly across the room to a swivel chair and got to work with the electric pencil sharpener to whittle them down.

He caught sight of his reflection and wondered, Who the hell is that?

Thankfully, the pencil sharpener proved up to the task, and he staggered around trying to get his muscles working properly again now that he could walk and pick things up without injury. Once assured he could make it through the door, he put on a pair of boots. He'd worry about the rest later - the t-shirt and shorts he wore now would suffice.

He found a staircase and stepped warily down into a large room covered in grime and rust, and yet, bits of it seemed brand new. A large flatbed scanner table sat in the middle of the room, lit up with blinking lights against a green surface, and four swivel chairs sat around it. Walls of computer screens and keyboards surrounded him, with three doors against three of the four walls. One led to what appeared to be a cockpit, complete with four workstations and a plexiglas viewscreen, the opposite one led to a tiny yet cozy-looking kitchen, maybe big enough for two people, and the middle one took up the entire wall and bore the label, "AIRLOCK".

So, a spaceship, then. Bloody lovely.

As he took all this in, he noticed a strange man with a head shaped like a chewed up rubber-tipped pencil waddle in carrying a cube of garbage to another small door labeled 'WASTE DISPOSAL'. His entire body seemed a mishmash of metal, plastic and tinfoil. Then, he realized this man could only possibly be a mechanoid.

The mech gave him a plastic smile. "Welcome back online, sir!" he said brightly, dumping the cube in the waste disposal and jettisoning it. "How are you feeling?"

"... So, you know me?"

"You have a touch of amnesia. That's not uncommon after a prolonged period in Deep Sleep. You have been out for over two hundred years."

"Two hundred years?!"

"Well, I tried to wake you up in the spring, but you absolutely insisted on another three months." He popped into the kitchen and brought out some food. "I've just been preparing your breakfast tray. French toast, scrambled eggs and a glass of ice water with approximately five ice cubes."

"Approximately?"

"You're very particular about breakfast, sir. Quite particular about a lot of things, actually."

"Am I?"

"Oh yes. You're very appreciative of having everything orderly and in its proper place. That's why your underpants hang from coat hangers."

"I see… I'm strange, then?"

"Oh, I am but a mere mechanoid, sir. Hardly my place to judge a human in his habits."

"Does that stop you?"

"Shall I put the kettle on, sir?"

As he watched the mech scurry back into the kitchen, he heard footsteps from upstairs and looked up to find a man in a black PVC bodysuit, an orange flannel jacket and stylish boots came gliding down the stairs after him. His hair swept up into a pompadour, and he had two long eye-teeth that twinkled when he smiled. "Who the hell's that?" he demanded.

"That's Mr. Rimmer, sir," Kryten explained, popping his head out briefly. "The other human one I mentioned."

"Ugle-e-e-e-e."

"My name is 'Rimmer'?"

"Arnold Judas Rimmer, sir."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Why, no, sir."

Rimmer pinched the bridge of his nose in despair. It just kept getting worse. "And who are you?" he asked the man in front of him.

"Apparently, I'm descended from cats," the other man said. "And according to jello head here, I'm incredibly vain, self-obsessed and only interested in myself." He plucked a spoon off the table and admired his reflection. "Looking sharp, though, am I right?" he howled proudly and danced out of the room to the cockpit.

Kryten emerged from the kitchen and checked on him. "Feeling any familiarity, sir?"

"None," Rimmer muttered, taking a bite of the toast. "Although, I do feel a twinge of irritation at the two of you."

"Oh, good. It's all coming back now." Kryten pulled out a wooden chest and set it on the table in front of him. "Here we are - your personal artifacts. Perhaps this will help."

Rimmer looked at the old camphor wood chest and popped open the lid, peering inside. He found a few books, a handful of toy soldiers and a box marked 'Rachel'.

"Who's Rachel?" he asked.

"I'm afraid she's unavailable until we get a new puncture repair kit, sir," Kryten replied. "But here - perhaps this will help." He plucked out a painting and handed it to him.

Rimmer's eyes darted across the watercolor painting with intrigue. "A painting? Where'd I get this?"

"From you, sir! You painted it!"

"Did I?"

"Indeed, sir. You noted how beautifully blue the atmospheric rim of the planetoid was."

"So I can paint? Is that my job?"

"Regretfully, sir, no. You only took up painting after your quest to become an officer in the Space Corps completely and utterly fell apart."

Rimmer blinked. "My what?"

"If I recall your stories correctly, your father was a half-crazed military failure who forced you and your brothers to become officers in the Space Corps. While your brothers enjoyed fame and success, you never became more than a chicken soup machine repairman. You spent many years struggling to achieve the dreams your father forced on you before you finally realized the futility and explored other interests."

"Well, that's a relief," Rimmer said. "How long did it take me to come to my senses?"

"Not counting time spent in suspended animation, sir, roughly thirty-one years."

Rimmer felt his face sag with disbelief. "That long?"

"I'm afraid their influence remained strong on you, sir."

"So you're telling me that I'm an anal, neurotic, parent-disappointing goit with toy soldiers, a paint brush and… a blow up doll?!"

"Welcome back, Mr. Rimmer, sir! We have missed you!"

Kryten reached into the fridge and pulled out a small device frozen in a block of ice. He popped it in the tea kettle, waited a few seconds, and then pulled it out again with a pair of cooking tongs.

"What's that?"

"This is Miss Kochanski, sir. This is her light bee - she's a hologram."

That name rang a bell in Rimmer's memory. "Kochanski… Is she my girlfriend?"

Kryten's plastic features shifted into a look of immense distaste. "Sir, you are sick!" he said, pulling out a hypodermic gun. "Perhaps a shot of synaptic enhancer will do the trick." He dug through Rimmer's unruly long beard and placed it against a vein on his neck, shooting a blast of the serum into his bloodstream.

Kryten took the light bee and placed it on the floor, tapping a few buttons on a wall console. The light bee slowly floated awkwardly into the air until some three feet off the floor. Some imagery crackled across the screen. "Download physical form," he said to the voice-command unit and watched as Kochanski's black-and-white image crackled into existence. Five-foot-four with shoulder-length light-brown hair, ruby red lipstick, and a red jacket that met halfway across a slight gut with a matching pair of red trousers.

Rimmer observed that while she was far from unattractive, he felt more of a sisterly-vibe from her than anything else.

"Access personality banks," Kryten murmured into the VC unit. A series of bar charts appeared on the screen. "Download characteristics. Load standards." A tall orange bar began to shrink down and fill up the outline of a person on the screen. "Load patience." An even taller red bar shrank down. "Load neuroses." A green bar revealed itself to have several layers that each shrunk down, one after the other. "Load memory."

Kochanski's face spasmed briefly with a flurry of different facial expressions as her memories poured into her brain, and after a moment, she smiled as she took her final form.

"Oh, that Kochanski," Rimmer said as the synaptic enhancer suddenly hit the spot. "Oh god, that Kochanski," he repeated, acquiring a wry grin.

She grinned wryly back at him, looking him up and down. "I take it the Hobo Festival was a hit?"

A few hours later, with everyone's memories restored, and Rimmer freshly-shaven and dressed, he, Cat and Kryten sat around the scanner table while Kochanski marched up and down with her hands behind her back. "Now, gentlemen," she declared. "As you are all aware, we have lost…" She paused to snap her fingers, and the scanner table projected a three-dimensional image above them of… "...Red Dwarf," she finished.

"Yes, thanks, Kris," said Rimmer. "We all know what the ship looks like."

She sneered at him and snapped her fingers, making the image disappear. "Right then," she said. "We need to figure out who took our ship and why."

"Who'd steal a gigantic red trash can with no brakes and three million years on the clock?" asked the Cat between bites of toast.

"Considering how beastly and depraved most of the life forms we encounter are, the sky's the limit."

Kryten nodded in agreement. "Indeed, it's only now after almost two centuries that we've finally caught up with them." He pressed a button on the scanner table, and a holographic image of Red Dwarf returned, only now, an image of Starbug joined it, along with a row of asteroids. "They've been forced to circumnavigate around this asteroid belt," he explained. They watched as the Red Dwarf image went over the asteroid belt. "Starbug, however, is small enough to navigate through it," he continued, maneuvering the little green dot through the swirl of brown dots. "We find ourselves with an opportunity to 'head them off at the pass', as it were, and recover Holly."

"Right," Rimmer drawled, "and the odds of us navigating through all those asteroids without being hit by so much as a pebble and being sucked into the cold heartless void of space are what, exactly?"

"We don't have a lot of choices, Rimmer," Kochanski pointed out. "Even with the provisions we brought on board, it's not going to last us forever. I'm on battery backup, water - if we use recyc - seven weeks…"

"Not to mention the matter of all my suits being in danger," Cat agreed. "I say we go for it."

Realizing how badly outnumbered he was, Rimmer held up his hands in surrender. "Fine," he said, "but when we're all splattered against the colander of our ship because of a stray pebble, don't come crying to me."

"There's an old cat saying: 'it's better to have spent one day as a tiger than a whole lifetime as a worm'."

"There's an old human saying: 'whoever heard of a worm skin rug'?"

During his two centuries alone on the 'Bug, Kryten put his skills at redecorating to good use. The cockpit alone proved he still had the talent for a DIY program, with four stations for each of them to make use of. Cat took the helm with the pilot controls while Rimmer sat next to him as co-pilot and Kochanski at the navigation console, with Kryten manning the science desk.

Cat's instincts came in handy, all right. He deftly dodged Starbug around the asteroids, including one that sent a volley of flame in their direction. They staggered from the change in direction, but they stayed alive. His nasal intuition even paid off when he 'smelled' an asteroid coming up so large they couldn't get around. Fortunately, Kryten had plenty of garbage cubes loaded with nitroglycerin to fire at such targets, enabling them to pass on with minimal trouble.

All went well until they found all the crashed ships. Immediately, they brought Starbug to a halt and launched the scouter. Within minutes, they had their answers. After reviewing the black boxes of a few ships, they uncovered that a new breed of GELFs lived in this asteroid belt, known as Psirens. With the ability to alter your perception telepathically, they could lure you down and suck your brains out with thick metal straws.

During the briefing, they received a transmission that the Cat answered. Two temptresses with sultry voices begged for someone to come down and have sex with all of three thousand of them. Thankfully, the others kept him from leaving the craft, but it proved a solid example of what the Psirens had in their repertoire.

Kochanski rolled her eyes as another message came through. "Okay," she said. "Let's see what they've got."

The screen crackled into life, and she saw a woman covered in grime and oil carrying a communicator in one hand while firing a laser pistol in the other. She looked directly at them and reported, "Can anyone read me? This is Captain Tau of the SCS Pioneer. We're under attack from some kind of scavengers - Psirens. They lured us onto this god-forsaken asteroid - killed most of the crew."

Kochanski's brow furrowed as she tried to tell fact from fiction before looking at the others. "What do you think? Real or not real?"

"It's a better effort than the 'seed spreaders', I'll give them that," said Rimmer with a shrug.

They heard a yell of pain and looked back just in time to see the woman die from a laser to the back. As she fell, the camera panned down to her body. A hand came onscreen and rolled her over, only for the camera to pan upwards to reveal…

"Don't worry about us," Dave Lister said, a cigarette dangling from his lip and a heavy-duty gun perched on his shoulder. "Save yourselves. No point in all of us dying."

Kochanski's heart started beating faster. "Dave?!"

Lister did a doubletake to the camera. "Wait… Krissie?!"

"I thought you were dead!"

"I thought you were dead!" He raised his gun to the camera. "No way. No chance in hell is it you. This is another trick, isn't it?! You're another damn Psiren! How many more times am I gonna have to see you before they leave me alone?!"

"Dave, no, I'm me! Really! I swear!" Her thoughts carried her away in a roaring river of hope. It had been too long since she'd last heard his voice.

"Stop it! I won't fall for it! You damn Psirens want my brain?! Well, how would you like it if I deep-fried it with a laser? Eh?" he asked, putting the gun to his head. "You wanna take that chance?!"

"No! Stop! I'll prove it's me!" Kochanski shouted before turning to the others. "Kryten - bazookoids! Rimmer - plot a course!"

"Kris - tune into Sanity FM!" Rimmer shouted back.

She stopped just short of the cockpit, breathing hard and very cautious. "What, you're saying that's the… Psirens?"

"Of course! It's as plain as a Bulgarian pin-up!"

She swallowed heavily. "You're sure about that?"

"Come on, even the real Lister wouldn't be that melodramatic! It had all the slush and emptiness of an American soap opera! Next, he'll get run over by a taxi!"

Kochanski took several deep breaths and wished she could lean against something. "God…," she muttered. "Can't believe I almost…"

Rimmer exchanged a look with Kryten before gingerly approaching her. "It's okay. That's the whole point of these things. We just have to be on our toes, okay?"

She gave a silent nod, still shaken.

Fortunately, Cat came in with an announcement from the cockpit. Out in the void of space, a giant flaming meteorite blazed its way straight for them on a direct collision course. They attempted to plot a course change when Kryten noticed how dry the radar seemed to be. With Cat not registering any smell off of it, he suggested it to be another illusion, and to their irritation, he turned out to be right.

Of course, when they weren't looking, a second one suddenly popped up and sent them crashing to the nearest asteroid before they had a chance to react. Fortunately, the crash wasn't serious, and they found minimal damage done.

"The left landing stanchion is buried up to the joint," Kryten announced. "We're going to have to get out there and blast it free."

Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Guess that'll be me, then," he sighed, already making to leave.

"Sir, the atmosphere is thin, and this place is likely to be crawling with Psirens!"

"Then keep the motor running. Be ready to engage 'leg it mode' the minute you hear my petrified scream." He exited the cockpit and headed for the nearest supply cabinet.

A few minutes later, Rimmer wore a lightweight spacesuit and fired a welding gun at the landing leg. Bits of rock flew away with each blast, revealing more of the scratched green paint as he went. He took another suck of air from his breathing pipe before taking one last shot. It looked half-decent. He held up the communicator on his wrist.

"How about now?"

"Looking good," Cat's voice replied. "We'll clear the rest on take-off."

"Good. On my way back."

Rimmer slung the welding gun over his shoulder and made the trek back to the airlock. The dim light made it difficult to tell if any Psirens lurked nearby, but he couldn't hear anything, so he determinedly made his way.

"Hi, Arnie!"

He froze. The voice sounded familiar. Vaguely Brazillian. Where did he know that from?

He shouldn't look. He knew that. Once he looked, he'd be playing their game. But the nostalgic tug of that voice made him look anyway.

A beautiful woman with a dark complexion and long flowing raven-colored hair smiled back at him, wearing a black bikini with fishnet stockings and heels.

"Oh god…," he moaned. "Janine, my sister-in-law."

"It's been a long time, Arnie," she smiled, showing off her pearly white bicuspids. "Remember the long days you spent thinking of me? All that time gazing at the photo of me and Frank, with his face cut out and yours taped in?"

Rimmer quietly thanked whatever higher deities existed that Kochanski remained unaware of this.

She began to approach him. "You dreamed of the day you would steal me from him. The day you finally got what your brother had."

Rimmer levelled his welding gun. "All right, Barbarella - stay right there. No more sultry skulking towards me."

Janine smiled that warm smile that always made his heart flutter. "How many times have you made love to a woman?"

Rimmer swallowed. "I confess, I'm inexperienced in that field."

"Twice in your entire lifetime, and one of them was a hologram. That's hardly enough."

"I was never all that interested in sex, to be perfectly honest. Not much sex drive. Probably all that school cabbage I was forced to eat as a boy."

He suddenly realized that at some point during his ramble, she'd gotten her long slender fingers into his curly brown hair, gently teasing it. "You just needed to meet the right woman," she purred seductively. "And here I am - all yours, Ace."

Rimmer would later reflect he didn't even remember letting his welding gun fall. "Oh god," he murmured. "What the hell is wrong with me?"

Her smile stretched with undeniable smugness. "I'll give you exactly what you want, precisely how you imagined it, and then I'll blow your mind," she whispered, closing the gap between them.

Rimmer whimpered. In the back of his mind, he knew precisely what she was - an insectoid genetically engineered life form that vaguely resembled a dung beetle. Still, he reflected, it felt more natural than kissing Kochanski.

Abruptly, she pulled away, looking startled, and then a few blinks later, Janine disappeared, replaced by a Psiren who now had a harpoon sticking through its body before it flopped to the ground, dead.

On the other end of the harpoon stood Kryten, who stumbled slightly as he let go of it and let the Psiren fall wriggling to the ground as it died. The mech hurried over to Rimmer and helped him along.

"Come on, Arnold! Let's get out of here!"

Rimmer's head felt dizzy after the kiss. The lack of oxygen to his brain tempered his ability to think rationally. He took a brief puff off his breathing pipe when it suddenly occurred to him. Since when did Kryten ever refer to him by his first name?

Still lightheaded from oxygen deprivation, he made a dive for the discarded welding gun. He snatched it up and whirled around, coming face-to-face with a metal straw. He wasted no time in firing a couple rounds. The illusion ended as the Psiren died on the ground.

Rimmer's head lolled back briefly as he heard the real Kryten's voice over his wristwatch.

"Sir? Is everything okay out there?" Kryten asked.

"Standby with the airlock," Rimmer replied. "Just had to get around a couple of Psirens."

...

"Are you okay?" Kochanski asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine… Although, I'm forced to admit, the TV weather girl from Channel 27 is a tad distracting right now."

"Okay, down boy. Blast your way past and get up here."

They waited for his reply, but none came.

"Rimmer?"

"Just a mo. I'm waiting to see where she puts the stick."

"Rimmer!"

They heard the sound of gunfire over the radio, and Rimmer's annoyed response a moment later. "Coming, mother."

Kryten went down to the airlock and pressed the necessary buttons. He saw Rimmer's nostrils fill the nearby internal monitor. Satisfied, he opened the door, and he stepped in.

"Right, time to make tracks," Rimmer said, dusting himself as he entered.

To their surprise, Rimmer's nostrils filled the screen once more. "Hey, wait a minute! I'm still out here! Let me in!"

Kryten doubletook at the screen, then looked frantically between the two Rimmers. "I'm afraid, sir, that you're already here!"

The indoor-Rimmer pulled Kryten from the door. "Don't let him in, Kryten! That's an order!"

The outdoor-Rimmer replied, "Let me in, Kryten! That's an order!"

Kochanski came into the mid-section and groaned at the sight. "Oh, come on!"

"Apologies, ma'am. Seems we've fallen for the oldest trick in the book."

"Right, well, let the other one in and let's get going before a third one shows up."

"Are you insane?!" asked the Rimmer in front of her. "Then we'll definitely have a psiren onboard! A psychotic slobbering temporal lobe slurper!"

"I'm sorry, sir, but there's a fifty percent chance we've already got one onboard. I'm opening the hatch," said Kryten as he stabbed the button.

"On your square head be it," the Rimmer replied.

The second Rimmer entered the airlock and nodded gratefully to the others while also eyeing the first one suspiciously.

After giving Cat the order to get them back in the air, Kochanski ordered Kryten to watch them with a rad pistol until the feline could be spared to also aim a weapon at them.

As the two Rimmers argued over which one was the fake, Kochanski and Kryten stood off to the side while Cat guarded them.

"So what do you think, Krytie?" Kochanski asked. "How do we tell which is which?"

"Difficult to say, ma'am," the mech replied worriedly. "The Psiren can read his mind and knows everything he knows."

"So the only way to know for sure is if one of them is carrying a metal straw."

"And it could easily disguise the straw with telepathy."

Kochanski hissed frustration out through her teeth. Her mind raced, trying to think of some kind of weakness to exploit. There had to be something, but if what Kryten said was true, they had no chance of outsmarting this thing.

Turning on her heel, she re-entered the mid-section where the Cat continued to guard the two Rimmers, who stood on either side of the scanner table as they continued to look at each other with unmasked contempt.

"Okay," she said at last. "Since you're essentially the same person right now, there's only one thing for it. We're going to lock one of you in the brig and keep a security camera on you."

Both Rimmers looked extremely put out. "Kris, for smeg's sake!" they said in perfect unison.

Kochanski continued. "The other shall remain with us under constant supervision, with weapons in plain view. Any attempts by the Psiren to attack the rest of us shall naturally result in the Psiren's untimely demise. Clear?"

"Kris, come on!" the first Rimmer said.

"For crying out loud!" said the second.

Cat kept a steady grip on his bazookoid trigger. "So which of these dudes is first?" he asked.

"Kryten - flip a coin," Kochanski ordered.

"Right away, ma'am," the mech replied, pulling out a coin from the junk drawer.

The two Rimmers watched anxiously as the mech readied the coin on his fist.

Kochanski pointed to the first Rimmer. "You - call it."

The first Rimmer floundered for a moment. "Heads. I mean… no, wait, tai - no, heads! No! Stop! I haven't chosen yet!"

Kochanski pointed to the other Rimmer. "You - call it."

"Tails!" said the other Rimmer. "No, I mean…!"

"Can't we just waste both of 'em?" Cat complained.

Kochanski sighed. "Heads, the first one stays. Tails, the second one stays. Kryten - toss."

Kryten flipped the coin into the air, caught it on his palm and held it out for all to see. "Tails," he announced.

"Yes!" the second Rimmer exclaimed.

"Wait, no!" the first Rimmer objected. "Hold your horses! Kris, it's me! I swear!"

Kochanski ignored him. "Kryten, keep a rad gun on the winner. Cat, let's guide the other to the brig."

"Since when does Starbug have a brig?!" the first Rimmer complained.

"Well, actually, sir, it's less of a brig and more of a broom cupboard," Kryten replied, holding the other one at bay.

"Don't fret," said Kochanski. "We'll swap you out after twelve hours." She pointed at the other. "And you - don't look so smug. For all we know, you're the Psiren."

"I'm really not!" said the second Rimmer pathetically.

Cat and Kochanski guided the first Rimmer into the broom cupboard. "We'll have Kryten bring you food and supplies later," said Kochanski. "And we'll be monitoring you the whole time, so if we see any behavior deemed 'un-Rimmer-like', we'll see it."

"Kris, you can't be serious!"

"Deadly serious. Now get inside."

The first Rimmer lolled his head like a spoiled child and stomped into the cupboard. He had just enough room to sit on an overturned bucket and lean against a wall, crossing his arms petulantly.

Feeling a stab of uneasy sympathy, Kochanski knelt down. "Look, if you're human, then you're safer in here. The Psiren wants your brain, and it won't be able to reach you in here. Especially not if we're guarding it."

"And what happens if it overpowers the three of you?" the maybe-Rimmer asked.

"It won't. Now - get comfy. We've got work to do."

Cat closed the door and activated the lock, and all they heard from behind the door was an intensely unhappy sigh.

Kochanski and Cat re-entered the mid-section, where they found Kryten still pointing his gun at the other Rimmer, who stood calmly with his hands behind his back.

"Everything all right in here?" asked Kochanski.

Kryten's mouth twitched slightly, but he said, "Everything's fine, ma'am. No trouble here."

"Good. Cat - with me. We're going to see about steering around this asteroid field."

"What about me?" protested the other-maybe-Rimmer.

"Sorry, I don't trust you around the controls yet. Kryten - keep guarding him for now. Once we're out of this belt, we'll start rotating watch duty."

"Of course, ma'am," Kryten replied.

The two of them departed to the cockpit, leaving Kryten alone with the maybe-Rimmer.

The Rimmer smiled. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Kryten glared. "You can't keep it up forever."

The other Rimmer rippled briefly, and a moment later, he had become a woman with glasses, a sexy lab coat and her hair in a bun. "Now, now, Kryten," the woman said. "You know I'm the only person whose orders you can't ignore. That synthetic brain of yours is hardwired to obey my every command."

"Unless the others return."

"Now that they are certain that they have the situation at hand, I no longer need you," she smiled. "Cease speaking."

Kryten opened his mouth to protest, but then, almost instantly, his lips snapped shut.

"Quietly place your weapon on the scanner table."

Kryten tried to voice his protest as he put the rad pistol on the table, frantically trying to resist.

"Remove your head."

Kryten gave a muffled yelp as his arms unscrewed his head and held it like a ball.

"Place it in the waste disposal."

Kryten's body walked across to the waste disposal hatch and pressed the button. The angular pink head squealed and wailed frantically behind its shut lips.

"Engage the mechanism," the woman said with a cruel smile.

Kryten's body flailed briefly, trying to resist, but alas, his fingers pressed the button, and the hatch door closed around it, sending it flying into space with a loud whoosh!

"Kryten, what was that?" Kochanski's voice called out.

The Psiren cursed briefly before running through another hatch, hoping to find the broom cupboard in time.

Kochanski and Cat ran back into the mid-section and found Kryten's headless body stumbling around, bumping into things as it went.

"Oh for god's sake!" Kochanski shouted. "Where the hell is it?"

The headless mech shrugged helplessly.

"Where's your head?"

It pointed vaguely at the waste disposal unit.

"Smegging hell," she hissed angrily.

"So what do we do now?!" Cat exclaimed, already picking the bazookoid back up.

"We need to get Rimmer and… and… and…"

"And what?!"

Suddenly, Kochanski's image began to lose color, and interference lines ran up and down her body. "My battery's going…!" she croaked. "Only got a few seconds left… Need a recharge."

Like an ancient television, her image blinked off, and her light bee fell, with the Cat's reflexes being the only thing saving it from clattering on the floor. He looked at it for a moment before realizing that everything was down to him now.

"I could be napping right now," he muttered, pocketing the bee and making tracks to the lower levels.

Kryten's headless body bounced off the central computer column before tripping over the steps to the cockpit.

The Psiren knew exactly where to find the broom cupboard. Having shared Rimmer's memories, it knew exactly where to look. Skulking along the corridor, it briefly wished it had the skills of a polymorph. At least those squidgy little freaks had the ability to really shapeshift. It could grow a proper pair of legs and make the trip much quicker. Alas, it had been created to simply alter one's perception of it instead. One must make do with what one has been given, or some smeg like that.

It waddled awkwardly along towards the door. It recalled from Rimmer's memory how to undo the lock. It rubbed its feelers against the buttons, pressing the necessary twelve-digit code. The lock gave a happy little 'ding!' before sliding open.

The Psiren pulled out its straw in eager anticipation.

It found the cupboard empty. A ventilation shaft in the ceiling had been opened and swung silently back and forth.

In the mid-section, another shaft cover popped open from the ceiling, and Rimmer lowered himself down feet first, climbing down the central computer column. Once his boots touched the floor, he dusted himself off and immediately noticed Kryten's headless body lying slumped on the floor.

"I'm gone for two minutes," Rimmer grumbled, running over and helping it up. "Kryten, where the hell's your head?"

The headless mech pointed once again at the waste disposal unit.

Then, to Rimmer's surprise, he heard a tapping sound against the automatic door of the chute. Hoping against hope it meant what he thought it meant, Rimmer opened the waste door and found the angular pink head of Kryten peering back at him.

"Ah, Mr Rimmer, sir! You escaped!"

"Seems you did, too," said Rimmer, peering down at him. "Didn't it try to flush you into space?"

"Indeed, sir. Fortunately, I was able to hang on to the rim of the disposal unit with my teeth."

"Well, let's get you back together and find the others," Rimmer said, taking the metal head out.

They heard a loud angry screech from the engine room.

"No time, sir!" said Kryten. "Just take me with you! We must hurry!"

Rimmer took the head and barrelled down the hatch to the engine room.

Cat prowled around, trying to sniff out the Psiren, but he figured a creature that could pretend to be something else and fake radar readouts would be able to disguise its scent as well. Still, he sniffed the air for anything out of the ordinary.

After a few more sniffs, he detected something - perfume.

Swallowing, Cat turned and aimed his bazookoid at the smell. He found himself face-to-face with one of the temptresses from the first illusion. Specifically, the brunette.

"You didn't answer our distress call," she smiled.

Cat tried to keep his thoughts clear. "I know what you are now," he said shakily. "You damn vixens never give up."

She took a sultry step towards him, her studded skirt glistening in the red-and-green lighting of the engine room. "We don't," she purred, "and neither do you. You know you want it to be true. Why fight it?"

Cat stood his ground, still aiming his bazookoid. "No…," he said with great uncertainty. "You ain't coming anywhere near my brain."

But she just kept coming. "Come on. Stop using logic. It doesn't suit a damn-good-looking guy like yourself."

Cat cursed his vanity as he felt the bazookoid slowly lower. "Damn it," he grunted. "You really do know all my buttons."

"Indeed," she smiled deviously. "Perhaps I should press them some more."

From behind, Rimmer skidded up with Kryten's head. He could see the Cat holding the bazookoid at the large insectoid creature, but his loosening grip suggested he wouldn't hold out for much longer.

"Quickly, sir! Attack!" Kryten cried.

"I don't have a weapon!" Rimmer reminded him.

"Sure, you do! Me!"

It took a moment for Rimmer to catch on, but when he did, he didn't waste any time. He went into the wind up, aimed carefully, and threw Kryten's head down the corridor and into the back of the Psiren's head.

The Psiren whirled around, startled and in pain, spotting Rimmer. Its concentration lost, it also lost the power of illusion over the Cat just long enough for him to see it for what it really was. The feline loaded his bazookoid and fired relentlessly on it, sending it crashing to the ground. It writhed in agony for a few seconds until the laser finally put it down permanently.

A few hours later, everyone sat at their stations as the last few asteroids zoomed past. The vast empty star field looked very welcoming after dodging and weaving all day.

"That's it," said Rimmer. "We're clear of the belt."

Kochanski sighed with relief. "Okay," she said, looking at her radar screen. "Red Dwarf's vapor trail heads into that gas nebula."

"Then that's where we're heading," said Cat, taking the controls.

"I fear this will last much longer than I anticipated," mused Kryten.

"Well, we'll survive it," replied Rimmer. "No sense in losing our heads over it."

The others sniggered while Kryten pouted at his desk.

Author's Notes: All right, we're off and running! Next week: Legion!