Better Than Life

  This one, he reckoned, ranked number four. The squashing to death of forty skutters now eased into Rimmer's horror charts, just above accidentally shooting his father through the shoulder with his own service revolver, and just below the time he inadvertently reversed over his Aunt Belinda's show poodle.

  With half the skutters destroyed, it was now impossible to start up the engines in time.

  There was only one option left.

  Abandon ship.

  FOUR

  Lister and the Cat, suspended in neighbouring medi-suits, stared up at the video monitor on the ceiling.

  Bored wasn't the word for it.

  They'd been cooped up in the MU for the best part of three weeks, and Kryten still insisted they stay put.

  They were sick of being sick. And the more they recovered, the worse the feeling got.

  Part of the problem was that they'd spent almost two years in Better Than Life, and they were both used to getting anything they wanted, the instant they wanted it. They'd forgotten the countless delays, compromises and general inconveniences of reality.

  For Lister, the BTL cold turkey was compounded by the fact that he was now twenty-seven.

  Twenty-seven!

  He was a codger!

  Twenty-seven and heading into beer-gut country. Soon, he'd be one of those sad old farts who have to play squash to keep fit. And drink mineral water. And know about calories.

  Twenty-seven.

  A has-been.

  In three years, he'd be practically senile. He'd be thirty. It was too depressing for words.

  So he lay, grumpily, in his medi-suit, alongside the Cat, with nothing to do except read old comics and watch videos. The only video they both agreed was an indisputable classic was the Flintstones, which they watched for fifteen or sixteen hours every day. After perhaps ninety hours of watching the Flintstones, something strange seemed to happen to Lister.

  'Cat,' he grunted, without removing his eyes from the screen.

  'Umf?' the Cat grunted back.

  'Is it me, or is Wilma Flintstone incredibly sexy?'

  The Cat swivelled and looked at him, then turned his head back to the screen.

  'Wilma Flintstone,' he said with quiet authority, 'is without question the most desirable woman who ever lived.'

  Lister looked at him, to see if he was serious. He was. 'That's good,' he said. 'I thought I was going a bit whacko. What d'you think of Betty?'

  'Betty Rubble?' The Cat mulled it over. 'We-ell, I would go with Betty,' he said, then added wistfully: 'but I'd be thinking of Wilma.'

  They both lapsed into silent reverie.

  'What are we doing?' Lister said, finally. 'I think we've been in the medical unit for too long. Why are we talking about making love to Wilma Flintstone?'

  'You're right,' the Cat agreed. 'We're nuts. This is an insane conversation.'

  Lister shook his head, sadly. 'She'd never leave Fred, and we know it.'

  Kryten's face, when it appeared through the recovery bay's hatchway, was simultaneously wearing two expressions. The bottom half was calm, benign and kindly; the top half, his eyes and forehead, was shot through with panic.

  'And how are you two feeling?' he said soothingly, his voice obviously siding with all the features south of his nose.

  Lister and the Cat grunted non-committally.

  'Now, there's absolutely no reason for concern, but we're going to have to move you,' he said, and began loosening the medi-suit support straps.

  'Why?'

  'No reason. Just keep resting and getting better. That's all you have to worry about.'

  'I don't want to be moved,' the Cat protested. 'I want to watch the Flintstones. This is the one where Fred and Barney go away, and Wilma and Betty are left alone.'

  Kryten pushed the hover stretcher parallel with his bed. 'Just lie back and relax. We're going to go on a little walk.'

  'Where to?'

  'Nowhere in particular. I just thought it would be nice.'

  'Kryten - what's going on?'

  'The medicomp said no stress. Now just try and get some sleep.'

  'Kryten, I'm not getting on that stretcher until you tell me what's going on.'

  Kryten smiled. 'If you absolutely must know, there's a tiny little planet that might be possibly heading on a collision course with us. But there's absolutely nothing to worry about,' he said, soothingly.

  'A planet!?'

  'It's only a small planet.'

  'Why doesn't the ship just get out of the way?'

  'The engines are sort of deadish, but that's not a matter that should concern you. Now please, get on the stretcher.'

  Lister tried to wrestle himself upright in his medi-suit. 'Why don't we make the engines sort of un-deadish?'

  'We can't,' Kryten smiled benignly.

  'What does Holly say?'

  'Well, Holly's sort of deadish, too. Now please, get on the stretcher, and try and relax.'

  Lister and the Cat sat bolt upright, rigid with panic. 'What are we going to do, then?'

  'We are going to go on a nice little walk down to the cargo bay and then, depending on how we're all feeling, who knows, we might even do a spot of abandoning shipping.' Kryten patted the stretcher, and watched helplessly as Lister and the Cat un-velcroed their medi-suits, ripped off the biofeedback sensors and belted out of the room and down the corridor.

  ***

  It fell to Rimmer to give Holly the news that they couldn't take him with them. His hardware was far too vast to be evacuated on to the small transporter, and so Rimmer felt it was only decent to switch him on and let him enjoy the fifty-five seconds of run-time that remained to him, before the planet oblivionized Red Dwarf, and everything on it.

  He sat at his sloping architect's desk in the sleeping quarters, bathed in the emergency lighting, and re-read the speech he'd written. It didn't seem nearly as succinct as he remembered when he'd dictated it to his secretary skutter.

  In all, it covered nine pages of A4, and when he timed it, he discovered it lasted over sixteen minutes. He had to make some cuts, and get it down to five seconds at the most. But it all seemed essential. His two-page tirade against the Space Corps and their loathing for blast-off buttons; it seemed a pity to lose that. His three-page report on the squashed skutter incident, which laid the blame firmly in the lap of person or persons unknown - how could that go?

  But in the end, he managed to get it down to twelve words: 'Planet collision course ... engines dead ... impact twelve hours ... Abandoning ship ... sorry ... 'bye.'

  With practice, Rimmer found he could say the whole message in just under two seconds. This still left Holly a full fifty-three seconds of run-time to enjoy in whatever way he chose.

  Rimmer voice-activated the re-boot disc, and Holly's pixelized image assembled itself on the sleeping quarters' vid-screen.

  Rimmer went into his speech.

  'Planet collision course, engines dead, impact twelve hours, abandoning ship, sorry, 'bye.'

  Holly blinked. 'You what?'

  Rimmer took a deep breath, and ripped into his speech a second time:

  'Planlisioncoursenginesdeadimpactwelvoursbandonshipsorrybye.'

  'Eh?'

  Rimmer repeated it a third time:

  'Planlisioncoursenginesdeadimpactwelvoursbandonshipsorry-bye.'

  'That's what you said last time. What does it mean?'

  Rimmer was half-way through it for a fourth time, 'Planlisioncoursenginesdeadimpac...' before Holly stopped him.

  'I can't understand a word. Say it slower.'

  'Planet,' said Rimmer.

  'Yes,' said Holly.

  'Collision course,' said Rimmer.

  'Yes,' said Holly.

  'Engines dead.'

  'Right.'

  'Impact twelve hours.'

  'With you.'

  'Abandoning ship.'

  'Oh.'

  'Sorry.'

  'Yes.'

  ' 'Bye.'

  Within two seconds, Holly ab
sorbed the data from the scanner scope, mulled the problem over and said two words. The two words were: 'Drive room.'

  Then he switched himself off with less than twenty-five seconds of run-time remaining.

  Rimmer met Lister, the Cat and Kryten dashing down the corridor towards the cargo bay.

  'Drive room,' Rimmer shouted.

  'Drive room?' Lister shouted back. 'Why?'

  'I think Holly's come up with something.'

  ***

  They heard the babble and chatter of operational machinery long before they passed under the colossal archway that led into the Drive room itself.

  Traction-fed computer print-out chundered on to the floor from every one of the two thousand, six hundred printers. The whole chamber was knee deep in writhing reams of paper.

  'What the smeg is going on?' Lister screamed above the machine noise, the remnants of his biofeedback tubes clattering behind him.

  Kryten stooped and picked up a section of print-out. 'It's machine-speak. Calculations.'

  'What kind of calculations?' yelled Rimmer.

  Suddenly, the machines stopped chattering.

  Above them, the immense screen which covered the entire ceiling, normally host to Holly's image, rippled into life. 'Solution,' it read, and then underneath was a list of coordinates. Below that was a 3D graphics display of Holly's plan.

  It was quite the most audacious piece of astronavigation ever attempted in the entire history of the universe.

  FIVE

  On the screen was a simulation of the binary star system in which they were now marooned, motionless.

  At the bottom of the screen was a vector graphic of Red Dwarf.

  At the top of the screen was the blue-ice planet hurtling towards them on its collision course.

  To the left was a small sun, and to the right was its larger twin. Both were orbited by single planets.

  Starbug, Red Dwarf's beetle-shaped transport craft, then flashed on the screen. The craft blipped a course towards the right-hand sun, and fired something into its core.

  The sun flared, its planet was torn from its orbit and hurled towards the centre of the screen.

  Lister watched, bewildered and bemused, as the display dissolved into a dazzling array of plotted lines and arrows.

  When the screen finally cleared, all three planets now orbited the sun on the left, and Red Dwarf remained intact.

  'Let me get this straight,' said Lister. 'Is he doing what I think he's doing?'

  'What do you think he's doing?' asked the Cat.

  'I think he's playing pool. With planets.'

  Kryten stared pointlessly at the blank screen. 'Is that possible?'

  'Well,' said Rimmer, 'it's certainly possible to fire a thermonuclear device into a sun and create enough of a solar flare to throw a planet out of orbit. The rest of it is somewhat in the realms of hypothesis.'

  Lister creaked into one of the console seats, and shook his head grimly. 'It's not going to work. I promise you - it's not going to work. No way, Jose, not in a month of Uranian Sundays. If Holly thinks he can use the red planet to pot the blue planet into the left-hand sun's orbit, then he's out to breakfast, lunch and tea.'

  'You don't think so?' said Kryten.

  'No chance. There's not enough side.'

  'Side?'

  'Side-spin. His cueing angle's all wrong.'

  'Lister - what are you drivelling about?' Rimmer snorted in contempt. 'We're talking about a computer with an IQ of twelve thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight.'

  'That doesn't mean he can play pool.' Lister placed his palm on his chest. 'I can. Trust me, I know whereof I speak. Aigburth Arms on a Friday night, you couldn't get me off that table. This pool arm,' he flexed his right arm, 'is sound as a pound. And I promise you, that shot's not going to come off. He's topped it, that's what he's done. It's a felt-ripper. That planet's off the table and into somebody's glass of beer.'

  Rimmer brayed incredulously. 'We're talking about the trigonomics of four-dimensional space, you simple-minded gimboid, we're not talking about some seedy game of pool in a back-street Scouse drinking-pit.'

  'Same principle.'

  'Of course it isn't.'

  Lister nodded at the giant screen, 'I'm telling you, it's a complete miscue, and I say we chuck Holly's coordinates in the bin and let me take the shot.'

  'Well,' Rimmer stood apart from the rest of the group, 'I say we put it to the vote. On the one hand, we have a computer with an IQ in five figures, who has a complete and total grasp of astrophysics, and on the other, we have Lister, who, and let's be fair to him, is a complete gimp. To whose hands do we entrust our lives, the safety of this vessel and the future of everything? Lister, what's your vote?'

  Lister looked up from practising his imaginary pool shot. 'I vote for me.'

  Rimmer smirked, enjoying the game. 'One-nil for Listypoos. I vote for Holly. One-all. Kryters?'

  'Well,' said Kryten, 'even though I agree it's insane and suicidal, I'm afraid I have to side with the human.'

  'Brutal!' grinned Lister, and slapped the Mechanoid on his shoulder.

  'What?' said Rimmer. 'You're voting for El Dirtball?'

  'Sorry,' said Kryten. 'It's my programming.'

  Rimmer's smile receded like a fizzling fuse. 'Cat?'

  'I agree with you, Buddy. Everything you said makes sense,' the Cat went on, 'but the thing is: even though I agree with you, I could never bring myself to vote for someone with your dress-sense. I'm going to vote for Lister.'

  'Three-one to me,' said Lister, and swayed his shoulders and rotated his fists into the touch-up shuffle.

  ***

  Lister ran the final checkdown on the Starbug's instrument panel, then flicked the intercom on, so that Kryten's face appeared on the vid-screen. 'We're ready to go, Kryten. Where's the Cat?'

  'He should be on his way, sir.'

  'This is madness,' Rimmer shook his head, his eyes fixed on the Starbug's navicomp screen. 'Sheer madness.'

  There was a bleep, and the Cat's face appeared next to Kryten's on the vid-screen. 'I'm not coming,' he said.

  Lister bunched up his face. 'What?'

  'This is the way I see it: if everything goes OK, everyone's safe, no problem. If something goes wrong, the guys on Starbug get wiped out twenty minutes ahead of the guys on Red Dwarf.'

  'So?'

  'So, there's a lot of things a guy can do in twenty minutes. I'm staying here with Kryten.'

  'Thanks a lot.'

  The Cat grinned. 'Hey, don't even mention it. Just looking after number one.' Then he bleeped off the screen.

  ***

  The retros scorched into the take-off pad, and the Starbug wobbled uneasily into the air.

  Lister frowned at the steering column. It seemed stiff and unresponsive.

  'What's the matter?'

  'Nothing,' Lister lied. He wrestled the 'bug on to an even keel, and fired the rear-thrust jets.

  Rimmer glanced uneasily at the instrument panels. 'What's happening? We're hardly moving.'

  Then they were. The 'bug's tail plummeted to the ground, grinding huge sparks from the runway, while the nose bucked towards the cargo-bay roof.

  Lister fought through his safety webbing and thumped the reheat button. The 'bug bobbed and reared, before finally picking up speed, if not altitude. Nose in the air, tail on the ground, it screamed and grated the quarter of a mile towards the airlock doors.

  'I hardly need remind you,' Rimmer yelled over the howling engines, 'that we are carrying a small but robust thermo-nuclear device, not ten feet beneath us. In the name of everything that is holy, get this son-of-a-goit in the air.'

  'You think I'm doing this for a laugh?' Lister yelled, 'There's something wrong. The ship feels about ten times heavier than it should.'

  The 'bug smacked into the rim of the airlock, flashing brilliant, magnesium-white sparks that welded the doors open forever, and caroomed out into the silent yawn of space.

  Once clear of the ship,
the 'bug jerked and juddered, then plummeted for two miles down Red Dwarf's south-west face before Lister engaged the back-up boosters and two-handedly wrestled the steering column into some semblance of submission.

  'I don't get it,' Lister shouted over the engine's maximum howl. 'For some reason, we need full thrust plus emergency back-up just to get the smegging thing moving.'

  Not for the first time, Rimmer felt extremely grateful he was already dead.

  ***

  Lister crouched over the flat-bed scanner, one eye closed, his nose almost parallel with the screen. Silent and still, he studied the 3D simulation, then straightened and walked around the table to look at it from a new angle. There, at the far end of the screen, was the blue-ice planet. This was the planet Lister had designated as the blue ball. To the right, circling around the bigger of the twin suns, was the planet Lister had christened the cue ball.

  The cue ball would strike the blue ball, and send it into the orbit of the left hand sun, or, as Lister preferred to call it: 'the pocket'.

  That simple.

  It was a straightforward pot. He'd made identical shots thousands of times before. True, he'd never made the shot with planets, but, as Lister kept on insisting, in theory it should be easier, because planets are bigger.

  Without taking his eyes from the scanner, he grabbed a six-pack of double-strength lager out of Starbug's tiny fridge, and ripped off a ring-pull.

  He was half-way through his third can before Rimmer broke his vow of silence. 'How many of those are you going to drink?'

  'I told you not to talk. Game on.' He finished the third and started the fourth.

  'You're going to drink four cans of double-strength lager?'

  Lister brushed some imaginary dust from the scanner screen. 'No, I'm going to drink all six. I always play my best pool when I've had a few beers. Steadies the nerves. I'm not going to get blasted - just nicely drunk.'

  'Define "nicely drunk”. Is "nicely drunk” horizontal or perpendicular?'