Faster Than Light E-Book

John Lucas

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Blending exuberant inventiveness with subtle satire, Faster Than Light is a novel that will appeal not just to fans of humorous science fiction, but to anyone looking for a quirky and original read.

Leseprobe

Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

FASTER THAN LIGHT

John Lucas was born in 1966, and spent his childhood in suburbia, dreaming of faraway places. He studied maths at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and now works in the electricity industry, devising horrendous equations for the price of electricity.

He lives in Wimbledon with his wife and daughter. Faster Than Light is his first novel.

To Sharona

Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,

24–26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE

email: [email protected]

www.dedalusbooks.com

ISBN printed book 978 1 903517 11 6

ISBN e-book 978 1 909232 73 0

Dedalus is distributed in the USA & Canada by SCB Distributors,

15608 South New Century Drive, Gardena, CA 90248

email: [email protected] www.scbdistributors.com

Dedalus is distributed in Australia by Peribo Pty Ltd.

58, Beaumont Road, Mount Kuring-gai, N.S.W 2080

email: [email protected]

Publishing History

First published by Dedalus in 2002

First ebook edition in 2013

Faster Than Light copyright © John Lucas in 2002

The right of John Lucas to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Printed in Finland by W. S. Bookwell

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 1

The blame for his abduction by extraterrestrials, Jason Black would later decide, lay with the outplacement counsellors, who’d arrived that morning at the lab where he worked, their convoy of rented cars sweeping through the gates before most of the staff had arrived. If they hadn’t made him redundant, he and Alex wouldn’t have got quite so thoroughly plastered, and wouldn’t then have presented such a tempting target to any UFO hovering over the English countryside, its alien crew trying in vain to make some sense of the television broadcasts they were intercepting, and wondering whether to kidnap a native who could explain it all to them.

As soon as they’d arrived, the counsellors had established a base in the lab’s administration block, bustling about assertively with their laptop computers as they raided the personnel files for details of the staff. Jason was one of the first they called for, summoning him by phone to meet with someone called Steve, who turned out to be a muscular, tousle-haired American in his late twenties.

“Thanks for coming,” said Steve, after the shaking of hands and finding of chairs was over. “Perhaps you could start by telling me what it is that you do.”

“I’m a filing clerk,” said Jason. Until a few weeks ago, when all research at the lab had stopped on the instructions of the insurance company, his task had been to receive the ceaseless flow of computer printouts and other paperwork generated by the scientists working there. It hadn’t been a difficult job, except on those rare and awkward occasions when someone wanted to get back one of the documents they’d consigned to his care, and unlike most of the other employment available in the village, it didn’t involve getting up hours before dawn, or carting heavy bags of fertiliser across freezing farmyards. All in all, it had suited Jason fine. “Why?”

“No reason,” said Steve, consulting his clipboard. “I was just making conversation. Trying to put you at your ease. I wasn’t actually interested in your answer.” He flashed Jason a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid we’re making you redundant,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. It’s simply that you’re worthless to us, and we don’t want the expense and inconvenience of employing you any longer. You’ll have the rest of the morning to collect your personal belongings together, and after that we never want to see you again.” He sat back and beamed inquisitively at Jason.

“I see,” said Jason. He’d suspected that something like this might happen for the last two months, ever since one of the cleaners had opened a window in what was supposed to be a secure area, allowing a number of aphids to escape into the mild summer evening. The insects had carried with them one of the plant viruses with which the lab’s enthusiastic young genetic engineers had been experimenting. “I had hoped you might break the news to me a bit more gently than that.”

“Interesting,” said Steve. “So how would you have liked me to tell you? What would you have liked me to say?”

“What exactly is going on here?” asked Jason.

“We’re experimenting with different ways of making people redundant,” explained Steve. “For example, perhaps this week we’re being brusque and mildly offensive with half our subjects, and sentimental and tearful with the other half. We’ll measure the effect on each group: how many of them attempt to sue for unfair dismissal, how many threaten to kill themselves, how many go quietly, and so on. The more we learn, the more efficient we become.”

“And I was in the brusque and mildly offensive group, presumably?”

“No, you’re in the open and meaningful dialogue group. That’s why I’m explaining all this, and trying to get your feedback.”

“I’m not sure I have any feedback to give you,” said Jason.

“Just tell me your immediate reaction,” said Steve. “How do you feel about being out of work?”

“I don’t know,” said Jason. “It seems so unfair, that we should all lose our jobs because of one little mistake. A mistake that could easily have destroyed the global ecosystem, admittedly, but still just one mistake.”

The first thing Jason had known about the escape of the virus had been the next morning, when the damage control team arrived by helicopter. One of them had called the staff together to explain the situation. He’d spoken of sensible precautions and minimal risks, of public relations and the need to avoid panic. His well-practised smile had never slipped, but somehow Jason had been left with an uncomfortable sense that something very, very bad might be about to happen.

Over the next three days, troops bussed in from Army bases across East Anglia had incinerated every trace of vegetable matter within an eight-mile radius of the lab. They’d burnt the crops and grubbed up ancient hedgerows. They’d set up road blocks and sprayed everyone leaving the area with herbicide. They’d gone from house to house, destroying gardens and confiscating pot plants. Those villagers who’d tried to refuse the soldiers entry had been threatened with arrest, on the grounds that their immaculate lawns and prize begonias now constituted biological weapons, and were banned under international law.

Despite the best efforts of the damage control team, the national press and TV had arrived at the lab within hours. Channel 4 had run it as their main news story three nights running, gathering together a colourful assortment of pundits and doom-merchants to explain the risks. They’d spoken with grim enthusiasm of fields and forests across the globe being turned to lifeless dust; of economic collapse and mass-starvation; and of the possible extermination of the human race.

Unsurprisingly, shares in MetaBase, the high-tech conglomerate that owned the lab, had plummeted. The Chairman and Chief Executive had bickered openly on TV about whose idea it had been to build it in the first place, and had then fled the country, leaving a few hapless press officers behind to confront the torrent of outrage directed at their company. By the time the Ministry of Defence announced that the virus had definitely been contained, MetaBase was no more, swallowed by a privately-owned American company called Global Systems.

“To be frank with you,” said Steve, “the virus incident isn’t the real issue here. Global Systems is a modern company, and modern companies don’t spend their money employing people. Why should they, when they can give it away to their directors and shareholders instead?”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Jason, uncertainly. “Companies have to employ people. That’s what they’re there for.”

“Not any more,” said Steve. “Everything is changing, thanks to the miracle of computer technology. Why pay to store bulky paper documents, when the whole lot can be fitted onto a disk the size of a cigarette packet? Why rent expensive office buildings, when people can still hold meetings even if they’re on opposite sides of the world? Why waste money employing people at all, if their work can be done so much more efficiently by machines?”

“So what does Global Systems do, if it doesn’t rent office buildings or employ people?”

“Global Systems is looking forward to the time when a major multinational corporation can be a purely abstract entity. Something composed of legal agreements and computer code and not much else. Something completely independent of physical space. They see reality itself as obsolete, and intend to free themselves from it. It no longer meets the needs of the business community, in their view.”

“This sounds like science fiction,” said Jason. “Insane science fiction.”

“It makes sound business sense,” said Steve. “You have to remember that money itself is now almost entirely abstract. Its physical manifestations, the coins and notes in your pocket for instance, are utterly irrelevant to its essence. And if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that big corporations are going to go where the money is.”

“But you still haven’t said what this new and entirely abstract Global Systems is going to do.”

“It’s going to provide new and entirely abstract services to other entirely abstract corporations,” said Steve. “Naturally, no one really understands what they’ll be yet.” He leant forward, and lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “I met their head of global strategy once. He’s a fascinating man, a real visionary. He hasn’t spoken to anyone for over eight years. He hasn’t communicated at all. He regards all existing language as contaminated by outdated assumptions. He’s vowed to remain silent until he’s arrived at a new language, pure enough to describe what Global Systems is going to become.”

“How’s he getting on?”

“It’s hard to say. The nature of his task is that no one will be able to understand what he’s doing until he’s finished. But his manner was one of confidence.”

“It sounds like a good job. Perhaps I should apply to be a head of global strategy.”

“Perhaps you should. You do need a new job, after all.”

“So is everyone being made redundant, or is it just me?”

“No, everyone’s going. The lab will be shut down, then decontaminated, and turned into a luxury leisure centre. It’s one of the conditions in our out-of-court settlement with the locals.”

“I didn’t know there was an out-of-court settlement. A lot of people are still very angry, you know.”

“There is still some bad feeling, of course,” said Steve. “Our relationship with the local Horticultural Society is pretty frosty, for example. But they’ll come round. Time is a great healer, and everyone’s been very generously compensated.” He flashed another smile. “Now, was there anything else you wanted?”

“No,” said Jason, shuffling awkwardly in his seat. “I suppose not.”

“I won’t keep you any longer, then,” said Steve, turning back to his clipboard.

It was less than twenty minutes later that Jason Black handed in his pass at the laboratory gates and stood for a moment, baffled and hurt, with a few possessions in an old plastic carrier bag, and a surprisingly large redundancy cheque in his pocket, wondering what to do with his unexpected afternoon off.

*

Few independent observers have ever studied the behaviour of human beings, and much of it remains puzzling and obscure. For instance, their habitual response to any difficulty or threat is to ignore or forget about it. It’s unclear what benefit they derive from this, but no other race can match their skill at it. Even quite major problems, such as the inevitability of death, or the fact that they’re rapidly destroying the ecosystems on which their own survival as a species depends, can be ignored completely for years at a time. At moments of great stress, when this natural ability to avoid confronting reality may start to fail, it’s reinforced by the simple expedient of becoming mind-shatteringly drunk.

“Thanks,” said Jason, pushing away his empty glass, and settling back into one of the lumpy, uncomfortable armchairs that graced the lounge bar of the Dog and Goat. “I will have another. Pint of cider, please.” He’d bumped into his old friend Alex Marchant buying food in the village, and as it was her afternoon off, she’d needed little persuasion to join him for a commiserative drink.

“It seems so unfair,” said Jason. “I’ve worked for them ever since I left school. Nearly eight years. You’d think they’d show a little loyalty in return.” Alex made a noncommittal noise in reply, before setting off to the bar.

“I don’t understand what you’re so upset about,” she said, after she’d returned with their pints. “You’ve been complaining for years that it’s an awful job. About as intellectually demanding and spiritually rewarding as the blurb on the back of the average corn flakes packet, you said. This is your big chance to do something different.”

“You’re right,” said Jason. “I can always find another job.” He was onto his fourth pint now, and the world was beginning to seem a warmer and more hospitable place.

“That’s the spirit. Anyway, it’s a good thing the place is closing down. We can do without that sort of military-industrial techno-death in our village.”

“And how’s your job going?” asked Jason.

“Awful,” said Alex, who by now had tried out most of the jobs available to an unskilled twenty-three-year-old in a small country village, and hadn’t enjoyed any of them. Over the summer she’d worked as a waitress in the tea-shop, serving over-priced cakes to the occasional tourist. Now it was October, and she’d found part-time work as a receptionist in the doctor’s surgery. “That Dr Plummer is such a fascist. All I was doing was asking his patients to consider the alternatives to conventional medicine. He should have been grateful to have a smaller workload, but of course he wasn’t. Grossly unprofessional, he called it. Said I was endangering his patients’ lives by telling them to flush their medication down the toilet. Couldn’t bear to have a young woman questioning his authority, more like it.” She shook her head sadly at the injustice of the world.

“Are you out with Simon tonight?” asked Jason. Simon was Alex’s current boyfriend, and therefore something of a sore point. Years ago Alex had turned down Jason’s own romantic advances, on the grounds that he was a drunken lout interested only in going out and enjoying himself with his mates. This had seemed a bit rich even at the time, considering the regularity with which Alex herself had to be helped home semiconscious from the effects of alcohol. Seeing her choose a number of hard-drinking boyfriends over the years that followed had done little to ease his sense of grievance. It was the one thing that marred their friendship, the one thing he’d never had the courage to ask her about.

“No,” said Alex. “Strictly between you and me, I’m starting to have second thoughts about Simon. It’s the same old story, really. I’m attracted to a man because he’s strong and knows his own mind and does exactly what he wants without caring what anyone else thinks, and then when I’m actually going out with him, those exact same qualities suddenly become intensely irritating.” She sighed. “Anyway, he’s working overtime all this week. There’s a convention of office stationery salespersons, apparently.” Simon was a hotel barman in one of the sleepy little holiday resorts on the nearby coast.

“Never mind,” said Jason. “It’s your party in a few days.” Alex’s twenty-fourth birthday was later that week, and to celebrate it she’d invited nearly sixty of her friends to cram themselves into the tiny, boxlike flat she rented on the outskirts of the village.

“That’s true,” said Alex, cheering up a little.

“And in the meantime,” said Jason, “we’ve got some serious drinking to do.”

“Dead right,” said Alex, aiming a friendly blow at his shoulder. “Make yourself useful, and go and buy some more drinks.”

“Cheers!” said Alex, once Jason had returned from the bar. “Last one to finish these buys the next round.”

*

It was nearly midnight when they left the pub. None of their friends were there to offer them a lift, so they had little choice but to trudge back along the winding, unlit lane that led to the village. It was a still, clear night, and bitterly cold.

“Do you think we might have had too much to drink?” asked Alex, after a few minutes of walking.

“Too much to drink?” said Jason. “That’s a contradiction in terms, surely?”

“You’re right, of course,” said Alex. “Still, I do wish the world wouldn’t spin so. It’s making me feel most unwell. And my legs are misbehaving too. All I want them to do is to walk in a straight line. That’s not an unreasonable demand, is it?”

“Not at all,” said Jason. “It’s their job, after all. You must be firm with them.” Neither he nor Alex had noticed the outline of the Krullen starship, clearly visible as a patch of darkness against the stars.

“Oh dear,” said Alex. “I think I’m going to fall over.” Jason grabbed her, and they swayed together companionably for a moment, their eyes closed, their minds fully occupied in willing their bodies not to collapse or throw up.

“What’s happening?” said Alex, her reverie disturbed by a sudden, vicious gust of wind tugging at her coat. She was speaking very slowly, struggling not to slur the words too much. “Where are we? Where’s the sky gone?” The ship was hovering less than fifty feet above them now, utterly dark and utterly silent, the vast curved walls of its hull blotting out the moon and the stars. She squinted upwards, struggling to focus her eyes on the blackness.

“There’s something up there,” said Jason, incredulously. “If only I could see what it was.”

All at once, they were bathed in a fierce white light. Every detail of the underside of the ship was clearly visible as it hung there above them. It was a dull brown colour, and its surface was curiously knobbly and organic-looking.

“Bloody Americans!” shouted Jason, waving his fist at it. In his drunken fury, he’d forgotten that the nearby airforce base had closed more than twelve years ago, and that even when it was open, the Americans hadn’t been in the habit of hovering low over quiet country lanes in vast, alien starships.

“It’s doing something,” said Alex. A small circular hole was opening in the underside of the craft. Suddenly, and without warning, an intense beam of blue light shot down from the opening, and Alex and Jason fell instantly into unconsciousness.

Chapter 2

Alex and Jason awoke to find themselves lying on the floor of a cheap-looking hotel bedroom. Peering down at them curiously was a middle-aged man. There was something hauntingly familiar about his tanned and chubby face, and his casually expensive clothes.

“Who are you?” demanded Jason, scrabbling hurriedly to his feet. “And where the hell are we?”

“Greetings,” said the man, removing his sunglasses, and tucking them into the pocket of his rumpled linen jacket. “My name is Bentley, and you’re on board a spacecraft, the Far Star, travelling away from the Earth at very close to the speed of light.”

“What do you mean, a spacecraft?” demanded Jason, incredulously. “Are you claiming to be from another planet?”

“That’s correct,” said Bentley. “I originally came from Krull, on the far side of the Galaxy to your own world, although it’s many years since I’ve been back there. I’m a research scientist, sent by the Total Trading Corporation to perform a survey of previously unknown star systems in the outer edges of the Galactic Empire. A survey that seems to be getting further and further behind schedule all the time, incidentally, so if we could get on I’d be grateful.”

“But how can this be a starship?” protested Jason, gesturing in bafflement at the yellowing wallpaper and cheap, faded carpet. “It’s all so shabby and uninviting.”

“I resent that,” said Bentley. “I went to a lot of trouble to design this environment. You see, everything you’re currently experiencing is an illusion, designed to reassure you.”

“And why should I be reassured to find myself mysteriously transported to a cheap hotel room?” asked Alex.

“Because it is, I hope, a familiar environment. More familiar than the interior of a Krullen survey vessel, at any rate.”

“I’m still not sure that I understand,” said Jason, reluctant to drop a promising line of questioning. “You look more like a washed-up television personality than a Krullen research scientist. I’m almost sure I’ve seen you in something. We’re not being filmed for some dreadful daytime TV show, are we?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I thought I’d explained all this. What you see is not my real appearance. It’s a crude facsimile of a human body, intended to put you at your ease. We based it on the television footage we intercepted, which is doubtless why it seems familiar to you. Now, I really must ask you some questions about your planet.”

“Assuming for the moment that your story is true, it seems a little unfair that we should suffer all the inconvenience of being abducted by space aliens, without getting to see what they look like,” said Alex.

“Very well,” said Bentley. As he spoke, he started to shimmer and change. Within a few moments his human form had gone, to be replaced by a curious-looking insect-like creature. He was still about six feet tall, and still stood upright on two legs as he had before, but his body was now black and shiny and rounded, like an enormous beetle, and his limbs were spindly and chitinous. Something about his portly bearing reminded Alex irresistibly of Jack Plummer, the village doctor whose smug self-importance she’d been finding so irritating over recent months. Jack had only two arms and only two eyes, of course, whereas this creature boasted six spiky arms and four unblinking eyes, each one comprising a thousand mirrored facets, but nonetheless the similarity was remarkable.

“And where did you learn to speak such fine English, if you don’t mind me asking?” said Jason, suspiciously.

“That’s one skill I can’t claim,” said Bentley, pointing to a small red box strapped to his waist, a little like the portable CD-players worn by joggers. Clearly visible on its casing was an artfully-shaded pattern of interconnecting circles that ninety-nine percent of the Galaxy’s intelligent inhabitants would instantly have recognised as the logo of the Total Trading Corporation. Alex and Jason, coming as they did from one of the few worlds so primitive that the Corporation traded there only in secret, fell into the other one percent.

“Our computers have been studying the languages used in your television broadcasts, and they’ve programmed them into this translation module,” continued Bentley. “Mind you, the results are often quite poor in my experience. Each language needs an awful lot of tedious debugging to get it right. So don’t be too surprised if you find that what I’m saying is stilted or partially incomprehensible.”

“Not at all,” said Jason, politely.

“Good,” said Bentley. “Now, I really must insist that we start. The Total Trading Corporation has allocated me forty thousand star systems to survey, and I just can’t afford to waste this much time on a single one.”

“What is this corporation you keep talking about?” asked Alex, suspiciously. “What does it want with the Earth?”

“The Total Trading Corporation is the largest and most remarkably successful commercial organisation the Galaxy has ever known,” explained Bentley. “It’s organised this Galactic survey in order to identify anything interesting or note-worthy. Great works of art, mysterious alien artefacts, unusual memes, exotic life-forms, planets of outstanding natural beauty. Anything worth preserving, in short. I don’t suppose you’re aware of anything like that on your world? The one you call the Earth?”

“What do you mean, are we aware of anything worth preserving?” bristled Alex. “The Earth has millions of species, billions of individual human lives. All of them are infinitely precious and worth preserving.”

“You may think so,” said Bentley. “But the Galaxy contains countless billions of worlds, and frankly after a while one’s much the same as another. Still, I don’t want you to think that I’ve prejudged the matter. I’m very much open to the possibility that there may be something worthwhile about your little planet. When we left we took with us a number of promising items, and I’m hoping that you can tell us more about them.”

“Why are you asking us, if you’re so clever?” asked Alex. “Why can’t you work it out for yourselves?”

“We have found your culture to be more confusing than most,” admitted Bentley. “For instance, despite exhaustive computer analysis of tens of thousands of hours of your television broadcasts, we still have only the haziest idea of which parts of it are supposed to be made up, and which parts of it are supposed to be true. That’s why we’ve taken the unusual step of capturing specimens to interrogate directly. Are you a mated pair, by the way?”

“No,” said Alex, glaring angrily at the insect creature. “We’re not.”

“You said,” said Jason uneasily, “that you were looking for things worth preserving. Worth preserving from what, exactly?”

“The Total Trading Corporation is in the process of building a new, artificial universe,” explained Bentley. “Naturally they want it to be at least as diverse and exciting as the old one. They’re paying us to identify all the best things in the Galaxy, so that they can be transferred to the new universe before it’s commissioned.”

“Why would anyone want to build an artificial universe?” asked Jason incredulously.

“To get round all the niggling little restrictions of the real one,” said Bentley, as though it were obvious. “The sad fact is that the current universe, although undeniably clever in a technical sense, wasn’t designed with the needs of modern business in mind. It’s obsolete, as far as the Corporation is concerned. The new one will have infinitely more convenient laws of physics, lower rates of income tax, and an exciting new range of retail experiences.”

“And what’s so inconvenient about the existing laws of physics?”

“Well, take the impossibility of travelling faster than light, for example. You have no idea how infuriating really powerful people find it. Imagine you’re on the board of a pan-Galactic corporation, and you want to order your employees to do something. Any message you send will take eighty thousand years to reach the more distant parts of the Galaxy. Not only will you be long dead by then, but the very language in which the message was written will probably have become extinct. And that’s not the only problem. Most senior executives regard three spatial dimensions as totally inadequate, and as for the conservation of mass-energy, who’s that supposed to benefit? Best to scrap the whole lot and start again from scratch.”

“Are you telling us,” asked Alex, “that these precious items you’ve stolen from the Earth are going to be carted off to a private universe to be enjoyed by a load of corporate big shots?”

“If they turn out to be of sufficiently high quality, yes,” said Bentley. “Otherwise we’ll probably just dump them in deep space.”

“And what about the people of Earth?” asked Alex. “Do they have any say in the matter? What do they get out of the deal?”

Bentley paused and stared at them through insect eyes. “Perhaps I have not made myself clear. The senior management of the Corporation are methodical and tidy-minded people. They have no intention of allowing the old universe to continue without the benefit of their control. It will be destroyed as soon as the new one is functioning satisfactorily.”

“In that case, I’m certainly not going to cooperate with you,” said Alex. “You can’t go around destroying the entire universe, just because it doesn’t fit in with your preconceived ideas. I want to go back home to Earth. Right now!”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible,” said Bentley. “Even if we were willing to take you back to the Earth, which we’re not, you’d find it very different from the world you left. You’ve been away too long. After we picked you up, we kept you unconscious in order to study you.”

“How long for?” demanded Alex.

“About three months,” said Bentley. “But you have to take relativistic time dilation into account. The Far Star was undergoing very considerable accelerations during that period. From the viewpoint of those you left behind on Earth, you’ve already been away for some twenty thousand years.”

“But that means everything I know is gone,” said Alex. “My friends, my parents, they’re all dead. You bastard!”

“Not only that, but the payments on my credit card are twenty thousand years overdue,” wailed Jason. “I’m never going to catch up now.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Bentley. “I would imagine that the entire human race died out millennia ago. Any species that’s evolved a strong instinctive desire to protect its territory coupled with just enough ingenuity to construct thermonuclear bombs has to be living on borrowed time.”

“This is absurd,” said Jason. “It renders the whole idea of space travel completely pointless. Why would anyone want to travel to another planet if it means their own world will be changed beyond recognition when they get back?”

“Very few people do want to, for precisely the reason you give,” said Bentley. “There are a few species who don’t mind. The Chitaan, for example, are such a long-lived and thoughtful race that they take centuries of profound introspection to respond to even the most casual conversational gambit. A hundred-thousand-year journey between star systems gives them just enough time for a brief natter with a friend, and perhaps a bite to eat. And then there are us Krullen of course. We’re a dutiful race, and would happily travel to the edge of the known universe if our hive leaders commanded it. But the overwhelming majority of the Galaxy’s inhabitants would never consider venturing out into interstellar space. They regard each star system as an island, cut off from even its closest neighbours by the tyranny of distance.”

“So what’s going to happen to us?” demanded Jason. “You can’t just leave us stranded somewhere with no hope of getting back to our home world.”

“Of course not,” said Bentley, reassuringly. “It would be grossly unethical to abandon you in such a stressful and dangerous situation. Once you’ve answered our questions you’ll be humanely killed, and then processed into fertiliser for the fungus gardens on deck four.”

“No way,” said Alex, backing nervously away from Bentley. “I don’t believe this nonsense about twenty thousand years going by. I insist that you take us home.”

“You are in no position to insist on anything,” said Bentley, his voice suddenly laden with icy menace. One of his hands was now waving a sinister black object, about the size and shape of a small electric torch, but adorned with vastly more dials and buttons and cruel-looking spikes than are customary on such an item. “We Krullen are a civilised race, and certainly gain no pleasure from torturing primitive species, but neither do we shirk the call of duty.”

“I used to have a PE teacher who said things very much like that,” said Jason. “You’ve never worked at Grimswood Comprehensive, I suppose?”

A blue warning light flashed on Bentley’s translating module, and he paused to study the readout carefully. Humour wasn’t something the Krullen had ever found a need for, and in fact the very structure of their language made it almost impossible to express. He struggled bravely with the alien concept for a few seconds, and then gave up, turning his attention back to more important matters. “I shall be interested to see how your so-called sense of humour copes with a blast from my neural manipulator,” he said, raising his device to point directly at Jason’s head. He was just about to press one of the larger and more sinister-looking buttons when he was interrupted by the distant wail of a klaxon. He glanced at a communicator strapped to one of his wrists, and an expression that might well have been alarm crossed his alien features for a moment.

“You must excuse me,” he said. “Something unexpected seems to have occurred, so we’re going to have to continue this discussion later. In the meantime, I suggest that you consider your position carefully. Things will be a lot easier for you if you choose to cooperate.” With that, he turned and scuttled away. The door of the room swung open automatically, revealing a brief but puzzling glimpse of brightly-coloured, twisting tunnels beyond, and then he was gone.