Fenchurch and Morthern made their way from the café area of the spaceport and into the vast hypermarket dome. Here the intergalactic traveller could buy anything he or she could possibly need and a few others that he or she might impossibly need as well.
On the way there, Morthern briefed Fenchurch on the items she would need to buy.
“The most important thing is the Interspace saver ticket.” He said, “It gets you discounts on most of the main intergalactic transport lines and free flights at some off-peak times. Very useful if you are going to do the amount of travelling you intend.”
“Kind of like a student rail card?” interrupted Fenchurch.
“Sorry?”
“Never mind, just the earthling in me coming out again.”
“And a hyperspace sleepsuit. It can get very cold on some of these economy class freighters and, while a towel is really good for emergencies, you can’t beat a proper SuperSpaceSlumber.”
“You’ll need some protein ration pills and a few condensed Vizto drinks” he went on, “and, of course, a copy of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.”
“But of course” said Fenchurch with a wry smile.
“You know it?” Morthern said with a puzzled look.
“Oh, yes,” she replied “Arthur always took his and, of course, his friend Ford was a roving field researcher for it.”
“Ford? You mean Ford Prefect?” Morthern spluttered. “Don’t tell me you know that Betelguisian bandit?”
“Why, yes” replied Fenchurch, equally astonished. “Arthur spent many years with him in all sorts of odd places.”
“That must mean you also know Zaphod BeebleBrox?”
“Only by reputation, I’ve never actually met him”
“Well, well. It is a small universe.” The look of surprise had started to mellow to one of fond nostalgia. “I met them many years ago when I was a young apprentice working on Zoltrast 3. I had been trying to preach the ways of Life, the Universe and Everything outside a bar called Ziggie’s Den of Iniquity, when they took me in and had me try out some new drink they were in the process of inventing. After a couple of these, which, incidentally, went on to become the famous Pan-Galactic GargleBlaster, they persuaded me to teach them some of the Pralite Mind Control tricks. Of course, being only an apprentice, I could only teach some very minor skills but I believe they went on to use them occasionally. The only problem was they had to drink so much to overcome the guilt pains that they were usually incapable of benefiting from the control.”
“How come, if you were an apprentice then, you are so much older than them now?” Fenchurch inquired.
“Don’t make the mistake of assuming all races in the galaxy age at the same rate. You also have to remember some of us often travel through time as well as space. Beeblebrox is probably several hundred years old now whereas I will probably be dead by the time I am forty”
Fenchurch lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
“Anyway, back to the shopping” continued Morthern, “You must go in by yourself and chose all the items. It is important that Sogra does not see me. Take them to the counter and when he asks them what you have to trade, show him the cufflinks. He will, at first say they are not worth enough but tell him to look closely at the stones. Repeat this over and over and he will soon do the deal”
“What will you be doing?” said Fenchurch, puzzled.
“ I will wait outside and see if I can, ahem…, influence things a little” He had again become the mischievous elf.
“But I thought you said you couldn’t abuse your mind control like that”
“Oh, I can”, he smiled, winking, “when I am doing my duty in helping a lost traveller.”
They arrived at the store and Fenchurch, doing as instructed, went in alone. It took a while for her to find everything as, rather than the intergalactic version of Sainsbury’s she had expected, there were only vast arrays of terminals with holographic images.
She stood in front of one and tried to figure out how it worked.
She found that moving her hand around in front of it rotated the object for viewing and pressing against it caused the item to be teleported from the warehouse to her shopping trolley.
She got all Morthern had said she needed, including a Sub-Ether Sensomatic and an Electronic thumb. When she chose the sleepsuit in a nice fetching ultra-blue, she also noticed some rather nice clothes and, looking down at the tattered jeans she was wearing, selected them. A beam shone out of the terminal and created an image of her on screen. This was then shown clad in the clothes she selected. “Wow,” she thought, “this sure beats M&S!”
Once she had all the items she took the trolley, with difficulty as that one of the hover-pads on her trolley was misaligned and it was behaving as if it had a mind of its own, to the checkout.
The creature she assumed to be Sorga was rather like a large, grey caterpillar. He was smoking a foul smelling substance from a very long pipe with one of his many arms while counting coins and notes with several of the others.
Fenchurch pushed the trolley up beside the desk and had great difficulty in refraining from introducing herself as Alice.
“W-w-well, oh p-p-pretty c-c-carbon c-c-creature”, stuttered the creature, “how do you p-p-propose to p-p-pay for these w-w-wonderful g-g-goods from my s-s-store?”
“I have these beautiful jewels,” said Fenchurch, laying the cufflinks on the counter beside him.
“These?” he mocked, “these are w-w-worthless t-t-trinkets! Come back when you have something of real worth.”
“But,” she replied, “if you look, the jewels are quite unique, all the way from the land of Sevorbeupstry, where lies the Message. The last Message from God to his creation.”
“G-g-god? W-w-what do I c-c-care of G-g-gods?” he said as he bent down over the cufflinks and studied them closely. “Hmmm, m-m-maybe they d-do have some m-m-merit but c-c-certainly not enough for all these g-g-goods.”
Fenchurch was not deterred, “Look deep into the stones, you will see what I mean.”
Gradually the scowl on his face turned to a smile. He picked up each one in turn and, to Fenchurch’s horror, stuck it trough the side of his nose.
He turned and looked in the mirrored glass of the wall behind him. “Yes, I like these,” He said, his stammer mysteriously gone. “Now, be off with you before I change my mind.”
Fenchurch left the store as fast as she could without actually running. She could not believe her luck. She looked around for Morthern to tell him the good news but she could not, at first, see him
Finally she glimpsed a crumpled figure lying against one of the strangely shaped pillars that supported the spaceport’s transparent dome.
She ran across, fearing the worst.
His face was tightly drawn and his skin appeared almost colourless. “What’s wrong?” she cried.
“Oh, the pain was a little worse than I expected, nothing to worry about.” He tried to raise a smile, “I just need to rest a while. Did you get everything?”
“Yes, It worked exactly as you said” said Fenchurch, still worried, “I’ll go and get you some help.”
“No, no, I’m fine. We need to get you on your way. There is a starcruiser leaving for the Mendroball hyperspace terminal in half an hour. If you run you can just catch it.”
“If you’re sure?”
“Of course I am. Been through this dozens of times. Now go. Tell Prefect and Beeblebrox to have a bottle of Janx on me when you see them.”
She bent down and hugged him warmly “Thank you,” she said, “Thank you more than I can ever say.”
And with that she left, her eyes darting around trying to find the sign for the right departure area. She eventually saw it and, of course, it took her by the longest possible route so she very nearly missed her flight.
¨
Several hours later a robot found the body of an old vagrant in a little used corner of the spaceport. It had initially taken it for a bundle of rags but, having scooped it into its TrashTrunk™, its onboard Garbage Analysis System detected the presence of carbon based organic matter.
It alerted its Control Centre which ordered it to return to base for further investigation.
¨
Pollution of the galaxy has now reached such proportions that the majority of Planetary Governments are now introducing strict controls on the dumping of waste in space and provide incentives to the companies who collect, sort and recycle their waste.
The Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, in a rare display of logic and reasoned thinking, identified an opportunity to develop a product to take advantage of these incentives and produced the SCC Recycle-o-Bot.
This wondrous piece of machinery, available in a wide variety of sizes from the Mini-micro-Bot (which is suitable for cleaning out small furry animal’s cages) to the UltraMega-Bot (which can sweep up whole buildings), collects rubbish and sorts, grades and packages it for reuse.
Used in large number such as spaceports, shopping complexes and sports centres, they are usually programmed to take the packages back to a Control Centre where they are recycled into useful objects.
Unfortunately, the team developing the Recycling Control Centres received a corrupted copy of the package specification information and the end result is that it often churns out, for example, chairs that are supposed to be made from recycled plastic cups but are, in fact, made from cream cheese sandwiches or pig food that is made from crushed house bricks and old rocket booster oil.
The robot arrived at its Recycling Control Centre and disgorged the buddle on to an inspection table.
A series of spidery arms quickly rummaged amongst the bundle and produced an Indenticard.
His Identicard showed the body to be that of one Mandrax Corshaarak, a former monk from the planet Garz. It indicated he was thirty-nine years old and it listed no next of kin.
“Classify as food waste,” the machine squawked mechanically and tipped the body back into the TrashTrunk™.