The story so far:- Biggles, Algy and Ginger have encountered hostile ME109's, and in the ensuing dog-fight Algy dropped the secret experimental seagull out of the plane. It landed (undamaged) in a field and was purloined by our bird-watching hero, Martin Blojobski. Elsewhere, two lost and perplexed aliens have stolen an ISDN phone, and unwittingly collected a human flea. They have been spotted by James Bond, who is now in hot pursuit. He, in turn is being followed by the evil one-eyed spy Boris Adidoff, disguised as sexy Mangy Azadinuf, after having failed an attempted poisoning. Biggles, Algy, Ginger, Martin Blojobski and James Bond converged on the beach only to see the experimental seagull disappear beneath the waves. There is then a stream of bubbles leading out to sea. There is no sign, as yet, of the much promised dog with brown boots and no significance to the brief appearance of either the Death character from the Discworld series of books, nor the tiger with influenza. The only sign of a plot has been a small garden.
Biggles, Ginger and Algy raced back to the field. Biggles clambered into the cockpit as Algy threw himself on the tail and Ginger grasped the propeller.
"CONTACT," yelled Biggles.
"CONTACT," replied Ginger wearily.
"WHAT?" called Algy, cupping his ear.
"Ignition on," said Ginger, off-handedly.
"ROTATE!" yelled Biggles. Ginger grasped one arm of the propeller, moved gently to the horizontal then jerked downwards, twisting away. There were two loud "Pops" and the engine roared into life. Algy moved to the starboard wheel and Ginger to the port wheel, they shouted "CHOCKS AWAY!" and pulled the wedges out from the wheels, leapt on the wings and along to the cockpit.
"Phew!" said Algy and Ginger in unison, as they threw themselves on the floor.
"What is it?" asked Biggles.
"Now I know what the pops were." Replied Ginger wrinkling his nose in disgust.
It was a multi-purpose aircraft, specifically designed for poor writers. A single-engined, single seater Sopwith Camel. A biplane designed during the first world war, yet with both a built-in Unison and a well designed Disgust, it was capable of exceptional behaviour. Right now it did something that the watching crowd, two gossiping ladies and a three-legged dog, never expected. It took off. As the plane climbed into the sky, the dog half walked, half hopped over to the nearby tree. It eyed the tree with trepidation, putting its head first on one side then the other. Gradually the two gossiping women lulled to a silence and watched with bated breath as the three legged dog turned its right side to the tree, lifted its right back leg, leaving it standing on its only front leg and its rear left leg. The two women began to smirk and nudge each other as the dog gained a puzzled look. If it had lost its left and not its right front leg, it would not have fallen straight over on its side before the duty was complete.
Biggles banked steeply to the right before nose diving steeply downward and hitting the ground. It was a good job that Algy was flying the aircraft and Biggles was merely practising in the rear portion of the cockpit. The coast came into view, and there, beneath the waves and heading for deep water was a submarine at periscope depth! Before Algy had a chance to call Biggles, who was still rubbing his nose, Ginger shouted from the rear gun turret.
"Alien spacecraft approaching at 5 o'clock." Biggles looked at his watch. It was 4.30. Half an hour to go.
Coincidentally, down on the ground, it was also 4.30, as James Bond slammed the car door on his leg. It was the not sort of mistake that you would expect from England's top spy and a man licensed to kill. He hopped out of the car, swore and rubbed his shin. Martin turned to James, his thoughts in a turmoil. He felt sorry for this man with the flashy sports car and bleeding shin, yet he was also jealous of the obvious success that gave him access to such impressive female magnets. James was a charismatic figure, and Martin felt some strange and disturbing attraction to this lithe and athletic figure, and yet he was also disgusted by any such faintly gay feelings. He felt sad that the experimental gull had been lost, and somehow confident that James could retrieve it. His resolved faltered as the shining hero swore again, and yet Martin's inner voice told him to boldly go forth. Telling himself he was a man and decisive, he threw aside all doubts about shirt-lifting and resolves, and gave full vent to his imagination of the capabilities of the car, the probable smell of the leather, the feel of the freshly waxed shiny surface, the throb of the engine, the imagined screech of the tyres and with total disregard of the design flaws of a car without storage space for shopping, called out.
'Can I have a lift, please?' James stopped his swearing and refraining from a final kick at the car door, gathered his composure.
'You are looking great, and the world's your oyster,' replied James. Martin felt suddenly elated, and full of courage, as he replied.
'Thanks, you are looking good yourself. Could I have a ride in your motor car?'
'Where to?' James asked.
'Wherever the seagull has gone! I feel responsible.' A brief nod from James, and Martin scrambled in. Without slamming the door on his leg. James started the car, reversed back, performed a rear spin hand brake turn and accelerated down the spit
There is a certain assurance, detected occasionally in real life, but constantly in books, that ensures that an entirely coincidental set of encounters will culminate in a single activity. As James and Martin sped off to find more aerial means of transportation, the alien spacecraft Q931, an inter-planetary milk float of the Imperial Fleet, light-years off course to be present on the planet Earth, tracked a second, and much larger, spacecraft from the same Imperial Fleet.
The Imperial Cruiser Badminton glided menacingly out of hyperspace and down to sub-light speed. Masked from the Earth, and its comparatively low-technology astrophysics detection equipment, by the planet Mars, electronic cloaking devices and a well-written fictional invisibility device. It had a simple mission. It had run out of milk and the Imperial milk float Q931 was over two weeks overdue. Being a merchant, rather than a military vehicle, it had left a tell-tale sign, and the complex equipment1 on the Badminton had easily found the trail and followed the wayward craft to the Solar System. Or SS7 in unmapped quadrant DSS1, as it was known to the Badminton's captain, Idea.
Captain Idea was puzzled as to the reason for Q931 being so far off course. Admiral Plan had considered the problem and claimed to have formulated a possible reason, but was not going to share any information with lower ranks. First Mate Slipting Sloelee, from the planet Capers in system Bonk was even more confused, having less information than the Captain. And so it went on. Lieutenants and Radio Officers knew little of the mission, NCO's and other ranks were almost unaware that the Badminton was engaged in anything other than a routine patrol. Surprisingly, one crew member on board hit upon the real reason for the mission and the Badminton's involvement. Marine Private Jewty shrugged when a mechanic asked him what was happened.
'I expect someone just got lost,' he replied offhandedly, as he settled into the security seat (defensive) of the Badminton's shuttle. He quickly lost interest in the mechanic's adjustments of the tractor beam, as he lovingly adjusted his marine defender's Blaster for the umpteenth time.
Pilot Officer Vollai stepped into the shuttle and the small puddle that the leading spaceman on cleaning duties had missed. Not noticing, he slipped into his seat and adjusted his belt. If only he hadn't been tempted into a second helping of Galactic Loäfheigh á la Funghi avec Créme. It was his one weakness - food. It was fortunate that he had chosen a career as a pilot, now that he was 50 pounds overweight.
"Ready for Launch," the intercom crackled.
"Just a sandwich or two," replied Vollai, mis-hearing the clearance.
"No, LAUNCH!" boomed his colleague, the equally over weight Traffic Officer Lob.
"Roger, Launching," Vollai complied, as Stephen Lob wondered why his friend had called him Roger.
As the shuttle slipped from the launch bay, a sinister shape melted silently out of hyperspace and jolted from many times light speed down to tortoise paced geostationary orbit behind one of Mars moon's. Almost by sheer chance, more shapes stealthily arrived, all equipped with electronic invisibility gadgets, and shielded from both the Earth and the Cruiser Badminton by the moon they were orbiting. As well as the first arrival, the star destroyer Return, there were several alphabetically named rebel ships: an impressive 20 'A' wings; 18 'X' wings; 12 'Y' wings; 3 'B' wings; 4 'I' wings; 3 chicken legs; a pot of barbecue sauce and the substantial bulk of the Millennium Bunny! Carefully loaded into its hold, and well disguised as an Easter Egg, was a huge and lethal Neutron bomb.
The ships all maintained radio silence, as planned. Each captain fed in the final course programmes, as planned. Each second-in-command checked the encrypted call sign that would fire the engines onto the preset course, as planned.
On board the Millennium Bunny, Lukewarm Wallcrawler dropped his light sabre and See3-Poo fell over it with crash and hit several buttons along the wall. This was not as planned. Nor was the resulting blast from the aft auto-gun and the resulting bright flare that burst above the moon. The rebels held their breath. The robots held their currents.
"What the **!$ is going on?" stormed Fiet Dewette, climbing out of his seat and moving back to the crews quarters. "I can't leave you alone for a minute can I?"
"It was knot my fault," intoned the robot, the crack on the head bringing a little used "quirky" programme into use for the first time. "Lukewarm dropped his Light Sabre on my nee and nocked me down. A knice robot like me would knever nowingly put a mission at risk."
"Sorry," said Lukewarm. "I felt a disturbance in the Farce - as though a thousand souls laughed at the same joke."
"Well, just be careful. It is your job to control and monitor the farce.
As luck would have it, as the shuttle approached the designated on Earth, the instruments suddenly shut down and then restarted. For 30 seconds the spacecraft was visible on radar, radio, visually and even the main television news broadcast.
"Alert, we have been spotted," yelled Pilot Vollie.
"Do not worry, it will soon brush off," replied Leading Astronaut Lert.
"Idiot! The sub-species here have noticed our presence, we have broken rule 418B of the Galactic Charter."
"Do not worry, I won't tell if you won't," Alert calmly reassured his officer. Pilot Vollie was not easily reassured and had a large vein standing out in his forehead.
"Do not worry," he screamed. "That lump of wood, fabric and an engine is a heavier than air early flying machine. A single seater, double winged propeller and internal combustion-engined 3 man crewed craft." As he finished ranting the instruments all winked on again. The auto-locking device winked on as the civilian identification radio beamed received a conformation of status, mission and cargo. It was only too unfortunate that the chances of the encrypted code for "Q931, milk refuelling mission, cargo 60,000 imperial litres of grade 1 milk (bovine)," was identical to the encrypted code sent out by the submarine as it reported "Seagull captured, rendezvous at code Toad and Raspberry, 2 days time. Boris Adidoff"
As well as the shuttle, Q931, the Sopwith Camel and a flock of seagulls with loose-bowels, another flyer appeared from north west, arriving at exactly the right time almost by fluke. A sleek machine, capable of incredible speeds, heavily armed and with a manoeuvrability achieved by twiddling with the VTOL controls, James smiled as he felt the power beneath him, his eyes dancing beneath his goggles - mainly so that his ears couldn't know what they were frivolously doing, as the Harrier screamed over the beach at dangerous 75 feet above sea level. In the rear cockpit Martin squirmed in his seat, wishing the busy schedule had been just a little bit slacker, so that he could have paid a visit to the bathroom. Or popped behind a hedge.
"It has gone - just disappeared!" cried an amazed Ginger from the rear cockpit, coincidental to the invisibility device re-operating. "One minute it was behind us, the next it is gone!"
"There it is, right ahead," Algy called from the pilot's seat. Then he remembered the intercom, flicked the switch and said it again. "There it is, right ahead."
"Circle slowly in a clockwise direction, staying 300 yards out," instructed Biggles, suddenly becoming dictatorial. Ginger wrote the instructions into his shorthand pad, bumping his elbow twice, mainly because he had quite long arms, even if his hands were a little short. As the Camel circled the alien craft, the three pals watched as the submarine rose to the surface, breached the waves and then lifted, dripping above them and into the sky. About twelve feet from the shuttle, it hung suspended by the invisible tractor beam.
The tractor beam had been a real breakthrough for the federation. The earlier invention, the Karthoarse beam, was only capable of moving smaller cargo containers (single door, 20 feet long, no stowaways). The tractor beam was immensely strong, taking up less room and producing far less effluence than its predecessor. It could pull a weight equivalent to any craft it was fitted to, cultivate deep furrows in the fabric of sub-space, required no hay whatsoever, and its singleton driver required only a simple meal of cheese, bread and pickle before operating it for a whole day.
Notes:
1 I couldn't think of any other reasonable explanation for its presence.