[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.All their values were tip over tail.Still, what else could you expect from a race whose foremost scientists believed they evolved from slime? Ocean slime.They honestly held the opinion that their ancestors were mud.On the other hand, having spent some time with them, the Cat was inclined to agree.He sculpted his face into an elegant sneer and disappeared into the shower cubicle.The Cat was less than an hour into his ablutions when Rimmer spotted the Starbug.‘Look, there it is!’The Cat dashed out of the cubicle, dripping underneath his bathrobe, his shower cap still in place.‘There!’ Rimmer pointed at the magnified video image.The Cat squelched into the Drive seat, looped White Giant over for an investigatory pass, and landed four hundred yards from the stricken craft.Rimmer knew there was no one alive on board long before they scrambled over the dunes of glass and stood in front of the gutted ‘bug.The hatchway door was half-melted, and what was left was swinging creakily on one hinge.Inside, there was nothing; no fixtures, no fittings; just the rotting bulkhead.The roof was almost entirely missing, and cone-shaped holes gouged grotesque patterns in the three-foot-thick reinforced steel floor.The Cat curled a finger through a gap in the hull and pulled.A foot-square slab of metal came away easily and, when he tightened his fist, crumbled in his hand.Rimmer looked down at the pile of ashes that lay on what remained of the sleeping couch.‘Found this on the Drive seat.’ The Cat stood in the hatchway holding a melted fragment of Lister’s leather deerstalker.‘I’ve seen this before,’ said Rimmer.‘One time on Callisto.Wiped out an entire settlement.’‘What is it?’Rimmer looked up through the roof at the black knotted whisps of cloud threading across the grey sky.‘Acid rain,’ he said, quietly.Both of them knew they wouldn’t find anything, but they decided to look around anyway.None of it made sense to Rimmer.He’d left Lister on an ice planet.Somehow, the ice had melted, exposing this strange terrain of geographical features apparently built from glass.‘Hey!’Rimmer looked up.The Cat was standing high on a ridge overlooking the wreck of the Starbug.‘Look at this!’ The Cat motioned for Rimmer to join him.Rimmer picked his way up the jagged slope of the bottle mountain and looked down into the next basin.Spread out below them were acres on acres of rich, verdant pasture land.Fields of wheat, fields of corn and fields of barley shimmered in the easy breeze of the sheltered valley.A long, thin stream of gurgling blue glinted its length.Trees, not very tall, but strong and young, sprouted in thick forests around the perimeter.And in the centre of the valley, in the heart of a vast olive grove, smoke curled from the chimney stack of a small homestead.‘There.’Rimmer couldn’t make out what the Cat was pointing at for some moments: his eyesight wasn’t nearly as keen.Then he saw it.Distantly, in a thin rectangular patch of brown, a tiny figure was dragging a handmade plough across a half-furrowed field.‘It’s Lister.It’s got to be.’They half slid, half tumbled down into the valley, and ran across the fields towards the figure.When they were two hundred yards away, they realized they were wrong.It was a human, but it wasn’t Lister.It was an old man, grey-haired and slightly bent.More than a little hard of hearing, too, because he didn’t respond to any of Rimmer’s shouts until they were almost on him.He swivelled and looked at them, his fingers toying idly with his long, braided silver beard.He had the strong muscle tone and weathered skin of a farmer who’s spent a lifetime in the fields.He was fit and strong, but he had to be at least sixty, maybe more.He gazed at them for a while from under the thick, furry white caterpillars of his eyebrows, then he mopped his brow with a leathery forearm and turned back to his plough.‘Old man!’ Rimmer panted.‘We’re looking for someone.’The man stopped, but didn’t turn.‘A friend of ours.Crashed just over the hill.’ The Cat pointed, but the old man didn’t look.Instead, with his back still to them, he performed a passable impersonation of Rimmer’s voice.‘I’ll be back,’ the old man said.‘Trust meeeeeee.’ He turned and pulled off his cap.He swept a liver-spotted hand through the remaining wisps of silver on his pate.Rimmer crooked his head to one side and studied the old man’s features.It was the eyes that gave it away.‘Lister?’ he said, his eyes half-pinched in disbelief.Lister shook his head.‘Where the smeg have you been?’‘We got here as quick as we could.’‘Quick?’ Lister bellowed.‘Quick!?’ He rubbed his legs together and made a series of bizarre clicking noises with his tongue
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]