THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RED DWARF

PART 15

"Kill them!" the Orc leader shouted to his troops.

"One mob of homicidal Orcs can just ruin your whole day," quipped Kochanski, arming her bazookoid.

"How are we for time?" Aragorn shouted to Kryten.

"It's going to be a tight squeeze, sir."Kryten told him as laser beams and bazookoid shells started flying.

"HOW tight?"
"Nine minutes, thirty-seven seconds, sir."

"Oh smeg." Lister said.
"Oh double smeg." Rimmer echoed.

"Run for it," Lister yelled. "We'll provide covering fire."
Rimmer looked at him. "We will?"

Aragorn and Kochanski both looked at each other and said... [CENSORED]

The Orcs kept charging . . . .

"I got 'em," Cat said. He raised his bazookoid . . . only to find that it was pointing the wrong way.

"Don't shoot!" Lister warned, but it was too late.

Cat fired right over the heads of the Hobbits, who were running like mad for the portal site--at least, where they thought it was.

"I'll be glad to get out of here, Mr. Frodo." Sam said as he dodged laser fire.
"That makes two of us, Sam." Frodo agreed.

Legolas was running out of arrows. And still the Orcs came.

"Oh TRIPLE smeg!" Lister and Rimmer said together.

"We're never gonna make it!"

"Bugger that," Gandalf said, and waved his staff around.
An unbreakable force bubble appeared around them. They could move, taking the bubble with them, but no Orcs could get in.

"Now what?" Lister asked the wizard as the Orcs swore at them.

"I suggest we recamp at the portal site."

The group quickened their pacing, with Gollum protesting every step of the way.

"Why'd we have to let him out?" Sam protested.
Rimmer gave him a sharp look. "Those stasis booths cost money, you know! We can't just be leaving them all over creation, can we?"

"My precious does not like this!"Gollum rasped.

"Time?" Lister demanded.

"Eight minutes, forty-four seconds." Kochanski said.

"We're not gonna make it!" Cat wailed.

"Oh, do shut up." Rimmer sighed.

They finally reached the portal site with only two minutes to spare.

"Well, mates," Lister shouted over the rumble of the portal, "looks like this is it!"

"But won't this smeg up the story?" Kochanski asked.

"I don't know." Lister admitted ruefully. "But . . ."

"Not to worry," Gandalf said. "I've prepared a special memory spell that will make them forget everything from the moment we arrived."

"You done this before?"

"Well, no, actually . . ."

That scared the smeg out of Lister. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Give them some of your vindaloo."Rimmer quipped." That should do the trick."

"Here's a better question," Cat said. "How do we get out of this bubble-thingy?"

Gandalf concentrated. The bubble became a single wall between them and the oncoming Orcs.

"One minute forty-one seconds." Kryten called, straining to make himself heard . . . as the Orcs kept firing their bazookoids at the shield wall.

You could barely see the portal unless you were looking directly at it. It was just a shimmer in the air, like heat coming up off a hot pavement.

But Middle Earth could be seen quite distinctly...

"Good luck, man." Lister leaned down and patted Frodo on the shoulder.

"Thank you, Mr. Lister." Frodo said as he began to enter the portal.

"You really would have liked that outfit," Cat said to Aragorn. "And you would have looked good in it too!"

Aragorn didn't reply...

"Well," Cat said, "see you, man."
"Look, we haven't got all that much time!" Rimmer helpfully pointed out. "Can we just get on with it?"

"We're tryin', man!" Lister shouted as Merry and Pippin waved farewell to Kryten and entered the portal.

Gimli looked over his shoulder at Starbug. "You take care of that great beast!" he called out, before he too disappeared into the portal.

"My precious is getting frightened," said Gollum, listening to (and cowering from) the bazookoid fire.

"Here y'are," Lister said, holding out a can of lager (which earned him a rather alarmed look from Rimmer). "One for the road."

"My precious thanks you." said Gollum, emptying the can in one swallow before diving into the portal. The empty can whizzed through Rimmer's leg as it was thrown away.
"D'you mind?" Rimmer cried indignantly.

The last one through was Legolas, who even as he was stepping through kept firing off arrows in defense of Lister and his comrades.

"Keep the outfit!" Cat called out to him.
Legolas nodded, not really sure where he could wear such an outlandish costume, but wanting to be nice.
When he was gone, the shimmer vanished. Kryten confirmed it with the psi-scan: the portal was gone.

"And now, sirs, I humbly suggest . . ."

"How long d'you think this shield thing'll last?" Lister asked worriedly.
"Not long, I should think," Rimmer said.
They legged it double-time back to Starbug.
Kochanski hadn't said anything in a long time, but no one noticed. They were too busy dodging bazookoid fire.

But the moment they got back to Starbug and lifted off, she started crying.
Oh, smeg, Lister thought. "What's the matter?"

"I'll never see him again!" she wailed. "And he's going to die and . . . and . . . and he won't even remember me! Oh, switch me off!"
"You don't mean that," Lister said, in what he hoped was a tender manner.
Kochanski nodded. "I do! I don't want to go on without him!"
Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Please spare us the melodrama."

"Rimmer?"
"Yes, Listy?"
"Smeg off."

She wouldn't stop, though. All the way back to Red Dwarf she kept going on about how she wanted to be switched off because she couldn't stand the pain.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this, Ms. Kochanski?" Holly asked her when they finally got back to Red Dwarf.
"Quite sure." Kochanski replied, blinking back more tears. "Switch me off now."
"Can you switch Rimmer off too while you're at it?" Lister asked Holly.
Rimmer glared.

Lister wanted to talk her out of it. He wanted to give her a million reasons why she should stay, only he couldn't think of any. He wanted to do anything, say anything, if it would change her mind.
Then he saw her face. That was enough to silence his protests. 

"I'm gonna miss those guys," Cat mused.

"I'm gonna miss Kochanski." Lister said.

"You won't want to be seeing the video tape, then," Holly said suddenly.
"What video?" Lister asked.
"Hang on, it's here somewhere . . ."

Lister, Kryten, and Cat all looked at each other. "What video?"

"Oh, didn't I tell you? I made a little video of that going-away party you had the other night. Or was it the coming-aboard party? I don't know, either way we had short people everywhere . . ."
"Play the vid, Hol."

If she'd had shoulders, Holly would have shrugged.

It started off with a closeup of a lager can. From there it pulled back to a shot of someone short and hairy and another, taller someone in a black wig singing "I Got You Babe."

"God, tell me I didn't just see what I think I saw." Rimmer pleaded as Cat was shaking his head.

"That is not a good look for him."
Lister shushed him, and they watched some more.

Kochanski was doing the Hustle with Boromir and two of the Hobbits. Even Gandalf was getting into the groove.

Lister stared in utter disbelief, and Rimmer did the same when the silly costumes came out.

"For smeg's sake, Holly, stop the tape!" he shouted frantically, not wanting to see what came next.
"I warned you chaps not to play this." she replied, shutting the machine off.
Lister looked at his shipmates and said, "That tops it. There's only one thing for us to do now . . . Erase it."

"But it's just getting to the good part!" Cat protested.

"For a change, I agree with Lister." Rimmer said. "It should be erased. Now."

"Don't you want to see the end?" Holly asked.

" NO!!!" the crew shouted in unison.

"All right then."
The tape cut off, in the midst of a chorus of "Who Let the Dogs Out?", and there was a crunching sound.
"What's that?" asked Rimmer.

"I don't know," Lister said, reaching for a bazookoid, "but I don't like it, man."

"You said you wanted it gone," Holly said. "I guess it's really gone now."
Lister shook his head. "I think Krissie had the right idea."
"Oh, no!" Rimmer started backing away from him. "No one's shutting me off!"
"No, that's not what I meant."

Rimmer, as usual, had no idea what he was talking about.

"C'mon," Lister said. "It's late, let's get to bed. We'll talk about it in the morning."

"Actually, I think we'd best talk about it now." said an unfamiliar voice. The Boyz from the Dwarf all turned as one to see a stranger standing in the doorway.
Lister broached the obvious question: "Who the smeg are you?"

"Me? Why, I'm . . . Inspector Raymond Fowler, Gasforth PD, at your service, and the most peculiar thing happened to me this morning outside the station."

"Smeggin' 'ell!"

Far away, on a hillside somewhere near Moria . . .

. . . the crew of the starship Heart of Gold stared in utter disbelief at their surroundings.
"Nice going, Zaphod!" Arthur Dent fumed at his reluctant shipmate, Zaphod Beeblebrox. "'Don't touch the dimensional body-swapper', I said. 'Leave it alone', I said. But would you listen to me? NOOOOOOOOOO! You had to go and prove what a genius you are! Now we're stuck in the middle of God knows where . . . ."
"Chill out, Earthman." Zaphod urged him in his usual laid-back tone. "It's just a minor glitch, is all. Eddie'll have the whole thing sorted out in no time. You'll see."
"More likely," droned a grim Marvin the Paranoid Android, "we'll be stuck here months, if not years."
Ford Prefect cast an appreciative glance at a nearby grove of trees. "Well, if we did have to get stranded for a long time, we certainly couldn't have picked a prettier place to do it in." Noticing one familiar face was missing, he suddenly asked, "Has anyone seen Trillian?"
"Not me." Arthur admitted. "What about you, Marvin?"
"No, and I probably never will again." Marvin grumbled.
"What about you, Zaphod?"
"Not since that swirly light thingy dumped us here, Earthman." Zaphod said. "Maybe those guys can give us a clue."
Arthur looked around in confusion. "What guys?"
Then he saw the line of Ringwraiths coming over the next hill. There were only two words he could think of to say . . .

"Oh, smeg . . . ."

THE END

To be continued in THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE RED DWARF

(Stay tuned for a bonus smegups episode!)

Inspector Fowler belongs to Rowan Atkinson, Tiger Aspect Productions, and the BBC; all "Hitchhiker's Guide" characters belong to Ballantine Books, the BBC, and the estate of the late Douglas Adams.