“I recognise the first four farts, Groot, but the fifth sound was indicative of an accidental follow-through, substantiated by the inclusion of your description of the act of defecation thus performed.”
“I’m sorry, Sir, I had a plateful of Xoltan Smegclusters for lunch, and you know what they’re like on an empty stomach.”
“Quite!” agreed his employer. “Now would you kindly divulge your reasons for interrupting my slumbers just as I was on the point of inserting myself into a Foltan Mesmer Queen after a particularly satisfactory innings of foreplay involving exotic fruit, cauliflower cheese and a frog on horseback?”
“You managed to do all that in your sleep?” replied the incredulous voice from the radio.
“I refer to the contents of a dream, you idiot. Now get on with it.” Vesta Groot held his mouthpiece at a distance and regarded it witheringly, hoping the sentiment would not be conveyed through the ether.
“And don’t look at me down your instrument in that condescending manner.”
“Sir,” began the underling, “I’m worried about Cedric.”
“In that respect, we are in agreement. Your brother has been a constant source of aggravation since he joined our outfit in the Seventh Period of Uncertainty.”
“No, I mean, I think he’s been captured by the Skrota. He went off on a mission last week.”
“Hopefully with a loud report with the result that his entrails are being employed as sustenance for fattening livestock at a location not within a billion parsecs of our own. Very well, what was his last recorded position…..and, Groot, I would remind you that I do all the sexist and off-colour jokes in this relationship.” The Groot subordinate passed on all the relevant information upon which his superior then acted. He despatched two of RA-ANAs most trusted agents and returned to his Mesmer Queen, only to discover that, during his absence, she had taken up with a Skrotan Scud-Warrior who was performing perfectly well without the assistance of fruit and vegetables, or indeed, stallion-mounted amphibia.
“Where are we supposed to be looking for the bloody idiot?” asked Hidea, as she tucked herself into her purpose-built pilot’s seat. Not an easy task. Not only was she unforgivably ugly, but agent H. Scargoyle, was overweight by about 325%. She was also emotionally attached to agent Gunter Pass, a liaison which was entirely one-sided, and unrequited. Hidea was professional enough to ignore her feelings whilst working, which was why it was the only time that Gunter was willing to locate himself within several parsecs of her.
“Sector 88888888888888888888888 point 7 – Luzwiggfizzom.” Replied Gunter. They both immediately realised the implications. Sector whatever-it-was was one of the most dangerous areas on the planet Volta, domain of the Skrota, and present incarceration point of one Cedric Groot. The hazards were numerous; swamps, mud-pools, Voltaquakes, badly-drawn monsters and recordings of twentieth century English political speeches from the planet Earth played incessantly from the clouds.
“What? What did he want to go there for? It’s one of the most dangerous areas on the planet; swamps, mud-pools, Voltaquakes, madly-born dronsters----“ Hidea knew all about Volta. She had, long before joining RA-ANA and falling head over heels for Gunter, had a long-term relationship with a Voltan fungus merchant named Kusalerfasdy, which had ended tragically when he realised what a fat monstrosity she was and blew his head off with a thermopopsplat borrowed from the Museum of Objects on Snarge. At least, that was what he told her.
Soon, they found themselves on the approach to Volta. Gunter commenced landing procedures.
“Fire retroes.” He ordered.
“Retroes, here are four weeks’ wages and your cards. Now get out of my sight.” Answered Hidea.
“Landing gear down.”
“Landing gear – oh! Landing gear been down ever since we took off.”
“Oh! Landing gear up then.”
“Landing gear up.”
“Right! Landing gear down.”
“Landing gear down.”
“Land.”
“Sea.”
“Shit! Take off again. Quick.”
“Off again taken.”
“Land on land.”
“Land landed on.”
“Open door.”
“Zzzzzzt.”
“Pardon?”
“Wasn’t me. Was door opening.”
“Oh!”
“Door open.” With all this accomplished, Gunter sniffed the air.
“When I said ‘Shit!’ it was an exclamation brought about by landing on the sea instead of the land. It was not an order.”
“Sorry.” Said Hidea.
The first task was to scout around and get the lie of the land. Hidea pointed excitedly to the west.
“Look! At the end of this finger and a bit further.”
“What is it?”
“Part of Volta.” They scouted around some more.
“I wish we had a Tardis.”
“Shut up.” More scouting around.
“I think that’s Cedric’s spaceship, isn’t it?” ventured Hidea at length. Indeed it was. They examined the craft, which appeared to be in a fairly satisfactory condition, apart from several gaping holes in the side and the appearance of having been sat on by something very huge which then blamed it for its aubergine-like haemorrhoids which it was obliged to carry around after itself in a small wheeled contrivance manufactured from fragments of driftwood from the beaches of the Uzing Sea.
It was conceivable, mooted Gunter, that Cedric may merely have nodded off and forgotten to blast off. It was actually as conceivable as his waking up to the realisation that Hidea was the most gorgeous creature ever spawned and desiring to immediately rip of her clothes and consummate their passion with an urgency. In practice it would have been quite impossible even in the unlikely event of such an emotion taking grip of him. The removal of Hidea’s clothing was not a labour which could be accomplished with any kind of immediacy and would likely as not involve the use of miles of scaffolding, several dockside cranes and a workforce along the lines of that responsible for the construction of the Pyramids. It was decided that an internal inspection of the vessel was required.
The blundering brace entered the silent spaceship. The found Cedric’s maps, instruments, half-digested apricot sandwich, hurriedly spat back on to a table.
“Someone’s been here.” Suggested Hidea.
“Yes. Cedric probably.” Replied Gunter, oozing irony in handfuls.
“That’s far enough.” Came a voice from behind.
“Tell your behind to shut up.” Said Gunter.
“It wasn’t my behind. It was a voice from behind.” The two agents span round and found themselves facing the same way as before.
“Controlled spin this time. 180° as opposed to 360.” They span again. Gunter managed 90°, and his companion, putting her foot on a discarded grape – Cedric was a great believer in obtaining roughage from fresh fruit – rotated herself into a knotted rope and fell to the floor with a thunderous crash. At the close of this pantomime they found themselves to be staring into the business end of a Skrotan’s splatter-gun, with which weapon it was generally inadvisable to enter into contention, being, as it was, capable of atomising several large planetary systems at a setting of 1.09 on a scale of 150.
“Move.” Snarled the Skrotan.
“Why?” Hidea wished to know.
“Shut up.” Re-snarled the Skrotan.
“What if I don’t?” demanded Hidea, deliberately drawing the attention of the Skrotan in her direction, allowing Gunter to completely miss the point. Hidea fluttered her eyelashes at the Skrotan, who flinched perceptibly. The Skrotan estimation of beauty revolves around attributes regarded amongst other species as unattractive; boils, dripping noses and the inability to retain bodily fluids are looked upon with reverence and encouraged to the extent that the Skrotan pharmaceutical industry is kept busy producing unctions derived from used engine oil, vinegar, psyllium seeds and weak tea. Skrotan beauty contests, broadcast to the Universe live by means of their televisual organisations, have to be strictly vetted and censored using tape-loops and instant editing in order to prevent the full horrors being shown to viewers of sensitive, and even quite robust, disposition. Despite all this, the Skrotan was physically repulsed by Hidea’s aspect and took from his equipment pouch a pair of protective goggles which he affixed to his face before once more thrusting his weapon in the direction of his foes, regarding them with a sideways glance and endeavouring to concentrate his efforts on the matter in hand rather than throwing his innards into the nearest receptacle.
“Move.” He repeated. “You will come with me to Base where we are holding your comrade.” Hidea looked at Gunter. Gunter did his utmost not to look at Hidea. The idea that they should accompany this imbecile became a sensible one. Not only would they find the object of their search without having the bother of looking for him, but there was also the possibility that they might escape being blasted to jelly for their troubles.
“Okay. You win. Which way?” admitted Gunter.
Part 2
The Skrotan fingered his weapon with increasing vulgarity and Hidea wobbled disgustingly along, all the while endeavouring to distract the enemy who merely thought she was having some sort of siezure and ignored her.
"Never in the field of human conflict........" began an alto-cumulus, and fizzled rapidly to silence.
"Shut up!" snapped the Skrotan.
"It wasn't me, it was that cloud." objected Gunter.
"And I'm a Noltan Nupsukka."
"I wish you were," began Hidea, "'Coz then you wouldn't be here." This inane banter bounced to and fro for some time and they found themselves wading waist deep in a lake, or more likely a swamp, composed of something that looked and smelt remarkably like pea and ham soup. The whole foul mass belched, gurgled and boylked in the most nauseating manner, rising and falling obscenely and vomiting forth such a gut-wrenching stink that the very fabric of the landscape seemed on the point of throwing up - but enough of Hidea, the mud-pool itself lay strangely silent as they trudge-trudged along against the green, congealed ooze.
"This does not mean that the pound in your pocket......." observed a passing cumulo-nimbus.
"I'm warning you." glowered the Skrotan, effecting a piercing stare that only served to annoy Gunter. He returned the stare with attitude.
"If you weren't pointing that thing at me....."
"Hah! Well I just am, so there." Suddenly, the lake surface erupted, the soup began to bubble and boil ferociously and the waves parted as a great head broke surface and rose skyward....no, two heads. The mortal enemies, united now in fear and loathing stared helplessly at the vision and crapped themselves.
“Aim at it’s head” yelled Gunter to the blithering Skrotan, the only one among them that held the wherewithal to do anything about the huge and dreadful monstrosity that loomed above them, dribbling foam and threatening mastication. Were it possible to get inside the head of the Skrotan, a representative of the most fearless and evil species ever to soil the face of the Universe since the advent of the Daleks (who weren’t real, actually, right, okay), one might have construed that it was, alas, bricking its unpleasant self to the extent that it would have a view of the whole situation that could have been surpassed only by an extra tall stiltman craning his neck on the very summit of Everest on the hottest day of the year.
Yet the monster was, itself, a sad affair. It was the commonest of a species stricken by the affliction known as “Kestionay Van le Monsieur Avec Le Problem Uggydongindo”. The heads, although inextricably fastened together by virtue of being part of the same body, were as different from one another as could possibly be. Head number one was carnivorous, whilst head number two was strictly vegetarian and would hear nothing of munching upon anything with the slightest meat-based content whatever; hence its affection for fast food outlets and its total disgust at not being able to find any in the orblebungles of Skrot and the Bungledung Splat Splat Fongle where it found its birth. As the vile creature writhed beneath the two headed monster, Hidea recalled her biology lessons from the days of her youth when she was a gorgeous beauty, before the smiting that took place on her eighteenth birthday……but that was another story. This was the Ruptaloutadon, a rare but unfortunately not rare enough species that infested the momps and swud-loops of the Oltan Solar System, with the exception of Polta which was a totally crap planet with nothing going for it at all. Now, there was an even rarer variety, the three-headed Ruptaloutodon, which complicated things even more. The third head would eat only minerals; consequently living upon bits of rock or fizzy pop and having to travel several trillion light years every time in got thirsty on account of the fact that Earth was the only place you could get lemonade and if you asked for it in the Oltan System you were likely to be wrapped in foil and set under the blazing sun to fritter and blop til Huggenfrok. Rumour had it that there was an even rarer four-headed version that fed on Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and Abstract but nobody gave a stuff and it usually died before it was conceived. Anyway, this two-headed thing loomed above them and roared…… The Skrotan appeared suddenly to remember his mission and thrust his splatter-gun once more at Gunter and Hidea.
"Just keep moving. If we ignore it, it might go away."
"The lady's not for turning." announced a cirro-cumulo-nimbo-incubus.
"Get a move on." roared the Skrotan.
"It's following us." said Gunter.
"Hah! You can't fool me with th........"
"CHOMP" went a noise. The decapitated Skrotan tottered for a moment and fell what would have been head-first into the potage.
"Chomp! Chomp! Sloo! Gobble! Slaver! BU-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-URRRRRRRRRRRP!" went the Ruptaloutadon. Gunter took advantage of the moment to snatch up the splatter-gun and began to fiddle with the controls. The monster's veggie head, alert and unconcerned with chewing bits of Skrotan cranium thirty two times before swallowing, noticed and nudged it's comrade. Actually, it is debatable that another head attached to the same body should or indeed could be described as a comrade as a comrade might normally be expected to at least comprise a separate individual. This is boring and of no consequence. Hidea seized the initiative and thrust her garganutuan chest at the monster. Bizarrely, it seemed to take a shine to her and spat out the remaining bits of Skrotan brains prior to commencing what could only be construed as some sort of mating ritual. Gunter gazed in amazement as the two necks twined themselves around one another and the great beast began to utter weird cooing noises at a frequency several million megahertz below Barry White at 16rpm. The heades rose and fell alternately, while bubbles came to the surface and belched as they burst, sending splots of foam and smeg high into the purple Voltan sky. It was probably as well that the ceatures private parts were obscured by the soup for that, one feels, would not have been a pretty sight. Suddenly, all the evils ever spawned out of Hades and Purgatory combined howled throught the air like a discarded chapter from Lord of the Rings and the Ruptaloutodan vanished in a blinding flash, its constituent parts being blithered across the Universe by the Skrotan weapon which Gunter had at last worked out how to operate. Such was the force of the annihilation that bits of the creature were sent spiralling throughout the space-time continuum so violently that some of them came to light trillions of years later in totally different dimensions, including three or four of the curled-up ones. Gunter picked himself out of the ooze wherein he had been sent by the recoil. The splatter-gun throbbed and vibrated as it began to cool down from the several thousand degrees to which it heated itself in a discharge.
“Oh, the poor thing.” lamented Hidea. Gunter had thought of many names for the ruptaloutodon in the minutes leading up to the discharge of the weapon. Poor thing had not been among them. “Gibble! Gibble! Splunge!” Hidea stared wide-eyed like a hypnotised child at her idol and asked him if he was alright.
"Oh yes, fine." he muttered as he picked something with more legs than he felt comfortable about out of his left ear and plopped it back into the quagmire.
"That's good," she continued, "everything in one piece and working order?" she purred, advancing towards him and fluttering those damned eyelashes again.
"Er, yes thanks." Gunter was beginning to feel uneasy, and not, this time, about alien life forms with too many lower limbs. "Why?"
"Well, it's just that it's five thirty and I'm off duty." As she advanced upon him with open arms, Gunter frantically began to search for a "Reverse" button an the splatter-gun.
I suppose at this juncture it might be an idea to explain something about the solar system in which all this crap is going on. Yes, you’ve guessed it – all the planets names end in olta. The sun, a medium-sized yellow star, is called Olta and…..wait for it…..there are twenty five planets, Aolta to Zolta, including the aforementioned crap Polta which is the size of a cornflake and orbits at a distance of seventy five trillion miles, taking billions of years to go round once. In fact, so far, it never has. Xolta and Zolta are pronounced the same since people got fed up of trying to say “Ksolta” without sounding stupid. You might think from all this that the planets’ orbits range out from Olta in alphabetical order and you would be right – but only if you use the Qoltan alphabet which is, for our purposes, arse-back’ards and all jumbled up to buggery. It is used because the Qoltans won the right to name the planets in a raffle twenty years after the commencement of the Fifth Period of Uncertainty. The Periods of Uncertainty, of which there are eight, are so-called because nobody is entirely sure when they began or ended and even fewer people could actually give a toss.
Rolta is the largest planet in the system and is twice the size of Olta but is made of a material two billion times less dense than Crunchie bars and spins at a rate of 650,000 mph at the equator so that the pressure at the surface and its gravitational pull are roughly the same as the Earth. Why it should be nobody knows and the theory is that it was going to be a star but ended up instead parking cars and pumping gas until it was colonised by the Sopigyts so long ago that Primeval Soup was the sweet course.
Some time around the Confuscus of Gloot (see article 45364756373848474589347 “Encyclopaedia of Even Dafter Things” – Vol. 67 pages 45-666667), Rolta fell into disrepair and was sold to the present Roltans, who originated in the Rectal Sector of Andromeda (Hence the name of the Roltan capital) after a particularly heavy night on the razz and a Brachiosaurus Bangaloor Pal during a mindtrip to the Cretaceous Period, the prize in a competition in “Baluchetherium Weekly” the magazine of ridiculous mammalian knock-ups that attempted to take over after the dinosaurs were wiped out by their own flatulence, for the equivalent of twenty five p. If Baluchetherium is spelt incorrectly please do not blame the author of this piece – that’s how it was spelt on the cover and if you dispute that just try getting hold of a copy to prove it.
Much of the solar system is inhabited by organisms at varying levels of ludicrousness – all except Polta. A cosmic hermit once attempted to settle there to spend his life in worshipful penance living upon seeds and berries and water sufficient but after much deliberation and soul-searching decided “Bollocks to this” and emigrated to Solta, home of the famed delicacy Soltan vinegar where he became a diamond miner, meaning not that he excavated the purest form of compressed carbon, but that he eked out a living down a coal pit but was quite an okay geezer. To describe the inhabitants of each planet would take so long as to be extraordinarily dull. Suffice it to say that none of them added up to much, but all seemed to get on quite well, apart from the Skrota, who invaded and took over Volta even before Arthur Askey was born and subjected the native Voltan race to subjugation and penury because it was a giggle.
It was this evil Skrotan race with whom the Roltans were at odds……
The Skrota themselves strenuously denied all Roltan allegations of unpleasantness and nastiness, holding that it was jealousy which drove the Roltans to their conclusions. Their reputation for being ruthless was, they said, nothing to do with their being cruel and murderous, rather than the fact that none of them were called Ruth. Their leader, one Phuquias Helph, had been educated at the Roltan School of Betterment and Sheet-Soiling, having lied about his origins and disguising his obvious Skrotan appearance by wearing a hat with the message “I am not a Skrotan” on it.
It was during this time that he gained much of his knowledge about Roltan culture and established contacts which were to prove useless in later life. Despite having a good command of the Roltan language he was prone to word confusion so that many of his contacts turned out to be not worth the trouble. The Skrotan words for “Doctor” and “Dosser” for example are “Jxxxzxz” and “Jxxzzxz” respectively so that by asking school chums what their fathers did he garnered the Universe’s greatest database of vagrants, tramps and inebriates – totally without use for infiltrating Roltan society but a lifesaver in later years when, down to his last smegcluster, he sold the list to an interplanetary organ donation agency and used to money to mount the coup which brought him to power on Volta.
Other confusions arose concerning the words for “Solicitor/Toilet”, “Enemy/Enema”, “Penis/Stethoscope” and “Asteroid/Suppository”. Hilarious consequences along the lines of asking for a slice of cake in an Italian restaurant whilst under the illusion that it is French were not uncommon.
Helph ruled Volta, he considered, fairly. Nobody accused of a crime could ever be executed until it had been proven beyond doubt that he had “looked like the sort” or that his eyes were too close together. Given the revolting aspect of most Skrotans, and the fact that they made the Cyclops look like Marty Feldman, this was usually a foregone conclusion. However, it wasn’t all bad. The Skrotan method of execution was to let them die horribly of old age – the philosophy being that they were such an ugly, disgusting species that staying alive looking as they did was worse punishment than any quick release. This did not apply to Helph as he had spent what was left over from his Dosslist sale on plastic surgery. Initially he sent away to a mail order company, based in Heckmondwike, Earth, who advertised “Do-It-Thy’sen Plastic Surgery by Post” and was less than amused when a small resinoid model of a doctor’s treatment room, complete with examination couch, speculum and eye chart (Letters:
E VE RBE EENC ONNED), arrived two months later. He wrote in strong terms to the company demanding his money back and when they wrote back quoting his name as the course of action they proposed he take he was so inflamed that he had a photograph taken of himself which he sent to them with a short note threatening to find out where the director lived and move in next to him. He finally had his treatment at the Robin Cook/Margaret Beckett Institute For Facial Embeautyment located on Cleggybunghag339, a small moon of Eolta. The Institute was named after two particularly good-looking people from the planet Earth who managed to record details of their profiles and personalities in a time capsule just before the great “Accidental Purging of All Photographs Ever Taken of Cabinet Members of the New Millenium” on the planet Earth in 2005. Apparently Helph’s new good looks saved his life soon after when he ran into one of the Aliens, immortalised in the film series of the same name, and it was so staggered by his handsomeness that it ran off.