“OKAY, HONEY! LET’S SKEDADDLE OUT OF HERE!”
“Did you manage to get inside the Trading Centre, Jive?”
“Yes – finally! Goddamn it all!”
“Have you completed everything you came here to do?”
“You bet your sweet ass – if you had one! After what I’ve been through
I’ve had more than I can take of this damn dicey planet”. . . . . .
“THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA,” said Honey.
“You’ve had an incredibly lucky escape on Mogadosabron, Jive.
And here we go again, jumping straight into danger.
We’ve got an important consignment of rare antiquities aboard and just can’t afford the risk.
There’s the Lazanese Government to contact, too.”
Fromway made no reply as he flicked for pilot manual. He jabbed the warp-drive cut-out and there was a strange shifting sensation as the . . .
DAN DARE AND DIGBY are returning from a long tour of duty out in deep Space.
Oh, well, Dig! We’ve been away in space for a long spell – more than two years, Earth-time. But it’s back to dear old Earth now, at last – eh?
Aye! An’ Ah’m lookin’ forward to a reet neece spot o’ leave, too. Not t’ mention a long overdue payrise wi’ soom back pay!
Let’s watch the news, now we’re back in the Solar System and can receive it on sub-ether more or less as it happens. See what’s been going on while we’ve been away.
Good grief! Dig! Do you remember that peculiar . . .
THE MEKON’S FLAGSHIP DROPS SILENTLY through Earth’s cloud layer towards a corner of countryside somewhere in Southern England. It slows its descent through clear blue skies on a sunny day in mid-spring. On board with the Mekon in his control cabin, are Dan Dare and Digby, under Treen guard.
MEKON: Observe – we are coming in to land now, Earthlings. For my purpose, I have chosen a particular area and you, Colonel Dare, will be an integral part of my plan.
DAN DARE: Hey, Dig! I recognise some of the landmarks, and if I’m not mistaken, this is . . .
ALLOW ME T’ INTRODUCE MESELF!
Me name’s Horace Winkleberry – and me dad is Albert Winkleberry.
Me mum is Ethel Winkleberry. Before she were married she were Ethel Crabtree. She told me she’d always hated surname she were born with and couldn’t wait to get wed t’ change it.
“Didn’t get very good bargain, did I,” she added, throwing her . . .
HE WERE RIGHT PROUD OF HIS ORVIS.
Used t’ get it out of his trousers and show it to us.
Nowadays, of course, thee can get locked up for that sort of thing.
But in them days, yer could get away with murder . . .
MARSHADOGOBON IS HERE AND MARSHADOGOBON IS THERE. One planet in two places – two separate locations for only one world.
Starfleet Captain, Broged Par Jinnsi commanding the Starcruiser Voracious, originally discovered Marshadogobon in the inhabited sector of the Orion Arm. It was quickly colonized by Federation citizens and soon became a thriving mining and manufacturing community, trading with other worlds of the Federation.
Fifty years later, an expedition into the nearby fringes of the previously unexplored Sagittarius Arm, led by Captain Bel Ching Jorgenson in the Starfinder Intrepid, rediscovered Marshadogobon when he and his crew attempted landfall on a previously unknown planet.
Suddenly, on approach . . .
ON A MISSION THROUGH FEDERATION SPACE, the Starship Enterprise encounters a huge stationary object, directly in its path.
“What’s that up ahead on our sensors, Spock – some sort of monstrous Klingon Battle-Cruiser?”
THE DRAWING ROOM IS NIGH, the curtains are closed – only a chink remains open.
Smoke drifts a lazy trail, disturbed briefly by a breath of ghostly air from the street below.
All is deathly quiet and Mrs. Hudson is abed downstairs.
Not even one little snore doth escape her nasal nostrobes on this hushed night . . .
TO BE SURE, AT ALL – Tim Murphy knew without a doubt that he was an Irishman.
It wasn’t just that his name was Tim Murphy, or that he’d been born in Ireland, either. It wasn’t even, that he had a pronounced Irish brogue, at all.
Or that he’d downed thousands of pints of Guinness and countless double whiskies. And provoked hundreds of fights – most of which he’d won, even while stumbling and reeling in a foggy . . .
“OH WELL, HERE WE GO AGAIN,” thought James Entwhistle, brushing his palms together and sending a spray of crumbs to the floor beneath his desk. “Another working afternoon in this age of uncertainty and foreboding.”
Leaning forward and whistling cheerfully beneath his breath, he replaced his plastic lunch carton in the centre drawer of his desk and rummaged through the filing trays on top.
He plucked a Job Vacancies sheet from the mass of paperwork and leaned back in his seat with a sigh, studying it absently. Then peering through his spectacles across the sheet, he stole a lingering glance at the area in front of . . .
“HOW’S THE DIGGING GOING, UNCLE?”
“Oh, not bad, Ben. Not bad, at all!”
Professor Oscar Ryan’s bespectacled gaze was riveted to the floodlit slope ahead as it sped by beneath their vehicle, his gloved fingers tight around the grips of the steering column . . .
