Episode 1 - The Planet Eater of Acturus
“Why can't life ever be easy?” muttered Captain Disaster as he heard a terrible screeching sound emanating from somewhere underneath the cockpit. Still, it wasn’t as though his ship had exactly been in good nick to begin with.
His ship, if you could call a heap of scrap metal loosely held together by third-hand nuts and bolts a ship, was called “Disaster Area”. It was a particularly appropriate name, as it happened. All along the hull were dents to mark numerous collisions that had taken place with other ships, meteors, flying fish and even small moons. There were also blackened areas that commemorated various laser blasts. He had a name for each one and had even started talking to some of them. They were like old friends. One was called “Enterprise”. That one came from a security ship in a film set he'd inadvertently wandered into. The largest burn mark of all was called “Mummy”, not from any Egyptian curse but rather from the time his mother had tried to shoot him down in flames for leaving the gas on at home while he nipped down to the local shopping centre, five light years away on Ross 154.
She always did overreact, he thought fondly. And she'd looked quite surprised when he blasted her into oblivion. He’d set up the last few seconds’ video capture from her comms channel as his screensaver.
“Acturus-1 calling Disaster Area”, came over a message on his dead trendy headphones.
“Receiving you loud and clear, Acturus-1”, he said, in his best macho voice.
“Sorry about that. We had a slight problem with the hydraulic lock-pumps. I'm afraid we took the whole bottom section off your ship.”
“Yes. I know. I could hear it happening. And feel it happening. Also I had a lot of sensors setting off alarms and stuff. Also I felt a disturbance in the Force, though that may well have been last night’s vindaloo reacting to the Scum Light I’ve been drinking.” Disaster tried to sound cross, but he didn't really mind as he could now claim off the insurance. He'd been meaning to get a new set of wheels anyway, but just hadn't got round to it yet.
Maybe he could get a set that would actually turn now.
He was just about to land when he noticed that something was amiss. It took him half an hour to work out what it was, but in a flash he realised. The planet was no longer there!
CD checked all of his instruments very carefully, courtesy of “Very Careful Instrument Checking Systems PLC”, and then blinked a couple of times. But no, the planet didn’t come back. It was gone, as surely as the credibility of a cabinet minister who accepts invitations to tea from a Womble on Wimbledon Common at 2 o’clock in the morning, and then resigns because he's done nothing wrong. (And let me be perfectly clear on this, he was completely innocent and felt the compunction to resign for entirely separate reasons.)
The brave Captain pondered over the vanished world for some time. The only other occurrence of a whole planet disappearing was Pluto in 2047. That was because some fool had stockpiled five and a half million gigatons of nuclear explosives there and accidentally set them all off at the same time with an unfortunately timed sneeze.
“I would have noticed if a planet had blown up in front of me, wouldn't I?” he asked the ship's computer.
“Dunno. I suppose so. Even you, I think, would find it hard to miss an explosion of that scale, which measured a squillion on the Richter Scale. Unless you were asleep at the time, of course. Then it would take something significantly louder to wake you. Like the sound of all the lavatories in the galaxy being flushed at precisely the same time. Which as you know only ever happens when there's a Royal Wedding or a Spice Girls concert.”
Thus spake Zero-Bit, the ship’s computer, whose name would have been much cooler had it been Zarathustra. The name was chosen in an attempt to overcome Captain Disaster's inferiority complex. Unfortunately this didn’t work, as Zero-Bit had an IQ of significantly more than Captaino Disastero. Well, that is to say he had an IQ. Which is more or less the same thing.
“Yeah, alright Zero-bit. So instead of making smart remarks, why don't you tell me what you noticed? What happened to the planet?”
“Well, I should say that, in all probability, it vanished.”
“Howwherewhywhat?” gasped the Captain, without taking a breath or even breathing.
“It was probably de-materialized by an evil potent alien force into complete nothingness for the purpose of making an intergalactic causeway or something and what do you mean, what?”, replied Zero-bit.
“Quick, search all known theories as to why this may have happened!”
The annoyed computer replied “those are all the known theories, you anomaly of the space-time continuum!”. But then suddenly, and completely out of character, ZB stopped insulting CD and said something that was rather useful.
“No, wait! There is a reference... Something in Altairian mythology speaks of a monster that eats planets, and this creature is said to have never been quelled or subdued. It is conceivable that this legend is true, given current events”.
“Actually, I think that there's a lot of truth in these old legends”, said Captain Disaster by way of a startling revelation.
“Actually, I think that there's a lot of truth on these old legends”, said the Planet-eating monster, by way of an even more startling revelation. It really was startling. Look how startled I am and you'll see what I mean. Go on, look. What do you mean you can't see me? I'm here, aren't I?
There was the sound of a million trumpets, which shook space for light-years around. (Although, of course, it still wouldn't have been loud enough to wake up Captain Disaster. If he was asleep, that is. Which he wasn't. So I don't know why I mentioned it really. Never mind.)
“Pardon me”, said the embarrassed Planet-eating monster.
“Are you the Planet-eating monster?”, asked Disaster to the monster who filled up the viewing screen even though he was half an astronomical unit away, besides which he had a tee-shirt on which said “The Planet-eating monster's world eating tour 2039”, and a baseball cap (stupidly yet fashionably worn the wrong way round) which bore the legend planeteater@theendisnigh4u.burp.pardon.UK. Presumably he/it chose “UK” because, as we all know, the British are universally loved and admired by all. Of course.
“Yes, I am”, said the monster, “what are you going to do about it?”
“Quick, think of something!” screamed Disaster at Zero-bit. He was screaming because he had just realised the immense stupidity of trying to fight something approximately 896,245,671.4675332891 times bigger than himself.
“Run for it?”, suggested the computer sensibly.
“Where?”
“Anywhere!”
And so they ran. Or rather, sped away, in Disaster Area.
Quite what happened to the Planet-eater of Acturus is unsure. Many people say that he died of planet poisoning, but of course that was only the highly prejudiced people (well I suppose you could call them people… almost) of Delta Pavonis who made this claim. And that was only because of a long-standing feud between the two systems, all about a canister of unused fish oil... but that isn't important right now.
Personally, I think that the monstrously monstrous monster munched momentously, moreover making his way into the record books, only to be disappointed by the fact that he/it had only a very small speaking part in this story, the first of a series which is set to establish an all-time low in wit and ingenuity.
Still, you've got to start somewhere.
Captain Disaster, meanwhile, got a new set of wheels. His conversation with the claims department of “Don't Blame Us When It All Goes Pear-Shaped” went like this:
“I have a claim to make. For a new set of wheels.”
“Okay. Who were the other party insured with?”
“Um, they weren't. Well I don't know. They might have been. They must have been, I suppose.”
“Okay, I'm sure we can sort things out for you. Who were the other party?”
“Acturus-1 ground control.”
“Do you have a number we can contact them on?”
“Well, you might find it a little tricky to contact them. You see, the whole planet's just been eaten.”
“I see. So it's a cover-up on their part, basically.”
“You could call it that.”
“I think you should speak to our litigation department. Fraud is a very serious business, and by allowing themselves to be swallowed, the planet in question are basically accepting vicarious liability for any other crimes committed by whatever it was that ate them. I think this could be the biggest court case since Ian Paisley vs Everyone Else. It's all very exciting. I'm sure you're glad you insured with DBUWIAGPS.”
“So you're not going to pay for my new set of wheels?”
“No. Goodbye.”
Funding the new undercarriage proved to be quite easy, however. CD just sang at a local pub, and was fair weighed under with the deluge of money that was poured into his lap on the condition that he stop torturing everyone.
The wheels were a nice design, sort of like pyramids. There were little holographs of dragons portrayed on the sides of them.
They really looked quite impressive - and they even turned.
Occasionally.
