Zool III : Oh No, Not Again
                       Some Plot Happens. No, Really. Honest.
                                                   Episode 9 by Matt Bishop

     For those with short memories, or those who have managed  to blot  out
the intricacies of the plot so far, we provide a brief summary of where all
of our dramatis personae are at the moment:
     In  the  Lie  Berry  Inn,  we  have  the  Penguin,  Brother Mann,  and
Molin-Cax,  the  latter newly  and somewhat  implausibly reincarnated  with
tie-dyed flesh.
     Chez Lord, we have Tim Lord (formerly Gogromelgromoth  The Dark  Lord)
being harangued by his mother Mrs Lord. Tim, who has recently been revealed
to be a centipede, sells  insurance, though  I have  no idea  how1 and  his
mother wears a cardigan (with a few more sleeves than usual, I presume) and
goes round annihilating things with her gigawatt laser cannon.
     On a Klingon ship, we have Glamorous Galactic  Agent Marina  MacDonald
and her Sidekick, being tap-danced at by random Klingons in the presence of
David Icke.
     Vanished without trace  are: Beard  (last seen  in the  body of  Igor,
talking to MacDonald), Igor (last seen  in the  radiation-poisoned body  of
Beard, at Lord Evil's laboratory), Lord Evil (last seen with Igor),  Clute,
the Men in Black, the Wise Woman, and the Brotherhood of  Man2 Atomised  by
laser cannon, we have: Abigail Lord and the Hobbit.
     HOW the hell is the author ever going to tidy up this mess?
     WILL the vanished characters reappear?
     COME to that, will the atomised characters reappear?3
     IF it takes a week to walk a fortnight, HOW many apples in a pound  of
pears?4
     Now read on!
                  _______________________________________

     On board the Klingon ship, there was something amiss. One of the major
outstanding questions was answered, for those that  cared to  know, by  the
words  stencilled   on  a   nearby  bulkhead:   IMPROBABILITY  DRIVE5.   NO
USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS WITHIN6. But there  was still  one nagging  doubt...
Glamorous Galactic Agent Marina MacDonald was the first to  put her  finger
on it7.
     "Are you good Next Generation Klingons  or bad  Old Series  Klingons?"
she enquired sweetly, without a trace of her former French accent.
     "Neither!" snarled the Klingon captain, in an impressively bad display
of stereotypic dialogue. He and the lieutenant  both grabbed  the sides  of
their  heads  and  pulled,  rending  their  Klingon  disguises  in two  and
revealing Lord Evil and Igor (still in Beard's body, for those  of you  who
give a damn).
     "Now, Miss MacDonald, you have a choice. You can either  help us  find
the gigawatt laser cannon and annihilate  the Earth,  or..." (evil  vicious
leer - god this is badly written...), "we can cycle you  and your  sidekick
out of the airlock."
      MacDonald, who had always been amenable to reason, hesitated for  all
of several nanoseconds before shaking his hand.
     "Good," said  David Icke8,  "another two  recruits for  the Forces  of
Turquoise. I reckon it's about two days journey  to Earth  from here.  Lord
Evil, plot us a course for Earth. Igor, fetch me the Prozac."
                  _______________________________________

     The bow wave of improbability from the ship had caused a large area of
the surface of Zool death planet where the intractable criminals of  10,000
worlds etc. to instantly fling itself across  the galaxy  and land,  rather
neatly under the circumstances, on none other than the  planet Earth,  with
fringe effects doing even less believable things in the  process. A  couple
of the less subtle of these effects caught Mrs Lord in mid-harangue. A  fly
on the wall in that house would probably have turned  into a  fried egg  or
something, but assuming it hadn't, it would have seen both Mrs Lord and her
son turn into human beings9. There was a stunned silence.
      "Bugger," said Mrs Lord, "I spent months knitting that cardigan,  and
it'll  never  fit  now."  Beard (now  miraculously -  or, more  accurately,
improbably - reinstated in her own body10) fell from the light fitting with
an almighty crashing noise.
     "Odd,"  she  remarked  groggily, "how  only a  short while  ago I  was
talking to Glamorous Galactic Agent  Marina MacDonald,  and now  here I  am
lying on the carpet in  a house  with two  people I've  never seen  before.
What's that?" She pointed to a spot  where, until  a few  minutes ago,  the
gigawatt laser cannon had been lying. It had been replaced by a herring.
     "Bugger again," said Mrs Lord, "I can hardly going round knocking  the
living daylights out of people with a herring, now can I?" She picked it up
and stuffed it in her cardigan, just in case.
     "Come, mother and interloper," said Tim, (and  if you  thought he  was
impressively butch as a centipede, you can't imagine how bad he's going  to
be as a man) "we must go to  the pub.  For some  reason, my  body feels  as
though it needs beer and peanuts."
                  _______________________________________

     They entered the  Lie Berry  Inn to  find the  Penguin, Molin-Cax  and
Brother Mann  trying to  work out  what to  do next,  and on  the verge  of
deciding that another drink wouldn't be a bad idea.
     "You may perr'aps be wonderring why I 'ave brrought you all  togezzerr
in zis public 'ouse," said Clute, stepping lightly from behind a column. "I
'ave... dammit, I've been talking  to that  MacDonald woman  too much...  I
have an immensely important mission for you all to undertake.  I happen  to
know that the evil Forces of Turquoise are in pursuit of the plans for  the
gigawatt laser cannon...."
     "HOW do you happen to know," enquired Molin-Cax, "and what the hell is
that thing you're carrying?"
     The thing in question was a burnished aluminium  cube, about  eighteen
inches  on  each  side, festooned  with dials,  switches, flashing  lights,
gyroscopes and so on11.
     "It's my Critical Apparatus; I overheard  their subspace  transmission
on it. Are you going to help save the planet from Them or aren't you?"
     All present agreed that they were, since it seemed the only option for
getting  the plot  going again.  "Good. Here's  the plan.  The Ministry  of
Defence are, as we know, useless. We have to smuggle the plans to  America,
into the hands of Starfleet Command..."
     "Whoa!"  This time,  it was  the Penguin  talking. "You're  completely
barking. STARFLEET COMMAND? As in Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Uhuru, all them?
They're fictional, you logorrheic buffoon."
     "No, Starfleet  Command are  merely top  secret. America  has been  in
contact with extraterrestrials for  years _-  don't you  read Weekly  World
News?  Starfleet  Headquarters  were  cunningly  established  in   Altoona,
Pennsylvania, so that nobody would ever notice they existed..."
     "Except for people who went to Altoona, I  suppose," muttered  Brother
Mann.
     "Do you know ANYONE  who has  been, or  who would  voluntarily go,  to
Altoona?  Well,  then.  Now  be quiet  and let  me finish.  I have  already
established a method for smuggling the plans. My friends the Men in  Black,
who have been over  there behind  that pillar  all the  time, have  already
completed all the necessary paperwork. Let me explain..."
                  _______________________________________

     Only two hours later, our brave  heroes set  off for  America. It  had
been agreed that they would pose as the West Thurrock International  Ballet
and Double Glazing  Company, about  to tour  the United  States with  their
nine-hour-long smash hit musical Battlefield Earth  _- On  Ice!. Clute  had
written the script and had subtly embedded the plans for the laser into one
of the more hermetic subtexts, under the assumption that  nobody was  going
to be prepared to do close textual analysis of this  monstrosity. The  race
to Altoona had begun!

     WILL our heroes get to Starfleet before the evil Icke catches up  with
them?
     IS Altoona the first stop, or will they have to  inflict this  musical
on the general public?
     WILL the Critical Apparatus ever serve any purpose again?
     HAS the plot finally started moving?
     HAS Glamorous Galactic Agent MacDonald really sold out?
     WHAT became of the Wise Woman?
     All these questions and many more will probably be ignored in the next
instalment of ZOOL III...


  11 (FX knocking sound. pause. sound of door opening)
  2Tim (for it is he): "Good afternoon, Madam. I wonder if I could interest
 you in..."
  3Woman: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!"
  4(FX slam. sound of furniture being pushed against door.)
  52 They were given a set of keys by Molin-Cax. They haven't actually made
 an appearance yet, and as  long as  the present  author's characters  have
 access to that laser cannon, they're not going to.
  63 Let's face it, continuity has not been a strong point of the story  so
 far.
  74 As many steps as it takes a fly to walk backwards through a barrel  of
 treacle. (Old Bray's Kentish Sayings, Inc.)
  85 No, I didn't know that about Klingon ships either.
  96 Not strictly true, since any reasonably competent user could  probably
 replace  the  cup of  tea without  too much  trouble. At  least until  the
 Intergalactic Allied Union of Drive Servicers and  Beverage Mechanics  got
 to hear about it.
  107 No surprises there, missus.
  118 You thought I'd forgotten him, didn't you?
  129  What  a  coincidence!  Now  I  don't  have  to  write  bit parts  for
 centipedes!
  1310 Yes, this means that there are now two copies of this  body. Can  you
 say "plot device"?
  1411 It folds up into his pocket when he's not using it. Don't ask awkward
 questions.