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.The electrics were shot to hell.There was a rumble from the far end of the maintenance deck, and a whole twenty yard section of ceiling smashed to the floor.Lister was completely unaware of the tears that coursed down his grease-streaked cheeks, and of the insane babble that chundered from his lips as he raced back and climbed into the suit.He yanked the left-hand cable, and his neck snapped forward as the stacker truck lurched back and reversed fifty yards, slamming into the rear bulkhead.The suit tottered on the forks.If he fell now … if he fell and lay motionless on the floor as the acid swirled in from the deck above …Gently, he tugged the right-hand cable, and the truck moved forward.He tugged again.The electric motor whined to maximum pitch.The truck gathered speed.It screamed towards the bay doors, supporting Lister in his reinforced steel suit at the front.Acid drizzled delta patterns down the bay doors as Lister and the stacker truck smashed through the weakened structure and out into the eye of the acid storm.The truck’s caterpillar tracks juddered over the basin’s jagged terrain, gradually picking up the speed it had lost on impact with the doors.When Lister came to, he was half way up the basin’s incline.Over the peak of the hill before him, he could see the clear sky hanging a lazy blue over the next valley.Two hundred yards to go.He scanned the ground.Bizarrely, insanely, it seemed to be composed of broken bottles.He looked around.The whole of the mountain appeared to be glass.Millions upon millions of glass bottles, all shapes, all sizes, but only one colour - green.In fact, as he looked through the acid mist, he realized that all the mountains looming around him were likewise constructed of green bottles.What was this place?Overnight Ice Ages, acid rain that cut through steel, and a landscape made entirely of glass.Nice place for a holiday.There was a muffled bang from behind him, and the stacker truck jerked and stopped.Lister craned round to see why.The truck was scarcely recognizable - a melting mess of metal and plastic.He tugged on the right-hand cable with idiot optimism.The cable snapped and slithered through the sleeve of his suit, gouging a thin red line of pain along the length of his arm.He hung from the forks of the truck as the rain rodded down and bounced, sizzling, from his suit.Helpless and immobile, he swung like a giant metal pub sign.He tried to lift his arms.Impossible.The suit was too heavy.So he just swung there, wondering how long it would take him to die when the rain eventually got through, and how much of him would be left for the others to find.THREERimmer, Kryten and the Cat disembarked from the shuttlebus mid-afternoon the previous Tuesday and staggered surreally up the metal ramp to the Drive room.‘Look, stay calm,’ said Rimmer, manically pacing up and down in front of the vast screen.‘It’ll take Holly ten seconds to work out what to do, and then we’ll be out of here.’‘Does anybody want toast?’ came a small tinny voice.They turned, and saw the Toaster perched on top of a stack of terminals.‘No!’ they screamed in unison.‘How about a crumpet?’Kryten tapped in Holly’s activation sequence, and handed voice command over to Rimmer.‘On,’ said Rimmer.‘Holly - we’re being sucked into a Black Hole - how do we get out?’The giant screen flitted and flickered, before Holly’s image assembled in a mad, cubist parody of itself.His chin was where his forehead should be, his mouth was replaced by an ear and his nose pointed skywards on top of his balding pate.‘Jlkjhfsyuhjdk,’ he said.‘What?’‘Mcuj nklj flbnnbcbcy.’‘There’s something wrong,’ Rimmer yelled.‘Turn him off! We’re wasting his run-time.’Kryten slammed the flat of his palm on the keypad, and Holly fizzled away.‘What’s wrong with him?’Rimmer and the Cat shared shrugs.‘It’s the dilation effect.His terminals are spread all over the ship, they’re all operating in different time zones.While it’s midnight Monday for his central processing unit, it’s a week on Thursday for his Random Access Memory.Anybody fancy a muffin?’‘Will you shut up?’ said Rimmer.‘What the smeg are we going to do?’‘What happens,’ the Cat tilted his head to one side, ‘if we get sucked into this Black Hole? Is that a bad thing?’‘A Black Hole is an unstable star that’s collapsed into itself.Its gravitational pull is so enormous that nothing can escape - light, time, nothing.How about a potato cake?’‘Look, will you kindly shut your grill?’ Rimmer spat.‘I’m trying to think.’‘Can’t we just fly through it,’ the Cat ventured, ‘and out the other side?’‘Nice idea,’ the Toaster scoffed
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