“Captain, if you’ll follow me, I’ll give you your regularly scheduled tour of the Roddenberry,” said Spark, stepping away from his console and toward the door.
“Proceed,” said Cork, standing up from his chair and following him.
The two stepped out and stepped into an elevator. Or at least Cork thought it was one before Spark corrected him.
“It’s a PeopleMover, Captain,” he said. “It’s like an elevator, except it has a trademarked name so Space Fleet can sue other writers for using the same name.”
Down they went a few decks, and first stop on the tour was the Barbershop/Sick Bay.
“I never understood why the Sick Bay is called that,” said Cork. “It’s because people go there when they get sick, right?”
“Actually, Captain, it’s because people get sick when they go there,” said Spark.
The door opened, and the horrific smell of hair clippings and dried blood wafted out. Cork and Spark walked inside and saw an even more horrific sight. Moth-eaten barbers’ chairs halfway to falling apart, hospital beds soaked in twenty-year-old sweat, and pools of fresh blood covering every inch of the floors. On the walls hung the surgical instruments: knives, saws, and axes, all rusty and stained with blood. On the counters were pills and tonics of questionable origin, plus a whole jar filled with leeches. And in the middle of the room stood the good doctor himself.
“Welcome to Sick Bay, Joe,” said McDonald, slinging a blood-soaked saw over his shoulder and holding a wriggling leech in the other. “What do you need? A trim or a trickle? Or maybe a leg that needs to be sawn off?”
“None of those, thank you,” said Cork, cringing. “I’m here to tour the ship.”
“Splendid!” said McDonald. “Let me show you to the medical lab.”
Cork and Spark followed him into the operating room and beheld the pinnacle of Space Fleet medical science. There were test tubes, beakers, Bunsen burners, and those weird machines with two metal antennae and an electric current going between them. There were brains, eyes, and other organs in jars. There was an angled operating table and a half-finished Frankenstein’s Monster lying on it.
“What do you think, Captain?” asked McDonald.
“Splendid,” said Cork, holding his thumb up queasily and trying not to throw up. Space Fleet needs to get a bigger medical budget, he thought.
Cork and Spark left Sick Bay, then continued on to the Teleporter Room. Inside was a control console, six glowing lamps on the ceiling, and six glowing pads on the floor below them.
“This is the Teleporter Room,” said Spark. “We would have called it the transporter, but then Paramount would sue us for trademark infringement so we didn’t. We use it to send people to and from the surface of a planet. The machine disintegrates people into atoms, converts those atoms into energy, beams that energy somewhere else, converts it back into atoms, and reassembles those atoms into the shapes of the same people.”
“Isn’t that just killing them?” asked Cork.
“Um…” said Spark, pausing. “Nobody’s ever complained about it, Captain,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“And all that teleportation seems pretty complicated,” said Cork. “Why don’t they just take a shuttlecraft?”
“The shuttlecraft would take up too much of our special effects budget, sir,” said Spark. “The teleporter is much more affordable, since it only requires camera tricks.”
After that, Cork and Spark went to the recreation room. Inside were board games, card games, video games, and dozens of crewmen who were supposed to be on duty.
“This is the rec room, Captain,” said Spark. “Would you care for a round of quadri-dimensional chess, Captain?”
“How do you play that?” asked Cork.
“It’s like regular tri-dimensional chess, Captain, but you travel your pieces through time,” said Spark. “It requires a certain highly trained mind to play. We Volcanoes are all champions of the game.”
“Maybe later,” said Cork.
After about a million other stops, the final stop on the tour for Cork and Spark was Main Engineering. Inside this hot, stuffy room were towering piles of coal and dozens of strong men in overalls, shoveling coal into the fires of the gigantic boilers that powered the ship’s systems. There was also a Burp Cola vending machine and a slot in the wall to insert a can of cola, which apparently powered the ship’s Burp Drive.
“Top o’ the morning to ye, Cap’n,” said Spotty, drinking a bottle of Guinness from one hand and a can of Burp Cola from the other. “Welcome to Main Engineering.”
“Mind if I take a can of Burp Cola?” asked Cork, wiping sweat off his brow.
“Not at all, Cap’n,” said Spotty. “Ye just needs to put in a quarter from our special effects budget.”
Spotty pointed to a piggy bank labeled “Special Effects Budget.” Cork took a hammer and smashed it, and it contained a single quarter.
“Oh, well,” said Spotty. “Looks like we’ll be needin’ to get our ratings up, Cap’n.”
“Well, that’s the end of our tour, Captain,” said Spark, stepping out of Engineering. “How did you enjoy it?”
“Eh, it was fine, I guess,” said Cork. “Now how about a game of quadri-dimensional chess?”
“Captain, you’re needed on the bridge,” said Spark. “Suppose there’s a threat to the ship that requires your leadership?”
“Oh, forget about that,” said Cork. “It’s not like some alien’s going to blow a hole in the wall.”
Suddenly, there was an explosion — a big, bright, loud explosion that threw Cork and Spark off their feet. When the smoke cleared and the two regained their feet, they beheld a big hole torn in the wall. From out of that hole issued half a dozen aliens. All of them had big heads, rubbery skin, bug eyes, and a few of them had antennae. All of them were wielding plastic ray guns. And all of them had a “Spirit Halloween” tag still attached to their costumes.
“It appears you have been proven wrong, Captain,” said Spark.
“Oh, shoot,” said Cork. “I have, haven’t I?”
“What is your course of action, Captain?” asked Spark.
“What is my course of action?” said Cork, apparently deep in thought. Suddenly, he jumped up, and his eyes went wide. “RUN FOR IT! AAAA!”
TO BE CONTINUED
Mark Starman in the 21st Century 