The Rip in the Fabric of the Universe ...

[Driver]

"Would you mind, sir?"

He eased his way past Shorty and approached Sally. With a patently lustful glint in his seafaring captain's eye, he said. "You seem like a very useful sort of person to have aboard, Miss. May I invite you to the captain's cabin for a cocoa and a chat?"

"Won't the captain mind?" said Sally, innocently.

"Ahem!" Nemo was nonplussed. "I find myself nonplussed," he said. "I am the captain."

"Oh!" said Sally. "I am sorry. I'd love a cocoa and a chat."

Off they went, down the companionway with Nemo solicitously shooing various companions from Sally's path.

"Dogs," said Shorty. "Why is it that when I look at the captain, I immediately get a mental picture of a penguin?"

"That, my large and muscular mate, is a very perceptive question." Dogsbreath was impressed. "I'm impressed," he said. "For a bloke who was recently twassocked about the frontispiece with a fence picket by a bloke half his size, that is a very perceptive question. There's no doubt about you, Shorty, you're smarter than you look."

There was a brief pause.

Dogsbreath continued after a moment's reflection. "Mind you, that wouldn't be too hard ..."

"Yair, yair," said Shorty. "But why is it ..."

[fxst]

the penguin um sorry captain has a lustful look in his eye for the love of Rogers life? Wont she just beat the penguin err captain about the head with a large cup of cocoa until he

[ernknot]

has knocked the chocolate out out of him?

[Driver]

Speaking of whom .....

Chocolate Le Clair tapped politely on the door of the captain's cabin.

"Come in!" The Captain's peremptory summons wasn't the effusive welcome Chocolate seemed to have expected.

"Allo, allo, mon Capitaine! Eet ees a long time seence ah 'ave 'ad the pleasure of seein' your face! Won't you introduce me to zees charmeeng young ladee?"

"Le Clair - Miss Sally. Miss Sally - Le Clair. Now, what is it that you want, Le Clair? I have a great deal to discuss with Miss Sally."

"Ah merely wanted to say 'allo, mon Capitaine. Eet 'as been a while seence we spoke."

"Very well: Hello. Don't hesitate to speak to me again next time you see me on the poop. On your way back to the maindeck, roust out Roger from the galley and send him along with some cocoa, there's a good chap."

Sally leapt to her feet and clapped her hands with joy. "Oh yes, do send Roger along - even without the cocoa," she said. "He's the whole reason I'm here. I have missed him so much!"

"D'you mean to say that you know my cabin boy?" Nemo was astonished. "I'm astonished!" he said (to no-one's surprise).

Before he could expand on the theme of his astonishment, Roger burst into the cabin, thrust a tray of cocoa mugs at the Captain and swept Sally up in his arms.

"Mmmff, mmmfffff, mfffm!" they said, jointly and severally, lips locked together. (Sally and Roger, that is. The Captain wasn't party to the embracing and lip-locking - he hadn't been invited and he was busy trying hard not to spill hot cocoa on his clean uniform).

He was, however, mightily peeved to be treated with such lesé-majesté aboard his own ship and in his own cabin, no less.

"I am mightily peeved," he said. "To be treated with such lesé-majesté aboard my own..."

He got no further. Dogsbreath burst into the cabin, closely followed by the enormous bulk of Shorty.

"You'd better come up top and have a look at this Captain!" said Dogsbreath. "It looks like ..."

[fxst]

a repeat of the 100 years war all wrapped up in a few minutes" Cocoa going everywhere Captain Nemo shouted for Roger to clean up and raced out to stop the war about to erupt. As he burst out onto the poopdeck he stood and looked in amazment at Chocolate Le Clair doing his best to............

[ernknot]

keep a straight face whille Dogsbreath licked the chochcolate from his......

[fxst]

fox hat 'ya dirty mongrel snail munching waste of oxegen imitation of a homo sapiens why do you have to splater everyone around you with chocolate?'
Withthat he raised his staff and with one quick swing sent poor old Chocolate Le Clair into willie wonker's chocolate factory and .........

[ernknot]

and said " That will teach you to try and chockablock Miss Sally" Meanwhile Le Clair was transported in to the eclair processing machine where eclairs were being piped full of chocolate fudge. Noticing his demise Le Claire thought of Miss Sally and ........................

[fxst]

stiffened.....................his resolve to be a better person or eclair in his next life.
Meanwhile as Dogsbreath sheathed his staff...................

[AlexS]

...Miss Sally realised that her long-held dream of deflowering Roger the cabin boy was, at long last, near to fruition.
"Roger, my love," she panted, as she drew a badly-needed breath. "At last we can live our dream. Take me away with you. We shall spend our time with nothing on but the radio."

"Er, well," said Roger "That's a very nice idea, but..."

[Caliban]

"What the fox a radio?"

[Driver]

There was a ripping sound and a neatly dressed bloke in dark suit with a distinctly Edwardian haircut appeared.

"Per'aps I can 'elp," he said. "My name is Guglielmo Marchese Marconi. I theen' you are a-talkin' about-a my eenvention: thee radio."

Dogsbreath ....

[ernknot]

" Who the fox he??"

[AlexS]

Challenged by the tone of Dogsbreath's question, Signor Marconi (Macca to his mates) dived to the deck and writhed in agony. However, realising that there was no referee aboard the good ship Very Little Gravitas Indeed, he swiftly regained his feet, and was about to reply, when he realised that no one was watching him.

Every eye was fixed on a stunning blonde beauty who had apparently slipped through the rip with Macca. She stood 6'2" in her fishnet stockings, and the Little Black Number she wore only served to highlight her hour-glass figure. When she walked, it was like watching two tomcats fighting in a sugar bag, and the glimpse of breast that the LBN afforded put one in mind of the Swiss Alps, if the Swiss Alps had been made of blancmange and topped with plump strawberries. Her pouting lips gave you the feeling that kissing her would be like eating a sponge cake full of treacle. Is it any wonder that no one was taking any notice of Signor Marconi?

"I", she announced, "am Mademoiselle Claire de Saloon, spin doctor and media advisor for Signor Macca. We seem to have been transported through time by some miracle of radio-telemetry. One minute we were just twiddling knobs and pressing each others buttons, and the next we were here."

Shorty was the first to lift his gaping jaw from the deck. With all the suavity that he was renowned for, he...

[Caliban]

said "Which idiot brought a real woman onto the ship? You lot know the rules. It's tantamount to saying 'good luck' to an actor on opening night! Quick Doggsie get her out of here."
Before Dogsbreath could reply, Groans whose selective deafness had suddenly returned said...