The computer screen flashed a little signal. Dasel-pots went over and read it. ‘Hitchhiker asking for permission to board ship. Accept? Y/N.’ She didn’t recall leaving anyone behind, except perhaps Martin. Dasel-pots would’ve denied the hitchhiking request if it weren’t for Martin, who was not left behind.
‘Wait, I know him. He comes from planet Cheesius. Violet, black coat, has a strong odour of various sorts of cheese. I’ve done business with him. Trust me, he’s perfectly safe.’
Dasel-pots didn’t trust Martin at all, but she let the hitchhiker in anyway. A dull bang came from the inside of the cargo bay. Stuart heard it, walked up the stairs and quickly ran down again, nauseated from the smell. He passed out before even catching sight of the unknown hitchhiker. Niklas also heard the bang, walked up, collapsed and then rolled down the stairs. Dasel-pots started to walk up but spotted the two bodies. She ran back to the bridge to fetch Martin’s taser, which was, of course, gone. Martin went up the stairs with a newly XLM Cloak-all-Smells smell-cloak and helped Dasel-pots to drag the bodies back to the bridge. The unknown rabbit walked down, rubbing his head.
‘Tea?’ asked Dasel-pots to the hitchhiker.
‘Erm.. no thanks. It’s not really my cup of tea.’ But the unknown rabbit had a very painful headache. ‘Actually, I would like a cup of tea, please. Pun not intended,’ he added with a weak smile.

Down on the ground, the commander-in-chief of XLM’s spaceship-yards tried frantically to send all sorts of emergency signals, but there were no responses. Finally, he decided that paying a hefty sum for some mercenaries would be much better than to lose Orbitus, so he sent an emergency signal to every single major ice-cream vendor company in the galaxy, describing the most depressing lack of ice-cream on the planet and that the Beholders hated all things vanilla.
Soon enough, a dozen ice-cream capital ships turned up and bean their advance on Orbitus. After a receiving a brief volley of heavy chocolate-shells, the Beholders regrouped. Fighters came screaming out of the capital ships in their thousands while the Beholders clustered together in swarms and mingled with the fighters. The ensuing battle would be ranked by the standard, official inter-galactic Destruct-o-meter as ‘high-medium’. Ever so often, in the sphere of gunfire and earth-shattering explosions, burning metal, big panic-stricken eyes, or roasted pieces of body part, fell from the skies.
Nietzsche’s Shoe was quickly singled out as a weak target and was immediately being chased by about a hundred angry Beholders. The ship did some weak evasive manoeuvres but even a sprinting turtle would have looked more graceful. Inside the ship, people were starting to dehydrate due to cold sweat.
Dasel-pots looked over the data for both engines. ‘Something’s seriously wrong with the engines. Why aren’t the engines fully charged?’
‘The helium-3 batteries were all used up on our journey to Orbitus,’ said Niklas.
‘What about the spare-batteries?’ inquired Dasel-pots.
‘Didn’t you use up the spare-batteries for tea from the drinks machine?’ answered Unigma.
Dasel-pots looked dumbstruck. ‘Martin, taser the hitchhiker.’
Martin’s eyes shone with malice. ‘Hey, you, I’ll buy my taser back for 5 gold coins.’
‘No, I’ll keep it, but thanks for the offer,’ said the unknown rabbit.
Martin’s eyes turned red and the unknown rabbit did a little thinking. ‘All right, er, give me the money.’
‘Thanks. Nice doing business with you.’ Zap. Thud.
‘Ok, now we need spare-spare-batteries, or we’re done for. Where are those spare-batteries? Don’t stand there and shrug! Niklas? Q! Why are there no spare-spare-batteries?!’
‘There are plenty of spare-spare-batteries for the engines,’ replied Q proudly.
‘Argh! Then why haven’t you loaded them? Do I have to do everything manually these days?’
‘Sorry, but I can’t find them. I know they’re in the ship, but someone must’ve taken them and used them for some other purposes.’ Before Q could finish, the ship shook and rumbled. Its shields were losing power and they wouldn’t run for much longer. Q sighed. ‘Didn’t I warn you about the lax security around here? I listed 15, 000 ways of how to get a grip on safety issues in a ship, but you only allowed me to reach number 54 before rudely interrupting me. That’s it, I’ve had enough of rabbit incompetence! I’m switching the engines over to the spare-spare-spare-spare batteries because someone used the spare-spare-spare-batteries to operate the drinks machine. Again.’ At that moment, the bridge-door opened and Stuart entered with a cup of hot tea in his hands. Due to the tea’s extraordinarily good taste, he ignored the cold looks everyone gave him. ‘Hmm,’ he said as he sipped his tea, ‘I think we need to switch on the smell-cloak again.’

Nietzsche’s Shoe’s booster fuel was soon pumped through its inner fuselages like adrenaline-saturated blood. The lurched forward like a rhinoceros but soon picked up great speed and easily flew away from the battle scene. After its close escape from the Beholders of Orbitus, the ship flew away towards Holidaius because the captain, Dasel-pots, felt that she needed a break. After a brief pause to dump off the unknown rabbit on the planet of Muckamok, Nietzsche’s Shoe continued its silent journey into space

[Ok, that's that finished. The "finished" version will be posted somewhere at www.totalfreaks.com so check it out sometime in the future ]