Al had been on ‘Arry ‘Ead ‘Unter’s ship for three days now, and ‘Arry had rescued another fifty Jake lookalikes. They were making their way slowly across the galaxy towards Crawk, but stopping off at a different planet every day.

‘Arry knew people everywhere. He had business to check on, what sort of business Al didn’t want to know, and contacts to make. One of the contacts, Niall, had come aboard to help with the mission.

“Best navigator in the business,” ‘Arry had explained. Al supposed that was a good thing. If they were going to fly through a war zone, before trying to breach the war defences of the most notoriously evil race in history, it was good to have a decent navigator.

Al wasn’t expecting much from the mission, except for a fairly quick death. Death of course would already have arrived had it not been for ‘Arry stepping in to rescue him from the baying mob. This had left him feeling a little drained, but at the same time, an almost flippant confidence had set in, almost as if he didn’t care what happened to him.

This was probably the reason why he had been getting to know ‘Arry ‘Ead ‘Unter. He’d chatted to ‘Arry every time he’d come into the communal lounge where all the lookalikes spent their days, and eventually ‘Arry had invited him to come and spend time with him in other parts of the ship. On a normal day, Al wouldn’t associate with assassins, but this was about as far from normal as you could get.

“Back in ’64, me and Niall flew directly through the Antipean Asteroid Shower, whilst being pursued by Crawkian pirates,” ‘Arry explained. “Nobody else has ever made it through the Antipeans before, let alone when being fired at by pirates.”

“Of course,” continued Niall, a muscly skinhead with a scorpion tattoo-ed on his face, “the pirates didn’t make it that far, barely half way through. It took all we had to get through the remaining 2,000,000 miles. You remember how close we got to that one?”

‘Arry laughed. The Antipean Asteroids were notoriously dangerous, and only a mad-man would dare enter, it was a sure death-wish. The ice and metal boulders ranged from 200 to 5000 miles in radius and travelled at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Avoiding impact took all your wits, and to concentrate for as long as it took to traverse the whole belt was barely possible. Al was impressed.

It was clear that ‘Arry and Niall had been through a lot together, and that made Al feel a more positive about his prospects of getting through the war zone around them.

“Anyway Al,” said ‘Arry. “You’ve asked lots of questions about mine and Niall’s expeditions, we’d like to know a bit about you. What do you do?”

This wasn’t something that Al had expected, and there was more than a little trepidation in his mind as he answered the question. Al could imagine his face joining the other victims on ‘Arry’s famous tapestry.

Still, Al had gone too far to not answer the question.