The Space Adventures of Starship Toothgroper in the 76th Galaxy

The story that inspired the humorous sci-fi novel that I am currently pitching to publishers...

Captain Titanius Catknobbler (known as Tobyjug to his friends) sat at the controls of the Starship Toothgroper and contemplated his future. It was a very short contemplation mainly, if not wholly, because his was a very short future.

Things HAD been going brilliantly. They had stretched the lightspeed continuum really well, knocked out a couple of extra parsecs on the dimensional rebound, and even juggled the caterering figures to the extent that they would be the only ship to have made a profit in on-ship waste recycling.

In fact, he had been well positioned to win the coveted Space Captain of the year award. Had been. And then this had to happen. Goodbye to the 20,000 dinion prize money; goodbye to the complimentary six week holiday on the planet of Gurgley Wormsuckers; and definitely goodbye to the much sought-after sex voucher entitling the bearer to one overnight encounter with Gladys McNude and her dancing nobb-danglers.

The problem that faced him was a simple one. Nothing to do with quantum cross-pollination of universes - that he could handle. Nothing to do with temporal facsimile overflows (or the tens of thousands of mutant air traffic controllers that usually resulted) - that was a piece of cake. Not even a hyper deplosion of the meganoid ultrascollops as experienced by the most ill-fated and much pitied starship the Mandrigal-Hyperbonker - Captain Titanius would give his right tentacle (if he had one) for such a problem.

No. The problem he faced was simpler than all these yet far, far more problematic. And, worst still, embarrassing. He, captain of the year (probably), with a record ten years unblemished service (if you ignore that incident with the nudists and the spiny wagglethorn on chundertruss 6), all-round-good-guy and fun-chappie-with-the-captains-hatty, had just discovered that the presidential galactic transport vessel, containing every single member of the galactic government assembly had been accidentally sucked up into the faeces reprocessing tubes of the Starship Toothgroper, and transformed into (edible) yellow slime.

Captain Titanius Catknobbler wondered what the punishment was for total annihilation of the Galactic government - and whether or not he'd like it.

Probably not, he thought.  Probably not.