Cockpit Confrontation

With a sound reminiscant of a turnip being squeezed of its last drop of juice, the spaceship shuddered once, and stopped. This may not seem entirely logical, as the previous blog clearly stated that Shcktan pulled out the much-needed-fuse before Stan had time to start up the engine, but it makes for far more dramatic reading if there is an engine needing to be shut down, rather than just one being prevented from starting.

So, anyway, the spaceship shuddered once, and stopped.
Sitting in the cockpit, Stan quickly looked around at everything. What was wrong? Why had the spaceship suddenly stopped? Had he fogotten to turn on the hyper-drive, or the dreiptreion mark II, or the splangernator? No, they all seemed to be working. Even the CD of "Elvis and ET present 23 of Space's Greatest Hits" was busily playing in the background.

Perplexed, he reached into the glove compartment, pulled out the 2,783 page Driver's Manual, and began flicking through it, searching in vain for an 'English' section.

Before he could get far, however, a shadow fell across the doorway to the cockpit, and turning, he made out the figure of a very angry Russian Moving Assistant.... Shcktan (gasp!).

The anger in Shcktan's voice was obvious, even though in his rage he was talking in speed-Russian, and not making a lot of sense grammatically either! (Come now Shcktan, being annoyed is no reason to forget basic rules, like ш before б except after л!)
Eventually, Stan managed to get a word in edgeways.

"Edgeways!"
Shcktan stopped. No-one had ever called him 'Edgeways' before. A distant relative had called him 'Edward', and once he had been mistaken for a younger thinner taller Russian version of George Bush, but never 'Edgeways'. Perhaps Stan meant the movie 'Sideways', but that made even less sense...
He decided to ignore it, and move on, for the sake of the plot.

"What are you doing, comrade-boss?" he asked Stan, "Why do you steal spaceship from poor innocent alien? You will cause havoc to be reeking down on us!"
"Thats not very nice," Stan muttered, "Havoc isn't that smelly. I heard he washed last year, when Newsboy pushed him in that lake..." (apologies to those readers who don't live in New Zealand, and won't get the full wittiness of that joke)
Shcktan sighed. Talking to Stan could be like talking to a brick wall, except that a brick wall didn't talk back, or knock you out with underpants, or try to steal a spaceship while moving John Wayne memorabilia from an elderly deceased woman's house!
How could he get Stan to realise the havoc that would be reek... uh... the bad things that would happen if the spaceship was moved? He could start an interplanetary war the likes of which the universe had never...

Suddenly, Shcktan snapped out of his internal monologue, and realised that Stan was gone.
"Vodka!" he cursed in Russian, "Where has he gone now?"

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