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Two-toned blue and black leather bolero jacket. Silk button-down shirts with ruffled collars. Gold lamè scarf with embroidered edges.

Rimmer had speculated out loud more than once that the Cat must keep himself entertained with sexual fantasies at the helm in the long hours of nothing-happening. He's more or less right.

Faux tiger fur stole. Italian leather ankle-high boots. Spotless spats. 24-caret-gold filgr...

The Cat stopped in mid-mental litany and frowned. He hit the side of the console, and the frown deepened.

"Blinky light alert!" he shouted over his shoulder. "We have a blinky light on the console!

Kryten stepped forward to look over his shoulder. "Oh my. This is a warning light for the HVAC system."

"The what?"

"The thing that lets you breathe."

"That's bad, isn't it?"

"Indeed, sir."


Kryten stopped on his way down to the central air unit to pick up Lister. Lister was initially annoyed at the interruption, as he had found a brilliant angle from which to urinate on Rimmer from three decks up, once he emerged to take his shift, but Kryten eventually managed to persuade him that breathing is more important than irritating Rimmer. Together, they went to the drive room, where the oxy-generation unit, clearly marked, sat in a niche in a huge, greasy, dusty bank of unlabeled machinery, twice the height of Lister, with odd blunt protrusions that stuck out like tumors.

Kryten hit a few buttons on the O-G unit, and it flashed a soothing green light back. "Ah, good. The O-G unit is fully functional. You and Cat will not suffocate."

"Cheers, man," Lister replied nervously. He flashed the torch he was holding up onto the dingy, greasy monstrosity behind the O-G unit. "What's this?"

"That is the filtration system and the heating system. As space is a heat sink, we have no need of cooling, of course." Kryten touched one of the bulbous protrusions, and a chunk of the surface slid back to reveal a gritty control panel. He touched a few buttons, and a worryingly red light glowed desultorily. "Oh dear. The heating unit is failing."

"What's that mean?"

"Well, eventually this ship will cool down to about 2 degrees Kelvin, just above absolute zero."

"That's cold, innit?"

"Indeed."

The crew sat around the table in the midsection as Kryten finished explaining the situation. "It will not be a catastrophic failure. The temperature of the ship will gradually decrease as the unit fails. The auto-repair systems should be able to repair the unit, but they will not be able to work on it while it is running. I believe the best course of action will be to find a suitable planet on which to land and shut down the unit. If we shut it down in open space, the temperature of the ship will drop to effectively zero in minutes."

Rimmer sat back and folded his hands. "Well, we can just wait for curry night. Lister's flatulence is an untapped natural resource."

"In order to adequately heat the ship, Mr. Rimmer, Lister would have to break wind nonstop for four hours a day."

"He'll just have to cut down."

Lister rolled his eyes. "Look, we found a planet on long, long, long range scan that looks reasonable. Point eight gee and a breathable atmosphere. I say we turn the heat down to minimum to save the unit, and head for it." He punched a few keys, and a rust-brown sphere appeared on the monitor next to the cockpit door.

"Brown?" Cat looked down as his mauve smoking jacket. "I'm going to have to go change. Aaaaaw!"

"Make sure it's warm!" Lister shouted after him.


Two weeks later, they were just about halfway to the planet. The heating unit was still chugging along, keeping the ship at a nominal 5 degrees C; it had started to make some rather worrisome whirry noises with an occasional clonk, however, and although Kryten assured him that it would last until planetfall, Lister was worried. He huddled in his parka and mittens and paced nervously around the midsection. Cat was at the helm, resplendent in his white fur jacket and hat, and Kryten took no notice of temperature; Lister, however, was cold, and didn't like it one bit. He finally headed back to his quarters, hoping to snooze a little under a nice thick sleeping bag. He was surprised to see Rimmer there on the other bunk, with an expression on his face that would be better suited to icicles hanging from his nose.

"Hey, man," Lister said as he jumped into the cold bed, "what's with the mope?"

"It's cold, you goit."

Lister wiggled around until his body heat warmed up the comforter, and turned to Rimmer with a happy sigh. "What, cold? I didn't think you got cold."

"Not like I did when I was alive. I don't shiver. But I can tell it's cold, and it's not comfortable."

"Well, get into something warmer, man."

Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Holo-clothes aren't any more real than I am. And I don't generate any heat to keep in, anyway."

"I've seen you go out walking in deep space, though, man!" Lister was warming up to the argument - any warming at all was welcome. He rubbed the snot that was starting to seep out of his nose off on the corner of the bedspread. Rimmer flared his nostrils in disgust. "Deep space has no air to be cold."

"Oh, so your light bee senses temperature when there's air around to have a temperature. I get it. Lemme see..." Lister leaned out of the bunk and made a grab for the light bee, but only swept a hand through Rimmer's right-hand side as the neurotic hologram leapt back. "Keep your grotty putrescent curry-saturated fingers OUT of me! You don't just go sticking your hands into other blokes like that!" He looked back down his nose at Lister, now standing in front of him with his arms crossed. "Well, maybe you do." He turned to leave.

"Look, I'm sorry, man, I just want to help out." Well, that was not totally honest, perhaps. He was curious. He had only ever interacted with the hologram when he ran his hand through it back on Red Dwarf - oh, and when he had swallowed the light bee. But he had been irritated and turned it off, so it was rather a lot like swallowing a penny. Except that it went down more easily.

Lister walked up behind Rimmer and slipped his arms under Rimmer's arms and over his chest. He had to pay close attention to keep his hands on the outside of the hologram - and he was surprised to find that the boundary of Rimmer's body had a presence of its own. A subtle one, easily disregarded, but rather like the someone-walked-over-my-grave sensation when you take out the icy chill and foreboding.

Then he froze, realizing that if this were a woman, he would be spooning her and nuzzling her neck.

"Let. Go. Of. Me." Rimmer said through clenched teeth. And Lister did.


Lister dearly hoped that the planet would have a nice, suitably boring, and above all, warm location. With only three days until planetfall, the heating system was rapidly failing; the temperature was now a less-than-tepid -20 degrees C, and he and Cat were feeling it. They took comforters with them, now, wrapped into absurd ovoid bundles as they tripped and bounced and rolled their way about their duties. Kryten was infuriatingly optimistic, and Lister had responded to his latest variation on "Cold enough for you, sir?" with a suggestion that he engage in sexual practices that would be highly challenging for a limber human male, let alone a stiff-jointed android with a trademark where his jolly bits ought to be. Kryten had gone down to the service decks in a huff, and was now attempting to chip the laundry out of the solid cube that the sudsy water had turned into.

Rimmer had been uncharacteristically quiet; mindful of their earlier conversation, Lister had, like a good friend, attempted to draw him out by means of particularly offensive insults and his most disgusting anecdotes. But this had not worked; Rimmer's responses were uninspired mutterings of "git" and "gimboid." And while Lister knew that it was a straight-bloke hangup to react to an unexpected intimacy by holding the object of it at arm's length through meanness, he didn't care enough to buck the trend. And neither, he was fairly sure, did Rimmer. He pulled the edges of the throw up around his shoulders (it was from the women's quarters - puce with fuchsia spots - but it was warm) and stared fixedly at the brown sphere that was growing larger by the hour.

Later that evening, he lay under two scratchy blankets and a thick sleeping bag, slowly warming to the point where sleep would be possible. Cat, true to his kind, was out immediately. Lister was finally managing to drift off when he noticed that someone else was in the room.

Rimmer sat on the edge of the bed. The bed did not settle under him.

"I'm cold."

He was not shivering and his teeth weren't chattering. He was just cold.

Lister propped himself up on one elbow and looked hard at the figure he could barely see in the dim light. He couldn't hear that edge of suppressed glee in the hologram's irritatingly nasal voice that he could never quite hide when he had a jape in the works.

"So?"

Rimmer didn't speak, and his back wasn't contributing anything extra to the conversation. Lister sighed after a few minutes, and shifted back in his bunk. "Well, get in, you daft git."

Rimmer lay down stiffly in front of him, letting his body slide smoothly through the covers into the warm pocket of air surrounding Lister. Slowly, so as not to startle, Lister slid his hand through the holo... through Rimmer's chest, and found the light bee. It was so cold it burnt. Gingerly, Lister rubbed it with his fingers until it started to warm. He held it closer and lay back again - and was startled to discover that he was now overlapping Rimmer. If he moved, he could see the faintest edges of disrupted light. He stifled a giggle.

"What?" asked the testy voice from very near his lips.

"I just realized - I've never been inside of a bloke before." He grinned. "Am I any good, man?"

Rimmer paused for a second before answering. "Ashtray... whiskey... lager... a touch of curry... in a bundle of Liverpool-supporting goit."

Lister giggled again and fell asleep.

When he awoke, he was alone - but warm.