Regina made her way along the pavement with the graceful air of one who has many responsibilities but who has made a spur-of-the-moment unilateral decision to take the decade off and have a well-deserved nap instead, and who will not suffer gladly fools who have the nerve to suggest she should do otherwise.

She paused for a few long minutes to allow non-existent traffic to pass, then crossed the road at a leisurely pace and headed purposefully up the path towards Sean’s house as if she owned the place – which, in all the senses that mattered to her, she did.

It was more than a year now since she had charmed her way into the life of the young bachelor scientist, and felt more than justified in employing her undeniably winning ways to gain entry to his warm house, out of the wind and rain. Indeed, he had no cause for complaint regarding their informal arrangement, and was always more than happy to put aside whatever he had been planning on doing when he came home from work of an evening in order to make her welcome and simply sit with her head in his lap, stroking her soft, silky hair.

The only thing that spoilt it for Regina was when her brother Billy Bob got to Sean’s house before she did, and she entered through the open patio door to find him receiving the same treatment. She glared at Sean accusingly. Sean murmured some soothing words, which had a placating effect on Regina. Realising she was locked out of her own home until Kate got back with the only key, she resignedly took an empty armchair and began to wash herself with her tongue, while Billy Bob purred contentedly as Sean stroked his head.

Later that evening, one hundred miles due up:

"The Orion Senate deny that the elusive Feroh have delivered to them specific instructions that animal and plant life on Earth must be preserved no matter the cost, but sources close to the Kloan ambassador suggest that senior Firmament Agency officials have been mythically contacted by the technically non-existent ancient race which allegedly constructed the Galaxy’s lost wormhole network, and this would go some way towards explaining why…"

Flat Spatula sighed and motioned for the holographic news reports to go mute, which they accordingly did. It was going to be one of those days. Some hot-shot hyperspatial test pilot had dropped an unstable spatial discontinuity into another guy’s ocean, and it was his job to clean up the mess. He turned to his bushy-tailed operations co-ordinator, Snoozy Headfitz. "What have we got?"

"It’s bad," she replied, though he could tell from her furtive manner that this was exactly the sort of challenge she had been yearning for ever since first being assigned to Asylum and Immigration two standard years previously. "The spatial rift will seal itself in time, but it looks set to turn the Earth inside out before it does. Already the planet’s oceans have decreased in volume by two parts in 729, and volcanic eruptions are imminent."

"Then we’d best get to it. What do we have to work with?"

"Byyyrp has offered a number of sterile planets and moons ideal for Terraforming. Their orbits are being altered and atmospheres reconstituted as we speak. The gravity’s not perfect on all of them, but within acceptable limits. All they need us to do is bring them the Earthlings."

Regina’s ears pricked up as she heard a third cat mewing out in Sean’s back garden. This was unacceptable. This was her territory – well, all right, hers and Billy Bob’s, for the time being at any rate – and a third feline presence was not welcome.

Billy Bob had already dropped down onto the carpet and padded over to the patio door to look out. Regina also uncurled herself, stood up on her cushion, stretched and then descended.

Billy Bob had paused at the threshold, puzzled by what he was seeing and hearing outside. There were in fact upwards of half a dozen cats on the small back lawn, all looking troubled and confused. One was facing Regina and Billy Bob and calling them by name (in cattish).

Regina glanced back at Sean, who had taken the opportunity to rise and switch on his television set. He returned to his seat with the remote-control and began to flick through the channels. He settled on the one history channel available on Freeview and began to watch a repeat on Nelson and Trafalgar. Since leaving university two years previously and becoming a professional scientist his free time had been somewhat taken up with expanding his knowledge of other subjects, notably history and literature. That is, when he wasn’t playing host to cats.

He didn’t get as far as any of the news channels tonight, and would switch off before hearing the newsflash inserted after the main programme on the history channel. Noticing that both Regina and Billy Bob had left, he rose again briefly to close the door so as not to let the heat out.

What appeared to be a large blue sphere sitting on a tiny silver stool and an angry-looking cube had arrived on the White House lawn, and the President came out to make first contact.

"On behalf of the United States of American I extenuate the hand of friendship," he began. "In the words of my precedentor Clint Billion, which I sinceritorially believe to be particulationarily revelate to these unique circumspectres, may I emphasorise that we are a benevolentary people with a long and illustory history of goodwillingness and genericity toward all other cilivisations. Not even my extinguished electrocution teacher could put it more eloquentially than my dear old mother and your lovely wife… Oh, no, dang! I’ve got the pages mixed up again."

"Balderdash," spoke the sphere in a passable stereotypical upper-class English accent. "Damned if you aren’t the worst kind of rotter and swine. We’ve been monitoring your television and radio output for decades, and you cads can’t fool us with all that fancy talking and use of high-brow intellectual vocabulary. Strewth and Begorah."

"Yore damn straight, buddy," added the cube, following this up with the sound of spit hitting a spittoon. "Parlez-vous français?"

"Aw, hell," panicked the President. "I don’t speak Russian."

While such cunning decoys kept senior politicians around the world occupied, the main alien fleet went about its business. Under the direction of Flat Spatula, giant evacuation cruisers carved up the world’s natural ecosystems and used tractor beams to bring them into the massive ships’ holds, which had been designed expressly for this purpose. It was truly a sight to behold, large triangular tracts of land rising into the air – trees, animals, the lot. And they weren’t just taking the topsoil. Even the deepest-burrowing worms were being evacuated.

Each ship was heated to such a temperature as suited its respective cargo. Lions, elephants and zebras on what had once been the African plains were kept in hot, dry holds, while penguins, seals and polar bears were transplanted along with their icy environments in vessels that had a lower temperature differential with outside space. Hundreds of ships were involved in the operation, and whenever one was full it shot off without delay to its designated star system, deposited its refugees onto their new homeworld and returned at high speed to pick up the next batch.

Sadly, not everything in the oceans could be saved. Moving a whole planet’s worth of water from one system to another proved impossible, even in this day and age, but Snoozy Headfitz and her team of experts made sure to take as representative a sample of sea creatures as possible. With proper nurturing in the new oceans of the colony worlds, they would grow in number and replenish the lost populations.

Fortunately, the whales and dolphins had realised what was happening and helpfully made their own arrangements – they had already evacuated themselves by the time the Orion Senate’s rescue ships arrived on the scene. Others, however, particularly house pets, had to be liberated with the greatest of tact.

"But it’s not fair! We have rights!"

Some of the humans were proving difficult. At first there had been mass hysteria at the inexplicable events in the Atlantic Ocean which top scientists predicted would end all life on Earth in a matter of weeks. Then there had been yet more mass hysteria at what appeared to be an all-out alien invasion. Following that there was relief when it became apparent that the aliens were friendly, anger when the humans learnt that one of them was responsible for the disaster that had doomed their world, and puzzlement at the sudden forced evacuation of plant and animal life. It came to a head when one of the phoney ambassadors, a Jhid whose name roughly translated into English as C’monthenifyouthinkyou’rehardenough (Junior), accidentally let it slip that the humans themselves were not to be saved. A senior Orion mediator, Sprained Earlobe, had been despatched to London, the point of conflagration, to attempt damage limitation.

He also had to pick up another of those cat creatures, and a large contingent of pigeons, and keep the one from eating too many of the other, at least until they were in their new home and the pigeons had their usual sporting chance to get away.

"Rights? What are they?" The silicon-based, head-shaped extra-terrestrial bobbed up and down on his mechanical floating disc. His human accuser found this behaviour highly disconcerting – which was, of course, why he did it – though truth to tell, Earlobe was glad his friends couldn’t see him. Conforming to the humans’ expectations of alien life-forms (at least, based on the bad sci-fi movies his ship had intercepted en route to Earth) made him feel a right idiot. If this got out back home he’d never live it down.

"You call yourselves an intelligent civilisation?" (Earlobe had, in fact, done nothing of the sort, but let the lie pass.) "A right is something someone is entitled to. On Earth we believe that every human has a right to life, free speech, food, education, medical care, employment…"

"I don’t understand," the alien interrupted. "If every human is entitled to these things, who is it that is obliged to provide them?"

"Well, the government." Awkward pause. Blink. The conversation was already going in an unwelcome direction as far as the politician was concerned. This wasn’t like being interviewed on the Today programme – all this hovering and bobbing up and down. Was it really necessary?

"I see. So some humans are compelled to ensure that all the rest have life, free speech, food, education, medical care and employment. Why, then, are so many without these things?"

"Well, not all governments believe in rights."

"But some do?"

"Yes." The human thought his alien counterpart must be incredibly dense.

"So in the countries whose governments do subscribe to this religion, no-one dies, starves or goes without a full education and medical care?" The other-worldly mediator rotated 360 degrees, taking in the plush surroundings of his opposite number’s office, an office that would cease to exist in approximately sixteen days and eleven minutes. His single multi-faceted eye settled on the politician’s cat, asleep on a luxurious brown leather armchair, oblivious to current events. Was the cat aware of the alien’s presence? Was the politician aware of the cat’s presence? How often did he put aside his work to let it curl up in his lap and stroke its head?

"Well, some do. No government is perfect."

Time to get brutal, Earlobe decided.

"And these governments which believe in rights, they only believe in rights for their own citizens, not for those living in other countries?"

"No, they believe all humans should have rights."

"Should have rights. Before you said that humans had rights, now you’re saying they ought to have them. So, your government believes all humans are worthy of equal consideration?"

"Yes."

"So a human born in another country is just as deserving as one born in your own?"

"Of course."

"So why doesn’t this noble government of yours give as much food and medicine to humans in other countries as it does its own citizens?"

"Well, there’s not enough to go round."

"But according to your argument, it ought to share its resources equally among all humans in need rather than give preference to its own people."

"That’s not its job. A government’s priority must be to look after those in the country it is elected to govern."

"So you don’t treat all humans equally after all. Poverty and disease in other countries do not matter as much as poverty and disease in your own."

"No, that’s not right. Look, our laws treat all humans as equal within our borders. We can’t force our beliefs on other nations."

"But you could share your wealth with countries that have less. It would be fairer, but it would lower your own standard of living, which I see is a sacrifice that the people of the wealthier nations are not prepared to make. Now, you told me that your ‘human’ rights applied to all those within your country’s designated borders. So if somebody unfortunate enough to have been born in a less wealthy country turns up in yours, you treat them just as you do those already living here?"

"If they are fleeing for their lives, certainly," he said, not thinking too hard about whether or not that was really true.

"But suppose they just want to live in your country because life is better here than back home."

"Well, no, if that’s the case we obviously send them back to where they originally came from."

"Why?"

"Because if we let in everyone who wanted asylum, the population would increase and the standard of living go down."

"But for those being granted asylum, it would go up."

"I suppose so."

"I’m beginning to understand. Humans have rights if they happen to be born in the right country… and even then, they don’t always get them. You mentioned population. You refuse entry to foreigners because allowing it would increase your country’s population. I presume, then, that your citizens are limited in the number of offspring they can produce, for the same reason."

"No, people can have as many kids as they want. It would be an infringement on their freedom to instruct them otherwise." The man puffed out his chest proudly. "Our fertility programmes for those unable to have children are among the best in the world."

"This is incredible! You sanction the unrestricted immigration via human reproduction of babies who don’t even exist prior to their being conceived, and yet turn away living human children who happen to have been born somewhere less pleasant?"

The human deflated, doubting it would do much good to raise with this alien his constituents’ concerns about the low white birth rate and fears over changing the racial profile of the United Kingdom. The finer points of multiculturalism versus integration would surely be lost on an obviously inferior extra-terrestrial life-form, as would the virtues of ‘poaching’ skilled workers like doctors from developing nations. While he hesitated, Earlobe pressed his advantage.

"If there’s a shortage of resources on Earth, it’s not just due to people moving out of one country and into another. It’s also due to the ever-increasing total population of the planet."

"Possibly," the man conceded. He felt a mild headache coming on, one which was no doubt texting its less mild friends to hurry up and keep it company at their earliest convenience.

"Let’s go back to these rights you initially insisted you had but which now seem far less absolute. The right to life, for example. Humans have a right not to die, you say."

"Well eventually they must die of old age."

"What age is acceptable for death?"

"Um… eighty?" came the uncertain response. The politician realised after he said the words that the Today programme would never have got such a straight – and arbitrary – answer out of him on such a serious subject. Perhaps if he got this alien a well-paid job with the BBC, he might-

"But seventy-nine is unacceptable?"

"There’s no clear cut-off point," he backtracked.

"But you talk about rights. At what age does one’s right to life cease to be applicable?"

"Well…"

"Does somebody aged twenty have a right to life?"

"Oh, certainly."

"So, someone aged twenty has a right to be protected from freak lightning strikes, meteorites, volcanoes and tripping up and cracking his or her skull open on the pavement? What government agency is called to account if these things occur?"

"Don’t be silly." The human was exasperated now.

"I’m not. Are you conceding that if a twenty-year-old human is struck dead by lightning, this is not an infringement on his or her rights?"

"Oh… I suppose so."

"Interesting. And what if they are hit by a private car? Is that also outside your definition of a right to life or is the government responsible for the thousands of deaths that occur each year on the roads, and therefore failing to deliver basic human rights for its citizens? What happens when the rights to life and freedom of movement are mutually exclusive?"

"Er…"

"Name and species?"

"Woof, woof, growl! Bark!"

"Nice try. No humans on this transport. You’ll upset the rhinoceros."

"Now tell me again why you feel entitled to have your species resettled on a planet currently belonging to the Orion Senate."

The MP gave a sigh of relief. At last they were getting back on track, and without any nudging on his part. If he could pull this off without having to bring in his superiors, it would be the making of his political career.

"Because our lives are at stake. We grant asylum to foreigners fleeing from a genuine threat. Surely the destruction of the Earth falls into that category?"

"But we are not humans. We are a different species. Would you grant aliens asylum if we came to Earth fleeing death?"

"I’m sure we would, if you came in peace."

"No matter how many of us there were?"

"Well, within reason."

"And you would extend to us the same rights that you do your own people? We would be respected as equals, entitled to life, freedom, food, education and employment? We wouldn’t be imprisoned, interrogated by your military, dissected by your scientists? None of us?"

He hesitated. "No."

"You’re lying. Do you really expect me to believe that we would be instantly accepted as your fellow citizens?"

"Well, forget that! You don’t have to treat us as equals. Just save our lives! We would certainly do that much for you. The rest is of secondary importance. This was your fault, after all! We didn’t ask Bongo or whatever his name is to crash into our planet!"

"It was an honest accident."

"What difference does that make?"

"It makes a whole world of difference to our comparison of cultures and assessment of your worthiness. Occasionally a race affiliated to the Orion Senate accidentally destroys a natural ecosystem, but it has been nine millennia since we destroyed one on purpose, and that was only because two other ecosystems would have been destroyed had we failed to act."

"So what’s your point?"

"By our assessment, your species has destroyed more life on Earth through deliberate action than will be lost as a result of this incident."

"What? You’ve made the planet virtually uninhabitable!"

"According to our projections, you would have seen to that yourselves soon enough. And it’s just a piece of rock. It’s what’s on it that’s important, and that can be relocated – if it is deemed to be worth relocating, of course – if it is expected to do the Galaxy more good than harm by its continued existence."

"It’s our home."

"Yes, we’ve noticed this strange, sometimes religious attachment you have to arbitrary pieces of land. You do realise, don’t you, that your continents have existed for only a tiny proportion of the Earth’s lifetime? The oceans and coastlines are constantly being recycled by the planet. None of it is permanent. And yet you fight over it as if it really meant something. You attach historical significance to places based on events that occurred only a few centuries ago, but care nothing for geological time and the major part of Earth’s 4.5 billion-year life story. Nor do you appear overly concerned with the damage you do to the land you prize so highly while it is in your possession."

"We may have been exploiting the planet to our advantage, but it’s our planet, not yours. You have no right to come along and destroy it!"

"It’s not exclusively yours. With the power you have comes responsibility to those with whom you share this world. Might does not make right. As for us, we never claimed rights to anything, and I suspect that if this unfortunate accident had not occurred, and it was your species which eventually brought disaster upon itself, or if it had happened to be a naturally occurring asteroid impact that signalled the end, you would still have demanded we save you had we made ourselves known."

"But the whole human race is going to be wiped out! Doesn’t that matter to you?" When it was a question of UK immigration policy, it had been many races. Now it was one race. The MP made the switch without noticing any inconsistency in his world view.

"You shed few tears for the thousands of plant and animal species rendered extinct on a regular basis by human action. You destroy animal habitation in order to make room for farmland and cities so that your species can grow in number. How would you like it if animals rose up and flattened your cities so that they could expand their territory, or experimented on humans to develop animal medicines? What makes you think you’re so special? How can you claim this to be your planet rather than theirs?"

"They’re not as intelligent as humans. They are inferior life-forms."

"Ah, now we come to the crux of the matter!"

The politician shuddered as an icy tingle travelled down his spine, instantly regretting his choice of words (he was well aware that he had been answering the alien’s questions too readily from the word go, though he really couldn’t help that what with impending Armageddon and all), and convinced that he was about to unequivocally lose the argument as a result – but he could not take the words back. Had he doomed the human race? Or was the alien right in saying they had doomed themselves long ago?

Sprained Earlobe left victorious, though far from jubilant. The human had been stunned to learn that intelligence was not actually considered a universal measure of worth in the Interstellar Community. Birds considered themselves superior to humans because they could fly. Humans considered themselves superior to birds because they could think. As far as general outside opinion went, both viewpoints were equally valid, and flying was a far more popular form of recreation than thinking.

In desperation, the human had appealed to Earlobe as a fellow intelligent being to concede that he agreed with the human side of the debate, but the alien had declined to do so. He had been chosen as emissary because he could communicate with humans on their own level, not because he was the cleverest negotiator. There were super-advanced brain-beings in the Orion Senate who were as far above him in the thinking department as humans were above fish… but there were also fish in the Orion Senate. All were given equal respect, for while the fish were no good at solving systems of tenth order partial differential equations, if you dropped a brain-being into water it would most assuredly drown.

When Sprained Earlobe revealed that Earth’s animal species would be connected to machines built by brain-beings to monitor their emotional responses and reactions to outside stimuli in order to gauge their opinions of the human race, and that each would be allowed to vote on whether or not it wanted humans on its new homeworld, the MP realised his cause was lost.

"I must ask you to relinquish custody of your feline companion," the alien told him apologetically, shortly before departing. When the politician opened his mouth to object, he added, "Surely you don’t wish her to share your fate?" The human shook his head, and the strange being hovered out of the room without another word, taking the cat with him.

That was the easy part. Next came the pigeons.

"What did we do wrong, eh?" farmer Fred Sandwich demanded when the aliens came for his sheep. "Eh? Why are we so unpopular? All we’ve ever tried to do is make an honest living…"

One of the knee-high egg-creatures paused in the midst of seizing his assets and gave him a quizzical look.

"Oh, no, you’ve done far more than that, sir."

"Eh?"

"Allow me to explain." And to the troubled old man’s further perplexity it sat down on a log and began to tell him a story, a tale of the perils of reciprocal storytelling known as:

Woebegone the cobbler entered his shop, sniffed the air and concluded that something evil was afeet.

"Blisteroon!" bellowed he. From a back room there came the sound of hurriedly reshuffled papers, a stubbed toe and a stifled yelp, and his bleary-eyed assistant stuck his head out into the light. Something about his expectant face moved Woebegone. He hit it with a cash-register. "Blisteroon, you’ve been at your scribblings again, haven’t you?"

"No, thir, I assure you," the wrinkled clerk protested his innocence, whilst gingerly removing the large metal missile from his curry-hole. That cash-register contains fifty croubles at the very least, thought Blisteroon in awe. I must be starting to grow on him, if he’s taken to hitting me with such expensive objects. He normally just hits me with old boots and bricks.

"Don’t lie to me, chum. I’m- hold on, what’s that noise?"

"It’s not me!" Blisteroon assured his well-stuffed master.

"Well, of course it’s not you! It’s coming from outside! Surely it can’t be the Carnival of Ten Spoons already?"

Woebegone was dead right on his very first guess. It wasn’t the Carnival of Ten Spoons, but a flight of enormous brown fire-breathing dragons that swept low over Wibble West, sending the town’s most splendid edifices up in sheets of crimson flame.

"Oh, dear, sir," Blisteroon wrung his hands fitfully, then unwrung them. "And I’ll wager they don’t even have a dragon permit."

"What are you talking about, fool? There’s no such thing as a dragon permit!"

"That’s why I’ll wager they don’t have one," came the wretched reply. Before he could be hit again, he added, "It looks like rain, sir. I’d better get the washing in."

Blisteroon retreated back into his sanctuary, a small office at the rear of the shop whose door was too narrow for Woebegone to pass. He sank into his bean-bag with a weary sigh and picked up his notes.

"Now, where was I? Oh, yes…"

He began to write.

"Blisteroon! Customer waiting!" roared Woebegone from the shop floor. The unhappy assistant put down his quill and rolled his eyes.

"Coming, sir!" he replied in a tone laced with the most humble and respectful contempt.

The parchment on which Blisteroon had been writing was uneven and covered with lines and creases. If we zoom in on one particular region of it, we find a number of distinctive contours, and by looking even closer we are able to detect that the paper is damp, and that microscopic trickles of water run through the grooves – only it’s not paper, but actually a rocky mountain range, and the grooves are valleys through which mighty rivers flow.

Just adjacent to Blisteroon’s last full stop (a treacherous tar swamp), lo and behold we observe the idyllic Valley of Neither Here Nor There, where Spudnikk the Ambivalent is just preparing to address his audience.

"What do you mean, Bert the mighty Fred has the flu? Dragonslayers can’t get flu! I was at the meeting of the council when a motion was passed to that very effect!"

Blisteroon dodged a flying hatstand and waited for his master to calm down before continuing with his news report. "I’m afraid it’s true, sir. I learnt it from a grape on the grapevine. He’s ordered a dozen fruit baskets and left clear instructions that he’s not to be woken until spring."

"So what do we do, tell the dragons to go away and come back then? This is bad for business. No-one feels like buying a pair of shoes when mythical monsters are burning down the town."

Blisteroon just shrugged.

"All right," said Woebegone, coming to a decision of sorts. "Better close up the shop until it’s all over. Go and fetch the order books."

His assistant bowed meekly and vanished once more into the back room. He snatched up the vital documents in question and then looked around for his manuscript. Ah, there it was – a little singed by sparks drifting in through the window, but still intact and for the most part legible. He blew on it to remove a few spots of glowing ash.

"Blisteroon!" hollered Woebegone. "The fires are dying down, lad! Something’s spooked the dragons, methinks – they’re all flying away!"

The clerk mumbled his acknowledgement of the fact, while continuing to stare at the roll of parchment. He didn’t recall writing a hurricane into his story – that’s the last thing he wanted to inflict on the pleasant inhabitants of the Valley of Neither Here Nor There. But the ink on the page was undeniable. He decided he must be going senile, and sat down with his pen to correct the oversight.

"Blisteroon!"

I know, I know… time to reopen the shop.

The tired assistant put down his writing and headed for the door, where a line of customers with burnt and blackened boots waited to be served.

Blisteroon was perplexed, vexed and Tyrannosaurus-rexed. Either he was losing his marbles – highly unlikely, since he kept them safely sewn into a mattress in a maximum security bank vault – or else something truly bizarre was transpiring. His story seemed to be taking on a life of its own and continuing apace whenever he turned his back on it. He had tried hiding the ink bottle, but that was no good – the writing then appeared in crayon. The only way he could think of to keep the story under his control was to stick with it and continue writing until it was finished.

"Blisteroon, lad!" cried Woebegone, reaching into the back room with an antique fishing rod and dragging the scatterbrained clerk out by his navel. "The fiendish dragons have decided that eating houses is no longer all the rage and gone home, leaving Wibble West in peace!"

Blisteroon found himself in a haunted wood. He looked around warily. Something about his surroundings wasn’t quite as it should be, but he had considerable difficulty putting his finger on the precise source of his unease. Was it the way the dark trees towered over him, blotting out the sunlight, linking fingers above his head to form a cathedral far grander and more ominous than the greatest structure yet built by man? Could it be the shadows that seemed to move in the corner of his mind’s eye, taking on the shape of black ghosts which either refused or were unable to meet his gaze directly, and fled back to the ethereal spirit-realm from whence they came as soon as he turned his head to confront them? Might it not have something to do with the silence of the forest, the lack of even birds and insects in this godforsaken land?

No, Blisteroon concluded, none of these was the main reason for his disquiet. The principal cause of his anxiety was the four-foot tall cartoon rabbit that stood before him wearing striped pyjamas and fish slippers, politely offering him an exploding cigar from a tin box in the shape of an elephant.

"Damn you, Spudnikk!" he cried, and hurriedly rummaged in the dirt for a flat surface on which to write.

Blisteroon turned over to a fresh page and found a message written in ketchup. It said:

"Let’s talk. Spudnikk."

To cut a long story along the dotted line, the dragons never bothered Wibble West again, Woebegone suddenly took a liking to Blisteroon, gave him a raise and made him vice-chairman, Spudnikk’s goldfish made a speedy recovery and his sprouts turned out just right. All things considered, the universe got off lightly. But then, Spudnikk and Blisteroon had no imagination.

"Does that answer your question?" prompted the egg-thing patiently, like a teacher addressing a slow-learning child. "I’ll admit, the story loses some of its charm when adapted for human consumption."

"Eh? I can’t remember what the question was."

The egg sighed and returned to the marginally more important task of planetary evacuation, leaving the baffled farmer scratching his noggin and little realising that the story of Spudnikk and Blisteroon illustrated exactly where the human race had gone wrong. As Venson Dun, late of Part 3, would have put it, the freedom to choose versus the duty not to… or, better still, as was the case with the two reciprocal storytellers, it never even occurring to one to use one’s powers for world domination.

But we cannot blame the farmer for that. He had genuinely more important things on his mind. He, his wife and his children would all die in the next few days, and not in a painless, mildly humorous, satirical way that the reader can pass over without a moment’s pause, to continue enjoying the story as if nothing had happened. Knowing one will die soon is bad. Knowing one’s family and friends are all about to die as well is… well, the writer is fortunate enough not to know what it’s like, and will not be so insensitive as to pretend he does and try to describe it. Six billion people lose their lives off-screen in Asylum Seekers, some alone, some with those they love.

We will not be describing how they die, because that’s not what this story’s about. But please pause, think about it for just a moment, and then put it, not out of, but to the back corner of your mind and enjoy the rest of it as best you can, just as you must put the distant horrors of the real world out of your mind in order to enjoy your real life.

At least this is just a story.

"I’ve got nothing against humans during the wabbit season." – wild duck

"It’s the ones driving combine harvesters I could do without." – field mouse

"No legs good, two legs bad." – slug on a wet pavement

"As long as we stay hidden in this big tree, they think we’re extinct." – dodo

"Bow-wow! Woof!" – dog

"It’s not normal practice to knowingly leave a species to die on a doomed planet, you know" grumbled an uncomfortable reptilian tractor beam operator, whose name roughly translated as Tyrannosaurus-Rex-Harrison-Ford-Focusonwhatyou’redoing-Smith. "I’m descended from a species that evolved on Earth, and I feel badly about seeing its current dominant civilisation go down with it."

Flat Spatula shook his head. "I know what you mean, but it really is better this way. The humans aren’t like other races. Their genetic make-up is a freak of nature. They developed the capacity for reason without embracing it whole-heartedly. Very rarely does a species get to the point where it masters nuclear fission and the silicon chip before it outgrows the urge to kill other members of its own and other species. Their actions do not mirror their potential for rational behaviour. Would you believe they have put a man on the moon, and yet their society is still divided into separate nation states, with different languages, currencies and religions? They fight wars amongst themselves over land while at the same time knowing the size and origin of the universe and their place in the evolution of life."

The crew was astounded at this.

"How can such a society exist?" wondered Snoozy Headfitz. "Maybe we should put it in a museum."

"Oh, well," Rex shrugged. "We could not in good conscience have put them on a refugee colony world with other Terran animals, given their past record of abuse and domination, so it’s pointless arguing about it."

"You know, it’s funny," said Snoozy. "Not all the witnesses we took testimony from hated the humans. Domesticated cats in particular spoke out in their favour. It seems they were the only species that humans treated as their equals, in some respects at any rate. They provided them with food and warmth, and yet did not imprison them in cages or pens, or exploit or cull them like they did other Terran life-forms. It seems that the two species actually enjoyed each other’s company."

"Yes, I read that too. Apparently the cats were on a mission to make the humans slow down and live more simple, relaxed lives, leading by example with their demonstrations of a balanced, well-paced lifestyle. But most of the humans were too busy rushing around making money to notice that the cats knew something they didn’t."

"I think they’ll make a fine addition to the Senate."

There was a pause. Then, after a few seconds, as if they had been waiting for this lull in the conversation, every kind of warning light imaginable started flashing, and a self-satisfied aura began to form in the middle of the deck.

"No, no… it was all going so well!" cried Flat Spatula, who had seen this type of phenomenon before. More junior crewmembers were nonplussed.

"Greetings!" gushed the aura. "I am League El Loupole. My clients, if they knew they were my clients, would instruct me to point out that from their perspective things have not been going at all well. I am here to ensure that they receive due consideration."

In a Galaxy without money, lawyers still made a nuisance of themselves, only they tended to do it primarily for the intellectual challenge, and, as with many on Earth, the notoriety.

"There’s nothing to discuss, Loupole," replied Spatula, brusquely. "Earth is dying, and, not surprisingly, none of the other planets in this sector wants to take humans. The law can’t force them to back down on this."

"Very true, but there are other options. On behalf of my clients I present a top secret court order instructing you to conclude your current evacuation as quickly as possible…"

"We’ve finished."

"…and reconfigure your ships for temporal relocation. We are going to save the humans – some of them, anyway – while still keeping them confined to their ultimately doomed homeworld."

There followed a full minute of stunned silence.

"You can’t be serious," gasped Rex. "Time-travel will disrupt this planet’s history."

"It can’t get much more disrupted than it is already," pointed out Snoozy Headfitz, with growing enthusiasm for the plan now forming in all their minds.

Flat Spatula knew better than to argue.

"Just what do you propose to do?"

The lawyer looked a little disappointed that it wasn’t going to have more of a fight on its pincers, but after a momentary self-adjustment it switched smoothly to strategy mode.

"My clients… er, it has been observed… are satisfied neither with the preservation of their nearest non-human relations, nor the continued existence of a genetically modified human offshoot race which left the planet ten thousand years ago… er, which of course they don’t know about. They want representatives of the generation of humans currently occupying the homeworld to survive the coming apocalypse. Picky, I know, but they seem quite set on the idea.

"None of the Senate worlds will accept them as they are now. However, some are willing to give them a second chance. If the humans abandon their foolish ways and behave in a civilised manner for a millennium or two, these generous governments are willing to accommodate their descendants. Of course, the planet doesn’t have another millennium or two, so we’re going to have to fold time.

"There will be two operations. Some humans will be allowed to infiltrate societies of the past. If they and their offspring can keep a low profile and restrain their natural impulses to interfere with the rightful flow of history, they will be allowed to remain there until they have learnt sufficient humility and wisdom from their ancestors’ mistakes to pass the psychological screening necessary for Senate integration. As you say, human history is a mess already, so the potential for harm to the firmament predicted by temporal divergence modelling is low. It’s really just a test of willpower and discipline.

"At the same… er, time… we will establish an isolated community on an island undiscovered by the outside world until the turn of the last century. Children born into this society will not be taught where they came from. Their parents will instead be charged with bringing them up in a manner that will lead to a better future than the one they knew. If, after a few hundred generations, this group of humans is still living sustainably and responsibly, they will be considered cured and taken off-planet to a new home among the stars."

"And if they aren’t living sustainably and responsibly?"

"There was no sign of human habitation on the island when it was discovered by modern-day explorers."

"I see. And the refugees hidden in plain view among their own ancestors – I take it they too will be policed, and, if necessary, erased from history?"

"Of course. Do I detect a hint of sympathy for these creatures now? It’s surely better than the certain extinction currently facing them."

"How will you decide which humans are to go where?"

Sprained Earlobe reclined on his repose disc and played back the Orion Media Commission’s official public broadcast regarding the recent end of life on Earth.

Earlobe considered this assessment as the documentary ended. Had they done the humans an injustice, and judged them too harshly? Perhaps. He found it hard to believe they were all miserable, materialistic, self-obsessed, short-sighted homo sapiens supremacists, and the claims made by the broadcast regarding lack of irrational hostility and competitiveness among space-faring species were, in his opinion, self-delusion of the worst kind. Nevertheless, he had made a study of the humans’ television broadcasts, which consisted largely of commercial advertising interrupted for brief intervals by soap operas and game shows, and seen the endemic hypocrisy of their leaders and the suffering caused by war and destruction of nature for the sake of money and pride on their understated news bulletins.

He sat up and hovered over to the window of the cloaked evacuation cruiser, now resting on a rocky outcrop overlooking a Terraformed refugee colony modelled on the Congo region of Africa. A clearing in the forest revealed a small herd of elephants passing through a gentle gorilla community. Sprained Earlobe turned back to his monitor and switched to a live feed showing the plains transplanted from Kenya, where a sleek cheetah raced after a baby zebra in the age-old struggle between predator and prey. Elsewhere, squirrels foraged for food in English oak trees, polar bears sought out the hiding places of young fur seals beneath Arctic ice, flocks of ducks flew south for the winter without fear of the hunter’s rifle, rabbits on a hillside darted for cover at the approach of a fox, ants industriously reformed disrupted colonies, and chimps used large flat stones in conjunction with more heavily weighted ones as a hammer and anvil to crack open nuts.

He sighed, and began to feel the weight lifting from his conscience. What was done, was done. Life went on.

"Hold on just one second," interrupted Snoozy Headfitz. "If the present-day humans are going to be sent back in time to this island of yours and then, after a certain number of centuries, judged either fit or unfit for polite Galactic society, you should already know what became of them. The island’s empty now. Were they pardoned and taken off-planet, or, as my colleague so delicately put it, simply erased?"

League El Loupole shimmered uncertainly for a few moments, did a quick lap of the ship, stopped for a slow doughnut, read the health and safety notices, chose his words carefully, cleared his non-existent throat and gave his answer in unambiguous Sagittarian.