THE STORY SO FAR ... (Well, whoever reads the plot setting chapter in a wallow story anyway?)

Owing to a fault in the GALACTICA’s purification system, maintenance is being carried out on the water pumping system in the lower areas of the ship. Starbuck has persuaded Apollo to join him in a visit to the rest centre of the service crew where a game of pyramid is in progress. Meanwhile, Boxey, bored with his schoolwork, has run off with Muffit II in search of his father, and Athena and Cassiopeia have gone in search of him.

At the same time, a stray Cylon patrol has chanced upon the fleet and launched a surprise attack! Disaster! While Sheba leads a squadron to destroy the unexpected enemy ((well, I had to do something with her!)), the pump heads on the GALACTICA’s storage tanks are badly damaged, releasing a large amount of water into the lower areas of the ship. Hearing the alert, and feeling the attack, Starbuck and Apollo have rushed out, only to find the corridor already ankle-deep ...

NOW READ ON ...

"The storage tanks have been breached!" Apollo cried.

"They know that," Starbuck pointed out in an ironic tone. "They’ve just read ‘the story so far’. What they want to know is what we’re going to do about it."

"We’ll split up," the Captain decided.

"Why?"

Apollo sighed. "Because," he explained, "it adds dramatic emphasis. You know - hero alone in danger, and all that."

"Yeah." Starbuck stubbed out his fumarello and put it away regretfully. He had a good idea of what might happen, and a wet fumarello did not appeal at all. "Sounds idiotic enough. Let’s go do it."

"Right. You head for - how about the turboelevator? I’ll try to get to the pump system."

Starbuck thought it over. "How come you get to the dangerous bit?" he asked.

"Because," Apollo said for the second time, "I’m the Commander’s son. And I get top billing. Anyway - you’re going to have to rescue me, so why worry?"

"I’m not worried," the blond warrior mumbled. "It’s just that ..." He paused thoughtfully. "Wait a micron. What if the elevator shaft is flooded? I’ll be trapped down here ..."

His companion grinned. "Now you’re getting the idea," he said.

Apollo strode down the corridor, his steps raising waves in the wash of water at his feet. Now we’ve established the plot, he thought, I’d better get on with the rest of it. Good job these maintenance corridors aren’t used very often - it saves the extras’ bit of the budget for some classy effects.

He reached the end of the passageway and stood for a moment at the access hatch ((well, he would, wouldn’t he?)) that opened into the ship’s purification plant. A strong current was flowing from under it and emptied a cold shower of water into his boots.

I bet it’s up to the ceiling in there, he mused to himself. And if I open the door, it’ll unleash the rest of the water into the bowls of the ship. That’ll let the rest of the storage tanks drain, and all these lower levels will gradually flood. Anybody down here after that is going to drown ...

"Oh, well," he steeled himself. "If it’s in the script ... Just for you, Anaïs."

He opened the door.

A wall of water struck him hard, sweeping him off his feet and engulfing him in its foaming mass. Struggling against the torrent he fought for breath as his world tumbled about him. Finally the weight of water slammed him hard into a bulkhead, and for a long time he knew nothing but the numbing force of the current as it pinned him against the steel ...

"How high’s the water, Colonel?"

"Corridor three and rising, sir."

Starbuck muttered behind his teeth as he made his way toward the turboelevator.

"It’s not fair," he grumbled. "I was winning that game. Why couldn’t the plot’ve waited until I’d finished my hand? I’m sure I’d’ve got a capstone on the next card. Hades!" he swore. "My feet are getting wet!"

He looked down. The water was rising, lapping over the tops of his boots and soaking his trousers.

"Frak!" he said. "And not even a ‘wet medtech uniform’ competition to make it interesting. I suppose that means the electronics down here are flooded. No turboelevator for me, I guess."

He tried the control anyway, just in case. It didn’t work.

"Now," he muttered to himself, "I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. Let’s see - time for some plot exposition, I think. Over to Boomer on the next level."

"But there’s nothing we can do!" Boomer exclaimed, pacing the corridor. "Look - the lower levels are flooding, shorting the elevator systems. All the connecting doors have sealed automatically in the attack, and without power they’ll have to be cut open. We can’t vent the water out into space because it’ll simply freeze in the airlocks and then they won’t work. Besides - the writers’ got to fill a lot more space before the inspiration that’ll save the day. What do you think, Jolly?"

"I think," the broad-built warrior said generously, "that that’s the best bit of plot exposition I’ve heard for a long time. You go and repeat it to the Commander, and I’ll go and look in the stores to see if the quartermaster can rustle up some cutting equipment."

"Why the stores?" Boomer asked. "What’s wrong with the workshops or the lab?"

Jolly grinned. "Oh, come on," he teased. "Since when’s Wilker been my type ...?"

"How high’s the water, Colonel?"

"Corridor four and rising, sir."

Starbuck leaned against the useless elevator and considered his situation.

"Let’s see," he murmured. "I’m up to my knees in cold water. I can’t get out of this level because the elevator doesn’t work. Apollo’s gone off to get himself into danger ... all I need now is for the light to fail on me."

He paused, looking up at the ceiling. Sure enough - the light went out.

"Frak!" he said. "I must stop suggesting things to the plot writer. Now what do I do?"

He fumbled in his pocket (a difficult thing to do in the dark) and found his fumarello lighter. Flicking it on, the corridor was immediately illuminated by its paltry light. Along with three spots that allowed the camera to see him more clearly.

"That’s better," he remarked. "I suppose I’d better go and find something to happen to me. That way, I think."

He strode away down the passage, trying hard not to notice that the water was still rising steadily ...

Apollo groaned into consciousness with convincing agony. He was half-standing, half-lying in the curve of the corridor, jammed nearly upright by a combination of the current and a tangle of equipment that had, surprise, surprise, been swept out of the pump room by the weight of the water. He was soaked, and there was an artistic trickle of blood running down his temple.

"Oh ..." he groaned, and tried to struggle. He couldn’t, of course. Instead he looked down, to register the fact that the water was already waist-deep.

"Uh-oh," he sighed. "That means I’ve got at least half a metron to go before Starbuck comes to rescue me. And the water’s cold. I’ll freeze my ... NO, Anaïs!! My feet are freezing!"

He rested his weight against the wall and looked along the corridor. In one direction the water foamed dramatically from out of the pump room. In the other ...

"Bark, bark!" complained Muffit the daggit. He was perched precariously on the underside of an upturned table that floated on the floodwater. Beside him sat a small boy, currently employed in propelling his makeshift raft with a metal pole.

"Boxey!" Apollo cried. "What are you doing here?!"

"Trying to add to the suspense and drama," the small boy replied, drifting round in a full circle as the table was caught in the current.

"Oh," the warrior acknowledged. "I see. Will you stop that!" he added as Boxey and his daggit did another 360 degree turn.

"Sorry."

Stretching out a little further than was comfortable, Apollo caught hold of the nearest table leg. The makeshift raft dipped alarmingly, and Muffit barked a protest as his tail went under water.

"Now what do we do, father?" the boy asked, after tying the table leg to a handy piece of equipment.

"I don’t know, Boxey. Things are pretty bad, you know. I can’t move."

"Oh, I know that," the youngster told him, leaning against fake daggit fur with a sigh. "What I meant was, which plot device are we supposed to use this secton?"

"Ah ..." Apollo considered. "Well, there’s the ‘let’s send Muffit for help’ idea."

"No." Boxey rejected this after a moment’s thought. "Water doesn’t agree with Muffit."

"Arf, arf," the daggit concurred with feeling. He was trying to climb the rest of the equipment that imprisoned the warrior so as to get as far away from the water as possible.

"Well," the Captain suggested, removing a daggit foot from his head with difficulty, "how about the ‘hammer out a message on the wall’ trick?"

"Nope - we used that last secton."

"Oh, yes. So we did."

There was a long pause.

"I know!" Boxey announced suddenly, leaping up and down with excitement and swamping his father with several cold waves of water. "Let’s send a message in a bottle!"

"Boxey!" Apollo cried in some disbelief. "That’s ridiculous!"

"So?"

"So let’s do it. And, Boxey ..."

"Yeah?"

"Don’t jump up and down again."

Waist deep in an intersection, Starbuck was beginning to regret his decision to let Apollo go off on his own. Not that he was worried, of course. Just that it was a little lonely in the water with just a lighter flame, three spotlights and a camera crew for company.

"What I need," he muttered dispiritedly, "is for something to happen."

He paused midstride, his eyes darting this way and that, his breath held back as he realised what he had said. A centon ticked by.

"Phew!" he breathed at last. "Guess nobody was listening. Now ..."

At that moment a sudden surge of water swept along the corridor behind him, lifting him off his feet and tumbling him head over backwards down the passageway. As he fought to the surface, the background sound effects grew ominously louder - a roaring, rushing, as of an endless weight of water pouring down a gaping hole ...

"Oh no," Starbuck realised as the current caught him. "The set designers finished the open service shaft ..."

Sure enough, a camera shot around the corner revealed the torrent of water swirling down the service shaft to become a piece of stock shot from FLOOD! ((It’s ‘spot the disaster movie’ time, folks. Any bets this one was made by Irwin Allen?))

"How high’s the water, Colonel?"

"Corridor eight and rising, sir."

"This one will do," Boomer announced, dropping the thermal lance onto the deck and leaning on the sealed hatchway ((hands up all those who thought of a despicable joke just now - and put that seal away, Anaïs!)).

"You mean it this time?" Jolly questioned in surprise, puffing up behind him laden with gas cylinders, equipment boxes, a welding helmet and his lunch box. "No more ‘down this corridor so the camera gets my good side’, or ‘one more so the director’s happy’?"

"No. This is it."

"How can you tell?"

Boomer smiled; a wise, ‘I’ve got a higher billing than you’, smile.

"Because," he drawled, "it’s the one with the precut, laid-in flash powder groove that the special effects guys have just prepared. It also happens to be the same shaft down which the stock shot is currently pouring Starbuck."

"It is?"

"Yeah. Listen."

"Help!" Starbuck thanked the Lords of Kobol for stage training. "HELP!!"

He was hanging from a convenient metal crossbar, a fragile chance of rescue that he had grabbed (actually he’d bumped his head on it first) as the weight of water had carried him into the shaft. Now he hung precariously, his body battered by the raging flood, his lungs frozen by the force of the torrent as it pulled hungrily at him ...

"Frak!" he gasped, feeling torn in two. "Who said it was a good idea to do your own stunts ...?"

He struggled a little more (because it made him look good on camera), until he managed to reach the end of the crossbeam and hook one arm over the bottom rung of the service ladder.

"I wonder if I can claim on my Colonial Insurance if I catch pneumonia during a wallow story?" he gasped, then thought better of it. "Frak, no - the writer will simply put my suffering in a sequel or something. I really must stop giving out these crazy ideas."

He flinched then as a fat spark caught his shoulder, one of the few bits of him not immersed in the torrent. Surprised, he looked up, to see the flaming arc of the thermal lance as it cut into the safety door above him.

"Rescue!" he announced jubilantly. "We must’ve had the third commercial break. Hey, fellas! Down here!"

((Here follows a tense and dramatic sequence which intercuts between shots of the thermal lance, shots of Boomer and Jolly using it, and shots of Starbuck, hanging on for dear life, watching them. This sequence is very dramatic on the screen. It’s dead boring to write, so use your imagination.))

"Just don’t let go of that rope, okay?"

"Sure," Jolly said, putting a foot against a bulkhead to anchor himself. "I always knew I’d add ‘weight’ to a story one day."

Boomer lowered himself down the shaft carefully, leaning on the rope ((hang on, Jolly!)) until he felt the upper rung of the service ladder with his feet. ((A quick aside here - how come the service shafts and ladders and things on these ships never actually go all the way to one access point or another? It must be really lousy being a service engineer - you must need degrees in mountain climbing and potholing ever to get anywhere. And in spite of this there’s always a ventilation shaft going in just the right direction for the hero ...)) Quickly he descended the rest of the way and hauled Starbuck up out of the flood, getting his feet wet in the process.

"What kept you?" Starbuck asked.

For a moment Boomer contemplated the result of tipping Starbuck down the shaft and claiming he hadn’t been in time - second billing to Apollo, more girls, all the best lines ... then the other side of it occurred to him: getting shot at more often, having to be heroic all the time, going on suicide missions ... He helped Starbuck up the ladder with a shudder at the thought of the fate he had just avoided.

As he went to follow, something small wedged ((hiya, Red Two - oh, sorry, wrong squadron ...)) - something small wedged itself against his boot. A bottle. A small bottle of the sort the supplied ‘Colonial Cola’ (TM) in to the children of the fleet.

"What the ...?" He picked it up and followed Starbuck up the ladder.

((Meanwhile the ambrosa bottle Boxey had found to put his message in went careening down the shaft ... ah, only kidding, folks! Honest!))

"How high’s the water, Colonel?"

"Corridor seven and rising, sir." ((Spot the continuity error, anyone?))

Back in his corridor, Apollo was watching the water creep up his chest. His legs were numb with cold, and the pain in his lungs where the weight of the equipment pinned him down had turned into a band of fire. He didn’t know which was worse - that or Muffit’s continual whining.

"Maybe no-one found the message," Boxey was saying in his ‘cute kid in despair’ voice. "Maybe no-one’s going to come."

"They’ll come," Apollo said, heroically. "They’ve got to come!"

"Why?" the boy asked.

"Well," his father considered. "It’s bad for the ratings if the hero dies at the end of an episode. And the moral majority will never stand for family entertainment that drowns the cute kid. No offence, of course."

"None taken," the youngster shrugged. "It’s in my contract."

"Well - exactly. And my contract is for the rest of the season, and there’s a clause in it which clearly states, and I quote: ‘Whereby, being the aforesaid hero, the party of the first part - that’s me - will always, by virtue of the script, escape near-death with miraculous consistency’."

"Oh." Boxey thought about it. "I see. Oh. Well, in that case I’ll stop worrying about it."

He went back to his pocket game of ‘Wipe Out The Cylons’ that Starbuck had given him at New Yahren Festival. He was trying to improve his top score for the upcoming ‘Children’s Challenge’ that the IFB were always talking about.

"Apollo ..." he questioned slowly, after a few microns of electronic explosions, "you don’t think you could get me on your agent’s books, do you ...?"

"I’ve got to go back down there!" Starbuck declaimed in his best theatrical manner.

"What for?" Jolly enquired, taking a hearty bite out of his second mushie. "You know as well as I do that the Commander will get a flash of inspiration and save the day at the eleventh centar."

"I know that," the warrior growled, throwing a look of appeal at Boomer, trying to elicit his support. Boomer didn’t see it - he was busy calculating his rake-off percentage from the recent merchandising deal. (This time they’d even included him in the sets of action figures - well, it was black and it was wearing warrior uniform, and he didn’t think it was supposed to be Dietra ...)

"I’ve got to rescue Apollo," the blond Lieutenant continued, HIS VOICE HEAVY WITH EMOTION. ((Okay, folks, guess who’s going for an Emmy in this one? And guess who’s not going to get one, ’cos they never give them to SF shows anyway ...))

"I don’t see why," Jolly remarked, unperturbed. "After all, his contract says that nothing fatal’s going to happen to him."

Starbuck sighed with exasperation. "Look ..." he began.

"Starbuck’s got to go, Jolly," Boomer interrupted, suddenly realising he should have come into the conversation three centons ago. "It’s in HIS contract. Besides - it’s good for the ratings if he does ridiculously heroic things."

"Can we get on with it?" Starbuck requested irritably. "If we wait much longer there’ll be a scene change, continuity will lose its place and get me a dry uniform, and I’ll have to get wet all over again."

"Right," Boomer agreed, looking down the darkened shaft ((no, I don’t know what a streetwise black private eye was doing on the GALACTICA. Maybe he’s a friend of Colonel Tigh’s ...)). "Oh, hang on a micron ..."

The three warriors stared down at the rushing water as a lone figure appeared in the flood: a figure in a service uniform, struggling against the heavy weight of water about him. They watched as he tumbled desperately, fighting the current, only to be swept away into the foaming throat of the service shaft and vanish with a cry.

"Who was that?" Jolly asked curiously.

"This week’s guest star," Starbuck explained, grinning. "They persuaded Charlton Heston to reprise his ‘end of the movie’ scene from EATHQUAKE. Good, isn’t he?"

"Mm," Boomer agreed. "His stunt man’s even better."

"How do you mean?"

"Well," the warrior announced thoughtfully, "he didn’t come up again after the camera cut away ..."

Sharing a dawning realisation, the three Galacticans looked back down the shaft ...

"How bad is the situation, Colonel?" Adama asked, turfing Omega out of his chair and sitting in it.

"Well," Tigh considered, presenting a lean, handsome profile to the cameras ((hi, Jess!)). "The lower levels are flooded, your son and his son are missing, Starbuck is leading a ridiculously heroic rescue mission, Sheba is still shooting at Cylons and we are rapidly running out of time."

"You don’t mean ...?"

"Yes, Adama. If we don’t wrap this episode soon it will turn into a two-parter ... and we’re already over budget as it is."

"I told the director Chuck was too expensive." The Commander looked pensive. "Let me see - has Wilker any suggestions?"

Doctor Wilker wandered onto the Bridge, his pockets trailing wires and assorted screwdrivers, a Cylon helmet in his hand. He proceeded to launch into a long and technical spiel whilst rewiring the inside of the helmet and resetting half of the Bridge instruments. While this was going on Omega looked impressed, Tigh looked bored, Adama looked confused and Rigel looked for her hairbrush.

" ... so it therefore appears that the only possible solution available to us in the current paradigm of spaciophysical thought is the induction of a hysteresis-modulated wave of pseudo-gravitational influence so that the hydro matter involved is manipulated through a series of directional transportations to a point where the entire mass/liquid constant is stabilised."

Wilker wandered away again, shaking his head at the ignorance of the common herd. He’d thought of that solution centars ago but hadn’t bothered to mention it to anyone, it was so obvious.

"Yes, well ..." Adama regained his composure quickly. "What do you think, Colonel?"

Tigh considered thoughtfully. He did this to lengthen the time he was actually on screen, not because he needed to think about anything.

"He has a point, Commander."

"He does?" Adama wondered what he’d missed. He hadn’t made sense of a word. "Well, yes, I suppose he does. But - I have a better idea. Tigh, why don’t we move the water with the gravity motors? You know - set up a wave of high gravity that will drag all the water back to the storage tanks and then hold it there until maintenance can seal it off?"

Tigh sighed. For a few moments he considered throwing in the towel ((bet you didn’t know HE was a hitch-hiker!)) and getting a job in a good, fast-moving, up-market soap opera. Then he shook his head. He wasn’t that desperate. Yet. And he knew better than to point out that Adama had made exactly the same suggestion as had Wilker. He liked being a Colonel. He wanted to stay one.

"It could work, Commander. But what about the people down there? All that weight of water, and no way of warning them?"

Adama contemplated the question, looking at Tigh and then at Omega (who was waiting to get his chair back).

"We have to risk it," he decided. "Because if we don’t we’ll go down in history as the only Battlestar that ever sank in space! Besides, we’ll not have room for the tag scene if we don’t act quickly."

"Quick," Omega hissed at Rigel. " - Act!"

Tigh sighed. It was obviously one of those days.

Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the GALACTICA, Starbuck, Boomer and Jolly were wading waist-deep along a darkened corridor, roped together, just in case.

"Now which way?" Boomer asked for the umpteenth time.

"How should I know?" Jolly grumbled. "Starbuck’s got the map."

Starbuck was studying the damp, crumpled piece of paper thoughtfully. Boxey hadn’t quite finished his ‘Colonial Cola’ (TM) and there were several nasty brown stains obscuring vital parts of the hasty drawing.

"Apollo said he was heading for the pump system. He could be anywhere."

"Oh, great," Boomer remarked. "That’s all we need - a squadron leader with no sense of direction. No wonder you two are always getting lost."

"I think it’s this way," Jolly announced, pointing down a side turning.

"Why?" the other two chorused.

"Because," he answered with a smirk, "there isn’t any more set in the other direction. And there’s a big camera direction sheet pinned to the wall that says ‘climax of scene’ and points that way."

"Ah." Starbuck thought about it. "You may be right. Let’s go."

Apollo was beginning to wonder whether that part in DYNASTY wasn’t more attractive than he’d first thought. After all, even though it might require him to have nervous breakdowns, or be callously thrown aside by Joan Collins, or even endure a traumatic hospital/courtroom scene (funny that, he thought - how soap operas think hospitals and courtrooms interchangeable drama) - it wouldn’t require him to be up to his shoulders in cold water with a cute kid and a hydrophobic daggit for company.

"The things I do to make a living," he muttered dispiritedly.

"Father," Boxey began, bored with shooting Cylons. "I’m hungry."

"Oh, great." Apollo rolled his eyes ceilingwards. "I’M about to drown, and HE’S hungry!"

"Sorry," the boy muttered. "But I am."

"Wait!" the warrior cried dramatically.

"What for?" Boxey queried, searching his pockets for biscuits. "I mean, we can’t do anything BUT wait down here!"

"No" Apollo interrupted. "Listen!"

"Apollo!!!" Starbuck’s voice reverberated distantly along the flooded corridor as though on cue. Which it was.

"Starbuck!" Boxey yelled delightedly, jumping up and down.

"Boxey!" Apollo gurgled as the wave made by the table swamped him. "Do you have to ...?!"

"Starbuck!" Boxey’s voice could be heard echoing along the accessway. "Over here!"

"That’s Boxey!" Starbuck exclaimed (for the benefit of anyone in the audience who might be a bit slow on the uptake). "What’s he doing here?"

"Adding to the suspense and drama, I should think," Boomer remarked dryly. (Difficult in the circumstances.)

"Come on!" Starbuck led the way, heroically plunging through the waist-deep current. The three of them turned the corner, followed by a spotlight and a surge of water provided by special effects.

"Nice entrance," Apollo remarked as the warriors paused in the keylights so the dramatic intercut would work. ((Oh, come on you lot - Starbuck/Apollo and Boxey/the three warriors/back to the whole corridor - standard close-up exchange, you know, good telepic stuff!))

"Thanks," Starbuck grinned, striding, sorry, wading across to his friend.

"So what kept you?"

"Oh ..." the Lieutenant considered, airily. "This and that. Hello, Boxey. Muffit."

"Hello, Starbuck," Boxey smiled. "Can we go now?"

"In a micron, Boxey." Boomer laid a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder. "Soon as we get your father out of this. Or whenever the dramatic climax comes - whichever’s first."

"The water is up to the ninth level, Commander."

"Very well, Tigh. Begin the sequence."

"Ahh!" Starbuck reappeared from beneath the surface, shaking the water out of his hair and eyes. "I can’t move it. I can’t see where it’s caught."

"Well of course you can’t," Apollo said patiently. "We’re waiting for the episode climax."

"Oh." Starbuck frowned at Boomer, who was watching him with a grin. "So why did I just have to do that?"

Boomer and Jolly exchanged a knowing glance.

"For effect?" the Sergeant suggested. "You know - all those young women out there, thinking of the soaked folds of your uniform clinging tightly to your body ..."

"Jolly!" Starbuck exclaimed indignantly. "Do you mind?!" He reached across and wrapped his hands around Boxey’s ears. "Now," he said, his eyes glittering. "You were saying ...?"

"There’ll be women drooling at this scene," Boomer commented dispiritedly. "You - soaked to the skin, stripping off your shirt the better to help your friend ..."

"Oh, yeah," Starbuck agreed, stripping off his shirt. "Go on."

"Well," his fellow warrior went on, "there’s Apollo - pinned to the wall, suffering nobly and in danger of drowning at any micron - I mean, where do Jolly and I come in? In the background, that’s where."

"Oh, come on," Apollo cried (nobly, of course). "This IS a wallow story! And you have fans too, you know."

"We do?" Jolly looked surprised.

"Of course you do. I mean ... you must do ... mustn’t you ...?"

Boomer frowned uncertainly. "I don’t know ..." he began.

"Well," Starbuck announced, "I’m not getting wet for the sake of it if no-one else is. So unless Boomer comes and takes his shirt off too, I’m just going to stand around and display my manly chest."

"Oh no! Jolly breathed. "That I couldn’t stand! Quick, Boomer - do something!"

Boomer looked at Starbuck, sighed, then slowly began to take off his shirt. ((All you Boomer fans out there can faint now.))

"Sequence started, Commander. We are cutting it fine."

"I know, Tigh, I know. But we’ll make it. The audience looks forward to a tense climax."

"If you say so, Commander."

((Cut to sequence which shows a series of dramatic intercuts - the warriors in the corridor trying to free Apollo, the wave of water building up elsewhere on the GALACTICA, Adama’s pensive face on the Bridge, the water rushing down the accessways with great speed ...))

"I don’t want to interrupt you guys," Jolly said thoughtfully, "but can you hear anything?"

Starbuck resurfaced with a gasp, pulling Boomer up after him. "Did you say something, Jolly?" he asked, shaking water out of his ears.

"He said," Apollo gurgled (the water was over his chin by now), "he didn’t want to interrupt you so keep going!"

"No." Boomer paused. "He’s right. Listen."

They listened. Somewhere in the distance there could be heard a gurgling, roaring sound, as though volumes of water were being moved at great speed.

"It sounds like volumes of water being moved at great speed," Starbuck observed. "But why? And how, for that matter?"

"Well," Boomer considered, "I suppose the Commander could be trying to move the water by using the gravity motors to manipulate it back into the tanks. But that would mean ..."

"An enormous wall of water coming in our direction any micron!" Jolly cried in great alarm.

"Yes, yes," Boomer waved at him absently. "But ..."

"NO, NO!" the Sergeant nearly screamed. "AN ENORMOUS WALL OF WATER ..."

The two half-naked warriors turned together, to see the end of the corridor totally obscured by the wall of water that was rushing round the corner.

There followed a moment of undignified panic. Boxey grabbed at Muffit and they both fell off the table. Jolly grabbed at Boxey and the table and succeeded in getting a hold of both of them. Boomer grabbed at Starbuck, who grabbed at Apollo, who didn’t have to grab at anything because he knew very well that he couldn’t move. Then the water (gravity wave) reached them ...

((Deep breath, folks - this is the GOOD bit!!))

A foaming, roaring mass pulled and pummelled our heroes. Weight and gravity shifted and surged around them, inflicting a savage punishment, forcing precious air from their lungs and threatening to tear them from their precarious handholds. The onslaught seemed interminable, their world nothing but the rolling pressure of the water, their lungs screaming for air, their bodies screaming for relief and their agents screaming for danger money ...

((That will do. This could go on for as long as you liked, but I would point out that TOO long and everyone concerned would drown. Except for the daggit. He’d just waterlog.))

A long time later (see note above), a wary Starbuck raised his head to find himself lying in a bone-dry corridor holding onto a tangled mess of metal behind which Apollo was struggling to consciousness.

"Ohhhh ..." Blue Squadron’s Captain groaned convincingly (for the second time that day).

Further down the corridor a small tangle of Jolly, Boomer, Boxey and daggit was also stirring. Somewhere in among all that, Boomer had somehow managed to regain his shirt. [Continuity strikes again!!]

"Well, what do you know!" Starbuck exclaimed, with a characteristic grin. "We made it! Hey," he added, frowning suddenly, "has anyone seen my shirt?"

"Well, Colonel?"

"Water held in stable containment, Commander. Congratulations. We made it in time for ..."

THE TAG!!! (Well, there always IS one - unless you happen to watch the series on a channel that delights in removing them!)

Adama entered Life Center with a sweep, Tigh close on his heels. He found Starbuck, Boomer and Boxey clustered around the bed where Apollo sat, his shirt across his knees, while Dr Salik examined his bruises. [Just for all those Apollo fans I disappointed earlier - he’s taken his shirt off after all, Anaïs.]

"Well, Apollo," the Commander began. "Maintenance have reported that the water tanks have been repaired. How are you feeling, son?"

"Bruised," the warrior replied. "But at least I’m alive - thanks to my friends."

"Thanks to the scriptwriter," Starbuck murmured. Adama was saved from having to comment on this by the arrival of Athena and Cassiopeia, both looking stunningly radiant.

"What happened to you two?" Tigh enquired.

"Nothing," Cassiopeia smiled. "We were the missing plot point - the writer deliberately forgot about us, so we went and had our hair done on the RISING STAR. Do you like it?"

"All the time," Starbuck drooled, sliding himself between the two of them, and the assembled company laughed.

"Well," Tigh remarked thoughtfully, "it could have been worse."

"How do you mean?" Apollo asked suspiciously.

"Oh ..." the Commander considered. "We COULD have had a fault in the gravity motors as well, and the whole Battlestar would have been upside-down!"

He ducked rapidly as every loose item in the room was thrown at him.

FREEZEFRAME.

FADE.

((Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the ship, a warning light began to flash on a panel marked ‘GRAVITY GENERATOR’ ...))

But that’s ANOTHER story, folks ...!