Looking back, he never understood how he navigated the swarm of rampaging creatures. He was jostled like a pinball from one frenzied animal to the next, emerging from the hoggish whirlpool bloodied and bruised, but alive.

‘Look! Tancredi look!’ shrieked Cocomo, flinging an arm around the battered hero to steady him on his feet. She pointed at the ground. Tiny sparks were flying between porcine feet and the concrete floor. As the stampede intensified, the flashes became bigger and more frequent.

‘Any time now,’ Tancredi panted, ‘the whole factory …’

He looked about frantically, but there was no escape. They were trapped by the bestial deluge. Tancredi was too dazed to feel fear. In a futile gesture he tried to wrap his arms around his friends. Kasbek whimpered. Tamany and Cocomo stared ahead. Within moments the methane would ignite, and the factory and everyone within would be blown to pieces.

As the countdown to disaster continued, the stampede quickened. Cocomo’s beauty seemed to animate the beasts with an inhuman energy. Soon it was impossible to discern snout, trotter or little green hat. All was a colourless blur.

Tancredi squeezed his eyes shut. It felt unmanly to say goodbye, better just to await the end. Suddenly he opened his eyes in shock. He and his fellow travellers were floating in the air. He looked down. The factory floor was receding into the distance. They were caught in a vortex created by the animal stampede, rising slowly towards the factory’s glass roof.

‘Quick!’ shrieked Cocomo, ‘link arms and legs!’

The travellers locked their limbs in an aerial embrace, and Tamany flung an arm around Kasbek. Kaboom! The methane panniers ignited with an earth-shattering roar. Tancredi and his companions were blown through the roof into the brackish sky.

XV
The Pink Planet

The methane blast shot the travellers through space onto a pink planet. On landfall, it was difficult to stand upright; the ground had the consistency of a marshmallow. Tamany began a bouncing competition with Kasbek in its corpulent folds. For him, every situation was an opportunity – both for a game and for calm observation. He had also become the curator of items acquired on the expedition. Tancredi now handed him a methane pannier to keep alongside his fool’s cap and the Matron’s bedpan, his memento from Sanitalis.

Following her ejection from her home planet, Cocomo had had little time for introspection. She only had one gear – forward, normally by way of attack. While she had suffered the divorce ceremony to expose Bonnita’s character and win their game, in truth she’d enjoyed it.

In telling her story Cocomo had omitted a detail – she sought conflict. She had even chosen a profession normally fallen into out of desperation as a vehicle for attack. She despised men for their lies and lust and ruthlessly exploited them, an unusual reversal of roles. Extraordinary beauty was a weapon. It could be wielded by conventional means, as demonstrated by Bonnita, or to achieve devastation. Tancredi’s new travelling companion could be described in a single word – fighter – but unfortunately she was not one with a sense of balance.