Free A Toaster on Mars by Darrell Pitt

for a day. But this isn’t Blake’s fault.’
    Fighting back angry tears, Astrid scowled at him. ‘It’s always Blake’s fault!’ she snapped. ‘He’s always rubbing people the wrong way!’
    Zeeb says:
    They have some rather odd expressions on Earth. ‘Rubbing’ someone or something ‘the wrong way’ is just one of them. Another is the expression ‘having a Gladys’, named after Gladys Olsen, who lived in what used to be Renshaw, Nebraska. Gladys became known as the unluckiest person on Earth.
    While walking to school at the age of seven, Gladys was hit on the head by a falling meteorite and knocked senseless. But this was just the start of her troubles. At fifteen, she was struck by lightning. When she was nineteen, a falling tree branch broke her left arm.
    By the age of thirty, Gladys had ended up in hospital on no less than thirty-seven separate occasions.
    Possibly the most bizarre incident involved a stampede of gazelles as Gladys strolled to church. How the gazelles came to be charging down a back street in Renshaw, Nebraska, has never been established, but she broke both legs in the incident.
    Finally, a television program called Lucky to Survive decided to give Gladys an award as recognition for her extraordinary run of bad luck. Stepping onto the stage to accept the award she began, ‘I just want to thank the producers—’
    Which was as far as she got. A long defunct satellite happened to fall from the sky at that moment, killing her instantly. The only part of her body recovered from the scene was her left hand.
    To this day, there are still left hands being sold on gBay as good luck charms, all claiming to be the real deal. I doubt their authenticity. The one I bought certainly hasn’t done me any good.
    ‘Nicki’s right,’ Blake said. ‘And we need to focus on saving Lisa.’
    ‘You haven’t rung the authorities?’ Astrid asked.
    ‘We are the authorities,’ Blake reminded her. ‘And Badde made it clear we’d never see Lisa again if we brought in the department.’
    ‘So what do we do?’
    ‘We’ve got a plan. Or Nicki does.’
    ‘The robot?’ Astrid said, eyeing her sceptically. ‘You do more than play chess and vacuum under lounges?’
    ‘I’m a cyborg,’ Nicki said, more patiently than she was feeling. She glanced around the room, her eyes settling on a picture vid of Astrid competing in the 2493 Interplanetary Scarmish Final. ‘I have a way to get us into GADO, but we’ll need your help.’
    ‘What do I have to do?’
    Blake leant forward. ‘Do you still have your old scarmish gear?’ he asked.

13
    Milton Xanthrob was surprised when the doorbell tinkled and three people walked into his shop. Perkins Antiques was located on the 336th level of Neo City’s south side, far away from most foot traffic, and customers were rare.
    It was early and the street outside was dark. There was only artificial lighting down here, and mostly it didn’t work too well. An odd fungus had started to grow in the crevices of the buildings. Milton had lived here for so long he half expected it to start growing on him, but he didn’t mind. His life was simple, and if he had to contend with a little mould, well, so be it.
    During the day, he would sit behind the counter, reading and watching TV, whiling away the hours tillclosing time. Dying here was a very real possibility—and that was fine, too. Everything had a time and a place, and he’d had an exceptionally happy life.
    How Milton had ended up owning the shop was a story in itself. He had gone to Perkins Antiques to get a clock valued. It was an unusual Art Deco piece, still working, with the face showing the correct time and date, but the switches on the back were stuck in place.
    The previous owner of the shop had been an elderly man by the name of Bruce Perkins. The clock looked unusual to him too. He thought if he could get the switches working he might be able to work out their function. Perkins sat at his counter, applied some