Thrust 6.

The guards at the entrance to the spendadrome stopped them, "Captain, sir! Is this redshirt old enough to shop unaccompanied?" He turned to The Vagendra of Manocide and completely failed to recognise her from the wanted posters since she wasn't dressed up as a walking vagina. "Young lady, please show some ID."

"Hair bobble?" She asked, smiling.

A second guard arrived just in time to see the aftermath, "Miss, please give him his laser halberd back." Even if she did, that was going to be an embarrassing report, having your big scary guard clubbed senseless by a medium-lolly redskirt armed with what appeared to be a lethal hair ornament.

"No, he gave it to me." The Vagendra of Manocide twirled the weapon around having found the balance point, it buzzed malignantly as she accidentally circumcised an incautious bollard.

"Please!"

Captain Seymour DickLogic knew how to deal with his squeezy toy though. "He'll be all sad and cry. They're like that here. Besides, you're wasting valuable shopping time." He reached in his pocket and pulled out his weapon.

The Vagendra of Manocide noticed, the twirling laser halberd embedded itself in the pseudoconcrete wall behind the guard post. "Laser nun-chuckers!"

---

"Where are we now?" The Vagendra of Manocide admired the enormous sphere they were standing on the edge of, wherever she looked, people were emerging from tubes, mostly correctly sticking to the sides, but occasionally sailing out into the middle towards the largest mirror ball she had ever seen.

Captain Seymour DickLogic grunted and put an arm around The Vagendra of Manocide, picking her up and turning his magnabooties off after squatting down. With a burst of manliness that made any women within a hundred metres swoon, he pushed off, aiming almost directly for the mirror ball. "The Grate Disco Junction, it connects all the docks to the malls." He pointed at a larger tunnel off to their right, "there."

The Vagendra of Manocide merely noted the position and the fact that she didn't have the regulation space onesie trousers on under her redskirt. Anyone looking up would be in for a shock. "How do they ensure they don't have dead air pockets?"

"The mirrorball rotates, stirring the air. The cadets have a similar one for training, especially helmsmen." Captain Seymour Dicklogic transferred the medium-lolly redskirt to his other hand and held out a hand to slow their gentle spin more. "I do hope you have regulation panties on."

"Why?" She asked innocently, holding his hand and hugging his supremely manly chest as they skirted the mirror ball, feeling the rush of air as they closed within centimetres. "what happens if we touch it?"

"Disqualification, never missed yet, then again, never tried this with a hot lolly." they were millimetres from the whirling mirrors, "we really need to club the author to death, his spelling checker needs to die."

"That would cut our novella short before I have a baby." She noted as the cleared the spinning death ball and were now on target for the Spendadrome exit and travelling significantly faster. "Feet first?" She let him swing her around and the next thing they knew, they were falling feet first towards the giant green hole. "Aren't we going a bit fast?"

"Trust me."

"Intimately." She agreed, "can't we go faster, I'm seeing those intrusive holographic ultra cosmosigns." She lamented the fact that she didn't have hearing aids to turn off. Fortunately their precipitous speed meant they only had a few seconds of the worst kind of digital advertising in existence. The Holographic InYourFaceMatics.

"Greetinatings, do you have a spendamatic? you need a spendamat-"

"Bog Wibbles! Get your pet bog wibbles now, available in crumpets and cream-"

"Vote for Chutney!"

"Re-opening after a horrible incident, The greatest collection of-"

The Vagenda of Manocide held on tightly and ignored the breezy feeling as her redskirt rode up and exposed her stripies to the tunnel of InYourFaceMatics. Then she realised this was actually a huge improvement.

"Bonga! Bonga!"

"Nyarp! Nyarp!"

"Chutney!" That one actually exploded, immolating some slower travellers and sending them spinning into the walls.

"Brilcream! Now twice as GLORK!"

"Pants, pants, pants-" the last ring of signs howled before vanishing in a cloud of sparks. The whole tunnel went dark and zero-gravity firebots rushed out to calm the conflagration while filming the action.

The landing was, of course, perfect and manly. The Vagendra of Manocide got a whiff of manlificent aftershave and it wouldn't have mattered to her if they had slammed into one of the new Zero Gravity InYourFaceMatics roving holographic signage units. She reached down and touched the tabs to turn her magnabooties on as they walked off the mats. There was lots of debris from something floating around too, she stepped around a large thing that beeped alarmingly as they made their exit. "Food?"

Captain Seymour DickLogic grunted affirmatively as they looked at the Foyer of the Ninth Quadrant. Everywhere they looked, there were roving InYourFaceMatics accosting people and trying to predict their spending habits based on fancy algorithms, deep learning and electronic coin tosses.

"Pa-pa-pa-pa!" One of them was heading towards them, resembling a humanoid robot all in white standing on some sort of ball. It suddenly accelerated towards them screaming something unintelligible that sounted like "Ay Tee Ho!" The Vagendra of Manocide politely clubbed it as she side stepped. The head sailed off in one direction and the robot rushed into the zero gravity area where it was sucked up the now darkened tunnel.

"I wonder what that was about?" The Vagendra of Manocide smoothed her redskirt down and and they left quietly. She completely failed to notice the back of her redskirt was tucked in her panties. This would not have been a problem if she had had the regulation space onesie trousers on, they had velcro(tm) to stick them to the top and stop them falling down.

Behind them, roving InYourFaceMatics started having wardrobe malfunctions like, slamming into a wardrobe at full speed. spontaneously bursting into song or just spontaneously bursting.

They walked past a sign for a travelling museum. It claimed to have the greatest collection of historical laser dildoes since Robot Emperor Bender XVI. Over nine thousand of them. Including the legendary ICBM, the Maximus, The Atomic Wocket fully restored to working order and... The Almighty Meat and two Veg!

Captain Seymour DickLogic noticed a bunch of the engine room nurses crowding around a side-show all about radioactive purifiers. They appeared to be buying souveniers or some sort of cake.

"Vote Moisture Director Chutney!"