Makeshift Rocket

Knud Axel Syrup, chief engineer of the spaceship Mercury Girl, sat and drank his favourite beer and thought about the coming war he was so anxious to avoid. For Grendel - the planetoid on which he was stranded - had been occupied by a band of fiery Irish revolutionaries. And once the rival Anglians discovered this, there response would be speedy and violent.

Then, as Herr Syrup shook up a bottle of...