Space opera

This genre usually turns up on publishers' taboo lists but just for a laugh I'm scribbling away on a comedy version, which starts with a human and an alien stuck in an elevator together. For some reason I decided to call it 'Broken Lullaby' when I first started it, but now I can't remember why so I think I'm going to have to re-name it.

I added about 1,500 words to it yesterday and had a blast, which makes a nice change from scraping around for every word.

Here's a brief snippet:

The first time Rudi came face to face with a Vreenian, all he really noticed was the smell. It surprised him that he hadn't known that about them. After all, he'd been studying them for years, first at space school and then at the Union's political headquarters on Cygnus IV. He'd read virtually the entire contents of the Vreenian section of the library there (not as hard as it sounded since the Vreena system had only been discovered thirty years before) and watched endless visua-logs of early contacts with Vreenian explorers. He'd studied their history and their demographics and their physiology; he spoke six of their languages well enough to make himself understood; he recognised the difference between all but two of their five genders. But he'd never been in the same room as one before. Here in the elevator between levels one and five of the Trafalgar space station, face to face with a first-category Vreenian male, it was a different story, and a rather overpowering one at that.

Not that the smell was unpleasant, precisely, just... strong. It reminded him of his mother's garden after rain, or of picking parsley for the sauce for Saturday lunch, or of standing on the cliffs at Dingli and smelling the sweet herbs of the maquis on the wind. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more attractive it was becoming, and if he didn't want to be caught doing an impression of a Bisto kid in front of an alien officer he'd better pull himself up right now.

He risked a glance upwards beneath his fringe and found a pair of amused grey eyes watching him. Damn. The effect that scent was having on him must be more obvious than he'd thought. Shfiting uncomfortably inside his uniform collar he said, "Greetings, esteemed stranger,' in the most commonly-used of the six Vreenian languages he knew.

"Good afternoon," the Vreenian replied, in perfect English, with a lift of his left brow-ridge.