Harry Johnson, lifelong resident of the Wiltshire village of Gorsey-on-the-Hill and president-for-life of the local science fiction club, was never one to shirk a mystery. In fact, Harry prided himself on being the only person in town who could recite the original Klingon wedding vows and bake a perfect Victoria sponge, though never at the same time.

To his wife Olivia's occasional exasperation, he approached the world—and their staid little village—as if he were perpetually on the set of an interplanetary adventure.

It was one of those crystalline midsummer nights when the air was thick with honeysuckle and the moon hung low over the thatched rooftops. Harry was busy at the kitchen table, meticulously constructing a miniature model of the Millennium Falcon out of little more than matchsticks, glue, and stubbornness, when a commotion shattered the quiet. Olivia, in her tartan dressing gown, peered out the window and saw a figure sprinting down the lane with what could only be described as the urgency of an Olympic athlete fleeing a swarm of particularly aggressive hornets.

Within seconds, the person was banging on their front door. Harry opened it to find none other than the mayor of Gorsey-on-the-Hill, the Honorable Clive Stipplethorpe, standing on the stoop in nothing but his nightshirt and an expression of raw terror.