Mal is just a little concerned at how hard Serenity ’s engines are working as they take off, and how slowly they are accelerating, even keeping in mind they are running on the “near-light” setting.

Mal asks, “ Gui! (Hell!) River, are we hauling the whole gorram planet with us? At this rate, it will take longer to get to Sentinel than it took us to travel all the way from the ‘Verse!”

River says, “Mal, the controls feel funny. Either one of the main drives is misaligned, or we have a huge off-centre load.”

Mal heads off to the engine room to find out if Kaylee has an explanation. As he enters, she cries in a singsong voice; “Oh, Cap’n, come and see the shiny new parts, and all the spares we have! We should be able to travel trouble free for the rest of our lives!”

Mal is less than impressed; “Trouble free for the rest of our lives? Kaylee, we have trouble right now. You need to get to work! River thinks maybe a Drive’s misaligned – put away your toys and check it out, would you?”

But Kaylee is star struck; “Drive misaligned? I don’t think so – I’ll check it when I get this stuff sorted out.”

After several tries to get Kaylee’s mind off her shiny new toys, Mal gives up and wanders off to check on the loading…

Finally, Mal calls a halt mid-trip. There’s just too much stuff on board that he can’t account for, and River reports that although the engines still “feel funny”, the biggest reason for their slow progress is the huge amount of weight in the cargo bay.

While Diana decides she needs to learn more about Sentinel, and settles in with UniWiki, the rest of the crew has a field day doing inventory, and trying to guess why the ‘Bots thought they would need some of the strange things they brought on board becomes a fascinating game in itself:

Simon peeks inside one huge box; “Any of you mention we were going farming? We have two complete sets of equipment for horse drawn ploughs.”

Zoë says, “I think somebody told them we were going to spy on Earth. I have a whole box o