Here are some things which happened in the course of His Majesty's Starship, once, somewhere ... but not here.

• The original interview chapter (3300 words). Michael Gilmore is given a fortnight to select the best of his existing crew for Ark Royal. In earlier drafts, he had longer and was able to recruit more widely. Here are those interviews, and his farewell to his son before setting off on the delegation.
• Peter's interview (480 words). All members of Ark Royal's crew are interviewed by Arm Wild, the ship's appointed Rustie liaison. The ship's puritan, Peter Kirton, originally got more theological in his discussion ...
• Krishnamurthy and James (1500 words). A scene that definitely never happened, from the point of view of all parties: Krishnamurthy, Prince James and the author. Krishnamurthy has suffered a slight setback ...

Something else that can happen in the real world is that the novel is 16 pages too long for the price bracket that the publisher has set, and the author has to make a heart-breaking choice: lose 16 pages from the final proofs, or charge the readers an extra pound.

The following scenes were included in the US edition of the book, The Ark. For UK readers, here are some things that can definitely be said to have happened during His Majesty's Starship, but off stage or when the reader was looking the other way ...

• James on Britannia (400 words). Prince James is carried to his rendezvous with Ark Royal on board the royal yacht Britannia, and has an intriguing conversation with this doctor ...
• Arm Wild on the prideship (400 words). To break the monotony of the voyage, Arm Wild returns to his prideship for a much-needed reunion with his fellows. Here is his welcomed by his pride leader, Timbre Grey. This extract also gives a taste of what Rusties call fulltalk.
• Adrian and the marine (760 words). As all the crews of the delegation fleet come down to the Roving and settle into their accommodation, Sub-Lieutenant Adrian Nichol of Ark Royal has an interesting encounter with some of the crew of another ship.