"A fine sense of timing, I must say! A little love-making would have improved my spirits no end and taken away the nasty taste of Doctor Volospion's tantrum. It isn't as if I get the chance every day and I haven't had a man for ages. I don't even know if one can still give me what I need! Even you, Argonheart…"
She pouted, brushing at the nasty sticky stuff clinging to her petticoats. "I'm too furious to speak!"
Argonheart Po helped her from the pile and, perhaps moved by unconscious chivalry, pecked her upon the cheek. The smell of burning filled the air.
"Ugh," she said. "What a stink, too!"
"It is the least attractive of odours," Argonheart said.
"It's horrible. Surely it can't just be coming from that ship?"
The heat from the vessel was heavy on their skins. Argonheart Po, had his body been so fashioned, would have been sweating quite as much as Miss Ming. His sensitive nose twitched.
"There is something familiar about it," he agreed, "which I would not normally identify with hot metal." He perused the landscape. His cry of horror echoed over it.
"Ah! Look what it has done! Look! Oh, it is too bad!"
Miss Ming looked and saw nothing. "What?"
Argonheart was in anguish. His hands clenched, his eyes blazed.
"It has melted half my dinosaurs. That is what is making the smoke!"
Argonheart Po began to roll rapidly in the direction of the ship, Mavis Ming forgotten.
"Hey!" she cried. "What if there's danger?"
He had not heard her.
With a whimper, she followed him.
"Murderer!" cried the distressed chef. "Philistine!" He shook his fist at the ship. He danced about it, forced back by its heat. He attempted to kick it and failed.
"Locust!" he raved. "Ravager! Insensitive despoiler!"
His energy dissipated, he fell to his knees in the glutinous mess. He wept. "Oh, my monsters! My jellies!"
Mavis Ming hovered a short distance away. She wore the pout of someone who considered herself abandoned in her hour of need.
"Argonheart!" she called.
"Burned! All burned!"
"Argonheart, we don't know what sort of creatures are in that spaceship. They could mean us harm!"
"Ruin, ruin, ruin…"
"Argonheart. I think we should go and warn someone, don't you?" She discovered that her lovely shoes were stuck. As she lifted her feet, long strands of toffeelike stuff came with them. She waded back to a patch of dust still free of melted dinosaur.
Her attention focused upon the ship as curiosity conquered caution. "I've seen alien spacecraft before," she said. "Lots of them. But this doesn't look alien at all. It's got a distinctly human look to it, in fact."
Argonheart Po raised his mighty body to its feet and, with shoulders bowed, mourned his dead creations.
"Argonheart, don't you think it's got a rather romantic appearance, really?"
Argonheart Po turned his back on the source of his anger and folded his arms across his chest. He wore a martyred air, yet his dignity increased.
Mavis Ming continued to inspect the spaceship. A strange smile had replaced the expression of anxiety she had worn earlier. "Come to think of it, it's just the sort of ship I used to read about when I was a little girl. All the space-heroes had ships like that." She became fey. "Perhaps at long last my prayers have been answered, Argonheart."
The Master Chef grunted. He was lost in profundity.
Miss Ming uttered her trilling laugh. "Has my handsome space-knight arrived to carry me off, do you think? To the wonderful planet of Paradise V?"
From Argonheart there issued a deep, violent rumbling, as of an angry volcano. "Villain! Villain!"
She put a hand to her mouth. "You could be right. It could easily carry a villain. Some pirate captain and his cut-throat crew." She became reminiscent. "My two favourite authors, you know, when I was young — well, I'd still read them now, if I could — were J.R.R. Tolkien and A.A. Milne. Well, this is more like the movie versions, of course, but still … Oooh! Could they be rapists and slavers, Argonheart?"
She took his silence for disapproval. "Not that I really want anything nasty to happen to us. Not really. But it's thrilling, isn't it, wondering?"
"I —" said Argonheart Po. "I —"
Miss Ming, as she anticipated the occupants of the ship, seemed torn between poles represented in her fantasies by the evil, fascinating Sauron and the soft, jolly Winnie-the-Pooh.
"Will they be fierce, do you think, Argonheart? Or cuddly?" She bit her lower lip. "Better still, they might be fierce and cuddly!"
"Aaaaaah," breathed Argonheart.
She looked at him in surprise. She appeared to make an effort to retrieve herself from sentiment which, she had doubtless learned, was not always socially acceptable in this world. She achieved the retrieval by a return to her previous alternative, her vein of heavy cynicism. "I was only joking," she said.
"Sadist," hissed Argonheart. "This might have been deliberately engineered."
"Well," she said, having determined her new attitude, "at least it might be someone to relieve the awful boredom of this bloody planet!"
Still bowed, her baffled and grieving escort turned from the blackened fragments of his culinary dreams to stare wistfully after his surviving stegosauri and tyrannosauri which, startled by the ship, were in rapid and uncertain flight in all directions.
His self-control returned. He became a fatalist. His little shrug went virtually unnoticed by her.
"It is fate," declared the Master Chef. "At least I am no longer in a dilemma. The decision has been taken from me."
He began to wade, as best the sticky glue would allow him, towards her.
"Couldn't you round them up?" she asked. "The ones who survived?"
"And make only a partial contribution? No. I shall find Abu Thaleb and tell him he must create something for himself. A few turns of a power ring, of course, and he will have a feast of sorts, though it will lack the inspiration of anything I could have prepared for him." A certain guilt, it seemed, inspired him to resent the object of his guilt and therefore made him feel somewhat aggressive towards Abu Thaleb.
He reached Miss Ming's side. "Shall we return to the party together?"
"But what of the ship?"
"It has done its terrible work."
"But the people who came in it?"
"I forgive them," said Argonheart with grandiose magnanimity.
"I mean — don't you want to see what they look like?"
"I bear them no ill-will. They were not aware of the horror they brought. It is ever thus."
"They might be interesting."
"Interesting?" Argonheart Po was incredulous.
"They might have some news, or something."
Argonheart Po looked again upon the spaceship. "They are scarcely likely to be anything but crude, ill-mannered rogues, Miss Ming. Surely, they must have seen, by means of their instruments, my herds?"
"It could be a crash-landing."
"Perhaps." Argonheart Po was a fair-minded chef. He did his best to see her point. "Perhaps."
"They might need help."
He cast one final glance about the smoking detritus and said, with not a little violence, "Well, I hope that they find it."
"Shouldn't we…?"
"I return to find Abu Thaleb and tell him of the disaster."
"Oh, very well, I suppose I shall have to come with you. But, really, Argonheart, you're looking at this in a rather selfish way, aren't you? This could be a great event. Remember those other aliens who turned up recently? They were trying to help us, too, weren't they? It would be lovely to have some nice news for a change…"
She reached for his arm, so that he might escort her through the glutinous pools.
At that moment there came a grinding noise from the vessel. Both looked back.
A circular section in the hull was turning.