'There's something coming!' Dan could feel his knees beginning to quiver. Lucy pulled at Nettle's arm. But Nettle edged forward - as if eager to greet whatever it was that was even now opening the front door of the destroyed vicarage ..
'Aggggh!' screamed Lucy as the thing emerged into the starlight.
'Good evening to you, unknown life-forms,' said the thing. 'The proprietors of Starlight Travel Inc. would like to apologize for any inconvenience you may have suffered due to the inadvertent emergency parking of their vehicle.'
'Arrrrghhh! Aaaaaaarggghhh!' Lucy was by now screaming incredibly well. Nigel was covering his ears and trying to get even further under the steering wheel of the car.
'It's all right, Lucy!' Dan was trying to calm her down.
'Arrrrghhh! Aaaaaagghhhh! Arrrrrgggghhhhh!' Lucy was not about to be calmed down by anybody. She was confronted by an Alien From Outer Space, and she was jolly well going to have a good scream.
'Sh!' said Nettie. 'It's talking to us!'
'Quite,' said the Thing From Outer Space. 'By way of apology, may we have the pleasure of offering you a free cruise on board our Starship?'
'Perhaps another day...' said Dan.
'Aaaaaaaarrrrgggh! Arrrgh! Aaaaah! Aaaggghhhh!' continued Lucy.
'Yes!' cried Nettle. 'I'd love to!'
'Come with me, madam,' said the Thing From Outer Space and turned smartly back into the ruined house.
'Well? Come on!' said Nettle. 'What a hoot!' And before either Lucy or Dan could stop her, she had followed it through the front door.
Dan hesitated, and then realized he had no choice; before Lucy could start screaming again, he was racing after Nettle, and Lucy found herself racing after Dan.
The Thing was standing by an illuminated porch and they could now see that it appeared to be nothing more frightening than a smartly dressed robot wearing headphones, who bowed politely to them and apologized for having to invite them into the service elevator.
'Please do not be alarmed,' it said in a soothing voice. 'I can assure you that the Starship Titanic is the most luxurious and technologically advanced Inter-Galactic Starship ever built, and every state room has hot and cold running water and colour TV.'
It bowed again and ushered them in, and somehow or other - neither Dan nor Lucy nor Nettle could later quite explain why - they all three found themselves climbing the steps into the elevator. Before they knew what was happening, the steps had retracted up behind them and the robot had flicked a switch.
'I apologize once again for having to bring you in by the service elevator,' remarked the robot, 'entrance to the Starship is normally at Embarkation Level.'
'Hey!' exclaimed Dan. 'How come you speak English?' Dan felt better now he'd found something concrete to question.
'I beg your pardon, but I am not speaking... what did you say - "English"? All robotic functions on this ship are equipped with infra-violet translation sensors which automatically scan the brain-impulses of passengers for language patterns. These patterns are then rearranged inside your heads so that you can understand and speak intelligibly whilst on the ship. You are actually speaking and understanding Blerontinian. Pretty convenient for writers of science fiction - uh?'
Dan wasn't sure what to make of this last remark -was the robot implying that he was nothing more than a figment of some writer's mind and that this whole thing was not really happening? However, before he could think any further along these lines, his mind was overwhelmed by the fantastic situation in which they now found themselves: they were speeding vertically up the vast keel towards the main body of the Starship, a mile above the surface of the Earth.
Nigel stabbed out a number on his mobile, and called halfheartedly out of the car window: 'Dan? Lucy? Nettle?' But his voice barely reached the crumbled brickwork of the ruined house.
The next moment he heard a ghostly roar - like seas beating on a far-off shore.
'Hello?' said his mobile. 'Oxford Police Station. Can I help you?'
Nigel didn't reply. He was too busy watching the vast unbelievable thing as it rose up into the air again and disappeared towards the Milky Way.
'Hello? This is Oxford Police Station,' insisted his mobile phone. 'Who is this?'
Nigel looked at the smashed Victorian rectory, and the driveway where his friends had stood a few moments ago, and replaced his mobile on its cradle. 'It didn't happen,' he murmured to himself. 'It didn't happen.'
You might have thought there was a tinge of relief in the way his shoulders relaxed, but of course you would have dismissed such an idea as total fantasy.
In any case, at that same moment, Nigel suddenly became very unrelaxed again. In fact, he very nearly jumped out of his Armani trousers; he certainly hit his head on the roof of the car. 'Ouch!' he yelled. An old man with a flowing white beard was sitting quietly in the passenger seat; there were tears in his eyes and one of his eyebrows was just about to fall off.
9
The moment the ship took off, Dan felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was, of course, simply the result of the incredible G-Force that was being exerted upon his body. But Dan, who had no idea that the ship had taken off, merely thought that he was getting nervous. The sinking feeling in the stomach was quickly followed by a draining of blood from the brain, leading to momentary light-headedness, followed by total black-out.
If he hadn't just blacked-out, Dan would have noticed that the take-off had affected Lucy and Nettle in an identical way - even though none of them knew what was happening.
'Nothing to be alarmed about, sir, madam and thing.' The polite robot seemed to be addressing this last to the now comatose Nettle. 'A perfectly routine take-off. You life-forms have a good snooze while us machines get on with running the ship.' The Doorbot, itself, then blacked out and lay in a tidy heap, while the ship accelerated at speeds far beyond its original specifications, towards an unknown quarter of the InterGalactic Space-Time Continuum.
The robots on board must have recovered consciousness before the human beings. Nettle found herself undressed and tucked up in bed in a tiny cabin about the size of her flat back in Harringay.
Apart from the size, everything about the place was unfamiliar. The sheets on the bed were made of some material that felt like silk but much thicker and heavier. The mug holding the toothbrush bore a picture of an elderly Egyptian opera singer - or at least that's who it looked like to Nettle. She'd once received a postcard of an elderly Egyptian opera singer, and had kept it in a drawer. The toothbrush itself was rather weird, since it kept ducking its head and brushing its own handle - rather like a bird preening itself.
Opposite the bed was a television on which a snowstorm seemed to be the only entertainment. Nettle picked up the remote, aimed it at the TV and started pressing buttons. A cocktail cabinet rose out of the floor; a Dustbot scuttled out of the clothes cupboard, picked up an invisible speck of dust, squeaked, 'Thank you for appreciating a clean environment!' and hurried back out of sight again; the door opened; the lights went on and off but the TV resolutely refused to show any programme other than the snow-storm.
'Alt! Hi! I'm glad to see you have found your Personal Electronic Thingie, please keep it with you at all times since it is your communication with the Starship Titanic. Welcome aboard.' Nettle found herself apparently being addressed by the standard lamp that stood in the corner of the cabin. She instinctively pulled the sheets up to cover her breasts.