'Do you think it's getting colder?' asked Lucy as she tore out the voucher from the magazine.
'Anyway,' said Dan, 'I was not ogling Nettle.'
Nettie shivered as she waited for the door to the Second Class Area to open. For a brief moment she wished her Gap T-shirt covered her midriff. But then, as the door opened and she stepped through, her mind was swamped by the sight before her. She found herself standing on the main jetty of the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class. It stretched out in front of her, under a simulated sky. Wide columns marked out the elegantly curved walls, and burning braziers dotted the canal embankments. All over the canal, automated gondolas plied lazily back and forth, their robot gondoliers singing pleasantly - a song that brought harmony and peace to the main thoroughfare of the Starship Titanic:
'She gave him love!
She swung above!
She kissed him on his smiling handsome lip.
The gondolier
Sang in her ear:
She gave him six pnedes as a tip!'
Nettle climbed into the nearest gondola and the singing stopped. 'Take me to the Engine Room,' she said.
'Si! Work-Place Chum of Victorious Athletics Coach!' said the gondolier and off they drifted down the Grand Axial Canal.
'Tell me,' said Nettie. 'Shouldn't you be singing when you've got a passenger rather than the other way round?'
'Si! Perspicacious Lady Orthodontist!' replied the robot, breathing evenly with the exertion of propelling the craft. 'There must be something wrong with the ship's central intelligence system.'
Nettie nodded and made a mental note of this.
The gondola took her straight down the very middle of the Grand Axial Canal. The pace was relaxed, and the whole ambiance so far away from what she ever imagined being on a spaceship to be like - let alone an alien spaceship - that Nettie found herself leaning back against the cushions and letting her mind drift...
She wondered why she didn't feel more distressed by her situation. It was almost as if she felt there was some benign presence in the Starship - something or someone that she knew would take care of them - and yet it was not complete. Nettie shook her head - the thoughts were all a little too shapeless to make sense.
And then what about Nigel? Why didn't she miss him more? For three months now her whole life had revolved around him. She had made sure his diary was up to date and that he looked at it. She'd made him change his socks every day and had washed his underpants by hand. She must love him a lot! And yet she knew he'd just gone out of her life... Not just because they'd been kidnapped by an alien starship full of robots... Heavens above! She knew they'd return to Earth. She knew they wouldn't be harmed. But Nigel would not be there for her. Something was broken and yet she didn't seem to regret it.
The gondola bumped. They had reached the jetty.
'The gondolier was on his knees
She blew a kiss from her trapeze.'
sang the robot gondolier, as soon as Nettie was out of the gondola.
'Thanks!' said Nettle.
'And that was when the lady lost her grip...' sang the robot.
Nettie adjusted her translatorspecs and immediately saw a notice which read: 'Crew and Personnel only'. She followed the sign down a stainless steel corridor towards a set of glowing blue doors.
As she approached there was no perceptible engine noise - unless that distant rustling of leaves was it - or was it the beating of a sea upon a distant shore? Nettie felt a thrill pulse through her - and then realized it was just a chill. It really was getting very cold in the ship. And was it her imagination or was her breathing getting more difficult?
At the luminous blue doors, Nettle waved her John Lewis Credit Card and said in a commanding voice that she had never ever used before: 'Special Customs and Excise Search Warrant. Open up!'
There was a slight hesitation. The glowing blue doors opened a crack and then shut again, hesitated, and then obediently opened up.
The Engine Room was so similar to the sort of thing you'd see in a science fiction film that Nettle felt she knew exactly where she was. Except what was that black, black darkness behind the thick window? There didn't seem to be anything there and yet all the wiring and so forth seemed to be connected to it.
Nettie looked around for the intercom. Her idea had been quite a simple one: if they wanted to communicate with the Captain, and they couldn't get up to the Captain's Bridge to speak to him personally, then she'd telephone him from the Engine Room. There had to be some sort of communication between the Bridge and the engineers.
In the corner there was a small cabinet. Maybe that was it? She opened the doors to reveal two buttons.
One read: 'Bomb Monitor' and the other: 'Press To Arm'. A sudden wave of cold, even colder than the current temperature of the ship, swept through Nettie's body. 'Bomb!?' Was there a bomb on board?
Nettle pressed the button that read 'Bomb Monitor'. A polite voice said: 'Thank you for enquiring about the status of the Mega-Scuttler Corporation's SD-96 Full Force Mega-Scuttler - 'A Bomb To Be Proud Of' - which has been installed, for your convenience, upon this Starship. It is my pleasure to inform you that the Mega-Scuttler is currently not activated. Thank you for showing an interest in bombs.'
'Bit of a relief,' thought Nettle. 'Now where's the intercom?'
What happened next is totally unclear. Certainly Nettle herself had no recollection. She remembered climbing up the ladder next to the armour-plated window. She could recall feeling colder than ever and finding her breathing harder and then feeling a force gripping her... a force pulling her sideways off the ladder... a force so vast that she thought she was being sucked into a Black Hole or something... as she felt herself falling horizontally off the ladder towards whatever it was behind the perspex window... The next thing she knew she was whirling round in blackness - fighting for her life...
11
Dan and Lucy were having trouble.
They had both procured their vouchers and had successfully wheedled an upgrade to Second Class out of the Deskbot, but the trickier negotiation re an upgrade to First Class was proving to be a remarkably harrowing experience.
'You have no Credit Card. You are not members of the Sixty Million Miles Club. You are not even registered Frequent Travellers. This whole discussion is pointless. You will find the Second Class facilities on board this Starship more than adequate for your requirements.'
How could even a robot be so unbelievably, unremittingly snotty, wondered Dan.
'Dan!' said Lucy. 'We're wasting our breath in fact, is it my imagination or is it getting harder to breathe?'
Dan sniffed the air. Lucy was right. It was also getting colder. 'Jesus!' he muttered.
'The air and heating are at normal levels,' announced a Doorbot.
'That's bullshit!' snapped Lucy. 'It's getting colder and it's getting more difficult to breathe!'
'I can assure you that the air supply and the temperature are set to maximum for Super Galactic Traveller Class comfort,' said the Doorbot.
'Are you trying to tell us there are different levels of air supply for the different classes of traveller?' exdaimed Dan.
'Not normally, sir, no,' replied the Doorbot. 'However, should the ship be travelling without First or Second Class passengers, the oxygen and heating will - naturally - be lowered to the comfort requirements of Super Galactic Traveller Class passengers.'