'Nettie!' exclaimed Dan. 'My God! You're Nettie! What's happened to you?' But the Ancient Creature, whom Dan had rightly identified as Nettie, couldn't reply. The moment they passed into the First Class Section, she collapsed and lay as if dead. The Gap T-shirt hung around her shrunken frame like an over-large pullover. Her jewellery looked foolish and ill-advised on her scrawny wrists and neck. What on Earth - or off the Earth - had happened to her? What had in fact happened was this.
The Starship Titanic was powered by the latest and most incredible invention of the great Leovinus's genius. No one knew how he had done it, and he had kept it an absolute secret, but somehow he harnessed for the Starship - his beloved masterpiece - the vastest source of power in the probable Universe: a captive Black Hole.
Naturally something as powerful as a Black Hole needed very careful handling and had to be surrounded by incredible safety precautions. Unfortunately, safety was one thing that neither Scraliontis nor Brobostigon had first in their minds, when they began to reduce the specifications for the construction of the ship.
'There won't be anybody in the Engine Room,' explained Scraliontis, when even Brobostigon had queried the wisdom of reducing the Incredibly Strong Glass Company's spec for the window into the Black Hole.
'But you know what Black Holes are like...'
Actually Scraliontis didn't; he was an accountant and not an engineer. In any case Black Hole technology was a brand new concept straight out of Leovinus's brain. Just take Leovinus's lowest parameter for the glass shield!' he snapped. 'We can't afford any more.'
It was Nettie who discovered the problem thus caused by Scraliontis's cost-cutting, as she climbed the ladder, looking for the phone to the Captain's Bridge. The force of the Black Hole had simply plucked her off the ladder and absorbed her through the Incredibly Strong Glass Company's below-spec window.
Once in the Black Hole, she had begun to spin around for - as far as her body was concerned - hundreds of years, travelling millions of light years round in tiny circles. Fortunately, she still had her Personal Electronic Thingie on her, and this had dutifully clocked up all the miles she travelled.
Nettie herself didn't know how she had escaped. In fact, she had been thrown clear of the Black Hole, when The Journalist had short-circuited the Deskbot Nettie was, miraculously, still alive, and - even more miraculously - still had the presence of mind to realize that she had accumulated millions of light years of Space Miles - enough to get them all free upgrades to First Class.
'Less than eight edoes to go!' exclaimed The Journalist. 'And that's assuming the bomb doesn't speed up its counting!'
'What can I do about Nettie?' cried Dan, holding the Ancient Creature pathetically in his arms.
'Leave her! We've got to find the life-boats!' And The Journalist was off, running along the embankment of the Grand Axial Canal, First Class, with Lucy in close pursuit.
'Come on, Dan!' she called.
'I can't just leave her!' Dan yelled back. But they'd turned a corner and were gone. Dan tried to lift the ancient Nettie up, but even though she was emaciated and shrivelled, he was too exhausted to carry her anywhere.
He looked around and, for the first time, took in the extraordinary vista presented by the Grand Axial Canal, First Class. If the word 'posh' ever had any meaning, this was it. It was luxury. It was De Luxe. It was Expensive. It was also redolent with the operatic singing of the Gondolabots:
'He helped to chalk
Her tight-rope walk
So that the lovely lady wouldn't slip.'
Dan had always hated opera. 'Let's go somewhere quiet,' he whispered to Nettie, and finally lifted her up and staggered into the nearest doorway.
Lucy and The Journalist had, meanwhile, discovered that the Star-Struct Construction Co. Inc. had not skimped on the signs to the Life-Boats (First Class). There were big reassuring signs almost everywhere you looked. They were illuminated and some of them incorporated flashing arrows. Consequently, the two arrived at the Life-Boat Assembly Station in less than a minute.
'Seven edoes to go!' gasped The Journalist.
As he said this, both he and Lucy discovered that while the Star-Struct Construction Co. Inc. hadn't skimped on the signs to the life-boats, they had economized on the life-boats themselves. In fact they had economized completely and utterly on them.
'Well, what's the point of providing life-boats,' reasoned Scraliontis to an increasingly nervous Brobostigon, 'if there aren't going to be any passengers?'
'The bastards!' groaned The Journalist.
'That's it!' said Lucy.
'We're done for! We'll be blown to little bits of drifting cosmos in exactly six edoes and forty-five innims!' The Journalist sank to his knees. The fight had gone out of him. He looked so helpless - so forlorn. Lucy couldn't help it. The thought of imminent destruction threw all the usual caution out of her mind. She leapt to a conclusion that she would probably not even have begun to recognize under normal conditions.
'Oh God!' she cried. 'I love you!'
And before The Journalist realized what was happening, Lucy was on top of him, kissing his mouth and pulling her fingers through his hair.
'Ow! Ouch!' The Journalist yelled. 'Mind my wound!'
'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' yelled Lucy. 'But we've only got six edoes left! Whatever they are! I've never felt like this for anyone... The moment I set eyes on you... Oh God! No one's ever going to know! Nothing matters any more! I don't know what I feel! But hurry! Do something!' And she was wrestling with his clothing. 'I can't get it off!'
'I told you! It's thought-sealed!' His clothes suddenly pinged open and the next minute Lucy had flung her pinstripe power suit onto the empty life-boat ramp. Her fingers ran over the alien's body as she got on top of him.
'Oh God!' she cried, feeling the blood draining down into her lower abdomen like a rush of seagulls onto the last herring. 'We've probably only got five of whatever those things are left!'
'Edoes!' The Journalist tried not to yell out with the pain of his wound. 'We've got five edoes left! This is incredible!' he cried, 'We don't do it like this on Blerontin!'
'Why not?' Lucy didn't care.
'It's illegal!' The Journalist was grinning from ear to ear. 'We're only allowed "snork-style"! You know - upside down and from above!'
'Oh shut up!' Lucy was kissing him. 'I had to tell you! I had to! I love you! I've always loved you! That's what's been missing! Ah! Ah!"
'Quick!' tried The Journalist. They had only sixty innim before the bomb exploded.
'Yes! Yes!'
They rolled and kissed each other oblivious to the cold metal floor of the life-boat ramp under their naked flesh. 'Life is so short!' Lucy suddenly grabbed his hand and looked at his watch. It was totally incomprehensible.
'Thirty innims!' 'Is that all?' she yelled.
'Yes!' cried The Journalist. 'Yes!'
'I love yooooou!' cried Lucy.
'Ooooooooh!' echoed The Journalist and the two of them collapsed together as the clock clicked to zero...
They lay there waiting for the forever-ending explosion that would terminate their brief affair. But, unlike the two lovers, it didn't come. 'What's happened?' Lucy was the first to speak. 'I don't know!' said The Journalist. 'I don't know!'
15
At this same moment, Nettie suddenly managed to sit up on the couch on which Dan had placed her, and screamed: 'Oh my God! There's only five minutes before the bomb goes off!'
'Five minutes!' thought Dan. 'This is where, in a cheap novel, the couple - confronted by imminent oblivion - would suddenly make passionate love.'
'You've got to go and talk to it!' she pleaded.