None of them could have told you how long the attack went on for, but it seemed like several lifetimes to the three figures huddled on the Captain's Bridge. The noise, the vibration, the crashing and bucking of the giant Starship went on and on. Lucy found The Journalist had his hands on her breasts, but decided not to say anything.
When it was all over, they waited and then stood up, trembling and shaking. The first wave was returning to the main fleet meanwhile a second wave was peeling off.
'Here they come again!' yelled Dan, and he and Lucy ducked down once more beneath the console. But The Journalist remained standing, with a curious expression on his face.
Lucy and Dan braced themselves for the gunfire... but it didn't come. Instead there was an odd - rather unmartial - banging on the hull of the ship.
'Yassaccans!' muttered The Journalist. Lucy and Dan both assumed this was another alien expletive, and remained under cover, but then The Journalist nudged Dan and said: 'Look!'
Dan cautiously put his head above the console and peered out of the window: the second wave of spaceships had pulled up all around the Starship, and an army of short and stocky space-suited figures were swarming over the hull, hammering and welding as they went.
'What the blazes?' asked Dan.
'They're repairing the damage,' explained The Journalist, Yassaccans are like that! They hate injuring hardware!'
'What about software?' asked Lucy, readjusting her bra.
'We'll need guns!' yelled The Journalist. 'Follow me!' The three of them ran, doubled-up, out of the Captain's Bridge, while the enemy's hammering and welding outside gathered in intensity.
Meanwhile the voice boomed out over the loudspeakers again: 'We shall recommence our attack, as soon as the first damage has been repaired! If you do not surrender, we shall board and dispose of everyone we find!'
In the crew's quarters, The Journalist discovered an arms cache. He handed out weapons to Dan and Lucy.
'How do we use them?' asked Dan, turning a strange gun over in his hand. It had a short thingy and bulbous side-thingies and a sort of thingy that stuck out and which Dan pushed: a laser beam shot out across the Crew Room and exploded in a fireball at the other end.
'Like that,' explained The Journalist, 'except don't point them at the soft furnishings.' He rushed over to the flaming curtain that Dan had just set on fire and grabbed an extinguisher.
'We can't use these!' cried Lucy.
'Then you'll just have to get used to the idea of being thrown off the ship into deep space. These Yassaccans are not playing games. Here! Dan! Put this on!' He threw Dan a helmet.
'What is it?' asked Dan.
'The Starship has two realities; one is the DataSide and the other is the MatterSide. When the Yassaccans board, they'll try to take over the DataSide as well as the MatterSide. So one of us better be prepared to confront them there!'
'I have no idea what you're talking about,' replied Dan.
'It's a VR helmet - a Virtual Reality helmet. You put it on, you'll be able to explore the DataSide and check whatever the Yassaccans get up to there!' The Journalist was clearly losing patience.
'Just put it on!' shouted Lucy.
The noise from the repairs on the hull was getting unbearable.
'What the heck are they doing out there?' exclaimed Dan.
'Just put on the helmet!' cried Lucy. At which Dan did.
'Wow!' he exclaimed. 'I see what you mean! I'm right in the ship... Hey! This is great! I can get into the consoles! Wow! Now I'm running along the wiring! Hey! The circuit-boards are like vast cities! Shit!'
The moment he had the helmet on, The Journalist grabbed Lucy and started kissing her as if there were no tomorrow which, he figured, might well be the case. And, as if shed been expecting this all along, Lucy started to kiss him, but then she suddenly pulled back, and glanced anxiously over at Dan, who was climbing some invisible stairs in his Virtual Reality and then turning around and handling invisible objects and letting out delighted yelps.
'Oh don't worry about him!' panted The Journalist. 'He can't hear or see us. We're still MatterSide. He'll be totally absorbed in that thing - it's always the same - first time you put on one of those you're usually off for five or six hours! Let's do it!'
But still Lucy pushed him away. 'The Yassaccans are invading the ship!' she protested.
'That's right!' replied The Journalist. 'We've hardly got time to do it before they arrive! Quick!'
'Is that all you can think about!?' groaned Lucy. The Journalist was now nuzzling her neck and sending excited shivers down her spine.
'I told you - once we Blerontinian males get aroused...'
'Arrgh!' Lucy suddenly screamed. 'And what about the bomb?!'
Pangalin!' exclaimed The Journalist. 'I'd forgotten about that!' He suddenly whipped a small handset out of one of his many pockets and flipped it on.
'Twenty-five... twenty-four... twenty-three...' The bomb was counting.
'Toothless rabbits!' yelled The Journalist, 'it's nearly there!'
'Twenty-two...' said the bomb.
'Hey! Bomb!' yelled The Journalist into the phone.
'Don't talk to me!' moaned the bomb. 'I'm nearly there.. twenty-three... no, I've done that...'
'We're being invaded!' shouted The Joumalist. 'Twenty-oh... no! Damn! Recommencing countdown. One thousand...'
The Journalist flipped the phone off and started kissing Lucy's neck and undoing her suit. 'That was close!' he breathed.
'Whoops! Nearly went down a transistor then!' said Dan. And suddenly Lucy was running her hands all over The Journalist and pulling him down onto the floor.
'You're crazy!' she murmured...
18
The hammering and banging on the outside of the ship had stopped by the time Lucy and The Journalist had struggled back into their clothes. Dan, who was still scrambling around some unseen obstacles on the DataSide, suddenly yelled out: 'They're in the ship!'
The Journalist grabbed as many weapons as he could carry and headed out of the Crew Room. Down at the far end of the Grand Axial Canal he could see short, stocky figures already slipping onto the jetty. The Journalist settled himself behind a large podium, on which one of the braziers burnt, and took aim. As Lucy joined him, he fired and a series of explosions rocked the jetty and sent the invaders diving for cover.
The next moment, Lucy felt the air around and above her exploding with light and noise as the Yassaccans returned their fire.
'Hey! This air-duct goes on for ever!' Lucy span round to see that Dan (still in the VR helmet and totally unconscious of anything that was happening MatterSide) had wandered out through the open door of the Crew Room and was now heading straight for the Grand Axial Canal.
'DAN!' she screamed, and ran towards him as his feet reached the edge of the embankment. Immediately there was another explosion of noise and light around them, as the Yassaccans fired again. But Lucy had hold of Dan's sleeve. She managed to twist him round on the very edge of the water and pushed him back towards the Crew Room. The Journalist, meanwhile, was firing as fast as he could in the general direction of the invaders. But by now there was so much smoke neither side could see very much.
'Let's get out of here!' yelled The Journalist and he bundled Lucy after Dan, back into the Crew Room.
19
'Who set fire to the curtains?' demanded Bolfass the moment he burst into the Crew Room. He nodded, and a couple of Yassaccan repair workers hurried over to replace them. Bolfass had led his Special Assault Group along a back service corridor to the crew's quarters, while Yellin and Assmal led the frontal attack along the main arteries of the Starship.
Bolfass loved the finish they had obtained on the service corridor ceiling. It gave him much quiet satisfaction, in the dark of the night, to reflect on the craftsmanship and the high quality of material lavished on even the working areas of the great Starship.