The Journalist then told Dan about how the ship had suffered a SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure) shortly after launch and how it had crash-landed on some unknown planet in the unexplored backside of the Galaxy. He finally described how, after the crash, he had heard cries coming from one of the curtains in the First Class Dining Room. He had then discovered Leovinus where he had been left for dead by Scraliontis. The Journalist had freed him and then tried to stop the old man from rushing off the ship - but to no avail. Despite his age, Leovinus had overpowered him (The Journalist had still been losing blood at this stage) and - screaming for revenge, waving, a glowing silver shard in his hand and presumably imagining he was still on Blerontin - the great genius had disappeared into the darkness of an alien world...
'Captain Bolfass wants to see you.' Their jailer suddenly cut across the long story. He jangled his keys as he opened the door to the wretched cell, and pulled The Journalist out.
Captain Bolfass had escorted the beautiful Nettie to the Captain's Bridge. There he had invited her to take a little tea and some cinnamon biscuit, while he made the necessary arrangements to fly the great Starship back to the planet Earth.
'Without wishing to sound disrespectful,' he explained to her, 'it is not a planet with which I am familiar - though, of course, it must be the most delightful world, to be the home of someone as lovely and as charming as yourself.' He bowed, and Nettie felt the thrill of being treated like the heroine of Northanger Abbey.
'I am sure you are more than capable of guiding us home,' she said, lowering her eyes.
'Ah! My dear lady!' exclaimed the Captain. 'It is not I who will guide us but the ship itself. The exact location of the planet Earth will have been recorded in the Starship's central intelligence core. Although none of us have any idea of where your planet is to be found, all I have to do is to tell Titania - that is what Leovinus named his cybernautic system - and she will locate it and take us there.'
Captain Bolfass pressed a small button on one of the consoles, next to a video game based on a recent Blerontinian film... and that is where the novel suddenly ceased to be one by Jane Austen or even Catherine Cookson.
'Barthfarthinghasts!' exclaimed Bolfass. 'Something's wrong! I'm getting no response!'
Nettie, who had felt the Earth and home to be very close indeed - a mere button-push away - now saw it suddenly recede into deep space.
'Captain Bolfass!' Corporal Buke-Willinujit (the cousin by marriage of Corporal Buke-Hammadorf) had just arrived out of breath and nervous. 'The central intelligence core! Someone's removed the vital functions!'
Bolfass turned to Yellin, who was busy with one of the shoot-em-up games. 'This is the work of that Blerontinian vandal! Bring him up at once!'
By the time The Journalist was thrown at his feet, Bolfass had become quite angry - not as angry as if he had known about the sub-standard materials used for the railing around the Central Well, or if he had known about the scandalous lack of finish in the bilge and rubbish-disposal wastes (where the Unmarried Teenage Mothers had been told not to rub down or even apply any varnish!) - but still pretty angry.
'What have you done to Titania's brain?' he roared.
The Journalist stuck his chin out and said: 'I can only give you my name, rank and number.'
'This isn't The Great Escape!' * exclaimed Bolfass, swivelling a light into The Journalist's eyes. 'Tell me what you know! Or I shall let Horst here do his worst!'
- - - - - -
* The Great Escape - the name of a famous Blerontin film celebrating the true story of how the cream of the Blerontinian spacefleet, held prisoners in the supposedly impregnable fortress of Drat-Kroner, contrived a mass escape. Oddly enough it also starred Steve McQueen.
- - - - - -
'My lips are sealed!' countered The Journalist, turning his head away.
'Very well! You leave me no choice!' snarled Bolfass and he struck The Journalist across the face with his leather glove.
'All right!' said The Journalist. 'I'll tell you anything you want! Anything!'
'Don't you want to be tortured a little more first?'
'No! I'd rather tell you now.'
'Very well! We know you've sabotaged Titania's brain to prevent us returning to Yassacca! Tell us what you've done with the parts!'
The Journalist looked surprised. 'Scraliontis didn't tell me about that part of the plot!'
'What plot?' Bolfass secretly admired his Blerontinian adversary for his ability to remain cool under circumstances when a lesser man would have cracked. 'It's a pity,' he thought, 'we aren't fighting this war on the same side. On the other hand, we're not actually fighting a war at all.' Bolfass made an effort to pull himself together.
The Journalist then told everything he knew about Scraliontis's and Brobostigon's plot to scuttle the great Starship and claim the insurance. Bolfass listened in white-laced anger. Nettie could see the rage boiling up within him.
'It's not this fellow's fault!' she cried out.
Bolfass hesitated - his hand was already on his SD gun - but something in the tone of Nettie's voice stilled the fury inside him. He left his gun alone.
'Scraliontis and Brobostigon were on the ship the night before the launch,' said The Journalist. 'They wouldn't have wanted to attract attention by going in and out of it, so I imagine whatever they took out of the central intelligence system, they'll have hidden somewhere on board.'
'Sounds feasible,' said Assmal, the other Yassaccan commander, who up to this point had been doing fantastically well at the Tetris game.
'Very well!' said Bolfass. 'We will search the ship from prow to keel. Those parts must be found or we will never get Nettie back to her own planet. Indeed, we will find it hard enough to limp back to Yassacca as it is!'
'I think we can make it, Captain!' said Rodden, the navigational engineer. 'We are in the Starius Zone E-D 3278 of the Praxima-Betril Section of the Inner Galaxy.
I can get us home by dead reckoning, so long as Assmal can get manual control of the ship's power.'
Assmal nodded. 'I have control now of enough functions to be able to steer. But it will be a long trip - several hours at least.'
And so, the great Starship Titanic turned its vast bulk in the star-bright darkness of space and began its weary journey back to the planet of Yassacca.
21
The search for the missing parts of the Starship's brain proved more difficult than anyone could have anticipated. This was mainly owing to the fact that the ship's robots were becoming increasingly eccentric in their behaviour. The Doorbots were beginning to hallucinate - opening the doors for non-existent First Class Passengers' pets and being charming to waste-disposal units. The Liftbots had gone into a permanent decline, convinced that the only way to avoid the end of civilization as they knew it was to eat less protein. The Dustbots kept dashing out from the skirting and depositing on the floor bits of fluff large enough to trip everyone up.
But the biggest problem was in the main bar of the ship, where the Barbot was trapped in some strange cyberpsychotic loop, despite the fact that they could all clearly see a piece of Titania's brain amongst the coloured glasses and bottles on the shelf behind him.
'Yes yes sir! Jiff be with you... Cock this tail mix, have you just, sir...' The Barbot veered between the charmingly incomprehensible and belligerently drunk.
'Just give us that piece of cyberware on the shelf there...' tried Corporal Golholiwol. But the Barbot simply bit his nose. 'Ow!' cried Corporal Golholiwol.
Every attempt to climb over the bar and get at the object was met with a surprising show of force from the Barbot, and the peace-loving Yassaccans were forced into retreat.