'BLOODY GENIUS!' screamed the parrot over the intercom.
'Parrot!' yelled Captain Bolfass. 'What are you telling us?'
'Bloody genius!' repeated the parrot.
'PARROT!' Bolfass yelled into the intercom. 'We're looking for the missing central intelligence core for Titania's brain - do you know where it is?'
There was a silence.
'PARROT!' yelled Bolfass, but Lucy had removed her hand from the intercom button and was now using it to caress The Journalist's face as if his smooth features were a fortune-teller's crystal ball.
'Why's Captain Bolfass so interested in what a parrot says?' Nettie had turned to Corporal Inchbewigglit.
'In Yassaccan tradition,' whispered Corporal Inchbewigglit, 'parrots are the messengers of truth. We have a saying: "From the mouths of babes and parrots".'
Lucy, meanwhile, was wondering why she had said yes to everything The Journalist had just suggested. She thought she had probably made a terrible mistake, If only she could see the future in those strange orange-coloured eyes of his. 'You're crazy!' she said.
'Ohhh!' moaned The Journalist, and he chewed her bra-strap with his teeth.
'Ahh!' said Lucy.
'Haaaa!' murmured The Journalist.
'Oh-uh!' replied Lucy.
'Oooooh!' he said.
'Oh! Uh! Ooh!' added Lucy.
'Ya! Ha! Haa?' asked The Journalist.
'Uh!' confirmed Lucy.
'Uh?' asked The Journalist again.
'Uh!' repeated Lucy.
'Uuuuuhh!' The Journalist was almost lost for words at this point. But Lucy carried on the conversation:
'OH!' she sald.
'Ah?' He wondered how she could be so certain.
'AH!' She nodded. She was absolutely certain now. 'AH!'
And at that moment the entire company from the Captain's Bridge burst into the side chamber off the Grand Axial Canal, and stood riveted to the spot while they watched a highly qualified lawyer from Wilshire Boulevard and an under-achieving member of the Blerontinian press corps doing the sort of things to each other that give inexpressible delight and pleasure to the participants, but which only tend to provoke ridicule from casual observers, and about which, therefore, I will not go into detail. Suffice it to say that the moment the Bridge party burst into the room, the parrot gave the loudest squawk it had given to date, and Lucy fell off the table onto The Journalist's face.
'LUCY!' exclaimed Dan.
'Parrot!' yelled Bolfäss. 'Where is the missing intelligence core for Titania's brain?'
'Bloody genius!' squawked the parrot.
'Don't talk rubbish!' shouted Bolfass.
'BLOODY GENIUS!' screamed the parrot.
'I ASKED YOU A QUESTION!' yelled Bolfass. It was also according to Yassaccan tradition that parrots were supposed to answer any questions put to them.
'Squawk!' The parrot momentarily forgot its powers of speech.
'ANSWER MY QUESTION!'
'SQUAWK!'
The parrot flew off into the shadows at the further end of the chamber.
'Damn it!' Boll'ass knew it was bad luck if a parrot ref used to answer your question.
'I can explain everything,' Lucy was telling Dan.
'No! You can't! You can't explain ANYTHING!' screamed Dan. And Lucy suddenly thought: 'He's right! He's absolutely RIGHT!'
'Perhaps that is your answer!' It was Nettie who had suddenly stepped forward and taken Captain Bolfass by the arm.
'Dear lady, it is good of you to trouble yourself with this matter, but I fear the parrot has not given any reply. I am doomed.'
'Didn't you tell me that this Starship was designed by some genius?'
'Leovinus!' exclaimed The Journalist. 'He was here on the ship when we crashed on the Earth!'
'Maybe he has the missing part?' It was all so clear to Nettie, although she didn't know why.
Something clicked in The Journalist's mind. 'Of course!' he exclaimed. 'When he ran off the ship - he was brandishing this glowing silver strip in his hand...'
'The central core intelligence!' exclaimed Bolfass.
'That's why it isn't on the ship?'
'So...' Captain Bolfass was putting two and two together but rather slowly.
'In order to get the missing central intelligence core for the ship's system, we've got to find this Leovinus character.' Nettie had decided to take over the deduction process. 'Leovinus is on the Earth. But we can't get to the Earth because we don't know where it is, and the only way to find out where it is, is to get hold of the missing central intelligence core and refit it into Titania's brain. Gentlemen. We're screwed.'
It was then that the docking sirens sounded. The Starship Titanic was preparing itself for landing on the planet of Yassacca.
23
The celebration party was a gloomy affair.
Everyone tried to make the best of it, and kept toasting the Earth folk for their invaluable help in beating off the insurance loss adjustors; several speeches were made extolling the return of the great Starship to its rightful home, but nobody could forget that within a couple of days, the ship would have to be towed off to some distant part of the Galaxy, where it could explode without doing any more harm than destroy itself.
The Yassaccans could see no prospect of recovering their economy. Meanwhile Lucy, Dan and Nettie could see no prospect of ever returning to their own planet. They had each been given translation blisters (like small plasters worn behind the ear) so that they could still communicate now they were away from the influence of the ship's automatic systems, but that had done little to reconcile them to the prospect of exile on an alien world.
'But surely' - Rodden the Navigational Officer had cornered Nettie - 'you must have some idea of where this "Earth" place is? I mean you must at least know whether it is in the Notional Northern Hemisphere of the Galaxy or the Notional South?'
'Well... No...'
'Is it on an outer or an inner arm of the spiral?'
'I haven't a clue,' said Nettie.
Rodden shook his head gloomily - he hated talking to dumb blondes. 'Well if you really have no idea where you've come from, I really can't get you back there. The only thing that could is the Starship and that can't remember because its brain's missing! Seems to be a common complaint...' he added, unnecessarily, and wandered off, rather to Nettie's relief.
Nettie looked around at the gloomy party. She felt sad, and yet, there was so much beauty in this gentle world she found herself in. Yassacca! It was a nice name for a start. And she was sure there were worse places... Slough... New Maiden... Basingstoke... Nettie found herself split in two. One part of her was saying:
Come on! Make the best of it! This is home from now on! And the other half was telling her not to give up... that somehow, deep down inside her, she was convinced that she would be able to get them all back to Earth. Nettie felt a bit foolish for feeling so convinced of her own ability, but there it was - she just couldn't shake the feeling off, though she had no idea why she had it.
In the meantime, she tried to enjoy the sad celebration.
The very smell of the snork roasting over open fires seemed sad, as it wafted under the gloomy Yassaccan pines and then mingled with the softer, sadder scents of the night jasmine and the weeping oleanders that crowded Corporal Golholiwol's garden. The Yassaccans took it in turn to host important national events, and it just happened to be Corporal Golholiwol's turn. He had provided seven snorks for roasting, plates of fish and fruit and fresh vegetables from his garden. Unlike the Blerontinians, the Yassaccans took no interest in canape´s and preferred good plain food washed down with plenty of Yassaccan ale and sweet potato wine.
The Journalist gloomily thought it all pretty poor fare, but he tried to hide his contempt for the lack of 'fish-paste', tiny chicken vol-au-vents and cocktail sausages on sticks.