'Alas!' said Rodden, the Navigational Officer, 'it will take a long time to reach such a distant place!'
Nettie still had hold of Dan's hand. It seemed to Dan that she had permanently held onto his hand since that first discovery of the photos. Of course she hadn't but it was just that Dan only counted himself alive at those moments when she had. But he daren't say anything more to her: he would never use her as 'an emotional doormat' - she could be sure of that.
'We've only four more Dormillion days before the bomb goes off!' Nettie said. 'How long will it take to get to the Earth?'
Rodden paused before he spoke. He wanted to be exact. He didn't want to raise forlorn hopes in anyone - least of all himself Finally he said: 'To get to such a remote location would take three Dormillion weeks at best.'
Nettie leant her head against Dan's shoulder and burst into tears. It was just too much. The thin edge of hope upon which she had been balancing for the last two days had suddenly given way. Dan put his arm around her and felt the softness of her shoulders.
'Nettie!' he said. 'You'll be all right! You'll make a life here. Yassacca is beautiful!' As beautiful as you, he wanted to add, but dared not. Nettie, meanwhile, held onto Dan's arm as if it were her lifebelt.
'However,' continued Rodden, 'the Starship Titanic is propelled by a totally new and immeasurably more powerful drive. Judging by the time that elapsed since the launch, the crash on Earth and the time when we picked you up, I would say the Starship must be capable of reaching the Earth in perhaps three Dormillion days.'
Was it good news or bad news? Three Dormillion days! That would give them barely one day on Earth to find Leovinus and then, assuming he still had it in his possession, get the missing central intelligence core back into Titania's brain.
The only thing that was certain was that they must start now.
The first problem, however, was to find Lucy. After her last conversation with Dan, Lucy had been considering her life. She had slipped into a filmy Yassaccan shift and gone for a long walk along the beach at Yassaccanda. The red waves, beating on the blue shore, made the same reassuring sounds that the waves made back home on Topanga beach. But somehow the comfort that brought her didn't make her long for home. Something had changed inside her. Something had died. Something had grown. Lucy was just trying to decide what it was, when Nettie found her.
'Lucy! They've got the co-ordinates of Earth! We're going home! But we've got to hurry!' Nettie had never been one to beat about the bush. 'By the way, you look great in that!'
'Thanks... but...' Lucy was gazing out across the unfamiliar seascape. 'I'm going to stay here,' she said.
'What on earth are you talking about?' exclaimed Nettie. 'We can go home!'
'I don't know where my home is any more,' said Lucy. 'LA? London? Oxfordshire? I used to think it was anywhere that Dan was, but now...'
'What's the matter between you and Dan?' Nettie was genuinely concerned for them, and had been ever since Dan's inexplicable behaviour when she had been looking for her handbag.
'Neither of us wanted the rectory.' Lucy turned and looked at Nettie for the first time.
'What?' exclaimed Nettie.
'It's as simple as that. We must have been fooling each other for years... About all sorts of things. You know I was originally in love with Nigel?' Lucy was letting the sea wash around her bare feet.
'Till you realized what a shit he was?' asked Nettie.
'Not quite... It was more like... How can I describe it? Nigel was English... different... exciting... He made me feel all goose-pimples inside... It was unsettling... Whereas Dan I could understand... Dan was familiar territory where I knew where I was...'
'But Dan's gorgeous!' exclaimed Nettie. 'He's so exciting! So different from the rest of them! From creeps like Nigel!' Lucy looked at Nettie in frank surprise. 'I'm sorry!' Nettie continued. 'I shouldn't talk about Dan like that. I didn't mean anything... Anyway we've got to hurry...'
'Hurry away... run off... I've always done that, Nettie. I've wrapped my emotions up in a nice smart pinstripe suit and then walked away from them. Well, I'm not doing it any longer.'
'But Dan needs you, Lucy! You're a great team!'
'That's what we kept telling each other. We told each other that over and over again until we believed it. But all I know is that I'm a different woman from the woman I've been pretending to be'
'Lucy!'
Lucy and Nettie span round. They hadn't heard anyone approaching.
'Lucy! The Starship's about to take off for Earth!' It was The Journalist shouting from the breakwater. 'We've only got a few minutes to make it!'
'We?' murmured Lucy.
'Of course!' exclaimed The Journalist. 'You don't think I'd let you go back on your own... Not now you've said you'll marry me!'
'But,.. The! I'll stay with you here if you want me to!' Lucy had run up to him and was kissing him.
'Uh-uh!' said The Journalist. 'I've got to see this thing through to the end!'
And suddenly the three of them were racing along the sands towards the space-port.
26
The journey back to earth in the Starship Titanic was pretty uneventful for the first hundred and seventeen million million miles. The Doorbots were just as snooty as they always had been, but since Lucy, Nettie, Dan and The Journalist were travelling First Class (VIP Status) all the other bots were unbelievably obsequious to them. The Liftbots gave Dan a surprising account of the Dunkirk evacuation which made it sound like a great victory for the Allied Forces, and the Deskbot asked for Nettie's autograph (nobody was quite sure why until they overheard the Deskbot whisper to one of the Doorbots: 'That's Gloria Stanley, the actress, you know!'). But otherwise routine life on board the Starship ticked over.
Captain Bolfass put a brave face on his hopeless passion for Nettie. And yet, as he told his wife, it had at least given some purpose to his old age - even if that purpose were just to get over it.
Nettie for her part was mainly concerned for Dan. He seemed to be raking his separation from Lucy and her wild affair with The Journalist rather badly. He mostly kept to his cabin, and when he ate with them he was generally silent and morose.
'Poor Dan!' Nettie thought to herself. 'He must be going through hell; after all, he and Lucy have been so close for all those years, and now to see her so besotted with another man - and an alien at that!'
Lucy and The Journalist also mostly kept to their cabin, but judging from the sounds emanating from behind their closed door, they were not brooding about anything. It sounded as if they might have been playing polo, or doing a bit of water-skiing all mixed in with some pretty serious weight-lifting. All in all it was lucky the state rooms on either side were empty. Even as it was, several pictures fell off the adjoining walls and a stand bearing a pot of Yassaccan lilies mysteriously toppled over.
On the third day the great Starship moved into the region of space beyond Proxima Centauri.
'We should locate your star any minute - what d'you call it?' asked Captain Bolfass.
'The Sun,' said Nettie.
'What a beautiful name,' said the gallant Captain, gazing at Nettie's exquisite profile.
Nettie nodded. 'It's a beautiful thing.'
'Hmmm,' agreed the Captain dreamily.
'Do you recognize any of the star patterns yet?' asked the Navigational Officer anxiously. It was all very well heading for an unknown destination with such scanty data... but in this case they were all on board a ship that was destined to explode within two days time! The whole venture was crazy, as far as he was concerned, and he had expressed his opinion quite forcibly to Captain Bolfass. Supposing they failed to find the Earth - would they ever find anywhere to land in this remote armpit of the Galaxy? And even if they did, once the Starship had exploded, they would be marooned for well goodness knows how long it would take a rescue fleet to arrive.