At that moment, he heard footsteps running across the loggia of the Central Well and an exhausted Lucy, accompanied by a strange man with bright orange eyes, staggered into the Embarkation Lobby. The two of them collapsed next to Dan and lay there trying to get their breath.
'Who's this?' Dan was surprisingly indignant for someone who was in the process of dying of asphyxiation.
'Bomb!' gasped The Journalist.
'You're a bomb?' said Dan.
'No!' Lucy felt she had to explain. 'The, this is Dan. Dan, this is The.'
Dan blinked a few times.
'There's a bomb on board! It's about to go off!' The Journalist managed to get out. 'We've got to get to the life-boats!'
'They're in First Class!' explained Lucy. 'Naturally.'
'Now that is outrageous!' Dan received this new ammunition gratefully and turned on the Deskbot. 'If I tell the Travel Association that, they'll blacklist your whole flicking fleet forever!' Wow! That was some threat. Dan knew, they'd had it levelled against the Top Ten Travel Co. Inc. countless times.
The Deskbot tapped its fingers on the desk and gazed up at the ceiling.
'D'you hear?' exclaimed Dan. 'I'll close this whole goddamned company down!'
'Listen you Dumbbot!' The Journalist had grabbed the Deskbot by its scrawny stand. 'This is a matter of life and death! There's a bomb about to go off in. He checked his watch. 'In ten edoes! Pangalin!'
'How long's that?' asked Dan, but The Journalist wasn't listening. He was too busy shaking the robot.
Suddenly there was a crack and a flash and all the lights went off for an instant.
'Hey!' cried everyone, and the lights came on again - although there was no cause and effect between the shout of 'Hey!' and the recommencement of illumination,
'I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do unless you have a Galactic Gold Credit Card,' replied the robot in a simulated strangled voice.
'Pangalin!' repeated The Journalist.
'Please mind your language,' croaked the Deskbot. 'Don't you have a credit card, The?' asked Lucy - appalled to think her new friend might be not the most solvent character on Blerontin.
'Not a Galactic Gold!' he said.
'Who is this?' Dan had switched back to 'Indignation Mode'.
'You've got to earn over seven pnedes a week to get one of those beauties!' The Journalist was still trying to strangle the Deskbot.
'It's getting really hard to breathe!' choked Lucy.
Ice was now forming on the edge of the desk. Dan pointed at it. 'You call that Super Galactic Class comfort?!' he choked.
'Take your hands off my flex!' choked the Deskbot. 'You'll short me again!'
'Get us into First Class NOW!' choked The Journalist. 'Or I'll smash your lampshade!'
Lucy had collapsed on the floor, and Dan rushed to her, 'Where did you find that guy? he whispered into her ear.
'Save... your... breath...' panted Lucy. 'Argh!' screamed the Deskbot. 'Security!'
'May you rot in Pangalin!' yelled The Journalist
It was at that moment that an extraordinary thing happened. Or, rather, it was at that moment that an extraordinary thing crawled into the Embarkation Lobby, across the highly polished floor and up to the Deskbot.
It was clearly alive - although only just - and it was very old - very very very old. It was wizened and blackened. In its twig-like fingers the creature held a Personal Electronic Thingie. It waved this under the Deskbot's nose and croaked in an ancient voice:
'Upgrade... All of us!'
The Deskbot immediately sprang to attention and became perceptibly brighter.
'Of course! Madam! What a pleasure to welcome you to the First Class facilities of the Starship Titanic, You will find them without equal anywhere in the Galaxy! Please go through and have a pleasant trip!'
There was a hiss of air returning to the cabins and an instant rise in temperature, as the ship registered the arrival of four First Class passengers. The door to the First Class Area swung open and Dan and Lucy, The Journalist and the Ancient Creature stepped through into another - and even more amazing -world.
14
'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.