10

‘Vouchers?’ Dan was grunting this as they raced back through the loggia at the top of the Central Well. ‘Isn’t that the travel industry all over? Why do they never tell you these things in the first place?’

The Liftbot was in a cheerier mood - but only just. ‘Down?’ it said. ‘That’s what Chalky White yelled at me outside that fox-hole at Ypres. It was the last thing he ever did say. Buzz-bomb took him out - same bomb as took out my arm and leg. “Down!” I can hear his voice to this day…

By the time the elevator had reached the Super Galactic Traveller Class deck, the three had heard a full account of the rudimentary medical facilities available at the Caen dressing station, the technical details of cleaning out gangrene from a deep wound and a near-complete itemization of the Allied Forces requisitioning techniques in Cyprus. For a robot from a civilization which knew nothing of the Earth, it was a very impressive performance.

‘God, I just hope we don’t have to use that elevator many more times,’ groaned Dan, as the three raced off down the Super Galactic Traveller Class corridor.

‘Primula… Dahlia… Chrysanthemum…’ Nettle was reading the names with her translatorspecs.

‘We don’t even know what ours were called,’ moaned Lucy.

‘Ah! “Cabbage”,’ said Nettie. ‘This is mine!’

She gained entry with her PET (Personal Electric Thingie) and found her upgrade voucher on the last page of her copy of the Super Galactic Traveller Magazine - just after the Duty Free Shopping article.

‘Look!’ she said to the other two. ‘While you’re trying to find your rooms, I’ll go and get my upgrade. I’ve had an idea.’ She hurried back to the Embarkation Lobby, trying to ignore the Liftbot’s account of life on an army pension and no disablement grant, and while the Deskbot reluctantly stamped her ticket with her upgrade to Second Class, she inquired:

‘I suppose the Engine Room is aft, is it?’

‘At the end of the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class, through which you are now entitled to pass. Here is another voucher entitling you to a free glass of Moon-swill at the Bar.’ The Deskbot handed Nettie another ticket and switched itself off.

Nettie went as fast as she could - her high heels echoing round the loggia - towards the entrance to the Second Class Area.

Meanwhile, Lucy and Dan were trailing miserably round the SGT corridors pointing their Personal Electronic Thingies at each door in turn. But to no effect.

‘What was Nettie’s plan?’ Dan decided to take their minds off the present hopeless task… ‘She said something about the Engine Room,’ grunted Lucy.

‘Maybe she knows about engines?’ said Dan.

‘Nettle?! Oh sure! Hey! There was a click! I swear!’ Lucy tried one of the doors, but it was resolutely shut against them.

‘Well, you know, for one of Nigel’s bimbos that Nettle’s pretty bright.’ Dan nodded to himself.

‘Oh. I didn’t realize you were interested in her mind,’ replied Lucy.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Dan was taken by surprise.

‘It’s opening!’ exclaimed Lucy as one door seemed to give for a moment. ‘Oh! No, it isn’t.

‘She’s a nice girl,’ said Dan.

‘You ought to know. You’ve been ogling her ever since dinner… God! When was that? It seems like a lifetime ago!’

‘I wasn’t ogling her.’ Dan’s ‘injured innocence’ count was incredibly high some days.

‘Anyway’ Lucy was now working off her frustration - ‘if Nettle’s so bright, how come she allows Nigel to treat her like a Barbie doll?’

‘Does she?’

‘That sort of woman makes me sick! Why doesn’t she stand up for herself?’

‘She still might be quite bright,’ Dan ventured without much hope. Lucy’s powers of certitude always had a crushing effect on him.

‘There is no correlation between size of brain and size of tits, penis-head!’ Lucy had a cruel side.

‘Got it!’ Dan had just pointed his PET at a door and it had - wonderfully and graciously - swung open for them.

‘Translatorspecs!’ Lucy rapped out her order to the lampstand, found the Super Galactic Traveller Magazine stuck in a rack alongside a leaflet about aerobics classes, a list of self-operated washing machine facilities available to SGT passengers, a 132-page form in which to record your personal passenger-satisfaction rating, and a small leaflet entitled: ‘What To Do In The Event Of Fire’. Evidently the recommended action was to stay extremely calm and remain cool at all times. You were advised to stay in your cabins and not to fly and contact any of the staff. And, once again, you were admonished to remain relaxed and enjoy the remainder of the flight.

‘Do you think it’s getting colder?’ asked Lucy as she tore out the voucher from the magazine.

‘Anyway,’ said Dan, ‘I was not ogling Nettle.’

Nettie shivered as she waited for the door to the Second Class Area to open. For a brief moment she wished her Gap T-shirt covered her midriff. But then, as the door opened and she stepped through, her mind was swamped by the sight before her. She found herself standing on the main jetty of the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class. It stretched out in front of her, under a simulated sky. Wide columns marked out the elegantly curved walls, and burning braziers dotted the canal embankments. All over the canal, automated gondolas plied lazily back and forth, their robot gondoliers singing pleasantly - a song that brought harmony and peace to the main thoroughfare of the Starship Titanic:

‘She gave him love!

She swung above!

She kissed him on his smiling handsome lip.

The gondolier

Sang in her ear:

She gave him six pnedes as a tip!’

Nettle climbed into the nearest gondola and the singing stopped. ‘Take me to the Engine Room,’ she said.

‘Si! Work-Place Chum of Victorious Athletics Coach!’ said the gondolier and off they drifted down the Grand Axial Canal.

‘Tell me,’ said Nettie. ‘Shouldn’t you be singing when you’ve got a passenger rather than the other way round?’

‘Si! Perspicacious Lady Orthodontist!’ replied the robot, breathing evenly with the exertion of propelling the craft. ‘There must be something wrong with the ship’s central intelligence system.’

Nettie nodded and made a mental note of this.

The gondola took her straight down the very middle of the Grand Axial Canal. The pace was relaxed, and the whole ambiance so far away from what she ever imagined being on a spaceship to be like - let alone an alien spaceship - that Nettie found herself leaning back against the cushions and letting her mind drift…

She wondered why she didn’t feel more distressed by her situation. It was almost as if she felt there was some benign presence in the Starship - something or someone that she knew would take care of them - and yet it was not complete. Nettie shook her head - the thoughts were all a little too shapeless to make sense.

And then what about Nigel? Why didn’t she miss him more? For three months now her whole life had revolved around him. She had made sure his diary was up to date and that he looked at it. She’d made him change his socks every day and had washed his underpants by hand. She must love him a lot! And yet she knew he’d just gone out of her life… Not just because they’d been kidnapped by an alien starship full of robots… Heavens above! She knew they’d return to Earth. She knew they wouldn’t be harmed. But Nigel would not be there for her. Something was broken and yet she didn’t seem to regret it.

The gondola bumped. They had reached the jetty.

‘The gondolier was on his knees

She blew a kiss from her trapeze.’

sang the robot gondolier, as soon as Nettie was out of the gondola.

‘Thanks!’ said Nettle.

‘And that was when the lady lost her grip…’ sang the robot.

Nettie adjusted her translatorspecs and immediately saw a notice which read: ‘Crew and Personnel only’. She followed the sign down a stainless steel corridor towards a set of glowing blue doors.

As she approached there was no perceptible engine noise - unless that distant rustling of leaves was it - or was it the beating of a sea upon a distant shore? Nettie felt a thrill pulse through her - and then realized it was just a chill. It really was getting very cold in the ship. And was it her imagination or was her breathing getting more difficult?

At the luminous blue doors, Nettle waved her John Lewis Credit Card and said in a commanding voice that she had never ever used before: ‘Special Customs and Excise Search Warrant. Open up!’

There was a slight hesitation. The glowing blue doors opened a crack and then shut again, hesitated, and then obediently opened up.

The Engine Room was so similar to the sort of thing you’d see in a science fiction film that Nettle felt she knew exactly where she was. Except what was that black, black darkness behind the thick window? There didn’t seem to be anything there and yet all the wiring and so forth seemed to be connected to it.

Nettie looked around for the intercom. Her idea had been quite a simple one: if they wanted to communicate with the Captain, and they couldn’t get up to the Captain’s Bridge to speak to him personally, then she’d telephone him from the Engine Room. There had to be some sort of communication between the Bridge and the engineers.

In the corner there was a small cabinet. Maybe that was it? She opened the doors to reveal two buttons.

One read: ‘Bomb Monitor’ and the other: ‘Press To Arm’. A sudden wave of cold, even colder than the current temperature of the ship, swept through Nettie’s body. ‘Bomb!?’ Was there a bomb on board?

Nettle pressed the button that read ‘Bomb Monitor’. A polite voice said: ‘Thank you for enquiring about the status of the Mega-Scuttler Corporation’s SD-96 Full Force Mega-Scuttler - ‘A Bomb To Be Proud Of’ - which has been installed, for your convenience, upon this Starship. It is my pleasure to inform you that the Mega-Scuttler is currently not activated. Thank you for showing an interest in bombs.’

‘Bit of a relief,’ thought Nettle. ‘Now where’s the intercom?’

What happened next is totally unclear. Certainly Nettle herself had no recollection. She remembered climbing up the ladder next to the armour-plated window. She could recall feeling colder than ever and finding her breathing harder and then feeling a force gripping her… a force pulling her sideways off the ladder… a force so vast that she thought she was being sucked into a Black Hole or something… as she felt herself falling horizontally off the ladder towards whatever it was behind the perspex window… The next thing she knew she was whirling round in blackness - fighting for her life…