15

At this same moment, Nettie suddenly managed to sit up on the couch on which Dan had placed her, and screamed: ‘Oh my God! There’s only five minutes before the bomb goes off!’

‘Five minutes!’ thought Dan. ‘This is where, in a cheap novel, the couple - confronted by imminent oblivion - would suddenly make passionate love.’

‘You’ve got to go and talk to it!’ she pleaded.

‘What?’ said Dan.

‘I can’t explain! Just believe me! It’s in the Engine Room! Hurry!’

‘What? repeated Dan a bit gormlessly.

‘HURRY! THE ENGINE ROOM! SPEAK TO THE BOMB!’

Dan decided that, while gormlessness had its place in the human repertoire of reactions, now was neither the rime nor place for it. He sprinted out of the Beauty Salon (which was, apparently, where they were) and ran down the length of the Grand Axial Canal, trying to ignore the inevitable chorus:

‘She threw her arms

Around his charms,

And gave him six pnedes as a tip!’

The first thing he saw, when he burst into the Engine Room, was a large bomb sticking up out of a cabinet. A friendly sort of voice was booming out:

‘Fifty-eight… fifty-seven… fifty-six… fifty-five… fifty-four.

Dan couldn’t think what to say. After all, he’d never addressed a bomb before. He didn’t have a clue what sort of thing it would be interested in.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Fifty-three… fifty-two… hello… fifty-one… fifty…’ replied the bomb genially.

‘Any chance of you not exploding?’ Dan thought he might as well get straight to the point.

‘No… forty-eight… forty-seven…’

Dan was not the most imaginative of men. He knew it. Lucy knew it. Nigel had known it. He was dedicated, hard-working, loyal, thorough - all those admirable and desirable things for anybody’s partner to be. But leaps of the imagination were not his forte. And yet, he had one now. He suddenly knew the one thing that bombs were bound to be interested in.

‘Do you really want to do this?’ he asked. ‘I mean isn’t it a bit self-destructive?

‘Forty-six… forty-five… Forty - Look! I am just a simple counting and exploding device and am not equipped for philosophical discourse,’ replied the bomb. ‘Please do not speak to me while I’m counting. Damn! Now you’ve made me lose my place! You see? Recommencing countdown. One thousand. Nine hundred and ninetynine. Nine hundred and ninety-eight…’

‘Got the sucker!’ thought Dan. He checked his watch against the bomb’s counting. They had about sixteen minutes before they needed to talk to it again. He turned and raced back to Nettie.

As he ran, the thought of Nettie kept riffling his mind like a gambler’s hands riffling a deck of cards. God! She was so intelligent! How had she found out the bomb’s weakness so quickly? The clarity of her intellect made him feel so ordinary and humble.

But then he suddenly remembered how she seemed old and shrivelled: he must have been seeing things! That couldn’t have happened to the beautiful, gorgeous Nettie? And yet, it was then that Dan found himself thinking the most curious thought of course, it was terrible if something had happened to Nettie (and what had happened to her?) but, at least now, thought Dan, he might stand a chance with her!

Lucy was putting her clothes on rather hurriedly. The fact that she and The Journalist had not been blown to cosmic dust had severely embarrassed her. In fact, she didn’t know where to look.

The Journalist was regarding her curiously. ‘You do things very differently in your world,’ he said,

‘Oh?’ Lucy tried to pretend that everything was perfectly normal.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘On Blerontin we have all these absurd rituals we have to go through before having sex. There’s a thing called “dating” when a young couple go out for evenings together without necessarily “going the whole way” as we say. Then there’s a thing called “the engagement” where rings are exchanged. Finally there’s an elaborate ceremony called “a wedding” with a cake and “bridesmaids” and the “best man’s speech” - not to mention the “honeymoon”! You wouldn’t believe the rigmarole we have to go through in order to make love to each other. I like your Earth way of doing it much better.’

‘The bomb still might go off any second!’ Lucy reminded him.

‘The bomb? Oh! Pangalin! I’d forgotten!’ The Journalist thought-sealed his clothes.

As they raced down the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class, they didn’t realize that they had missed bumping into Dan on his way back to the Beauty Salon by exactly one eight-hundred and sixty-fourth of a second - which, by an incredible coincidence, was exactly where the bomb had got to in its countdown, when Lucy and The Journalist arrived back in the Engine Room.

‘Eight hundred and sixty-four… eight hundred and sixty-three…’ said the bomb.

‘Why’s it only got as far as eight hundred and sixty-three?’ wondered Lucy.

‘You’re beautiful!’ replied The Journalist.

Lucy became aware that he was still looking at her in a rather odd way, and she suddenly wished he’d concentrate on the problem in hand.

‘Maybe it doesn’t count when we’re out of the room?’ she suggested. She pulled her companion out of the door, but as she started to listen, Lucy suddenly felt the alien’s hands around her breasts.

‘Ohh! Lucy! I can’t stop thinking about you!’ he murmured as he nuzzled her neck.

‘Eight hundred and sixty-two… eight hundred and sixty-one…’ continued the bomb even though they were out of the room. That was one theory out of the way, thought Lucy, disentangling herself from The Journalist’s embrace.

Back in the room, she stared at the bomb and tried to think, but it was hard with an alien sticking his tongue in her ear and saying he loved her more than anything on his world.

‘Please, The!’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘We haven’t got time for that now…’

‘You started it…’ he reminded her. ‘Once we’re roused, us Blerontinian males tend to be very single-minded.’

‘I’ve met your type before,’ said Lucy, trying to push him away.

‘Just put your hands on my thing again!’ he was whispering in her ear.

‘Stop it!’ cried Lucy.

‘What?’ replied the bomb. ‘Oh damn! I thought you were talking to me! Now you’ve made me lose count! Recommencing countdown. One thousand… Nine hundred and ninetynine…’

‘I love you!’ said The Journalist. ‘You’re all I’ve ever dreamed about.’

‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘We’ve got to keep talking to the bomb.’

‘Please put your hand here…’ said The Journalist.

‘Listen!’ cried Lucy to the bomb. ‘Which baseball team won the World Series in nineteen hundred and ninety eight?’

‘Nineteen hundred and ninety-seven… nineteen hundred and ninety - now I’ve told you before about interrupting me while I’m in the middle of a countdown. If you want a bomb you can have a good chatter with, you should have got the Mega-Scuttler Pro which has multi-tasking, speech recognition and general chattering software and therefore makes an altogether more expensive bang. As it is you’ve got me and I’m doing my best under increasingly trying circumstances.

Recommencing countdown. One thousand… Nine hundred and ninetynine…’

‘You have the most wonderful skin,’ moaned The Journalist, biting Lucy quite hard on the eariobe.

‘Ouch!’ cried Lucy. ‘Look, The, you’ve got to stay here and keep talking to the bomb, while I go up and find the Captain’s Bridge.’

‘I can’t bear to be separated from you!’ He clutched at her arm.

‘If you don’t stay and talk to the bomb we’re both going to get blown up!’ she replied.

‘Just bring me off once more!’ pleaded The Journalist. ‘I’ll be able to think properly then. Honestly! Blerontinian males need to have two orgasms before they can think straight. It’s well known!’

Lucy sighed; brushed the alien’s hair straight and wondered what on earth she’d got herself into…