Leovinus now had his hands around Scraliontis’s neck. ‘Brobostigon!’ screamed Scraliontis, ‘Help!’
‘Rrobostigon’s garbage!’ The normally kind and mellow face of Leovinus had taken on a evil green hue. This was mainly due to the fact that the lamp of the table on which they were now wrestling was directly under Leovinus’s chin.
‘He may be garbage,’ gasped Scraliontis, ‘but he’s got a gun!’
‘He’s dead!’ yelled Leovinus, his fingers beginning to tighten on the accountant’s neck. If he’d known Brobostigon had had a gun he would have been a bit more careful how he’d treated him.
‘Arrrrgh! You’re choking me!’ screamed Scraliontis.
‘I know! That’s what I’m trying to do!’ Leovinus tried to put some conviction into his voice, but he was finding it extremely difficult to make his fingers actually constrict the accountant’s scrawny neck. I suppose you could say that Leovinus just did not have the killer instinct.
Scraliontis, on the other hand, did. As he realized Leovinus was never going to carry through what he was attempting, Scraliontis had tightened his hand around the table lamp – a conventionalized statuette of Titania with her wings providing the illumination. As he felt the great genius’s hands falter around his neck, Scraliontis brought his knee up into Leovinus’s groin. At the same time, he raised the table lamp and brought it crashing down onto that magnificent cranium that housed Leovinus’s magnificent brain.
Leovinus’s hands fell from the accountant’s neck; he slumped to his knees. Crack! Scraliontis brought the table lamp crashing down onto Leovinus’s skull again and again… The extraordinary and superb mind registered all was not right. It blocked out the pain, then realized something truly disastrous had taken place, and wisely decided to abandon all contact with the outside world for the foreseeable future. Leovinus rolled over onto the restaurant floor unconscious, with blood pouring from his head.
Scraliontis stared down at him. God! He’d killed the Great Man!
In a panic, Scraliontis glanced around the First Class Restaurant. Disposing of dead bodies, although not something he’d done before, was the sort of thing his accountant’s mind was really good at, and a few moments later he was hurrying out of the First Class Restaurant with a spring in his step. In his panic, however, he had forgotten the little glowing silver shard that now lay on the floor, mingled amongst the remains of the Maître D’Bot.
Leovinus was wrapped securely in one of the great curtains that helped give the First Class Restaurant its ambiance of unadulterated luxury and elegance.
6
While Leovinus had been thus engaged with business matters, The Journalist had been trying to pump information out of the workman who claimed to have come on board to reclaim his parrot.
‘Come on!’ said The Journalist. ‘Nobody’s buying that! What are you up to?’
‘I have a pet parrot,’ said the workman, doggedly sticking to his absurd story. ‘I always take it with me when I’m working. I know Mr Leovinus wouldn’t allow a bird on board, so I’ve been keeping it hidden. But when I came back to get it just now, I found that some bastard had opened the door of the cage and it’s escaped.’
The Journalist heaved his eyes heavenwards. He was used to hearing cock-and-bull stories but this parrot-and-bastard one didn’t even get off the slippery starting-blocks of meretriciousness. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m a journalist. I know when there’s something fishy going on, and I know that you’re hiding something. I’ll cut a deal with you!’
The workman turned on him: ‘I’m really very upset! I loved that parrot.’
‘You tell me everything you know about the Starship and I’ll not tell Star-Struct Inc. about the parrot.’
They had just reached the Central Dome area, and the worker was hurrying through the gallery surrounding the Central Well towards the port Embarkation Lobby.
‘Why’s the work got so behind? They’ve been cutting corners, haven’t they? Leovinus seemed to be in the dark about it. And all these stories about the financial problems – they’re true, aren’t they? What’s going to happen tomorrow? This ship isn’t in a fit state to take off, is it?’
‘That’s right!’ said the worker, as he strode across the Embarkation Lobby. ‘Everything you say is true.’