‘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.