‘So?’ said Dan.
‘So…’ said Lucy. ‘I suppose we’d better find out how to fly this baby ourselves and point her Earthwards.’
‘So – what was going on between you and that that thing…’
‘He’s not a “thing” – he’s just a perfectly ordinary alien and there was nothing going on.’
‘He had his hands on your tits!’
‘No he did not!’ Lucy couldn’t stand Dan at moments like this. Why couldn’t he give her room? Why did he try and twist everything? What mattered was them: Lucy and Dan.
‘What matters is us,’ said Lucy, taking her cue from the previous sentence. ‘You and me.’
‘You and me and any other life-form you can get it off with!’ retorted Dan.
‘Jesus! Dan! You are so unpleasant!’
‘I’m merely stating the facts.’
‘Well, if you really want to know the facts: I never made love to Jurgen Zenzendorf.’
‘I wasn’t talking about Jurgen Zenzendorf!’ Trust Lucy, thought Dan, to bring up another case that she could defend instead of the one they were actually talking about. ‘I never even suspected you of going to bed with Jurgen Zenzendorf. I mean Jurgen was an asshole.’
‘He was not! That’s typical of you to denigrate my friends just because you’re unbelievably, maniacally jealous!’ Lucy was firing on all cylinders. Dan beat a hasty retreat.
‘OK! OK! I accept what you say about Jurgen! He was a nice guy! I liked him. I liked his moth collection. I liked his mother. Jurgen was GREAT.’
‘OrJimmy Clarke!’
‘Ah! Now I know you’re lying!’
‘HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT!’
‘Jimmy Clarke told me himself you’d been to bed together.’
‘He’s a lying bastard! Anyway! That was before I knew you! I don’t want to talk about any of this!’
‘Then why d’you start it?’ Lucy was now yelling at the top of her voice. Dan found his drive to do whatever it was he’d previously felt driven to do shrivel into a limp rag of confusion. He’d actually forgotten what they had started arguing about.
‘Oh, Dan!’ Lucy threw her arms round him. ‘Why are you always so far away?’
‘I’m here, Lucy!’
‘But I never seem to get through to you. I love you.’
‘And I love you,’ replied Dan, and he kissed her, and she felt how far away he really was.
‘Oh, Dan, let’s get married,’ she said.
‘Oh, sure. We’re on an alien spaceship – God knows how many light years from Earth and you want to organize a wedding.’
‘You know what I mean,’ she said.
‘It’s no good rushing these things.’
‘Dan, we’ve been living together for thirteen years! We can’t ever rush anything now!’
‘Let’s get the hotel up and running, and then we can talk about it,’ said Dan sensibly, ‘You do like the rectory?’
‘Of course I do. I’m crazy about it.’
‘Except that it doesn’t exist any more.’
‘We’ll get it rebuilt – Nigel got a great deal on selling off Top Ten Travel. We’ll rebuild it – better than it was – and make it the best little hotel in the goddamned world’
‘If we ever get back.’
‘If we ever get back,’ agreed Dan.
They looked round at the so-called ‘Captain’s Bridge’ with its library, its video collection, its chess boards and cards tables, its jacuzzi, billiard tables, cinema complex and gym, and they wondered how the hell they were ever going to find out how to control something that didn’t appear to have any controls in the first place.
‘Lucy,’ said Dan.
‘Oh! Don’t start again! He wasn’t doing anything!’
‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ replied Dan.
‘Good!’ retorted Lucy. One point scored.
‘You know this video game that seems to be based on the Starship itself?’
‘Uh-huh?’ Lucy was staring out of the windows above the console of games.
‘Well, it’s sort of changing.’
‘I know this is stupid…’ said Lucy. ‘But you don’t suppose that computer game isn’t a computer game?’
‘You mean – might it be an actual display showing those things coming towards us?’ By now, Dan was also looking out of the window. A squadron of small, clumsy-looking spacecraft were hurting towards the Starship. Dan checked. Their movements correlated exactly to the motion of the spacecraft on the video display,