‘It’s getting really hard to breathe!’ choked Lucy.
Ice was now forming on the edge of the desk. Dan pointed at it. ‘You call that Super Galactic Class comfort?!’ he choked.
‘Take your hands off my flex!’ choked the Deskbot. ‘You’ll short me again!’
‘Get us into First Class NOW!’ choked The Journalist. ‘Or I’ll smash your lampshade!’
Lucy had collapsed on the floor, and Dan rushed to her, ‘Where did you find that guy? he whispered into her ear.
‘Save… your… breath…’ panted Lucy. ‘Argh!’ screamed the Deskbot. ‘Security!’
‘May you rot in Pangalin!’ yelled The Journalist
It was at that moment that an extraordinary thing happened. Or, rather, it was at that moment that an extraordinary thing crawled into the Embarkation Lobby, across the highly polished floor and up to the Deskbot.
It was clearly alive – although only just – and it was very old – very very very old. It was wizened and blackened. In its twig-like fingers the creature held a Personal Electronic Thingie. It waved this under the Deskbot’s nose and croaked in an ancient voice:
‘Upgrade… All of us!’
The Deskbot immediately sprang to attention and became perceptibly brighter.
‘Of course! Madam! What a pleasure to welcome you to the First Class facilities of the Starship Titanic, You will find them without equal anywhere in the Galaxy! Please go through and have a pleasant trip!’
There was a hiss of air returning to the cabins and an instant rise in temperature, as the ship registered the arrival of four First Class passengers. The door to the First Class Area swung open and Dan and Lucy, The Journalist and the Ancient Creature stepped through into another – and even more amazing -world.
14
‘Nettie!’ exclaimed Dan. ‘My God! You’re Nettie! What’s happened to you?’ But the Ancient Creature, whom Dan had rightly identified as Nettie, couldn’t reply. The moment they passed into the First Class Section, she collapsed and lay as if dead. The Gap T-shirt hung around her shrunken frame like an over-large pullover. Her jewellery looked foolish and ill-advised on her scrawny wrists and neck. What on Earth – or off the Earth – had happened to her? What had in fact happened was this.
The Starship Titanic was powered by the latest and most incredible invention of the great Leovinus’s genius. No one knew how he had done it, and he had kept it an absolute secret, but somehow he harnessed for the Starship – his beloved masterpiece – the vastest source of power in the probable Universe: a captive Black Hole.
Naturally something as powerful as a Black Hole needed very careful handling and had to be surrounded by incredible safety precautions. Unfortunately, safety was one thing that neither Scraliontis nor Brobostigon had first in their minds, when they began to reduce the specifications for the construction of the ship.
‘There won’t be anybody in the Engine Room,’ explained Scraliontis, when even Brobostigon had queried the wisdom of reducing the Incredibly Strong Glass Company’s spec for the window into the Black Hole.
‘But you know what Black Holes are like…’
Actually Scraliontis didn’t; he was an accountant and not an engineer. In any case Black Hole technology was a brand new concept straight out of Leovinus’s brain. Just take Leovinus’s lowest parameter for the glass shield!’ he snapped. ‘We can’t afford any more.’
It was Nettie who discovered the problem thus caused by Scraliontis’s cost-cutting, as she climbed the ladder, looking for the phone to the Captain’s Bridge. The force of the Black Hole had simply plucked her off the ladder and absorbed her through the Incredibly Strong Glass Company’s below-spec window.
Once in the Black Hole, she had begun to spin around for – as far as her body was concerned – hundreds of years, travelling millions of light years round in tiny circles. Fortunately, she still had her Personal Electronic Thingie on her, and this had dutifully clocked up all the miles she travelled.
Nettie herself didn’t know how she had escaped. In fact, she had been thrown clear of the Black Hole, when The Journalist had short-circuited the Deskbot Nettie was, miraculously, still alive, and – even more miraculously – still had the presence of mind to realize that she had accumulated millions of light years of Space Miles – enough to get them all free upgrades to First Class.