Starship Titanic

23

The celebration party was a gloomy affair.

Everyone tried to make the best of it, and kept toasting the Earth folk for their invaluable help in beating off the insurance loss adjustors; several speeches were made extolling the return of the great Starship to its rightful home, but nobody could forget that within a couple of days, the ship would have to be towed off to some distant part of the Galaxy, where it could explode without doing any more harm than destroy itself.

The Yassaccans could see no prospect of recovering their economy. Meanwhile Lucy, Dan and Nettie could see no prospect of ever returning to their own planet. They had each been given translation blisters (like small plasters worn behind the ear) so that they could still communicate now they were away from the influence of the ship's automatic systems, but that had done little to reconcile them to the prospect of exile on an alien world.

'But surely' - Rodden the Navigational Officer had cornered Nettie - 'you must have some idea of where this "Earth" place is? I mean you must at least know whether it is in the Notional Northern Hemisphere of the Galaxy or the Notional South?'

'Well... No...'

'Is it on an outer or an inner arm of the spiral?'

'I haven't a clue,' said Nettie.

Rodden shook his head gloomily - he hated talking to dumb blondes. 'Well if you really have no idea where you've come from, I really can't get you back there. The only thing that could is the Starship and that can't remember because its brain's missing! Seems to be a common complaint...' he added, unnecessarily, and wandered off, rather to Nettie's relief.

Nettie looked around at the gloomy party. She felt sad, and yet, there was so much beauty in this gentle world she found herself in. Yassacca! It was a nice name for a start. And she was sure there were worse places... Slough... New Maiden... Basingstoke... Nettie found herself split in two. One part of her was saying:

Come on! Make the best of it! This is home from now on! And the other half was telling her not to give up... that somehow, deep down inside her, she was convinced that she would be able to get them all back to Earth. Nettie felt a bit foolish for feeling so convinced of her own ability, but there it was - she just couldn't shake the feeling off, though she had no idea why she had it.

In the meantime, she tried to enjoy the sad celebration.

The very smell of the snork roasting over open fires seemed sad, as it wafted under the gloomy Yassaccan pines and then mingled with the softer, sadder scents of the night jasmine and the weeping oleanders that crowded Corporal Golholiwol's garden. The Yassaccans took it in turn to host important national events, and it just happened to be Corporal Golholiwol's turn. He had provided seven snorks for roasting, plates of fish and fruit and fresh vegetables from his garden. Unlike the Blerontinians, the Yassaccans took no interest in canape´s and preferred good plain food washed down with plenty of Yassaccan ale and sweet potato wine.

The Journalist gloomily thought it all pretty poor fare, but he tried to hide his contempt for the lack of 'fish-paste', tiny chicken vol-au-vents and cocktail sausages on sticks.

But, no matter how much Nettie complimented him on his crackling, Corporal Golholiwol refused to emerge from his gloom. 'In the old days,' he explained to Nettie, 'we would have roasted seventy snorks! I would have been able to provide so much fish we could have filled the Ocean of Summer-Plastering! And all the beer and wine... well! It would have flowed from those fountains you see over there in the centre of the garden... ah! These are thin times indeed for Yassacca.' And he gloomily stared into the empty ale mug he held in his hands.

Captain Bolfass was also gloomy. He kept trying not to stare at Nettie, who had discarded her Gap T-shirt hand-knitted waistcoat and miniskirt in favour of a simple Yassaccan shift, slit up to the thigh and embroidered at one corner. She looked breathtaking, and the poor Captain's breath was so taken that he sighed and tried to imagine how he could ever have lived without her.

'Who are you mooning over now, Captain Bolläss?' asked his wife.

'Excuse me, my dear,' replied Bolfass, 'it is just that that young Earth woman has stolen my soul with her beauty.'

'Poor dear!' said Mrs Bolfass, taking his hand and stroking it. 'I'm sure you'll get better.'

'Ah!' sighed Captain Bolfass. 'I do hope so... I do hope so...'

'Perhaps you should see Dr Ponkaliwack?'

'No... no. I'll be all right .' sighed the Captain. (On Yassacca, being 'in love' was considered a form of illness.)

But the old Yassaccan songs that the band were now playing caused the Captain to sigh again and again and even brought a tear to his eye. They were ancient songs of yearning for better tools and materials, songs of lament for construction projects that were never finished, and songs of regret for the great craftsmen of yesteryear who would never plane nor chisel again.

Lucy found Dan hidden at the far end of the garden, sitting on a low wall under the oleanders, sunk in utter despondency. He held a piece of snork crackling in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. 'Go away!' he said.

'Oh, Dan!' Lucy sat beside him and tried to put her arm around him. 'Let's get married!'

'Married!' exclaimed Dan. 'Huh! After what I saw that alien doing to you?'

'Don't be...' well Lucy wasn't quite sure what she was telling Dan not to be: 'foolish'? 'jealous'? 'sulky'? He had a right to be all those things, and yet... she couldn't help feeling he was overdoing it. 'Dan! We love each other - don't we?'

'I don't know,' replied Dan. 'Do we?'

'Of course we do!' cried Lucy. 'We're going to set up the hotel and run it together and have children.

'No we aren't,' said Dan. 'We can't get back to Earth and even if we could, the hotel's a pile of rubble!'

'But we've got the money from Top Ten Travel!' 'But that doesn't mean we love each other!' 'But we do! We've been together all this time!' Dan stared gloomily at the piece of snork crackling in his hand. Finally he looked at Lucy and said: 'Here comes Nettie.'

Nettie had been looking for Lucy and Dan all over the garden. 'May I join the funeral?' she said.

Dan nodded and Nettie sat down on the other side of him. Lucy took her hand away from Dan's.

'So,' Nettie began. 'I suppose this is going to be home from now on.'

'You look as if you've made yourself pretty much at home already,' remarked Lucy, who was still wearing her Earth clothes.

'I thought I might as well start getting into the role,' laughed Nettie.

'That is so sensible,' said Dan, to Lucy's intense annoyance.

'Look I don't want to break you two up...' said Nettie, even more to Lucy's intense annoyance. 'but I've got something to tell you... Something I think you ought to know...'

Nettie didn't quite know where to begin. 'It's about the rectory... your hotel...' she said.

'It's sad to think we'll never be able to run it after all, Nettie,' Dan sighed into his wine.

'You were never going to be able to run it,' replied Nettie.

'What d'you mean?' Lucy was immediately on the defensive. What was Nettie implying? That they were incompetent or something?

'I don't know whether I should tell you this now... maybe it's pointless... But on the other hand maybe it'll make you feel better...'

'What?' demanded Lucy. She had stood up and folded her arms, in her best courtroom 'How do you dare propose that?' posture.

'Well...' said Nettie, 'Nigel was a shit - we all know that...'

'He was my best friend!' exclaimed Dan.

'Yes... sure...' replied Nettie. 'But he was a shit.'

'You certainly let him treat you like shit!' retorted Lucy.

'That's my problem,' replied Nettie. 'I'm crazy. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid. And although Nigel never discussed any of his business with me, I can tell you he didn't sell Top Ten Travel for anything like the amount he told you he had. That's why you could never get the documentation off him. He actually sold it for peanuts. You'd never have been able to pay off the rectory - let alone set up the hotel.'

There was a brief silence, that seemed to get up, stretch its legs and then wander off into the night.

'Huh!' snorted Lucy eventually. 'That doesn't surprise me one little bit!'

'Well! It sure surprises me!' exclaimed Dan. 'How d'you know this, Nettie?' He felt incredibly indignant - probably indignant at Nigel, but for the moment, he was content to be indignant with the messenger.

'Oh...' said Nettie, 'he was so sloppy - he used to leave documents just lying around. He didn't give a shit. I guess he never bothered to talk to me enough to find out that I was bright enough to see what he was up to. I kept trying to tell you - but we never met except with Nigel in tow. It was awful; I could see you heading for disaster.'

'That bastard!' cried Lucy, striding around beneath the oleanders. 'If we ever get back to Earth I'm going to tear his balls off!'

'Well, that's one threat he doesn't have to worry about,' sighed Dan, his depression deepening by the second. Suddenly he felt Nettie's hand on his ann. He turned and looked directly into her eyes and felt his stomach give way. A wave of wonderful helplessness swept over him, as he felt her eyes falling into his. And yet she was saying something else. Dan couldn't make out what it was that Nettie was saying, he was so overcome with her proximity and the way her breasts showed under the translucent muslin of her Yassaccan shift. The next moment, before he regained his senses, she had rushed off in some excitement.

Dan turned to Lucy: 'What did she just say?' he managed to ask.

'She just said: "Wait a minute! I've got it! I've got the answer! I knew I would!' replied Lucy.

'Oh!' said Dan.

There was a silence. Then he added: 'I'm sorry about the hotel. I know how much it meant to you.'

Lucy looked at him in some surprise. 'I was more worried for you. I know you'd staked everything on it.' Dan frowned and took a little swig of his wine. 'That's why I went along with it,' continued Lucy. 'I never really liked the rectory that much. I just couldn't bear for you to be disappointed.'

Dan took another little swig of his wine. Then he did something that was so uncharacteristic that it made Lucy jump out of her skin: he threw his glass against one of the oleanders and it shattered into tiny pieces.

'Well,' he said. 'In that case, I guess we've both been fooling ourselves and each other for a long time. I was only so keen because I thought you were.'

Lucy was playing with one of the buttons that had come off her pinstripe power-suit during her earlier encounter with The Journalist. 'Maybe that says it all, Dan... Maybe that says it all...'