'Oh God!' she cried. 'I love you!'

And before The Journalist realized what was happening, Lucy was on top of him, kissing his mouth and pulling her fingers through his hair.

'Ow! Ouch!' The Journalist yelled. 'Mind my wound!'

'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' yelled Lucy. 'But we've only got six edoes left! Whatever they are! I've never felt like this for anyone... The moment I set eyes on you... Oh God! No one's ever going to know! Nothing matters any more! I don't know what I feel! But hurry! Do something!' And she was wrestling with his clothing. 'I can't get it off!'

'I told you! It's thought-sealed!' His clothes suddenly pinged open and the next minute Lucy had flung her pinstripe power suit onto the empty life-boat ramp. Her fingers ran over the alien's body as she got on top of him.

'Oh God!' she cried, feeling the blood draining down into her lower abdomen like a rush of seagulls onto the last herring. 'We've probably only got five of whatever those things are left!'

'Edoes!' The Journalist tried not to yell out with the pain of his wound. 'We've got five edoes left! This is incredible!' he cried, 'We don't do it like this on Blerontin!'

'Why not?' Lucy didn't care.

'It's illegal!' The Journalist was grinning from ear to ear. 'We're only allowed "snork-style"! You know - upside down and from above!'

'Oh shut up!' Lucy was kissing him. 'I had to tell you! I had to! I love you! I've always loved you! That's what's been missing! Ah! Ah!"

'Quick!' tried The Journalist. They had only sixty innim before the bomb exploded.

'Yes! Yes!'

They rolled and kissed each other oblivious to the cold metal floor of the life-boat ramp under their naked flesh. 'Life is so short!' Lucy suddenly grabbed his hand and looked at his watch. It was totally incomprehensible.

'Thirty innims!' 'Is that all?' she yelled.

'Yes!' cried The Journalist. 'Yes!'

'I love yooooou!' cried Lucy.

'Ooooooooh!' echoed The Journalist and the two of them collapsed together as the clock clicked to zero...

They lay there waiting for the forever-ending explosion that would terminate their brief affair. But, unlike the two lovers, it didn't come. 'What's happened?' Lucy was the first to speak. 'I don't know!' said The Journalist. 'I don't know!'

15

At this same moment, Nettie suddenly managed to sit up on the couch on which Dan had placed her, and screamed: 'Oh my God! There's only five minutes before the bomb goes off!'

'Five minutes!' thought Dan. 'This is where, in a cheap novel, the couple - confronted by imminent oblivion - would suddenly make passionate love.'

'You've got to go and talk to it!' she pleaded.

'What?' said Dan.

'I can't explain! Just believe me! It's in the Engine Room! Hurry!'

'What? repeated Dan a bit gormlessly.

'HURRY! THE ENGINE ROOM! SPEAK TO THE BOMB!'

Dan decided that, while gormlessness had its place in the human repertoire of reactions, now was neither the rime nor place for it. He sprinted out of the Beauty Salon (which was, apparently, where they were) and ran down the length of the Grand Axial Canal, trying to ignore the inevitable chorus:

'She threw her arms

Around his charms,

And gave him six pnedes as a tip!'

The first thing he saw, when he burst into the Engine Room, was a large bomb sticking up out of a cabinet. A friendly sort of voice was booming out:

'Fifty-eight... fifty-seven... fifty-six... fifty-five... fifty-four.

Dan couldn't think what to say. After all, he'd never addressed a bomb before. He didn't have a clue what sort of thing it would be interested in.

'Hello,' he said.

'Fifty-three... fifty-two... hello... fifty-one... fifty...' replied the bomb genially.

'Any chance of you not exploding?' Dan thought he might as well get straight to the point.

'No... forty-eight... forty-seven...'

Dan was not the most imaginative of men. He knew it. Lucy knew it. Nigel had known it. He was dedicated, hard-working, loyal, thorough - all those admirable and desirable things for anybody's partner to be. But leaps of the imagination were not his forte. And yet, he had one now. He suddenly knew the one thing that bombs were bound to be interested in.

'Do you really want to do this?' he asked. 'I mean isn't it a bit self-destructive?

'Forty-six... forty-five... Forty - Look! I am just a simple counting and exploding device and am not equipped for philosophical discourse,' replied the bomb. 'Please do not speak to me while I'm counting. Damn! Now you've made me lose my place! You see? Recommencing countdown. One thousand. Nine hundred and ninety-nine. Nine hundred and ninety-eight...'

'Got the sucker!' thought Dan. He checked his watch against the bomb's counting. They had about sixteen minutes before they needed to talk to it again. He turned and raced back to Nettie.

As he ran, the thought of Nettie kept riffling his mind like a gambler's hands riffling a deck of cards. God! She was so intelligent! How had she found out the bomb's weakness so quickly? The clarity of her intellect made him feel so ordinary and humble.

But then he suddenly remembered how she seemed old and shrivelled: he must have been seeing things! That couldn't have happened to the beautiful, gorgeous Nettie? And yet, it was then that Dan found himself thinking the most curious thought of course, it was terrible if something had happened to Nettie (and what had happened to her?) but, at least now, thought Dan, he might stand a chance with her!

Lucy was putting her clothes on rather hurriedly. The fact that she and The Journalist had not been blown to cosmic dust had severely embarrassed her. In fact, she didn't know where to look.

The Journalist was regarding her curiously. 'You do things very differently in your world,' he said,

'Oh?' Lucy tried to pretend that everything was perfectly normal.

'Yes,' he said. 'On Blerontin we have all these absurd rituals we have to go through before having sex. There's a thing called "dating" when a young couple go out for evenings together without necessarily "going the whole way" as we say. Then there's a thing called "the engagement" where rings are exchanged. Finally there's an elaborate ceremony called "a wedding" with a cake and "bridesmaids" and the "best man's speech" - not to mention the "honeymoon"! You wouldn't believe the rigmarole we have to go through in order to make love to each other. I like your Earth way of doing it much better.'

'The bomb still might go off any second!' Lucy reminded him.

'The bomb? Oh! Pangalin! I'd forgotten!' The Journalist thought-sealed his clothes.

As they raced down the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class, they didn't realize that they had missed bumping into Dan on his way back to the Beauty Salon by exactly one eight-hundred and sixty-fourth of a second - which, by an incredible coincidence, was exactly where the bomb had got to in its countdown, when Lucy and The Journalist arrived back in the Engine Room.

'Eight hundred and sixty-four... eight hundred and sixty-three...' said the bomb.

'Why's it only got as far as eight hundred and sixty-three?' wondered Lucy.

'You're beautiful!' replied The Journalist.

Lucy became aware that he was still looking at her in a rather odd way, and she suddenly wished he'd concentrate on the problem in hand.

'Maybe it doesn't count when we're out of the room?' she suggested. She pulled her companion out of the door, but as she started to listen, Lucy suddenly felt the alien's hands around her breasts.