'Oh my God!' murmured Lucy. 'We're being attacked!'

At that moment, The Journalist suddenly burst onto the Captain's Bridge.

'The ship's on automatic!' he panted. 'But the central intelligence core is missing some of its parts. We can't control the ship unless we can locate all the missing bits of the system and get them back into place!'

'Too late!' said Lucy and nodded out of the window. The Starship was now entirely surrounded by the smaller spacecraft.

The Journalist muttered: 'Holy Pangalin!'

A voice suddenly boomed over the ship's loudspeaker system: 'You are surrounded. Give up at once or we open fire!'

'Quick!' yelled Dan, pushing The Journalist over to the console. 'How do we give up at once?'

'I haven't the slightest idea,' returned The Journalist.

'If you refuse to give up, we shall open fire in thirty seconds,' said the voice from the enemy spacefleet.

'WE GIVE UP!' yelled Lucy, but her voice merely echoed round the Captain's Bridge.

'DO SOMETHING!' screamed Dan.

'I told you! The ship's missing essential bits! I don't know what to do!' The Journalist was flipping controls as fast as he could but to little effect.

'Since you refuse to co-operate...' boomed the voice.

'WE'LL CO-OPERATE! JUST GIVE US A CHANCE!'

Lucy had climbed onto the console and was waving her arms at the spaceships in a desperate attempt to attract their attention.

'... since you refuse to co-operate you give us no choice but to open fire,'

The space outside the Starship suddenly exploded in light and a terrific noise battered the mighty hull - deafening those inside. Lucy fell off the console and Dan and The Journalist both dived for the floor, where they lay trembling with their hands over their ears.

There was then a pause.

The voice boomed over the loudspeaker again: 'Do you surrender?'

'YES! YES! WE SURRENDER!' screamed all three occupants of the Captain's Bridge.

'Very well! You leave us no choice!'

Another almighty din broke out around the Starship, and this time they could feel it shudder with the impact of the explosions outside. Then there was silence. The smaller spacecraft edged in a little closer.

Then the voice was booming out again. 'Look! We don't want to damage the Starship, but if you refuse to co-operate you will leave us no choice.'

The Journalist had by this time found a sort of microphone. He pushed a switch and bellowed into it.

'STOP! STOP! WE SURRENDER! STOP!' His voice deafened everybody on board the Starship Titanic, but elsewhere there was a terrible silence. Then they heard the enemy for the last time:

'We shall hold you responsible for any damage done to the Starship!'

With that a wave of the smaller spacecraft peeled off from the main fleet and swooped towards them. Points of light spattered out from their guns and the sound of ripping metal shook the great Starship.

'Oh my God!' screamed Lucy.

None of them could have told you how long the attack went on for, but it seemed like several lifetimes to the three figures huddled on the Captain's Bridge. The noise, the vibration, the crashing and bucking of the giant Starship went on and on. Lucy found The Journalist had his hands on her breasts, but decided not to say anything.

When it was all over, they waited and then stood up, trembling and shaking. The first wave was returning to the main fleet meanwhile a second wave was peeling off.

'Here they come again!' yelled Dan, and he and Lucy ducked down once more beneath the console. But The Journalist remained standing, with a curious expression on his face.

Lucy and Dan braced themselves for the gunfire... but it didn't come. Instead there was an odd - rather unmartial - banging on the hull of the ship.

'Yassaccans!' muttered The Journalist. Lucy and Dan both assumed this was another alien expletive, and remained under cover, but then The Journalist nudged Dan and said: 'Look!'

Dan cautiously put his head above the console and peered out of the window: the second wave of spaceships had pulled up all around the Starship, and an army of short and stocky space-suited figures were swarming over the hull, hammering and welding as they went.

'What the blazes?' asked Dan.

'They're repairing the damage,' explained The Journalist, Yassaccans are like that! They hate injuring hardware!'

'What about software?' asked Lucy, readjusting her bra.

'We'll need guns!' yelled The Journalist. 'Follow me!' The three of them ran, doubled-up, out of the Captain's Bridge, while the enemy's hammering and welding outside gathered in intensity.

Meanwhile the voice boomed out over the loudspeakers again: 'We shall recommence our attack, as soon as the first damage has been repaired! If you do not surrender, we shall board and dispose of everyone we find!'

In the crew's quarters, The Journalist discovered an arms cache. He handed out weapons to Dan and Lucy.

'How do we use them?' asked Dan, turning a strange gun over in his hand. It had a short thingy and bulbous side-thingies and a sort of thingy that stuck out and which Dan pushed: a laser beam shot out across the Crew Room and exploded in a fireball at the other end.

'Like that,' explained The Journalist, 'except don't point them at the soft furnishings.' He rushed over to the flaming curtain that Dan had just set on fire and grabbed an extinguisher.

'We can't use these!' cried Lucy.

'Then you'll just have to get used to the idea of being thrown off the ship into deep space. These Yassaccans are not playing games. Here! Dan! Put this on!' He threw Dan a helmet.

'What is it?' asked Dan.

'The Starship has two realities; one is the DataSide and the other is the MatterSide. When the Yassaccans board, they'll try to take over the DataSide as well as the MatterSide. So one of us better be prepared to confront them there!'

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' replied Dan.

'It's a VR helmet - a Virtual Reality helmet. You put it on, you'll be able to explore the DataSide and check whatever the Yassaccans get up to there!' The Journalist was clearly losing patience.

'Just put it on!' shouted Lucy.

The noise from the repairs on the hull was getting unbearable.

'What the heck are they doing out there?' exclaimed Dan.

'Just put on the helmet!' cried Lucy. At which Dan did.

'Wow!' he exclaimed. 'I see what you mean! I'm right in the ship... Hey! This is great! I can get into the consoles! Wow! Now I'm running along the wiring! Hey! The circuit-boards are like vast cities! Shit!'

The moment he had the helmet on, The Journalist grabbed Lucy and started kissing her as if there were no tomorrow which, he figured, might well be the case. And, as if shed been expecting this all along, Lucy started to kiss him, but then she suddenly pulled back, and glanced anxiously over at Dan, who was climbing some invisible stairs in his Virtual Reality and then turning around and handling invisible objects and letting out delighted yelps.

'Oh don't worry about him!' panted The Journalist. 'He can't hear or see us. We're still MatterSide. He'll be totally absorbed in that thing - it's always the same - first time you put on one of those you're usually off for five or six hours! Let's do it!'

But still Lucy pushed him away. 'The Yassaccans are invading the ship!' she protested.

'That's right!' replied The Journalist. 'We've hardly got time to do it before they arrive! Quick!'

'Is that all you can think about!?' groaned Lucy. The Journalist was now nuzzling her neck and sending excited shivers down her spine.

'I told you - once we Blerontinian males get aroused...'

'Arrgh!' Lucy suddenly screamed. 'And what about the bomb?!'

Pangalin!' exclaimed The Journalist. 'I'd forgotten about that!' He suddenly whipped a small handset out of one of his many pockets and flipped it on.