'Twenty-five... twenty-four... twenty-three...' The bomb was counting.

'Toothless rabbits!' yelled The Journalist, 'it's nearly there!'

'Twenty-two...' said the bomb.

'Hey! Bomb!' yelled The Journalist into the phone.

'Don't talk to me!' moaned the bomb. 'I'm nearly there.. twenty-three... no, I've done that...'

'We're being invaded!' shouted The Joumalist. 'Twenty-oh... no! Damn! Recommencing countdown. One thousand...'

The Journalist flipped the phone off and started kissing Lucy's neck and undoing her suit. 'That was close!' he breathed.

'Whoops! Nearly went down a transistor then!' said Dan. And suddenly Lucy was running her hands all over The Journalist and pulling him down onto the floor.

'You're crazy!' she murmured...

18

The hammering and banging on the outside of the ship had stopped by the time Lucy and The Journalist had struggled back into their clothes. Dan, who was still scrambling around some unseen obstacles on the DataSide, suddenly yelled out: 'They're in the ship!'

The Journalist grabbed as many weapons as he could carry and headed out of the Crew Room. Down at the far end of the Grand Axial Canal he could see short, stocky figures already slipping onto the jetty. The Journalist settled himself behind a large podium, on which one of the braziers burnt, and took aim. As Lucy joined him, he fired and a series of explosions rocked the jetty and sent the invaders diving for cover.

The next moment, Lucy felt the air around and above her exploding with light and noise as the Yassaccans returned their fire.

'Hey! This air-duct goes on for ever!' Lucy span round to see that Dan (still in the VR helmet and totally unconscious of anything that was happening MatterSide) had wandered out through the open door of the Crew Room and was now heading straight for the Grand Axial Canal.

'DAN!' she screamed, and ran towards him as his feet reached the edge of the embankment. Immediately there was another explosion of noise and light around them, as the Yassaccans fired again. But Lucy had hold of Dan's sleeve. She managed to twist him round on the very edge of the water and pushed him back towards the Crew Room. The Journalist, meanwhile, was firing as fast as he could in the general direction of the invaders. But by now there was so much smoke neither side could see very much.

'Let's get out of here!' yelled The Journalist and he bundled Lucy after Dan, back into the Crew Room.

19

'Who set fire to the curtains?' demanded Bolfass the moment he burst into the Crew Room. He nodded, and a couple of Yassaccan repair workers hurried over to replace them. Bolfass had led his Special Assault Group along a back service corridor to the crew's quarters, while Yellin and Assmal led the frontal attack along the main arteries of the Starship.

Bolfass loved the finish they had obtained on the service corridor ceiling. It gave him much quiet satisfaction, in the dark of the night, to reflect on the craftsmanship and the high quality of material lavished on even the working areas of the great Starship.

'Never was there another such construction in the entire history of our people,' he used to tell his grandchildren, as they sat around the evening hearth, eating their dumpling stew and snork crackling. 'Even the curtains in the Crew Rooms were woven from the hair of the silky canadil, which lives high up in the Mountains of Merlor, and can only be caught with love and kindness. The hair of the canadil is so fine you must weave it by the light of the moons, for in sunlight it will disappear like snow.' The children loved these tales of craftsmanship and daring feats of engineering.

It cut Bolfass to the quick to see how someone could mistreat such workmanship. In fact it made him very cross indeed.

At that very moment, a figure wearing a VR helmet stumbled into the room, followed by two others - one of whom was clearly a treacherous Blerontinian. A black rage swallowed Bolfass whole, and the next moment he had swivelled out his SD handgun and blasted the three newcomers to cosmic dust - their bodies exploded in a supernova of entrails and mangled flesh that quickly reached white-heat and, happily, burnt out before they could besmatter or stain the beautifully hand-lacquered walls.

Lucy was aware of a violent cacophony of noise and her eyes were whited-out by the most piercing light. She screamed, grabbed onto The Journalist and fell in a faint upon the floor. It was that terrifying.

Bolfass grinned and blew away the smoke from his SD handgun. His anger assuaged, he twirled the gun on his finger and slipped it back into its holster.

It has to be explained at this point that the Yassaccans were a peace-loving, kindly race - dedicated to craftsmanship and sober industry. Many of them, however, were also prone to blind, blood-lusting rage when confronted by certain things - such as sloppy workmanship or a disregard for fine hand-crafting. In the distant past these rages had led to terrible destruction of life and property, and, since the moods went as quickly as they came, they had also led to unendurable remorse for many thousands of these otherwise benign and caring folk. The Yassaccan scientists had, therefore, developed the SD weapon, which - unlike the sort of hardware that most military scientists come up with - was designed to reduce death and destruction rather than increase it. The Simulated Destruction weapon - or SD gun - gave the user the momentary impression of having wreaked the bloody revenge that his crazed fury craved - without actually doing any damage. It always surprised and stunned the enemy, but that was all.

Lucy, not knowing any of this, was more than astonished to find herself still alive enough to hear the leader of the invaders demand: 'You are under arrest! Where are the others?'

'Hey! This is great! I'm going down one of the cybernautic neural pathways! It's like a water-slide! Wheeee Excellent!' exclaimed Dan.

'Take that stupid thing off his head!' snapped Bolfass. The Yassaccans had no time for Virtual Reality exercises. Their business was exclusively MatterSide. Two of the invaders grabbed Dan and yanked the helmet off his head.

'Hey! I was enjoying th-! Jeepers! What's going on?!' said Dan as he experienced SRM - Sudden Return to MatterSide.

'I said: where are the others?' repeated Bolfass.

'There aren't any others,' replied The Journalist, truculently.

'Come on! I wasn't brought up in a Blerontinlan State Nursery!* Who's running this ship?' Bolfass was getting irritated again; he'd just noticed the wretched finish on the mess-tables: the Blerontinian furniture makers had used unseasoned Lintin Pine from Northern Blerontin - an inferior wood which would warp badly after a couple of decades in use... and... by the Falls of Faknik! They hadn't even concealed the end grain with housed joints! In fact, when he looked closer, he could see the tenons were barely haunched - leaving scarcely enough timber at the top of the stile for wedging! Had these people never learned even the most rudimentary basics of the art ofjoinery? Bolfass reached for his SD gun...

- - - - - -

* These institutions were infamous for turning out individuals of less than avenge mental agility - possibly owing to the fact that, for generations, Blerontinian Governments had saved money on these establishments by forbidding any teaching to be done in them.

- - - - - -

But before he could wreak his terrible and destructive revenge on the perpetrators of this slipshod botch-work a miracle happened.