'Perhaps that is your answer!' It was Nettie who had suddenly stepped forward and taken Captain Bolfass by the arm.

'Dear lady, it is good of you to trouble yourself with this matter, but I fear the parrot has not given any reply. I am doomed.'

'Didn't you tell me that this Starship was designed by some genius?'

'Leovinus!' exclaimed The Journalist. 'He was here on the ship when we crashed on the Earth!'

'Maybe he has the missing part?' It was all so clear to Nettie, although she didn't know why.

Something clicked in The Journalist's mind. 'Of course!' he exclaimed. 'When he ran off the ship - he was brandishing this glowing silver strip in his hand...'

'The central core intelligence!' exclaimed Bolfass.

'That's why it isn't on the ship?'

'So...' Captain Bolfass was putting two and two together but rather slowly.

'In order to get the missing central intelligence core for the ship's system, we've got to find this Leovinus character.' Nettie had decided to take over the deduction process. 'Leovinus is on the Earth. But we can't get to the Earth because we don't know where it is, and the only way to find out where it is, is to get hold of the missing central intelligence core and refit it into Titania's brain. Gentlemen. We're screwed.'

It was then that the docking sirens sounded. The Starship Titanic was preparing itself for landing on the planet of Yassacca.

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.'