'Shit! Nettie!' exclaimed Nigel, making an effort to disguise himself as the pile of old laundry in question by pulling all the sheets around himself. 'I thought you'd been abducted by aliens!'

'This is important, Nigel!' Nettie was straight to the point.

'I can explain all this.' Nigel began. You see Nancy here's mother died recently and I've been looking after...'

'Think back, Nigel! After the spaceship took off, did you see anyone?'

You mean like going to a psychiatrist?'

'No! No!' Trust Nigel to be only thinking of himself, thought Nettie. 'Did you see an old man with a white beard, hanging around the wreckage?'

'I think I'd better go,' said Nancy, who was actually nineteen but looked younger.

'No! No! Hang on,' said Nigel instinctively. He could see that Nettie had other things on her mind than putting his balls in the toaster, and he half-hoped he might be able to resume what he had been doing, once he'd sorted out whatever it was his ex-girlfriend actually did want of him. 'Did I see what?'

Nettie was suddenly overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. Here was a whole world - a whole civilization so much more advanced than her own - depending on her eliciting a sensible answer from this creep whom she'd once been in love with. What a hope in hell! She might as well try and teach Turkish to the cat!

'An old man with a white beard? He was in my car. I took him to the police station in Oxford.'

It took Nettie a moment to realize that this was exactly the information she had come all this way to extract. The moment she did, Nettie ran to the bed and gave Nigel a smacking kiss on the lips. Then she gave one to Nancy for good measure, and the next minute she was leaping down the stone stairs of the large Victorian mansion two at a time, whooping: 'The! The! The!'

'I think I'd better go,' said Nancy. She was just about to start a degree in Art History.

29

Leovinus had undergone a sea-change.

For a start he had taken off his false eyebrows and stuck them on the wall of his cell, just above the door. But even more importantly he had spent the last week doing something that he had never really done before - certainly not since he was on the verge of becoming an infant prodigy. Seven days in a prison cell, without reading materials, without any ability to communicate with others, and - what's more - without a single admirer, had forced him to take stock of himself. He had spent a week looking back at his life and at the person he had become. And the more he had done this, the more he had become convinced that he had failed. The more he looked into his own soul, the more he realized how far he fell short.

He flinched with acute embarrassment as he remembered that last press conference - how he had revelled in the sycophancy. He curled up with shame as he remembered the answer he had given to that Journalist who had asked if he felt responsible for the collapse of the Yassaccan economy. What had he said? 'His responsibility was towards his Art' or something like that? Now, as he stared round at the bare walls of his cell, he realized that he'd been talking through his bottom. No one could hide behind the pretensions of creativity when people were actually suffering - maybe even dying - because of it.

He remembered the two cub reporters with their lovely smiles and alluring cleavages... How he had felt so superior to them... How he'd believed deep down that no one was good enough for him. Now, the more he looked about himself, in the solitude and misery of his prison cell, he felt he was not good enough for anyone else. The first Blerontinian who walked in through that door, he began to think, would have more right to freedom and happiness than he had. Even that dreadful Gat of Blerontis!

Leovinus had been granted such wonderful gifts - such fabulous, unlimited gifts - and what had he done with them? Had he made anyone else happy? Had he brought prosperity and peace to other worlds? No. As far as Leovinus could see, he had used his gifts almost exclusively for his own self-aggrandizement. Full stop. It was pathetic, now he looked back. Had he been loved? Had he loved?

And here, had you been eavesdropping outside the great man's cell (as indeed Constable Hackett was doing) then you would have heard a terrible groan rise up from the Greatest Genius The Galaxy Had Ever Known, as he remembered how his love and affection had been focussed not on a living creature - not on a wife - not on a lover - not even on a pet snorkling! - but on an agglomeration of wires and neurons, sensors and cybernetic pathways - Titania - his last, his greatest, his absolute obsession!

'But she loves me!' he cried from the depths of his despair.

'But she is not real...' came an answering echo as his thoughts bounced off the bare cell walls. 'You created her!'

This change that overcame Leovinus, in his Oxfordshire prison cell, would be unfortunately powerful ammunition for right-wing politicians who trumpet the beneficial effects of jail. Fortunately, however, it went totally unnoticed by anyone with political clout on Earth.

Leovinus had just reached that point of self-castigation at which he was really beginning to enjoy it, when he was rudely interrupted.

'Visitors for you, Chang!' said Constable Hackett. He had grown rather fond of the old fellow over the past week.

The door was flung open and the dreadful Journalist entered accompanied by an extraordinarily attractive female alien, all the more attractive for being dressed Yassaccan style, in the simple transparent shift with the single motif on the side which indicated that the wearer was unmarried and interested in proposals.

She was also wearing that fabulously expensive Yassaccan scent that was now almost unobtainable on Blerontin.

'My dear friend!' exclaimed Leovinus to The (surprised) Journalist. 'You are far more worthy of freedom and happiness than I!' It was an odd thing to say to the first Blerontinian to walk in through the door, but Leovinus, who had just been thinking he'd never get a chance to say it, said it anyway.

'There's not a moment to lose!' exclaimed the remarkably attractive and remarkably available female alien. 'We've only got an hour left!'

'Have you got it?' cried The Journalist.

'I don't know...' replied Leovinus. 'I am no longer sure what I have got and what I have not. When I look back on my life, I almost feel I have thrown it all away and I have been left with nothing. Dear lady, will you marry me?' Leovinus knew it was considered poor manners not to propose to any young female wearing the specially patterned shift.

'Have you got the central intelligence core? Titania's brain!' interposed The Journalist before Nettie could reply.

'Ah! Alas!' cried the great Leovinus. 'I threw it away! I have no use for her now!' and he turned back to Nettie. 'Dear lady! Do you think you could ever love me?'

'YOU CAN'T HAVE THROWN IT AWAY!' screamed the remarkably attractive and available female alien.

'THINK!' yelled the dreadful Journalist. 'Where did you throw it?'

'What does it matter?' Leovinus had grown a trifle maudlin. This was actually the result of the famous Yassaccan scent which the Yassaccan Prime Minister had given Nettie. Nettie had dabbed a spot on as they waited for the cell door to be opened - it was a nervous reflex prior to meeting the Greatest Genius The Galaxy Had Ever Known. What Nettie was unaware of was that one of the reasons the scent was so famous was because it had an extremely intoxicating effect on Blerontinians. This intoxication was usually so sudden and so strong that the scent had been made illegal on Blerontin, which is, of course, why it was so sought after and so fabulously expensive.