'But, you don't understand...' began The Journalist.

Dan decided to hold back his iron fist of retribution for the moment. He would save it for another time. 'I understand only too well,' he replied. 'We've got to make the Captain take us back to Earth now!' And he was off out of the Engine Room and racing back down the Grand Axial Canal towards the front of the ship.

'Look - it was great making love with you,' Lucy said to The Journalist, who was now standing behind her and attempting to fondle her breasts again, 'but we've got to get back to the real world! Our real world.' And she tried to remove his hands from her blouse.

'But Blerontinian males cannot just "turn off" like that!' explained The Journalist. 'We need multiple satisfactions before we can return to a state of equilibrium!'

Lucy had attended self-defence classes for two years, when she had just qualified for the law, and had always slightly regretted the fact that she'd never had the chance to put her skills into practice. Consequently it was with some satisfaction that she suddenly realized this was such an opportunity. She decided to use the standard response to the amorous-alien-fondling-you-from-behind assault. It was textbook stuff. She drove her right elbow hard into his stomach.

'Oooouuph!' gasped The Journalist.

Then she twizzled half-round, caught his left wrist and threw him over her shoulder onto the Engine Room floor.

'Oooouump!' grunted The Journalist.

Lucy spoke to him firmly in her best lawyer-speak: 'You stay here, and keep talking to that bomb! While I go and find the Captain!'

Then she was out of the door, racing after Dan.

'You don't understand,' The Journalist called after her, 'there isn't any Captain on this ship!' But Lucy had gone.

'Nine hundred and seventy...' said the bomb.

'You don't know what you're doing!' yelled The Journalist. You're going to need me!'

'Pardon?' replied the bomb.

'I wasn't talking to you!'

'Damn!' said the bomb. 'Recommencing countdown. One thousand... Nine hundred and ninetynine...'

By the time Lucy caught up with Dan, he'd already found his way onto the Captain's Bridge of the Starship Titanic.

The main feature of the Bridge was, as The Journalist had tried to point out to them, the distinct lack of anyone or anything who could in any shape or form be referred to as 'Captain'. In fact there was a distinct lack - in any shape or form - of anyone at all.

'Jesus! What do we do now?' murmured Dan, as Lucy clutched onto his arm.

Along the length of the Bridge was a row of windows, showing the great black immensity of space and the dazzling arm of the Milky Way along which they were headed. On the console beneath the windows were various display screens, with associated controls. The first screen showed a series of random blocks falling from the top of the screen to the bottom. The second appeared to be some sort of racing track. A third was a shoot-em-up, and the next one along was a game apparently based on the Starship itself.

'They're all video games!' Lucy felt righteously indignant. 'They aren't controls at all!'

As a matter of fact, the entire Captain's Bridge was little more than a high-class amusement arcade. It had been designed specifically to keep the Captain of the Starship Titanic amused during the tedium of long inter-galactic flights, in a spacecraft that was almost entirely automated and self-running. It was, after all, Titania - at the heart of the ship's intelligence - who was far more capable of taking decisions and issuing orders than any mere living creature.

'So?' said Dan.

'So...' said Lucy. 'I suppose we'd better find out how to fly this baby ourselves and point her Earthwards.'

'So - what was going on between you and that that thing...'

'He's not a "thing" - he's just a perfectly ordinary alien and there was nothing going on.'

'He had his hands on your tits!'

'No he did not!' Lucy couldn't stand Dan at moments like this. Why couldn't he give her room? Why did he try and twist everything? What mattered was them: Lucy and Dan.

'What matters is us,' said Lucy, taking her cue from the previous sentence. 'You and me.'

'You and me and any other life-form you can get it off with!' retorted Dan.

'Jesus! Dan! You are so unpleasant!'

'I'm merely stating the facts.'

'Well, if you really want to know the facts: I never made love to Jurgen Zenzendorf.'

'I wasn't talking about Jurgen Zenzendorf!' Trust Lucy, thought Dan, to bring up another case that she could defend instead of the one they were actually talking about. 'I never even suspected you of going to bed with Jurgen Zenzendorf. I mean Jurgen was an asshole.'

'He was not! That's typical of you to denigrate my friends just because you're unbelievably, maniacally jealous!' Lucy was firing on all cylinders. Dan beat a hasty retreat.

'OK! OK! I accept what you say about Jurgen! He was a nice guy! I liked him. I liked his moth collection. I liked his mother. Jurgen was GREAT.'

'OrJimmy Clarke!'

'Ah! Now I know you're lying!'

'HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT!'

'Jimmy Clarke told me himself you'd been to bed together.'

'He's a lying bastard! Anyway! That was before I knew you! I don't want to talk about any of this!'

'Then why d'you start it?' Lucy was now yelling at the top of her voice. Dan found his drive to do whatever it was he'd previously felt driven to do shrivel into a limp rag of confusion. He'd actually forgotten what they had started arguing about.

'Oh, Dan!' Lucy threw her arms round him. 'Why are you always so far away?'

'I'm here, Lucy!'

'But I never seem to get through to you. I love you.'

'And I love you,' replied Dan, and he kissed her, and she felt how far away he really was.

'Oh, Dan, let's get married,' she said.

'Oh, sure. We're on an alien spaceship - God knows how many light years from Earth and you want to organize a wedding.'

'You know what I mean,' she said.

'It's no good rushing these things.'

'Dan, we've been living together for thirteen years! We can't ever rush anything now!'

'Let's get the hotel up and running, and then we can talk about it,' said Dan sensibly, 'You do like the rectory?'

'Of course I do. I'm crazy about it.'

'Except that it doesn't exist any more.'

'We'll get it rebuilt - Nigel got a great deal on selling off Top Ten Travel. We'll rebuild it - better than it was - and make it the best little hotel in the goddamned world'

'If we ever get back.'

'If we ever get back,' agreed Dan.

They looked round at the so-called 'Captain's Bridge' with its library, its video collection, its chess boards and cards tables, its jacuzzi, billiard tables, cinema complex and gym, and they wondered how the hell they were ever going to find out how to control something that didn't appear to have any controls in the first place.

'Lucy,' said Dan.

'Oh! Don't start again! He wasn't doing anything!'

'I wasn't talking about that,' replied Dan.

'Good!' retorted Lucy. One point scored.

'You know this video game that seems to be based on the Starship itself?'

'Uh-huh?' Lucy was staring out of the windows above the console of games.

'Well, it's sort of changing.'

'I know this is stupid...' said Lucy. 'But you don't suppose that computer game isn't a computer game?'

'You mean - might it be an actual display showing those things coming towards us?' By now, Dan was also looking out of the window. A squadron of small, clumsy-looking spacecraft were hurting towards the Starship. Dan checked. Their movements correlated exactly to the motion of the spacecraft on the video display,