Terry Jones: Starship Titanic

He slipped unseen down the service entrance, and waited in the shadows until he saw the security robot stop to take its scheduled rest-break (as laid down by Blerontin law). He then hurried across the open forecourt and disappeared into the shadow of the temporary construction workers' sheds. It was not as if he didn't have a perfect right to be there - it was just he wanted to do this without the usual fanfare and the welcoming party and the official guided tour and all the usual commotion that accompanied his public visits. He wanted to commune with his creation alone.

He looked up. There was the Assembly Dock, looming up into the night sky far, far above him. It stretched a good mile up, and the Starship - his Starship - his baby - rose up another half mile above that - ready for blast-off at midday tomorrow - precisely.

The silk coverings flapped in the breeze that swept across the Observation Arena, over the Administration buildings and around the Dock Structures. Leovinus felt a surge of emotion sweep through his body and engulf his magnificent brain, His heart missed several beats. His knees turned to jelly. But it was not his pride in that stupendous structure that gave him butterflies in the tummy. Nor was it the exaltation that, after all these years, it was finally complete that made him feel like a schoolboy on his first date. No, what made his hand shake as he sleeked it through his greying locks was the thought that in there - in those vast halls and state rooms Titania was waiting for him.

As Leovinus leaned towards the Starship, the wind picked up, blasting dead leaves, old snack-wrappings, torn religious journals, pages of sentimental verse, knitting patterns and all the other usual detritus left behind by construction workers, across the Servicing Area. The sheeting that covered the Starship flapped frantically, like the Great Ghoul in the ancient filmed entertainment The Great Ghoul Frightens A Lot Of Folk. Leovinus shuddered with a childhood memory of fear. Then he shuddered again as he suddenly saw a figure slip from the base of the launching gantry into the shadows opposite the main steps of the Starship.

The moment he saw that figure, he knew, deep in his bones, with that certainty that comes of being absolutely without any doubt whatsoever, that everything was about to go terribly, fearfully wrong.

Cautiously he edged round into the shadows where he had seen the figure disappear.

'So?' a voice spoke to him out of the darkness. It was a voice that made his stomach relocate itself around his knees - a voice that made him want to be sick - to be anywhere but where he was. Leovinus looked around for a means of escape, but it was too late. 'Last minute check-ups, eh?' The figure stepped out of the shadow and confronted him. It was that dreadful Journalist from the press conference.

'Haven't you tormented me enough? Haven't you already ruined a day that was meant to be one of the greatest days of my life?' That's what Leovinus wanted to say, but he merely mumbled: 'Oh. It's you.'

'Are you afraid something's going to go wrong with the launch?'

'Of course not!' Leovinus adopted just the right cold tone that gave nothing away. 'I've merely come to pay my regards.' He liked to be thought of as a bit of a sentimentalist as well as a great brain.

'But come on! You must be a bit worried. Everyone knows that the workmanship here on Blerontin has not been a patch on the Yassaccans - in fact, you know and I know, Blerontin craftsmanship is nowhere near good enough to finish a ship of this sophistication.'

'Just because the Blerontin Government chooses to employ the Amalgamated Unmarried Teenage Mothers' Construction Units there is no reason to think that the work is in any way slipshod,' retorted old Leovinus. 'I have every confidence in their work.'

'I don't believe you,' replied The Journalist.

'Very well! I'll show you!' The Great Man saw his private tête-a-tête with Titania being blown away on the wind that now buffeted them, as a small unlit work platform carried them up one of the service gantries that surrounded the great Starship.

It was only when you started getting this high up, thought The Journalist, that you really began to appreciate the full scale of the enterprise. The launch area below receded into darkness and silence, as they rattled their way up the side of the vast Starship - higher and higher - until the great keel broadened out and they reached the main body of the ship. A short walk across another gantry and they were at the main doors of the spacecraft. An entry-coder received Leovinus's fingerprint and cross-checked it with a blood sample, recent hair-loss estimate, and favourite recreational activity. The doors slid open and the two entered.

The Journalist had, of course, often been in Starships, but he had never been in a Starship like this. It was magnificent, astonishing. It was built with luxury star-travel in mind. It was built to last. It was built to impress. What's more, it was still being built! Two workmen were slipping into the service elevator, as Leovinus and The Journalist entered the Embarkation Lobby.

'Just some last-minute adjustments,' one of them mumbled to Leovinus and they were gone.

'Hm,' said Leovinus in a way that The Journalist freely translated as: 'I wonder what those two could have been up to? They surely can't still be making adjustments this near to launch? And why didn't I know about them? I'd better check everything.' It was, you understand, a very free translation.

'Donkey-Data-Bases!' exclaimed the Greatest Living Genius in the Galaxy. 'Look at that!'

The Journalist looked. He saw a smartly dressed robot wearing headphones, and standing on the polished marble floor of one of the most elegant rooms he had ever stood in. The design was typical Late Leovinus and yet it was imbued with a spirit that was new. It had a lightness that some critics had thought lacking in much of his earlier work, and the colours were vibrant and yet warm and welcoming. Perhaps Leovinus had at last got in touch with the feminine side of his nature - or perhaps the gentler, more approachable feel of the Starship's interior owed something to the many little finishing touches introduced by Titania.

The Journalist was at a loss to see why the great man was so angry, but Leovinus was already striding across to the far wall. There he yanked at a decorative panel. 'Upside down!' he yelled. 'I sometimes think I have to build the entire ship with my own hands!' And he produced a screwdriver and proceeded to replace the panel in the correct position. 'Can't they see the entire ambient structure of the room is destroyed by exactly that sort of inattention to detail?'

The Journalist made a note in his thumb-recorder.

'Welcome to the Starship Titanic.' The smart robot was now addressing a light-fitting that protruded from the wall. 'Allow me to show you the facilities available to Second Class Travellers.' The thing then turned smartly on its heels and walked straight into the nearest closed door. There was a clang and the robot fell backwards onto the highly decorative marble floor. 'Here you may see the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class!' it announced proudly and extended a whitegloved hand at the ceiling.

The Journalist made another note in his thumb-recorder.

Leovinus's reaction to the robot's minor mishap was also noted down in The Journalist's thumb-recorder. It started off as 'blank disbelief' and ended up as 'cold fury'. In between it went through a fascinating range of adjustments all of which were noted down by The Journalist: 'surprised dissatisfaction' was rapidly replaced by 'stupefied indignation' which in turn quickly became 'bitter resentment' which equally quickly was transformed into 'burning thirst for vengeance' and so to 'cold fury'.

'Brobostigon!' murmured the Great Man, 'That bastard has been skimping on the syntho-neurones!'