The Journalist had by this time found a sort of microphone. He pushed a switch and bellowed into it.

'STOP! STOP! WE SURRENDER! STOP!' His voice deafened everybody on board the Starship Titanic, but elsewhere there was a terrible silence. Then they heard the enemy for the last time:

'We shall hold you responsible for any damage done to the Starship!'

With that a wave of the smaller spacecraft peeled off from the main fleet and swooped towards them. Points of light spattered out from their guns and the sound of ripping metal shook the great Starship.

'Oh my God!' screamed Lucy.

None of them could have told you how long the attack went on for, but it seemed like several lifetimes to the three figures huddled on the Captain's Bridge. The noise, the vibration, the crashing and bucking of the giant Starship went on and on. Lucy found The Journalist had his hands on her breasts, but decided not to say anything.

When it was all over, they waited and then stood up, trembling and shaking. The first wave was returning to the main fleet meanwhile a second wave was peeling off.

'Here they come again!' yelled Dan, and he and Lucy ducked down once more beneath the console. But The Journalist remained standing, with a curious expression on his face.

Lucy and Dan braced themselves for the gunfire... but it didn't come. Instead there was an odd - rather unmartial - banging on the hull of the ship.

'Yassaccans!' muttered The Journalist. Lucy and Dan both assumed this was another alien expletive, and remained under cover, but then The Journalist nudged Dan and said: 'Look!'

Dan cautiously put his head above the console and peered out of the window: the second wave of spaceships had pulled up all around the Starship, and an army of short and stocky space-suited figures were swarming over the hull, hammering and welding as they went.