'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!'