'Everyone here is holding their breath and keeping their fingers crossed,' whispered the Head Reporter of the Blerontin News Gathering Bureau into his invisible microphone. 'No one has yet even caught so much as a glimpse of the fabulous Starship, but everyone is certain that it will not only be the most technologically advanced but also the most beautiful Starship ever to have been created. It is, after all, the brain-child of Leovinus, to whose architectural genius we owe the great North - South bridge that now links our two polar caps, to whose musical inspiration we owe the Blerontin National Anthem "Our Canape´s Triumph Daily", and to whose unsurpassable mastery of ballistics and biomass energetics we owe our third sun that now shines above us with its own famous on-off-switch... But there's news just coming in that... what's that?

Ladies and gentleman and things, it appears that the great Leovinus has gone missing! Nobody has seen him all day. Surely they can't start the launch without him... but the crowd are beginning to demand some action... And uh-oh! What's that?'

A sour note had swept through the crowd, as a band of short individuals, dressed in ragged overalls and flat caps, suddenly forced their way into the spectators' area. They were shouting in a language no one could understand (because of the ban on translation blisters) and they were brandishing indecipherable placards.

'It looks as if the Yassaccan delegation has managed to gain entry!' An edge of alarm had entered the Head Reporter's voice. This was mainly because he had his entire commentary written down in advance - as he always did. The thought that an unforeseen turn of events might now force him to look at what was actually going on and then improvise was a nightmare that had dogged his sleep for all the years that he had been in the reporting business.

'Um!' said the Head Reporter. He felt his head going light. 'Er!' He fought for breath, as he felt his bowels starting to move. 'Oh! Ahm! What can I say?' He was praying that the words would come to him. In his recurring nightmare - the one that he always had after eating snork chitterlings - he was in this very situation - something unforeseen had occurred - his script was whisked away by some unseen hand - and the words just never came.