My immediate reaction to the MarkVI's announcement was that surely
the LUCA was far too advanced a craft to be equipped with anything
so quintessentially 20th and 21st century as ventilation ducts, for how
could a vessel that seemed capable of mastering such hurdles of
classical physics as area-to-volume ratio and the fearsome ionising
radiation of interplanetary space, not to mention such bafflements as
energy sources and means of propulsion - secretly I had begun to
believe that our vessel used a somewhat inelegant form of worm-like
locomotion derived from its remarkable ability to range through size
changes at will, quite independently of the laws of physics as known
in our universe, which would mean that far from darting through the
solar system as an elegant, streamlined duchesse brisŽe, she
advanced in a manner more akin to the motions of an adult puff
adder, in other words she had found a means to adapt crepitation to
space travel; but this, of course, is mere speculation on my part as I
had no means of observing our vessel from without, nor of confirming
my suspicions from within - be reliant on so antiquated a form of
breathable air dispersal as ductwork? The LUCA was, I had become
convinced, a living entity in itself, and the fact that my brief traverse of
the Balmoral corridors had brought to my notice several different
models of these remarkable day beds, encouraged me to believe that
an entire fleet of spaceships was docked within our monarch's private
property without so much as raising a tweet of concern amongst the
flow of visitors and personnel, not to mention familial members, clan
chiefs and the merely curious intruder like myself. And as a living
entity she respired a breathable atmosphere for all those who sailed
on her; no doubt she was capable of tweaking her internal
environment so that her shipmates, as I liked to think of us, could be
energised or sedated at will, the full control of her workings lying in
the management of the console, which we were so eager to reach,
and which, for the time being, could only be manipulated in medieval
Tuscan. But such are the workings of fate, never simple or
straightforward, they seem to delight in placing impediments in the
path of ordinary mortals as if there were some pleasure to be derived
by some unknown being from observing the convolutions we are
forced to adopt in the simplest of manoeuvres!
The MarkVI was no entity with whom one could contest a course of
action. If we were to make our way through ductwork, then so be it,
