He beamed with the delight of somebody who has just recited a stock answer for the first time.

The First Officer went on to explain that pirate ships roamed space assessing the defences of target vessels. If a ship was too well-defended, the pirates would leave it alone. The Invincible was equipped with millions of undulating pins, attached to her inner hull. So long as they vibrated in unison, the ship was rendered invisible. The circuit was completed at the passenger door, where a guard was posted to defend against sabotage.

‘When we get airborne you’ll feel a jolt as the system engages,’ he continued, wiggling his hips to illustrate the point. ‘The pins will be undulating in harmony, and we’ll disappear completely. Poof! We’ll be undetectable.’

His hand swept the air like a conjurer performing a vanishing trick.

Tancredi felt nervous as he squeezed himself through the portal. In his eagerness to escape one mad world, was he crawling into another?

He inched along a tunnel, emerging into an atrium the size of a cricket pitch. His anxiety was not calmed by what he found – his fellow passengers in an ecstasy of whoops, claps and cheers, worshipping the ship’s invincibility. Some were performing a can-can for no discernible reason.

Suddenly, Tancredi felt a blow to the back of his head. He had been hit by the slide section of a trombone. A band consisting of trombones, bass tubas, piccolos and kettle drums was marching up and down the deck, playing a single note. The bandsmen wore yellow costumes, with helmets from which sprouted gigantic ‘I’s. They were followed by a troupe of cheerleaders dressed in similar garb. The girls high-kicked and careened in every direction, linked arms and chanted:

‘Invincible! Invincible! Yes! We’re invincible!’

In their train appeared a trolley filled with all kinds of memorabilia, from little models of the ship to lollipops in the shape of the defensive pins. There was no short-term thinking here.

Presently, Tancredi turned his attention to a giant screen in the atrium. This showed the figure of the Captain, a man of Italian origin named Pizza, bustling about the ship’s control room with all the gravitas of his position.

He appeared to be making adjustments to the ship’s instruments. The room was, in fact, a stage set: the Invincible was operated by the Captain’s thoughts.

‘Welcome, spees cruisers,’ Pizza boomed through a speaker, ‘to the inaugural voyage of the Invincible, the safest ship in the univairs!’

Urged on by the band, the passengers cheered, and cries of ‘Invincible!’ rang out.

‘Soon we begin our spees hadventure.’

He turned towards a panel with a button set in its centre.

‘As I press this button – Avanti! La! We go!’

The passengers gave another cheer, and awaited the moment of lift-off.

The button, of course, did nothing. The Captain pushed it with a flourish and thought ‘Go’. Immediately the Invincible’s engines roared into life. Tancredi felt the deck vibrate beneath his feet. This was the bad part, take-off, that feeling of airlessness, of being an insignificant dot in a giant flying capsule.