Grapeliner

Eighty-year-old Woodhill captains the kind of spaceship that makes any reference to atomic piles seem indelicate: ". . . he looked out at his command which now hung like a bunch of silvery grapes against the stars." The "grapes" are inflatable, twenty-foot plastic passenger capsules. (Unlike their counterparts in Lifeboat/Dark Inferno, they actually work.) It all hangs together, scientifically (including the 'senior officer' bit), but I'd sure hate to build the Airfix model kit. Things go along well enough until the 'grapeliner' encounters an alien spacecraft -- made of glass!