Oli, A Very New Moon

by Carl Derham

  *

  The army convoy pulled into RAF Northholt, where a hangar had been prepared for their arrival. Several men wearing white coats were pushing pieces of electronic equipment on wheeled trolleys into position and four floodlights on long poles formed a square into which the lorry driver skilfully reversed the trailer. The tractor unit was unhitched and ushered out of the hanger by two armed guards. When the doors were fully shut with the armed guards stationed outside, the tarpaulin was pulled off the ship. One of the men in white coats gave a little whistle as he gazed up at their prize.

  Doctor David Branith had been working for the top secret UFO Investigation Department for five years. When he started the job, shortly after completing his PhD in astral physics, specialising in the speed of light, and the potential for faster-than-light travel, he was full of excitement at the thought of being the first to prove the existence of extra-terrestrial life. During his PhD, he postulated that without the ability to break the light barrier, travelling to other star systems was physically impossible. He hadn’t actually made any definitive discoveries, but he had presented some interesting equations that substantiated the need for continued experimentation. He firmly believed, given the number of stars in the galaxy and the number of possible planets circling those stars, that there must be other life out there and taking into account the age of the galaxy, some civilisations could be millions of years old. The reality of the task at hand was somewhat different. He’d taken soil samples from possible landing sights, examined thousands of photographs taken by the public and proved that most of them were fakes. He knew that the rest were also fakes, but hadn’t been able to prove it. He’d visited crop circles and was convinced that they were the work of very clever vandals and he had begun to seriously doubt the existence of UFOs. Over the last few years, he’d become increasingly despondent and started doubting the merit of his chosen path.

  Now what the hell was this? He thought, scratching his receding hairline and looking up at the jet black craft. He walked around the trailer, running his hand over the smooth material and looking for any sign of a door; but there was nothing. The hull was as smooth as glass.

  Doctor Branith called his assistant to help him wheel the steps alongside the ship. The steps were usually used for washing the windscreens of large military aircraft, but by chance they were exactly the right height to reach the top of the ship. He climbed the steps and crouched down to look along the smooth rounded top of the ship. Whoever built this, he thought, had technology way beyond anything that we’re capable of. He tried to mask his excitement at the thought of getting inside it and pulling it apart. He was just about to step off the top step onto the ship when one of the technicians called up to him.

  “Do you think that’s wise David? I mean, it could lift off with you on top.”

  “I think if it were going to lift off, it would have done so by now, don’t you?” he replied, stepping gingerly onto the roof of the ship in the same way that a person would step onto newly formed ice.

  He went down on his hands and knees, crawling along the vessel, fanning his hands out as he went, trying to locate some evidence of a door. He gave the hull two short taps with his knuckle. There was no reply, although Robbie and Pardy had to contain their appetite for mischief more than ever before.

  The door must be on the underside of the hull, thought Doctor Branith. They would have to raise it off the trailer so that he could examine it. The first job however, was to try and make contact with whoever was inside, if in fact anyone was inside. The ship had definitely arrived within the past twelve hours, following the previous low tide. If the ship turned out to be empty, then they had to face the serious dilemma that the owners were running around London. They placed a magnetic limpet speaker on the hull, but it didn’t hold. The material was nonferrous. So they used the suckers to secure it. The computer then broadcast the message that had been recorded for just such an occasion.

  “What do they mean?” asked Pardy. “Welcome? I feel about as welcome as a Goaf Pog at a uniting.”

  Then they heard a series of electronic blips and squeaks.

  “What kind of language is that?” she asked.

  “It’s very basic binary code saying exactly the same thing as the message,” replied Robbie. He resisted the temptation to send back a binary code telling them to clear off!

  Doctor Branith and his assistants began an inspection of the hull with an electronic magnifying glass on wheels. At one hundred times magnification, after one hour of searching, they found no cracks or joints. It was as though the craft had been carved from a single piece of material. The two steel woven straps, strong enough to lift a passenger jet, finally arrived. They were wrapped around the front and back of the hull as far as they could be pushed. They were secured at the top and extra chains were bolted to four huge steel eyes in the floor. Pardy and Robbie were watching the activity on the control room screen and it became apparent that the cranes had not yet arrived. This was their chance. Pardy could fly out, place the charges on the chains and when they blew, there only remained the hangar doors between them and freedom. The charges were only the size of a peanut, so Pardy could carry them in her claws. She stood on the elevator platform in the cargo bay and was raised to within half a metre of the ceiling. She wasn’t frightened, just beside herself with anticipation, just like preparing for a game of wingsphere. Robbie zoomed in on the nametag on Doctor Branith’s coat and the next second his mobile phone rang.

  “Yes? Branith here.”

  “Hello Doctor Branith,” said Robbie. “This is Warren Colwyn.” Doctor Branith knew the Minister of Defence very well and had spoken with him many times before, but Robbie had taken a clip from a BBC interview with the minister and synthesised his voice perfectly.

  “David, I need you to clear the hangar immediately. We’ve had reports of strange radioactive readings at the landing sight. I’m sending down a team of specially equipped men to check it out, but until then I want you to bolt it down and move out.”

  “We’ve had no readings of that kind here Warren. Radioactivity was the first thing that we checked.”

  “Just for half an hour please David. I’m sure there will be no problems, but I want to err on the safe side.”

  “OK Warren, but half an hour, no longer. I’ve got the cranes arriving to lift it in forty minutes.”

  Doctor Branith called the officer in charge and told him to clear his men out. Then he rounded up his colleagues and moved them out of the hangar onto the tarmac runway.

  The ceiling of the cargo bay opened and the lift placed Pardy on the roof of the ship. She flew straight to the chain holding the rear of the ship, landed on it and placed the charge in the middle of a link. It felt so good to stretch her wings that she thought she’d do a couple of circuits of the hangar.

  “Damn,” said Doctor Branith, “I’ve left my cigarettes on the table in the hanger.” And with that, he walked back to the small door on the side of the building and entered. As he crossed the floor, he saw a flash of green above the ship. He turned with such a jolt that his glasses fell off the bridge of his nose and bounced across the floor. He wasn’t particularly short sighted, and even without them he could make out the colourful bird flying around the ship. He felt around the cold concrete floor whilst not taking his eyes away from the intruder, eventually finding his glasses and hurriedly replacing them.

  “There’s a bloody parrot in here!” he shouted to the men outside.

  The army sergeant peered through the open door and looked up to where the Doctor was pointing. Pardy had just landed on the front chain and hadn’t seen the Doctor.

  “Well bugger me,” said the Sergeant in a broad Bristol accent, which Pardy heard loud and clear. In fact, so loud and clear that it startled her and she dropped the second charge. It bounced along the top of the ship, almost in slow motion and as she watched with gritted beak it reached the curve at the front of the ship, accelerated and rolled over the edge, plummeting
towards the hangar floor. Her immediate thought, apart from oops, was; is it going to go off? And so she dived for cover behind the ship.

  “How the hell did that get in here? I’ll get a couple of the lads and we’ll catch it.”

  Realising that the charge wasn’t actually going to blow the whole place to high heaven, Pardy who was a bit embarrassed by her fumble, swooped around the front of the ship to retrieve the charge and in full swoop, just off the floor came beak to boot with the rustic sergeant. She let out a squawk and zigzagged around him with the agility of a gazelle or, for that matter, a parrot. The Sergeant made a grab for her but missed by a country mile. Pardy flew around the ship and up into the roof of the hangar, where she could clearly see the Doctor looking up at her and next to him was the Sergeant with his size twelve, Hobnail-clad foot, resting right next to the explosive. Pardy had worked out that these humans, although very strong, were not particularly agile, so with confidence she flew down and landed on the back of a chair on the other side of the hangar. She turned her back on the two men and pretended to preen herself.

  “Oh you are clever,” said Robbie, watching the story unfold with increasing glee.

  “You go that way,” said Doctor Branith, gesturing to the left of the ship. “I’ll go this way and we’ll catch it between us.”

  They silently crept towards Pardy, staying in the shadows. As they got to within a few metres of her, the Sergeant, who was slightly closer and considerably faster than Doctor Branith, made a dive to grab her. Pardy, who had been watching their transparent approach in the reflection of a window spread her wings and lifted off, arching around the flailing arms of the sergeant and leaving him to crash unceremoniously into the metal-framed chair, sending it skidding noisily, across the floor. She flew around the ship, skimming the floor and with one smooth movement that would have made her school coach proud, grabbed the explosive charge in mid-flight and with barely a flap soared back to the top of the ship. She placed the charge in the middle of the chain and flew back towards the hanger floor, where Doctor Branith was helping the stricken sergeant to his feet.

  “Hold on Sergeant,” said Branith, “it’s coming this way. Maybe it’s tame and will come to us of its own free will.”

  Pardy landed on the lip of the electronic magnifier, a safe distance from the two men.

  “Actually, I’m a she and not an it, and as for being tame, well call me it again and you’ll discover just how tame I really am.” She threw her head back in disgust and flew back to the ship, feeling like Queen Pardy. The two men were left open-mouthed as they watched the parrot land on top of the ship and disappear inside.

  “Did you have to do that Pardy?” asked Robbie, “we were trying to make a clean getaway.” He couldn’t keep up the pretence for long though. He'd actually nearly blown a circuit through laughing when he witnessed the faces on the two men.

  “It? Tame?” squawked Pardy. “I’ve never been so insulted!”

  The Sergeant summoned his men and as the first of them entered the hangar, Robbie blew the two charges. The four men jumped and as one, automatically drew their weapons at the double firecracker sound. The chains fell in a heap on the floor and the ship hovered silently, a metre above the trailer.

  Doctor Branith watched in dismay as it turned on the spot through 180 degrees to face the main doors. The soldiers had positioned themselves in front of the doors and were pointing their rifles at the ship.

  “Oh please,” quaked Robbie, his voice trembling with mocked fear, “Don’t shoot. I give up.” Pardy laughed so loud that she had to flap her wings to stay on her perch. Robbie activated the Matter Transform Bubble and slowly raised the ship to the roof of the hangar. As it approached the roof, Doctor Branith could only watch in disbelief as the steel rafters and corrugated sheets disappeared. The hole was growing and taking on the shape of the ship. The sergeant ordered his men to open fire and a volley of rifle bullets bounced off the underside of the ship, ricocheted back to the hangar floor taking out a few of the windows at the rear and completely destroying the incredibly expensive magnifier.

  “Stop! You fools!” shouted Dr Branith. “They might shoot back.”

  He watched as the ship cleared the hangar and as it left, the roof reformed behind it. He ran out of the hangar and looked up just in time to see it disappear vertically at an inconceivable velocity. He sunk into a slouch and sighed. He’d lost the prize of his life and it had been piloted by a parrot with an attitude. This was a day that he would not forget in a hurry. When he called Warren Colwyn to inform him of their loss, he discovered that Warren had no recollection of their previous conversation.

  “Hey! Are you two coming to join the party?” shouted Ed. Oli stuck his head through the serving hatch of the kitchen.

  “Sorry guys, just sorting out our travel plans. Be right there.”

  Oli was over the moon to hear that the ship was safe. Robbie had decided that it would be best to wait for nightfall to come and pick them up, so they had a whole day to enjoy with the party crew.

  After a couple of hours, Ed went out to the kitchen and returned with a candle. Everyone knew what was coming. His favourite party trick involved holding his hand over a burning flame for ten seconds without moving. He secretly coated his hand in a flame resistant gel in the kitchen and the room erupted with fake rounds of applause as he once again dazzled them with his powers of pain control. Oli couldn’t resist the temptation and gave the Go-ring a little tap. He reached across the table and placed his hand over the flame. After about ten seconds he started looking around the room and whistling an inane tune, the kind that you might hear coming from a building site on a Friday afternoon. He looked at his watch after twenty seconds and sighed, then started humming the Countdown theme tune. He thought he’d better not push the bounds of believability, so he took his hand away and there was a genuine round of cheers from everyone. Everyone that is, except for Ed, who was already in the kitchen, squeezing his tube of gel to check the contents.

  As the party continued in London, Robbie took the ship to the far side of the moon to await nightfall. He was also at the party and enjoying every minute.