by Carl Derham
*
The music was pumping in the club. Oli and the crew were just getting into the mood when Roberta tapped Oli on the shoulder.
“What's up?” he shouted.
Roberta made a strange gesture across her mouth whilst shaking her head, and Oli took that to mean I can't talk here. So he gesticulated for her to follow him out to a quiet area. They reached the chill-out part of the club and had to step across the minefield of bodies and beer bottles spread about the floor to reach an uninhabited section.
“What's up?” he repeated. But she just made the same gesture.
“Okay,” he said. “If you can't speak for whatever reason, tell me with your hands. You know Charades?”
She took Oli to the corner of the room and turned her back on all the people, not that they would have noticed even if a purple pig wearing a pink tutu happened to be dancing in the middle of the room. She held her hand out and it morphed into the shape of the little ship.
“The ship!” shouted Oli, impressed that he'd guessed it with such ease. He was never very good at Charades and would usually get bored long before the game ended. Then Roberta crossed her hands palm down and moved them outwards several times whilst shaking her head.
“Ah...It's not a ship?” he queried.
She held up the ship replica again.
“Yes,” said Oli, “I got that bit. The ship.”
Then Roberta pointed to her ear and shook her head.
“You can't hear the ship? You can't hear the ship!” he reiterated. “What does that mean? Where is it?”
She held out her hands as though to say, your guess is as good as mine.
Oli realised that without a connection to the ship, the drone was unable to talk, because it was Robbie’s voice coming from her. The drone didn’t actually possess the power of speech. Roberta made a gesture of writing on her hand. Oli understood that she wanted a pen and paper to aid communication. So they headed back to the dance floor to find Sara. She never went anywhere without her sketchpad, even in a club. It always amused Oli; where did she keep it in that skimpy little outfit? He shouted to the crew to follow him outside, to an area where they could talk freely and two minutes later they were all on the busy London street outside the club.
“What's up?” enquired Ed.
Oli explained the problem and handed the sketchpad to Roberta, who scratched away for about one second and handed it back to Oli.
He read out loud. “The Throgloids are back! They have the little ship captive on board their vessel. Robbie has been in contact using a very basic radio carrier wave. The Throgloids are blocking everything else. We need to get to Cranus and set up a connection that will allow Robbie to control it from the little ship. You of course, will need to give the voice command and then we can finish what we started a few days ago.”
“You wrote all of that in less than a second,” said Oli, focusing once again on completely the wrong topic. Roberta gave a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, scribbled something else for a second or two, and then handed it to Oli. Oli scrutinised the image on the page, turning it through ninety degrees whilst simultaneously tilting his head, before finally realising that the word ‘YES’, cunningly emerged from a complex design of leaves and flowers.
“Now you’re just showing off,” said Oli, smirking at the drone.
“There’s only one small problem,” said Oli, not wanting to seem unduly negative. “Cranus is on the moon and we are in London.” Roberta grabbed the pad out of Oli’s hand and wrote again.
“I have a plan. We need to find somewhere secluded. I'll explain on the way.”
They walked along the street, searching for an empty building. Finally after scouring three side streets and one dead end they found an old derelict warehouse. The large, double wooden doors, had a huge padlock and chain securing them. Oli, forgetting for a second who was standing next to him, picked up the padlock, uttered a sigh and started looking around for another place in which to hide. Roberta cupped the padlock in her delicate hand, gave it a little squeeze and it disintegrated. The crew all looked at each other with one silent, unified thought. The door swung open to reveal an empty shell of a building. There were old wooden boxes, smashed glass from all the broken windows, newspapers and a smell that was reminiscent of a city tower block elevator.
“Right, what’s the plan?” asked Oli. Roberta wrote in the pad that the micro-drones making up the figure of Roberta, fortunately nearly all three million could assume any shape they wanted. They would be able to make a single-seat pod transport. Each of the drones was fitted with a micro Graviton Generator, allowing it to fly around the ship to carry out essential repairs. If they combined the power of one million of these Generators, they should be able to reach the moon in about six hours. Robbie would have to stall the Captain until they reached Cranus.
“Sorry guys,” said Oli. “It looks like I'm gonna have to do this one alone.”
Roberta was already starting to change shape. Firstly, she lost all her colour, the red shoes, the mini skirt and crop top and when she was a blank humanoid form, the legs began to dissolve into a puddle on the floor. As more of the body sank downwards, the puddle began to form a bowl shape around the remaining torso and head. The pod that slowly formed was about the size of a motorcycle sidecar with a pointed nose and tapered back end. Roberta’s upper torso sank into the pod and Oli peered in to see it forming a seat and to his delight, two control joysticks similar to the ones on the ship. Four stubby legs appeared from the sides of the pod and lifted it a couple of centimetres off the floor.
Oli was just about to place his right foot into the pod when he stopped.
“Hold on a minute,” he said, speaking into the open pod, “I’ve got a better idea. You know that Mini-Mal surf board leaning against the wall of our flat?”
He assumed the drones had heard and understood. “Well,” he continued, but the pod was already flattening itself into the shape of a board. When it was finished, the board hovered a few centimetres above the ground. There was a small joystick control connected to the board by a length of cable. Oli picked it up and stepped on. He positioned his feet to get a feel for the balance, and then hopped off again. He went round the crew, giving them all big Oli hugs. There were a few tears so he reassured them that he would be fine and said he’d call them all as soon as it was over. He gave the Go-ring a tap and hopped back onto the board which felt as solid as a rock. He waved a final farewell to the crew.
There were no navigation instruments, but the moon was a big enough target to aim for. Oli gave the throttle stick a gentle prod, and the surf board shot forward. The control was a little bit more sensitive than Oli had anticipated, and they shot straight through the brick wall at the end of the warehouse. The explosion of bricks and dust fell away from the board and Oli looked over his shoulder at the crumbling wall, with his four friends gathering in the new opening, shaking their heads and laughing.
“Oops!”
They were hurtling along the narrow backstreet, straight towards a very posh looking furniture shop. He didn't fancy having to explain the destruction of a shop front to its owners, so he lent forward as though he were digging the right hand rail of the board into an imaginary wave. At the same time he put more weight on his rear foot pushing the back of the board down. The board lifted its nose and carved a right hand turn through the air, clearing the roof of the building. He pushed the throttle all the way forward and they shot straight up. He let out a massive ‘yee-ha!’ as London became nothing more than a bright splodge on the landscape. At a height of thirty five thousand feet, they narrowly avoided an AWACS aircraft that had been circling London all night, searching for any sign of the alien craft.
“What was that?” asked the pilot.
“It looked like a youth on a surf board sir,” answered the Second-in-Command. No report was filed.
“Oops,” said Oli, as he fought every urge within him to carve into the wake of the military aircraft and ride the
massive wing as it cut through the air. They cleared the atmosphere and entered space. A most odd feeling thought Oli, as he turned the board to follow the surface of the earth. They crossed the North Sea, flew over Scandinavia and into Russia. Eventually, the new moon rose above the horizon. They continued for a few seconds and the old moon majestically slid into view. They left Earth orbit and he pointed the nose at the target. The micro-drones were creating a distortion field around the board to scramble any detection by the Throgloids. They didn’t really need to do that, as the Throgloids were far too busy trying to break into the little ship to have noticed a surfboard careering towards them.
