by Cas Lester
Chapter Fourteen
All-out feeding frenzy
By now the rest of the crew had joined Harvey in the food department and had immediately launched into an all-out feeding frenzy. It was gross. Astonishingly gross.
(Can I just say that the scene was so revolting I don’t even want to describe it? You’re going to have to make do with your own imagination and these sound effects.
Believe me, I’m doing you a favour.)
RIP!
TEAR!
SCRUNCH!
MUNCH, CRUNCH!
CHOMP, CHEW!
GUZZLE, GUZZLE, GULP!
BURB … BELCH … BUUUURP!
Harvey, however, was too gobsmacked looking at the food on sale to notice the disgusting table manners of his crew.
He gazed at the ‘Outer Space Fruit and Veg’ display in astonishment. There were dark orange Supersonic Sprouts, something called ‘Sprocolli’ (which looks like a cross between a cauliflower and a head of broccoli and a bright pink brain and tastes astonishingly scrummy – especially the stalks), bags of Mixed AstroNuts, and a heap of Bouncing Bananas, which were an alarmingly bright blue.
Harvey couldn’t resist trying a bouncing banana. He pulled one off the pile.
(No, not to eat, he just wanted to see if it would bounce.) He chucked it onto the floor … hard. It did.
‘Whoah!’ cried Harvey ducking, as the bright blue fruit hit the deck and bounced crazily around like a demented powerball.
BO-IIIIING! BO-IIIIING!
BO-IIIIING! BO-IIIIING!
BO-IIIIING! B-B-B-B-B-BOING.
Harvey finally caught the bounding banana, and put it back. Then he wandered over and scanned the breakfast food shelves. They were stacked with boxes of Astroid Pops, Spaceflakes and packs of Multi-Coloured JellyBread Rolls. He ripped open a packet of Astroid Pops and peered at the contents. It looked like ordinary cereal, so he grabbed a handful and shoved it in his mouth.
It was AWESOME!!!
POP! POPaPOP! POP!
As soon as the cereal puffs hit his tongue they exploded like popcorn, flooding his mouth with the taste of salted caramel, white chocolate, sticky toffee pudding and raspberry sauce. Merrily munching his way down the box he moved along to a section labelled SupaCosmicSupaSpeediSuppers. It was full of tins of Space Noodle Spolognaise with Meateor Balls, Asteroid Risotto with Orbital Onion Gravy and Purple Pasta Planets with 100% Blue Cheese Moon Balls.
‘Blue Cheese Moon Balls? Is that a joke?’ he asked, turning to the crew, who were still scoffing.
‘No,’ said Yargal, between gooey mouthfuls of a pink iced strawberry jam and mackerel doughnut. ‘The Moons of Margherita are made of blue cheese. Don’t you get cheese from your moon?’
‘Er, no,’ said Harvey witheringly, thinking that Yargal was winding him up. ‘We make cheese from milk.’
Yargal quivered like a jelly and snorted with laughter. (Well, technically she snotted with laughter – from both nostrils. Yuk.) ‘Now that’s a good joke!’
Harvey gave up.
Harvey sticks to his guns
After everyone had almost stuffed themselves sick, Harvey, Yargal and Scrummage started loading several trolleys with food while Gizmo and Maxie went off to the hypersonic tools section to find a new hydrosonic hyperdrive lever and a roll of electrical wire. Gizmo grabbed a whole stack of snazzy spare parts and bits of kit and caboodle for the Toxic Spew and put them in a trolley too. He had no idea what any of it was – but it all looked ‘state of the galaxy’ cool.
Looking at the heaps of food and piles of equipment, Harvey asked how they were going to pay for everything. Everyone looked at everyone else and then shrugged. None of them had any space cash – they’d all been hoping he had.
He hadn’t.
‘Who cares?’ argued Scrummage. ‘There’s no one here. We can just do a runner!’
‘We can’t do that!’ cried Harvey.
‘Of course we can’t!’ agreed Gizmo. ‘The security alarms will go off!’
‘Not if we rip the tags off,’ said Maxie, instantly tearing the labels off everything in her trolley.
‘No,’ said Harvey pointedly. ‘We can’t do it because it’s theft.’
‘So?’ asked Scrummage.
Three pairs of turquoise eyes and three googly ones on stalks stared at Harvey blankly.
Harvey took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. ‘Stealing is wrong,’ he explained patiently.
‘Who cares?’ shrugged Maxie.
‘I do!’ spluttered Harvey, and he insisted that if they couldn’t pay, then they should collect the garbage to make up for it and do some tidying up too. The crew groaned, complained bitterly and whinged spectacularly. But Harvey stuck to his guns.
So they all pitched in to clear up the worst of the mess and then Gizmo and Maxie went back to the Toxic Spew in the docking bay to fill up with fuel and give the ship a basic service to try to make it space-worthy. (Huh! Fat chance.) And Yargal carried on piling food into trolleys, while Harvey and Scrummage set off for the garbage control area. Harvey reminded everyone to be careful and keep a sharp lookout.
Something wasn’t right – he just knew it.
(But then, Harvey doesn’t have a lot of experience as a spaceship captain, so he might be wrong.
On the other hand, he might not be.)
Chapter Fifteen
Servicing and supplies
Back outside the ship, Gizmo undid the intergalactic fuel cap and filled the Toxic Spew’s fuel tank up with the Megatron 500 Insta-Refueller pump.
(Oh hang on, I’ve just remembered – you have absolutely no idea what type of fuel goes in a spaceship do you? You probably think it’s something like the sort of petrol you use for those funny little cars you like to travel around in on your planet.
Oh, please.
Most of the spaceships in Galaxy 43b use Three Star Premium GasoLime. This is a supercharged green gloppy goo that looks and smells very much like lime jelly. Whatever you do, don’t muddle the two up. Partly because spaceships don’t run at all well on lime jelly, but mostly because Three Star Premium GasoLime tastes terrible with ice cream – and even worse with peanut butter.)
Maxie was busily using the GalacticAirHose to pump up the front bumper, but there was a big puncture in the inner tube, so it didn’t work.
Then she tried cleaning the front vision screen with the Scrub-O-Matic spray. But the space-dirt was so thick that that didn’t work either.
So she tried mending the broken landing gear with a pair of super hydronic elastic braces. Guess what? That didn’t work either.
Finally, she tested the brakes and lights.
They didn’t work either, of course, but then she knew that already.
Meanwhile, Gizmo had gone back onto the command bridge on the Toxic Spew to fix the wiring on the engineering controls, and replace the hypersonic hyperdrive lever on the flight desk. As soon as the bridge doors schwoooshed open, he gasped and reeled backwards in horror! There were puddles of Gordonzola wee everywhere!
‘GORDON!!!’ he bellowed furiously.
Tempting goodies!
Meanwhile, back in the grocery department of Waitless, Yargal had just about finished loading trolleys and was now struggling to wheel all six of them (one in each tentacle) along at the same time. They just wouldn’t go in a straight line and kept crashing into each other. It didn’t help that all of them were ridiculously overladen, so every time they bumped into anything, piles of packages slithered off.
But it was made much, much harder by the fact that Yargal was constantly tempted by lots of other goodies and treats and kept letting go of one trolley to add something to another one.
‘Oooooh. I must have some of those!’ she said, reaching out a slimy tentacle for some Hovering Fizzy Saucers and Gooey Galactic Gummies.
CRASH … BASH!
‘Ooops!’ she cried gaily, as one of the trolleys smashed into the side of the walkway and nearly tipped over, scattering groce
ries everywhere. Yargal just sighed happily and stacked it all up again.
Ominous noises from the garbage bin
In the garbage control room Harvey was more and more sure that something was very wrong. The funny smell was getting stronger. He wished Snuffles was with him because the huge Hazard Hunting Hound was
a) good at hunting hazards, and
b) huge, and
c) not to mention the owner of more teeth than a fully grown Great White Shark with a good dentist.
Scrummage was also worried. Very worried. But he didn’t want to show it. Not because he’s brave, but because he’s reckless.
I mean, think about it – just because you’re pretending everything is all right, doesn’t mean everything actually is all right and sometimes, usually in fact, it’s probably a good idea to mention that it isn’t. All right, that is. Or not. Or something.
(Sorry, I think I might have confused you a bit there. I certainly confused myself.)
Hurriedly, Scrummage set the garbage controls to AutoSpew and it was about that moment that he and Harvey noticed some ominous noises coming from the industrial-sized rubbish tank in the middle of the room.
‘Flickering spew!’ muttered Scrummage nervously under his breath.
‘Is it supposed to be doing that?’ asked Harvey.
‘It’s probably nothing to worry about. Let’s just get back to the ship,’ said Scrummage carelessly, too carelessly, before he scarpered – at full pelt. Harvey sprinted after him. If there was something dodgy or, more probably, downright deadly dangerous in the garbage room he wasn’t going to stick around to find out what. Not because he’s a wimp but because he’s not stupid.
Yargal had finally managed to get to the exit with her multiple trolleys. Humming a cheerful Yargillian tune merrily to herself, she rounded them up, got them all going in the same direction and pushed through the doors … Instantly every alarm in the entire intergalactic service station went off.
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
She hadn’t thought to take the security labels off.
Alarms screamed – and so did Yargal. ‘Aaaaaaaargh!’
Then suddenly …
and terrifyingly …
Chapter Sixteen
SuperStain and SuperSting
Three enormous security drones zoomed up from out of nowhere, zapping their Stop’n’Spray SuperStain Paintballs at anything and anyone that moved. Which, just at that moment, happened to be Yargal and her trolleys and Maxie at the service docking bay.
ZAP! ZAP! ZAP-ZAP!
They might be called SuperStain Paintballs, but SuperSting Pain-Balls is probably a better name for them.
SPLAT!
‘YEEEOWCH!’ Maxie yelped as a yellow pellet thwacked her in the leg! She gave up trying to service the ship and made a dive for the ship’s exit pod and the safety of the Toxic Spew.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLATTER, SPLAT!
‘OUCH! OWWW!’ wailed Yargal as an orange paintball walloped onto her soft green body, quickly followed by a candyfloss-pink one, and two pale blue ones.
(I’m sorry to butt in at this thrilling moment, but I have an important information announcement for you.
I know it’s not likely, but if you do go to an intergalactic super store anywhere in Galaxy 43b – don’t do anything to upset the security drones.
Because not only do they have six extra-long extending arms – each ending in a powerful metal claw, but two of those claws have guns, and two hold handcuffs. And you don’t have to be a maths genius to know that that leaves two claws spare for grabbing hold of you. Painfully hard.
They whizz around incredibly fast on a single wheel. A blindingly bright red light flashes furiously on top of their cube-shaped heads. They have laser eyes with supersonic sight and X-ray glasses. (Which actually makes them look mega cool.)
They are also ENORMOUS. At least 9 feet 7 inches tall. It’s almost impossible to escape them.
They come in three colours. Red, blue and green – which is all very pretty, but frankly who cares? Because if you’re close enough to see what colour they are, you’re close enough to be in terrible trouble – and even more pain.)
Ducking madly and swatting wildly at the volley of paintballs, Yargal grabbed the first missiles she could reach from the nearest trolley and hurled them at the droids with all her might, letting rip with all six tentacles at once.
‘Take that!’ she cried furiously, hurling half a dozen bright blue bananas at them.
But the flying fruits just bounced straight off the metal droids without even leaving a dent or a nasty blue graze.
BOING!
BOING!
BOINGaBOING!
BOING!
ZAP! ZAP-ZAP!
‘OW, OUCH!’ squealed Yargal as the droids carried on firing mercilessly at her. Dragging her trolleys along with her as she went, she raced to the ship as fast as she could. In other words, very slowly.
KER-SPLAT!
‘OWWWW!!!!’
Actually, make that agonisingly slowly.
Fluttering upchuck!
Harvey and Scrummage arrived at the entrance just in time to see Yargal slither up to the exit pod of the Toxic Spew with three enormous security droids taking pot shots at her. Hurriedly she hurled the shopping inside and then grasping the doorway with all six tentacles, she hauled her quivering slimy body in afterwards.
‘Fluttering upchuck!’ yelled Scrummage.
Which wasn’t wise. Because up until that moment, the droids hadn’t noticed Harvey and Scrummage, but now, to their horror, the security droids turned their supersonic laser eyes directly on to them and trundled towards them – menacingly.
(You know, in that ominous, threatening, robotic way that only robots can really do well.
Except of course you don’t know, do you? Because you’ve hardly invented any droids in your distant corner of the universe, have you?
Honestly, it’s a lot less tricky than you think. I mean obviously, it’s harder than making the perfect pepperoni, pineapple and parsnip pizza with a three chilli cheese and marmalade chutney crust stuffing, but it’s much easier than rocket science.)
‘What are we going to do?’ wailed Scrummage, as the enormous droids zoomed towards them.
Harvey thought about making a run for it. But his Rubbish Officer was a much slower runner – and a much bigger target. And you didn’t leave your teammate … er crew member, exposed like that.
But then Scrummage had a brilliant idea. He radioed the Toxic Spew: ‘Gizmo! The security droids are metal. You can use the Magno Beam to capture them!’
It was a brilliant plan. Except that Gizmo didn’t know how. In fact, only Scrummage knew how to operate the Magno Beam – or any of the garbage collection devices on the Toxic Spew. And let’s face it, this was hardly the time for Scrummage to stop everything and give Gizmo a basic step-by-step lesson.
Well, not with three enormous security droids bearing down on them, it wasn’t.
Then Harvey had another, equally brilliant idea.
‘Scrummage, grab hold of something!’ he ordered and grasping the artificial gravity lever he yanked it to ‘OFF’!
It was a brilliant plan. Except security droid wheels are magnetic so the robots stayed firmly on the deck while Harvey’s and Scrummage’s legs floated upwards until they were floating upside down, the blood rushing to their heads. Harvey promptly yanked the gravity control back to ‘ON’.
But by now, one of the droids (the blue one, actually) was dangerously close.
‘RUN!’ yelped Scrummage, sprinting off, leaving Harvey to race after him.
Fat chance. Within seconds they’d both been grabbed in the robot’s powerful claws.
‘AAAAAARGH!’ they screamed as the droid zoomed off across the deck with its metal extending arms wrapped firmly round them!
Clamped in the painfully tight grip of the merciless machine, Harvey’s mind raced frantically.
Scrummage’s mind, on the other hand, and under the
other arm, panicked frantically. ‘Waaaaah!’ he shrieked.
Suddenly, to his utter horror, Harvey realised they were heading for the Toxic Spew – and Yargal hadn’t closed the exit pod! The entire ship and crew would be at risk if the robot got onto the ship. He had to get the crew to shut the door! He struggled to reach his radio – but his arms were held in a vice-like grip. He couldn’t move.
‘Scrummage!’ Harvey yelled desperately. ‘Can you reach your radio?’
‘Waaaaaaaah!’ continued Scrummage.
Harvey took that as a ‘No’.
Outclassed and outpaced
As a football captain, Harvey always says ‘the game isn’t over until it’s over’. Even if you’re six goals down at half-time, outclassed and outpaced, you don’t give up. So Harvey went for a change of tactics, and started wriggling wildly and violently kicking his legs. He was determined to get free and protect his crew!
(For the record – can I just say how amazed and impressed I am by Harvey’s courage and doggedness?
No, seriously. If I had to choose one word to describe him right now it would be:
Heroic.
Or Valiant.
Or Fearless.
Or maybe Bold?
Or … oh, I dunno … you pick one.)
But the robot only tightened its grip and raced up to the Toxic Spew! Flinging Harvey and Scrummage roughly in through the exit pod, the droid hauled itself up after them. Then, to their astonishment, it slammed the door behind them all!
‘Save me!’ it begged, in a metallic, rusty voice.
Harvey and Gizmo stared at it open-mouthed, way too stunned to speak.
‘I’m not a security droid! I’m a NerdBot 1000! I was sent here by mistake!’ explained the robot. ‘My programmed functions are: cleaning, tidying and making galaxy-class galactic coffee – with soft brown sugar, cream and caramel topping. Not chasing, handcuffing and shooting shoplifters! I did try to tell the manager,’ it complained miserably, ‘but honestly, you humanoids are all the same. You think that just because we robots all look the same we are all the same. Take me with you!’ it rasped, clasping its claws together pleadingly.
