The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

by John Boyne

  “It was two weeks before the start of the World Cup,” continued Matthias. “Everyone expected Germany to win as long as I played in every match. But just before the start of the tournament, I was contacted by the Space Academy to tell me that my number had been called and I had been selected for this yearlong mission. Only the mission began the following Tuesday. And the World Cup began on Wednesday night.”

  “Ah,” said Barnaby.

  “Exactly. I had to choose.”

  “And which did you choose?” asked Barnaby—the other six turning at that point to stare at him.

  “Maybe he is an idiot after all,” said Wilhelmina.

  “No, no,” said Barnaby, realizing his mistake. “Of course. You chose space. I get it.”

  “I chose space,” agreed Matthias.

  “And he’s not much looking forward to going home, are you?” asked George.

  “Not much,” he admitted. “My family will want nothing to do with me.”

  “I was supposed to take over the family farm,” said Wilhelmina, who didn’t like to be left out of a good moaning session. “But I didn’t want to spend my days shearing sheep and sending cattle off to market. My old man had to put one of my half-wit brothers in charge instead of me when I went to the academy. He hasn’t spoken to me since.”

  “And what about you?” asked Barnaby of George Abercrombie. “Does no one in your family speak to you either?”

  “I don’t have a family,” said George, looking down at the table and rubbing at an invisible stain there. “I wanted to be an astronaut because I was lonely. I only wish I had all these chaps’ problems.”

  Which brought that particular conversation to an abrupt end.

  Chapter 22

  The Space Walk

  Over the next few days, Barnaby got to know each of the astronauts a little better and grew to like them all. His favorite pastime on board Zéla IV-19 was sitting on one of the cushioned seats by the portholes and staring down at the slowly rotating globe that was the planet Earth far below. In the morning he would look out and see North and South America and remember his time on both continents. And there was Canada at the top and the Atlantic Ocean, which, when he returned a few hours later and looked out again, led to Ireland. But the best time was at the end of the day, when he could make out Australia and New Zealand, those two familiar shapes that meant home. He was fascinated by the ring of green and blue that acted as a perimeter around the continent, and the browny-gray expanse in the center. He would stare at it for long periods of time, filling in the places like he used to do in geography class. Perth over here, a small dot on the west coast. Sydney over here on the southeast. Melbourne at the base, just above Tasmania. Uluru, north of center. Canberra, where the government worked, down in the south. Byron Bay, home of his favorite living writer. He’d come to their school once, and for weeks afterward the queues at the library doors stretched halfway down the corridor. In the evenings he swapped stories of antipodean life with Wilhelmina and was delighted to learn that when the spaceship finally returned to Earth in a few days’ time, they would be touching down just outside Sydney.

  “So I’ll get to go home at last,” said Barnaby.

  “You sure will. Happy?”

  Barnaby nodded, but for the first time, now that returning home seemed like an actual possibility, he started to feel a little uncertain. He wanted to go home, of course. He’d been trying to get back there for a long time, after all. So why did the prospect suddenly make him feel so nervous?

  “Last space walk!” roared Naoki Takahashi on their final morning in space. “My space walk! Great pride for Naoki Takahashi! Great pride for Japan!”

  “I’ll get the suit,” said Dominique, pressing a button on a wall. A hidden door opened to reveal a shiny white spacesuit.

  “Wow,” said Barnaby, his eyes opening wide as he stared at it.

  “This is the most expensive thing on the spaceship,” said Calvin. “Which is why there’s only one of them. If we didn’t have one of these, we wouldn’t be able to breathe on our space walks.”

  “Or go where we want to go,” added George. “It is made of a special material that allows us to control our movements out there. Otherwise, we’d just drift off through middle space and on into outer space.”

  “What do you do out there anyway?” asked Barnaby, who was intrigued by the equipment that was being brought up and the extraordinary white suit that Naoki was climbing into.

  “We gather air samples,” explained George. “Also the debris—flotsam and jetsam that floats through space. We measure air pressure and temperature. We take readings of sound and light as it travels to and from the Earth.”

  “Does this rope feel quite right to you?” asked Dominique of no one in particular. “The tension feels a little off somehow.”

  “We’ve all gone on space walks, Barnaby,” explained Calvin, ignoring her. “Dozens of times. There’s nothing to it. But it’s vital information for the scientists and geologists back on the home planet.”

  “Can I go?” asked Barnaby, filled with enthusiasm now; this would be something to tell Henry when he eventually got home. “I’d love to go on a space walk.”

  “Sorry, kid,” said Calvin. “It’s not just for fun, you know. This is important scientific research. We can’t have any distractions.”

  “Oh, please!” begged Barnaby, and for a moment he thought that the astronauts were going to allow it, but in the end they shook their heads.

  Naoki Takahashi made his way through into a separate chamber, which was completely sealed before another door opened slowly on the opposite side and he stepped out into the vast unknown, his movements as graceful as a dancer’s. He stretched his arms wide, connected back to Zéla IV-19 by nothing more than the strong white rope that Dominique had been uncertain about earlier.

  “How long will he be out there for?” asked Barnaby, watching his every movement through the porthole, envying him this great adventure.

  “Ninety minutes—we have to make sure to watch the clock,” said Wilhelmina. “He only has enough oxygen for that amount of time. If we leave him out there any longer, he’ll suffocate and die.”

  It was difficult to make out exactly what Naoki was doing. Every so often he would remove some scientific instrument from one of his pockets, hold it out in front of him for a minute or so, then replace it in his pocket and zip it up. Sometimes he would take an unusually shaped bottle, open the lid, wait, reseal it, and zip that up too. It all seemed to be going perfectly.

  Until something went wrong.

  “The rope!” cried George, pressing his face against the porthole as the white cord that connected Naoki to the spaceship shivered and trembled for a few minutes, making the astronaut turn upside down and rotate. His arms flew out from his body, and he looked back at the spaceship with a confused expression on his face.

  “I knew there was something wrong with it,” said Dominique, panic rising in her voice. “I said as much. But everyone ignored me.”

  “Bring him back in,” ordered George, and Matthias pressed the button that was supposed to wind the cord back into the spaceship and the astronaut back into the airtight chamber—but the moment he touched it, there was a horrible sound like elastic being pulled too far and breaking, or a balloon being inflated more than it should be and popping, and the white cord snapped, leaving Naoki Takahashi floating in space with no way to get back to them. He waved in their direction, and they waved back to indicate that they were working on the problem as they all gathered round the table with diagrams and schematics.

  “We need to take a second cord out,” said Calvin. “If we get him connected to the ship again, then we can reel him back in. I’ll go out with one.”

  “No, I’ll go,” said George, who liked the idea of being a hero.

  “If you’re going to fight about it, then I’ll go,” said Dominique, who was already imagining her appearance at the Élysée Palace to accept her award for bravery.


  “If anyone’s going out there, it’ll be me,” insisted Wilhelmina.

  “This is a tremendous joke,” said Matthias, laughing heartily. “This clearly calls for German efficiency. It’s a job that requires the attention of Matthias Kuznik.”

  “Talking about yourself in the third person again?” asked George, shaking his head. “That’s exactly the kind of arrogance we don’t need, thank you very much.”

  The astronauts all started to talk over each other, each insisting that they should be the one sent out to rescue Naoki. Barnaby glanced at the clock. The minutes were ticking away. So was Naoki’s oxygen supply.

  “I’ll do it,” he said in a quiet voice—so quiet in fact that the five astronauts didn’t even hear him at first. “I said, I’ll do it,” he repeated, louder now, and they turned to look at him—a little irritably, as if he was just getting in the way.

  “Don’t be silly, Barnaby,” said Wilhelmina. “You’re not a trained astronaut. If we sent you out there, you’d lose control of yourself. You have to be used to floating.”

  “If there’s one thing I am definitely used to,” he said, rising up to his full height and placing his hands on his hips defiantly, “it’s floating.”

  “Can we risk it?” asked Dominique, looking around. “He’s just a kid.”

  “A kid who wants to help,” said Barnaby. “And none of you can agree among yourselves. So please let me do it. It’ll be an adventure. Plus, I’m brave, you know. Really I am. And time is running out.”

  They all looked out of the porthole toward Naoki, who was beginning to drift a little.

  “Are you sure you can do it?” asked Calvin, putting his hands on the boy’s shoulders and looking him directly in the eye.

  “No,” said Barnaby. “But I can give it a try.”

  “Good enough for me,” said George. “All right, everyone. Let’s get the rope. You take it out and give it to Naoki. He’ll know how to reattach it to his suit. Once that’s done, hold on to him and we’ll reel you both in together—understand?”

  “Got it,” said Barnaby, trying not to think about the hundreds of butterflies floating around in his stomach.

  And so he was fitted with a mask and a tank—great fun—and sent through the airtight chamber and out into space. It felt good to be floating again; he felt more like himself than he had since arriving at Zéla IV-19 the previous week. It was peaceful out there too: all the noises and troubles of recent times seemed to fade away into nothingness. For a moment Barnaby thought how peaceful it would be to spend the rest of his life floating in space, never having to worry about anyone or anything except passing comets. But these pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Naoki Takahashi waving frantically at him and turning over and over in despair as he floated in all directions. Barnaby kicked his legs as if he was swimming and floated toward him, handing him the rope like he’d been told, and within a few seconds Naoki had reat-tached himself to the ship. Barnaby held on tight and the astronauts brought them both back inside.

  “You’re a hero, mate,” said Wilhelmina later when they were all gathered for a celebratory meal of food tablets and purified water.

  “Great shame for Naoki Takahashi,” said Naoki sadly, bowing his head in despair. “Great shame for Japan.”

  “I like being an astronaut,” said Barnaby, grinning. “Can I go for a space walk again?”

  “Not now, sorry,” said George, strapping himself into the front of the spaceship. “We can’t risk any more disasters like that. There’s only one place we can go now.”

  “Where’s that?” asked Barnaby.

  “Home.”

  Chapter 23

  Everything They’ve Told You Is True

  The spaceship touched down near the Berowra Valley Bushland Park at three o’clock the following afternoon. On their descent, Barnaby started to feel that familiar floating sensation getting more and more pronounced, until he was forced to put on his safety belt or risk floating up to the capsule’s ceiling.

  Barnaby had never experienced anything like the noise that was produced when the front of the rocket detached itself from the rest of the capsule, leaving them flying along in something that looked more like a clunky aeroplane than anything else. Finally, the engines began to decelerate, the wheels descended, and they made it safely back to Earth. A long line of dignitaries from each of the countries that had provided an astronaut were on hand to welcome them back to the home planet. Science ministers from New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and the United States jostled with each other to get to the front of the line in order to ensure that they would be in all the photographs, but the Australian foreign minister, who was used to dealing with unruly children, made them stand in a horseshoe shape and declared that only when each astronaut appeared could their government representative step forward. There was a lot of grumbling about this, but it was Australian territory, so Australian rules had to be obeyed. The British minister poked his French counterpart in the ribs and said, “It’s all your fault, Luc,” but the Japanese minister was having none of that sort of bullying and slipped behind him to give him a wedgie.

  After the engines had been turned off completely, Justin Macquarie, a Sydneysider who not only was head of the International Space Academy but also happened to be a direct descendant of Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie, at whose chair in the Botanic Gardens a terrible thing had once happened, stepped forward and cleared his throat.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, tapping his finger against the microphone, “it gives me great pleasure to welcome Zéla IV-19 back to Earth after a long and successful mission. These astronauts have brought great pride to each of their families—more perhaps than they might have done in any other field of human accomplishment. And now may I ask them to leave the spaceship and meet the welcoming committee, after which they should go directly through to baggage reclaim to collect their suitcases, which I believe are being delivered to carousel number four.”

  One by one the astronauts emerged, blinking, into the afternoon sunlight, a little unsteady on their feet as they descended the rocket’s staircase. When all six were standing together in line, the band began playing the first of the six national anthems, and they were only in the middle of “La Marseillaise” when first the tuba player, then the saxophonist, then the violinist each stopped in surprise. The music became discordant and the conductor tapped his stand in embarrassment, but by now everyone’s eyes had turned to the doors of the spaceship, where what looked like an eight-year-old boy had just emerged from Zéla IV-19 with a parachute attached to his back.

  “Who on earth are you?” asked Justin Macquarie, stepping forward.

  “I’m Barnaby Brocket,” said Barnaby.

  “You speak our language!”

  “Of course I do.”

  “How did you learn it?” asked Mr. Macquarie in a slow, careful voice, as if talking to a foreigner who had only a basic grasp of English.

  “I don’t know,” said Barnaby, trying to remember when he had first learned to speak. “It’s something I picked up when I was a baby.”

  “You assimilated it,” said Mr. Macquarie, nodding thoughtfully. “From the conversation of the astronauts. You can learn, then. Perhaps we can learn from you too,” he added loudly, a wide smile spreading across his face as he tried to look accommodating. “I’m sure there are many things that you can teach us.”

  Barnaby thought about it and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s possible, I suppose,” he said. “Although I haven’t been to school for a while, so I might be a little rusty. My geography is pretty good, though. I’m quite well traveled for a boy my age.”

  The audience started to talk to each other in loud voices, but Justin Macquarie turned to hush them, afraid that their noise might antagonize the space creature. “You believe you are a boy?” he asked.

  “Well, I am a boy,” said Barnaby, confused. “I might be only eight, but I know the difference between boys and girls. And I am def
initely a boy.”

  “How did he get in there?” shouted the German minister, looking around for a parent who might have allowed their child to slip under the barriers and run in to explore the spaceship.

  “He’s with us, sir,” said Matthias Kuznik, but the German minister shook his head and turned away.

  “I can’t even look at you,” he said quietly. “Fourth!” he added dramatically. “We couldn’t even win the third-place play-off—the most pointless fixture in the global sporting calendar.”

  “Great shame for Matthias Kuznik,” said Naoki Takahashi, shaking his head. “Great shame for Germany.”

  “But what do you mean, he’s with you?” asked the New Zealand science minister.

  “We found him,” replied Wilhelmina White. “He just came floating toward us, so we took him in.”

  “Everyone inside,” said Justin Macquarie, clapping his hands loudly at the microphone. “And put this boy in quarantine for the time being. I need to have a think about this.”

  At the word quarantine, two men dressed in yellow rubber protective suits with helmets covering their heads came running toward Barnaby, picked him up under each arm, and dragged him inside the terminal. They ran down some long corridors; up a flight of stairs; past a swimming pool, a sauna, and a decompression zone; then down again through a series of narrow passageways, where a code was punched into a keypad, and they entered a large white room to find a dozen white-suited scientists working together in perfect silence. The scientists turned in unison, stared at Barnaby, blinked, then returned to their test tubes and microscopes. In the corner of the room stood a glass cell with a single white seat inside.

  “Code?” asked the scientist sitting closest to the glass cell, turning to one of the men holding Barnaby with an expressionless expression on his face, if such a thing is possible.

  “Twenty—two—nine—twenty—nineteen—sixteen,” replied the man. The scientist gave a barely perceptible nod of the head as he tapped the numbers into a computer, and the glass front opened silently. Barnaby was thrown inside, the doors closed, and he found himself alone, staring out at his captors. Of course, as he was no longer being held by the yellow-suited men, it was only a moment before he began to float upward and found himself pressed against the top of the glass box, looking out at them from above and counting their bald spots. One or two of the scientists glanced over and studied him for a moment, but they soon turned away; they had clearly seen many strange and unusual things in their lives—this would barely merit a place in the top one hundred.