by Cas Lester
‘Er … sorry,’ said Harvey, who couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Yes-bye-thank-you-for-coming,’ snapped Maxie. She turned her back on him, pushed up her sleeves and busied herself with the flight controls.
Scrummage and Gizmo went back to their posts.
‘Computer: transport,’ ordered Gizmo.
‘Okey-doke,’ it replied and started to bleep importantly.
Harvey stood leaning weakly against the captain’s seat and gazing through the smeary vision screen at the awesome wonders of outer space. He clung to the arm of the chair and braced himself, expecting at any second to be flung a zillion light years across the universe and into his bedroom. He wasn’t anticipating a soft landing.
Yargal had stayed with Harvey.
‘Are you feeling better?’ she asked kindly, her yellow eye-stalks waving gently in front of his face.
Harvey gulped and forced himself not to react. ‘Yes, thank you,’ he said.
‘Shall I make you a little snack before you go? How about a sardine and chocolate pizza with barbecue sauce?’
Oh, gross, he thought, but not wanting to upset her he said: ‘Thanks, but I’m fine.’
‘Computer, why is he still here?’ demanded Maxie irritably.
‘Because I can’t send him back.’
‘Why not?’
‘I haven’t got his address,’ it said.
Interplanetary Postal address
‘Isn’t it on the SpaceMail he sent?’
‘No … ’ said the computer crossly, its console lights flickering furiously. ‘And since I have an enormous 215 megatronbyte boogleplex memory, don’t you think that if it was I might have spotted it?’
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ cried Maxie.
‘What’s your IP address, Harvey?’ interrupted Gizmo, looking up from the engineering desk and deliberately not calling him ‘Captain’.
Harvey looked at him blankly.
‘Your “Interplanetary Postal” address? You know, it starts with your planet number?’
‘Er … I don’t know.’
There was a stunned silence. In all their multiple intergalactic missions the crew had never met anyone who didn’t know where they came from.
(I’d guess that even on Earth that’s pretty unusual.)
A horrible thought struck Harvey. Although he had always wanted to be on a real spaceship, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be on this horribly grotty one …
Or stuck on it forever.
Chapter Seven
How long?
Harvey forced himself to take a deep breath and think clearly. ‘Hang on. The computer must have had my … IP thingy address, because it found me in the first place … ’
‘Good point!’ said Gizmo, and he and the crew looked at Harvey with respect. None of them had ever managed to catch the computer out before.
‘Technically that’s correct,’ said the computer snippily. It bleeped and its lights flickered frantically. ‘It’s just a question of locating it in my memory bank.’ Bleep. Blibble. Bleep. ‘I’ll have to do a complete search … ’ Blibble. Bleep … ‘Won’t take too long … ’
‘How long?’ asked Harvey.
The problem with having a 215 megatronbyte boogleplex memory is that it can take quite a while to look in all the nooks and crannies.
‘Four years, two months and fifty-seven days,’ replied the computer. ‘But that’s if you don’t distract me.’
‘Four years!’ gasped Harvey – who wasn’t in the mood to bother with minor details like a further two months and fifty-seven days … And he hadn’t even noticed there seemed to be more days in the month than he was used to.
(Of course, you probably did notice, didn’t you? You might even have picked it up at the beginning when I told you the date was Moonsday the 116th of Oort. Galaxy 43b has a very simple calendar system. There are 360 days in a year. Each year is neatly divided into three months of 120 days, and the months are neatly divided into three weeks of forty days. It’s a great system, except you have to wait a long time for the weekend. But then Harvey’s got to wait four years, two months and fifty-seven days … )
‘But what about my family?’ he cried.
‘Oh, don’t worry about them,’ said Scrummage. ‘They won’t miss you at all.’
‘I think they might!’ Harvey spluttered.
Harvey’s mum had cried when he went to football camp for four days – never mind hurtling around the universe for four years without even phoning home.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ said Scrummage. ‘We’ll be able to send you back to the exact same moment in space and time that you left.’
‘You mean you can go back in time?!’
‘Splattering upchuck!’ cried Scrummage. ‘Of course we can. If you travel faster than the speed of light you go backwards in time. Don’t they teach you anything where you come from? Good grief!’ He rolled his turquoise eyes and hitched up his overalls.
‘Actually, where do you come from?’ asked Yargal.
‘Earth,’ said Harvey.
‘Sorry, never heard of it,’ said Yargal.
Harvey looked at the others – but they all shrugged. Neither had they.
Earth: does it exist?
‘Computer!’ said Harvey. ‘Please look up planet Earth.’
‘Earth?’ asked the computer, and it made a few hurried blips and bleeps and its lights trickled on and off for a bit and then it said:
‘Well:
a) I can’t find it, so
b) it probably doesn’t exist.’
(Can you imagine how worrying it is to find out that your home planet might not exist? Possibly not: after all, you’re from Earth too, so you probably don’t exist either, do you?)
But Harvey didn’t have time to worry about that. Maxie slapped the digipad back in front of him.
‘If we’re stuck with you on the Toxic Spew,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to make yourself useful.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Gizmo snottily. ‘We’re not a star cruiser. We don’t carry passengers.’
‘We’re a garbage ship,’ added Scrummage.
‘Never heard of one. So you probably don’t exist either,’ snapped Harvey, getting his own back.
The Chief Rubbish Officer turned slowly to Harvey with one multicoloured eyebrow raised on his purple face. ‘We are responsible for collecting all the garbage in Galaxy 43b!’ he said importantly.
‘Yup! We’re Bin Men!’ said Maxie. Scrummage shot her a filthy look.
‘Er … Bin Men?’ queried Harvey. ‘But you’re a girl, and they’re not … ’ He tailed off because Maxie was glaring at him, her bright turquoise eyes glittering dangerously. He knew that look. It was the one the girls in his class used on any of the boys dumb enough to criticise them.
Maxie raised one white eyebrow and said coolly: ‘Well, what would you call us then?’
Harvey’s brain raced to come up with something that wouldn’t offend her.
‘Er … Rubbish Operatives?’
‘Operatives? We’re not robots or droids,’ spluttered Gizmo.
‘And we’re not rubbish!’ snorted Scrummage.
‘You are!’ laughed Maxie. ‘You’re a Rubbish Officer!’
Scrummage scowled at her furiously.
Harvey’s mind was doing overtime. If he wasn’t careful he was going to upset the entire crew.
‘Bin … er … ’ he stopped. He was just about to suggest ‘Bin People’ but remembered in the nick of time they weren’t exactly people.
‘Bin … er … Aliens?’
‘Aliens?’ gasped Yargal, waggling her tentacles and deeply insulted.
‘OK, how about Bin Beings?’
‘Oh, yuck! We’re not a bunch of manky garbage maggots,’ cried Maxie. ‘Or festering waste-disposal worms … or disgustingly gross junk bugs, trash beasties or any other kind of revolting creepy crawlies that might spring to mind. If it’s all the same to you, we’ll stick with Bin Men.’
Scrummage’s rubbish equipment
‘Yes,’ agreed Scrummage proudly, much to Harvey’s surprise. ‘We’re highly trained, well equipped, professional Bin Men. The Toxic Spew might be a bit tatty, but our garbage gadgets are galaxy class. We’ve got a Nebula 30X-1. Watch this!’
Through the grimy vision screens, Harvey could (just about) see a huge metal web extend outwards and then sweep across the front of the ship.
‘That’s a mega-strong meteor-proof mesh,’ announced Gizmo coming over to join him.
‘Looks like a giant net to me,’ said Harvey.
Maxie laughed.
‘Technically, er … yes,’ said Gizmo glaring down his nose at Maxie.
Scrummage indicated a set of buttons. ‘Now these,’ he said, ‘operate the Megatron 16XL Magno Beam. It can pull massive chunks of metal towards the ship.’
‘So … it’s a magnet,’ said Harvey.
‘Again, um … technically, yes. But it’s very big and, er … powerful,’ finished Gizmo limply.
‘And this … ’ said Scrummage, hitching up his scruffy overalls and grasping a large lever, ‘is the Ultrawave 3.2 Vacuum Pump!’
Harvey watched as a giant hose unhooked itself and snaked about wildly in front of the ship.
‘We’re the only garbage ship in Galaxy 43b to have one,’ said Gizmo pompously.
‘Yes, but then we’re the only garbage ship in Galaxy 43b!’ said Maxie, snorting with laughter.
Gizmo ignored her. ‘It has three settings,’ he boasted. ‘Nova nozzle, supernova nozzle and supernova nozzle plus.’
‘Wow,’ said Harvey, politely.
‘Anyhow,’ cut in Maxie, ‘unless there’s something else you can do, like … fix the engines, do lifesaving operations in the sick room, actually fly the ship … or clean the toilets,’ she added pointedly, handing him the digipad.
‘Fine,’ said Harvey, flicking his hair off his face. ‘I’ll be captain – but only until you can get me home. And you’ve got to promise to keep trying.’
‘I promise,’ said Gizmo.
‘Yeah, I bet you do!’ muttered Scrummage. Gizmo glared at him.
Harvey signed the contract, quickly reading it as he did so.
‘Er, hang on … what’s this bit about danger money?’ he asked.
Scrummage was just about to answer when:
KA-BOOOM!
An explosion rumbled deep in the belly of the Toxic Spew and all the lights went out.
Chapter Eight
Captain Harvey in command (almost)
‘Fluttering vomit!’ cried Scrummage in the darkness.
RED ALERT! RED ALERT!
… screamed the warning alarm.
It was chaos on the command bridge of the Toxic Spew. But hey, what’s new?
At the engineering desk Gizmo feverishly jabbed buttons as if there was no tomorrow. Which there might not be of course, well, not for the crew anyway. There might not even be an afternoon … and the chance of lunch was looking very slim.
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
Harvey gripped the arms of the captain’s chair and tried to keep a cool head.
‘Save us, Captain!’ yelled Yargal, flinging herself at him.
Oh, yuck! he thought as green Yargillian goo smeared all over his school uniform. But he didn’t push her off – partly because he was too nice, but mostly because he didn’t want to touch her with his bare hands.
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
‘Do something!’ yelled Scrummage.
‘I am!’ bawled Gizmo, pounding at the controls.
‘I mean something useful!’ snapped Scrummage.
RED ALERT! RED ALERT!
‘What’s happening?’ cried Harvey.
‘No idea!’ yelled Gizmo.
Good news and bad news
Maxie calmly piloted the ship while alarms screamed all around. ‘Why don’t you ask the computer?’ she shouted at Harvey over the noise. ‘You’re supposed to be the captain!’
Harvey cringed and asked the computer for a status report.
‘I’m so glad you asked me!’ said the computer cheerfully. ‘Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news … ’
Everyone froze – this didn’t sound good.
‘The good news is that:
a) I can get the lights back on, and
b) the ship isn’t going to explode before lunch.
But the bad news is that it probably will explode before bedtime. And I’m not sure that rubbish in the cargo hold is exactly tickety-boo. In fact,’ it added carelessly, ‘some of it just exploded.’
‘Quick! To the cargo hold!’ yelled Scrummage.
‘You’re not the captain – you can’t give orders!’ snapped Gizmo, and everyone looked at Harvey.
‘Er … to the cargo hold!’ he yelled.
‘Oh, well done! Did you think of that all by yourself?’ said Maxie, setting the flight controls to ‘auto-astronaut’.
Everyone pelted off the command bridge. Well, except for Yargal, who slithered … slowly.
‘Wait … ’ she cried. ‘Don’t leave me … ’
Chapter Nine
Grunge and gunk
The crew ran down a series of gloomy metal corridors, their feet clanking and slightly squelching on the steel floor. The computer had managed to restore the lighting. Not that it made much difference. Half the lamps were broken and the rest were covered with grunge. The dim lighting hid the disgusting mould and grime smearing the floors and walls. But it did nothing to hide the sickly smell of rotting rubbish. Honestly, nothing could hide a smell as bad as that.
Harvey lost count of the turnings they took, and all the corridors looked the same to him – filthy.
The crew were fitter than they looked (although Scrummage reminded Harvey of one of those fat Sunday morning football refs who struggle to keep up with the action).
‘Hurry up!’ called Maxie over her shoulder as she ran. ‘You don’t want to get lost on your own ship! How embarrassing would that be?’
Very, thought Harvey.
Finally, at the far end of a corridor, Harvey could see a pair of giant steel doors labelled CARGO HOLD.
Determined not to be last, he put on a final spurt. Harvey was the fastest sprinter on the Highford All Stars team so he had every chance of overtaking the crew.
But unfortunately he hit a large puddle of slippery yellow gunk on the floor, his legs zipped out from under him and he slid the entire length of the corridor on his back. But at least he got to the doors first.
CRUNCH!
‘Owwww!’ Harvey struggled to his feet and, feeling foolish, snapped at the crew as they gathered outside the cargo hold. ‘You need to clean these floors!’
‘No, you need to get some non-slip space boots,’ retorted Scrummage, eyeing Harvey’s school shoes scornfully.
‘And what kind of uniform is that anyway?’ asked Maxie. ‘I mean, is it waterproof, rip-proof, acid-proof, gas-proof – and most importantly, is it maggot-proof?’
‘Maggot-proof?’ asked Harvey. ‘No! It’s just my sch—’
‘Stinking vomit! You’re braver than you look!’ spluttered Scrummage. ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere in outer space without full protective clothing.’
Killer maggots
But then no one would go anywhere in the Toxic Spew without full protective clothing either. Their green overalls kept them safe from 99% of all germs, bugs and other toxic nasties in the Known Universe – even pink killer maggots from the planet Venomoid Flux.
Which is just as well, because the entire cargo hold of the Toxic Spew is one giant rubbish bin. And it’s infested with maggots.
(I don’t know what kind of maggots you get on Earth, but pink killer maggots from Venomoid Flux are no ordinary maggots. They have vicious fangs that rip open your skin and pump pure acid into your flesh. Your insides turn to mush and then they slurp you up like soup.
So it’s a good job the crew have protective overalls, isn’t it? Of course, Harvey doesn’t. But th
en, he doesn’t know he needs them, does he? So he’s just standing there outside the cargo hold in his school uniform, wondering what all the fuss is about.)
But just right now, pink killer maggots from the planet Venomoid Flux were the least of the crew’s worries. Maggots don’t go KA-BOOM! and put all the lights out.
Deadly dangerous cargo
The doors to the garbage hold on the Toxic Spew are impressive. They’re those massive metal sliding ones that look like they’ve got a gigantic clunky zip down the middle. Above the doors are three orange lights that flash if the cargo is dangerous.
Alarmingly, they were flashing right now, bathing the grubby corridor and the crew in a sickly orange light.
Gizmo turned furiously on Rubbish Officer Scrummage. ‘Why didn’t you tell us the garbage was dangerous when we loaded it?’
At this point Yargal finally caught up. ‘Dangerous?’ she cried, her blue tentacles quivering nervously.
Scrummage glanced casually at the flashing orange lights and shrugged. ‘I didn’t know! And anyhow it’s probably nothing to panic about. Some of it’s just got a bit overheated … or … something.’
‘A bit overheated or something? Actually, I think you’ll find something just exploded!’ yelled Maxie.
For a Rubbish Officer responsible for some extremely hazardous waste, Scrummage could be worryingly hazy on the details. He could also be worryingly reckless. And worryingly … er … rubbish. He shrugged. ‘Don’t panic. I’ve carted all sorts of deadly toxic trash halfway round the universe and back for years and I’m telling you it’s fine. We just have to go in and hose it down a bit.’
‘We?’ choked Gizmo. ‘WE?! No way! “We” will stay out here. “You” will go in and sort it out.’
‘Fine,’ said Scrummage, and he hitched up his overalls and tried to look heroic. ‘If you’re all too scared, I’ll go on my own.’
