by Cas Lester
‘Try again, Scrummage,’ said Harvey, fighting to stay calm. ‘And this time press 1.’
‘But that’s fibbing!’ gasped Yargal.
‘No, it’s tactics,’ said Harvey. ‘If we live, we’ll get a licence. If we don’t – we won’t need one.’
Scrummage did the whole thing all over again, but this time he pressed 1.
‘Please proceed to Bay 14 and dispose of your waste,’ said the digital voice. ‘Thank you for using the Toxic Garbage Dump in the Dork Quadrant and have a nice day.’
Fortunately the Toxic Garbage Dump in the Dork Quadrant is quite small so it didn’t take long to find the right docking bay.
Maxie rapidly reversed the Toxic Spew into Bay 14. Literally.
SCRUNNCH!
There was a sudden jolt as the rear rocket booster whacked into the side of the dumping bay.
Everyone gasped, except Harvey. ‘Steady as she goes, Maxie.’
‘Whoops! Careful!’ joked the computer. ‘You don’t want to blow it at the last minute – ha ha ha!’
‘Again, not funny,’ said Harvey.
‘Oh, cheer up! You might only have about three minutes to live – don’t waste them being grumpy!’ it said, with a gobsmacking lack of tact.
Three minutes
‘Stop counting down!’ yelled Harvey.
Maxie steadied the ship and Scrummage switched the Garbage controls to ‘unload cargo’ mode. Harvey felt the Toxic Spew judder as the enormous hatch to the cargo hold slowly peeled open.
‘Just a couple of minutes left … ’ started the computer. ‘You won’t go without saying goodbye, will you?’
‘Computer! Shut up!’ snapped Harvey.
Two minutes
Gizmo switched the main monitor to cargo cam and everyone held their breath as they watched the image of the huge rubbish removal jib arm shovelling the garbage slowly towards the open hatch.
It seemed to take forever.
It was deadly quiet on the bridge. It was also deadly dangerous. But finally the pile of trash reached the opening and toppled down the drop shaft and safely away from the Toxic Spew. Everyone leapt up and cheered with relief.
They’d done it!
KA-BOOM!
Or maybe they hadn’t …
Chapter Nineteen
Out of control
RED ALERT! RED ALERT!
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
The ship was whizzing round wildly like a balloon that’s been blown up and then let go (except it didn’t make that rude farting noise balloons make). And worse, they were rocketing through space – completely out of control! Maxie wrestled with the flight controls. ‘I can’t stop it!’ she cried.
Everyone clung on for dear life as they spun round faster and faster. Harvey shut his eyes. His stomach was struggling to keep up with the rest of him.
‘I’m going to vomit!’ announced Gizmo.
‘Mulitcoloured upchuck!’ cried Scrummage.
‘Yes, probably!’ agreed Medical Officer Yargal.
(Guess what – it was chaos on the command bridge of the Toxic Spew. But hey, what’s new?)
Harvey forced himself to open his eyes and look through the vision screen at the stars and planets spinning round crazily. He immediately wished he hadn’t. He also wished he hadn’t eaten Yargal’s Supersonic Special. A hot rush of sickness swept over him and the pizza threatened to reappear. It had been bad enough seeing it the first time.
It’s a good job the Toxic Spew has a powerful artificial gravity system. Otherwise the crew would have been flung to the sides of the command bridge and whizzed round like clothes in a washing machine set to ‘super spin’.
DAMAGE ALERT! DAMAGE ALERT!
… shrieked the warning system.
‘Computer! Cut the alarms and give me a status report!’ ordered Harvey.
‘Oh dear,’ it said. ‘It’s all gone horribly wrong. On the one hand you were lucky the Explo-Foam didn’t blow up inside the cargo hold. But on the other hand you were very unlucky that a nanosecond after you had dumped the stuff, it did explode – and slap-bang next to the left-hand engine. Which is now either:
a) shattered
b) wrecked, or
c) bust.’
‘Can we fix it?’ asked Harvey.
‘How would I know? I’m not the Senior Engineering Officer!’ snapped the computer and bleeped off.
‘Captain, I’m not sure I can repair it,’ said Gizmo through clenched teeth, trying not to throw up. ‘But the other engine is still working.’
‘Which is why we’re whizzing round so fast our guts are going to tangle into a knot of knitting and we’ll be strangled to death by our own innards!’ yelled Maxie, still battling at the flight desk.
‘If we carry on spinning we’ll damage the other engine too!’ warned Gizmo.
‘In that case, cut power to both engines!’ demanded Harvey.
Gizmo did, and the Toxic Spew slowly stopped spinning, and began drifting aimlessly through the darkness of outer space.
Lost in space
They had no idea where they were. The blast had hurled them, spiralling, a gazillion miles across outer space. The blackness through the vision screen was dotted with strange distant planets and unfamiliar stars. Maxie was using the 3D star map trying to work out where in the universe they had ended up. Fat chance. It’s hard enough finding where you are on a 3D star map when you know where you are in the first place.
The trouble with being lost in space is that there aren’t any helpful signs saying ‘Straight on for the Gallipian Nebula’ or ‘Planet Pandromeda left at the roundabout’. And it’s not like you can open a window and ask a boy on a bike.
While Maxie checked the star map, Gizmo tried to find out why the left-hand engine had stopped. He tried every test in the book (the book was The Idiot’s Guide to Space Engines). He even tried turning it on and off few times, unplugging it completely and thumping the engineering desk. Nothing worked.
‘Captain,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s broken.’
(If you’re not mechanically minded you could miss the next sentence – it won’t mean much to you anyway.)
‘It’s either the hyperdrive gearing nodes or the mega-drivebelt or maybe the nova-drive robotic plates,’ he said.
Harvey looked over Gizmo’s shoulder at the image of the engine on his monitor and tried to understand him. Then he noticed something.
‘Um … what’s that?’ He pointed to a dark splodge on the screen.
Scrummage went over and all three of them peered at the shadowy blob.
‘That? Oh … ah … ’ said Gizmo pretending he’d seen this already. ‘Or … it could be something stuck in the engine!’
‘Looks like a chunk from an Explo-Foam tub to me,’ said Scrummage drily.
It was. And you don’t need to be a space mechanic – sorry, ‘Senior Engineering Officer’ – to know that engines don’t work very well if they’ve got clumps of metal stuck in them.
Gizmo groaned. This was his worst nightmare. If there was any damage to the engines it was his job to fix them – even if that meant going outside. ‘Outside’ as in ‘out of the ship and into the vast and terrifying inky-black nothingness of outer space’. It’s not that he’s a wimp. It’s just that when you’re flying around the galaxy, nice and safe inside a spaceship, you kind of want to stay inside – where it’s … well, nice and safe.
(I’m sorry to bring it up again but since you’re from Earth, you’re probably wondering just how dangerous and scary it is to do repairs on the outside of a spaceship in deep space. The answer is: very.
Think about it. How would you like to clamber out of a plane to fix a broken engine … while the plane is actually flying thousands of miles up in the sky … and in the dark? I’m guessing not much.)
Going outside
Gizmo had no choice. If he had, you can bet your pet hamster he would have stayed inside. For several moments Gizmo just sat gazing at the image of the broken engine on his monito
r, trying to ignore the fact that the rest of the crew were looking at him expectantly.
‘What are you waiting for, Senior Engineering Officer Gizmo?’ sneered Scrummage. ‘That engine won’t come to you!’
‘Gizmo, are you all right?’ asked Maxie quietly.
‘Yes, fine … er, thank you. Right then,’ he said limply. ‘I’ll go and get kitted up and, er … go outside then.’ Reluctantly he headed for the doorway of the bridge.
Harvey followed him. ‘I’ll help.’
If you’d slapped the entire crew round their faces, one after another, with a raw quarter-pound beef burger they couldn’t have been more surprised. Never in all their multiple intergalactic missions had anyone ever, EVER, volunteered to go outside.
‘You don’t have to do that, Captain! It’s my job,’ said Gizmo bravely.
‘Yes, it’s his job!’ said Scrummage, meanly.
‘I know,’ said Harvey. ‘But it’s my job to support my team … er … crew.’ He headed off the bridge. ‘Let’s go, Gizmo.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!’ said Gizmo, who was more grateful (and more gobsmacked) than he’d ever been in his entire life.
Chapter Twenty
Spacewalk!
The exit pod of the Toxic Spew looks like a grubby, short, round tunnel. The plasti-glass window in the door is smeared with finger marks and odd splatters of … well, frankly, who knows? Harvey peered in. On the far side he could just make out the large circular door hatch. A jumble of grubby space suits, helmets, boots and backpacks cluttered the floor. It looked like the Highford All Stars changing room after a really rough match.
Gizmo slid open the airlock and Harvey followed him in. Then it swooooshed closed behind them.
(Can you imagine how Harvey felt about doing his first spacewalk? He was ‘over the moon’ [actually, he really was over the moon. Over the moon and about 3.7 gazillion light years away, to the left])
Harvey could hear his heart pounding in his ears. But he forced himself to watch carefully as Gizmo clambered into his silver space suit. Harvey had no idea how to put one on, but he didn’t want Gizmo to know that.
The Toxic Spew is kitted out with Super Economy Space Suits. They’re all the same size: Large (or in Harvey’s case: Much Too Large). They have built-in gloves and sealed boots to make them airtight.
It’s absolutely vital to put the life support pack on properly. Basically, there are two crucial hoses. The oxygen one goes into the helmet, and the other one (for poos and wees) goes … er … somewhere else.
Whatever you do, you don’t want to get these two pipes muddled up.
Once they’d scrambled into their space suits, they clipped on their lifelines.
(Since you’re from Earth – and I promise that’s the last time I’m going to mention it – I should probably explain that a ‘lifeline’ is just a posh space word for a long bit of old nylon rope. You tie one end onto your belt and the other onto the ship. Not very technical, I know, but probably the most important piece of an astronaut’s kit.)
The absolute nothingness of outer space
Gizmo checked to make sure both lifelines were firmly attached, then he opened the exit hatch and they stepped out of the spaceship into … nothing … the absolute nothingness that is outer space. Airless and silent and empty – except for a million stars and planets stretching out endlessly, and of course, one tatty little intergalactic garbage ship, which was comfortingly near.
For Harvey it was …
MINDBLOWING!
And also embarrassing. Moving about was much harder than he’d expected. He thought it would be like swimming, where you push or pull yourself through the water. But in space there’s nothing to push against, so you just float there waving your arms and legs, and looking ridiculous.
Gizmo was confidently pulling himself along the side of the Toxic Spew by hanging onto any sticky-out bits. It’s a risky tactic. Some of the sticky-out bits were so battered and wobbly they might well have broken off.
Harvey couldn’t get the hang of it. His legs caught in his lifeline so he let go of the ship to sort them out, and immediately started somersaulting backwards.
He heard Gizmo’s voice through his helmet radio.
‘Are you all right, Captain?’
‘Yes, fine, thank you,’ said Harvey, who was by now completely upside down and hopelessly tangled.
‘Only, you seem to be having a bit of trouble,’ continued Gizmo. He helped Harvey roll the right way up and then gently shoved him back to the ship.
‘It’s best to hold on, Captain.’
‘Of course,’ replied Harvey, grabbing onto some sort of metal thingy on the side of the Toxic Spew.
They hauled themselves round to the huge metal case of the left-hand engine. They could easily see the chunk of metal jammed into the side. But they couldn’t reach it.
(You would think, wouldn’t you, that people who build spaceships would make sure the lifeline cables are long enough to reach all the really useful bits on the outside of the ship? Well, they don’t.
On the Toxic Spew the cables are about two metres shorter than the distance from the exit pod to the left-hand engine. Worrying, isn’t it? It was for Harvey and Gizmo.)
Stretched to breaking point
Meanwhile, Maxie and the others sat anxiously on the command bridge. They couldn’t see Gizmo and Harvey so they didn’t have a clue what was happening. Maxie nervously chewed her nails and Yargal sucked noisily on one of her tentacles.
‘Do you have to do that?’ snapped Scrummage.
‘Yes we do!’ said Maxie. ‘If it bothers you, then perhaps you can go somewhere else. You know, like outside … with the others.’
‘You should be out there helping Gizmo,’ said Yargal. ‘Not the Captain. It was your fault.’
‘No it wasn’t!’
‘Don’t start,’ snapped Maxie, whose nerves were stretched to breaking point. ‘I’m going to radio them. Bridge to Gizmo, can you hear me?’
There was no reply.
(Look, I don’t want to make a big drama out of this moment – don’t worry, nothing bad had happened. It was just that Harvey and Gizmo were too busy having a massive row to hear her.)
‘Are you crazy?’ cried Gizmo.
‘Only for about a minute! Just as long as it takes me to get to that bit of metal and give it a shove.’
‘No! It’s rule one of the Intergalactic Travel and Transport Pact rules and regulations regarding repairs outside a spaceship. NEVER UNCLIP YOUR LIFELINE.’
‘Do you have a better idea?’
‘Er … no.’
‘Well, then,’ said Harvey, unclipping his lifeline and handing it to Gizmo. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.’
Gizmo watched Harvey haul himself towards the engine. ‘Just don’t let go of the ship, Captain!’ he said.
For goodness sake, I’m not that stupid! thought Harvey.
Harvey edged his way round and, clinging onto the side of the engine casing with one hand, jiggled the lump of metal with the other. It was quite loose. It just needed a good hard shove.
So Harvey gave it a good hard shove – with both hands.
Which was a mistake. A big mistake. Actually, it was … the biggest mistake of his life.
Because the metal chunk broke away much more easily than he’d expected … and Harvey plummeted after it! He made a frantic grab for the ship, but too late, and his fingers closed on … nothing!
‘Gizmo! Help!’
Gizmo kicked against the ship and launched himself as hard as he could towards Harvey, but he could only go as far as his lifeline would let him. Desperately, they lunged for each other’s outstretched hands … but missed – by about half a centimetre …
… and Harvey floated off into space.
‘Captain!’ cried Gizmo. ‘Captain!’
Chapter Twenty-one
‘I’ve lost the Captain!’
Maxie kept on trying to get Gizmo on the radio. Scrummage and Yargal wa
ited nervously. And at last they heard his voice. Which should have been a huge relief. But wasn’t, because he said:
‘I’ve lost the Captain!’
‘What?!’ wailed Yargal.
‘How?!’ spluttered Scrummage.
‘He unclipped his lifeline.’
‘Why did you let him do that?’ cried Maxie.
‘Splattering sick buckets! You did it on purpose!’ cried Scrummage. ‘So that you can be captain!’
‘I did not. How dare you!’
Yargal sobbed and flailed her tentacles hysterically. ‘Do something, someone!’
‘Calm down!’ snapped Maxie. ‘We have to find him.’
They urgently looked through the vision screens around the command bridge, hoping they could locate Harvey. They couldn’t.
‘Gizmo, can you still see him?’ asked Scrummage.
‘He’s about fifty metres away from the left-hand engine.’
Maxie switched the flight desk monitor to Space-Scan. There were two slowly moving blips – one was just drifting along and the other was gently turning backward somersaults.
‘That’s him!’ she cried. ‘Computer, lock onto the captain, and bring him back onboard!’
‘Don’t be silly!’ snapped the computer. ‘I can’t transport a person who’s revolving round like a Catherine wheel! He’ll get all scrambled and end up with his ears on his knees, or his feet on back to front, or his fingers up his nose … or even worse.’
‘What are we going to do?’ cried Yargal.
The crew exchanged horrified looks. But no one had a clue.
Which was a shame, because Harvey’s fate was in their hands.
Captain adrift
Harvey watched the Toxic Spew drift further and further away.
It was the first time he’d seen it properly from the outside. He hadn’t realised how grubby and battered and tatty it was. He could just make out what was left of its name, in massive yellow capital letters:
