by Sue Bough
Once more, Ern and Norm exchanged bewildered looks. The Professor skipped over and held Ern’s arm up in the air. “Hold it there… That’s it, don’t move!” he beamed. The Professor moved his head from side to side until the light from his headlamp caught the watch. “Oh, yes, fantastic… and so simple! Why didn’t I see it before?” He threw himself down in his chair again and began crossing out diagrams and scribbling furiously.
“Er… Professor… are you OK?” asked Norm.
“Oh, my goodness yes, young Poggle. Never been better. Once again you have come up with the answer to the problem – here, let me explain.” He stood and wiped some markings off a board on the wall.
“Now, we’ve identified that Drones are afraid of the light, haven’t we?”
Norm and Ernie nodded.
“Good. And we know that the Drones are building a UV ray so they can invade the Dark Side of the Green Planet again?”
More nods and worried stares.
“So, the problem is how to get light over to the Dark Side to scare them off when they get here.”
The Poggles looked bemused.
“Well, thanks to Ernie, we have the solution!”
More confused looks.
“Come, come, it’s simple really.” He drew a circle on the board. “Here’s the Green Planet (scribble), here’s us on the Light Side, and there’s the Dark Side (scribble, scribble). Now, where do we get our light from?”
Norm and Ern felt like they were back in Mr Astra’s Astronomy class.
“From the Dog Star,” they chorused.
“Good,” said Professor Zube. He drew the Dog Star above the Green Planet. “Now, if we use the principle of reflection that Ernie showed us just now, we can use the light from the Dog Star and move it over to the Dark Side using a system of mirrors.”
“Mirrors?” queried Ern.
“Yes. As you know, light will only travel in a straight line and doesn’t usually like to bend around corners, right?”
“Ooh, ooh, yes! Mr Ree taught us that in Science the other week!” exclaimed Norm, delighted to have understood something at last.
“Right! Well, if someone was to stand on the Light Side of the Planet and hold a big mirror up, they could reflect the light of the Dog Star to somewhere else.” He drew a small Poggle on the Light Side, holding a mirror, and a straight line to show the path of light bouncing off.
“As you can see, one mirror would only reflect the light in a straight line and, as we know, the Green Planet is round, so to get the light around the corner, so to speak, we need more mirrors!” He drew a stick figure standing further round the Planet where the Dark Side met the Light. Then he angled the ray to hit the mirror above its head and reflect round to the Dark Side. Finally, he drew another figure standing on the Dark Side whose mirror reflected the light upwards. “Right! Any questions?” grinned the Professor.
“Yes. Can I put my arm down now, please?” asked Ern wincing.
“Goodness, yes! Have you been holding it up all this while? Give it a shake to get the feeling back.”
Whilst the Professor revived Ernie’s numb arm, Norman continued to stare at the diagram on the board. An ominous thought was forming in his head. Was it his imagination, or was the figure standing on the Dark Side a little podgy with a slightly longer middle toe?
“Er, Professor,” Norm hardly dared to ask the question “who is holding that mirror?”
“Ah. Well, it’s funny you should ask that.” The Professor crouched down so that his eyes met Norman’s and, when he spoke, his voice was suddenly serious. “Norman, you are a very special Poggle – no, I know you don’t feel it but, I promise you, it is no coincidence that a Long-Toed Poggle is in existence just at the time when the Green Planet is in grave danger.”
Norman gulped. His heart was pounding and he suddenly felt very sick.
“Now, I know what I am asking of you is an enormous task… and you will have to be a very brave Poggle – just like Scott was – but Norman, I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think you could do it. I think you’ll find you have more courage than you know.”
A sharp intake of breath broke the silence as Ernie grasped what was going on. He tried to make up for it by offering some words of encouragement but he could only think with awe of the daunting task facing his friend.
Strangely, Norman didn’t try to argue. The words of Ilona Quinn (was it only that morning she had spoken to him?) quietly replayed in his mind: ‘Warriors have fought them in the past and new Warriors will be called on in the future… although they may not know it yet.’ Somehow he knew she had meant him and, while every part of him wanted to run away back to his pod and pretend this was all a bad dream, he knew that his task was inevitable. He had to be the one to travel to the Dark Side. He took a large breath and gave a small nod of acceptance.
Professor Zube gave a sad-ish sort of smile in return. “You know it has to be you. With your extra-long toes, you’re the only one who can sense the Drones arriving… At least you’ll be ready for them…”
Behind the Professor, Norman could see his friend’s eyes widen at the mention of the Drones’ arrival, but he himself felt strangely numb.
“Don’t worry, Poggle, you won’t be entirely alone; you’ll have Spong with you. He’s a clever little animal and very useful when the going gets tough – you’ll see.” He ruffled Spong under the chin, and Spong licked his hand affectionately.
For a moment Norm wondered how the Professor knew so much about the class pet. He wished he’d asked Miss Lastic more about the creature and where he’d come from. Too late for that now, though.
“Well, now,” the Professor straightened up and looked at his watch, “it’s getting on, and you two had better head home before your folks wonder where you are. I need to work out the finer details of our plan. It will need some precise trigonometry if it’s going to work.”
“Trigger what?” Ern frowned.
“Trig-oh-nom-eh-tree… Don’t tell me Miss Take hasn’t taught you about it. Angles? Triangles? Hypotenuse…?”
“Oh yes, I think she mentioned something about that,” Ern replied weakly, wondering what a hippopotamus had to do with it.
“Right, well, pop back tomorrow after school. I should have it all worked out by then.”
The mention of school suddenly jogged Ernie’s memory. “Oh Norm – we’ve forgotten your homework – it’s meant to be ready for Miss Lastic tomorrow… We’ll never find any bugs now!”
Norm found it difficult to share Ernie’s concern about the unfinished homework. Faced with the prospect of tackling an army of invading Drones, an empty jam jar where his homework should be seemed insignificant. Rather like being in the path of a tidal wave and realising you’ve left the bath on at home. Miss Lastic probably wouldn’t see it like that, though. Even if he tried to explain why the jam jar was empty again, there was no way she would believe him. He would never hear the end of it from Boris either. Norm shrugged helplessly.
“What’s this about homework?” asked the Professor.
“We were meant to find some bugs to study in class this week,” explained Ern, “only Norm broke his jam jar when Spong escaped. Miss Lastic’s given him till the end of the week to hand his in – only that’s tomorrow…” Ern glanced nervously at Norm.
“Bugs, eh…” said Professor Zube with a slight smile, “and I suppose the rarer the better?”
“Oh yes,” nodded Ern. “I found a Trojan!” he added proudly, unable to help himself.
“Well, I think I might be able to help you there, Norm.” Professor Zube turned and reached over to a ledge behind the model of the Waste Dome that neither Norm nor Ern had noticed before. He gently lifted down a glass tank in which, to their amazement, was a shiny Baracs Beetle.
“Fred!” exclaimed the Poggles in unison.
“Fred?” said Professor Zu
be with a puzzled look. “You mean Ginger. He’s the only surviving Baracs Beetle on the Planet, I’m afraid. Been trying to find him a mate but… well, under the circumstances I think you deserve to have him for your homework, Norm.”
“But he’s not the last!” beamed Norm. “We’ve got one in our classpod – Fred! They’ll be able to have babies!”
“a shiny Baracs Beetle…”
“Only one problem with that,” grimaced Ern as he peered intently at Ginger’s undercarriage. “Fred and Ginger are both boys.”
“Oh.” Norm was crestfallen. “Well, at least they’ll be good company for each other for a while. Miss Lastic will be chuffed.”
The Professor carefully lifted Ginger out of his tank and coaxed him into Norm’s jam jar, sealing the lid tightly.
“Now, take good care of him, Norm,” he instructed.
“Oh, I promise I will.” Norm held the jar up to his face and watched the precious beetle exploring the few grains of dirt in the bottom. Boris will never believe this, he thought, and for a moment he brightened and forgot the awful task that lay ahead.
A Strange Meeting
Norm’s change of mood didn’t last long. Back in his pod he carefully put Ginger’s jar under his bed and slipped into the kitchen where his parents were having supper. He had almost run straight in to show them the Baracs Beetle but realised it would involve a lot of explaining – or more lies. Thankfully, they were distracted by seeing Spong looking so well recovered from his ‘trip to the vet’.
As Spong bounced around happily, performing tricks for morsels of sugarloaf, Norm reflected on how complicated life had become. He toyed with his mug of night tea and only managed a bite of his toast. Arthur Snodgrass gave him a look of concern.
“Why don’t you get an early night, Norm?” he said gently. “I think you’ve been feeding the Firelighters at both ends – it’ll do you good.”
For once Norman didn’t argue, and with a nod mumbled, “Night, then…” and shuffled off to his bedpod.
An hour later he was still wide awake and staring at the ceiling. Madness, he thought to himself. Utter madness to believe I can do this. What was I thinking? Going to the Dark Side on my own will be bad enough… but tackling the Drones… What if I’m shattered? His head began to throb and his toes tingled unpleasantly. Norm sighed.
A sliver of light pierced the darkness as his father peered round the bedpod door.
“You alright, Son? I thought I heard a noise.”
The huge lump in his throat choked any reply Norm could make. Arthur Snodgrass was no fool and could sense a troubled soul in need of comfort.
“Did I tell you the funny thing that happened at work today?” he said as he sat on his son’s bed. Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “Well, we were down at the face of the Sugar Rock Mine… found a lovely tasty seam, and we’d been picking away at it for a while. The Sweep Team were following behind us collecting up all the small lumps and dust for processing, the way they do. Anyway, there’s this one Poggle, Robbie his name is – always complaining about something. Well, he’s lagging behind the sweepers, fussing with his broom and grumbling away to himself about something or other. In the end he marches right up to the boss, and do you know what he says?”
Norm shook his head.
“It’s no good, he says, there’s something wrong with this broom… Three times the handle’s come out and now the head’s fallen off!” Arthur Snodgrass wheezed with uncontrollable laughter. “Do you get it, Son? Three times the handle… and now the head…? Oh, you couldn’t write it…”
At the sound of his father’s laughter, the lump in Norman’s throat loosened its grip. “Dad,” he said, “can I ask you a question?”
“Of course you can, Norm,” his father replied, wiping the tears from his eyes. “What is it?”
“Supposing… hypothetically, of course… that you had to make a choice about whether to do something… difficult, or not, how would you know what to do?”
Norman’s father let his gaze rest on his son for a while. “Now, that’s a good question, Norm… a very good question… one we all have to ask ourselves from time to time. I reckon, deep down, you probably know the answer already.”
“But I don’t,” Norm protested weakly.
“It’s quite simple, really,” his father continued. “You just have to do what you believe to be right… but make sure you do it for the right reasons. That’s all.”
Norman frowned, so his father continued, “Take today, for instance – I felt a bit sorry for Robbie after the fiasco with his broom, so when we stopped for tea I fixed it up with a bit of old wire I keep in my pocket. You never know when it’ll come in useful. The things I’ve made out of old wire – I could write a book! Anyway, unbeknown to me, Robbie showed the boss my handiwork. He was so impressed, he asked me to do a bit of overtime and modify all the brooms. There’s a design fault, and they’re all like it, apparently.”
“That’s great, Dad, but I still don’t understand what you mean.” Norm was confused.
“Well, if I’d have thought to myself, I know, if I help Robbie out, he’ll tell the boss and I’ll get some overtime, I’d have been doing the right thing but for the wrong reason – do you see?”
“Yes, but what if you r-really don’t know what the right thing is in the first place?” Norm’s voice cracked with emotion again.
“Ah, there’s an easy answer to that as well, but you probably won’t like it.”
Norm swallowed the lump that was rising in his throat again.
His father continued, “If you’re faced with two choices but don’t know which is the right one, you’ll usually find it’s the hardest of the two, I’m afraid.”
Yet, rather than alarm Norman, these words had the same effect on him as those spoken by Ilona Quinn earlier that day. The simple truth of them struck him and gave him the sense that he was just a small cog in a very big wheel, a wheel whose every turn was being planned and monitored by brains far greater than his and that, somehow, all would be well.
“OK, thanks, Dad,” he smiled gratefully.
“Anytime, Son. Now, talking of old wire, I’ve an idea for Spong’s cage. We can rig up an automatic feeding system if we get two lengths of wire, a spring and a…” But before he could finish his sentence, Norm had drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.
“Norm had drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.”
*
Beneath Norman’s bed, four pairs of eyes widened in delight.
“Forgive me staring but I never thought I’d see a Baracs Beetle again!” Sherri moved closer to the jar Norman had hidden. “My name is Scheherazade, but you can call me Sherri – I’m delighted to meet you. You must have quite a tale to tell.”
Ginger did. In the quiet darkness he told Sherri his life story. He spoke of happy days spent scuttling around the planet with his many friends, and dark times as, one by one, they had all died of starvation. He explained how the waste-pipe system had destroyed their only means of finding food. The pipes whisked it all to the Waste Dome where it simply fermented and became poisonous. In desperation, Ginger had followed one of the pipes to the Wasteland, where Professor Zube had found him and taken him in.
Sherri was horrified, but Ginger had more to tell. By the time he’d finished, the Scudder knew all the details of Professor Zube’s plan and the part Norman was to play in it. Sherri thanked Ginger sadly and climbed onto Norman’s pillow. Gently, she whispered her most comforting stories into his ear as he slept.
*
Norm felt like a different Poggle in the morning. Firstly, it was a beautiful day. Even though it was never fully dark on the Light Side of the Planet, the green morning glow from Sirius had a certain quality to it that always lifted his spirits as it filtered through the Zube Tube openings close to the surface. Then there was the fact that he would be marching prou
dly into class with his trump card to play. He chuckled happily as he fed Ginger a few globs of dung from the bottle Professor Zube had given him.
I can’t wait to see the look on Boris’s smug face! he thought as he did a little jig round his bedpod, sending Ginger spinning round the jar, waving his feelers in protest.
“Whoops, sorry, Ginge! Didn’t mean to give you a headache.”
The disgruntled beetle wiped some smears of dung off its shell with its back legs and began to digest them.
“Crikey, I never realised how much you beetles ate,” Norm marvelled, as he poured the last dregs of dung into the jar. “This bottle was full last night!”
Seeing the creature gorging itself suddenly reminded Norm that he was RAV-EN-OUS! He looked down at his stomach, which was slightly less podgy than usual. An empty rumbling from within reinforced the fact that he’d not had a good feed for days.
After two rounds of baked hasbeans on toast and a large mug of Mrs Snodgrass’s famous pick-me-up tea, Norm felt almost like his old self. He clipped on Spong’s lead and slipped Ginger into his bubble bag. Sensing Norm’s change of mood, Spong trilled happily, and a few minutes later they were trotting off to school with Ernie.
A large crowd of Poggles gathered in the playpod and there was a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘wows’ as Norm held Ginger’s jar aloft.
“Nice one, Norm!” The words of praise came from the unexpected voice of Jeli Mould.
“Th-thanks, Jeli,” said Norm in amazement. Was Jeli blushing?!
“What? Is he your new boyfriend now or something?” Boris Whinge’s voice was laden with sarcasm. “It’s only a dumb beetle.”
Jeli hung her head and slunk into the school pod behind him. Before Norman and Ernie could exchange thoughts about this curious incident, the bell rang and they were caught in the scrabble for the doors.
Miss Lastic’s face was a picture when, a few moments later, Norm placed his jar of homework on the podium in front of her. It was several minutes before she could speak.
