You know, dripping showers and faulty microphones were nothing compared to that take off. It was a bit hairy, I can tell you. It went something like this…
‘Let go moorings fore and aft!’ the captain barked.
I heard the sound of docking clamps detaching and falling away…
‘Thrusters astern. Dead slow!’ he barked next.
…I heard the engines hum into life and felt the ship begin to move…
‘Rotate 180 degrees for flight!’
…I watched the spaceport begin to move across the front window as the ship swung slowly round…
‘Engage main engines! Take her out.’
…and I felt a jolt and we were accelerating.
There was a porthole in the corner where I was standing, and I watched the terminal buildings starting to shrink as we pulled away. We were climbing, that was for sure.
I whispered a last goodbye to my mum and dad, and to them trying to stop me doing my experiments. I whispered a last goodbye to the school and the headmaster, and to him trying to stop me doing my experiments. And last of all, I whispered a last goodbye to planet Earth, which had been such a good home to all my experiments and which now seemed to be falling rapidly away as we climbed.
But as I looked out, I noticed something. I noticed we didn’t seem to be climbing any more…In fact, we seemed to be levelling off…In fact, we seemed to be…oh-oh!
Then everything seemed to be happening all at once. I heard the captain bark something on the intercom at the engine-room. I heard the engine-room scream something back about not knowing what was going on, and I knew in an instant that something was wrong, something was, like, seriously wrong. And if something was seriously wrong, they were going to need my help, that was for certain. I stepped forward from my corner.
‘Er…anything I can do?’ I asked.
The captain swung round in his chair to look at me. No, scrap that, the captain swung round in his chair to glare at me.
‘You!’ he roared. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Um…well…actually, you told me to be here. Don’t you remember? Space Cadet Astra Norte report to the bridge and all that stuff?’
His bald patch went purple again and he looked about fit to explode. ‘Then just stand there and be quiet!’ he roared next. ‘Can’t you see we have an emergency?’
‘Yes and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You see—’
‘SILENCE!’
‘But—’
‘ONE MORE WORD FROM YOU AND I’LL THROW OFF THE SHIP MYSELF! NOW BE QUIET!’
I decided it was probably best that I didn’t say any more just then so I sort of decided to be quiet. But I wasn’t going to stand idly by while there was this emergency on and some machine somewhere was going wrong and I could probably fix it and save the whole ship—oh no, that’s not my style. So while the captain wasn’t looking, I slipped quietly away from the bridge and headed for where I knew I was going to be needed.
I raced down to the engine-room. I found it easily enough. Well, hey, even I know the engine-room on a starship is pretty much at the rear. And anyway, I had the sound of a loud voice yelling orders to guide me: the fainter it got, I figured, the further away from it I was getting.
I pushed a door open and I was there. It was a hot and steamy place smelling of oil and grease and lovely mechanical things.
‘Hi!’ I yelled to the engineer. ‘Need any help?’
His grimy face looked up from a control panel. ‘Who are you?’ it shouted back.
‘No time for that now! What wrong with these engines?’
‘I don’t know! They just seemed to lose power!’
I had to think quickly. My reputation was at stake. No machine had ever beaten me before and I wasn’t about to let one beat me now.
‘Have you checked the fuel flow?’ I yelled next.
‘Yes! Next question?’
‘The inlet portals on the mixing chamber?’
‘Clear, every one of them. Any other bright ideas?’
‘Hey! I’m only trying to help!’
‘Sorry. Any suggestions gratefully received.’
I was still thinking. And I had an idea. ‘What about the main coupling on the drive generators?’
‘You know about main couplings and drive generators?’ he shouted, and I could tell he was impressed.
‘No time for that now!’ I yelled back. ‘Have you checked them?’
He didn’t answer, he just raced to a panel, ripped it off and looked inside.
‘Well, I’ll be…You were right!’
‘Told you,’ I said.
‘Yeah, yeah, okay. But finding what’s wrong is one thing, fixing it is something else.’ He glanced out the porthole. ‘And we’re very rapidly running out of sky.’
‘Leave it to me!’ I shouted. ‘I’ll be back in a minute!’
He didn’t argue. Maybe he knew he was in the company of a genius, I don’t know. But even geniuses need tools, and mine were back in my cabin.
I raced out and along darkened corridors barely lit by flickering lights and showers of sparks. The first told me the ship was losing power, which I sort of knew already. The second told me the ship was wreck, which I also sort of knew already.
I found my cabin, burst in and began rummaging through my luggage for my toolkit. I’d used it only recently, to find my trusty all-purpose screwdriver to fix the shower, so it had to be around here somewhere. And there it was, under my backpack containing the pack of sandwiches my mum had made for me for the trip. Just how long she thought a pack of sandwiches was going to last on a trip scheduled to take two weeks, I don’t know. Nor did I care just then, all I wanted was my toolkit.
I yanked the lid open and looked inside. Jump-leads, that’s what I was looking for, my trusty multi-voltage jump-leads. They were around here somewhere…something long and thin and with clips on the ends, that’s I was looking for…AH! Found them!—No, those were the headmaster’s braces. Ought to send them back to him, really. He’ll need them to keep his trousers up when he gets out of hospital…But…yes?…No…YES!
I’d found them. I yanked them out of my toolbox then bolted back to the engine-room with them.
‘I’m back!’ I yelled.
He looked up from a viewscreen. ‘About time too!’ he yelled back. ‘Take a look at this.’
I joined him at the viewscreen. One look told me we were a little too close to the ground for comfort. In the distance, I could see a large building surrounded by fields, and in front of it, a tall statue that looked oddly familiar. And then I twigged.
‘That’s my school!’ I yelled. ‘We’re going to crash into my school!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes! That’s the statue of my headmaster and we’re heading right for it!’
‘Well, don’t just stand there! Do something!’
I knew I had to. Blowing up a headmaster was one thing, demolishing his school was something else entirely.
‘Here! Hold this!’ I yelled as I handed him one end of the jump-lead.
As he took it, I clipped my end to the main coupling.
‘Now, clip your end onto the drive generator!’
He clipped his end onto the drive generator. Immediately, the engines surged into life.
‘We did it!’ I shouted.
‘We did!’ he yelled back. ‘I just hope we’re in time, that’s all!’
We hung on and watched the viewscreen as the ship started to pull out of its dive. The horizon began to dip…slowly…slowly…but we were still straight on course for the school.
‘Do you think we’ll make it?’ I yelled to the engineer.
He just shrugged so I went back to watching. Slowly…slowly…but yes! We were levelling off! But so close to the ground! How can a starship fly so close to the ground!
And the school was getting closer and closer! Bigger and bigger in the viewscreen! I shut my eyes! I couldn’t watch! And there was a sudden—
CLUNK!
&
nbsp; —and I opened them to see blue sky filling the viewscreen. We were climbing again! But—
‘What happened?’ I said. ‘Did we hit something?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Let’s find out.’
He flipped a switch and the viewscreen shifted to show the scene behind us. And yes, we’d hit something, we had indeed hit something. It was lying on the ground with what looked like the Maths teacher jumping up and down beside it and waving his fist at us.
‘Er…that statue of your headmaster,’ said the engineer, ‘it seems to be missing its head.’
‘So I see,’ I said. ‘Will they know it was us?’
‘Oh, yes! Someone is bound to have seen our fleet number. I just wonder what your headmaster will say when he sees what we did to his statue, that’s all.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about him,’ I muttered. ‘He and I go back a long way.’
‘Okay. Look, you’d better get out of here before anyone sees you. And thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I said as I headed for the door. ‘I expect I’ll see you again some time.’
As I spoke, a great shower of sparks burst out of one of the panels. The engineer just looked at me. He didn’t need to say anything.
Back on the bridge, everyone was laughing nervously, like they’d just come through some terrible ordeal and were trying to make light of it.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ the captain was saying. ‘I told you I’d get it sorted out.’—but he seemed just as nervous as the rest of them.
I didn’t say anything. I just stood in my corner and waited to be given something to do. I tried not to think about it but I had an awful feeling that this was going to be a long trip…
~oOo~
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