“It lives on you?” asked Ulan Nuur doubtfully. “Are you sure?”
Brola picked up a clump of grass from the ground. She slapped it on to her arm, where it stuck, looking exactly like part of her fur. “It grows on us, as it does everywhere. We cannot live without it.”
“Why not?”
“It gives us our food! It catches tiny animals, and feeds us through our skin,” she said. “But now it is in terrible danger, because of the Gyzols.”
Donal gawped at the grass on her arm, waving where there was no wind. Grass that ate animals…
He thought of sea anemones waving their tendrils to catch shrimps. Suddenly the Meerie didn’t seem so cuddly any more. Their thick green coats weren’t made of fur, but thousands of tiny, waving tentacles.
Surreptitiously, Ulan Nuur plucked a clump of grass with his teeth and tried to plant it on his leg. It fell off.
“But what’s the problem with your Greengrass?” asked Donal. “Why is it in such danger?”
“The Gyzols are killing it,” said Nolga. “Come and look!” He led the way back out of the mound, and climbed up on top of it, huffing and puffing.
“Once this land was all Greengrass,” he said, waving his arms around, “as far as you could see, and further. But the more we sowed it, the more the Gyzols came and burned it back–”
“– and sprayed it with horrible stuff that shrivelled it up–”
“–they want to kill all our Greengrass–”
“–poisoning the land with their fumes–”
“–pointy-toothed sharp-clawed demons!”
Donal gazed over at the threatening black hills that reared up in the distance beyond the sea of luscious green. He shuddered, remembering the cluster of insect figures that had shot at the ship.
“But what can we do?” he asked.
“Ulan Nuur must travel on the Skywheel,” announced Nolga.
The camel looked askance at the silver ball, lying on its slab. “I may have trouble balancing,” he said.
“I’ll show you how! Like this!” Brola pushed through the crowd of Meerie to the slab. Stretching out a grey hand, flat as a paddle, she touched the sphere.
There was a muffled WHOOMPH. The silver ball was gone; instead a huge black bubble hovered just above the slab. It gradually became transparent, until Brola could be seen inside, along with three other Meerie who happened to have been standing next to her.
The bubble drifted to the ground. With another WHOOMPH, it burst. It vanished: and the little sphere rested on its slab again, while Brola sat breathless on the grass.
“To make it work, all you have to do is touch the outside,” she said. “It shrinks again as soon as it comes down to land.”
“We had many Skywheels once,” said Nolga mournfully, “all stored safely in our Dome, until the Gyzols stole them.”
“Is that the Dome?” asked Donal, pointing at the mound.
“It was like that, only bigger and better.”
“–they stole our beautiful Dome and all our lovely Skywheels–”
“And then hid them away from us,” added Brola. The other Meerie moaned and swayed in agreement.
“That’s why we brought you here–”
“–to go and get them back.”
“I expect that will not be too difficult,” said Ulan Nuur faintly.
“It’s perfectly simple!” rustled Nolga. “All you have to do is ride the Skywheel to the dreadful land of the wicked Gyzols, seek out our Great Dome in whatever secret cavern they have hidden it, find the entrance, and break in without being caught. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“There you will find our wonderful, clever Skywheels,” added Brola. “Then bring them home to us. Once we have our Skywheels, we’ll be safe.”
“I think you need somebody else,” said Donal. “I think there’s some mistake.”
“No mistake! No mistake!” chorused the Meerie. “We asked for someone to save us – and we have been sent Ulan Nuur!”
“But the mission’s impossible!” protested Donal.
“Not for Ulan Nuur.”
“He’s a camel!”
“He is our saviour,” said Nolga solemnly, and all the Meerie sighed like the wind through the trees. “Our deliverer! Our hero!”
Ulan Nuur blinked his long eyelashes. “I need a drink,” he said.
Chapter Seven
Donal listened to the camel drink. It was a very long and noisy process, involving much slurping and snorting.
“Are you really going on this mission, Ulan Nuur?” he asked.
The camel drained another litre from the clear stream trickling through the Greengrass.
“Of course,” he said, and belched loudly. “Aah. The grass may not be good, but the water is. Full tanks. I won’t need to drink for a week or so now.”
“Ulan Nuur, you can’t really mean to go. The whole task sounds impossible!”
“It must be possible,” said Ulan Nuur, “or they would not ask Me to do it.”
“But it’s dangerous! You don’t have to do what they want.”
“Humans always want something,” huffed Ulan Nuur. “Do this, carry that, stand there, spit for the camera. At least the Meerie ask respectfully.”
“I’m sure there’s something wrong with their story, though…”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” said Donal, worried and baffled at the same time. “Something’s bugging me, but I don’t know what it is.”
“How useful.”
“I wish I could put my finger on it.” He paused as Brola joined them. Wading into the shallow stream, she scooped water over her green fur.
“That’s better!” she said. “It was thirsty.”
Donal pulled his flask from his rucksack, dipped the cup into the water, and sipped cautiously. The camel was right; it tasted good. He decided to risk drinking it, and save the orange juice in his flask for later.
As he drained his cup, the lemming’s head popped up at the water’s edge.
“Dug a nice hole,” it said. “Good hole. Nice grass.”
“Can you eat this grass?” asked Ulan Nuur incredulously.
“Green, innit?” said the lemming. “S’alright.”
“Caterpillars are green,” observed Ulan Nuur, looking down his nose, “but I would not eat them.”
“I would,” said the lemming.
“Ulan Nuur!” commanded Brola impatiently. “Come to the Skywheel! It’s time to leave. Are you bringing your human?”
“It does not wish to come,” said Ulan Nuur, “and it is Not Necessary.” He began to amble after Brola with a slow, loose stride.
Donal bit his lip. He didn’t like the sound of the Meeries’ mission – but how could he let Ulan Nuur go alone? The camel thought he was still on Earth. He didn’t know what he was letting himself in for.
“I’ll come too,” he offered.
“As you please,” said Ulan Nuur haughtily. “Just do not expect to ride Me.”
“Hurry up!” Brola shook a shower of water droplets off her fur as she waddled briskly away. “I’m captaining the Skywheel,” she said over her shoulder, “since it was all my idea. So you have to do what I say.”
She sounded as bossy as a squat, green version of Toby. Donal sighed and bent to pick up his rucksack. It was wriggling.
“Leave me some sandwiches, lemming, please,” he said. “They might be all I get to eat. I hope this mission won’t last long.”
* * *
Even though he had seen the Skywheel blow up twice now, the WHOOMPH still came as a shock.
At least it didn’t knock him over this time. All the same, Donal felt wobbly as he watched the black walls gradually turn to silver all around him.
It was a comfort to have the solid, smelly presence of Ulan Nuur beside him, and the soft warmth of the lemming in his hand.
“Morning again,” said the lemming, as the sphere slowly grew transp
arent enough for them to see green fields sweeping past below. Donal tried to walk up the wall, and found that he couldn’t. This time, up was up and down was definitely down.
“We don’t need artificial gravity,” Brola told him. She stood by the control core, looking important and busy. “You only need that out in space. We’re not going into space this time; just round the world a bit.”
“How does it work, this Skywheel? How does it expand and go small again?”
“Questions, questions!” said Brola, sounded exasperated. “Do be quiet. I need to steer.”
“I thought this ship had an automatic pilot?”
“Yes, but I’m steering now.”
She pressed the edge of the glowing panel in the ship’s core. It slid back to reveal a round screen, split into segments like the spokes of a wheel.
“Since we’re not going into space, we set it for Level, not Out,” said Brola. “Like this. Then we choose the direction to go in by touching the right place on the screen. You have to count the sectors. This is where we’re going today; sector four. See? I know all about it. I worked it out. I’m the cleverest Meerie of all.”
“It’s amazing,” said Donal. “So did you design this ship?”
“Of course not!” said Brola. “I’m not that old.”
“Sorry. Silly question. But…” He hesitated. Now he realised what had been bugging him; but it was probably another silly question, and Brola would most likely snap his head off.
“If the Meerie built this space-ship,” he said tentatively, “why can’t you just build some more, instead of trying to get your old ones back?”
“Because we can’t,” she said shortly.
“Why not? Or what about trucks, or tanks? You could cross the desert in those and find somewhere safe to live. Don’t you have any vehicles?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Brola.
“Trucks! Cars! Things with wheels!”
Brola was huffy. “Gibberish. The Skywheel is the only wheel there is. Stop bothering me and go away. I’m busy!”
Donal gave up. The translator obviously had limitations. He stared round, trying to puzzle out how the Skywheel worked.
“If it stays just as heavy when it shrinks,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s no wonder it sank into the ground at the zoo. It must weigh more than an elephant!”
“Got stood on by an elephant once,” remarked the lemming.
“What? How come you’re still alive?”
“It missed.”
Ulan Nuur was gazing out in a reverie. “The great Gobi awaits!” he murmured.
Below them, the lush Greengrass carpet was fraying at the edges. Soon it petered out entirely, giving way to barren rock and sand.
“Horrible, horrible,” muttered Brola.
For now the green land swiftly turned to grimy black. Once again they were flying over the scorched desert. Trails of smoke rose up from scattered craters; like long, thin fingers trying to grab their ship and pull it down.
Chapter Eight
The camel stared long and hard at the desolate landscape. At last he let out a contented sigh.
“Behold the magnificence of the Gobi desert!” he told Donal in sonorous tones.
“Ulan Nuur, we’re millions and millions of miles from–”
“Yes, I can see the sand dunes now,” continued the camel as if he couldn’t hear.
“Horrible sand,” said Brola.
Rearing before them, huge dunes cast long black shadows across the lifeless land. Donal shivered, although it was warm inside the Skywheel.
Outside, the smoking sand looked hot enough to fry an egg. The steaming craters grew bigger and more frequent; between them trailed thin ribbons of lava, running into glowing, smoking pools.
The dunes swelled into foothills, and then into mountains. The Skywheel flew over steaming orange lakes trapped in the rock, and red-hot fissures. To Donal, it looked like a picture of Hell.
“Nasty,” squeaked the lemming perched on his shoe, and tried to hide up his trouser leg.
Then, through the steam and smoke, he saw the pointed pinnacles of the Gyzol towers rise before him: tall, thin and pitted with the mouths of a thousand lightless tunnels.
They looked as if they were built out of lava, thought Donal. There were hundreds of them, like giant, jagged ants’ nests; a city of cruel spires…
“I hate them! Hate them!” muttered Brola. She stabbed at the screen, and the control panel hummed briefly. Donal noticed a dimple forming in the Skywheel’s skin beneath him.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Brola. The dimple grew to a bubble the size of Donal’s hand, and popped. He saw a cloud of fine dust drift away from the ship. Then it was gone, leaving the Skywheel’s surface as smooth as before.
But down below, something else grabbed his attention.
“Look! There’s some-one watching us!”
On top of a tower, angular figures stood silhouetted against the smoke. Donal could see the four bony arms with which each creature clawed the air. Wiry feelers waved on their long heads.
He remembered a TV programme he’d once seen about a new island that had grown up out of the sea, formed by lava from an underwater volcano. The very first animals to appear on that island – while it was still hot and smouldering – had been cockroaches.
The Gyzols reminded him of those cockroaches; except that they were at least two metres high. He was close enough to see huge, dark eyes turned his way. He shuddered.
“Poisonous stick-legged monsters!” chanted Brola. “Murderers of the Greengrass! But they can’t hurt us while we’re up here.”
“Yes, they can!” exclaimed Donal. “They shot rocks at us before!”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Brola dismissively. “I never heard of–”
With a loud whine, a huge chunk of rock sailed past the Skywheel.
“That hole in the ground is spitting stones,” grunted Ulan Nuur. “The Gyzols feed it, but it spits them out again.”
“So what?” said Brola. “The Skywheel is unbreakable.”
Peering down through the floor, Donal saw a group of spindly aliens pushing boulders into a burning fissure. They hefted up a long vessel and poured a liquid in after the rocks. Then they jumped back.
Two seconds later, the boulders came hurtling up into the air like cannonballs.
“They’re using the volcanoes to fire at us!” yelled Donal.
“They can’t be,” Brola said. “They’re not clever enough to–”
THUNK! A boulder hit the Skywheel, which rocked alarmingly. Donal staggered and clutched at Ulan Nuur.
There was a second THUNK, and Donal and the camel were thrown completely off their feet as the ship went into a spin. They hurtled headlong around the sphere like a pair of hamsters in a wheel.
The lemming bleated pitiably as it rolled past. Donal grabbed it and with one hand stuffed it out of harm’s way beneath his T-shirt; while with his other hand, he tried in vain to stop himself from skidding around the rapidly spinning walls.
“Steady the ship!” he shouted to Brola, who was clinging on the central pillar.
“I can’t!” squealed Brola. “I feel sick!”
“I do not care for this form of transport,” said Ulan Nuur reproachfully. He slithered down the rotating wall with his legs splayed out, humps jiggling. “It is most undignified.”
Gradually, the wild rotation slowed. The shaken passengers slid into a pile. Donal saw to his relief that the Gyzols were out of sight.
His relief did not last long. Gazing around, he made an unwelcome discovery.
“The Skywheel’s getting smaller!” he exclaimed in shock.
“It can’t be,” Brola snapped. “That’s impossible.”
“It is! It’s shrinking! Maybe it got cracked. What’ll happen if it shrinks right down?”
“Stop asking stupid questions!” shoute
d Brola.
“We’d better land,” said Donal. “If the ship gets too small, we’ll be crushed inside it. Or if it collapses in mid-air, we might all get thrown out into the sky! We’ve got to land before that happens.”
“We’re can’t. We’re too high.”
“I know we are! That’s why we’ve got to come down!” cried Donal.
Jumping up, he rushed over to the core. He ran his hand urgently over the control screen, as he’d seen Brola do. The Skywheel dipped a little.
“Get off!” said Brola indignantly, waddling after him to slap his hand away. “It’s mine!”
“Then bring it down!” he pleaded.
Brola stamped on his feet and pushed him, hard. He fell against the panel.
At once, with a roar like a gale, the ship went into a nose-dive. Donal and Brola were hurled back against the outer wall, and pinned there by the speed of the falling ship. The panel’s lights went out.
With a splitting, tearing noise, a web of fine black lines appeared on the Skywheel’s skin, and began to spread like cracks on an icy puddle.
“We’re breaking up,” cried Donal. ”We’ve got to land soon!”
“We will,” said the camel soberly, “but perhaps a little fast.”
The ship was falling out of the sky, and the ground was surging up to meet them. On the control panel, a last light flickered and went out.
There was a jolt, and a terrible splintering sound as if lightning was tearing the Skywheel apart.
“We’re going to crash! Oh, Ulan Nuur, I’m sorry,” said Donal, before the ground rushed up and hit him.
Chapter Nine
“Sand,” said Ulan Nuur.
Donal raised his head weakly and spat out a mouthful.
“Ugh,” he agreed. There was sand in his eyes, up his nose, in his hair, and from the feel of it, down the inside of all his clothes. Hot sand. It scorched his skin where he lay on it. So he sat up, feeling scoured, bruised and shaken.
They were surrounded by low, black sand-dunes. Somewhere a lonely wind whistled with a hollow sound; but its breeze did not touch them. Beyond the sand-dunes Donal glimpsed the distant tops of the Gyzol towers, hazy in the heat.
But apart from the heat shimmer, nothing moved. There was no life here at all.
Something scratched Donal’s chest. He put up a shaky hand, and discovered that the translator was still tucked inside his shirt; and so was the lemming. It wriggled out in a shower of black grains, and did a scuttling, jumping dance along the ground.