Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - One Mountain of Crisp Packets Later

"I'm sick of Worcester Sauce flavour. Have you got any Prawn Cocktail?"
Cleo shook her head slowly. Ant could swear she had gained several stones. "It's all Mango Chutney flavour over here." She sat up and squinted at the cargo platform, bleary-eyed. "Are you sure we didn't find anything to drink in there but beer?"
Ant nodded sadly, and stared at the label on his beer bottle. "Iss strange - the more I drink of it, the more thirsty I seem to get." He hiccuped.
"I have got to get out of here by tonight", said Cleo. "I am going to a party tonight."
"I've heard of parties", said Ant. "What are they like?"
"You mus' get invited to parties" said Cleo, burping.
"Not really", said Ant. "I think most of the kids at school think being poor is catching."
"My dad likes me going round with you. He thinks it means he's still in touch with the proletariat."
"Whassa proletariat?"
"What lots and lots of poor people are called when they get together", said Cleo.
"What, like a Council Estate?"
"Sort of."
"Hey - the room is spinning round", said Ant. "We must be landing."
"Iss not spinning round", said Cleo defiantly. "You're not spinning round."
"Ah", said Ant, holding up a finger. "But if the entire room is spinning round, we will both appear to be stationary from the standpoint of each other."
"Don' you hold your finger up at me."
Cleo rested her head back against the spaceship hull. "I do not know", she said, "what adults see in this stuff."
"My dad", said Ant, "sees things that chase him out of the window."
"How is our patient?"
Ant had forgotten their patient. He looked sideways to check on the patient, who was still breathing, though he had now turned a beautiful shade of pink. He also seemed to be doing rather a lot of breathing, perhaps rather more than he really should.
"The patient", announced Ant, "is fine."
Suddenly, the entire room shifted, as if the ship really was landing. The cargo pallet, fixed to the floor and secured with straps and sheets of polythene, did not move. The crisp packets, and all the crisp crumbs associated with them, floated gracefully into the air, accompanied by all the beer bottles. The patient rose into the air. Cleo rose into the air. Ant rose into the air, as if floating on a cushion of nothing. Ant's arms rose into the air. Ant's legs rose into the air. And Ant's stomach, the stomach he had just filled with beer and crisps until he could stand the thought of Smoky Bacon Flavour no more, rose with them.
"Oh, no", said Ant. "Not zero gravity now."
***
"YEEEEUCH!!!!"
The floor was covered with crisp crumbs, and with bits of crisp that had been all the way to Ant's stomach and back. The seats were covered in the stuff, the console and Ant himself were covered in it, and crucially, Cleo was also covered in it.
"For PETE'S SAKE, Ant, can't you control yourself for just one lousy minute??? This is DISGUSTING!!!
Ant did not care. His stomach hurt badly enough for nothing else in the universe to matter. Zero gravity had always seemed like fun for astronauts, but he could now tell anyone who would listen that it felt very little like being either Peter Pan or Superman. Did NASA astronauts feel like this?
Everything in the ship had been weightless for just thirty seconds, and then the weight had come back again. Unfortunately, those thirty seconds had been all Ant's vomit reflex had needed. It now had to be at least an hour since the gravity had suddenly turned itself back on; Cleo's complaining muscles, however, had not begun to tire yet.
Cleo lurched across the cabin. "I've GOT to clean myself up - oh, this is VILE - OMIGOD."
Ant forced himself to look. Cleo was staring at a panel she had opened in the wall.
"This toilet", said Cleo with a contempt she normally reserved only for disc jockeys and the criminally insane, "is for Men Only."
She held up a length of flexible hose, the correct use of which could only be imagined.
Ant smaned.
"Maybe they don't have women on their planet", he said.
"Omigod. How am I going to fit myself into this. DON'T WATCH."
Ant took down a space helmet from the pressure suit on the wall, put it down over his head, closed the silvered visor and folded his arms solemnly.
"I can't do this. I can't do this. I will simply have to cross my legs till Planet Bong, or wherever it is we’re going."
"Planet Bong", said Ant with an air of superior knowledge, "is not a planet, but a shop on Camden High Street."
"Ohhhhh ANT, we're going to spend FOREVER out here -"
"Or at least till the air supply runs out", muttered Ant to himself.
"We'll never see our mums and dads AGAIN -"
"Suits me", muttered Ant to himself. Two nights ago, his own dad had raided Ant's piggy bank for the third time that month, and then recycled part of the piggy bank money as Ant's pocket money the following day. Ant had marked the notes, and he'd had to mow the lawn to get them back.
Then Cleo said a thing which made him sit up sharp in his helmet.
"Ant - the universe is back."
***
He raised his helmet visor. Small untethered objects were floating around the inside of the ship again. Ant was floating around the inside of the ship again. Luckily, his stomach had done all the throwing and spewing it needed to. Also luckily, most of the liquid yawn from last time seemed to have dried hard on the spaceship walls.
It was back, but it was not the same old universe. There was no Sun, no Moon, and no Planet Earth. Instead, there were three huge impostor Moons, each a different colour, each many times the size of the old Moon he remembered. There was a red Moon, a scarlet Moon, and a crimson one.
"That one's the Moon", said Cleo. "No - that one. No - that one. Erm."
"None of them are the Moon", said Ant. "There's no trouser-shaped piece on the right hand side where Neil Armstrong landed in the right leg. And there's no Oceanus Procul Harum, which is the big dark blot on the left that doesn't look like anything but another Oceanus Procul Harum. And it's red", he added.
"Maybe we're looking at the Dark Side", said Cleo. Ant went quiet. He hadn't thought of that.
There was no proper Sun either; instead, there was a dull red smouldering mass that seemed to fill up half the sky. The windows took a good half minute to adjust to it, and Ant was certain he'd get sunburn even through his silvered visor. With his visor down, he found he could look almost directly at it. It was circular, like the sun.
But the most peculiar thing of all was the planet.
It was certainly a planet; it was even a planet like Earth, with seas and continents and icecaps and the occasional swirling hurricane. But it wasn't Earth. The continents were Earth-coloured in their middles, a sort of brick red; but the oceans were a darker red, the colour of dried blood; and where the continents met the oceans, they were sometimes a dingy maroon colour, sometimes a vibrant auburn. The icecaps were pink. The clouds were scarlet.
"That's not Earth, is it?" said Cleo.
Ant shook his head.
"That bit there looks a bit like Africa."
"It's also covered in snow."
"It snows on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Mount Kilimanjaro's in Africa."
"Granted. But there are parts of Africa that are not on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Otherwise Mount Kilimanjaro would not be in Africa. It would be the other way round."
Cleo nodded grudgingly, but Ant suspected she did not really believe him.
They stared at their new universe for a long time.
Then, Cleo screamed.
"I'm floating!" she yelled.
"Have you only just noticed?"
She took a second more to think about it, and then announced: "I feel sick."
Ant sighed, yawned, and settled back in mid-air with his hands clasped ostentatiously behind his head. "Take a Space Sickness pill."
Cleo examined the Space Sickness pills minutely. "It says they're Not To Be Taken Under Thrust", she wailed.
"Well, don't Take Them Under Thrust, then."
"How do I know whether I'm Under Thrust or not?"
"Do you feel Under Thrust?"
Cleo thought a moment. "I suppose I'd know, if I was", she said. "Wouldn't I."
So saying, she swallowed half the packet. Ant was beginning to realize uncomfortably that he, too, was soon going to need the toilet.
"What's that thing over there?" said Cleo.
"What thing?"
"That bright thing. That saucer shaped thing that's, erm, coming our way, very fast."
***
It was a saucer like their own. But it was much larger, maybe the size of a portokabin rather than a caravan. It was difficult to judge sizes in space, but the pilot's cockpit, if it was a pilot's cockpit, was much smaller in relation to the rest of the ship, being a rather tiny blister infecting the top of the main saucer shape rather than a dominant feature of the design. The leading edge of the ship bristled with aerials and needles and radar dishes, just like Ant and Cleo's own vessel.
"What are all those big holes along its bow?" said Cleo.
"No idea", shrugged Ant. "Probably intakes for jet engines."
"Air intakes", said Cleo witheringly, "in space."
"Maybe they only use their jet engines in an atmosphere", said Ant curtly.
"They're gun ports, aren't they", said Cleo.
"They're far too big to be gun ports", Ant said, hoping that this was true. "Besides, anyone advanced enough to travel in space wouldn't be using guns that fired bullets."
"Or jet engines", added Cleo.
The saucer also seemed, to Ant's inexperienced eye, to be in a bad state. There were streaks of corrosion all over it, and places where the stuff of its hull seemed to have been replaced with patches of what looked worryingly like bacofoil. It was possible to see the joints between the plates its outer skin was made of.
"Crikey", said Cleo, "it's in even worse shape than ours."
"It has a pilot", pointed out Ant. "Ours doesn't."
Cleo floundered around in the air until she could flick herself in the direction of the control panel. "Does this thing have a radio? We could call for help - whoops, what did I turn on?"
The lights went off all over the ship.
"Erm", said Cleo. "Which button did I push?"
The alien saucer turned side-on to the light, and Ant saw a faded emblem stencilled across its side. A star in a circle, two rows of stripes like wings, and the letters USASN.
"We're saved!" he said. "It's friendly!"
"How do you know it's friendly?"
"It must be friendly! It's American!"