Space Oddity

by Christopher Edge

  I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say, feeling kind of relieved that Mum’s gone upstairs for a lie-down now. ‘My mum’s human – she met my dad here on Earth.’

  Damon turns his head towards me, searching my face as if he expects me to turn green again.

  ‘So what does that make you?’

  I think about this, trying to work it out for myself. My dad’s an alien. My mum’s a human being. What does that make me?

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ I stutter.

  Even though I’m sitting still, I feel my heart begin to race. I can almost hear a double-thud of heartbeats, thundering away inside my chest. I feel like I’m falling into a black hole.

  Amba reaches out to take my hand. ‘It makes you Jake,’ she says, kicking Damon under the table. ‘And you’re our friend.’

  ‘Ow, Amba!’ Damon protests. Then he catches sight of the fierce glare that Amba’s aiming in his direction. ‘Oh yeah. Sorry, Jake. I didn’t mean anything bad by that. I think it’s cool you’ve got an alien for a dad.’

  ‘My dad isn’t cool,’ I sigh. ‘In fact, most of the time he’s really embarrassing. But I still want him back.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Amba says, giving my hand a friendly squeeze before letting it go. ‘We’re going to get your dad back.’

  ‘But how are we going to do that?’ Damon asks. ‘That spaceship might be halfway to Mars by now.’

  ‘My dad doesn’t come from Mars. He’s from a planet called . . .’ I pause as I remember the strange noise that Dad made when he said its name and decide to go with the Earth version instead, ‘Proxima b.’

  Amba makes a sudden excited noise. ‘I read about Proxima b in the library!’

  Picking up another of the books, Amba quickly flicks through it until she finds the page she’s looking for and then begins to read out loud.

  ‘Nowadays, astronomers can use telescopes to search for alien worlds where life might exist. By analysing the light emitted by a star, it’s possible to detect whether any planets are in orbit around it and even whether these “exoplanets” might be capable of supporting life. The closest exoplanet astronomers have found so far is called Proxima b and is located only four point two light years away from Earth. However, using current technology, it would take a spacecraft seventy thousand years to reach Proxima b, so there’s little chance of us popping round to say hello to any new alien neighbours who might be living there.’

  Amba looks up and I see the disappointment on her face.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jake.’

  4.2 light years doesn’t sound very far away. But 70,000 years sounds like for ever.

  I feel like I’m going to cry.

  Reaching into my pocket for a tissue to stop my eyes from leaking, my fingers find something egg-shaped there instead. I pull this out, placing it on the table in front of Amba.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asks.

  The jet-black pebble sits there lifeless.

  ‘Alien technology,’ I reply. ‘My dad called it the Quintessence.’

  ‘What does it do?’ Damon asks.

  ‘Loads of stuff,’ I reply. ‘My dad used it to disguise himself as a human when he first landed here on Earth. It can translate alien languages and even has a quantum flare that can send a distress signal across the universe. I thought I could use this to lure the spaceship back.’

  With a thoughtful look on her face, Amba picks up the device.

  ‘It’s supposed to light up when you twist it between your fingers,’ I tell her. ‘But it doesn’t seem to work any more.’

  Holding it up to her eye, Amba peers at the egg-shaped pebble. ‘Clockwise or anti-clockwise?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Either way, I think, but neither seem to work now. I think my dad must have left the safety catch on.’

  I watch as Amba tries to twist the Quintessence, her hands moving in opposite directions. For a second, I hold my breath, fingers crossed, hoping that the starry lights on the stone will shimmer into life again.

  But nothing happens. Not even a faint glimmer of light can be seen. The alien device still looks like a dull, black pebble.

  Amba hands it back to me.

  ‘I thought if I could send a signal then the aliens would come back.’ I look down at the useless device. ‘I guess I was wrong.’

  Silence descends as the three of us sit glumly around the kitchen table. No more bright ideas. No chance of getting my dad back.

  ‘That’s it!’ Amba snaps her fingers, the sudden sound of this making Damon jump in surprise. ‘Maybe there’s another kind of signal we could send that would bring the aliens back.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  Beneath her curly fringe, Amba’s brown eyes shine with excitement. ‘Didn’t you say aliens aren’t allowed to come to Earth?’

  I nod my head. ‘Dad said it was strictly forbidden.’

  ‘So if we could send a signal that shows there is another alien here on Earth, the Cosmic Authority would have to come and get him, right?’

  ‘I suppose so, but how are we supposed to do that?’

  Then the front doorbell rings again.

  ‘Go away!’ I hear my mum shout from upstairs. ‘And take your TV cameras with you too!’

  Momentarily distracted, I turn back towards Amba and then notice the strange way she seems to be looking at me.

  ‘What?’

  Amba grins in a way that suddenly makes me feel kind of worried.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she says.

  MY DAD ALWAYS TOLD ME NOT TO EAT MY GREENS

  I stare at the glass that’s standing on the kitchen table in front of me, filled to the brim with an evil-looking mulch of murky green slime. The rest of the table is strewn with vegetable scraps: broccoli stalks and asparagus ends, sprout peelings and shredded spinach leaves, but the rest of this vegetable tsunami has all been blended to a pulp and poured into this brimming glass of goo.

  ‘There you are, Jake,’ Amba announces, taking away the now-empty blender jug, its insides splattered with the same green slime. ‘One Super Vegetable Smoothie Shake with added Vitamin C – all ready to drink.’

  My stomach turns as I look more closely at the drink, now seeing the bits floating in it.

  Earlier this year, our teacher, Mrs Beale, took us pond dipping in the local park. Using our nets, we skimmed the pond and then deposited what we’d collected in our trays, although Frankie Baines spent most of his time flicking us all with slime. I remember the sludgy mess that filled up my observation tray, pond weed and slimy creatures wriggling through the goo. We had to use this worksheet to work out what we’d caught, and I discovered that my tray was mostly filled with fly larvae and water flea soup.

  But this crazy super shake that Damon and Amba have made me looks even more disgusting.

  ‘Come on, Jake,’ Damon says, giving me an encouraging smile. ‘Drink up.’

  I shake my head. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

  ‘I think it will,’ Amba replies, setting the jug on the side and turning round to face me again. ‘When your skin turned green on the Kidsplorers weekend, you said it was an allergic reaction to the broccoli soup that you drank. The same thing happens to your dad too and, if you’re both chlorophyll-intolerant, then maybe this comes from the alien part of you.’

  Stepping closer, Amba looks at me with a serious expression on her face.

  ‘Every vegetable we’ve put in this drink is chock-full of chlorophyll so it’s bound to trigger the same reaction. If we want the Cosmic Authority to think you’re breaking his stupid rules then you need to look the part. We need you to turn green, Jake. We need you to look like an alien.’

  I look up at my friend. What she’s saying sounds so convincing, but the truth is I’m scared.

  Most parents are always nagging their kids to eat their vegetables, but since I was little my dad always told me not to eat my greens. And now I know why.

  I remember watching him caught in the tractor beam, his skin glowin
g green in the light. If I ever want to see him again, I’ve got to do this.

  Closing my eyes so I can’t see the slime, I lift the glass to my lips and start to drink.

  As the sloppy green goo pours down my throat, I gag.

  It might’ve looked disgusting but it tastes even worse. I feel my stomach turn, a spin cycle of nausea whirring into life. I can taste sprouts and broccoli, peas, spinach and celery, the odd stray leaf that’s mixed in with the slime almost making me choke.

  And then the last drop drains from the glass and I bang it down on the table in front of me.

  Breathing hard to stop myself from being sick, I look up at my friends.

  ‘How do I look?’ I ask, trying to ignore the washing machine that’s churning in my stomach. ‘Has it worked?’

  Looking stunned, Damon and Amba don’t say a word. Instead Amba holds up her pocket mirror and I stare into it to see a strange alien face staring back at me. My skin glows with a weird greenish tinge and, as my mouth gapes wide in surprise, I can see that even my tongue has turned green.

  ‘It’s worked,’ Amba says, finally remembering how to speak. ‘Now we just need to show the world.’

  SMELLY SOCKS!

  Crouching down in front of the front door, Damon flips open the letter box.

  ‘They’re still all there,’ he says as he peers out at the TV news crews gathered outside my front gate.

  As I listen to the hubbub of voices outside, I feel a panicky fluttering inside my chest. It almost feels like two hearts are beating in there. Lifting my hand, I press my green fingers against my chest to try to calm my runaway nerves.

  ‘I still don’t see how embarrassing me in front of the whole world is going to bring the Cosmic Authority back.’

  ‘When you go out there,’ Amba says, taking my hand in hers as my heartbeat starts to slow, ‘those TV cameras aren’t just going to be beaming pictures of you around the world. Those signals will head out into space too, travelling at the speed of light. In one of those library books it said we’ve been sending signals into space ever since we invented TV and radio. All the TV programmes we watch and all the songs we hear on the radio escape from Earth’s atmosphere and travel to the stars.’

  I remember what Dad told me about the sphere of silence that is placed around our solar system, blocking out all the TV and radio signals that we send. But one signal got through before – the message that brought Dad to Earth. The loneliest voice he’d ever heard, singing ‘Space Oddity’.

  ‘That’s how you can tell the Cosmic Authority that Ion’s your dad,’ Amba continues, letting go of my hand as she reaches for the door handle. ‘And if he thinks you’re an alien too, he’s going to come back and beam you up.’

  It sounds like Amba has thought of everything. I just need to hope that huge spaceship hasn’t left the solar system by now. I shiver as I remember the rainbow beam of its scanner, scrolling across my skin. Then I remember something else.

  ‘There’s just one problem,’ I say. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out the Quintessence and hold this up for Amba to see. ‘I think my dad used this to reprogram my biology. When that spaceship scanned me at the campsite it thought I was a human being. My skin might be green, but an allergic reaction to a Super Vegetable Smoothie Shake isn’t going to fool any extraterrestrial scanning machine.’

  Amba’s brow furrows in a frown. She looks at me thoughtfully. ‘Tell me again why you and your dad hid in the zorb.’

  ‘He said it would keep us disguised,’ I say. ‘Inside the zorb our bio-data signals were all mixed up so the Cosmic Authority couldn’t tell which one of us was the alien.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Amba says. ‘So we need to mix up you and your dad’s bio-data again. Maybe we could get some of his DNA – you know, like in the films when they use this to track the criminal down.’

  ‘My dad’s not a criminal!’

  ‘No, but he is an alien,’ Amba replies patiently. ‘Have you got one of his hats or maybe a pair of gloves? Anything that might have a trace of his DNA. Preferably something a bit . . . smelly?’

  I think about this for a moment. Mum’s upstairs, so I can’t go rooting around in their wardrobe. And all the clothes in Dad’s rucksack were disintegrated when the killer robots blew up our tent. Except for his . . .

  ‘Smelly socks!’

  I race to get these from the living room.

  ‘So what should I do with these?’ I ask, holding the socks well away from my nose. ‘Do you want me to wear them?’

  Amba nods her head as she plucks the socks out of my hand. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But not on your feet.’

  Reaching up to my head, Amba hooks a smelly sock over each ear.

  ‘There,’ she says as I feel the elasticated tops of the socks ping around my ears. ‘Now when the aliens scan you, the first thing they’ll read is your dad’s DNA. You’ll look and smell like an alien.’

  I blink as my eyes start to water.

  An invisible cloud of blue cheese and toenails now seems to be hanging in the air around my head. These socks really stink.

  Holding his nose, Damon steps back from the front door to let me through. ‘Good luck, Jake,’ he says, his voice coming out in a nasally squeak.

  ‘Just remember,’ Amba says as I pause at the door. ‘This will be the biggest news story ever. Real proof that aliens exist. Every TV channel will cut to show the news live, beaming your face up into space. There’s no way the Cosmic Authority will be able to ignore this signal.’

  My hand trembles as I reach for the front door handle. Through the obscured glass at the top of the door, I can see the bright lights of the TV cameras.

  I’m not just going to embarrass myself in front of the whole world – I’m going to embarrass myself in front of the whole universe.

  Taking a deep breath, I open the front door and step outside.

  ARE WE STILL LIVE?

  The cameras start flashing the moment I step out of the front door.

  ‘That must be him!’

  I feel my heart thumping in my chest, beating double time as I walk down the path. I can hear the reporters shouting out questions to me as the camera crews scramble to get into position.

  ‘Where’s your dad, Jake?’

  ‘What happened at Middlewich Forest?’

  ‘Did you really see a UFO?’

  It’s only short walk from my front door to the gate, but every step I take seems to take longer and longer. Glancing back over my shoulder I see Damon and Amba peering through the letter box, but they can’t help me now. I’m on my own.

  Opening the front gate, I squeeze past the wheelie bins. To be honest, they don’t smell any worse than Dad’s socks. As I step out on to the street, the nearest of the reporters thrusts her microphone under my nose.

  ‘Asha Barnes,’ she says. ‘BBC News. Jake, what can you tell us about what happened to your dad?’

  I squint as I gaze up into the glare of the TV cameras. Every lens is pointing straight at me. My face might be bright green, but it’s burning with embarrassment. I can see the reporter is looking at me suspiciously, her gaze taking in the green sheen of my skin.

  ‘Jake,’ she says again, more softly this time. ‘Is there something you want to tell us?’

  My throat feels dry, the words I’ve got to say dying on my lips. Instead I nod my head and feel the socks on my ears flop back and forth.

  I look into the lens of the nearest camera, the little green light on its side telling me it’s transmitting live. The pictures it’s sending are travelling all around the world. And maybe out into space too.

  I take a deep breath.

  ‘I’m here to tell the world the truth,’ I say, trying to stop my voice from shaking. ‘The truth is that our planet isn’t the only planet where intelligent life exists.’

  I look up into the darkened sky, the stars almost invisible beyond the glare of the TV lights. I try to remember what Dad told me when we were sitting together outside the pop-up tent.

/>   ‘We’re spinning round the Sun, but every star up there is a sun too,’ I say, pointing up towards the darkness of the sky. ‘All those stars have planets spinning round them, just like this one. Millions, billions, trillions of worlds. Why should we be so big-headed to think that Earth is the only world where life got clever?’

  I turn to look at the reporter, her furry microphone still hovering under my nose.

  ‘The universe is a very big place,’ I say. ‘And it’s full of aliens.’

  There’s a moment of silence, filled only by the clicking of cameras. Then Asha Barnes coughs to clear her throat.

  ‘And how exactly do you know this?’ she asks. ‘Did the aliens who took your dad tell you this?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘No. The aliens want to keep it a secret. They think we’re too primitive to mix with the rest of the universe. They’re keeping our planet locked away from the rest of the galaxy. It’s against the law to even visit Earth. That’s why they kidnapped my dad—’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she interrupts. ‘Are you trying to tell me your dad’s been abducted by aliens? Looking for humans to experiment on with their probes, I suppose?’

  With a glance at the camera, Asha Barnes shakes her head with a mocking smile. I can tell that she doesn’t believe a word that I’m saying, but I’ve got to make the truth heard. It’s my only chance to get my dad back. If this broadcast can make it to the stars, then I’ve got a message that the Cosmic Authority needs to hear.

  ‘My dad’s not human,’ I say, staring straight down the camera lens. ‘He’s an alien who came to Earth twelve years ago. He met my mum, they fell in love and then they had me. Jake Jones. Human mum, alien dad, so if the Cosmic Authority is watching this—’

  The reporter makes a throat-cutting gesture, pulling the microphone away before I can finish my sentence. ‘I think we’re finished here, guys,’ she says to her camera crew. ‘It’s pretty obvious the kid’s making it all up. I mean, just look at all this fancy dress make-up that he’s wearing. I bet his dad’s put him up to this for some kind of publicity stunt.’