Space Oddity

by Christopher Edge

  Shaking her head in disappointment, Asha Barnes starts to turn away.

  ‘No, wait!’ I call out. ‘I can prove that what I’m saying is true.’

  With fumbling fingers I reach into my pocket and pull out the Quintessence. I hold the egg-shaped device up to the light, hoping that all the TV cameras can get a close look at this alien technology.

  ‘This is the Quintessence,’ I say. ‘It’s what my dad used to survive here on Earth. It’s the ultimate in alien technology. It can translate any language, make you invisible and even change your biology.’

  I twist my fingers around the stone, listening for the click that will bring the Quintessence to life. But instead I hear the worst sound in the world.

  Laughter.

  Everyone’s laughing.

  I look up to see Asha Barnes hiding her face behind her hand, unable to disguise her giggles. Behind her I see the other reporters and camera operators, their shoulders shaking with laughter too. And it’s not just the TV people – I can see my neighbours standing out in the street, pointing with flabbergasted grins.

  Everyone’s laughing at me.

  As I stand there, my skin glowing green beneath the lights of the TV cameras, I feel my eyes start to leak.

  It’s all gone wrong.

  The socks on my ears droop as I stare up into the darkness of the sky.

  Just above the horizon I see a glowing orange beacon of light, brighter than any star. Inside my heart, a tiny spark of hope flickers into life. But then I realize what I’m looking at. This isn’t a spaceship. It’s Mars.

  The tiny spark of hope flickers and fades.

  I hear the TV news crews start to pack their gear away, the bright lights that lit the pavement in front of my house slowly going out one by one. I stay standing there in the growing darkness, my gaze still turned to the sky.

  I can see the stars now and, through my tears, wonder which one is my dad’s.

  Maybe it’s that bright blue-white star I can see in the middle of the sky. Dad said it was only four light years away. And then I realize – this star is getting bigger.

  I hold my breath as I watch the bright star turn into a glowing sphere, its blue-white light shining down on me as I stare up in wonder.

  ‘Look!’

  This cry of surprise comes from Asha Barnes, but my eyes stay fixed on the glowing sphere. I realize now that this isn’t one sphere but three, their glowing shapes slowly separating as they descend out of the darkness. As they get closer I start to see the silvery metallic shapes hidden in the light and, with a gulp, remember what Dad told me. ‘They’re Remote Operation Bio-location Observation and Termination units!’

  Killer robots.

  I want to run, but my feet stay fixed to the pavement as the glowing spheres grow bigger and bigger.

  ‘Are we still live?’ I hear the TV reporter shout, her stunned voice incredulous. ‘Are you getting these things on camera?’

  A sudden crackle of static makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I’m still holding the pebble-shaped Quintessence, the starry lights on its surface now flickering into life.

  The trio of glowing spheres are hovering over my head, filling my eyes with a dazzling brightness.

  And then I hear a shout.

  ‘Jake!’

  Glancing back over my shoulder, I catch sight of my mum racing down the garden path.

  ‘It’s OK, Mum,’ I shout. ‘I’ve got this all under con—’

  A beam of blue-white light suddenly splits the sky, engulfing me in a shimmering brightness. I can’t speak. I can’t even move a muscle as the light surrounds me, inside and out.

  Frozen, I watch as flickering colours dance across my body, the shimmering light changing from blue to green to yellow to red, flashes of orange, violet and indigo travelling from the tips of my toes to the socks on my ears. I know what’s happening. I’m being scanned; my bio-data read by the Cosmic Authority. I only hope Amba’s plan works.

  From what seems like a million miles away, I hear the faint sound of the TV reporter’s voice, her voice fuzzy in my ears as the static crackles again.

  ‘Look at that! Look! At! That!’

  I stare up into the brightness, but all I can see is the light. And then the light turns green.

  I remember what happened to my dad and watch with a strange fascination as the same thing happens to me. The ghostly green glow of the beam seems to be brightening, the light shining right through me now. I don’t feel any pain, but somewhere in the distance I hear the sound of Mum’s voice calling out my name.

  ‘Jake—’

  Then I feel myself zipped out of existence.

  THERE’S NO WAY WE CAN ESCAPE

  ‘Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!’

  I jump around as my feet hit the ground, the sensation of being zipped in and out of existence not much different to that time when I got my wotsits caught in the zip of my homemade pyjamas.

  I mean, who puts a zip on a pair of pyjama bottoms?

  My dad, that’s who, and it’s his voice I hear now as the pain of being beamed up slowly fades to a dull nagging ache.

  ‘Jake?’

  I look up to see my dad standing right in front of me. He’s still dressed in his silly silver ski suit, the pong from this almost as bad as his socks as he stares at me in shock and surprise. He looks just the same as he usually does, but with one tiny difference. Just like me, his skin is bright green.

  ‘What happened to you?’ he exclaims. ‘And why have you got my socks on your head?’

  Reaching up, I quickly slide the socks off my ears and stuff these into my pocket.

  ‘It was Amba’s idea,’ I explain. ‘She said I needed to look like a proper alien to fool the Cosmic Authority. She made me a Super Smoothie Shake using every vegetable in the fridge and, when I drank it, an allergic reaction turned my skin bright green. We popped your smelly socks over my ears to disguise my bio-data, then I popped outside to tell the whole world who I really was on live TV and challenged the Cosmic Authority to come and get me. I didn’t think it had worked at first, but then the spaceship came and beamed me up. And now I can rescue you.’

  I grin, waiting for Dad to tell me how brilliant I am.

  ‘You idiot!’ he says, slapping his hands to his head in frustration. ‘You should have listened to me, Jake. I told you to use the Quintessence to keep you safe, but now you’re trapped on this spaceship with me.’

  ‘We don’t have to be trapped,’ I say, feeling rather annoyed at my dad’s reaction to being rescued. ‘We can escape together.’

  With a despairing sigh, Dad throws his arms wide. ‘And how exactly do you think we’re going to do that?’

  I look around the space, taking in my surroundings for the very first time.

  It’s not much bigger than the inside of the zorb. But instead of a translucent hue, the colour of this room is a bright electric blue. Every surface is smooth – the walls, ceiling and floor all curving at the sides and the edges. I can’t see any windows or doors.

  I try to push my hand against the nearest wall but feel my hand glide right past the surface without even making contact.

  ‘What is this?’ I ask, trying to push again against the gleaming blue sunshine. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘We’re in a holding cell,’ Dad explains. ‘This is a bioengineered prison. The quantum teleportation beam that brought you on board scanned your bio-data, just like it did mine. Any other creature could walk right through this electromagnetic barrier, but there’s no way we can escape.’

  To demonstrate, Dad reaches out with his own hand and I watch as his green fingers bounce off the electric blue surface. He turns towards me, the lines around his tired eyes creased in concern.

  ‘I wish you’d listened to me, Jake. You’ve put yourself in terrible danger being here.’

  Dad rests his hands on my shoulders, and inside my brain I feel my rescue plan slowly falling to pieces. I spent so long worrying about how to find my dad again
that I forgot to think about the most important bit – how I was actually going to rescue him.

  If only I had a sonic screwdriver, like Doctor Who, that we could use to blast our way out of this place. Then I remember, I’ve got something even better than that.

  Reaching into my pocket I pull out the Quintessence, noticing as I do that the green tinge on my fingers is already starting to fade.

  ‘If it’s our bio-data that’s keeping us prisoner here, then why don’t we use the Quintessence to reprogram our biology? It can make you human again and change me back too.’

  Faint lights flicker across the surface of the egg-shaped stone but as I hold it out for my dad to take, he shakes his head sadly.

  ‘It’s no use, Jake,’ he says, his gaze flicking over the device as he turns it over in his hands. ‘These lights show that the Quintessence is currently running on auxiliary power. This means only its most basic functions are operational. The quantum flare isn’t working, there’s no cloaking shield and the harmonic modulating circuit is on the blink.’ He hands the device back to me. ‘It needs more time to recharge.’

  I’m about to ask him exactly how long when the blue wall of the cell starts to bulge behind my dad’s head.

  ‘Look out!’ I shout, pulling Dad away as the gleaming blue surface stretches and contorts. Then, with a sudden flubbery sound like a thousand rubber bands being pinged at once, a hideous creature emerges out of the blue.

  A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH

  It looks like a giant sea slug. The creature’s translucent skin shimmers with bright, neon colours, whilst the bulbous bulk of its body towers above us both. As I look up in horror at the place where its face should be, I see a single probing tentacle staring back at me.

  And then there’s a terrible smell.

  ‘Prisoners! The Cosmic Authority has sent me to escort you to your doom!’

  These words boom inside my brain even though I can’t see the mouth they’re coming from. I turn to my dad in terror as a small puddle of slime slowly pools on the floor around the alien.

  ‘How come it’s speaking English?’ I gasp.

  ‘Er, it’s not,’ Dad replies, grimacing as he wipes a stray strand of slime from where it has splatted on his face. ‘The Gezundhai communicate solely through their scent glands. They don’t make speeches – they make smells. And the Quintessence translates these whiffy emissions into words inside our heads.’

  ‘Silence!’

  An even fouler smell rises up from the alien like a cloud of cow pies.

  Then the electric blue wall begins to bulge again and, with a slippery popping sound, a second of these creatures enters the cell. This one is smaller than the first, not much taller than me, but apart from that the creatures look exactly the same.

  With a phut-phut sound, a neon bubble rises from somewhere near the rear end of this smaller alien. It floats up into the air and then pops to release a ghastly smell.

  As soon as the stench hits my nostrils, the alien’s words appear directly in my head: ‘I’m bored.’

  Ignoring the smaller alien, the larger slug-like creature waves its protruding tentacle in the direction of my dad as another stinking puddle of slime washes towards us.

  ‘You will follow me to the Chamber of Judgement,’ it oozes, as the electric blue walls suddenly blink out of existence. ‘There you will be sentenced for your terrible crime of trespassing on to a P-class planet and exposing the universe to their infectious ideas. Do not try to escape.’

  I don’t know about escaping, but I’m finding it difficult to breathe as the alien’s noxious emissions waft over me.

  ‘Please stop talking,’ I gasp.

  Then my dad lets out a small musical fart that quickly peters out into silence.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, wincing as if he’s trying to remember exactly how the tune goes. ‘My Gezundhai is a bit rusty now. Tell you what, I’ll leave it to the Quintessence to do the translating.’

  ‘Silence!’ Another foul-smelling cloud rises up from the giant alien slug. ‘You will follow me!’

  We now seem to be standing in a vast cavernous corridor, its curving walls pulsing with an eerie glow. The slug-like creature slithers forward, its gelatinous body quivering in rhythmic waves as it leaves a trail of slime for us to follow.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been a big mistake,’ Day says, hurrying to catch up with the giant gastropod. ‘You can take me to the Chamber of Judgement, but my son Jake shouldn’t be here. He got himself beamed up by mistake.’

  I feel a slimy tentacle poke me in the back and twist round to see the smaller of the slug-like creatures prodding me on. I hurry forward, my footsteps echoing off the metallic floor that gleams like blackened sunshine.

  ‘Kids, eh?’ The giant alien slug’s words appear in a puff of curdled steam. ‘They never listen, do they? Take this one here,’ it exudes, waggling its eye-tentacle back in the direction of the smaller alien. ‘It’s “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” today, but with all the fuss this one’s been making you’d think it was “Torture Your Child at Work Day”. “Stop fluorescing in front of my friends, Dad,” she said when I picked her up from her mum’s, and since then it’s been moan, moan, moan. “Do I have to sing on the way to the cells? Do I have to shout at the prisoners so loud?” Here I am, trying to show her the exciting life of an intergalactic guard and all she can say is she’s bored!’

  I glance over at the smaller slug-like creature as it slithers along beside me.

  ‘Is that your dad?’ I ask.

  The slimy alien bobs its head, its translucent skin now shimmering a crimson red.

  ‘He’s so embarrassing,’ she replies in a rasp of stale air.

  ‘See what I mean,’ the giant slug continues, its jelly-like body wobbling as it slowly negotiates a curve in the corridor. ‘No respect for their fathers. Think all that we’re good for is pocket money and lifts home from interplanetary trips.’

  My dad nods his head in agreement. ‘It’s the same for me too,’ he says. ‘When I picked him up from this year’s school disco, Jake made me wait on the street outside. He said he didn’t want me showing off my breakdancing moves like I did last year.’

  I shudder as I remember the horror of the Year Five disco – Dad spinning on his head across the dance floor and then taking out my head teacher at the knees. Mr Ronson was off school for five weeks after that with a fractured femur.

  ‘It’s not breakdancing when you do it,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘It’s broken dancing.’

  Overhearing my muttered joke, the younger Gezundhai secretes a slimy trail of giggles in her wake.

  ‘You know, it’s almost a shame I’ve got to escort you to a fate worse than death,’ the Gezundhai guard belches, spraying my dad with a shower of foul-smelling slime. ‘I can’t help thinking that you and I have got a lot in common. Two ordinary dads just trying to do the best we can.’

  Dad wipes the slime from his face with the back of his sleeve. ‘Perhaps you don’t have to escort us to a fate worse than death,’ he suggests, looking up at the giant slug with a hopeful smile. ‘You could say we escaped and let us beam back down to Earth.’

  ‘Oh no, no, no,’ the guard guffs in reply. ‘What kind of example would I be setting my daughter by doing that? No, I’ll deliver you both to the Cosmic Authority and then I can clock off for lunch. I could murder some Dentrassi stew.’

  Dad’s shoulders sag as the giant slug slithers forward again, leading us to our doom.

  I glance across at the guard’s daughter, but she just waggles her eye-tentacle apologetically.

  It’s no good. We’re being taken to the Chamber of Judgement to face a fate worse than death. And we’re going to get there very, very slowly.

  I fall into step next to my dad, the two of us shuffling forward and then stopping, shuffling forward and then stopping as the Gezundhai sluggishly oozes its way along the corridor.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I hiss, frantically
searching my brain for any kind of escape plan.

  But before Dad can even think of replying, another foul-smelling cloud chokes him into—

  ‘Silence!’ The stinking pall hangs above the giant slug’s head, its eye-tentacle swivelling in my direction. ‘Or at least speak up a bit so I can hear you. I can’t stand the way you young people mumble all the time.’

  I sniff a sigh of exasperation from the smaller Gezundhai behind me and, echoing this, thrust my hands deep into my pockets. I can’t believe I’m being nagged by a giant alien slug. I sometimes used to wish that my own dad would nag me like this – telling me to tidy my room or get my homework done – just like an ordinary dad. But he never did.

  I glance across at Dad, his bright green skin still looking so strange to me. I know now that he’s far from ordinary, but I don’t care any more. I don’t want an ordinary dad. I just want to find a way to get us both home.

  Inside my pocket I feel the smooth shape of the Quintessence nestling next to the socks I stuffed there before. And as my fingers touch these furry socks and the giant slug’s eyestalk flicks back to the corridor ahead, this jogs a memory loose inside my mind.

  I remember standing in the wings at the school concert and hear Damon’s voice inside my head, telling me the best way to defeat a Dalek. Stick a sock on their eyestalk and they can’t see a thing, he said. For a master race of alien monsters, they’re pretty rubbish really.

  Amba laughed at this idea at the time, but maybe this is the kind of crazy plan I need now to rescue my dad from the Gezundhai. But I’m going to have to be quick . . .

  Nudging him in the ribs, I whisper to my dad out of the side of my mouth, ‘Get ready to run.’

  ‘Silence!’ A fresh stink erupts from the giant slug leading the way, its eye-tentacle swivelling in my direction again. But this time I’m ready for it, drawing my weapons out of my pocket like a gunslinger stuck in a sock drawer.

  With an acrobatic leap, I plant the first of these on top of the alien’s eyestalk, blindfolding the giant slug creature with a polka-dot sock from Marks and Spencer.