Once upon a time they’d worked in a travelling circus, and Aunt Tabitha said they argued so much because they missed the old circus days. She also said she was working on a rejuvenating machine that would allow them to regain their youthful physiques and return to the wandering showbiz life, because their neighbours complained to her about the noise whenever she went to visit. But rejuvenation is difficult and the machine was still not yet ready.
Grandad Zoltan had once been The Great Zargo, a human cannonball who would sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a member of the audience as he flew through the air. If there were very many people with birthdays on the same day he would perform the act very many times, not always to the joy of people without birthdays who’d come along to the circus to see the dancing dogs and sword swallowers and flaming hoops and all the rest.
Grandad Jasper had worked behind the scenes, oiling the cannon, cooking Zoltan’s meals and sewing sequins on to his leotard.1 He didn’t mind this; after all, he blushed whenever people looked at him and enjoyed the smell of fresh oil. Circus life wasn’t so bad.
Today, however, Greta didn’t have time to go visit them. There were things she needed to do before the party.
‘Hello,’ said a creaky voice at the other end of the telephone.
‘Grandad Jasper,’ Greta said. ‘I won’t be visiting today. I’ve got things I need to do. See you next week.’
‘Greta,’ said Grandad Jasper. ‘Is that you, love?’
‘Yes,’ said Greta, louder and slower. ‘I can’t come visit today.’
‘Don’t worry, love,’ her grandad said. ‘Bertie Rustle’s come to see us, so there wouldn’t be a chair for you anyway.
Maybe we’ll see you tonight? At the party?’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
So, they were coming to the party too, were they?
Five minutes later Greta was once again on Jessica’s patio.
‘Jessica,’ she shouted.
An upstairs window opened and Jessica stuck her head out.
(The noise of the shouting ex-Brigadier in the garden next door filled the gaps between their words as they spoke.)
‘Hi, Greta,’ Jessica said. ‘If you wait there I’ll be down in a minute. We can go play up the park; it’s a lovely day.’
‘Tell me more about the party,’ Greta said. ‘What did you say the theme is? Is it fruit again?’
The year before it had been ‘fruits of the world’, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the melon.2
‘Oh no. This time it’s space. I didn’t even know it was the sixtieth anniversary of the moon landing until I got the invitation. I’m such a silly.’3
‘Space. OK,’ said Greta. ‘Thanks.’
‘Shall we go up the park?’ asked Jessica. ‘We could play football or throw sticks at ducks or …’
But Greta didn’t hear. She was too busy thinking about what to do for her costume, and had already reached and opened her front door and gone inside and taken her shoes off and climbed upstairs.
It needed to blend in perfectly with the theme of the party, but also allow her the perfect opportunity to catch the thief when she saw him or her lay a finger on the cakes.
Her first thought was to go as a Space Scone. But where would she get Space Flour and Space Eggs and Space Sugar on a Friday? They weren’t the sorts of things Sophie Doodad had in her corner shop.
What about a Space Monster that could shoot glue out from its eyes? That would be perfect for catching a thief. The moment she saw a cake move it would be squirt! Eye-glue all over the villain …
But as far as she knew there was no such thing as eye-glue, and Aunt Tabitha probably wouldn’t have time to invent it.
This was difficult.
It would require more thought than a normal Friday morning had room for, so Greta ran herself a bubble bath with extra bubbles and made herself a Marmite sandwich.
Then she sank beneath the steamy suds, nibbled and began to think extra hard.
* * *
When Greta resurfaced, the water was cold, the sandwich soggy and the answer was in her head.
She had a blue T-shirt and a cap with the BASA logo on. She’d go as one of the people from mission control. It wasn’t exactly pushing the boat out so far as exciting costumes went, but it would do, especially because it meant she’d be carrying a butterfly net.4 That would come in really handy.
But it wasn’t just the ideal costume that had bubbled into her mind while she’d been thinking so hard; something else had gone ping as well. It was something Grandad Jasper had said.
He’d said that he and Grandad Zoltan had a visitor: Bertie Rustle.
The name hadn’t meant anything at first, but while she was in the bath a memory had popped into her head.
Bertie Rustle was short for Bertram Rustle and Bertram Rustle had been a shorter-than-average contortionist and acrobat her grandads had worked with back in the circus. He had been famous for squeezing himself through holes that less flexible people couldn’t fit through. Audiences had fallen off the edge of their seats watching him. It had been years since she’d seen him round her grandads’ house, but she remembered he’d been quite small and old back then. Now? Well, now he must be even smaller and older, and Grandad Jasper had confirmed that Rustle was in the area. Right now.
What did she know about the thief? What had she learnt from her own investigations? It was this: the thief was a tiny person with grey hair who could move fast and climb through tight windows with ease.
Bertram Rustle loved cake. Greta remembered Grandad Zoltan saying so once. Rustle had visited a few years ago on a Thursday, and when she’d made her usual Friday visit her grandad had greeted her at the door by saying, ‘There’s no cake left, love. Never is when Bertie’s been to visit.’
What more was there to say?
All she had to do now was catch Rustle in the act of nicking a cake from the party and the case would be closed, the mystery solved and she’d be able to write the story up ready for the front page of the newspaper.
Except, of course, it wouldn’t be on the front page of the newspaper because Mr Inglebath had sacked her, because he preferred to do what Mrs Hummock, his sister-in-law, said, instead of being dedicated heart and soul to The Truth like what she was.
Well, she’d use the photocopier in the library and just make her own newspaper, as Aunt Tabitha had suggested. It would still be something to leave on the Head’s desk when they went back to school. It would still be a pretty cool thing that nobody could deny: Greta Zargo, crime solver! Greta Zargo, winner!
It might still be Prilchard-Spritzer-Medal-worthy, even if she published it herself. It was such a good story.
Greta had to admit, she was brilliant.
1Being fired from a cannon was one of the main causes of lost sequins in the latter part of the twentieth century, just behind crocodile attacks and sudden bouts of overeating.
2Jessica Plumb had gone as a plum. It had been very funny. People kept asking her, ‘What are you, Plumb?’ and she’d say, ‘Yes’. Oh, how everyone laughed. Greta hadn’t laughed as much as everyone else, however, since she’d dressed as a banananana and had got stuck in a doorway for several hours. (The banananana was one of Aunt Tabitha’s creations, designed for hungry people who only had time to peel one piece of fruit. It was twice as long as the old-fashioned banana, and an improvement of several inches on her previous effort, the bananana.)
3BASA (British Agency of Space Adventures) had launched the Boudica 8 from Ventnor Spaceport sixty years ago that summer. Bernice Wickett’s iconic first words, ‘Oops, mind that step, Graham,’ will be remembered for as long as human beings remember them.
4The butterfly net had become the unofficial symbol of BASA after the moon landing because of the issue they’d had with all the butterflies (and other insects, hummingbirds and geese) who mistook the colourful computer screens in mission control for a beeping floral display, just as Wickett and Stump had been about to touch down on the moon.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Middling Otherbridge, England, Earth
LAST SUNDAY
THE SILVERY ROBOT landed beside a low building.
‘Take me to your leader,’ it said to the world at large, assuming that if someone were within hearing range they would answer.
‘Go see The Great Zargo,’ said a voice.
The robot swivelled and focused its camera-eyes.
Through a window it could see a biological life form sat on a soft rectangular structure.1 It had two arm-limbs and two leg-limbs and a ball with what appeared to be various sense organs protruding from the top of a barrel-shaped body.2
The robot had seen others of this type around. They must be, it computed, the dominant species on this planet. They were featured, after all, in many of the television programmes it had watched in order to learn English from as it approached the planet.
‘Take me to your leader,’ it repeated.
The figure scratched under one of the arm-limbs with the little mini-limbs at the end of the opposite arm-limb, but it didn’t speak.
‘Go see The Great Zargo,’ said the voice that had spoken before.
A metal cage hung in the corner of the room. In it a colourful animal, about the size of a squawlk-gurd from the third moon of Trixl-Dar, sat on a wooden perch.3
‘Go see The Great Zargo?’ the robot repeated.
‘Go see The Great Zargo,’ the parrot confirmed.
‘Very well,’ said the silvery robot, already lifting up into the sky.
Robots, it should be remembered, as has been mentioned before, are amongst the most trusting things in the universe. They do not understand irony, sarcasm or metaphor4. They always tell the truth and always assume they are being told the truth. They are, in fact, the exact opposite of cats.
As it flew the robot probed the internet to discover the location of this ‘Great Zargo’, leader of the people of the planet Earth.
The first relevant entry it discovered was Greta Zargo’s birth certificate, on which her father had made a minor spelling mistake.
Another seven seconds of searching through the computerised records of the Earth turned up an address.
It was only a few miles from where the robot had first landed.
Course was set for the town of Upper Lowerbridge.
* * *
Back in the bedroom, Zoltan Zargo was shouting at his parrot.
‘Shut up, Bertha. I’m tryin’ a think. Between you and the radio and that metal thing outside, I can’t remember what I came in here for.’
‘Go see The Great Zargo,’ the parrot repeated.
‘If only,’ the once-Great Zargo said. ‘But I ain’t feelin’ so great no more.’
Bertha preened under her wing and then ate a peanut.
She had been with Zoltan Zargo for fifty years and the only thing she’d ever learnt to say had been that one phrase, the phrase that would draw eager customers into the Big Top night after night. Well, that and ‘Bertha wants a cracker’, but she wasn’t hungry just then.5
1It was a bed.
2It was a human.
3It was a parrot.
4For a fuller list of the figures of speech and turns of phrase robots don’t understand see paragraph one here.
5She’d just had a peanut, after all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Upper Lowerbridge, England, Earth
LAST FRIDAY, TEATIME
GRETA WAS ON the pavement outside the Cohens’ house, watching the guests arrive. She made a note in her head of what people were wearing, as if she were a reporter on the red carpet of some swanky movie premiere.
The Merridews from number sixteen, the Appledumps from number twenty-five and Mr Borris from opposite Greta’s house had all dressed as the aliens from the Don’t Mind Me, I’m Your Mother series of films1, and were arguing on the front lawn.
Belinda Archangel, the soprano who lived in the flat above Sophie Doodad’s shop, had wound tin foil around herself and was humming the famous aria from Wingstein’s opera Space Mummy versus the World.
Brigadier Ryefoot-fforwerd (Rtd) was wearing his old army uniform with all his medals on, which didn’t really count as fancy dress, but since he wasn’t very nice and shouted a lot, no one complained, because that would have meant spending time with him.
Aunt Tabitha arrived on a floating bicycle she’d invented, just like the one that Janet Weatherfall rode in Which Way to the Future? But even though everyone was impressed, Greta could see that there was a hint of sadness in the corner of her aunt’s left eye.
‘What is it, Auntie?’ she asked.
‘Jonathon still hasn’t come home. I do so worry for him,’ her aunt replied.
‘Oh dear,’ Greta said.
She didn’t have to comfort her sad aunt for long, because just then her Grandad Jasper arrived, dressed as a Space Pirate, with a little grey Space Monkey waddling beside him.
‘Grandad Zoltan’s still under the weather, love,’ he told Greta. ‘He’s stayed at home.’ He leaned in close. ‘Between you and me, though,’ he whispered, ‘I think he just didn’t want to miss Dance, Baker, Dance!’
‘Where did you get a Space Monkey from?’ Greta asked.
‘Oh, it’s not a real Space Monkey,’ her grandad said. ‘It’s just Bert in fancy dress. Go on, give her a twirl, Bert.’
And the Space Monkey twirled, and Greta saw that it was indeed Bertram Rustle, the shorter-than-average, elderly but sprightly circus performer she’d been waiting for. (He wasn’t wearing the strange big furry backpack she’d seen him with before, but that wasn’t surprising, since monkeys, even space ones, rarely wear backpacks.)
Aha! she thought, nevertheless.
‘He’s been staying with us this week while his bungalow is moved a bit further to the right,’ her grandad explained. ‘It’ll get more sunshine, he reckons, when it’s done.’
She wanted to slap her hand down on Rustle’s shoulder and say, ‘Someone call for the police and a photographer. I have captured the infamous Upper Lowerbridge Cake Thief.’ But there was no point.
All the evidence she had and all the suspicions she held would only add up if she caught the thief red-handed. Until then it would just be her word against his, and almost everybody trusted elderly circus performers more than they trusted eleven-year-old girls.
She had to be patient.
She tried hard to not stare, because she didn’t want Rustle to know she was on to him.
Patience, Greta, she thought, patience, as she watched them all go into the house.
Ten minutes later she was in the Cohens’ kitchen watching the cakes.2
Watching them carefully.
Watching them closely.
(Her butterfly net was held ready.)
There were an awful lot of cakes. More than enough to prove irresistible to a hungry old man.
She just had to wait.
She edged back into a dark corner of the kitchen and stood still. She imagined she was playing musical statues and the music had stopped, which was something she’d never done, not having been invited to those sorts of parties very often.
She was, however, a very determined, recently sacked, investigative-reporter-cum-schoolgirl.
Twenty-two minutes went by before anything interesting happened.
And even then the interesting thing that happened was just that Jessica Plumb found her and said, ‘Hi, Greta. Have you seen Sophie Doodad? She’s got the most wonderful robot costume. It’s all silver and has flashing lights and everything. I’m very jealous. Do you like my outfit?’
Jessica twirled.
She looked like a plum, with extra tin foil.
‘I’m the Carnivorous Plumulon from Space Adventures in Space, series two, episode thirty-six,’ she said excitedly.
Greta had only seen the first series of Space Adventures in Space, so she said, ‘Very good. I’m on a mission, Jessica. Go away for a bit.’
Jessica, recognising that her best friend was
involved in some serious business that she’d probably find out about later on, nodded and went away. (She didn’t mind. There were other people she could show her costume off to, and there were seven different flavours of crisps in bowls in seven different rooms around the house, and she thought that by eating two, or possibly three, crisps from different bowls at the same time she might be able to invent some new flavours. She secretly wanted to be an inventor like Greta’s aunt, but her parents were still alive and annoying, so she had hardly invented anything yet.)
Greta went on watching from under the brim of her baseball cap.
Sixteen minutes later and still all the cakes were unstolen.3
‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, spacemen and spacewomen,’ shouted Mrs Cohen, tinging a fork on the side of a glass. ‘Let us repair to the street, where Mr Cohen and I will recreate the moment we are all here to remember, the landing of The Henry, and the historic descent of Wickett and Stump to the moon’s surface.’
Greta had seen the full-size model of the lunar module dangling from a large crane in the street as she’d arrived and had, at first, wondered what it was for. But when she’d seen Mr and Mrs Cohen in their replica BASA space suits, it had all become clear. They really did go to a lot of effort for their parties.
Everyone began filing out of the house into the street.
Everyone except Greta.
She was willing to miss the re-enactment. With everyone gone, now was the obvious time for the thief to strike. She couldn’t risk missing it.
But she needed a better hiding place. Just standing stock-still like a statue in the shadowy corner of the kitchen wasn’t good enough, she decided.
She quickly looked around and found the biggest cupboard. After moving all the brooms, buckets, mops, boxes of moth balls and clothes pegs, detergent, coats and gardening gloves, dustpans and brushes, old rope and boxes of dog biscuits and fish food, bird seed and candlesticks, candles and roadmaps of Scotland, minor Impressionist paintings of negligible worth and umbrellas, umbrellas and more umbrellas carefully aside, she climbed in.
Greta Zargo and the Death Robots from Outer Space Page 5