The emergency services moved in, all flashing lights, squawking walkie-talkies and blaring sirens, achieving little, but determined to be noticed. Businesslike firemen hurriedly unrolled the anaconda of all hoses to douse already extinguished fires. Cops pushed sightseers back, back, ever back, setting up cordons, planting bollards, insisting there was, ‘Nothing to see. Nothing to see.’
And they were right. There wasn’t anything to see.
So people drifted away to buy lottery tickets, and the police took to pushing each other away. Chief constables pushed away sergeants. Sergeants pushed away constables. Constables pushed away special constables. Special constables pushed themselves away, getting into minor scuffles with their own arms, till a major civic disturbance erupted and the police had to arrest themselves in a scrum of men not seen since the days of the Great Wheatley Kangaroo Chase.
And the army? Most of all, the army congratulated themselves on a job well done though none were too sure what it was they’d done. But a great victory had been won today. There’d be ticker tape and buntings, and kisses from easily impressed girls. And that was reward enough. Now all they had to do was find a way back to Earth.
A black-clad woman with a rifle ran round and round in shrinking circles, as though not knowing what else to do now her Plan A was ruined. When the circles became too small for her to move without tripping over herself, she flung herself at the ground and sprawled, face down, thumping and kicking the grass, in a less than becoming tantrum. The one remaining cop took her away for assaulting the Earth, a very serious offence indeed, he told her.
But, in all the mêlée that followed, the frantic waste of effort, money, time and resources, no one offered assistance to a dazed boy who lay by a now upright tower. He didn’t care. He was simply glad to be alive and unkissed. Bleary-eyed he looked toward his chest, to the two scampery things that had so terrified the horrible Mr Meekly into releasing the girl it loved.
Noses twitching, they squeaked at Danny.
And he smiled.
He saw two rats with cardboard ears.
‘Still crap at Buckaroo, then.’ Hands in pockets, she gazed up at the wobbling Osmosis Tower. ‘How’s the Ker-plunk?’
Danny frowned, vision still blurry. ‘Lucy?’
Three Lucys revolved around one another – like a choir of angels or a washing machine on Slow Spin – before converging into the Lucy who, hair dangling over one eye, stood grinning down at him. ‘Way to go, Danny. We watched the whole thing on TV. The missile dodging was my highlight.’
‘Me and Des, my new flatmate. Between you and me, he’s a bit weird but a big improvement on you.’ She shrugged, looking around. ‘He’s wandered off. I don’t know where. So, how are you?’
‘I can’t move.’
‘Paralysed?’
‘Lucy, look at me. I’m tied up.’
‘I had noticed but didn’t want to comment, feeling it might be something you didn’t want attention drawing to. It suits you though.’
He tutted.
‘No, really,’ she insisted. ‘It does.’
In breathless passing, a military officer stopped. ‘Sparkling Boy, I’m Colonel Rodgers.’ He half-extended a hand to shake, then, seeing the straps, thought better of it. ‘That was magnificent. The way you got close to that monster and attempted to head bullets onto it. This country’s lucky to have men like you. I’ll see you get a medal for this.’ And he departed, barking orders at his men.
Lucy watched him go, a contemptuous gleam in her eyes, then returned her attention to Danny. Her teasing head tilted sideways, eyelashes fluttering, she asked him, ‘Sparkling Boy?’
He shrugged blankly.
Windswept she looked around. ‘So, Sparkling Boy, where’s Osmo?’