Moonwalking
“Grab my arm!” yelled Ty, stretching out an arm to Chilli and Oubaas.
Skree-skree-skree! Oubaas screeched in terror as he flailed around. There are only two fears hard-wired into animals, and this was one of them. Falling is a baboon’s version of a worst nightmare.
“Oof!” Chilli was winded as she linked arms with Ty and slammed into him.
The friends hung onto one another as they hurtled head-over-heels through the air, screaming at the top of their lungs.
“Where are weeeeeee?” Chilli shrieked, feeling as though her eyes were about to pop out of her head.
“I can’t seeeee!” replied Ty, giddy from being spun around so fast. “But I think we’re slowing doooowwwn!”
Ty was right. The spinning was rapidly slowing down until, finally, it stopped. The two friends, however, still felt their heads spinning.
Chilli was the first to trust herself to speak without throwing up. “We’ve stopped falling!” she gasped with relief.
“Are you okay?” asked Ty.
“I... I think so. Where are we?” Chilli looked around, trying to get her bearings. “Oh, wow! We... we’re...” Words failed Chilli as she gaped at their surroundings.
“It can’t be! But we are, aren’t we? We... we’re in space! Look!” Ty said in disbelief. “That bright light... it’s the sun!”
“We weren’t falling. We were just spinning in one spot!” exclaimed Chilli.
“There’s no gravity out here. Look!” said Ty, deciding to have some fun in the weightless atmosphere. He held his nose and made silly swimming motions. Then he flipped backwards and forwards doing somersaults and flick flacks.
Oubaas, on the other hand, wasn’t having fun. He was having trouble just trying to stay upright. He quickly learned the smallest movement sent his body careening across space. Finally, he folded his arm across his body, crossed his legs and hung motionlessly.
“Check this out” said Chilli, doing a backward sliding walk. “A real moon walk! Michael Jackson, eat your heart out.” The two friends collapsed into a fit of laughter, but it was more from the relief of surviving their ordeal than at her joke.
But no matter how much Chilli was enjoying herself, she couldn’t forget the trouble her parents were in. Her uneasiness brought her back to the reality of where they were and what they might be facing.
“This is fun. But what’re we doing here?” Chilli asked, gesturing at the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies around them. They were so far out in space that they could see lightening slashing through dark clouds gathering in the Arctic Circle.
“Watch out!” cried Chilli suddenly, grabbing Ty by the shoulder.
“What the...?” exclaimed Ty.
“That” replied Chilli, pointing at a huge piece of twisted metal whizzing past them, “was about to hit you on the head.”
“Space junk! We...”
“Ooooooohhhhhhh!”
“What was that?” whispered Chilli.
“Dunno” answered Ty, spinning around to see what had made the sound.
“Even space is not safe from mankind. Is there no respite anywhere from man’s careless ways?” a woman’s voice sighed.
“Who said that?” the two friends asked in unison. At that point, Oubaas started behaving strangely. He raised his head to the sun and made a soft ooh-ooh sound, almost as if he was answering the voice that came from nowhere and everywhere.
“It is merely I, children. It is merely I,” the voice sighed in answer.
Where was it coming from? But, more importantly, who was it? It isn’t as though there’s a huge crowd of people in space.