Chapter Nineteen

Out of control

RED ALERT! RED ALERT!

WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!

The ship was whizzing round wildly like a balloon that’s been blown up and then let go (except it didn’t make that rude farting noise balloons make). And worse, they were rocketing through space – completely out of control! Maxie wrestled with the flight controls. ‘I can’t stop it!’ she cried.

Everyone clung on for dear life as they spun round faster and faster. Harvey shut his eyes. His stomach was struggling to keep up with the rest of him.

‘I’m going to vomit!’ announced Gizmo.

‘Mulitcoloured upchuck!’ cried Scrummage.

‘Yes, probably!’ agreed Medical Officer Yargal.

(Guess what – it was chaos on the command bridge of the Toxic Spew. But hey, what’s new?)

Harvey forced himself to open his eyes and look through the vision screen at the stars and planets spinning round crazily. He immediately wished he hadn’t. He also wished he hadn’t eaten Yargal’s Supersonic Special. A hot rush of sickness swept over him and the pizza threatened to reappear. It had been bad enough seeing it the first time.

It’s a good job the Toxic Spew has a powerful artificial gravity system. Otherwise the crew would have been flung to the sides of the command bridge and whizzed round like clothes in a washing machine set to ‘super spin’.

DAMAGE ALERT! DAMAGE ALERT!

 …  shrieked the warning system.

‘Computer! Cut the alarms and give me a status report!’ ordered Harvey.

‘Oh dear,’ it said. ‘It’s all gone horribly wrong. On the one hand you were lucky the Explo-Foam didn’t blow up inside the cargo hold. But on the other hand you were very unlucky that a nanosecond after you had dumped the stuff, it did explode – and slap-bang next to the left-hand engine. Which is now either:

a) shattered

b) wrecked, or

c) bust.’

‘Can we fix it?’ asked Harvey.

‘How would I know? I’m not the Senior Engineering Officer!’ snapped the computer and bleeped off.

‘Captain, I’m not sure I can repair it,’ said Gizmo through clenched teeth, trying not to throw up. ‘But the other engine is still working.’

‘Which is why we’re whizzing round so fast our guts are going to tangle into a knot of knitting and we’ll be strangled to death by our own innards!’ yelled Maxie, still battling at the flight desk.

‘If we carry on spinning we’ll damage the other engine too!’ warned Gizmo.

‘In that case, cut power to both engines!’ demanded Harvey.

Gizmo did, and the Toxic Spew slowly stopped spinning, and began drifting aimlessly through the darkness of outer space.

Lost in space

They had no idea where they were. The blast had hurled them, spiralling, a gazillion miles across outer space. The blackness through the vision screen was dotted with strange distant planets and unfamiliar stars. Maxie was using the 3D star map trying to work out where in the universe they had ended up. Fat chance. It’s hard enough finding where you are on a 3D star map when you know where you are in the first place.

The trouble with being lost in space is that there aren’t any helpful signs saying ‘Straight on for the Gallipian Nebula’ or ‘Planet Pandromeda left at the roundabout’. And it’s not like you can open a window and ask a boy on a bike.

While Maxie checked the star map, Gizmo tried to find out why the left-hand engine had stopped. He tried every test in the book (the book was The Idiot’s Guide to Space Engines). He even tried turning it on and off few times, unplugging it completely and thumping the engineering desk. Nothing worked.

‘Captain,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s broken.’

(If you’re not mechanically minded you could miss the next sentence – it won’t mean much to you anyway.)

‘It’s either the hyperdrive gearing nodes or the mega-drivebelt or maybe the nova-drive robotic plates,’ he said.

Harvey looked over Gizmo’s shoulder at the image of the engine on his monitor and tried to understand him. Then he noticed something.

‘Um  …  what’s that?’ He pointed to a dark splodge on the screen.

Scrummage went over and all three of them peered at the shadowy blob.

‘That? Oh  …  ah  … ’ said Gizmo pretending he’d seen this already. ‘Or  …  it could be something stuck in the engine!’

‘Looks like a chunk from an Explo-Foam tub to me,’ said Scrummage drily.

It was. And you don’t need to be a space mechanic – sorry, ‘Senior Engineering Officer’ – to know that engines don’t work very well if they’ve got clumps of metal stuck in them.

Gizmo groaned. This was his worst nightmare. If there was any damage to the engines it was his job to fix them – even if that meant going outside. ‘Outside’ as in ‘out of the ship and into the vast and terrifying inky-black nothingness of outer space’. It’s not that he’s a wimp. It’s just that when you’re flying around the galaxy, nice and safe inside a spaceship, you kind of want to stay inside – where it’s  …  well, nice and safe.

(I’m sorry to bring it up again but since you’re from Earth, you’re probably wondering just how dangerous and scary it is to do repairs on the outside of a spaceship in deep space. The answer is: very.

Think about it. How would you like to clamber out of a plane to fix a broken engine  …  while the plane is actually flying thousands of miles up in the sky  …  and in the dark? I’m guessing not much.)

Going outside

Gizmo had no choice. If he had, you can bet your pet hamster he would have stayed inside. For several moments Gizmo just sat gazing at the image of the broken engine on his monitor, trying to ignore the fact that the rest of the crew were looking at him expectantly.

‘What are you waiting for, Senior Engineering Officer Gizmo?’ sneered Scrummage. ‘That engine won’t come to you!’

‘Gizmo, are you all right?’ asked Maxie quietly.

‘Yes, fine  …  er, thank you. Right then,’ he said limply. ‘I’ll go and get kitted up and, er  …  go outside then.’ Reluctantly he headed for the doorway of the bridge.

Harvey followed him. ‘I’ll help.’

If you’d slapped the entire crew round their faces, one after another, with a raw quarter-pound beef burger they couldn’t have been more surprised. Never in all their multiple intergalactic missions had anyone ever, EVER, volunteered to go outside.

‘You don’t have to do that, Captain! It’s my job,’ said Gizmo bravely.

‘Yes, it’s his job!’ said Scrummage, meanly.

‘I know,’ said Harvey. ‘But it’s my job to support my team  …  er  …  crew.’ He headed off the bridge. ‘Let’s go, Gizmo.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!’ said Gizmo, who was more grateful (and more gobsmacked) than he’d ever been in his entire life.