Chapter Seven

How long?

Harvey forced himself to take a deep breath and think clearly. ‘Hang on. The computer must have had my  …  IP thingy address, because it found me in the first place  … ’

‘Good point!’ said Gizmo, and he and the crew looked at Harvey with respect. None of them had ever managed to catch the computer out before.

‘Technically that’s correct,’ said the computer snippily. It bleeped and its lights flickered frantically. ‘It’s just a question of locating it in my memory bank.’ Bleep. Blibble. Bleep. ‘I’ll have to do a complete search  … ’ Blibble. Bleep  …  ‘Won’t take too long  … ’

‘How long?’ asked Harvey.

The problem with having a 215 megatronbyte boogleplex memory is that it can take quite a while to look in all the nooks and crannies.

‘Four years, two months and fifty-seven days,’ replied the computer. ‘But that’s if you don’t distract me.’

‘Four years!’ gasped Harvey – who wasn’t in the mood to bother with minor details like a further two months and fifty-seven days  …  And he hadn’t even noticed there seemed to be more days in the month than he was used to.

(Of course, you probably did notice, didn’t you? You might even have picked it up at the beginning when I told you the date was Moonsday the 116th of Oort. Galaxy 43b has a very simple calendar system. There are 360 days in a year. Each year is neatly divided into three months of 120 days, and the months are neatly divided into three weeks of forty days. It’s a great system, except you have to wait a long time for the weekend. But then Harvey’s got to wait four years, two months and fifty-seven days  … )

‘But what about my family?’ he cried.

‘Oh, don’t worry about them,’ said Scrummage. ‘They won’t miss you at all.’

‘I think they might!’ Harvey spluttered.

Harvey’s mum had cried when he went to football camp for four days – never mind hurtling around the universe for four years without even phoning home.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ said Scrummage. ‘We’ll be able to send you back to the exact same moment in space and time that you left.’

‘You mean you can go back in time?!’

‘Splattering upchuck!’ cried Scrummage. ‘Of course we can. If you travel faster than the speed of light you go backwards in time. Don’t they teach you anything where you come from? Good grief!’ He rolled his turquoise eyes and hitched up his overalls.

‘Actually, where do you come from?’ asked Yargal.

‘Earth,’ said Harvey.

‘Sorry, never heard of it,’ said Yargal.

Harvey looked at the others – but they all shrugged. Neither had they.

Earth: does it exist?

‘Computer!’ said Harvey. ‘Please look up planet Earth.’

‘Earth?’ asked the computer, and it made a few hurried blips and bleeps and its lights trickled on and off for a bit and then it said:

‘Well:

a) I can’t find it, so

b) it probably doesn’t exist.’

(Can you imagine how worrying it is to find out that your home planet might not exist? Possibly not: after all, you’re from Earth too, so you probably don’t exist either, do you?)

But Harvey didn’t have time to worry about that. Maxie slapped the digipad back in front of him.

‘If we’re stuck with you on the Toxic Spew,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to make yourself useful.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Gizmo snottily. ‘We’re not a star cruiser. We don’t carry passengers.’

‘We’re a garbage ship,’ added Scrummage.

‘Never heard of one. So you probably don’t exist either,’ snapped Harvey, getting his own back.

The Chief Rubbish Officer turned slowly to Harvey with one multicoloured eyebrow raised on his purple face. ‘We are responsible for collecting all the garbage in Galaxy 43b!’ he said importantly.

‘Yup! We’re Bin Men!’ said Maxie. Scrummage shot her a filthy look.

‘Er  …  Bin Men?’ queried Harvey. ‘But you’re a girl, and they’re not  … ’ He tailed off because Maxie was glaring at him, her bright turquoise eyes glittering dangerously. He knew that look. It was the one the girls in his class used on any of the boys dumb enough to criticise them.

Maxie raised one white eyebrow and said coolly: ‘Well, what would you call us then?’

Harvey’s brain raced to come up with something that wouldn’t offend her.

‘Er  …  Rubbish Operatives?’

‘Operatives? We’re not robots or droids,’ spluttered Gizmo.

‘And we’re not rubbish!’ snorted Scrummage.

‘You are!’ laughed Maxie. ‘You’re a Rubbish Officer!’

Scrummage scowled at her furiously.

Harvey’s mind was doing overtime. If he wasn’t careful he was going to upset the entire crew.

‘Bin  …  er  … ’ he stopped. He was just about to suggest ‘Bin People’ but remembered in the nick of time they weren’t exactly people.

‘Bin  …  er  …  Aliens?’

‘Aliens?’ gasped Yargal, waggling her tentacles and deeply insulted.

‘OK, how about Bin Beings?’

‘Oh, yuck! We’re not a bunch of manky garbage maggots,’ cried Maxie. ‘Or festering waste-disposal worms  …  or disgustingly gross junk bugs, trash beasties or any other kind of revolting creepy crawlies that might spring to mind. If it’s all the same to you, we’ll stick with Bin Men.’

Scrummage’s rubbish equipment

‘Yes,’ agreed Scrummage proudly, much to Harvey’s surprise. ‘We’re highly trained, well equipped, professional Bin Men. The Toxic Spew might be a bit tatty, but our garbage gadgets are galaxy class. We’ve got a Nebula 30X-1. Watch this!’

Through the grimy vision screens, Harvey could (just about) see a huge metal web extend outwards and then sweep across the front of the ship.

‘That’s a mega-strong meteor-proof mesh,’ announced Gizmo coming over to join him.

‘Looks like a giant net to me,’ said Harvey.

Maxie laughed.

‘Technically, er  …  yes,’ said Gizmo glaring down his nose at Maxie.

Scrummage indicated a set of buttons. ‘Now these,’ he said, ‘operate the Megatron 16XL Magno Beam. It can pull massive chunks of metal towards the ship.’

‘So  …  it’s a magnet,’ said Harvey.

‘Again, um  …  technically, yes. But it’s very big and, er  …  powerful,’ finished Gizmo limply.

‘And this  … ’ said Scrummage, hitching up his scruffy overalls and grasping a large lever, ‘is the Ultrawave 3.2 Vacuum Pump!’

Harvey watched as a giant hose unhooked itself and snaked about wildly in front of the ship.

‘We’re the only garbage ship in Galaxy 43b to have one,’ said Gizmo pompously.

‘Yes, but then we’re the only garbage ship in Galaxy 43b!’ said Maxie, snorting with laughter.

Gizmo ignored her. ‘It has three settings,’ he boasted. ‘Nova nozzle, supernova nozzle and supernova nozzle plus.’

‘Wow,’ said Harvey, politely.

‘Anyhow,’ cut in Maxie, ‘unless there’s something else you can do, like  …  fix the engines, do lifesaving operations in the sick room, actually fly the ship  …  or clean the toilets,’ she added pointedly, handing him the digipad.

‘Fine,’ said Harvey, flicking his hair off his face. ‘I’ll be captain – but only until you can get me home. And you’ve got to promise to keep trying.’

‘I promise,’ said Gizmo.

‘Yeah, I bet you do!’ muttered Scrummage. Gizmo glared at him.

Harvey signed the contract, quickly reading it as he did so.

‘Er, hang on  …  what’s this bit about danger money?’ he asked.

Scrummage was just about to answer when:

KA-BOOOM!

An explosion rumbled deep in the belly of the Toxic Spew and all the lights went out.