Chapter Thirteen

Captain’s quarters

The captain’s quarters of the Toxic Spew are a bit basic. There’s a metal bunk screwed to the floor with roll-out drawers underneath, and a large monitor with SpaceTime connection mounted on the wall. And, er  …  that’s it.

When Harvey had first seen his quarters, they were utterly trashed. The bedclothes were thrown in a tangled heap on the floor, and the whole room was strewn with empty drinks cartons, chocolate bar wrappers, empty crisp packets, dirty underwear, and a very smelly old pair of space boots. But Yargal had kindly helped him clean it out a bit. And now it was astonishingly tidy.

It’s amazing how much you can do in thirty seconds when you have six tentacles and a large bin liner.

It’s also amazing how tidy you can keep things if you don’t have any things. (Technically of course, Harvey has plenty of stuff – but it’s all in his bedroom, which is several gazillion light years away on the other side of the universe.)

Captain’s kit

Harvey had arrived on the Toxic Spew in his school uniform and with absolutely nothing else. But the crew had managed to get the bare essentials for him:

a uniform (several sizes too large)

a toothbrush

toothpaste

spare underpants and socks

a games console with a stack of games

a hot chocolate machine

a handheld 3V VidiScreen with full Outernet connection

a jelly bean dispenser

two build your own model spaceships with moving parts, and

some tatty old dog-eared spaceship manuals.

Harvey put a plastic cup in the hot chocolate machine and pressed the button. It was great having it in his quarters, but he missed his mum’s hot chocolate. She did it with a swirl of squirty cream sprinkled with mini marshmallows and topped off with crumbly chocolate. The stuff from the machine wasn’t nearly as good.

Then he curled up on the bunk. Snuffles leapt up, dug around at the duvet for a bit, until he’d pulled most of it off Harvey and under his huge shaggy belly, and then plonked himself heavily down against Harvey’s legs.

Harvey could have sent Snuffles to sleep in his basket, but he liked the hound – even if it was difficult to sleep with him taking up so much more than his fair share of the bed, and snoring more loudly than a subsonic booster engine with a dodgy silencer.

As Harvey zzz’d off, the Toxic Spew slipped silently through the utter blackness of deep space – a brave little ship dwarfed by the absolute and incredible enormity of the universe all around her.

Very, very long lists

At the engineering desk, Gizmo drew up a list of spare parts needed to repair, or replace the broken bits on the ship. With a bit of luck they could pick some up from the interstellar scrapyard. It was a very, very long list.

(If you don’t like lists, or you’re not mechanically minded, you can skip this bit. Since you’re from Earth, none of it will mean very much to you anyway.

But if you are interested in spaceship design you might like to know his list included:

rear subatomic tow bar

rubber counter gravity bumper

reactor-driven heat shield

back booster ramscoop plate

reversing camera and

2 wing mirrors.

And that was just the stuff needed on the outside of the ship.)

Scrummage sat with his grimy space boots up on the garbage control desk, his grubby hands folded on his huge belly, keeping his eye on the controls of the Ultrawave 3.2 Vac Tube. He drew up a mental list of all the things he could buy once they’d flogged the Techno-tium. It was a very, very long list. Much longer than Gizmo’s.

(You probably really don’t want to read another list here, do you? So maybe I’ll just say it started modestly enough with a personal pizza dispenser and unlimited supplies of mozzarella, chocolate, banana custard and chilli sauce.

Then it got rather more ambitious, by which I mean, downright greedy, until it ended with:

a small planet with sandy white beaches and a heated sea.)

An ominously large ship

While the Toxic Spew zoomed along, with a cargo of the most valuable metal in the entire Known Universe, and Beyond, an ominously large spaceship loomed out the blackness of deep space. It seemed to be following them.

Scrummage and Gizmo didn’t notice. Partly because they were busy making lists, but mostly because the Toxic Spew didn’t have a reversing camera or any wing mirrors.

And the computer didn’t mention it either.

(This might have been because the computer was sulking. It had been in a snippy mood all day.

Or it might have been because it didn’t think the ominously large ship was anything to worry about.

Or it might have been because it was so busy playing itself at MeteoriteMaze 3 that it just hadn’t noticed.

Look, I don’t want to make a huge dramatic moment here. It might be perfectly innocent.

On the other hand, it might not.)