Total panic on the Toxic Spew!
Through the smudged and grimy front vision screen of the Toxic Spew the terrified crew stared in horror as they hurtled further and further into the deadly darkness of the black hole with the certain knowledge that they couldn’t get out again!
I’ll be honest with you – it was total panic on the bridge, with the crew sobbing and screaming and running round like headless er … well, I don’t like to be tactless, but … headless aliens.
‘Calm down!’ ordered Harvey.
‘Why should I?’ shrieked Gizmo dramatically and clutching his multi-coloured hair in a frenzy of fear.
‘Somebody slap him! He’s hysterical!’ wailed Yargal, who, frankly, was even more hysterical than Gizmo.
‘Bagsy I do it!’ begged Scrummage, leaping up eagerly.
‘NO!’ snapped Harvey. ‘Everybody QUIET!’ he bellowed.
To his enormous surprise, everyone shut up and settled down, and some sort of order returned to the bridge. Actually, for the Toxic Spew, it was impressive that any kind of order had returned at all.
‘Captain, we’re going to have to think of something, and fast!’ said Maxie at the flight controls. ‘Otherwise we’re going to get sucked so far into that black hole we won’t be able to get out and we’ll all die a terrible, agonising, and literally long-drawn-out death!’
‘Captain I’m too young to die a terrible, agonising, and literally long-drawn-out death!’ sobbed Yargal, sticky grey snot splattering onto everyone within a tentacle’s reach of her slimy slug-like body.
Harvey’s mind raced. What on Earth could he do?
(I hate to be overly critical at a time like this, but it seems a bit of a daft question.
They weren’t on Earth and when Harvey had been on Earth the only captain experience he’d had was with the Highford All Stars – and you get a lot of black holes on a football pitch, do you?)
Fighting back the panic, Harvey told himself to dig deep for an idea – any idea. The thing about the Highford All Stars is, they aren’t all that good – but their captain is. They were bottom of the league until Harvey took over two seasons ago and now they’re steadily working their way up the table. This is partly because Harvey is very good at reading a game but mostly because he has the guts to change tactics mid match.
Time to ditch the game plan
He’s always telling his team that there’s no point sticking to your game plan, or what you practised in training, if it isn’t working on the pitch. And if you’re playing a forward-attacking game and you’re losing, then you have to stop and fall back on your defence.
That’s it! thought Harvey, stop and fall back!
‘Hit the brakes,’ he yelled. ‘And REVERSE. Maximum cosmic speed!’
Maxie yanked the supersonic brakes on and shoved the reversing rockets on to FULL. The engines screamed and juddered as 900,000 units of cosmic power (from two really, really big batteries) forced them to go backwards.
The crew held their breath as slowly, horribly slowly, agonisingly slowly in fact, the grotty little garbage ship gradually reversed out of the powerful pull of the black hole and to safety.
‘YAHOO!’
The entire bridge crew erupted into wild cheering, except Yargal who cried with relief. It was disgusting.
‘My hero!’ she cried, slapping Harvey soggily on the back. He tried not to flinch.
Maxie gave him a huge grin from under her multi-coloured fringe.
‘Oh, well done, sir,’ cried Gizmo, coming over to shake his hand enthusiastically.
‘Shall I stick the hydrosonic hyperdrive lever back on?’ asked Scrummage, picking up the broken handle and some sticky tape. ‘And we can have another go?’
‘NO!’ yelled everyone.
Maxie switched off the Anti-Pasta Intergalactic Shield 3000 and the force shield surrounding the ship disappeared.
(I say ‘disappeared’. Actually it popped like a giant bubble, leaving greasy smears on the outside of the ship. But I wasn’t going to put that because it doesn’t sound very hi-tech or space-like does it?)
Then Maxie plotted the new course taking the longer route to Waitless, on the 3D star map, showing Harvey as she did so. ‘We’ll take the Interstellar Scenic Highway Z98, nip past the Lesser Spotted Nebula, through the Greater Megon Belt, hang a left at these two planets, Caloris Major and Caloris Lite, bear right at the Moons of Dorus and then the intergalactic super store will be up ahead of us.’
It was quite a wiggly route, marked in bright purple and, worryingly, littered with exclamation mark signs.
‘What are those?’ asked Harvey warily.
‘Tourist sites. It’s the scenic route.’ she explained. ‘But it shouldn’t be too bad. Unless we get stuck behind an enormous P&O cruise ship.’
‘A “P&O” cruise ship?!’ exclaimed Harvey, who was pretty sure his granny had been on one of those.
‘Yes. Stands for ‘Pangalactic and Orbital cruise ships,’ said Maxie. ‘They’re massive. Some of the biggest crafts in outer space and horribly SLOOOOOW.’ She ended in a groan.
Harvey grinned, then sat back in his captain’s chair and braced himself for the gobsmackingly brilliant moment when the plucky little garbage ship careered forward at full cosmic speed.
ZZZZZIIIIIP!
This time he hardly cracked his head at all on the back of his seat and there was only a small
THWACK!