Waitless
Casually Maxie looked up just as, with less than 10 centimetres to go, the massive hangar doors shot open and the Toxic Spew slid inside. The doors immediately closed behind them, keeping as much air as possible inside the dome.
Harvey didn’t actually see any of that happen – he’d clapped his hands over his eyes in terror. When he peered over his fingers, it was to see Maxie laughing at him from under her multi-coloured fringe.
‘Fine captain you’re turning out to be!’ she sniggered. ‘Scared of a pair of auto-opening hyperspace hangar doors!’
Harvey grinned at her, and then laughed too. You didn’t get to be picked captain of the Highford All Stars for two seasons running if you didn’t know how to laugh at yourself.
Slowly the Toxic Spew descended towards the deck, Maxie using the ship’s rear parking booster jets to slow them down and steer them towards the docking bays.
They were all empty.
‘Pick a number!’ said Maxie jokingly to Harvey. ‘Any number you like!’
‘Er … eight,’ said Harvey, instinctively opting for his shirt number in the Highford All Stars.
Skilfully, Maxie parked the spaceship in docking bay number eight, slap bang in the centre of the parking lines.
‘Food!’ groaned Scrummage again, pitifully. ‘So near and yet so far!’
Harvey peered out through the smeary vision screens that lined three sides of the bridge. The lights were on, but there were no other spaceships, and no one to be seen anywhere. Waitless was deserted.
‘Is it usually this quiet?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps they’re closed,’ suggested Yargal.
‘They never close,’ announced Maxie.
Harvey didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
But with absolutely no food left on the ship, and a ravenous, mutinous crew, he didn’t have any other options, ideas or excuses. There was no escaping it – they had to go shopping.
Scrummage wanted to take Gordon but Harvey told him to leave him on the ship with Snuffles.
‘Snuffles, on guard!’ ordered Harvey, and the hound proudly stood protectively over the little alien. ‘I meant guard the ship, not Gordon!’ sighed Harvey despairingly.
A painful drop
The crew headed down to the ship’s exit pod. As the outer doors slid open they stood back politely to let Harvey go first. Well, he thought they were being polite. Actually they were letting him go first to make sure everything was all right.
Everything wasn’t.
The instant Harvey stepped out of the ship, his feet lifted off the deck and he floated up!
‘Woooaaaah!’ he cried. ‘HELP!’
Looking on the bright side, at least Harvey was inside an enormous plasti-glass domed hangar, and wasn’t in danger of drifting off into the lonely depths of outer space, dying almost immediately from lack of air and never to be seen again. (Unless he floated near the doors and they opened automatically, of course, which would be a bit, er … dodgy. Well, fatal really.)
But anyhow, Harvey was too busy to worry about that – he was desperately scrabbling to snatch hold of a sticky-out bit of the ship. He missed.
‘Harvey!’ screamed Maxie jumping up and trying to grab him. She couldn’t reach.
‘Splattering upchuck!’ cursed Scrummage.
‘Captain! Come back!’ cried Gizmo.
‘How?’yelled Harvey.
Suddenly he felt a disgustingly soggy tentacle slap itself round his ankle. Yargal had grasped him. Her giant foot sucker held her firmly on to the deck and she hauled him to safety.
He never thought he’d be glad to feel Yargal’s sloppy grey slime oozing through his sock and onto his bare flesh. But there you are.
‘Why is the artificial gravity turned off?’ demanded Gizmo.
‘Who knows?’ shrugged Yargal.
‘Who cares!’ replied Maxie.
‘FOOD!’ pleaded Scrummage.
Clinging on to anything they could – the docking bay barriers, advertising stands and mostly Yargal (which was about as easy as gripping a wet bar of soap, and about as pleasant as hugging a slug) they struggled to the shop.
Gizmo found the artificial gravity controls and switched the system back on.
THUD! THUMP! PLONK!
Everyone landed painfully on the deck. Scrummage stumbled to his feet and staggered into the shop.
Everywhere they looked they saw signs that the intergalactic super store had been abandoned in a hurry – dirty plates and cups lay dropped and deserted in the café area, loaded shopping trolleys left at the checkouts, and full shopping bags just dumped on the deck.
It was worryingly quiet.
It was also worryingly smelly.
Any other crew would have been wary – their highly trained senses and even more highly trained brains would have detected there was something very wrong.
But this was the crew of the Toxic Spew and
a) there was nothing highly trained about any of them, and
b) they were used to the disgusting smell of the Toxic Spew (anything smelled better than that)
Plus
c) they were very, very hungry. Way too hungry to worry about anything except how quickly they could rip open food packets and cram the contents into their mouths.
(Seriously? After all their multiple intergalactic missions they’re too worryingly stupid not guess that something that’s worryingly quiet and worryingly smelly is … er … worryingly worrying?
Oh, good grief.)