All-out feeding frenzy
By now the rest of the crew had joined Harvey in the food department and had immediately launched into an all-out feeding frenzy. It was gross. Astonishingly gross.
(Can I just say that the scene was so revolting I don’t even want to describe it? You’re going to have to make do with your own imagination and these sound effects.
Believe me, I’m doing you a favour.)
RIP!
TEAR!
SCRUNCH!
MUNCH, CRUNCH!
CHOMP, CHEW!
GUZZLE, GUZZLE, GULP!
BURB … BELCH … BUUUURP!
Harvey, however, was too gobsmacked looking at the food on sale to notice the disgusting table manners of his crew.
He gazed at the ‘Outer Space Fruit and Veg’ display in astonishment. There were dark orange Supersonic Sprouts, something called ‘Sprocolli’ (which looks like a cross between a cauliflower and a head of broccoli and a bright pink brain and tastes astonishingly scrummy – especially the stalks), bags of Mixed AstroNuts, and a heap of Bouncing Bananas, which were an alarmingly bright blue.
Harvey couldn’t resist trying a bouncing banana. He pulled one off the pile.
(No, not to eat, he just wanted to see if it would bounce.) He chucked it onto the floor … hard. It did.
‘Whoah!’ cried Harvey ducking, as the bright blue fruit hit the deck and bounced crazily around like a demented powerball.
BO-IIIIING! BO-IIIIING!
BO-IIIIING! BO-IIIIING!
BO-IIIIING! B-B-B-B-B-BOING.
Harvey finally caught the bounding banana, and put it back. Then he wandered over and scanned the breakfast food shelves. They were stacked with boxes of Astroid Pops, Spaceflakes and packs of Multi-Coloured JellyBread Rolls. He ripped open a packet of Astroid Pops and peered at the contents. It looked like ordinary cereal, so he grabbed a handful and shoved it in his mouth.
It was AWESOME!!!
POP! POPaPOP! POP!
As soon as the cereal puffs hit his tongue they exploded like popcorn, flooding his mouth with the taste of salted caramel, white chocolate, sticky toffee pudding and raspberry sauce. Merrily munching his way down the box he moved along to a section labelled SupaCosmicSupaSpeediSuppers. It was full of tins of Space Noodle Spolognaise with Meateor Balls, Asteroid Risotto with Orbital Onion Gravy and Purple Pasta Planets with 100% Blue Cheese Moon Balls.
‘Blue Cheese Moon Balls? Is that a joke?’ he asked, turning to the crew, who were still scoffing.
‘No,’ said Yargal, between gooey mouthfuls of a pink iced strawberry jam and mackerel doughnut. ‘The Moons of Margherita are made of blue cheese. Don’t you get cheese from your moon?’
‘Er, no,’ said Harvey witheringly, thinking that Yargal was winding him up. ‘We make cheese from milk.’
Yargal quivered like a jelly and snorted with laughter. (Well, technically she snotted with laughter – from both nostrils. Yuk.) ‘Now that’s a good joke!’
Harvey gave up.
Harvey sticks to his guns
After everyone had almost stuffed themselves sick, Harvey, Yargal and Scrummage started loading several trolleys with food while Gizmo and Maxie went off to the hypersonic tools section to find a new hydrosonic hyperdrive lever and a roll of electrical wire. Gizmo grabbed a whole stack of snazzy spare parts and bits of kit and caboodle for the Toxic Spew and put them in a trolley too. He had no idea what any of it was – but it all looked ‘state of the galaxy’ cool.
Looking at the heaps of food and piles of equipment, Harvey asked how they were going to pay for everything. Everyone looked at everyone else and then shrugged. None of them had any space cash – they’d all been hoping he had.
He hadn’t.
‘Who cares?’ argued Scrummage. ‘There’s no one here. We can just do a runner!’
‘We can’t do that!’ cried Harvey.
‘Of course we can’t!’ agreed Gizmo. ‘The security alarms will go off!’
‘Not if we rip the tags off,’ said Maxie, instantly tearing the labels off everything in her trolley.
‘No,’ said Harvey pointedly. ‘We can’t do it because it’s theft.’
‘So?’ asked Scrummage.
Three pairs of turquoise eyes and three googly ones on stalks stared at Harvey blankly.
Harvey took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. ‘Stealing is wrong,’ he explained patiently.
‘Who cares?’ shrugged Maxie.
‘I do!’ spluttered Harvey, and he insisted that if they couldn’t pay, then they should collect the garbage to make up for it and do some tidying up too. The crew groaned, complained bitterly and whinged spectacularly. But Harvey stuck to his guns.
So they all pitched in to clear up the worst of the mess and then Gizmo and Maxie went back to the Toxic Spew in the docking bay to fill up with fuel and give the ship a basic service to try to make it space-worthy. (Huh! Fat chance.) And Yargal carried on piling food into trolleys, while Harvey and Scrummage set off for the garbage control area. Harvey reminded everyone to be careful and keep a sharp lookout.
Something wasn’t right – he just knew it.
(But then, Harvey doesn’t have a lot of experience as a spaceship captain, so he might be wrong.
On the other hand, he might not be.)