Sam stopped the skateboat by putting his foot down hard on the ground. He stared at Spock for a while, before handing him to Ruby.
“How did he get under there?” she asked.
“I don’t know …” said Sam. “Maybe we knocked the cage open as we were carrying the skateboat out …?”
Spock looked at them with quite a strong sense of, “Yes, you did. It was very traumatic and I had to run away from the noise, and the only place I could find to hide was between the top bit of wood and the bit of wood with wheels on it.” He had a very expressive face, that guinea pig.
“What shall we do?” said Ruby. “We can’t turn back now!”
“No, we can’t. Apart from anything, it’s downhill all the way to the river. Which means it’s uphill all the way back home.”
Ruby paused from thinking about Spock for a second. “So … how were you planning to get us home?”
Sam frowned. “Oh. I hadn’t really thought that far.”
Squeak squeak squeak, went Spock.
“OK. Let’s not worry about it for the moment. He’ll just have to come with us.”
“OK,” said Ruby.
Sam nodded and kicked off. The skateboat moved. Because they’d stopped and because it was no longer downhill, he really had to put his back into it. Four kicks down the line, they’d finally built up speed, which left him breathless. That was when he looked round, and saw that Ruby had put Spock on top of her helmet.
The guinea pig was looking out into the night with quite a strong sense of, “This is fun. I think I look like one of those statues of half-naked ladies they used to have on the front of old boats.”
“What are you doing?” said Sam to Ruby.
“When we turn, I have to move about and grab on to the boards with both hands to shift my weight across. So where else am I going to put him?”
Sam shook his head. But then suddenly he didn’t have time to think about it any more, as he heard the sound of a siren.
He looked around. Coming out of the corner, at great speed – a corner they were approaching – was a police car. Wah-wah! Wah-wah! Wah-wah! was what Sam felt inside – but it was also the sound of the siren. Sam put his arms back up into the flying position, and shouted, “Left!”
Ruby moved – still fast, but, because she had a guinea pig on her head, a little more carefully than usual – to the left. If you were walking down the street, and watching very closely, you may have noticed that the guinea pig on her head, at the same time, also leant to the left.
And the skateboat turned left into a new street, and there it was: the river.