Boom!

14 Little blue suckers

I was sitting in the kitchen with Mum and Dad and Becky. Charlie was there too and we were eating lasagne and it was really, really good lasagne. Except someone was shaking my shoulder, so I rolled over and opened my eyes and screamed.

“Shift your potatoes,” said Britney.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

“How is the small one this morning?” asked Britney. “Are your feelings good?”

“Of course my feelings aren’t good. I’m on some stupid planet called Plonk in the…in the…in the Dancing Hamster Galaxy. And I’m talking to a monkey-faced spider called Britney.”

“Beastly child,” said Britney. “Get walking. I will take you to breakfast. Put some food in your talk-hole.”

I made her wait outside while I went to the loo, then she led me through a maze of white corridors to a huge circular hall filled with people. The T-shirt people, not the purple robe people. There was a high domed roof and curving, star-filled windows, and everyone was milling and chatting and eating at long tables. It was like a massive school dining room, with space outside and giant monkey-spiders clearing away the dirty plates.

A middle-aged man with a flowery Hawaiian shirt and a ponytail wandered up to us. “You must be a new guy.” He held out his hand. “Bob Smith. Pleased to meet you.”

I didn’t shake it.

“Take him,” said Britney. “He hurts my head.” And with that she turned and scuttled away.

Bob Smith was still holding out his hand.

“Where’s Charlie?” I said.

“Who’s Charlie?”

“I want to see my friend. And there is no way I am going to shake the hand of some hairy-tailed, kidnapping alien with no belly button.”

Bob laughed. “I’m human. Like you. Assuming you’re human.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I shook his hand. “Jimbo. My name’s Jimbo.”

“You’ll be hungry,” he said. “Coming up the Weff-Beam really takes it out of a guy. Let’s get you some tucker.”

I followed him to a round table at the edge of the room. Sitting on the table were a number of little blue suckers. He picked one up. “Stick it onto your forehead.”

“What?”

“You think of a type of food and it… well, it appears. It’s totally brilliant. Look.” He pressed a disc to his own forehead and grimaced like he was doing his thirteen times table. There was a ping! and a plate of scampi and a pint of lager appeared magically in the centre of the table. He picked them up.

“You have a go,” said Bob. “You can get anything. Absolutely anything. You can get vomit if you want. Most people try it once. But it annoys everyone. You know, the smell.” He chuckled merrily. “Oh, and trust me. There is nothing you can do to badger to make it taste good. Baking, boiling, stewing, puff pastry, batter…I’ve tried.”

I put the sucker to my head and tried very hard to clear my mind. If I wasn’t careful I was going to get a serving of badger in vomit. “Brie and marmalade sandwich,” I said to myself. “White bread. No crusts. Brie and marmalade sandwich. White bread. No crusts. And some hot chocolate.”

There was another ping! and suddenly there it was. Brie and marmalade sandwich. White bread. No crusts. Mug of hot chocolate. Creepiest of all, the hot chocolate was in my battered Captain Scarlet mug. Or something that looked very like it.

“Come on,” said Bob. “Let’s find us a seat.”

We sat down and I took a bite of the sandwich. It tasted a bit like Brie and a bit like marmalade and a bit like petrol.

“Yeah,” said Bob. “It’s not perfect, but” — he looked around — “is this whole place not totally the most incredible thing? I mean, we’re on another planet, man.”

“No,” I said. “Totally the most incredible thing would be finding my best friend and going home.”

“You’re not into the whole sci-fi trip, then?”

“Look. No. Wait.” I was holding my head. This was all too much. Seventy thousand light years. The hairy tails.

The disco spiders. “I mean… what the hell is going on?”

“It does kind of throw you a bit, doesn’t it?” said Bob, chewing a mouthful of scampi. “At first, I mean.”

“Yeah. It does. A bit.”

“They can’t have children,” said Bob. “Some kind of genetic malfunction.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Fifty years and they’ll all be dead.” Bob washed the scampi down with a swig of lager. “So they decided to repopulate the planet.”

“By stealing people from Earth?”

“We’re, like, the closest match. I mean, there’s a lot of intelligent alien species out there. But some of them are seven hundred miles long, and some of them look like snot.”

I looked around the room. “But everyone seems really happy about it. Don’t they have, like, families and jobs and friends and stuff?”

“They’re sci-fi fans,” said Bob. “Clever, eh? You know, choosing the kind of people who’d really dig this place.”

“Hang on,” I said. “They’re going to populate a whole planet with sci-fi fans? Is that sensible?”

“I guess you must be an accident,” said Bob.

And that’s when I saw him. Hunched over a table on the far side of the room. I’d have recognized him anywhere.

I leaped to my feet, spilling hot chocolate and sending Brie and marmalade flying and shattering the Captain Scarlet mug on the floor.

“Easy, tiger!” said Bob.

“Charlie!” I shouted. “Charlie!”

I ran across the room, tripping over the legs of a giant monkey-spider carrying a stack of crockery. “Tighten your pants!” it shouted.

Charlie spun round in his seat. “Jimbo!” He jumped off his bench and ran towards me and I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite so wonderful in my entire life.

“Charlie!”

“Jimbo!”

We threw our arms round one another and jumped up and down and spun around whooping.

“Charlie!” I said. “It is so good to see you!”

He grinned. “I knew you’d make it, Jimbo. I just knew it.”

“You’re here!” I said. “I didn’t even know whether you were alive.”

“So,” said Charlie, sitting down again, “did they capture you or what?”

“No, no, nothing like that. We knew they’d got you. And they tried to get me too. The guy with the suit. And these other men.”

“Uh-huh,” said Charlie.

“But Becky and Craterface, they turned up at the flat and Craterface fought them off and Becky and I borrowed Craterface’s motorbike.”

“Uh-huh,” said Charlie.

Something was wrong. He wasn’t excited enough. He wasn’t interested enough. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was the petrol-flavoured food. I carried on. “But the important thing is, we’ve got to find a way out of here.”

“Actually,” said Charlie, “I think I’m going to stay.”

“What!?”

“Look at this place. It’s brilliant.”

“What!?”

“They’ve got hover-scooters. I bet you haven’t seen the hover-scooters yet.”

“No, listen,” I said. “Shut up about the stupid hover-scooters. I came all this way to help you escape, so—”

“That’s really good of you,” said Charlie. “But I like it here. I really do.” His voice was calm and he was smiling like he’d become a member of a weird religious cult.

I stood up and leaned across the table. “Shut up, you idiot. I nearly died looking for you. Your mum and dad are going out of their minds. And now my mum and dad will be going out of their minds.”

“Give it a few days,” said Charlie in the same creepy, chilled-out way. “It really grows on you.”

I slumped back down onto my seat. “They’ve brainwashed you, haven’t they? They’ve given you drugs. Or put electrodes into your brain. They’ve turned you into a zombie.”

Charlie laughed. “Of course they haven’t. You’re just suffering from jet-lag. Trust me.”

I was too angry to speak. I grabbed him by the collar and shook him hard. “You’re meant to be my friend! You’re meant to be my friend!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Charlie. It was the same grown-up voice Mum and Dad used when I was getting upset. “It’s going to work out fine.”

“Fine!?” I swung my fist and hit him as hard as I could.

“Ouch!” He put his hand to his face and took it away again. There was actual blood.

I pushed him backwards so that he fell to the ground. Then I turned and ran.