“Yes,” I said. “It is a nice place here, after all. In the daylight.”
The professor tinkered with the jewels and the string and the buttons. Then he said, “I think I’ve got it properly fine-tuned, now. This next press should bring you back to your own time, place, and breakfast.”
But before the tip of his tail could touch the button, a voice said, “I’ll explain later. Fate of the world at stake.”
A hand grabbed, and the milk, which I had carried safely for so long, was gone. I turned in time to catch a glimpse of a fine-looking gentleman with his back to me, holding my milk, and then the hole in space through which he had reached was closed.
“MY MILK!”
“He said he’d explain later,” said the professor. “I’d be inclined to believe him.”
The hole in space opened again. A voice shouted, “Catch!” and the milk came rocketing through.
Fortunately, the milk struck me in the stomach, and in clutching my hands to my belly I caught the milk.
“There,” said the professor. “Everything is back to normal.”
“He did say he’d explain later,” I pointed out. “And that wasn’t much of an explanation.”
“But it’s not later yet,” said Professor Steg. “It’s still now. It won’t be later until later.”
He was arranging pebbles and stones and string on the top of the Time Machine box. “Final coordinates entered,” he said. “And then it’s off to your house for breakfast.”
“Does that mean that there is a Stegosaurus in a hot air balloon outside?” I asked my dad.
“There is not,” he said. “For reasons that will become apparent.”
“I think that there should have been some nice wumpires,” said my sister, wistfully. “Nice, handsome, misunderstood wumpires.”
“There were not,” said my father.
“Would you like to press the button?” said Professor Steg.
I pressed the red button. There was an ear-popping noise and a flicker of years and I was floating, in a balloon basket, above the intersection of Marshall Road and Fletcher Lane. I could see our house from above. I could see the bicycles in the back garden. I could see the rabbit hutch.
“We’re here!” I said, and I patted Professor Steg on the back ridge-plates.
“It was very nice, having you as a traveling compani—aargh,” said the professor, because there was a familiar sort of a thumm-thumm noise, and before I had a chance to press the red button, we were deposited, balloon and all, on the enormous metal deck of a flying saucer, with a number of very grumpy-looking green globby people staring at us with too many eyes. They did not look pleased.
“HaHA!” said several globby people at the same time. “You thought you had escaped us! And you were wrong! Now, you must sign the planet over to us so that we can remodel it. We will take out all the trees, for a start, and put in plastic flamingoes.”
“Why?”
“We like plastic flamingoes. We think they are the highest and finest art form that Earth has achieved. And they are tidier than trees.”
“Also, we are going to replace the clouds with scented candles.”
“We like scented candles, too,” explained a huge green globby person, who looked like he was mostly made of snot.
“We also like decorative plates!” said another. “We will put a decorative plate up where the moon is now.”
“A really BIG decorative plate, showing landmarks of the world.”
“And we will then replace all of the landmarks of the world with decorative plates with pictures of landmarks on them too, so the Eiffel Tower will be replaced by a large plate with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. And Australia will be replaced by a really seriously big plate with Australia on it.”
“Also we will replace all of your mountains with throw-cushions,” said the smallest, globbiest thing of all, with triumph in its glutinous voice.
“We have learned a lot from our previous meeting,” said some globs that were sticking to a wall. “If you look over there, you will see that the door to the space-time continuum you used to escape through last time is now securely locked.”
It was definitely locked. It had a huge padlock on it, and a sign saying
KEEP OUT
on it, in unfriendly red letters. There were also chains around it, a tape that said
DO NOT CROSS,
and a handwritten notice that said
For Your Convenience,
Please Use Another Door.
ESCAPE WAS IMPOSSIBLE.
“Also we have depowered your Time Machine.”
I looked at the professor. His armored back-flaps were drooping, and his tail was—well, not actually between his legs, because stegosauruses aren’t made that way, but if they were, it would have been.
“We have been tracking your movements through time and space,” said a large globby alien in front of a console with a screen on it.
“Now, see what happens when I press this grundledorfer,” said a particularly drippy alien. It was half-sticking to the wall, next to a large black, shiny button.
“It’s called a button,” I said.
“Nonsense. We named it after our brood-aunt, Nessie Grundledorfer,” said the globby aliens. The particularly drippy alien pressed the black button on the metal wall with something that might have been a finger and might just have been a long strand of snot.
There was a CRACKLE.
There was a FIZZ.
Standing around us, in attitudes of anger and irritation, were several pirates, some of the black-haired people from the jungle, a very unhappy-looking volcano god, a large bowl filled with piranhas, and some wumpires.
“I’m not sure that I understand what the piranhas are doing,” said my sister.
“They were from a narrow escape earlier that I forgot to mention,” said our father. “Fortunately, the milk floated at a crucial moment and it all ended for the best.”
“I thought it might,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Prepare to be keelhauled, you scurvy dogs,” shouted the pirates.
“Let us now sacrifice them both to great Splod!” shouted the men with shiny black hair.
“They stole my eye! Twice!” rumbled mighty Splod.
“Ve vants those willains and warmints wiolently vound up,” proclaimed a tall lady wumpire with long fingernails.
The piranhas said nothing, but they thrashed about in their bowl, ominously.
“Doomed,” moaned Professor Steg. “We cannot escape. They have frozen us in time and depowered us. Even my mighty Time Machine can do no more than open a small window in time and space—smaller than either of us could get through.”
“But can you do it?” I asked. “Open a little window in time to our last location?”
“Of course. But what good would that do?”