The green globby aliens having been rounded up and taken away, all the space-dinosaurs gathered around.
“I can’t believe it,” said the Diplodocus. “Professor Steg. Just like in the comics. The dinosaur who taught us that in the far future, small mammals will eat their breakfast cereal with milk on it. Inventor of the button. She’s here, in front of us, with her gorilla.”
“Not a gorilla, but a human father,” said Professor Steg, and all the other dinosaurs gasped and said things like “How wise she is!” and “What a brain!” and “How can you tell the difference between that creature and a gorilla? Is it the shoes?”
Professor Steg said, “This human father has been my companion on my strange journey into the future. Now, before I take my leave of him, and come with you, O Space Dinosaurs, we should sing to him one of the great old dinosaur songs.”
They sang me a song in six-part harmony called “How Do You Feel This Morning When You Know What You Did Last Night?” Then they sang me a song called “Don’t Go Down to the Tar Pits, Dear, Because I’m Getting Stuck on You.” The Space Police dinosaurs sang me a song about being Space Police and saving people all over the Universe, and driving very fast space-bikes. And then they all sang a song called “I’ve Got a Loverly Bunch of Hard-hairy-wet-white-crunchers,” which was an ancient dinosaur song that had apparently been written by Professor Steg’s Aunt Button.
There is nothing in the whole of creation as beautiful as dinosaurs singing in harmony.
“Now,” said Professor Steg. “I shall go off in my Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier, with my newfound Dinosaur Space Police friends, and I shall explore the Universe, and then I shall return to my own time, and write a book about it.”
“You actually write several books,” said the Diplodocus. “Professor Steg’s Guide To Everything In The Whole Of The Future was my favorite. It’s very inspirational.”
I said good-bye to all the dinosaurs. I thanked Professor Steg for saving my life.
“Not at all,” she said. “We were both fortunate that you had the milk with you. It is not every container of milk that saves the world, after all.”
“That was me that saved the world,” I said. “Not the milk.”
The space dinosaurs all had their pictures taken holding the milk and smiling at the camera.
“What are you going to do with the milk?” they asked me. “Are you going to put it in a museum?”
“No, I am not,” I told them. “I am going to give it to my children for their breakfast cereal. And possibly I will pour some in my tea.”
Professor Steg nipped back up the rope ladder and climbed into the gondola of her balloon. The last I saw of her—of any of them—the whole inside of the saucer was fading into light so bright I had to close my eyes and look away.
And then I was standing at the back door of our house, none the worse for wear. Fortunately, the dinosaurs had given me back the milk after they had their photos taken with it.
So I came in.
And here I am.
That was what my dad said.
I looked at my sister and my sister looked at me.
Then we both looked around the kitchen. At the calendar on the wall with the hot air balloons on it. At my dinosaur models and my sister’s ponies, at my sister’s vampire books, at the picture of a volcano I had painted when I was little, last year, and which is still up on the wall by the fridge.
We looked at those things, and we looked at my dad.
“You know, we don’t believe any of this,” said my sister.
“We don’t,” I told him. “Not any of it.”
“Especially not how you saved the world from being remodeled. Or the pirates.”
“Not. Any. Of. It,” I said.
My father shrugged. “Suit yourselves,” he said. “But it was all true. And I can prove it.”
“How?”
“Yes. How?” asked my little sister.
“Well,” said my father, putting it down on the kitchen table, “here’s the MILK.”