Chapter 10: In Outer Space.

Martin was so shocked he jumped a metre high in the air-, which was gone.

He was now floating around, having broken through the atmosphere.

Martin acted quickly; he used his arms to sort of swim through, well, nothingness.

He hurriedly put the rockets on autopilot, put himself inside another white outline of a square he had found, which took you to the kitchen, and pulled the lever that was labelled ‘KITCHEN’.

He then went through that strange sensation again, and floated into the kitchen to have a spoon hit his spacesuit.

Everything was floating: plates, pans, cups, bowls, drops of water, a fridge, a microwave, a-

“ROSE AND CAI!!!!!!!!” Martin screamed, because, floating motionless in the nothingness were Rose and Cai, who was bleeding.

Martin grabbed both Rose and Cai by their wrists and dragged them to the control room, opened the storage cupboard, and pulled out oxygen masks

(Which lasted 24 hours) and put one on each of his friends.

The two siblings still had their eyes closed, so Martin checked them both for a pulse; luckily, they both had one.

It took them a while to come round, but they did.

“Er-my-knee…” mumbled Cai; he was obviously in great pain: his knee was

Bleeding quite badly, and that same leg was floating in an odd angle.

“Mmm?” came the voice of Rose, she had waken up.

“Oh Rose, what happened to Cai- I thought I heard you go out the door?”

Asked Martin curiously.

“Well, what happened was, that when we where heading out the door, a butcher’s knife fell off the shelf and- and landed on his knee.

Then he fainted, but only for ten seconds, when he woke up the rocket’s started and then he shouted for help, and soon after we, we, both fainted.”

She said in a concerned voice.

“Yeah, and it hurt too.” Came a loud voice from behind Rose and Martin, who both started.

The two turned around, and saw Cai, upside down in the nothingness, who had obviously listening to every word Rose had said.

“Are you OK Cai?” asked Martin, with a tone of panic in his voice.

“I’m alright. It’s just that my knee hurts a little-“ Rose gave him a don’t-lie-because-we-know-that’s-not-true look’s.

“and I’m really cold.” Said Cai, shivering.

“You two better get a space suit on; space is cold.” Said Martin knowledgeably.

So Martin swam over to the storage cupboard, pulled out what looked like fifty bed sheet’s, and gave one space suit to Cai (“I’m actually wearing it?”) and the other to Rose.

Then he floated back to the cupboard and pulled out two thin booklets.

“Here,” he grunted, shoving an emerald green booklet into each of his friends hands. “you’ll need them, ‘took me an hour and a half to get into mine on solid ground, but in air…” his voice trailed off.

******

It took his two BFFAE’s two and a half hour’s to get their suits on, and Martin couldn’t imagine how much difficulty they were going through.

But the two came out in their space suits looking utterly bewildered.

“Get ready for the hyper-jump; it’ll take us all the way to Charon.

The space suits will give us some protection, but we will be going at high speed for at least five minutes.” Said Martin casually, not knowing that he had made Rose extremely nervous.

Martin pressed a purple button and a cool, female voice sounded through the spaceship: “Hyper jump proceeding in 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…0”

At that moment, a high pitched whooshing noise boomed in the children’s ears, and in a few second, the ship was flying through space, as though it was being chased by a very fast crocodile with razor sharp teeth.

The three were thrown back sharply against the wall, and waited for five minutes in the frightening air of a hyper jump.

Chapter 9: Goodbye.

The next day snailed by. Literacy melted into Maths, Maths leaked into Science, Science dawdled into recess, and so on.

Rose was worried, or rather positively petrified, that something would go wrong at 11:30 that night, whereas Cai was so excited, that he dropped anything he was holding whenever the words ‘Rocket’, ‘spaceship’ or anything to do with space was mentioned.

As soon as the 3:00 bell rung that afternoon, as usual, there was a lot of hustle-bustle to get out the door.

Cai and Rose walked home in an eerie silence; they didn’t visit Martin as they usually did, as today was not a usual day.

Because today, their only friend would be going away to a far-off moon, and they didn’t know if they would ever see him again.

They felt like an icy-cold dagger was slowly sinking into the depths of their hearts, like they were trapped in the ocean, disappearing in its fierce, blue waves, like the sky was turning in the wrong direction, and endless tears of grief were falling into the pale-grey nothingness of despair and hopelessness.

***

As soon as they got home, the two siblings raced up to their rooms, and set both of their alarm clocks to 11:00, as it would be best to get there early for a proper good-bye ceremony.

***

It was not an easy sleep, but at last, the alarm clocks rang, and they both stopped them quickly, so their mother wouldn’t wake.

They both sneaked silently out of the house, with no trouble at all, and walked down the footpath to Martin’s house.

They knocked on the door, and heard footsteps in the hose, then the door opened, and they saw a scared looking Martin in a-

“Space-suit! That’s really awe-stuck- can I just touch it Martin?” Cai said haphazardly.

Martin laughed, so did Rose. “Yes, you can touch it Cai!” said Martin in a

Giggly voice.

So Cai reached out his forefinger, brushed the hard material, and drew it back quickly, grinning.

“Awesome.” He said in awe. The three then walked to the kitchen when Rose said

“Now, um, we better get, er, moving.”

“Oh, um, yeah, well, I-I’ve worked out how to fly it and everything, so um, er, we should probably get going with our, er, um, goodbyes.” Said Martin in his small, shy voice.

“Right then, I have brought you something to, er, remember us by.” Said Cai in a strong and firm voice, and he pulled out a small rock with golden writing engraved into it: Cai & Martin & Rose r BFFAE’s.

“What does BFFAE stand for, Cai?” asked Martin curiously.

“Best Friends Forever And Ever.” Cai said importantly.

“Well, er, I brought something for you too, Martin.” Rose said casually, and she rummaged in her enormous coat pocket for something, and than pulled out a small sphere, with lots of floating balls, that looked strangely like plants, and there was lots of glitter, that looked like stars, a large, yellow ball was in the middle, and Cai was guessing it was the sun, and the back-round was painted black to make it look like the solar system in a glass ball.

“Wow, I mean whoa, I mean- oh thanks, Rose!” Martin said excitedly.

“I thought it might be just as good as a map of the solar system- just a bit more decorative and interesting.” Said Rose proudly.

“Thanks Guy’s, I really appreciate it, I really do, and everything that you’ve done for me. I mean, I’ll be able to see my family again because of you two, and, oh- I just can’t thank you enough.” Said Martin dramatically.

All of a sudden, Rose burst into tears, and Cai tried to comfort his sister with lots of “We’ll see him again someday.”s and “It’s alright.”s.

Finally, it was time for the big lift off.

The friends did one more final group hug with lots of “Goodbye”s.

So Martin went down the secret toilet to the control room, and waited until he heard the front door close, then started the rocket boosters.

It was a trifle uncomfortable in his spacesuit, but Martin could take it.

‘I’m going to see my family, for the first time since I crash landed on earth.’

It was a perfect lift-off, in Martins opinion.

In a few hours, he would hyper jump back to Charon, where his family would be waiting, or would they? He thought to himself nervously.

He was just about to break through the earth’s atmosphere, when-

“HELP, HELP!” came an urgent voice.

Chapter 8: The way out

All three of them drew breath; it was amazing!

It was the control room they had been looking for, there were knobs and dials and levers and charts and radars and signals and screens and buttons.

All of a sudden, Rose whispered, “We must be underground.”

“Don’t worry about that, this is awesome! Martin can study all this overnight and while we are at school tomorrow, and then, after school, we can come to see you off!” Cai exclaimed.

“How exactly do we get out of here though?” Rose said quietly.

“Ummmm, I er, umm, don’t, er, really know.” Said Martin, clearly with a mixture of fright, and nervousness.

An awkward, and eerie silence followed, until Cai couldn’t stand it, and just had to speak, “Well, lets have a look around and umm, give a shout if you find something.”

And that’s what they did, it was the exact same thing they had done looking for the control room, and Rose was on the verge of tears.

She felt like they were just doing the same thing over and over again for no reason at all, and that they were getting nowhere whatsoever.

“Guys, I think there’s something over here,” Martin said slowly, pointing to a lever that was labelled ‘OUT’.

Rose and Cai scurried over to him. “I think we have to stand inside the white line.” Martin said, examining the white outline of a square.

So the three friends stepped inside, and Cai, who was nearest to the lever, pulled it.

A strange sensation, like being sucked up a thin, slimy straw, smothered itself into the three friends.

All they could see was blackness, then they saw lilac streaked with crimson and pink; they were flying through the cool, afternoon air.

“AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!” was what the three children screamed.

They were gathering speed, faster and faster towards- a soccer field.

They screamed again, and shortly after that, they landed in a bush, a very large one, which was lucky.

But their luck ran out quickly as they saw who was on the field: Billy Crocker and his group of cronies.

“O-oh.” Said Cai in an undertone.

“So the Bustenburg’s have found a little friend, where did you find him, in a bin?” Billy said in his usual sneering voice.

His cronies laughed loudly.

“No, actually we found him in that house you say is haunted.” Said Cai fiercely.

Rose kicked him.

“Oi, what did you do that for!” Cai said angrily.

“Yeah right, Bustenburg. Don’t think you’re so cool all the time, because everyone knows I rule.” jeered Billy.

“Bet you couldn’t go into that house, or aren’t you going in there ‘coz you’re the chicken, eh Croc-face?” Cai sneered.

“Don’t – call – me – CHICKEN!” Billy screamed angrily, his face turning scarlet.

“Keep your fat mouth shut then.” Said Cai triumphantly, and with that, he turned on his heel, beckoned for the others to follow him, and headed to Martins place, with a cheeky grin on his face.

“You really shouldn’t have done that, Cai, how stupid of you!” Rose said angrily to Cai when they were at Martins house.

“Who cares Rose? Hey, listen Martin; tomorrow I think we should do the lift off at 11:30, so no one sees, eh? Rose and I will sneak out of bed to see you off, it’ll be awesome, and I’ve never seen a rocket blast off before! You go to the control room tonight, work a few things out, and, er, see you tomorrow!” said Cai over-excitedly, and then dragged Rose out the door.