BRAWL IN THE MALL

We decided to cut this detour out of the epic chase because it was getting just TOO epic. But don't worry, Ashley Abbey-Ann has just signed a four-picture deal with Miramax.

The six-wheeled machine rolled out of the M12 tunnel and Lucy and Sam stopped pedalling in relief. Since the scooter’s engine exploded they had cycled their connected bikes many kilometres, not to mention the many before the tunnel. The sun shining down on their wet clothes felt like a fantastic reward. Flumpy leapt from under Lucy’s arm, and quickly identified the distant speck in the sky that was the Dachshund en route to the D.O.G.

‘Attention young Earth people. We will have to pursue Colonel Bars by means of perambulation until we locate another vehicle,’ Belka ordered over the loudspeaker. ‘Follow us!’

Lucy looked at Sam. Sam shook his head.

‘He means we’re going to run after them, guys,’ Strelka spoke up.

Lucy and Sam scrambled from their bikes as the terrier bolted over the nearby embankment and ran towards a bland, beige shopping mall. Flumpy scooted to a sudden halt at the glass doors, almost upending Sam and Lucy directly behind them, before the automatic doors finally slid open. Almost immediately they were spotted by Ted Nimble, the keen if a tad overweight ShoppingTown Head of Security. Belka and Strelka ran quickly through the legs of startled shoppers as Lucy and Sam scrambled after them. Ted followed, inexpertly reaching for his walkie-talkie to raise the alert.
A dropped potato chip smeared under the ATV’s rear paws and Belka and Strelka skidded across the mall’s tiled floor. Flumpy slammed broadside into a rickety table of discount books, spilling large quantities of out-of-date diaries and Women Of Softball lingerie calendars across the floor. The debris, however, formed the perfect barrier. Ted stumbled to a halt and ran a handkerchief across his sweating brow as Lucy and Sam leapt across the obstacle.

‘Bear 27.5 port,’ Strelka advised.

Belka, clinging desperately to the ATV’s guidance column as the paws continued slipping across the floor, turned as instructed. He managed to instead spin them in a spectacular series of circles before they collided with a pair of blue overall-clad legs. Suddenly Belka and Strelka found themselves airborne; with rather dirty fingernails ploughing into their fur fuselage.

The fingernails belonged to the hands of a rather pimply teenage boy called Ryan. He didn’t really like his job – displaying the Mobile Dog Grooming Unit out the front of his father’s pet shop “Fur and Feather Fantasy.” But it was a job he had to do if he wanted to see as many movies as he did. Ryan was so bored, and so “on automatic pilot”, he hadn’t even picked up the right dog – a rather snooty looking black poodle tied up nearby. Instead he had reached down without looking and scooped up Belka and Strelka’s ATV, then instantly submerged it in warm, sudsy water.

‘That’s right, Fur and Feather Fantasy customers,’ Ryan mumbled without enthusiasm, for about the twentieth time that day. ‘Our new Mobile Grooming Service comes to you. We take the furriest member of your family and wash him…’ - here Ryan gave Flumpy a very perfunctory soaping with a rather unclean looking sponge - ‘then we rinse him in this anti-bacterial spray…we can add anti-flea solution if you wish at this stage for a small extra charge…’ Ryan managed to aim most of the spray directly on the ATV’s roof and Belka was alarmed to see some of it drip inside the cockpit.

‘Strelka, look!’ Belka exclaimed in horror.

‘The seal’s been breached,’ Strelka muttered, checking the ship diagnostics report. ‘Back at the gnome. When the ATV fell onto the backpack of explosives!’ Strelka’s ears seemed to ring a little in recollection.

‘If we’re not water-tight, we’re not airtight…’ Belka frowned.

‘Which means we can’t use this ship to get home,’ Strelka said and stared off into space. He was probably panicking, Belka thought, but with Strelka he could never really tell.

‘Now we need Bars’ ATV and orbiter to get home!’ Belka sighed. ‘Jump us out of here!’

The ATV sprang from Ryan’s startled hands and landed with a wet splat on a shopping trolley piled with groceries. An eight-year-old girl kept pushing the trolley regardless, marvelling at the sudsy dog that was suddenly staring her in the eyes.

‘Ashley Abbey-Ann!’ shrieked her rather stout, track-suited mother, racing to join them. ‘Watch where you are going! Ashley ABBEY-ANN! WATCH OUT!’

But it was too late. Ashley rammed the trolley at full force into the pond feature at the centre of the Food Court, and the ATV, a carton of cigarettes and a box of lamingtons fell with a great splash into the water.

* * *

Colonel Bars stretched back in his chair and checked the location monitor with a smile. The D.O.G. position was creeping nearer, Belka and Strelka’s position was so far behind as to be a joke, Flanger was remarkably quiet and the Dachshund was flying steadily forward on auto-pilot. He looked out on the receding suburbs of the city and saw the great dusty sweep of the countryside looming in all directions.

‘Hideous planet,’ said Bars.

Flanger wasn’t listening. She had plugged her headphones into the music amplification cube and her favourite thrash could be heard pounding into her head. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy as her feet and fingers tapped out the beat. As Bars stood up and walked to the Meals/Beverages Unit, neither of them saw the “low fuel” warning blink repeatedly on the forward screens. Bars reclined on the practical if smallish sleeping bench, closed his eyes and sipped a delicious draught of Gersbacian beer, the cold liquid calming his senses.

Bubbles streamed past the twin screens as Belka and Strelka’s craft landed heavily on its back in the ShoppingTown fishpond. A goldfish swam up and regarded them for a moment before meandering away. Belka didn’t notice it. He was out of his seat, standing on the roof that now served as the floor, looking in alarm at the water brimming through the broken seal. Strelka wrestled with the controls, trying to turn the ATV upright – a difficult task, hanging upside-down as he was from a chair on the ceiling.

‘Talk to the fish!’ ordered Belka. ‘Get them to help us!’

Strelka muttered urgent instructions into the translator as Belka activated the emergency sealing device. The flow of water slowed momentarily, then surged with a great ripping sound. Belka almost vanished under the water level.

There was a bump on the torso of the ATV. Then another. Soon a cacophony of bumps and grinding sounds echoed about the ship. A great wall of fish – goldfish of all sizes, trout and carp – were pushing the ATV toward the glass wall of the pond.

‘They’re pushing us out! Well done, Earth fish!’ Belka couldn’t contain his gratitude. ‘Well done! What a noble species of Earthling!’

‘And they taste great,’ Strelka added.

The sounds of rescue ceased immediately.

‘When you said that, did you have the translator on, or off?’ Belka managed, dog-paddling in the rising water, now almost level with Strelka’s reddened face.

Strelka looked at the switch and answered quietly. ‘On…ish. Sort of on.’

The twin screens revealed a terrifying sight. Schools of angry fish were charging them. BASH! The first wave collided with the cockpit. THUMP! Another wave threatened to splinter the glass. CRASH! A goldfish splattered a good portion of itself on the left screen and shot them a look of extreme contempt.

Outside, Ashley Abbey-Ann clung to the track-suited leg of her Mum.

‘Do something man!’ her mother yelled to Ted Nimble, the out-of-breath Security Head, arriving on the scene. ‘Save those poor fish from that mad dog!’

Ted hesitated, alarmed at the frothing marine frenzy by the wall of the pond, where the usually docile fish were madly trying to drown a small terrier.

Strelka kicked the ATV’s legs at the fish, but on they came with greater ferocity. He tried to turn Flumpy the right way up again, but the surprisingly co-ordinated fish attack kept them pinned to the bottom of the pond. Strelka’s inverted hairstyle began to dangle in the rising water. Belka reached up and grabbed the armrests of his chair, just keeping his head above the madly swirling water. Strelka’s head vanished under the water level and his hands struggled to free himself from his seatbelt. Belka reached across to help his friend, but the water surged high and fast and pushed his face into the last free inch of air that existed on the cockpit floor. A photo of Flanger Damka drifted by, her smiling face seeming to mock the brave Galactanauts’ desperate bid for survival. The water bubbled upward and completely filled the cockpit. Belka fell into the murky depths and saw Strelka sinking slowly to the bottom, bubbles streaming from his mouth. Belka struck out for him, feeling the breath leave his body, and his thoughts dissolving to quiet, eternal darkness…when suddenly they were airborne. Lucy’s inverted face appeared on the twin screens, and just as suddenly the ATV was upright and standing on dry land. Well, standing on dry, unpleasantly coloured food-court tiles. In the cockpit Belka and Strelka burst through the subsiding water and gasped in relief. The water sloshed about them, draining to the lower decks, and soon they were sitting in a pond on the floor.

Strelka wiped dripping hair from his eyes. Belka hiccuped, and a stream of water ran down his front. The pair smiled wryly at each other for a moment before Strelka, wobbling to his feet, flicked a switch.

Sam caught up with Lucy, Ted Nimble, Ashley Abbey-Ann and about thirty bemused shoppers as a small, bedraggled terrier opened its mouth to discharge a litre of water and run off. Young Ashley could swear she saw windscreen wipers hard at work on the little dog’s eyes, but she couldn’t be sure.