Chapter 5: The Greenwich Interplanetary Society
The red door had opened into a long corridor. There weren’t any lights on, and Dodds had disappeared into the gloom, followed by Helix, who had bounded after him. Stella and Tom peered into the darkness, trying to make out shapes from the shadows, but it was as if their eyes were just getting sucked into a bottomless dark.
“I’m guessing they don’t get a lot of visitors,” Tom said.
“Come on, then. Close the door behind you, you’re letting in the cold.” Dodds’s voice called from out of the dark.
“Know your uncle well, do you?” Tom asked Stella.
“Not really, no,” Stella admitted nervously.
“Are you sure… you know, it’s… well… safe?”
Stella was about to reply ‘of course’, but then she thought about what she’d already been through that evening. “All I know is I’ve got to find a way to bring back my parents and work out what’s going on. You can always go back.” Stella took a deep breath and walked into the corridor.
“Hey, wait!” Tom shouted and tried to grab Stella’s arm, as he stumbled through the doorway. The door slammed shut behind them.
“Uncle Dodds? Helix?” Stella shouted.
“Where’s the light switch?” Tom wailed.
“Ow! Get off my foot,” Stella yelped.
“It’s not my fault. It’s too dark in here,” he moaned.
“I can see that,” Stella hissed back.
She thought she saw a glimmer of something, a faint trace of light. Her first thought was that her eyes were playing tricks on her, but it seemed to get stronger. “I think my eyes are getting used to the dark.”
All around them, pin-pricks of light started to glow, and shapes eased into their vision, growing into luminescent pearls of light. It felt as if they were surrounded by stars. Shapes of moons and planets started to swirl into being. Stella traced the course of a silver shower of stars up and up until her neck ached. There seemed to be no end to them.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“What are we standing on?” Tom gasped. “There isn’t any floor.”
Stella looked down to see… nothing. Her feet seemed to be suspended in mid air, and what appeared to be an infinity of stars slowly flowed below her. The effect made her feel a bit dizzy. She wasn’t the only one.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Tom said.
“Look,” Stella said. On either side of them, a set of old-fashioned doors had started to appear in the midst of the cosmos.
Shuffling forward, she reached out to the nearest one to her.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Tom gulped. He was on his hands and knees and was trying to feel his way forward.
“Well, a door normally opens into a room,” Stella reasoned.
“Do they?” Tom gestured around him. “It didn’t last time.”
“Well, we can’t stay here forever.”
Grasping a brass handle, she turned it. The door opened to a loud crash, and Stella was hit on the head by a tennis ball, mop handle and an old handbag. They fell down past the stars into nothingness. She had obviously opened some kind of cupboard, and in the cramped space she could see a bucket, a set of skis, a pile of old shoes, a stack of old vinyl records and a broken tennis racket. These were buried amongst other odds and ends, some of which were spilling out into a purple dust cloud underneath her feet. A forgotten-looking green balloon bobbed at the back of the cupboard. It had a string that trailed forlornly under it, like a limp tail. The oddest thing about the balloon was that it had two large eyes and a big frowning mouth stencilled onto it with what looked like a black marker pen.
Tom had made it to his feet and was gingerly creeping over to the cupboard, peering down as if expecting to be plunging into the mass of stars below him at any moment.
“Phew, what a mess,” he said. “It looks just like my gran’s cellar. I think that’s an old gramophone…”
“Ooooohhhh.”
“Ssshhh. Did you hear that?” Stella asked.
“It’s rude to sssshhh people, you know…”
“Ooooohhhhhh.” This time the sound was a bit louder. It was an odd noise, as if somebody was humming through a comb.
“Who’s there?” Stella asked.
“I can’t see anything,” Tom said. He started to rummage through the cupboard.
“Well, I definitely heard something.”
“Maybe this stupid balloon has a hole in it.” He punched it away from him.
“Yaaaarrgghhhh,” a voice pealed out.
“Aaaaaggghhh,” Tom bellowed in fright.
The balloon rebounded off the walls of the cupboard, back into Tom’s face, and bounced off again.
“Help!” it screeched.
“Help!” Tom yelled, as it bounced back at him.
Tom and the balloon were trapped in the cramped cupboard. Tripping over the shower of bric-a-brac, Tom couldn’t get away. The harder he tried to bat the balloon away, the greater the force it bashed back at him. The balloon had turned a deep pink, and its mouth formed a wide ‘O’ as it squealed for help. Tom gave the balloon a great swipe, and it spun out of the cupboard.
“Aaaahhhh, catch me! Catch me!” it yowled.
Stella reached out and grabbed hold of the balloon’s string. It had returned to a sickly green colour now and tried to cower closer to Stella.
“Pull me back! Pull me back!” it wailed.
Stella carefully pulled the balloon back into the cupboard. Seeing Tom, it shied away from him, in danger of bouncing off the wall again.
“It’s all right, he won’t hurt you,” Stella said. “Get out of the way, Tom.”
“It attacked me,” Tom muttered, rubbing a bruise he’d picked up on his elbow, but he moved quickly away, glaring warily at the balloon.
“Is that better?” Stella asked, as the balloon hovered in the corner, visibly quivering.
“I thought I was done for,” it said. “There I was, having a doze, and then suddenly, without warning, you break in and start smashing up the place. And then I get beaten up by that great thug over there.”
“Thug?” Tom cried. “It’s talking about me, isn’t it? I’m not a thug.”
“Thug! You caught me by surprise before, but now I’m ready…” The balloon started to butt Tom’s stomach.
“Look, there’s been a mix-up. I’m Stella, and this is Tom.”
“You can call me Wendell. As for this thug here…”
“I’m sorry, all right?” Tom said. “I thought you were a balloon.”
“Ah! Just because you don’t like my clothes, you think you can punch away, then?”
“Clothes?” Stella asked, pulling the balloon back on its string. “You mean, you’re not just air in there?”
“Just air!” Wendell squeaked, turning red in outrage. “I’ll have you know I’m a cloud of gaseous matter. I might have let myself go a bit, but I can still vaporise with the best of them.”
“You mean you’re a load of gas?” Tom asked.
“There’s no need to be insulting. You wouldn’t like it if I called you a bag of water.”
“But why do you wear a balloon?” Stella asked.
“What! And go around stark naked?” Wendell said, blushing pink.
After meeting Gordon, Stella felt she could get used to anything, but she still found it hard to believe that she was speaking to a cloud of gas wrapped in a balloon.
“Obviously, this world is not my natural habitat,” Wendell explained. “My people drift through the vacuums of space.”
“So what were you doing in the cupboard?” Tom asked.
Wendell seemed to deflate a little as he murmured. “I’m agoraphobic.”
“What?”
“I’m scared of open spaces.”
Tom and Stella just gaped at him.
“It’s a bit of a problem if you’re meant to roam about the galaxy. That’s why I hate this hallway. I keep asking them to change the wallpaper.”
/> “We can’t stay in this cupboard forever,” Tom said.
“Why not?” Wendell asked.
“We’ve got to find my uncle Dodds. We’re here with him,” Stella said.
“Uncle Dodds? I didn’t know he had any family. He doesn’t seem the type.”
“Well, sort of family. I’m adopted.” As Stella said the words, she felt a sudden pang of loneliness again.
“In any case, visitors should go to reception,” Wendell said.
“We don’t know where reception is,” Tom said waspishly. “Do you think we enjoy breaking into broom cupboards?”
“I suppose I’d better show you the way,” Wendell grumbled. “Just you keep hold of that string.”
Wendell directed them through the dizzying hallway to the furthest door in the corridor. With every step, he hovered a little closer to Stella, who was holding her breath, preparing herself for whatever surprise she felt sure was waiting behind the door. It was more of a shock when she pushed on the brass doorknob and found herself looking into a disorderly, but ordinary-looking office. It reminded Stella of an old waiting room. There was a thin film of dust on the surfaces, and a musty smell of old papers and coffee hung in the air. A hotchpotch of different chairs sat against walls of peeling wallpaper, and there was a wobbly looking desk in one corner of the room. An old-fashioned typewriter sat on top of it, amidst stacks of paper. The room looked quite commonplace in comparison to the corridor, apart from the woman with four arms who was sitting behind the desk.
The woman wore a prim hat perched on top of a thatch of tightly permed hair. Two of her hands were busy typing, whilst one was filing and another held a delicate china cup of tea.
“Ah, there you are, dearies. We were wondering what had become of you.” Her face split into a jolly grin.
There was a bark, and Helix appeared from under the desk and ran over to Stella.
“Professor Botwing! Oh, Professor! Our little waifs and strays are here,” she called in a sing-song voice, whilst reaching up with a spare hand to open a sliding window behind her.
The woman then stood up and reached over to Stella and Tom, smothering them in an embrace. Something she was able to do quite comfortably with her extra limbs. The hug caused Stella to let go of Wendell, and with a wail, he drifted over to entangle his string onto a large hat stand.
“That’s Gladys, the receptionist,” he said.
“Doctor Dodds told us all about that disgusting Greddylick and what it did to your poor parents, my dear. It breaks my heart to think of it. It really does.” Gladys fished out a lace handkerchief from one of her sleeves to dab her eyes with.
Stella disentangled most of herself from the woman’s hug just in time to see a small, rotund figure with grey wings fly through the open window. It looped around the room a couple of times before it came to perch on a filing cabinet. The bird-like creature was clothed in a waistcoat, collar and tie. Tartan braces held up his trousers, with clawed feet sprouting from the end of them and a set of tail feathers sprung from the waistband. His head was crowned with a plumage of grey feathers and wire spectacles, which were propped midway down his beak.
“We hoped we had seen the last of that wretched Greddylick, we did. Oh my. Yes, we did,” he cawed. “You must be Tom, and you must be Stella. Or is it the other way round? So hard to tell these days. No telltale plumage, oh my dear, no.”
A dishevelled Tom had broken free of Gladys’s grip and said firmly, “I’m Tom – she’s Stella. Where’s Doctor Dodds?”
“Gone, gone. Urgent, oh yes, urgent business. Sorry state of affairs this, oh my dear, quite, quite sorry. I am his associate – Professor BB Botwing. Pleased to meet you, sir, and of course, you, madam. Oh yes, Stella with the seven-pointed star.”
“You know about my necklace?”
“Know about it? Oh no, no, no. Not nearly enough. Oh my, nowhere near. An enigma, a puzzle, always was, always is.” The professor’s bead-like eyes peered intently at Stella.
“The right question is, what secrets and sights does Parhelian’s light illuminate for you, Stella Mayweather? Oh my yes, what secrets, indeed?”
“Enough questions!” Gladys cried. “The poor little mites look just about done in. If I have any say-so, they’ll get a nice bit of cake and some cocoa down them and then off to bed.”
“I’m hungry too,” Wendell said, from the safety of the hat stand. “I’ve just spent three days in the cupboard, with nothing to eat or drink.”
“That’s because you can’t eat or drink. How many times do we have to go through this, dearie?”
“I want cake,” Wendell said sullenly.
“I’ll see whether I can find some helium for you, how about that, hmm?” Gladys crooned.
At the back of the office, a set of stairs led down into a kitchen. A large table stood in the middle of the room, with a large chequered cloth draped over it. Around the side were an assortment of different chairs and a perch for Botwing to sit on. There was a sink and rows of cupboards displaying a collection of clean but chipped plates and mugs, but there was no fridge, washing machine or even cooker in the kitchen. In the corner, however, there was a large, battered, metallic box on wheels. It had an old brass kettle on top of it and pots and pans hanging from hooks on its side. The surface was a patchwork of little doors, and it had a large dent on the front, as if something large had smashed into it.
“So what shall we have for supper, my lovelies?” Gladys gushed. “Oh! The Mechomator’s run down again.”
Gladys opened a drawer filled with string, nuts and bolts, and the plastic toys you get free from cereal packets. After a bit of rummaging, she found a large wing-topped key. She inserted it into a hole at the side of the metallic box and started to turn.
“It’s always doing this. Last week it switched off in the middle of doing the breakfast. I wanted boiled eggs and didn’t notice they weren’t done until I dipped the toast in. The latest model, the MM1000 has just come out. We could get one of those?” Gladys asked Botwing hopefully.
“I’m sorry, Gladys, but you know that our money is pretty stretched at the moment, oh goodness me, tightly stretched indeed. Besides, the 200 model was built to last, oh yes. I’m sure it’s got a good few years left in it yet. I’m quite sure, years,” Professor Botwing said firmly.
“Years? The poor thing is so old it should be drawing its pension. It’s gone senile.”
“It’s true it has gone a bit mad,” piped Wendell from where he was hovering over the sink. “It collects sponges. I keep seeing it hide them when it thinks nobody is looking. It hasn’t been the same since it got hit by that meteorite.”
“Is that what happens to them? I’ve been wondering why I have to keep buying more sponges every week,” Gladys said.
“What would a machine want with a sponge?” Tom asked.
“I’m quite, quite sure it doesn’t collect anything,” Professor Botwing insisted. “The idea is preposterous, oh yes, preposterous. It just needs a bit of a tune-up, I’m sure. Sponges indeed!”
As the key was wound, the Mechomator started to judder into action. There was a loud metallic bang, and some sparks escaped from one of its doors. It started to rattle with the sound of cogs cranking into motion, and its kettle started to steam. A periscope shot up out of a little door on the top. The lens at the end of it flickered into a blue light, and it started to swivel around. Seeing Tom and Stella, it spun forward, jerking its way towards them on squeaking wheels. A metal arm extended out of the side of the Mechomator, with a boxing glove on the end of it clutching a dishcloth.
“They don’t need cleaning, you rusted ninny. They need feeding,” Gladys shouted, giving the periscope a tap.
The Mechomator span around and rolled to the sink. On the way, it ran over one of Helix’s paws, and he gave a yelp. Another door in the side of the Mechomator swung open, and a sink plunger popped out. Using it to suck onto cups and plates, the Mechomator assembled refreshments in a clanking frenzy of activity. A jet o
f purple liquid streamed from the spout of its kettle and into the cups. The strange brew bubbled glittering clouds of steam. At Gladys’s urging, Stella picked up a cup and took a sip of the concoction. It tasted like chocolate, with a zinging burst of sherbet that prickled her tongue.
Using a saw that appeared out of one of its doors, the Mechomator cut out generous portions of cake onto the plates. The icing was in fact freezing, as Tom discovered when he bit into it with a crunch. It also had a habit of trying to bounce off the plate, which Gladys explained.
“It’s jumping jelly-bean cake. The trick is to open your mouth and see whether you can catch them when they leap off the plates.”
Stella took a bite of the cake, and one of the beans began bouncing off the inside of her cheeks.
Helix was given some in a bowl and spent his time chasing the jumping beans around the kitchen. Professor Botwing asked for some vintage lunar Brie with crackers to peck at. Only Wendell was left out, and he started to moan that it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t digest things. He only stopped when the Mechomator produced a canister of helium from one of its hatches and began to fill up Wendell’s balloon with it. The helium seemed to have a strange effect on Wendell because he started to giggle and bounce off the ceiling.
Once they had eaten, Gladys caught Stella stifling a yawn.
“Come on, dears, off to bed,” she said, and she led Tom and Stella up the stairs.
“There we are. Good thing I got the Mechomator to change the sheets in the guest bedrooms, isn’t it? This one’s your room, Tom,” she said, opening the doors into two comfortable-looking bedrooms, “and you get this one, Stella…”
Tom said goodnight with a yawn, but Stella was more reluctant to get to bed.
“How long do you think it’ll be until Uncle Dodds finds out how to help my mum and dad?” she asked Gladys.
“Oh, my poor dear. If I know Doctor Dodds, he’ll find a way in no time. Once he sets his mind to something, it usually gets done. You just have to be patient, is all.”
***