Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon

  Beyond the palm trees that surrounded the swimming pool, Jeremy and the others came to a wide-open space — a strip of black that swept in a great curve toward the bridge.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It reminds me of something,” said Dad, “but I’m not sure what.”

  Suddenly there was a roar of engines, a flash of metal, and a cacophony of motor horns. A fast car was screaming toward them.

  “Now I remember,” said Dad. “It’s the racetrack.”

  Brakes squealed. Blue smoke streamed from the back of the car. The air filled with the sharp tang of burning rubber. The car managed to stop just in time to avoid Tooting carnage.

  It was a pert white Aston Martin DB5. The slickest, chicest sports car the world has ever known. Even when one has just almost killed you, it’s hard not to admire it. “Golly,” said Jeremy. “Look at the aerodynamic lines and the stylish headlights.”

  “The word today is British engineering at its very finest.”

  “Is this him?” said Jemima. “Is Tiny Jack in there?”

  The car didn’t move. Its engine stopped. Its door opened. Jemima reached for Mum’s hand but she never found it. When she saw who got out of the car, she ran. Toward the Aston Martin.

  “Mummy!” cried Jemima.

  “Daddy!” called Jeremy.

  For stepping out of the car — one on the driver’s side and one on the passenger side — were a handsome man and an elegant lady in matching turtlenecks.

  “Oh, Mummy! You’re alive!”

  “Why on earth would I not be alive?” said Mrs. Mimsie Pott. “I’ve always been alive.”

  “What about my Little Harry?” said Mum. “Is he alive?” But the Potts were too happy to hear Mum’s worries.

  “We didn’t know where you were. We thought you’d crashed in supersonic Big Ben,” said Jemima.

  “Not at all. We met this little chap — Tiny Jack — who brought us to this wonderful ship.” Mimsie smiled.

  “We were so worried about you.”

  “And we’re STILL worried about Little Harry,” said Mum.

  “Yes. I was worried about you children, too,” said Mimsie. “But Caractacus was absolutely certain you would find us. After all, you still had Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

  The Commander offered Jeremy a manly handshake. “You took good care of your sister and you found us. Well done, son.” But Jeremy hung back, looking awkward.

  “I’m afraid I’ve let you down,” he said. “I tried to protect your secret laboratory, but it seems this evil genius — this Tiny Jack — has stolen some of your finest inventions — the Miniaturizer, the burst-proof bubble.”

  “Jeremy, don’t give it another thought,” said the Commander. “He didn’t steal those things at all. I gave them to him.”

  “You gave Tiny Jack the Miniaturizer!?” gasped Lucy. “Are you crazy?”

  “Lucy!” snapped Dad. “This is Commander Pott. The Commander Pott. I’m sure he knew what he was doing. Pleased to meet you, Commander Pott.”

  “Please, call me Caractacus.”

  “Oh. Tooting. Tom Tooting. I’ve been — we’ve been — helping the children look for you. It’s a great honour to meet you, sir.”

  The Commander was staring at Dad a little bit too intensely. Dad realized he was still wearing the Commander’s naval cap and a pair of binoculars. “I brought you these,” bluffed Dad, handing them back, “in case you needed them. We’ve also brought your magnificent car.”

  “How is the old girl? How did she handle in space?”

  “WHERE IS LITTLE HARRY?” yelled Mum.

  “Little Harry?” said Mimsie. “Oh, he’s such a darling. And you know, he’s always, always right. About everything.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s with Tiny Jack. They’re in the Toy Box, playing that board game. They seem to be quite obsessed with it. Still, it makes them happy.”

  Leaving the Aston Martin parked on the track, Commander Pott led them past the sunloungers and up the marble steps into the living quarters. Here the floor was tiled with black and white squares so that it looked like the chequered flag in motor racing. There was a huge chandelier dangling from the ceiling, made entirely of tree-shaped in-car air fresheners. A huge statue of St. Christopher — the patron saint of motorists — stood in the stairwell. The lamps were headlights. The banisters were curling chrome bumpers.

  “He really does like cars,” said Jeremy.

  “Yes, he really does,” agreed the Commander. “He’s got the most astonishing collection, including his own gold-plated Paragon Panther. Strange, as I thought there was only one ever made. He even calls his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — isn’t that a coincidence?”

  “That is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” said Lucy.

  “But I thought you came here in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?”

  “Yes, but we seem to have crossed the Time Divide. There’s only one Chitty, but it now exists in two different places at the same time.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Yes, thought Lucy, that is fascinating. What would happen if the two ever met?

  “I wouldn’t want to try it,” said Jemima, as though she had read Lucy’s thoughts. “You always get punished when you break the laws of physics.”

  “Did you just read my mind?”

  “No, we just think alike.”

  “That’s a horrible thought.”

  “This Tiny Jack,” said Jemima. “He really is tiny, isn’t he?” She was looking at a framed photograph of Tiny Jack holding a Toblerone. Next to him, the bar of chocolate was the size of a ladder.

  “That’s actually debatable,” said Lucy.

  On the first deck of Château Bateau, all the doors are bright-yellow metal — like the doors of New York taxicabs. On the second deck, there are folding glass doors like the ones you might find on a bus. The Toy Box is perched on the top deck, behind the bridge. The outside is painted racing green, just like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Jeremy strode over and opened the door.

  The Toy Box on Château Bateau is full of amazing things. The floor is paved with board games. The Monopoly board there is so big you can walk around it. The playing pieces are big enough to sit in and pedal. It has an oak chest full of real money. In one corner of the room a tank of hungry pythons slithered over each other — ready for Snakes and Ladders with real snakes (and real ladders).

  More amazing than the extravagant toys was the view. The Toy Box has a glass roof, which was now filled with a view of the moon. It was huge and ghostly, the shadows of its mountains like some strange magical writing.

  But there was something in the room that was more amazing than the view of the moon, more amazing than a chest of money or a tank full of snakes.

  “Little Harry!” shouted Mum.

  Little Harry was crouched over a board game with a hammer in one hand and a dice in the other. He looked up so suddenly that he floated into the air.

  “Mummy!!!!!!!!!!”

  He tried to run to her. It was always amusing to see him run on his rapid, fat legs. But to see him run in weightless conditions, when each step propelled him into the air, was hilarious. Every time he rose up, he looked thrilled. Every time he landed, he looked bewildered. Thrilled — bewildered — thrilled — bewildered — thrilled — bewildered. Even if you are far from home at the mercy of a supervillain, it was hard not to laugh. Finally he crashed into Mum’s legs and locked his arms around them. His own feet drifted up off the floor behind him.

  “I feel we’re getting warmer,” said Mum. “Come on, everybody, we have to win this game.”

  “What game?” asked Mimsie.

  “Hide-and-seek. We’re trying to find Tiny Jack.”

  “Couldn’t we just forget about Tiny Jack and go back to Basildon?” Dad sighed. But even as he said it, he knew it was impossible. Tiny Jack must be stopped, and they were the only people who could stop him.

  Jem held the Zborowski Lightning up to the Earth. It hovered o
ver England, and he pretended to make it fly down across Spain over north Africa and on to the Indian Ocean — all the places that they had flown in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on that first adventure. It was funny to watch the little silvery biplane blotting out bigger and bigger chunks of the shrinking Earth. Was the Earth shrinking? Yes, definitely. Ten minutes ago the Lightning covered one corner of India. Now it covered the whole of India and most of the Indian Ocean. He had thought they were in orbit around the Earth, but no, they were flying away from Earth, farther and farther into space.

  From somewhere nearby he heard the clink of gravel. Something was moving behind one of the great fallen stones of Stonehenge. Quickly he shoved the Lightning into his pocket. “Who’s there?” he called. “Lucy?”

  No reply. He held his breath. He could hear someone else breathing, quick and shallow. He rooted around in his other pocket. There was nothing in there but two fifty-pence pieces and a train ticket. For the first time, he found himself wishing that Jeremy was there with him. He’d probably have been able to produce a telescope and a choice of weapons from his pockets.

  “Who’s there?”

  Out of the shadows Lucy’s voice said, “Go away. I’m trying to contemplate all the death and destruction that engulfs the face of the Earth.”

  “Lucy?” It sounded like Lucy, but how could it be her? She hadn’t passed him. Why would she hide from him? He took another step closer. Now Mum’s voice said, “Jem, your sister told you to leave her alone, so leave her alone.”

  It was definitely his mother’s voice, but why would his mother be hiding from him? He crouched down, then pushed himself up so hard that he launched himself three metres into the air. Looking down he could see a mop of red hair, squatting behind the great stone.

  A pinched little face looked up at him. “Aaargh, you got me!” Tiny Jack leaped out from behind the stone. He floated so high he almost crashed into Jem. He seemed smaller than ever. “I’m pretty good at voices, though, eh? I can do ’em all. Listen to this: This is your dad — The word today is I could live like this.”

  Tiny Jack did sound uncannily like Dad as he drifted back down.

  “That’s how I fooled you with the radio on Big Ben. Good at hiding, too, eh? I’ve been crouched behind there for hours. I did think one of you would have found me before now. I guess that just means I’m really good at it.”

  Jem remembered when the Tootings first taught Tiny Jack to play hide-and-seek, long ago in the Amazon rain forest. Of course he wasn’t called Tiny Jack then. He was just a little boy called Red, having fun. Jem suddenly felt something that he never expected to feel — slightly sorry for Tiny Jack. Imagine if you just loved hide-and-seek and the only way you could get anyone to play with you was by abducting their children or their parents.

  “Happy birthday,” said Jem.

  “Thanks,” said Tiny Jack. “What did you get me?” Then he saw the gleaming green chassis of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

  “Ah, nuts!” growled Tiny Jack. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I already got one of those . . .”

  “Oh. No. She’s not a present,” said Jem. “She’s —”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I was told there was only one Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. NANNY!”

  When he shrieked, all the little plastic birds tweeted in reply:

  “What’s going on? There’s another Chitty Chitty Bang Bang down here on the deck!”

  Tiny Jack had already worked himself into a terrible, red-faced rage. He was furiously kicking Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s wheels.

  “Ga gooo gaaaa,” wailed Chitty.

  Tiny Jack stopped kicking and shrugged at Jem. “Just checking the tyre pressure,” he said. “This was the biggest game of hide-and-seek of all time, and you won it! Let’s go and tell everyone!”

  “No,” said Jem. He’d decided now that nothing would get him to leave Chitty’s side.

  “Come on, you have to tell them. Especially,” said Tiny Jack, “Jeremy Pott. If he’s anything like his daddy, he’s got pockets stuffed with maps and knives and compasses, but did he beat you? No. You won. I can’t wait to see his face.” Jem had to admit that it would be quite nice to see Jeremy’s defeated face just for a second.

  Tiny Jack grabbed Jem’s wrist and dragged him toward the pool. They had only made two kangaroo bounds when Jem said, “No. Wait.” He turned back to Chitty.

  She was gone. She had been there. Now she wasn’t there. What had happened?

  Tiny Jack shrugged as he landed next to Jem. “Complimentary valet parking. We take care of all our visitors. Nanny has put Chitty in the car park. She’ll be safe there. It’s very, very secure. No one gets in or out without my permission.” He laughed.

  He carried on laughing all the way through the palm grove, up the stairs, and up to the Toy Box. He never let go of Jem’s wrist. He was surprisingly strong, as though the muscles of a massive man had somehow been scrunched down into his tiny hand. Then he burst through the door of the Toy Box, yelling, “Look who won!” as he propelled Jem into the middle of the room.

  “Jem?” said Mum. “Where have you been?”

  “Jem found me!” cried Tiny Jack. “He’s the champion! The hero! Across the wastes of time and space, he tracked me down. Let’s give him a round of applause.”

  Everyone clapped. Jem flushed. It was nice to see Dad and Jeremy applauding him, even if they were only doing so because an evil supervillain told them to.

  “You have to admit,” crowed Tiny Jack, “I totally fooled you all with that Big Ben stunt. Even that brainbox Lucy thought I was in Big Ben.”

  “Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the tower,” pointed out Lucy sniffily.

  “She may know the names of public buildings, but she doesn’t know how to beat Tiny Jack. What shall we play next? What about Scalextric with real cars?”

  “We’re not here to play games,” said Mum.

  “Actually I really like Scalextric,” said Dad.

  “What about Destruction? That’s my favourite. Look . . .”

  There was a half-played game of Destruction on the table. On the board were models of the Colosseum and the Great Wall of China. Except the children knew these weren’t models. “It’s easy,” said Tiny Jack. “One defends, the other attacks. When you win, you get to destroy your opponent’s property . . .” As he said this he brought a little hammer down hard on a tiny Empire State Building, reducing it to dust. The children shuddered.

  “Just look at the mess you’ve made,” snapped Mum.

  “That’s the game. That’s the rules!” protested Tiny Jack.

  “I’m not talking about the game,” said Mum. “I’m talking about history. You’ve messed up history. And geography.”

  “And you made England lose the World Cup,” put in Dad, “which is worse than both.”

  “Fun, fun, fun?” explained Tiny Jack.

  “Travelling in time,” said Mum, “is like playing with Lego. It’s fun while it lasts, but you have to tidy everything up when you’ve finished, otherwise someone will stand on one of the pieces in the dark and really hurt his foot. The Pyramids, Stonehenge, the World Cup, and Basildon — you have to put them all back. We’ll help you. But it has to be done. We have to put the world back the way it’s supposed to be, so that life can be lived as it’s supposed to be lived.”

  “I say,” said the Commander, applauding. “Excellent speech.”

  The others joined in the applause. Tiny Jack wiped a tear from his eye and said, “Mrs. Tooting, you’ve shown me the error of my ways. I’ve done wrong, but now I’ll put it right.”

  “Well said,” said the Commander, applauding again.

  “Big kiss,” said Dad, giving Mum a big kiss.

  “This is so much worse than fear and chaos,” said Lucy.

  “I suppose,” said Tiny Jack, “that I should give back my unrivalled collection of amazing cars, too?”

  “Steady on,” said the Commander. “There are some remarkable vehicles in tha
t collection. Apart from that beautiful Aston Martin, he has a DeLorean that travels in time . . .”

  “That never really worked,” admitted Tiny Jack.

  “The very Mercedes that Mr. Benz gave to his daughter Mercedes.”

  “She cried when I stole it. She was only eight years old.”

  “But that’s far too young to have a Mercedes, even if you are a Mercedes,” said the Commander. “He also has a car shaped like a bat.”

  “It belonged to some sort of crime-fighter type. I had to tow it away as he kept chasing me.”

  “He has a Beetle that was driven by the Beatles.”

  “I stole it from the stage door. You see, I stole them all. It was wrong. I see that now. I’ll put them all back.”

  “Good boy.” Mum smiled at him.

  “There’s just one thing, one last little thing I’d like to do first,” said Tiny Jack. He said this in exactly the voice that Little Harry used when he was trying to delay his bedtime. “Just one little thing,” he repeated.

  “Just one little thing,” echoed Little Harry.

  “Oh, go on, then,” said Mum, who never could resist Little Harry.

  “I’d like to take Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the moon.”

  “To where?”

  “The moon, the moon, the moon. I’d like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to be the first car on the moon.”

  There was a long pause.

  Everyone looked up at the moon.

  Since the dawn of time people have looked up at the moon and dreamed of walking on it. Dad first heard about men walking on the moon when he was a little boy. Growing up, he had the impression that if some men had walked on the moon, then it would only be a matter of time before everyone could. Like most men his age, he was a disappointed astronaut.

  Jeremy and Commander Pott had spent a lot of the last two years reading every newspaper report about the Space Race — the Russian rockets that had been round the dark side of the moon; the American rockets that had splashed down safely in the sea . . . How they had longed to be part of it. And now . . .