Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon

  “I could take some of you with me,” suggested Tiny Jack with a shrug.

  Tiny Jack was offering the Tootings and the Pott family the chance to do something that almost every family since the first family that ever lit a fire had dreamed of doing. Of course they knew that Tiny Jack was a villain and a liar but . . . the moon.

  Only Jem had the presence of mind to say, “It’s a trap.”

  “We’ll probably need a young chap to sit in the front and read the map,” purred Tiny Jack.

  “Oh!” said Jem. “That’s me!” Even Jem could not resist the offer of a front seat on a lunar landing. “I always read the map. I always sit in front,” he said.

  “You got a map of the moon?” asked Jeremy.

  “No,” admitted Jem. “Do you?”

  “Of course,” said Jeremy, pulling a little red book from his pocket. “There’s one in the back of my diary.” He flicked it open at the lunar-map page.

  Now that he wasn’t going, it all became clear again to Jem. “Don’t be fooled,” he pleaded. “He’ll probably maroon you on the moon.”

  “Jem, Jem,” said Dad. “Don’t be upset. We can’t all be lunar navigators.”

  The Commander cleared his throat. “I feel I should say a word about Tiny Jack,” he said. “Tiny Jack came to see me, all the way from the future, in his gold-plated Paragon Panther, and caused chaos at Big Ben. Apparently in the future many of my inventions — like jet packs and floating houses and edible gramophone records — are all the rage.”

  “Because they’re so wonderful,” put in Mimsie.

  “So he thought I was just the man to help with his scheme. He told me that in the future — which is now — there is a race to see who would be first on the moon — America or Russia. He said the first man was one thing, but wouldn’t it be rather nice if Britain put the first car on the moon. The car, of course, would be Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the finest example of British engineering the world has ever seen. I explained that we British don’t have enough money to build a rocket big enough to take a car into space. He said, ‘But what if we did it without a rocket?’ You can do a lot with a Miniaturizer, some antigravity paint, and a burst-proof bubble. As we have demonstrated by taking his splendid ship into space.”

  “You shrank yourselves?” asked Jemima. “Mummy too?”

  “We were positively microscopic for a while,” said Mimsie.

  “Wasn’t that incredibly dangerous?”

  “Not if you read the instructions carefully and make sure you’ve got plenty of room around you when the effects wear off. There was a slightly embarrassing incident at the testing stage when Caractacus regained his normal size inside a postbox.”

  “What was he doing inside a postbox?”

  “Testing the theory that people could travel by post. If they were small enough.”

  “So as soon as we were safely in outer space and shipshape and normal size,” said the Commander, “your mother plotted a course for the moon. Girls are so good at navigation, I find. Especially in space.”

  “A map is just a big knitting pattern, when you think about it,” said Mimsie modestly.

  “I believe it is our patriotic duty,” said the Commander, “to see this thing through. At least I believe it’s my patriotic duty to try to put a British car on the moon.” The Commander stood straight. Mimsie sniffed back a tear. Dad shook the Commander firmly by the hand.

  “We even brought a flag,” said Mimsie, taking a Union Jack out of her handbag. “Tiny Jack of course wants to do it for world peace,” she added.

  “Really?” said Lucy. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “America and Russia are always fighting. This silly Space Race is just another fight but in space. We thought how wonderful it would be if someone went to the moon, not for war but for fun, fun, fun.”

  “That’s a beautiful thought.” Jemima sighed.

  The door burst open and Nanny strode into the room, her bullet heels zinging on the metal floor. “I have a surprise for the birthday boy,” she said with a smile. She reached into her handbag and brought out a birthday cake on which hundreds of rocket-shaped candles were already blazing. There were enough candles to barbecue an ostrich. Birthday-candle heat blasted the room as she started to sing “Happy Birthday.” First the Potts and then, reluctantly, the Tootings joined in.

  “It’s so kind of you all,” gushed Nanny, “to make this such a special day for my dear little charge. A birthday on the moon! What a lucky boy.”

  Dad asked Tiny Jack how old he actually was.

  “A lot older than he looks,” Nanny answered for him.

  “You must be quite old yourself.”

  “Tom! Don’t make personal remarks,” scolded Mum.

  “I’m only saying she doesn’t look old. But she must be old.”

  “I do find that frequent time travel is very good for the skin,” preened Nanny. “Tiny Jack does like to beat Old Father Time at his own game.” Then she started to sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and again the others joined in.

  This was too much for Jem. How could anyone call Tiny Jack a jolly good fellow? “He is not a jolly good fellow!” he yelled. “It’s all lies.”

  “Jem!” gasped Dad.

  “Someone’s a teensy bit grumpy,” said Nanny, “but we’re not going to let that spoil our party, now, are we?”

  “Which part is lies?” asked the Commander.

  Jem wanted to say, “The part about jet packs and edible records catching on. No one has ever heard of these things!” But he knew how painful it would be for Commander Pott to hear that his entire life’s work had been completely forgotten. So instead he said, “It’s not even his car! He stole it from us! He’s Tiny Jack, the world’s greatest car thief!”

  “That’s true,” said Dad. “But . . . you know, the moon, Jem. I mean . . . the moon.”

  “He is Tiny Jack now,” said Mum, “but he used to be Red, the little boy who came with us to El Dorado. Maybe we should give him a chance.”

  For a moment Jem almost wavered. He remembered Red’s joy when he played hide-and-seek for the very first time. How he had wanted to play it forever. That was five hundred years ago now, of course, but all the same . . .

  “Who would be driving Chitty to the moon?” asked Lucy.

  “Well, I feel that I should go in case anything goes wrong,” said the Commander.

  “Isn’t it time there was a female on the moon?” asked Lucy.

  “Oh, that would be so nice,” said Jemima. “I’ll go. I won’t be any trouble.”

  “The word today,” said Dad, “is it’s my car. He stole it from me. The least he can do is give me a lift.”

  “It can’t be you,” sneered Jeremy. “Your fingers are too fat.”

  “Jeremy, don’t make personal remarks.”

  “Dinosaurs!” yelled Little Harry.

  “How about we play a game for it?” said Nanny, lifting the lid of the snake tank. “What about Snakes and Ladders . . . with real snakes?”

  Mum thought herself pretty good when it came to snake wrestling. Lucy had dealt with snakes during her days in South America. Everyone wanted to go to the moon, so everyone said yes. They crowded around the Snakes and Ladders board, each convinced that they would win. Only Jem stepped away. High over all their heads, through the Toy Box dome, the moon loomed brighter and more mysterious than ever. Of course he wanted to go there every bit as much as the others, but how could they trust Tiny Jack? How could anyone trust Tiny Jack? And besides, if it was to be decided by a game of Snakes and Ladders, what was the point? Jeremy’s pockets were probably stuffed with Everything a Boy Would Need for dealing with deadly snakes and wobbly ladders.

  He slipped away.

  The others seemed to have lost their wits. The only person he felt he could really trust was not a person at all. It was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

  Jem crossed the deck of Château Bateau in long, unintentional bounds, heading for the car park, where he hope
d to find Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Every now and then he’d bump into something in midair. Everything that wasn’t actually nailed to the floor when the ship had left the Earth was now floating around in the air. Dressing gowns and towels, life preservers from the pool, deck chairs and champagne buckets from the observation decks, books, magazines, and the guns and bombs that Tiny Jack used to scare off intruders, all dangled in the air like strange birds.

  The car park on Château Bateau is not your average pay-and-display parking garage. It is Car Heaven. There is a fully integrated car wash that cleans each car at the entrance. Perfumed breezes waft the car dry afterward. Each car has a room of its own, with a numbered door. The whole place has a dangerously effective security system.

  Jem tiptoed in through the main door, thus activating the integrated car wash and getting soaked to the skin. Dripping, he went from door to door, peeping inside. There was the Maharajah’s Rolls-Royce, its gold giving off a soft, buttery glow. Here was a DeLorean, a car whose doors opened upward like wings. Finally, in room number 23, was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang herself. When Jem slipped in through the door, the great green machine seemed to move back a little nervously, the way a horse does when you enter its stall. Then she floated toward him, barging against his shoulder affectionately. Or possibly trying to push him out.

  Last time Jem had visited this car park the security system had consisted of hundreds of poisonous jumping spiders. Nervously he scanned the walls and wheel wells for a glimpse of a hairy spider leg or a poisonous spider jaw. He reached into his pocket for a flashlight, but then remembered that he was Jem, not Jeremy, and didn’t actually have a flashlight.

  He tugged his jumper up over his face and his sleeves down over his hands to give himself the best protection he could. Then he heard the rattle of metal. A chain. Was there some kind of ferocious watchdog chained up in here? Holding his breath, Jem bent down to take a look. No. There was a chain but it wasn’t fastened to a dog. It was padlocked to Chitty’s axle. She was tied up like a rogue elephant or a mad dog.

  “We’ll soon sort that out,” said Jem, patting her running-board. “Where’s your toolbox? We can cut this off for you.” He knew there should be a pair of wire cutters in the toolbox that was normally stashed under Chitty’s front seat. Jem pulled open the back passenger door.

  That’s when he discovered that Tiny Jack had upgraded the security system.

  Spread out on the backseat was a pile of stripy, tawny fur. It looked so inviting and warm that Jem reached out to touch it.

  Then it looked up at him.

  It had huge headlamp eyes. They focused on him.

  It had thick, muscular shoulders. They bulked up, ready to leap.

  Its jaw was flanked by a pair of gleaming, carving-knife teeth. It opened its mouth and roared.

  Ah, thought Jem, a sabre-toothed tiger.

  In this life, each of us has his own way of fighting off pythons. The technique you choose to fight off a python says a lot about who you really are. Commander Pott, for instance, used the classic explorer’s technique, which involves making yourself as big as possible by filling your lungs with air and tensing your muscles while the snake wraps itself around you, then breathing out and relaxing your muscles so that you become small enough to slip out of its coils. Then there’s the direct approach of grabbing the snake behind the head and bashing it about a bit, favoured by Mum. There are those who use weapons. Jeremy, for instance, liked to fire his slingshot at them. This is very effective. You don’t even need to aim straight to get a result, as the snake can see the missile coming and will try to strike it — helpfully throwing itself in the path of flying pebbles or whatever. A hatpin is good if, like Mimsie, you wear hats with pins in. You can dazzle a snake with your makeup mirror, like Jemima. You can try to unsettle the snake by climbing up a ladder and making it rock from side to side. The corresponding floor vibrations give the snakes a funny feeling in their tummies. Since they navigate by tummy, this can completely disorientate them. They end up trying to eat draught preventers, cushions, and close family friends.

  Tootings and Potts all fought well and hard.

  No one was eaten.

  But the winner of the game of Snakes and Ladders with real snakes (and real ladders) — by a considerable margin — was Dad.

  It seemed all he had to do was wiggle his hands in a snake’s face for it to become soft and cooperative. It seemed the snakes mistook Dad’s chubby fingers for tiny baby snakes, and this made them go all gooey and sentimental.

  Dad was going to the moon. “And all thanks to my chubby fingers.”

  “Mr. Tooting is going with me to the moon!” declared Tiny Jack.

  Everyone cheered.

  “I also want Commander Pott and his little boy,” said Tiny Jack. “In case she won’t start, and I need a push.”

  “Shouldn’t the composition of the crew reflect the makeup of our families more accurately?” asked Lucy.

  “What?” said Tiny Jack.

  “You need a girl. Namely me.”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” said Nanny. “We girls are going to have a girly get-together while the boys are playing with their rockets and things.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Lucy.

  The first thing most people ask when they see a sabre-toothed tiger is . . . “What on earth is the point of those huge, curving carving-knife teeth? Who needs teeth that are bigger than their mouth?”

  The answer is that sabre-toothed cats first arrived in the Pleistocene era — the age of supersize mammals, like mastodons, mammoths, and giant elks. If you’re going to eat a big dinner, you need big teeth, teeth that can slice through arteries and crunch through bones even when those bones are buried beneath mats of mammoth hair and elk muscle.

  When most people see a sabre-tooth for the first time, it’s on Wikipedia, or on the telly. However, if the first time you see a sabre-tooth, it’s crouching down on the seat of your car, growling and ready to pounce, the question that springs into your mind is less likely to be What exactly was the evolutionary advantage of those incisors? and more likely to be What am I going to do?

  Jem thought quickly. He grabbed Chitty’s bodywork, pushed off, and vaulted into the air. As the cat jumped, Jem floated clean over its head. The cat yowled in fury, then slammed against the garage door.

  Jem had one advantage over the cat. Jem liked being weightless. The cat hated it. It had curled up on Chitty’s seats and dug its claws into the leather just to enjoy the sensation of not floating around for a while.

  The cat however had an advantage over Jem. When it slammed against the garage door, the door clicked shut. The cat was now between Jem and any means of escape.

  Jem was at the back of the car. The cat was at the front. He thought that if he made like he was going to run away down the passenger side, the cat might go for him, and then he could dodge over to the driver’s side.

  “Here, kitty!” he teased, leaning out as far as he could.

  The cat paused, trying to figure out what was going on. It raised one thick, muscular paw and slammed it against Chitty’s front wheel. The spokes rattled. Chitty swung from side to side like a saloon door.

  “Ga gooo ga!” she blasted.

  “Oh, don’t do that, Chitty,” whispered Jem. “I’m trying to steal you in secret.”

  At the sound of Chitty’s Klaxon, the cat did not even blink. Its eyes were fixed on the boy. The boy was the cat’s favourite combination of things — edible and annoying. It could solve two problems — the boy’s annoying existence and its own hunger — by sinking its two incisors into that convenient gap between the boy’s top two ribs.

  “Come on, kitty!” called the boy down the passenger side. Clearly the boy was planning to dodge back. Had he never watched a cat hunting? This was the oldest trick in the very old cat book. The cat actually yawned, turning its back on him.

  Has it lost interest in me? thought Jem. Maybe it wasn’t hungry.

  Bang! The cat was s
uddenly on top of Chitty’s bonnet, sending Chitty seesawing up and down with the force of its landing. There was not going to be any left–right dodging about. The cat was coming straight down the middle. Down the centre of Chitty’s bonnet it came. Over the windscreen it slunk. It perched on the dashboard. It sprang onto the back of the passenger seat. It was face-to-face with Jem now, only one bound away. Its muscles rippled.

  The cat leaped. The boot! Jem whipped the boot up. Moving in weightless slow motion, the cat saw it coming. It swivelled in the air. It hit the boot with its feet and pushed off like a swimmer. It got ready to swing again.

  Jem looked down into the boot. Should he climb in there? Close it after him? What was in there? The antigravity paint spray. Could that work? Jem snatched the spray. There was still paint in it. He closed the nozzle and worked the pump. The creaking of the pump intrigued the cat. It growled.

  Jem levelled the nozzle. Then he slammed the boot shut. Suddenly the cat was face-to-face with Jem again. It unsheathed its teeth. It leaped at him teeth first.

  Jem flipped the nozzle. A fine spray streamed out. Some of the weightless droplets drifted off into the air, but he was close enough and the pump was strong enough to make sure that all the cat’s underbelly was splattered with the paint.

  The paint clogged in the soft fur. The cat shot upward, yowling and howling, claws and jaws flashing, cartwheeling round and round, its back flush with the ceiling. Jem did not speak sabre-tooth but he knew what all that spitting and squealing meant. It meant, Get me down, get me down, get me down!

  While the sabre-tooth spat and yowled above his head, Jem rooted the wire cutters out of the toolbox. He came around the front and wedged the blades around Chitty’s chain, but the links were so thick that they barely fitted between the blades of the wire cutters. No matter how hard he pushed, Jem couldn’t get them to make even a nick in the metal.