Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon

  “Come on, Chitty,” he coaxed, speaking into her radiator. “You’ve got to help me, if I’m going to help you . . .” He leaned his back against her and pushed. The massive car rolled over the wire cutters. Their blades slipped neatly through the chain.

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was free. And Jem was in the driving seat. He rested his hands on the steering wheel. That’s when he heard the voices.

  The excitable squawk of Tiny Jack . . .

  The confident rumble of Commander Pott . . .

  Dad’s familiar tones . . .

  Jeremy’s excited voice . . .

  They were all coming this way. What if they were coming here? What if they heard the racket the sabre-tooth was making? What would Tiny Jack do?

  A warning light flashed up on Chitty’s dashboard. A message spooled across it in thick black letters:

  ZBOROWSKI LIGHTNING

  The Lightning. Of course! It was still in Jem’s pocket. He took it out. The silver propellers caught the light and splashed sparks across the ceiling. The angry growling changed to a bewildered purr, as though the big cat had changed gear. It tried to follow the pretty lights with its eyes as the propeller sent them round and round and round, until the cat’s eyes grew weary and it fell into a deep, peaceful sleep and dreamed it was lying the right way up on solid ground. Very quietly, trying not to attract the cat’s attention, Jem screwed the Lightning back into place. He could make out what the others were saying by now.

  Tiny Jack was showing off his cars.

  “How on earth did you get such a marvellous collection?” That was the voice of the Commander.

  “They’re mostly stolen. As you know, I was a car thief. Until I reformed. Started out as a car thief and worked my way up to stealing ancient monuments. But stealing cars was my first love. Now I’m far more interested in . . . errrmmm . . .”

  “World peace?” suggested Dad.

  “That’s it.”

  They were coming nearer. Jem huddled down in the seat.

  “How did you become a reformed character? How did you stop being a car thief?”

  “There was nothing left worth stealing. Sad, really. This collection of stolen cars is complete. I’ve got Bugatti’s own Bugatti. Ferrari’s own Ferrari. Winston Churchill’s boyhood pedal car. And in here, of course, is . . . Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Jem held his breath. Was Tiny Jack going to open the door?

  “This way, please,” said Tiny Jack.

  Sweat broke out on Jem’s forehead.

  “Chitty’s just through here, gentlemen . . .”

  A door opened, but not Jem’s door.

  Of course! Tiny Jack wasn’t interested in the dear old racing-green Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He wanted to ride around in the gold-plated Chitty.

  There was a loud roar.

  “Good heavens!” That was Commander Pott again.

  “The question today,” said Dad, “is Did I just see a sabre-toothed tiger?”

  “Security system,” explained Tiny Jack. “Some of these cars are very valuable. But I didn’t want to mess up their paintwork by putting alarms on them. Or wheel clamps. So I went back in time and got some big frightening cats. I used to have poisonous spiders, but the cats are easier to feed. Now,” sang Tiny Jack, “bring me my Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of gold.”

  It gave Jem a strange feeling to think that they were looking at the very same car that Jem was sitting in, but from a different time. It gave him goose bumps. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s steering wheel shook a little in his hand and her electronics whined briefly. Maybe she had automobile goose bumps.

  “If your collection is complete”— it was Jeremy talking now —“why is there still one space in your car park? This room is empty.”

  There was an awkward pause. In his mind’s eye Jem could see Tiny Jack turning even redder than usual, getting ready to explode because someone had asked him the wrong question. Then, “Jeremy,” he said. “Have you got the map? Jump into the front seat. Let’s fly to the moon.”

  The green Chitty’s electronics whined again. Her steering wheel shuddered. Through the door she could hear the hand crank turning in her other self.

  Chitty — she heard her engine starting up somewhere else.

  Chitty — it was hitting its stride.

  Bang — she was purring nicely, but there and not here.

  Bang — she was moving off, while at the same time staying quite still.

  Commander Caractacus Pott was piloting the golden Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, her sun dome sparkling, through the mountain passes and over the craters of the moon. Jeremy Pott perched next to his father, his knees around the gearstick. Tiny Jack sat in the passenger seat. Dad was in the back. Next to Dad on the backseat was the world’s only PBPBP.* Since we first learned to look, we have looked at the shadows of the moon’s mountains, imagining we can see faces or oceans in them. Everyone has seen the shadows of the mountains, hardly anyone has seen the mountains themselves. Now Jem and the others were breezing along just above them.

  “We’re looking for the Marsh of Decay,” said Tiny Jack. “Can you see any sign of it?”

  Dad pointed out that it was unlikely that they would see any signs on the moon. “We should just look for a marsh that’s a bit decayed.”

  “It’s not actually a marsh,” said Jeremy. “That’s just the name people gave it in the old days when they thought the dark bits of the moon were seas. Like now we’re flying over the Sea of Showers.” Hundreds of feet below them was a flat, rocky plain spread out in all directions like a vast lake of melted toffee. “It’s not a sea and it’s never rained here.” It wasn’t until he said it that the hugeness of that thought struck him. It had never rained here, not since the beginning of time. For centuries people had looked up at this place, trying to imagine what it was really like. Was it a sea? Was it a marsh? Were there creatures living there? Now he, Jeremy Pott, was seeing it close up. He knew what it was like, knew better than Galileo, better than Leonardo . . .

  “Well, if it’s not a marsh and it’s not decayed, how are we going to know when we get there?” screeched Tiny Jack.

  “Couldn’t we park here and drive around for a bit?” asked Dad. “It looks nice and flat.”

  “We have to get to the Marsh of Decay . . .” said Tiny Jack, “BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE I WANT TO GO AND THIS IS MY CAR, MY TRIP, MY IDEA, AND MY FLAG, SO . . . SHUT UP.”

  “OK.”

  “In fact, it is OK,” said Jeremy, pulling out a little diary from his pocket and opening it at the moon. “I have a map here. Those mountains on the horizon are called the Lunar Apennines. They’re the highlands of the moon. Head for those. When you see a long channel in the ground, that’s the Rima Hadley rille — follow that. Carry on as far as the big crater and turn left. Then at the third crater on your right, go right and that should bring you right into the middle of the Marsh of Decay.”

  Commander Pott rubbed Jeremy’s hair. Dad reached over and did the same.

  “ARE WE THERE YET!” shrieked Tiny Jack. “ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET?”

  Soon they saw the long, dark gash in the ground that was the Rima Hadley rille. Commander Pott brought Chitty closer to the ground, getting ready to land. Her great wings bulldozed the air, her mighty exhaust stormed the dust on the moon’s surface around, her large wheels churned it up. She was a gale and a tornado and a hurricane all at the same time. For miles around, the dust lifted and swirled beneath her like a carpet of sparkling grey cloud.

  “I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!” shrieked Tiny Jack. “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

  “It’ll be impossible to land if I can’t see the ground,” said the Commander.

  “ARE WE THERE YET?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see. We need to find somewhere flat to land.”

  “Maybe I can help,” said Dad.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Jeremy. “Father was in the Navy; he knows about these things.”

  “Press on the brake.”

&
nbsp; “If I stop, we’ll just fall.”

  “Not always. I once pressed the brake when we were thousands of feet up, and Chitty stopped in midair. If it worked again, then we could just wait until the dust has cleared.”

  “What if it didn’t work?”

  “We’re practically weightless. So we’d land quite gently.”

  The Commander pressed the brakes. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stopped in midair. Slowly the dust began to descend, settling back into its cracks and crevices. As it fell, it became thinner and more transparent. The clouds of dust became a fog of dust, then a mist of dust, and then something like a tissue-paper wrapper, then finally the air was empty again and everything seemed clear and new. It’s true that everything was grey, but it was a bright, shining, fresh kind of grey.

  “Just over there. It’s not far,” said Jeremy. “It looks like there’s something there already. Can that be right? Could it be something to do with that big rocket? Or is it just a trick of the light?”

  “That’s it!” whooped Tiny Jack. “Head for that. Aim for that . . . trick of the light.”

  The Commander released the brake. Silently Chitty glided in to land.

  “Hurry it up,” goaded Tiny Jack, shoving himself into the Commander’s lap and grabbing hold of the steering wheel. “OK, let’s go!” he said. “This is taking too long.”

  “I can’t see,” complained the Commander.

  “You don’t need to see. I can see. I’ll steer. All you have to do is work the pedals.”

  “What if we need to brake suddenly?”

  “We won’t need to brake at all. We’re in a hurry.”

  Banners of moondust fluttered and flashed behind them as they sped across the Marsh of Decay.

  “That is not a trick of the light,” said the Commander. “That is some kind of object — a man-made object.”

  The air on the moon is very clear. You can see even faraway objects in great detail. They could see every detail of the boulders that dotted the slopes of the faraway mountains and the craters that lay at their feet. They could also see that the object they were approaching was made of metal. It was held together by rivets. It stood on jointed insect-like legs of steel. It had a doorway. It had the number XV painted on the side, and beside that the American flag.

  “Oh, blow!” said the Commander. “We’ve been beaten to it.”

  “Apollo 15!” said Dad. “You know the Apollo landings were all on TV. This means we’re going to be on TV all over the world.”

  “Accelerate! Accelerate!” shouted Tiny Jack.

  “Is there any point now? We might just as well enjoy the view,” said the Commander.

  “I SAID ACCELERATE! THIS IS MY CAR! IF I SAY ACCELERATE THEN YOU ACCELERATE OR GET OUT! FASTER! FASTER!”

  The Commander pushed on the accelerator. The sun rose over the Lunar Apennines. Its first rays lasered into Chitty. She must have looked like a fireball speeding over the plain, her gold alight with sunshine. As they got closer to the spacecraft, Tiny Jack swung on the steering wheel so hard that he was lifted right off the Commander’s knee. “Brake! BRAKE!” he cried as Chitty spun on her back wheels, shovelling a great column of dust into the air before plunging to a halt with her back bumper to the spacecraft.

  “We should go and congratulate them,” said the Commander. “I feel that’s the proper thing to do.”

  “Activate the PBPBP,” snapped Tiny Jack. “I need a big, big bubble.”

  “Is that me?” said Dad. “OK.” He pressed the red button on the PBPBP and a froth of tiny bubbles appeared in the mouth of the machine. One of the bubbles grew bigger and then bigger. One moment it was the size of a tennis ball, the next the size of a football.

  “The yellow button turns on the oxygen fountain,” said the Commander, “in case you were thinking of stepping outside.”

  “We’re going to walk on the moon!” said Dad, pressing the yellow button. “The word today is lifetime ambition fulfilled. Hey, do you think the Apollo astronauts will come out? Are we going to talk to real astronauts?”

  “We are real astronauts,” said Jeremy. “We’re on the moon, after all.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Dad smiled. “I am an astronaut.” Liking the sound of the sentence, he added, “I’m an astronaut,” before going on to say, “I . . . am an astronaut.”

  The bubble had now grown so big that Dad was sitting inside it. Soon it filled the whole interior of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. They watched in wonder as it grew out through Chitty’s doors and roof without bursting so that the whole car was inside the bubble. The stars danced rainbows on its round, oily surface. Soon it grew so big that it enclosed both Chitty and the Apollo landing module.

  “OK, that’s enough,” snapped Tiny Jack. “Jeremy, keep the engine running. Pott, round the back and pull out the tow bar. Tooting, you get the doors with me.”

  “The what?”

  “OK. Let’s move it.” Tiny Jack jumped out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and stood on the surface of the moon, protected by a Pott’s Patent Burst-Proof Bubble.

  Dad stepped out next. “I’m an astronaut,” he said. “I’m on the moon.” Over to the left he could see the round, blue Earth watching him like a child’s eye. He waved to it. “I’m an astronaut!” he called as if everyone on Earth could hear. “And it’s all thanks to my fat fingers.” He looked at his fat fingers as he waved. If they hadn’t been fat, he would not have been sacked. If he had not been sacked, he would never have begun this great adventure at all. It was his fat fingers that had helped him defeat the pythons and win his place on the trip to the moon. “The word today,” he said, sighing happily, “is fat fingers are the best.”

  “Get your fat fingers round this,” said Tiny Jack, pushing a long black crowbar into Dad’s hands. “Is the motor running? Pott, are you ready with that tow hook?”

  “Yes, the tow hook is here, but I don’t quite understand —”

  “OK, team, let’s do this.”

  Tiny Jack kangaroo-hopped across the surface of the moon, to the command module. The module had a small pod on top that looked like living quarters. There was another pod underneath, lower, more boxy, sitting almost on the ground. It had a door with some kind of seal on it. Before the others had time to work out what was going on, Tiny Jack had wedged his crowbar into the seal and jimmied it off. “Now you, Tooting. Just swing on it.”

  Tiny Jack’s voice was so commanding and his tone so urgent that Dad did as he said without a thought. The door of the pod broke off and drifted slowly to the ground. A ramp slid into place.

  “Nice work,” said Tiny Jack, dropping his crowbar. “Is that engine still running, kid? It had better be.”

  “Yes, but —”

  “Let’s keep it that way.”

  He dashed inside the pod. Dad, the Commander, and Jeremy looked at each other, uneasy and embarrassed. What was going on?

  A few seconds later they knew. A vehicle came bouncing out of the pod. Four wheels, massive tyres, no roof, just a seat and a lot of wiring. Tiny Jack was at the driving wheel, whooping and cackling.

  “That,” said Dad, accurately, “is the moon buggy.”

  “Most expensive car ever built! And here I am, stealing it.”

  He drove it right up to the back of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, where the astonished Commander Pott was waiting in a trance of amazement, Chitty’s tow hook in his hand. Without even looking at him, Tiny Jack took the tow hook from him and fastened it to the front of the moon buggy. He grabbed hold of Chitty’s wheel well and swung his low-gravity self in a beautiful arc, right to the driver’s side door.

  “Time for your moonwalk, Jeremy,” he snarled, and yanked Jeremy out of the car. He pulled Chitty’s door shut behind him.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” yelled Dad. “You can’t . . .”

  Chitty said “Chitty” twice; and then “Bang Bang.” Tiny Jack slipped the car into gear. The sun dome clicked into place.

  “No, no, wait . . .”

  Too late.
br />   The golden Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rolled forward, sliding out of the bubble.

  She was only inches away, but as unreachable as if she had been in the heart of the sun.

  Dad, Commander Tooting, and Jeremy watched in despair as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with the NASA moon buggy behind, bumped away from them over the rocky plain, swinging from side to side as Tiny Jack divided his attention between steering and accelerating.

  “We’ve been marooned,” said Dad, “in a bubble on the moon.”

  Across the plain, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang lurched into the air. Tiny Jack swept her into a turn that took her curving low over them, so that the whole bubble wobbled. They could see him grinning out of the window.

  “The greatest feeling in the world,” he chortled to himself, “is leaving someone behind.”

  “Five minutes ago,” said Dad, “I was an astronaut. Now I’m a car thief.” He looked at his fat fingers as if they might offer some explanation.

  A few moments later two figures appeared from behind the lunar module. They were Apollo astronauts, dressed in full space suits, carrying massive backpacks and wearing huge boots. They were wearing big reflective helmets, so it was impossible to see their facial expressions, but Dad thought it was probably safe to say they were surprised to find two men and a little boy in shirtsleeves waiting for them on the surface of the moon.

  Slowly the astronauts inched toward them.

  “We come in peace,” said Dad.

  Commander Pott was carrying the Union Jack. He waggled it at them and said, “God save the Queen?” but had the feeling that this wasn’t really helping to clarify things.

  The astronauts looked inside the broken pod and saw that the moon buggy was missing. They spread out their arms as if to ask, “What? Where has it gone?”

  “It wasn’t us,” said Dad. “A little boy did it and then ran away.”

  “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!” yelled Little Harry, pointing out of the Toy Box window. Jemima followed his finger and saw the beautiful car rise from the surface of the moon, her golden bodywork shining like a meteor.