Free Shrunk! by F. R. Hitchcock Page B

out on to a piece of paper. All I find is a teddy bear head and a ten cent coin.
    I sit back against the bed and think.
    Where else could it be?
    Jacob’s trying out a toy car, but he won’t fit through the window.
    I stare at the wall.
    There’s a drawing pin, stuck to the plaster the wrong way round. The pin seems to be sticking towards me.
    Weird.
    I get up to have a look and pull at the drawing pin. It comes away quite easily, but when I let go, it sticks to the wall again. Two paper clips and a picture nail hover just above the skirting board. They’re not apparently held up by anything.
    I pull at them and it feels like pulling a nail away from a magnet.
    Magnet?
    What did Eric say about magnetic pull? With Jupiter the size it was when it came out of the sky, the magnetic force field would only have been about five centimetres. But the paper clip and the drawing pin are a metre apart. Eric must have got the calculation wrong. The magnetic field must be at least a metre, and it’s on the other side of the wall.
    Tilly’s room.
    She’s got Jupiter. That’s why she won’t let me in her room.
    Yeah! That means I haven’t lost it.
    Yippee! Yippee! Yippee! We won’t all be fried by the sun, or blasted by asteroids. I’ve saved the world – I’m a hero.
    Except that it’s in Tilly’s room, she’s doing after-school ballet, and Grandma’s out there fiddling about.
    And I’m still too scared of Grandma.
    I pull the door open, really quietly.
    I don’t breathe. I reckon Grandma can hear breathing. She can’t hear the telly but she can hear someone eating a biscuit.
    I stick my head out to have a look.
    She’s still there, really close. There’s no way I can get into Tilly’s room without her spotting me.
    Blast.
    So I come back in. Jacob’s legs are sticking out from under the bed.
    How can I get into Tilly’s room? It’s only on the other side of the wall. The other side of a five-hundred-year-old stone wall, with no convenient hole in it.
    Why is none of this easy?
    I check the landing again and Grandma’s still there.
    Is there any other way in? We could distract her somehow and rush in, but I don’t think she’s that deaf. Anyway there’s always the chance that she would think that Jacob really was a bed bug and squash him.
    I look around my bedroom again.
    The window.
    It’s a big sash window, and it nearly fully opens. I push it up as far as it’ll go. It wedges open.
    I stick my head out and look along the front of the house to Tilly’s room. There’s a ledge that runs along under the windows, but I don’t think you’re supposed to walk along it, and below is the model village church with a tall spire.
    Ow.
    â€˜BAAA.’
    Over by the miniature bowling green I can see the sheep, and they’re looking enormous. In fact they’re looking almost full-sized.
    Are they growing?
    I stare at them for a second longer. No – that’s impossible.
    Shame there aren’t any underneath the window, they’d make a nice soft landing pad.
    I look back inside.
    â€˜Jacob?’ I say nicely.
    â€˜Hm?’ His mouth is jammed with something green and sticky. A forgotten jelly baby?
    â€˜How are you on heights?’
    â€˜Can’t do them. Sorry, mate.’ He smiles at me.
    â€˜Not even to save the planet?’
    He shakes his head and crawls off under the bed. Interesting – he didn’t call me ‘Model Village’.
    I sit on the windowsill and swing my legs over. They dangle in space. This is not a nice feeling. It’s like sitting on the top board at the swimming pool, but instead of water there’s crazy paving. I look up instead of down. It’s nearly dark now and the meteor showers have got going again. Another firework display.
    If Eric was here he’d tell me that the meteor showers were getting more frequent, or closer or