Free Galaxy Patrol by Jean Ure Page A

‘That,’ I said, ‘is a creature from another planet. Otherwise known as an extraterrestrial.’
    â€˜You mean, an alien.’
    â€˜Well, yes. Except…’ I frowned. ‘I’m not really sure we ought to call them that.’
    â€˜You just did! Just now!’
    I said, ‘Yes, I know, but it’s not politically correct. They’re just different life forms, that’s all.’
    â€˜Huh!’ She tossed her head. ‘Some life form. Looks like a perambulating octopus.’
    I nearly said ‘You what?’ but thought better of it. She’s always trying to confuse me by using words I’ve never heard of.
    â€˜Actually,’ I said. ‘It could be deadly.’
    â€˜So what’s he going to do? Your hero – Captain
Kirk
. What’s he going to do? Get it with his ray gun? Psht!’ She made her fingers into a gun shape and aimed them at the screen. ‘Zap! And then it explodes, blood and guts all over the place… I s’pose the blood’s some yucky colour, like yellow, or something.’
    â€˜This particular extraterrestrial,’ I informed her, ‘doesn’t happen to have any blood. It doesn’thave blood of
any
colour. And Captain Kirk,’ I added, ‘does not have a ray gun. Ray guns,’ I said,‘are simply figments of your imagination.’
    â€˜Oh.’ She sniggered. ‘Pardon me! So what’s all this stuff? I thought it was science
fiction
.’
    It is science fiction based on fact. That is what she cannot grasp. She likes to pretend it’s all just nonsense. She was about to learn…
    â€˜Oops!’ She fluttered her hands, pretending to be scared. ‘Watch out! It’s got him in its tentacles. Now what’s going to happen?’
    I said, ‘He’ll tell Scotty to beam him up.’
    â€˜Yay! The famous transporter! Wish they’d hurry up and invent it. I could do with one of them for getting me out of maths lessons.’
    Rosie is dumb at maths. She seems to think it’s amusing, having to add up on her fingers. She does know a lot of long words, though; I’ll give her that. But I reckon maths is more important, ’specially if you want to understand temporal mechanics. Ha! She wouldn’t even know what that was.
    â€˜Matter of fact,’ I said, carelessly, ‘they already have transporters.’
    Her lip curled. ‘Who does?’
    She never believes a thing I tell her.
    I said I wasn’t sure exactly
who
. ‘It might still just be alien technology. But they do exist.’
    She opened her mouth to say ‘Oh, yeah?’ She is always saying ‘Oh, yeah?’ Anything she can’t argue against.
Oh, yeah
? Only this time she didn’t get the chance, ’cos at that very moment Captain Kirk spoke into his communicator: ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ And that was when I disappeared…

Chapter Two
    Whoosh! I’d landed.
    Some
of me had landed. I could feel that some bits were still missing. The odd toe. The nose. My right ear.
    Well, that was OK; I wasn’t too anxious about it. I knew that body parts didn’t always reassemble themselves at exactly the same moment. Some of them were probably still floating around in the transporter. Yup! That was my nose. Back in the middle of my face, right where it ought to be. Oh, and here came the toes! A whole bunch of them. I hadn’t realised so many were missing. Now I was just waiting for my right ear.
    â€™
Ere
,’
ere
. Dad would make a joke of that. Dad makes jokes about everything. But I bet even he wouldn’t make a joke if he were all exploded into atoms and having to wait while he got put together again. It might have been a bit scary if I hadn’t seen it so often on
Star Trek
. Of course,there was the occasional accident, when people
didn’t
get put back together … but most of me was back. I guess you can live without a right