Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

‘What about food? What about oxygen?’

‘What about your biology textbooks?’ added the Goldfish, concerned.

‘Go away, Goldfish!’ I snapped, swatting at it.

‘Oh,’ said Josephine, deflating slightly. ‘Well, there’s an oxygen pump in the Flying Fox, but… I didn’t really think about food.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a whole crate hidden back by the Maggini airlock. Look, get in the ship and have some proper oxygen; I’ll go and grab it.’

Josephine looked a bit dubious, but she did as I said, and I scrambled off over the rocks and between the scrubby bushes of Beagle Base.

The Goldfish was still with me. I felt a bit mean about trying to shoo it off, because it had been nice to me in its own way while I was alone in the classroom, but it was clearly only going to be a nuisance.

‘What are you doing, Goldfish?’

‘I’m looking after you kids, Alice,’ it said, as perkily as ever. ‘That’s what I’m here to do!’

‘Well, not to be rude,’ I said, dragging the crate out from its hiding place, ‘but you haven’t done a very good job of it so far.’

The Goldfish sank in the air and the lights in its eyes got very dim indeed. I felt mildly awful, because the Goldfish and the other robots shouldn’t really have been expected to handle three hundred rioting kids all by themselves, but after the day I’d had and the lessons I’d been through I thought I had some excuse.

Then it brightened up, both literally and figuratively. ‘Then by golly I’m going to do better ,’ it resolved, and stuck to me with even greater determination.

‘Alice!’ someone hissed, a few feet away.

‘ Oh, what now ?’ I said, having had quite enough of sudden surprises for one night.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Carl, appearing out of the dark. He looked pale and dishevelled. I wondered for the first time how I looked.

‘Never you mind,’ I sniffed, gathering up the crate.

‘But, you’re all right, though? They didn’t rough you up too bad?’

‘No thanks to you.’ I was not very happy about the way he’d disappeared when Lilly and Gavin’s lot jumped us.

Carl looked unhappy about it too. ‘I’m sorry! I had to get Noel out of there. I had to,’ he said. ‘I thought you were behind me, anyway. I’ve been looking for you, I swear.’

‘Well, fine,’ I said, in that disgruntled way when you see someone’s point but aren’t in the mood to be nice to them yet.

‘Are you running away?’ said Carl, looking me over. ‘You are, aren’t you? Awesome. Where are you going? How are you doing it?’

‘None of your business,’ I grumbled, trying to stalk away from him and finding myself hampered by the fact he’d taken hold of one end of the crate and was trying to help me carry it.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked. ‘Hold on a sec and I’ll get Noel. He’s in the soya dome; I’ll be two minutes.’

‘You’re not coming!’ I cried.

Carl skipped the ‘Yes we are’/‘No you’re not’ part of the conversation and just asked, ‘How are you going to stop us?’

‘We’ll all stick together,’ announced the Goldfish. ‘TEAM! It stands for Together Everyone Achieves More!’

‘Oh for God’s sake, go away, Goldfish,’ Carl ordered it. ‘We’re running away. That means not bringing teachers.’

‘Well, it’s like you said to Alice, Carl,’ said the Goldfish airily, though I felt there was a suggestion of menace in its voice: ‘ How are you going to stop me?’

The two of them stared each other down for a moment before Carl seemed to decide that dealing with the Goldfish was my problem. ‘I’m getting Noel.’

I didn’t wait. I went hurrying on back to the Flying Fox with the Goldfish skimming along beside me, but I had to keep putting the crate down all the time to change my grip on it, so Carl and Noel caught up with me quite easily.

‘Hello, Alice. Goldfish,’ said Noel, politely, as if running away in the middle of the night was a perfectly routine thing to be doing.

‘Hi,’ I said, feeling there was something to be said for his attitude. Meanwhile Carl had taken the other end of the crate again and it was much easier that way.

Josephine popped out of the Flying Fox as we approached and scowled as she saw the crew of tag-alongs I’d picked up.

‘Why did you bring them ?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t bring anyone!’

‘She’s right,’ said Carl easily. ‘We invited ourselves.’ Josephine didn’t stop scowling.

‘Well, Carl is a good pilot,’ I sighed, ‘and the Goldfish… knows stuff.’

‘ I know stuff,’ said Josephine, aggrieved.

‘Yes, of course you do,’ I agreed soothingly, ‘but you know the Sunflower was useful already.’

In a way, none of that mattered, because the Goldfish, Carl and Noel were all piling into the Flying Fox whether we liked it or not, and it would have taken a serious physical fight to even try to get them out, and I for one was not up for that.

Carl and I did fight a little over who got the controls of the Flying Fox. For some reason, I wanted to be the one to do this bit. An awful lot of things seemed to have happened to me recently, and I wanted something to be happening because I was doing it, for a change.

Finally Carl let me have the pilot’s seat. I backed the ship out of the obstacle course. Bits of it crunched worryingly around us and I had time for more elaborately detailed visions of fiery death than even the best simulator in the world could come up with.

‘You’re doing great, Alice,’ said the Goldfish, hovering behind my head. ‘You can fire the thrusters now.’

So I did, and for that second or so I could feel the ship fighting gravity – and it won; we won, and we took off into the dark sky. And then we were flying over the night-time valleys and hills of Mars.

I went very slowly for what the Flying Fox was capable of – which is to say, about four hundred miles an hour. I screamed only occasionally, even though there was a ferocious wet wind coming the other way, scouring over the Gulf of Chryse. The Goldfish helped me, and Carl tried to help me too. At least, that’s what he said he was doing, but in practice it was more that the Goldfish would suggest I do something and I would try to do it and Carl would say, ‘No, no, not like that ,’ and, ‘are you sure you don’t want me to take over?’

Then Josephine sighed, leaned across and quietly did something to him I couldn’t see on account of not daring to take my eyes off the viewport, and Carl yelped, ‘OW,’ and, ‘What did you do that for, I’m only trying to help,’ and though he was not actually quiet after that, at least he wasn’t bothering me and I was able to tune him out.

But I was not going to keep this up for very long in the dark. It was about two in the morning or something equally awful by now. We were on our way, and far beyond Leon and Christa and Lilly and Gavin and that was the main thing.

‘We’ve got to stop and rest. I need something nice and flat to land on, Goldfish,’ I warned, trying not to sound panicky about it. We were flying over something nice and flat at the time, but it was the sea.

‘That’s OK, Alice, just bear south-south west, forty k,’ it said soothingly. It was interfacing with the Flying Fox’s computer, which was handy.

I skimmed over the dark coast, activated the lifters and lumbered down on them before dropping the Flying Fox rather awkwardly on to something. It bounced around a bit before it stopped completely and we all yelled, except for the Goldfish, and Noel, who slept right through it.