BLAST OFF David Rudd

The animals and settlers had been in suspan since blast off, but the crew had remained conscious for the first few months to make sure all was running smoothly. Then the crew had held a farewell party before they said ‘goodnight’ and went into hibernation. Control was passed to the ship’s computer, ‘H4L,’ colloquially known as ‘Hal.’ It was not only easier to say but also gestured towards the infamous HAL of 2001.

When Eddie awoke, he was surprised at how quickly their years in suspan seemed to have passed. But then he noticed he was alone. None of the other pods had opened.

 

Edward had always dreamt of being a writer and, finally, he’d launched himself into the unknown. It had taken almost a lifetime. His career as a draughtsman, then as a carer for his parents, had somehow put his dream on hold—in fact, as he now thought of it, he’d been in suspan.

After a dark period of grieving, Edward had finally subscribed to an online creative-writing course, only to be frustrated by his tutor’s concentration on process, not product. Edward found himself endlessly quizzed about where his ideas had come from and what had shaped them. Edward hated such introspection, which was why he championed science fiction, ‘Where you gaze at the horizon rather than your own navel,’ as he’d told the tutor.

That said, Edward would be the first to admit that his great-uncle Jethro had inspired this story. A picture of the two of them, he and his uncle dressed as spacemen, greeted Edward whenever he turned on his computer.
Uncle Jethro had worked for Hulton Press, where he received free copies of the British comic, Eagle, which featured their hero, the space pilot Dan Dare, along with his sidekick, the corpulent, bumbling Digby—the one who, in a crisis, was usually to be found snoozing. Edward and his uncle would reenact stories about these characters, though Edward did resent being typecast as Digby. Uncle Jethro maintained that it was because he was the one who always authored their adventures. ‘When you come up with your own storylines,’ his uncle would say, ‘we’ll swap roles.’

Well, finally Edward had taken control. ‘3-2-1, BLAST OFF!’ he’d declared, echoing his uncle’s opening formula.

Reading back what he’d written, Edward was quite pleased with himself. He’d ended on a cliff-hanger, too, just as in episodes of Dan Dare: ‘To be continued, dot, dot, dot.’

However, Edward wasn’t sure where to go next. He looked up through his attic skylight at the stars twinkling like jewels. Some twenty minutes later, he was still sitting there, his uncle observing him from the screensaver. ‘What next?’ Uncle Jethro seemed to be saying. It was then that Edward recalled the one piece of advice from his writing course that had appealed: ‘When stuck, take your story for a walk.’

Yes, Edward thought, once again gazing out at the night sky. It would help his imagination take flight. Attain escape velocity! Plumb the stellar depths! To go where no man … No—he stopped himself. Others had gone there before.

Edward ventured out and was enjoying the stillness of the night when he heard a dog barking. Worse than that, he soon realised that the animal was on the loose—and large too, for there it was, behind him in the lane, a half-Alsatian, half-Doberman thing with bared teeth.

Edward made for the gate that led into the churchyard, just closing it as the beast’s claws scrabbled at the other side. Even so, the cur attempted to leap over—unsuccessfully, thank goodness. Edward ran swiftly across the graveyard, continually checking behind him. Later, the saying, ‘Out of the frying pan,’ would ring in his ears. Stumbling over a mound of earth, everything suddenly went black.

When he finally turned onto his back, Edward found himself gazing up at the stars again, but this time through a lozenge-shaped opening. He realised he’d stumbled into a freshly dug grave. However, apart from a headache, he was in one piece. Tentatively, he stood up and looked for a way back to ground level. The sides, though, were impossibly vertical. Edward then observed something else encountering the same problem: a worm, poking through the edge of its world before plunging into the abyss. He experienced a feeling of empathy.

Edward then heard a scrabbling above and feared the dreaded hellhound had found him. But no, it was a more sensibly sized dog, a cocker spaniel. However, its behaviour was equally senseless. Quivering with excitement, it hurled itself at Edward.

‘Fluffy!’ he heard a woman’s voice, and the stupid mutt squirmed in Edward’s arms. A middle-aged woman wearing a head torch peered down. With some effort, Edward passed Fluffy up to her. She switched off her torch and listened as he explained his predicament.

‘Graves aren’t that easy to get out of,’ he concluded.

‘I don’t think they’re meant to be,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ll fetch Reggie, my husband … with a ladder.’
 


Eddie, feeling very alone, went up to the bridge to consult H4L. It took ages to get there. The date confirmed his fears: they’d left the Solar System, but their destination was still years away. ‘Aaaaaaaagh!’ he wailed. Even as he said it, he recalled that corny phrase, ‘In space, no one can hear you scream.’ No matter, he found the scream therapeutic. He could hear it—and H4L registered it too.

As the two shared intelligence, H4L confirmed that time was slowing, locating the cause in a nearby black hole. Looking at the external cameras, Eddie could see an unrelenting nothingness outside. Dark as the grave, Eddie thought, swallowing hard. He felt like Alice stuck down her rabbit hole; and, as with Alice, time itself had distorted, elongated.

The reason for their predicament, as H4L detailed, was a result of an asteroid or comet (unfortunately not captured on camera) striking them, sending them off course and damaging their propulsion system. H4L had been forced to waken Eddie, the chief engineer, for advice.

Eddie felt honoured. Captain Jet, it seemed, could afford to snore on. It was Eddie who was to be the hero of the hour, saving the Nozark. And Eddie felt himself fully capable. His brain was buzzing. Time might have slowed physically, but Eddie was flying. As good as a black hole, he could suck the light from any technical data. Theories and formulae that had baffled him at Space Academy now made perfect sense. The quantum world of multiverses and wormholes was an open book. Even H4L was struggling to keep up with him.
 


Edward woke up at his keyboard. Literally. His forehead was indented with the keys. Looking up, ranks of capital ‘A’s filled the screen: AAAAAAAAAA. But where was his exciting story? It had been going so well, inspired by those crazy events in the graveyard … just last night, was it? He went off to get some aspirin.
In the bathroom mirror, he caught sight of his forehead. It looked like the backside of the moon, all cratered and blotchy. He freshened up, brushing his teeth. As he did so, the name ‘Fluffy’ popped into his head. That was what the couple had called their silly mutt. Thank goodness they’d been there, rescuing him from … well, from his own black hole!

Back at his computer, armed with coffee and a sandwich, Edward deleted the echelons of As. He hoped to find his story at the beginning of the sequence, but it was not there. He hammered at the undo key, but that simply brought back the As. Could he have dreamed what he’d written? He picked idly at the keyboard, struggling to recall his adventure.

‘I’ve written myself into a black hole!’ he declared.

He eventually gave up, to start afresh the next morning with a trip to the library in order to conduct some research. Lacking a laptop, he took a pen and a notebook. It was a good decision. The pen, his uncle’s old Parker, proved unexpectedly liberating. Whereas Edward would type any old thing at the keyboard—confident that he could easily revise it—every word from his pen was hard won and therefore carefully chosen.
 


Eddie was now grateful not to be in suspan, wasting precious time that could be dedicated to understanding the universe. Stephen Hawking’s radiation theory particularly attracted him with its proposition that black holes leaked energy: they weren’t completely possessive. Eddie pictured a wormhole through which the Nozark could escape like … well, like a strand of vermicelli—a ‘little worm’—squirming through into a whole different space.

Eddie was confident that the Nozark could exploit this leakage of energy. After extensive mathematical computations, he fed the new coordinates into the system before advising H4L that, given the damage to their propulsion system, they should not risk proceeding to Tau Ceti. H4L’s dogmatic opposition surprised him. They could do no such thing, it said, without Captain Jet okaying it.

Eddie was speechless, but before he could say more, a howl greeted his ears. It came from below, down in the Ark. Eddie went to investigate, making sure he was suitably armed. He took a stun gun, net throw, and gas canisters, also donning protective clothing. This time, it seemed to take even longer to make his way through the ship, but he now knew why. However, before he’d even got near the Ark pens, he was confronted by a wolverine sauntering down the very corridor he’d entered.

Renowned for their aggression and strength, wolverines were about the least friendly creatures on board. As far as Eddie could tell, the species had avoided extinction by blithely extinguishing others. He’d always been surprised at their inclusion on the Ark. However, these concerns were now academic.

On sighting the beast, Eddie abandoned his weaponry and turned on his heels, his adversary in pursuit. However, thanks to the black hole’s pull, all this happened in slo-mo. Eddie fondly recalled those Hanna-Barbera cartoons where characters repeatedly ran past the same bit of background footage, busy getting nowhere. Their chase was similar. The only benefit was that Eddie found himself getting thinner. For the first time in years, he could see his feet pattering beneath him. And at least Eddie knew what was going on. The wolverine was totally nonplussed, besides being a shadow of its former self, looking more like a pet cocker spaniel.

After what seemed an age, they reached the end of the corridor, and Eddie, with his new lissom figure, squeezed through the hatch before the wolverine, now whining pathetically, could reach him.

Eddie did not, however, return to the bridge. During his sojourn in the corridor, he’d been pondering the wolverine’s sudden awakening and appearance. It had happened just after he’d suggested that they return to Earth. Clearly, H4L was programmed to stop anyone from jeopardising the mission. What H4L hadn’t realised, though, was that before verbalising his concerns, Eddie had already updated their destination, never anticipating that H4L would overrule him. With any luck, they should be well on their way home before H4L realised that Eddie had done far more than engineer their escape from the black hole.

What he had to do now was lie low, lest any more beasties be let loose on him. The only place he could think of hiding, beyond H4L’s surveillance, was in one of the storage lockers.

Shut in there, with his trusty Parker pen, Eddie began a written record of what had occurred—just in case. His pen, though—one inherited from Uncle Jethro—kept side-tracking him, such that he found himself incorporating all sorts of irrelevant biographical information. About, for example, how the Parker used to double as a laser gun when he and his uncle played spacemen, when they’d dress up in aluminium foil outfits, their headgear fashioned from colanders with forks and fuse wire stuck in the top. They saw themselves as the British answer to Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Dan Dare and Digby! Southport’s home-grown favourites!

Eddie wondered whether the black hole was still affecting his brain. Or could it be H4L, spiking his air supply? Recalling the hallucinogenic ending of 2001, he even wondered if these memories were his own. Am I even ‘Edward?’ he wondered, his given name ringing strangely in his head.
 


‘Edward?’ His name rang out again. Was there someone else in his locker? No, it was a bed he was in, with lights pulsing, sounds bleeping, and tubes worming out of him. … He really was in 2001!

But no, he wasn’t. There were doctors and nurses around, and there was someone else sitting at his bedside. The man was clearly relieved to see Edward awaken. The man—Reggie, he said—kept apologising, going on about the mound of earth he’d fallen over; and about the ladder he’d been carrying that had then flown from his grip, launching itself at Edward, clocking him on the head …
 



When Edward was finally discharged, he made straight for his attic computer. While it booted up, Edward rested his head against the screen. It was still painful from the airborne ladder, let alone from the keyboard. Finally, the screen revealed Edward and Jethro smiling into the future. For the first time in ages, Edward looked at them closely. No headgear.

Edward shook his addled head. Was he still suffering from the drugs they’d given him? He moved his mouse to the Word icon. ‘Blast off!’ he announced habitually, opening his Nozark file.

Nothing. No Nozark. No Eddie. He checked the trash. Still nothing. It was a proverbial black hole. ‘Aaaaaaagh!’ he shouted.

Again, he rested his head on the screen, confronting his great-uncle on the other side. ‘Speak to me, Jethro. You always had the storylines. H4L’s not listening, honest!’

Then he had a better idea. He pulled Jethro’s old pen from a drawer and extracted some blank A4 from the printer.

‘Blast off!’ he intoned, inscribing the words in capitals at the top. After that, his nib seemed to squirm with its own volition. He watched, fascinated, as the paper’s crisp whiteness succumbed to an explosion of wormy traces.