Nanny Piggins and the Accidental Blast-off (4 page)

‘There was a faint aroma of quadruple espresso coffee, parmesan cheese and poorly made burritos coming from this vicinity,’ explained Nanny Piggins, ‘which tells me that someone, who was overtired after a night of being sick from eating bad Mexican food, was working on this panel. And as soon as I opened it I could see it was all wrong.’

‘You could?’ marvelled Michael, as he looked at the web of hundreds of different coloured wires woven in every direction.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘As you can see, this blue wire leads to this green wire. And everyone knows those two colours clash.’

‘Blue and green should never been seen,’ quoted Boris solemnly.

‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And over here, there is a red wire leading to a pink wire! Yuck! I can barely look at it, it’s so unsightly.’

‘It is?’ asked Michael.

‘That poor engineer,’ sympathised Boris. ‘He must have been so exhausted not to realise he was making such a dreadful colour mistake.’

‘I’ll swap them back,’ said Nanny Piggins, whipping out a pair of wire cutters she just happened to have hidden in her hairdo.

‘But you can’t just start cutting wires on the space shuttle!’ exclaimed Derrick.

‘Why not?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘I can’t leave something as ugly as this. It’s like walking past a crooked picture and not straightening it. Or not throwing a blanket over your father’s face when he’s fallen asleep on the sofa.’ Nanny Piggins deftly snipped the wires and crossed the colours over. ‘You see – blue and red, and green and pink – much nicer.’

‘Please don’t snip any more wires,’ begged Samantha.

‘Of course not,’ agreed Nanny Piggins as she shut the panel door. ‘Now we’ll just turn her on to see if that’s fixed it.’

‘When you say “turn her on”, you don’t mean
the whole space shuttle, do you?’ asked Michael, beginning to panic as much as his sister. If his nanny did manage to destroy the space shuttle he imagined they would get into even more trouble than the time she ‘accidentally’ ran over Headmaster Pimplestock’s bicycle with a steamroller.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ said Nanny Piggins as she clambered over to the main controls. ‘I hope it’s like a car and the radio will come on when you turn the engine on … Hmm, there’s no key to turn … But this big green button looks promising; I’ll try that.’

Nothing happened.

‘Maybe I pressed the wrong button,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll try a few more.’ She swiftly tapped her trotter on every button, flicked every switch and pushed every slider within arm’s reach (which was a lot because there are a lot of buttons and switches within arm’s reach of the pilot’s seat in a space shuttle).

Again, nothing happened.

‘I knew I should have brought a crowbar,’ muttered Nanny Piggins.

But then, suddenly, the space shuttle shuddered, red lights started flashing and an automated voice boomed out of the speakers: ‘Commencing launch procedures in ten …’

‘It worked!’ cried Nanny Piggins delightedly.

‘Nine …’ said the automated voice.

‘It worked!’ screamed the children in horror.

‘Don’t panic,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll just switch it off again. Now, what did I press?’

‘Eight …’ said the automated voice.

‘You don’t remember?!’ shrieked Samantha over the roar of the engines that had just fired up.

‘Seven …’ said the automated voice.

‘Perhaps we’d better sit in the seats and put our safety belts on, just in case,’ suggested Boris.

‘Six …’ said the automated voice.

‘Good thinking,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Safety belts are so important, as anyone who has ever read about Newtonian physics knows.’

‘Five …’ said the automated voice.

‘You are still trying to stop the launch, aren’t you?’ asked Michael.

‘Four …’ said the automated voice.

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know, I’ll just bang the green button again lots of times and see if that helps.’

‘Three …’ said the automated voice.

Nanny Piggins pressed buttons furiously but the engines still roared and the space shuttle still shuddered.

‘I don’t know why they have to make it all so complicated,’ muttered Nanny Piggins. ‘We don’t have any buttons on cannons and they still manage to fire people all right.’

‘Two …’ said the automated voice.

‘This is ground control. What the heck do you think you are doing?! Turn that space shuttle off immediately!’ screamed the head of NASA.

‘All right, no need to yell,’ chided Nanny Piggins, ‘although perhaps you can tell me which button exactly should I be pressing?’

‘One …’ said the automated voice.

‘The big red one!’ screamed the head of NASA.

But Nanny Piggins never got to press the big red button because just as she reached forward, the space shuttle launched, and the force of it accelerating at 4793 kilometres per hour pushed her back in her seat.

‘We’re going to die!’ wailed Samantha. She would have fainted but there is no way you can collapse when 3Gs of force are holding you in a sitting position.

‘This is so cool!’ yelled Michael.

‘Samson Wallace is going to be totally jealous,’ agreed Derrick.

The shuttle burst through the atmosphere and
out into space. The shuddering stopped, the engines turned off and everything went silent. The five of them did not say anything for a moment because there was so much adrenaline pumping through their systems.

‘Well, I got it going all right, didn’t I?’ said Nanny Piggins proudly.

‘Well done, Sarah,’ said Boris.

‘Hey, look out the window!’ exclaimed Michael.

(Now reader, I am sure you know that little children generally do not enjoy looking at views. The idea of going on a long car journey and being told to look out the window is, to most children, akin to the very worst kind of torture. But in this instance, Derrick, Samantha and Michael looked out the window and were struck speechless by the beauty of what they saw. The vast infinity of space was utterly black, but this darkness was lit up like a Christmas tree by a million stars spread out in every direction. And the stars twinkled, really twinkled, and so much brighter than they did down on Earth, where you can only see them through all the gases of the atmosphere.)

‘Look at that!’ exclaimed Derrick, as the space shuttle tilted, adjusting its course and the Earth came into view beneath them. They saw the bright blues of the ocean, the greens and browns of the
continents and the white of the clouds, all contained in a perfect sphere and highlighted against the deep unending blackness of space. It was awesome.

‘Well,’ said Nanny Piggins as their brains finally began to process the extraordinary situation they had found themselves in. ‘I think whatever trouble we will get in when we land will be totally worth it.’

And even Samantha, who would easily win the gold medal if worrying was an Olympic sport, nodded her head in agreement.

‘So,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘now that we’re up here, what are we going to do?’

The children turned to look at her. They were even more agog at their nanny than they were at the view. ‘You’re not planning to take the space shuttle anywhere, are you?’ asked Derrick, suspecting his nanny of harbouring ideas of a quick visit to Mars.

‘Oh no, of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins, looking wistfully at the red dot seventy-eight million kilometres away. ‘That would be naughty. We don’t want to get in too much trouble. I imagine we’ll just orbit Earth a couple of times and then land, once they’ve sorted themselves out down at ground control.’

It was a relief to hear their nanny sounding so sensible.

‘But that will probably take a couple of hours,’ added Nanny Piggins, ‘so how are we going to amuse ourselves in the meantime?’

‘Hmmm,’ said Boris thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps we should have a snack?’

‘Brilliant suggestion,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.

But when they took off their seatbelts to go in search of food they discovered something even more wonderful than the view out the window. They discovered they were weightless. And in the absence of gravity even Boris was able to float around like a butterfly. It was an amazing sensation. The children tumbled through the air, spun in pirouettes and hung upside down with their heads off the floor. They felt like the greatest acrobats on Earth, except that they were not on Earth anymore, so they could not really claim the title. And when Boris tried out some of his ballet moves they were even more beautiful, poetic and graceful than they were back home.

Eventually, after an hour of play, Nanny Piggins remembered that they were all hungry so they resumed their search for snacks. They soon found the food storage closet at the back of the ship. But when they opened it, they experienced their first disappointment in space travel.

‘Where is all the cake?’ asked a bewildered Nanny Piggins as she rifled through endless sachets. ‘I can’t find anything. No biscuits, no tarts, no doughnuts, no cheesecake … How are astronauts meant to survive up here?’

‘I think these sachets are food,’ said Derrick.

‘No!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins in shock. ‘Surely not.’

‘Now, Sarah, you should be open-minded,’ said Boris. ‘Remember, just because food looks disgusting doesn’t mean it is.’

‘It’s usually a good warning sign,’ muttered Nanny Piggins.

‘I’ll try one,’ volunteered Michael.

‘You’re a brave, brave boy,’ praised Nanny Piggins.

Michael took a sachet, tore it open and squeezed it into his mouth. The others did not need to ask if it tasted good. They could tell from Michael’s expression. His face went red, his mouth puckered up and his eyes started to water. He would have spat it back out again, but he was worried where the spit would go in zero gravity.

‘That was awful!’ exclaimed Michael, after finally summoning the courage to swallow.

Samantha read the label: ‘Liver with brussels sprouts.’

‘How unspeakably dreadful!’ said a horrified Nanny Piggins. ‘No wonder NASA needed me. If they haven’t got the brains to keep a nice chocolate cake on board for the astronauts, it’s no surprise they can’t build a working space shuttle.’

Just then the speakers crackled and the head of NASA’s voice boomed through the cockpit. (I will not print exactly what he said because he used a lot of rude words, which were unbecoming of a man of science, and really, it is ungentlemanly to yell at a lady.) After a full five minutes of recriminations and tellings-off (him telling Nanny Piggins off for launching the space shuttle and her telling him off for using naughty words in front of children), he eventually calmed down.

‘All right,’ said the head of NASA. ‘At 1500 hours we will need you to commence landing procedure.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘He’s not speaking Latin, is he? I absolutely refuse to be spoken to in Latin. It’s a language entirely for show-offs.’

‘He said at three o’clock he wants you to start the landing,’ explained Derrick.

‘Ohhh,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He likes using his fifty-cent words, doesn’t he?’

‘I can hear every word you are saying!’ yelled the head of NASA. He was beginning to lose his temper again.

‘I know,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but unlike some people, I don’t say things I should be ashamed of.’ (If she could have seen the head of NASA at that moment, she would have seen him blush.)

‘Because this was an unplanned launch our computers are not properly in sync with the shuttle,’ explained the head of NASA, ‘so you will need to get out the workbook from the aft locker, copy in the readouts from the cockpit displays, use the coordinates I give you, and calculate your re-entry angle using trigonometry.’

‘Oh,’ said Nanny Piggins, and for the first time that day she began to feel genuinely sorry that she had become the first pig in space. Because there was nothing in the world that she hated more than doing maths. Nanny Piggins was, however, a brave pig so she got out the workbook, copied down the readouts and gave it a valiant effort. She attempted to do trigonometry for an entire twenty seconds before she got heartily sick of it, cried, ‘Piffle to that!’ and flushed the whole workbook down the space toilet.

‘But how are we going to land now?!’ worried Samantha.

‘Don’t worry,’ Nanny Piggins reassured her. ‘I was blasted out of a cannon night after night for years. I know more about landings than all that lot down at NASA put together. I’ll just land it by eye.’

‘But we have to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at exactly the right angle or we’ll burn up!’ exclaimed Derrick.

‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ dismissed Nanny Piggins. ‘I think that’s just a load of old tosh they made up to make space travel movies more exciting. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I never burnt up on re-entry when I smashed out through the Big Top and had to smash my way back in.’

‘But this is rather different …’ protested Michael.

‘Now, children,’ chided Boris. ‘Nanny Piggins has made a decision. She almost always knows what she is doing, or is very good at faking it, so let’s stop being Nelly-negatives and start being supportive.’

‘All I need is something to aim at down on the ground,’ said Nanny Piggins, peering out through the windscreen of the shuttle as Earth passed beneath them.

‘You could land it in the ocean,’ said Derrick as they passed over the Pacific.

‘Good gracious no!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.
‘I’ve got a lovely new pair of suede boots on and I don’t want to get them wet.’

‘How about the Sahara desert?’ suggested Michael. He had just read a thrilling book about searching for diamonds in the Sahara.

‘Too much sand,’ dismissed Boris. ‘It would take forever to brush out of my fur.’

‘I know,’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Look down there – it’s the Great Wall of China. We’ll aim for that.’

The others peered out the window to see a thin line winding its way across China.

‘Do you think you can hit it?’ asked Derrick.

‘Easily,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The Great Wall of China is over a thousand miles long, so I’m sure I can hit some part of it.’

‘But won’t the Chinese get cross?’ protested Samantha.

‘I don’t see why they would,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They don’t use it to keep out the rampaging Mongol hordes anymore so it’s just sitting there doing nothing.’