Nicola stood under a gum tree in her great-grandmother’s backyard and looked up at the stars. The sounds of Grammy’s one hundredth birthday party drifted out from the house. Nicola and Sean had given her a giant gift box of ShobbleChoc and a CD of Silent Fred’s hit song, ‘Rock Around the Choc’. It had proved to be the most successful present of the evening. Grammy had the box of chocolates on her lap. She was refusing to share them with anyone and was nodding her head in time to the music.

As Nicola looked up at the Milky Way, she wondered what her intergalactic friends were doing right now. Was Topaz busy handing out leaflets and giving speeches trying to convince the people of Shobble to vote for her? Was Shimlara sunbathing under Globagaskar’s two cherry suns and swimming in her fizzy pink pool with Georgio, Mully and Squid? Fortunately, when they’d got back to Earth they’d found that only three hours had passed thanks to Time-Squeeze speed. It felt like they’d been gone for months.

She wondered also about the Space Brigade’s next mission. Would there be another mission? It might be nice to have a little rest for a while, without fighting off deadly Biters or flying hot-air balloons in hurricanes. Yes, it would be good not to deal with anything scarier than Mrs Zucchini’s maths tests for the time being.

‘Nic! They’re cutting the cake!’ It was Sean calling from the house.

Nicola gave the stars a secret wave and went running back into the house.

*

‘Mum? Dad? Squid?’

Shimlara walked around her deserted house for the tenth time.

The Space Brigade had dropped her off on Globagaskar ages ago and she was still waiting for her family to come home from wherever they were. She was starting to feel a bit flat. She didn’t really like being on her own and she was looking forward to telling her parents about everything that had happened and teasing her mum about dating somebody as awful as Enrico.

It wasn’t like them to be gone for so long without calling.

She remembered how her dad had taken that mysterious phone call before the Space Brigade had left for Shobble. He’d looked quite serious. Had something bad happened? Something really bad? Shimlara kneaded her stomach. The silence in the house seemed to roar in her ears. She was going to be very cranky with her family when they returned. She was too young to feel worried like this. Worry was something that old people did.

She looked out the window at the swimming pool. Her dad had obviously arranged for it to be refilled with fizzy pink water since Tyler had landed the spaceship in the pool. The floating table was bobbing about, set with two mugs and a plate.