Nicola handed Tyler a piece of paper with Shimlara’s address on Globagaskar on it so he could type the address into the spaceship keyboard. She wondered if the others were thinking about how when they left Globagaskar last time he accidentally typed in ‘ARTH’ instead of ‘EARTH’. They didn’t realise they were on the wrong planet until they’d left the spaceship and they were all nearly killed by hungry Arth-Creatures who thought they looked like a tasty, home-delivered lunch.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Tyler, who must have been remembering the same thing. ‘I’m being careful.’

‘Oh,’ said Nicola. ‘I just thought of something. Can we fly this spaceship at Time-Squeeze Speed so our parents won’t worry about us?’

She was remembering how Shimlara’s dad had used ‘Time-Squeeze Speed’ when he flew to Earth from Globagaskar. It was an amazing device that used intergalactic molecular conversion to compress time on the planet you were leaving behind. It was fantastic because it meant you could travel to another planet with time up your sleeve. They could spend a whole day on Shobble and only a few minutes of time would pass on Earth.

‘Um, let me see.’ Tyler pulled out the instruction manual and his gaze moved between it and the panel of buttons, flashing lights and levers in front of him. ‘Here it is!’ He pulled a lever and a robotic voice said, ‘You-have-switched-to-Time-Squeeze-Speed.’

‘Right,’ said Tyler. ‘Please prepare for . . .’ He punched one fist on a large red button. ‘. . . take-off!’

The spaceship shot straight into the air.

Nicola looked out the window and saw that the cars parked on their street already looked no bigger than toys.

As they climbed higher into Earth’s outer atmosphere, the bright summer day vanished like a dream. Now they were surrounded by silent, velvety blackness. All around them were glittering stars. Earth floated beneath them like a beautiful marble.

‘Should have brought a pack of cards for the journey,’ yawned Sean. Nicola poked him in the side. Sean was playing it cool but Nicola knew there was no way he could not have been amazed to be in outer space again.

‘I think that’s Globagaskar down to our left,’ said Tyler, his face flushed with excitement.

They all craned their heads to see. If Earth was the size of a marble, Globagaskar was a soccer ball. There were no blue patches, like on Earth, because there were no oceans, but Nicola knew the patches of white were the tops of colossal snow-capped mountain ranges.

‘Prepare for landing,’ said Tyler into his microphone.

‘Oh, gosh.’ Nicola had forgotten how incredibly fast spaceship travel was with Globagaskarian technology.