Unfortunately, Weasel thought we were actually in a giant flying pickle jar and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out where the pickles were kept. Fortunately, he did eventually find a rusted shut jar of dill pickles, but unfortunately he spent the rest of the evening trying to open it.
We had probably been asleep for hours when he finally passed out from sheer exhaustion. We assumed this because when we woke up, Weasel was left lying on the floor clutching the pickle jar and murmuring something about rusty pickles. When Weasel eventually woke up, we had already been planning our lift off for a couple of hours.
By the time Weasel figured out which room we were in, Dave had already plopped down into the pilot’s seat and was fiddling with a nonsensical array of levers and buttons, but before Weasel could ask what we were doing the ship shot up into the air at such an incredible speed that anybody who wasn’t buckled in was thrown backwards against the opposite wall.
It was dark most of the time because Dave had neglected to back the space ship out of the cavern before lifting off. We rocketed upward through level after level of family cave. When we finally reached daylight, I was too dazed to actually pay any attention to it until it got dark again. We were back in space.
Numerous times, Dave started to tell us his story, but then had to stop to avoid an asteroid or the gravitational pull of a planet that he didn’t see because he was too busy talking about how he had a lonely childhood. Several times Alabaster had to pounce at him and grab a lever at the last second to avoid crashing into a neglected and broken satellite.
Eventually, after several dozen near collisions, Alabaster just gave up trying to help and sat down in the pilot’s seat himself. Dave motioned us out of the room and slid the door to the pilot’s cabin shut.
“Ummmm, what are out here for?” said Weasel.
“So I can tell you my story without being interrupted by a meteorite,” replied Dave. “Well. When I was young I had a very lonely childhood-”
“We knew that already,” I interrupted.
“You did?” said Dave, feigning surprise. “Well, after that, I had a very lonely-”
“I think we knew that too.”
“Anyway, about halfway through my lifespan, an army of my kind came marching through my clan and said that our planet was going to explode, like Krypton, and that we had to leave the planet in spaceships. Our spaceship,” he said, motioning to the ship around us, “was originally named ‘The Dark Duck’, but I renamed it ‘The Great Flying Pickle Jar’ later, after it came into my possession.”
“How did it come into your possession?” I asked.
“That’s for later. Anyway, after spending several years on ‘The Dark Duck’ working with my military exus leader-” two of Weasel’s four arms shot up in the air.
“Ooh! ooh! ooh! ooh! ooh!” he said. Dave rolled his eyes, which was strange because, as I had mentioned before, they were about the size of baseballs.
“What is it, Weasel?”
“What’s a military exus leader?”
“What I became after mine died,” replied Dave, as if that answered the question. Weasel looked satisfied and pulled down his arms. “Anyway, like I was about to say- Oh look at the time,” he said, pretending to look at a watch, “I must go,” and he ran out of the room through the maze of corridors I had come through when I entered the ship.
Weasel started to follow but I explained to him that it was a maze, not just a hall. He pretended to understand and then shot out after Dave through the maze of corridors. The last thing we heard from him was, “I’ve had plenty of practice with mazes.”
Me and Plittereeg reported back to Alabaster. He answered that they’d come back in the morning and we shouldn’t worry, although he did murmur something about how he’d have to work the night shift. Then, without another word, he said, “Good night,” and pushed us out of the room and flicked off the light.
I had a small conversation with Plittereeg under the light of Dave’s red eyes glowing back through the maze and after that we went to sleep.