“Look! I’ll show you - I’ve just happen to have an apple for snacktime,” he went on, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a large carrot. Manuel laughed to see his brother so confounded.
“Remind me, this Isaac Thingy was sitting under an apple tree when a carrot fell on his head. No wonder he was surprised.”
“No! I don’t know how that got there.”
“I do,” said Manuel smugly. “You’ve got my trousers on.
I had a carrot in my pocket for school snacktime.”Carlos was irritated. “Then hand them over."
"Are you saying we should take our trousers off here, on the Moon, where anyone might see us?"
"No, just give me my apple. And the other things...”
Manuel handed over the contents of his brother’s pockets. The long lost apple, followed by two matchboxes.
“It’s all right, I’m taking them to school; we’re doing insects.” Carlos explained unhelpfully and put them in his pocket.
“I thought you were doing gravity.”
Carlos gave Manuel one of his big brother looks and said: “Watch!” as he tossed the apple in his hand, and then threw it up into the air. They watched it soar into the black sky.
“I’m not sharing my carrot with you, just because you threw your apple away.”
“I didn’t throw it away,” said Carlos, putting out his hand and looking up. The apple was slowly returning: It fell gently out of the starry sky and landed softly in his hand. “That is gravity.”
Manuel searched in his pockets for something to throw and pulled out a seashell that he had picked up on the beach the day before. He threw it up, but not straight up, so it went soaring out into the night sky as they watched it spinning away from them until it disappeared over the horizon.
“It’s not coming back!” he said, worried.
“It will land eventually, but not here.” explained Carlos.
“I liked that shell.” Moaned Manuel. “I was taking it to school. we’re doing shells.
Carlos felt sorry for his little brother and tried to cheer him up. “Still it was a great throw! You are stronger than you thought! And do you know why?”
“Gravity?”
“Yes! Because the gravity is less on the Moon you can throw things much further - and...”
“And what?”
“And you can jump much higher!” said Carlos with a leap that took him ten or twelve feet into the air.
The expression on Manuel’s face changed from puzzlement to joy. Now this was something he understood, This was a nice short word; fun! He was soon launching himself upwards and the two of them took advantage of the weak gravity to make several record-breaking high-jumps.
Soon they were running across the Moon surface with huge strides, leaping over boulders and craters and generally acting like giant rabbits. Until they came to a steep cliff of Moonrock that rose up like a sheet hanging on a washing line. They immediately began to look for a way to climb up. They were used to clambering over cliffs and knew what to look for; skid marks where someone has lost their foothold; broken plants that were not strong enough to stop them from falling, and loose rocks that invite you to test them with your weight. But this cliff had never been attempted by anyone; it was and unmarked it looked impossible to climb, so they turned and followed the wall along hoping to find a way up somewhere. But the cliff just led them round in a curved line that just went on and on curving.
“Do you know what I think?” Carlos said suddenly, stopping and touching his brother on his arm. “I think we have been going round and round in circles.”
“Let’s go back then,” said Manuel cheerily.
Carlos was always ready to put his little brother down, but this suggestion was stupid even for him. He shook his fists in frustration.“What is the point?” Then he began waving his arm around as though he was doing an impression of a windmill. “If it’s a circle, we’ll only end up here!”
Manuel was trying to work this out when he turned around and saw a strange creature that was standing a short way off as though it had been following them for quite a while. It was a bit like a green kangaroo with a long tail and a small head that had two horns sprouting from it that were shaped like trumpets. Manuel jumped and spluttered out a snort of surprise, and the creature also jumped to find that it had been spotted. Carlos turned around in time to see it turn and start to run away. It had a long heavy tail, which it waved from side to side as it scampered off. “What was that?” he gasped.
“A monster!” squeaked Manuel turning and fleeing as fast as he could in the opposite direction. “Let’s go!”
In his haste Manuel had forgotten that they were trapped in a circle of rock, and he was still running at full tilt when he ran straight into the creature which was running just as fast, looking over its shoulder as it too fled in terror. They banged hard into each other and fell to the floor.
Manuel cried out in pain and clutched his head while the creature whined and sat on the ground. Carlos caught up and found them both crumpled on the floor soothing their bruises. When the creature saw Carlos approach it stood up shakily on its hind legs and limped away.
“Hey!” Carlos cried after it. “Come back, we won’t hurt you!”
The creature made a humphing snort as it rubbed its aching thigh and sat down a little way off. It uncurled its long toes in pain and the claws showed, pinky-green. Carlos came near to reassure the wounded creature, but when he touched it on the shoulder up! it leaped, scaling the wall with a single jump, just skimming the topcrust with its long toenails, leaving nothing behind but some scattered crumbs of moonpastry and the memory of its terrified heartbeat still throbbing in Carlos’s empty hand.
“Lets go after it!” called Carlos.
“Are you mad? Did you see what that was?”
“All right, we’ll just go round and round this crater until we die.”
“That sounds nice!” said Manuel rubbing his sore head.
That creature - whatever it was - had given him a massive bump. He closed his eyes and soothed his spinning head.
When he looked up he saw Carlos trying to climb the crater wall and then sliding down. He had to laugh because his big brother was acting like a clown, he almost made it to the top and then losing his foothold in the dust, he tumbled in slow motion back down to the bottom.
Then Carlos had another idea; he went over to a large boulder that was lying nearby, and began to push against it. Manuel laughed to see his brother attempt something so totally impossible, but to his surprise the rock began to move.
Apparently with superhuman strength, Carlos rolled the boulder over to the wall. “Gravity!” he explained: “Not so much!”
“Oh yes, I remember the apple!” said Manuel as he mucked in. They heaved and shifted and lunged and lifted, and soon they had a large pile of moonrocks leaning up against the crater wall, with plenty of footholes and steps to climb up on.
Carlos lead the way and Manuel followed, squeaking with fear and excitement. They reached the top of the crater wall and sat there looking out over a magnificent Moonscape.
“Everything looks so clear and - what’s that thing from cameras? Yes, that’s it, in fowkiss.” But there was a black and white film in the camera, or so it seemed as there was not a speck of colour to be seen, and no sign of the injured monster they had followed.
“Carlos? Are we going to sit here until we die?”
For answer Carlos pushed himself down the slope and taboganned down the crater on his school-trouser-bottom. Manuel launched himself off after him and after a bruising descent they landed with a not too gentle bump in a cloud of fine Moondust. Or two clouds rather, since Carlos landed first, and Manuel made a second slightly smaller cloud of moondust a few seconds later.
This part of the moon was smoother than the area inside the crater. Until they had hit the dust a few seconds before, it seemed that there had been no major impacts in this area of the Moon. They had arrived at what seemed to be a wide sandy beach, except it couldn’t be a real beach because there was no sea. They stood still for a moment, wondering which way to go. Any one direction looked the same as any other.
“The tide is out; very far out. In fact I can’t see the sea at all,” pondered Carlos.
They gazed out across the flat sand. No wind ruffled their hair, no salty spray stung their eyes, just stillness and silence.
“It’s very calm,” said Carlos, staring blankly.
“What is? The sea?” asked Manuel.
“No, stupid, there is no sea here. There is a word for this place but I don’t know what it is.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know all the long words.”
“Are you stupid, Carlos?”
“No I am not stupid, and anyway I do know some long words.”
“Good, I am very glad. I don’t want to get stuck on the moon with someone who turns out to be stupid.”
At that moment they saw three shapes coming towards them, and their conversation stopped. The shapes looked at first like someone walking two dogs, which was a sight they had often seen on the beach at home, especially early in the morning, before breakfast. As they got nearer the tall figure turned out to be a woman who looked like she had stepped out of a history book. She wore a long dress with a skirt that made a giant bell shape, and her hair was piled up into two spiral buns. But the boys were more concerned about her dogs which they could now see were not dogs at all.
“Silly of you to expect to find dogs on the Moon, really.” chided Carlos unfairly.
One of them was the strange monster they had chased earlier. The other one was slightly larger and was a paler green and had only one trumpet shaped horn on its head. The boys waited for the lady to come closer. She was waving at them.
“Hey! Hello there!” she called in a friendly though commanding voice, which was high pitched and excessively loud. “Good Afternoon! Is it afternoon yet? Or is it Wednesday? I get these things mixed up, the days are so short up here!”
The boys couldn’t understand what she was talking about, but they cowered at her booming tone of voice, and kept their distance from her two monstrous pets.
“Don’t worry, they won’t bite!” said the lady, tugging at the leads she held in each hand. “We’re just finishing our walkies, aren’t we girls?” The monsters looked tired. “We’ve got to keep our leashes on, since we tend to run off otherwise,” jested the Lady at full volume. “I just found this one wandering about who-knows-where getting up to who-knows-what-kind of mischief! Didn’t I, my darling?”
At this she ruffled the beast’s head with a gloved hand playfully pulling at the trumpet shaped horns (which actually turned out to be ears) in a rough display of affection.
“She came back with a terrible bruise on her head!”
The bruise matched the one on Manuel’s head.
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