"Nice tea, Victoria," Isobel said.
"Thank you."
Zoë bustled in from the café's tiny kitchen.
"Here's the bill," she said. "Sam, could you take a look at it?"
She had donned a pink apron embroidered with bluebirds, which had been
hanging on the kitchen door. Despite this attempt to get into the rôle, her
grasp of a waitress's duties had been sketchy at best, and by unspoken
agreement she'd been kept well away from the actual preparation of food.
Samantha looked up in surprise. "What? Me? Why can't you?"
"Oh, I have." Zoë handed her a piece of paper and a pen. "But I think I've
made a mistake somewhere. Could you double-check it for me?"
Samantha gave her a surprised look, but started glancing to and fro between
the menu and Zoë's notes. After a few seconds, she started writing her own
figures beside Zoë's neat entries, then crossing them out and writing others.
"Silly me," Zoë said, glancing over her shoulder at the fractured
arithmetic. "I must have been working in base eight. Or was it nine?"
Samantha, momentarily distracted, crossed out several entries she shouldn't
have, and multiplied the price of teacakes by the date.
Across the table, Gia suddenly opened her mouth in a soundless "Aha!". She
cleared her throat.
"How d'you think they'll get on in the cricket today?" she said.
"What's that got to do wi' anything?" Jamie asked.
"Oh, Jamie!" Zoë said, causing Victoria to smother a giggle behind her
hand. "You should take more interest in these things. I think, in this
weather, they should get to three hundred easily. Probably with two or three
wickets to spare."
"Ah, but the light won't be good past five," Gia countered.
Samantha's paper was now a tangled mess of figures. Her face was screwed
up in concentration as she tried to follow from the price list through the
twists and turns of Zoë's outlandish mathematics, all the while under fire
from the blizzard of numbers being thrown back and forth across the table.
"Since when were you interested in cricket?" Isobel asked.
"About ten or twelve minutes ago," Zoë replied, straight-faced.
"Hey!" Samantha yelped. She threw the pen down and jumped to her feet.
"What's going on?"
Gia cast a glance at the paper. The numbers on it danced before her eyes.
"We have ignition," she said drily. "I suggest we find something to hang
onto."
Even as she spoke, the café began to shake. On the counter, a pyramid of
rock cakes shuddered, and the topmost one bounced to the floor.
"What's happening?" Jamie demanded. Instinctively, he clutched at the
closest person to hand -- in this case, Isobel.
"I've done it!" Zoë's eyes were shining with triumph.
"Done what?" Victoria grabbed at her teacup as another tremor threatened to
send it off the edge of the table.
"It's a fully operational Bistromathic Drive, of course." As always when
she'd just solved a tricky puzzle, Zoë had a slightly euphoric expression
and absolutely no thought for any problems her cleverness might give rise to.
"Enjoy the ride, every--"
The acceleration caught everyone by surprise. Tables, chairs, cutlery,
cups, saucers, plates, food and drink all went flying, and the whole place
was instantly reduced to chaos. Gia overturned the table they'd been sitting
at, crouched behind it, and dragged Jamie and Isobel down with her. A series
of impacts sounded as, one by one, the rock cakes flew off the counter and
smashed against the far side of the table.
She glanced over her shoulder. Victoria had dived under another table,
and was hanging onto its legs for dear life as it slid toward the back of
the café. There was no sign of Samantha or Zoë. Through the windows could
be seen, not the dawn sky, but the darkness of space, with what looked
disturbingly like stars hurtling past.
"Gia!" Isobel shouted, over the sounds of shattering crockery. "Don't ever,
and I mean *ever*, let her do this again!"
Before Gia could answer, the acceleration came to an abrupt halt. For a
few queasy seconds, they were weightless. Then the G-force hit them again,
in the opposite direction, and everything began to slide in the direction
of the counter. Victoria's table glided past again, her screams dopplering.
"What's happening to the air?" Jamie asked, still hanging onto Isobel for
dear life. "It feels like we're up in the mountains."
"This building can't be airtight. The air's leaking out into space." Gia
found herself having to take deep breaths just to talk. "Doesn't that girl
have any common sense?"
In unison, Jamie and Isobel solemnly shook their heads. A moment later, the
windows flared with red light, the café shuddered under a violent impact, and
its occupants were once more thrown headlong as if by a giant hand.

"Samantha?"
Samantha crawled out from a heap of smashed furniture, shaking demerera
sugar out of her hair.
"Are you all right?" Victoria asked with concern.
"Yeah. I'm fine. Landed on something soft, didn't I?"
Zoë emerged behind Samantha, her apron wrapped round her head. She pulled
it free.
"She means me," she said, and rose, somewhat unsteadily, to her feet.
"Thank you for travelling Zoë Airlines and I hope you all enjoyed your
journey."
She swayed, and leaned against the counter for support.
"Is that everyone?" Gia asked.
Jamie carefully enumerated them on his fingers. "You, me, Isobel, Victoria,
Sam, and Trouble." He winked at Zoë. "That's everyone."
Victoria sniffed. "Something's burning," she said. "I think it's the café."
"That would follow," Zoë said calmly. "We re-entered the atmosphere at
considerable speed..."
Before she could complete her sentence, Isobel had taken a firm grasp of
her arm and dragged her outside.

The party found themselves in a trench, at its base exactly as wide as the
café, and deep enough that they couldn't see out. The sides of the trench
steamed gently, making it difficult to see beyond a few metres. Behind them,
the café, blackened and distorted by its journey, smouldered.
Jamie cautiously touched the steaming earth; then, satisfied that it
wasn't hot enough to burn, scrambled up the side of the trench.
"It's quite safe," he called down. "Nice and quiet."
The others soon joined him. Apart from the trench so recently carved into
the landscape, it could have been anywhere in rural England. They were
standing in a field, its grass wet with dew. In the middle distance could
be seen more fields, nondescript woodland, and a minor road.
"What happened to the air?" Victoria asked. "While we were travelling, I
mean. I couldn't breathe."
"Well," Zoë said defensively. "I couldn't follow a direct course. We'd have
ripped a hole in the Earth's crust."
"Looks like you did anyway," Samantha said, gesturing at the trench.
"A minor scuff. This would have involved lava. Anyway, I took us a little
way into space and back down again."
"Why all the way to space?" Gia asked. "Surely you could plot a suitable
trajectory that didn't leave the atmosphere."
"That's what I thought I was doing." Zoë avoided meeting Gia's eye. "But I
overshot a bit."
"How much?"
Zoë shuffled her feet, and blushed. "We ended up somewhere in Messier 17, I
think."
Gia gaped, momentarily lost for words.
"What's that mean?" Jamie asked, nudging her.
"It means her calculation was out by approximately fourteen orders of
magnitude," Gia said, recovering her composure.
"Pretty good for a first try, then," Jamie said helpfully. "Wasn't it?"
Gia took a deep breath. "I agree with Isobel. Zoë, you are never to
experiment with bistromathics again."
"I'm sure I know what I did wrong," Zoë said. "I think, if I had another
go--"
"No!" all the others chorused.
"You're no fun any more." Zoë looked down at the café, which was now burning
merrily. "I'd need another café, though. This one's used up."
"I don't know if any of you lot remember," Isobel said. "But before this
little trip we were supposed to be thwarting a gang of criminals, weren't we?"
"First thing we do is find out where we are," Samantha said firmly.
"Starting with what planet we're on, and working up from there. It's not
that I don't trust you, Zoë, it's just that you're completely off your
trolley."



Chapter 7: The Smiling And Beautiful Countryside

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