Junior Science by Mick Jackson Page B

to go where he suggested, though it showed no inclination at all to shift its altitude.
    That first time out, Daniel just skirted the roof of his own house, high above the neighbours’ gardens, and ended up more or less back where he’d set out from. After he clambered out of the cabin, he took some string and tethered it to the TV aerial. In Daniel’s mind his little shed-cum-space station was now suddenly mobile and he worried that it might drift away.
    The following evening he rowed down the street, as far as the Ashworths. Sailed right up alongside their chimney pots. He could hear the sound from the television, but not much more. So he rowed across the park, above the various joggers, strollers and dog-walkers, and back via the fancy houses on Wellesley Road.
    But the Friday proved to be Daniel’s undoing. He’d decided to row right across town, so that he was well away from his own neighbourhood. It took him forty-five minutes and no small effort, but as he came around the spire of St Luke’s church he spotted a block of flats up ahead – four or five storeys tall – and realised that, with a little care, he should be able to row right up to the windows of one of the apartments on the upper floors.
    He picked a flat in which the lights were on and the curtains had been drawn tight-shut and sailed quietly up to it. Once the cabin had come to a halt he sat with his hands on his oars and listened . . . very hard. He could hear a couple talking. Whatever was being discussed appeared to be quite a ticklish subject. At different times both the man and the woman raised their voices. Then, quite abruptly, Daniel heard the slamming of a door. A light went on in the next window, and after Daniel heard the second person follow the first one in there he made a single short tug on the oars and let the cabin drift on to the next room along.
    The talk was now quiet and conciliatory. Daniel could barely make out a word of what was being said. He leaned right in, to try and hear a little better. But in doing so, inadvertently knocked one of the oars, which came around and struck the window with quite a clunk. The conversation stopped. Daniel froze, horrified. Then he took hold of both oars and started rowing. He rowed as if a pack of dogs had been let loose on him. As he pulled away into the darkness he saw the curtains fly open and a large man, standing in his pyjama bottoms. The man brought both hands up to his forehead and peered out into the night.
    Daniel had no idea whether he’d been spotted, but rowed home, tout suite, tied the cabin to the TV aerial and went straight to bed. He pulled the sheets up to his chin but felt decidedly uneasy. He had, he sensed, crossed some moral threshold, and now had to wait to see what the consequences might be.
    As soon as he woke the following morning he knew that something was the matter. He ran straight up to the attic. His precious cabin was gone. Or, if not quite gone, then in a quite different location . . . and a quite different form.
    The timber lay in a great heap in the middle of the lawn. Daniel flew down the stairs, out into the garden and stood before the wreckage. There seemed to be only two possible explanations as to how it had got there. Either the pocket of zero gravity had suddenly upped and gone – in which case, it was just Daniel’s good fortune that he hadn’t been aboard when it happened. Or someone had brought the whole thing down deliberately. Daniel was almost certain that he’d managed to row out into the dark before the man in the apartment saw him. And even if he hadn’t, how would the man have known where he lived?
    Daniel would never know. All he knew was that his days of floating, carefree, in zero gravity were over. And, sure enough, the rest of his childhood proceeded much like any other. Every week or two he would stand on his lawn and throw a ball up into the air, with the same determination that had once proved so fruitful. But no matter