Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen

My first impression was of being squashed by something, probably like those bananas on my dad.Can't move, can't bark, can't say a word, can't do anything - in short, we have to go to space.Looking out of the window, all I can see is the blue sky.The spaceship flies into outer space. After a while, we seemed to slow down slightly and feel lighter.Major Feyn said he could unbuckle his seat belt and go about his business.She said we were going at fifteen thousand miles an hour.I looked back, and sure enough, there was only a small ball left on the earth, just like a photo taken from outer space.I looked back and the great ape was staring at Major Fritch and me with a sullen expression on his face.She said maybe it wanted to eat lunch and asked me to go back and give it a banana so it wouldn't get angry and do something bad.

They had a bag of food for the apes, bananas, cereal, dried strawberries and leaves and shit.I opened the bag and fumbled around, looking for something to amuse the ape, when Major Fritch radioed to ground control in Houston. "Listen," she said, "we've got to do something with this monkey. It's not Sue—it's a male monkey, and, besides, doesn't look happy to be here. It might get rough." It took a long time for the conversation to reach the surface and then the answer came, but the person on the surface said, "Oh, phew! Apes are not all the same." "Fuck you," Major Fritch said. "You wouldn't say that if you were crammed in such a small cabin with that big monkey."

After a minute or two, a voice came over the radio saying, "Listen, you're ordered not to tell anyone about this, or we'll all be a laughing stock. From now on, that monkey will never be seen by you or anybody else." It's Sue—whatever grows between its legs." Major Fritch looked at me and shook his head. "Yes, sir," she said, "but as long as the beast is in the cabin with me, I'll tie him'—did you hear that?" The ground control center only sent back two words: "Received." In fact, once you get used to it, outer space is a lot of fun.We have no gravity, so we can float around in a space capsule, and the scenery is amazing - the moon, the sun, the earth and the stars.I don't know where on earth Jenny is doing.

We go round and round the earth.Day and night change every hour or so, and the experience makes one see things differently.I mean, now I'm in space, but when I go back—or should I say, if I go back—what about?To start my shrimp farming business?Go find Jenny again?Participate in the "Cracking Egg" show?Solve the problem of my mother living in a poor house?Now that I think about it, it feels weird. Major Fritch tried to take a nap with his eyes closed when he could, but as long as she wasn't sleeping, she was a nuisance there.Complaining about getting the ape wrong, criticizing the people at ground control for being idiots, picking on no place for makeup, picking on whether I eat at lunch or dinner time.Huh, we only have granola to eat.I don't want to complain too much, but it seems like they can pick a good-looking woman, or at least a woman who won't be mean all the time.

Also, let me say this: that ape wasn't exactly a dream companion either. I gave it a banana first - how?It grabbed the banana and peeled it, but put it down again after a while.Immediately the banana was floating all over the capsule and I had to grab it.After handing over the banana to it, it turned it into a muddy state and threw the mud everywhere, so I had to clean it up.It still always calls attention to it.Every time it was ignored, it would make a lot of noise, deliberately opening and closing its teeth to make a rattling noise.Going around like this for a while can really drive people crazy.

Finally, I took out my harmonica and played a ditty--like "Ranch House."The ape grew quieter.So I wrote some more tunes—such as "Texas Yellow Rose" and "I Dream of Light Brown-haired Jenny"; the ape lay looking at me, as peaceful as a baby.I forgot that there was a TV in the capsule, and it turned out that the ground control center picked up everything.When we woke up the next morning, someone held up a newspaper in front of the video fax machine in the control center for us to read.The headline reads: "Idiot Plays Space Music to Appease the Apes." I've had to eat that bullshit.

All in all, things went pretty well.But I've noticed that "Sue" looks at Major Fritch a little weirdly.Every time she came near it, Sue would get a little hyper, and stick out her paws like she wanted to grab her or something, and she'd call at him—"Don't touch me; you disgusting beast. Put your paws Put it away!" But what was Sue thinking.At least that's what I can see. It didn't take me long to see what the idea was.I was peeing in a bottle behind that little partition when I heard a commotion.I poked my head out of the partition, and Sue somehow got hold of Major Fritch, and got his claws in her spacesuit.She yelled again and hit Sue on the head with the radio mike.

It was only then that I realized where the problem was.We were in space for almost two days, and Sue was strapped to the seat the whole time, speculating about pissing and stuff!Of course I remember what it was like.It must be about to explode!Anyway, I went over and pulled him away from Major Furth, and she was still yelling at him, calling him a "nasty beast" and some shit.After she got away, she immediately walked to the front cockpit and buried her head in tears.I untie Sue and bring him behind the bulkhead. I found an empty bottle for him to pee in, but when he was done, he threw the bottle onto a lighted board, and the bottle shattered into pieces, and the urine started floating in the spaceship.I thought, what the hell, but just as I was leading Sue back to his seat, I saw a big cloud of piss flying right up to Major Vermau.It looked like it was going to hit her in the back of the head, so I let go of Sue and tried to use the net they gave us to catch the flotsam to clear the pee ball.But I was about to catch the ball of piss when Major Fritch sat up straight and turned his head and the ball hit her in the face.

She snarled again, and at the same time, Sue actually went aside and started to put down the wires on the control panel.Major Fritch screamed, "Stop it! Stop it!" But before he knew it, sparks and shit were flying all over the capsule, and Sue was jumping up and down and pulling stuff.A voice on the radio asked: "What's going on up there?" But by then it was too late. The spaceship flipped 360 degrees and rocked, and me, Sue, and Major Fritch were thrown around like buoys.Can't hold on to anything, can't close anything, can't stand or sit.The voice from the ground control center came over the radio again, saying, "We have noticed a slight instability problem in the spacecraft. Forrest Gump, could you please manually enter the D-six program into the starboard computer?"

Damn - he must be joking!I'm turning around here like a leaf, and there's a wild monkey messing around here!Major Fritch was howling so loudly that I couldn't hear anything or even think, but she was howling like we were going to crash.I managed to look out the window, and indeed, things were not going well.The earth is coming at us very fast. I managed to make my way to the starboard computer, grabbed the control panel with one hand, and entered the D-six program into the computer with the other.It's programmed to land the spacecraft in the Indian Ocean in case something goes wrong with the spacecraft, and we're in trouble right now.

Major Fritch and Sue clung to the anchors like hell, but the major yelled, "What are you doing over there?" When I told her, she said, "No, you fool—we've already passed the Indian Ocean .After we circle around again, you can try to see if you can land us in the South Pacific." Believe it or not, it doesn't take much time to travel around the world in a spaceship.Major Fritch had grabbed the radio microphone and was yelling at ground control that we were about to land or crash in the South Pacific and that they should come pick us up as soon as possible.I slammed the buttons like a madman, but the big Earth was fast approaching.We flew over what Major Differmow thought looked like South America, and then again there was nothing but ocean, with Antarctica to our left and Australia straight ahead. Then, the whole capsule became hot, and there were strange noises outside the cabin, and the hull began to hiss and vibrate, and the earth was looming in front of us, and Major Fritch yelled at me: "Pull the lever Drop your parachute!" But I'm stuck in my seat and she's pressed against the ceiling of the capsule, so it looks like we're doomed, because we're heading toward a big swath of the ocean at about 10,000 miles an hour. green space.Hitting land at this speed, we probably don't have a broken bone left. But at this moment, something suddenly made a "wave" sound, and the spacecraft slowed down at the same time.I looked, goddamn it, it was Sue who pulled the parachute pole and saved our old lives.I told myself immediately, when all the crisis is over, I must feed it a banana. Anyway, the spaceship was rocking back and forth under the parachute, and it looked like we were about to hit that green field - which obviously wasn't a good thing, because we were supposed to just land in the water and wait for the boat to pick us up.But from the moment we stepped into this novelty machine, nothing went right, so why hope for it now? Major Fritch radioed to ground control: "We're about to touch down on a piece of land in the ocean north of Australia, but I'm not sure where we are." After a few seconds, a voice came back: "Since you're not sure where it is, why don't you look out the window, stupid girl?" So Major Virginia put down the radio, looked out the window, and she said, "God—looks like Borneo or something," but by the time she tried to tell ground control, the radio went down. We're very close to Earth now, and the spacecraft is still dangling under the parachute.Below us was a jungle and mountains; nothing else but a small brown-looking lake.We can also barely see what is happening next to the lake.The three of us--Me, Sue, and Major Fritch--were all looking down the window, and all of a sudden Major Fritch yelled, "God! This ain't Borneo--it's bloody New Guinea, Those weird guys on the ground must be performing a prayer ceremony or something!" Sue and I tried our best to look down, and sure enough, there were about a thousand natives by the lake looking up at us, all of them raising their arms to us.They wore little grass skirts, with flying hair, and some carried shields and spears. "Damn it," I said, "what ritual are you talking about?" "Prayer," said Major Fritch. "During World War II, we used to throw bags of candy and stuff at these bush natives so they wouldn't turn against them, and they never forgot. They thought it was from God or something, and they've been waiting ever since We went back. Even built rough runways and all that—see those things down there? And they marked the drop zone with big round black stakes." "I think those things look like big saucepans," I said. "Well, kind of like it," said Major Fritch curiously. "Don't the cannibals come from here?" I asked. "I think we'll find out soon," she said. The spaceship rocked gently towards the lake, and just before we were about to hit the water, they started drumming and their mouths squirmed up and down.We can't hear a thing inside the capsule, however, the imagination is very active.