Gershwin the Space Slug Rider

Once upon a time, there was an adventurer named Gershwin. Now he travelled all over the world. He would travel to Africa. He travelled to America. He travelled to Canada, up mountains. He even touched space once.

So he'd been to all of these places, but the one place he'd never been was completely into space. So he decided that as well as being an adventurer, he would become an astronaut. So he decided to make himself a rocket to get himself into space.

He went to the local store and he bought himself some rocket fuel and a big collection of metal. He took it home and he welded it all together into what looked like a big arrow.

He filled it up with rocket fuel, and he jumped on top, putting on his favourite astronaut outfit: hat, boots, gloves and suit.

He lit the fuse for the rocket. The rocket fuel ignited, and off he flew into space, up, up, up. Through the lower atmosphere, through the upper atmosphere, and then everything went dark.

He turned on the light in his visor so he could see better. And as he looked down, he could see the Earth. He could see the Moon. He could see the Sun, glowing in the distance. And he could see the other planets, but they were very small.

So he thought the first thing he'd do was go on a spacewalk. Spacewalks are very fun. You can put on a backpack with tiny little rockets on it, and fly through space, so he exited his spaceship and went on a spacewalk.

First, he sent his little rockets and went flying around the moon. He went round and round and round, looking round and round the moon. He saw things that people had never seen before. He saw craters that had been formed by asteroids.

He saw the old ship that had landed.

He saw metals and gold and all sorts of rocks that they didn't have on Earth. And he took photos of everything as he went.

He came back round and saw his ship in the distance, so he went back to his ship, got himself a little bite to eat, and then tried to work out where to go next.

The next place Gershwin the astronaut was going to visit was Mars.

So his ship headed off in that direction.

When he got relatively close, he jumped out of the ship and went on a spacewalk. Because his ship was still moving towards Mars, he got a big, big boost on. And before he knew it, he was flying through Mars's atmosphere. He could see the planet so close, and he decided that he was going to go and stand on Mars to see what all the fuss was about.

So his little rockets took him down, and his feet soon touched the floor. But it was a good job that he was wearing boots because before he knew it, the rubber on his boots started to melt. Mars was the hottest thing he'd ever seen. It was like lava, and his boots were melting. And he had to go really quickly before his feet got burnt to bits. So he set off his rockets and headed back up through the atmosphere. Gosh, he was so scared, but it was okay. He'd made it out with no problems.

There was no hole in his spacesuit, so he decided to have a quick orbit around Mars just to see how it was.

As he came out of orbit, a giant space slug swallowed him up before he knew it.

He didn't know what was happening. He went down the throat of the space slug, but he reached into his backpack and found he had a shovel there. He grabbed the shovel and he used the shovel to climb up the space slug's neck.

He shoved the shovel between the teeth of the space slug. So the space slug couldn't close its mouth, and then he crawled out. He was alive. He'd escaped the space slug, so now he thought he'd better head back to his ship.

As he approached his ship, all he saw was thousands of pieces of metal flying in his direction.

He didn't know what the metal had come from. Maybe a satellite, maybe a rogue comet had just blown up.

But as he got closer to where he parked his ship, he realised that it was actually his spaceship that had been hit by a meteor. There was nothing left, and here he was stranded in the middle of space with no way to get home.

But being a resourceful person, he checked his space map and set the location to Earth. He saw the arrow pointing the way he knew he'd come in the first place, but he didn't know how to get home. But then he remembered the space slug. Now space slugs were really fast, and although they were very hungry, he thought he could ride the space slug. So he headed back to where the space slug was, grabbed the shovel from under the teeth of the space slug, went up to the top, and put it in the blowhole of the space slug and held on. It was like a joystick; he could steer the space slug any way he wanted. So he steered it towards Earth, and pressed forward. The space slug reared up in the air, and then flew forward as fast as it could, leaving a slimy trail in space behind it. Before they knew it, they'd arrived at Earth.

When they got there, Gershwin decided to head back down through the orbit. So he jumped off the space slug, gave it a pat on the back, said, “Thank you very much. Have a good day.” And then the space slug flew off way past the Earth. Gershwin went through the atmosphere, pulled his parachute as soon as he got through, and gently floated down, back, straight into his back garden.

He floated down and landed directly on the middle of the ginormous trampoline in his back garden. He bounced a few times, did a flip, landed on his bottom, got off the trampoline, took off his spacesuit, and went inside to download the photos from his camera.

He posted the photos online on his website for everybody to see, and everybody loved Gershwin the Space Traveller, or as some people called him, Gershwin the Space Slug Rider.

That's the story of Gershwin's first visit to space.

Maybe there'll be more to come.