Space Travel for Mike’s Football

“Mum, I’ve finished my homework now; can I go and play football with Peter for half an hour, please?” Mike asked.
“All right, but don’t be late for dinner.”
“OK, Mum, be back soon,” Mike put his football in a knapsack and jumped on his bike.

Mike’s best friend, Peter, lived in a farm house. Peter’s father owned a farm and a small forest; there was a field between the house and the forest where the cows grazed. Mike and Peter liked to play football on the field when the cows weren’t there, because the field was flat.

“Here Mike!” Peter kicked the ball hard, but it flew over Mike’s head into the forest. Mike ran quickly after the ball. Suddenly,
“Ahhhhhhh!” Mike slid down the bank towards the river near the back of the forest.
“Peterrrrrrrr …..” Mike’s voice faded into the distance.
Peter rushed after Mike,
“Mike? Mike! Where are you?” Peter called, as he looked around in the forest.
“Down here, Peter!” Mike’s voice came from a small hole at the base of a gigantic tree near the riverbank.
“Where?”
“Under the big tree, come down here, Peter, there’s something weird in here.”
“What do you mean weird?” Peter stepped forwards, and lost his footing,
“Ahhhhhhh!”

Peter landed on some bales of straw. It looked like they were in a long, dark underground tunnel.
“How did these bales ….?” Peter was puzzled.
“Shhh!” Mike stopped him, “look!”
There was faint light at the far end of the tunnel.
“Shall we go and have a look?” asked Mike, holding the football.
“All right.”
As they walked quietly towards the end of the tunnel, the faint light became brighter. They came to a small opening that looked like a round glass window.
Both of them peeped through the window.
“What’s …?” They looked at each other with their eyes wide open, amazed by what they saw.

On the other side of the small window was the inside of a huge control room similar to the ones in the spaceships they had seen in science-fiction films. It was full of machines with many buttons, and everything was sparkling under the bright light. There were many objects about two feet long, that looked like metallic logs, here and there.
“What do you think this is?” Peter whispered.
“It might be a secret government lab,” Mike whispered.
“Why aren’t there any scientists then? I think it is an alien spaceship.” Peter was excited. “Look at this window, it doesn’t look like glass,” he poked a finger at the window, “it feels like jelly.”
As soon as Peter’s finger touched the window, they saw the logs spring into life, some of them whizzing around in the air and in less than a second several of them flew through the window and surrounded Mike and Peter.

“What do we do now?” Peter whispered in a scared voice.
“I don’t know,” Mike replied, clutching the football tightly.
“Shall we run?” Peter asked.
“Okay, count to three.”
But before Mike started to count, the logs began to whiz around Peter and Mike and the football so fast that they became almost invisible, then Peter and Mike were lifted from the ground, and floating in the air they were flown through the window into the huge room and put down on the floor gently.

Mike and Peter were too frightened to move or talk, they could hear different high-pitched buzzing noise coming from the logs, some of them hovered over Peter and Mike, and then emitted beams of different coloured light to the machines; Mike and Peter saw the machines were flashing with lights at very high speed. Suddenly the football was taken away from Mike by some kind of force, then once again, Mike and Peter were lifted and flown through the window and put on the ground.
“Run now!” Mike shouted.

Mike and Peter ran as fast as their legs could carry them to the other end of the tunnel. They used the bales of straw to climb out of the hole at the base of the tree, and then ran all the way back to Peter’s house. They told Peter’s father about their discovery.
“Oh you found a tunnel under the big tree! That could be a foxes’ den! We had a few hens missing for the last couple of weeks, I must take a look soon,” Peter’s father said.
“No, Dad, there’s an alien spaceship in the tunnel.”
“Alien spaceship? You boys watch too much TV,” Peter’s father laughed.
“I’ll tell my dad, he is a scientist, perhaps he’ll believe us,” Mike said.

On the following Saturday, Mike and Peter found that Peter’s father had been checking the tunnel, and there was no foxes, alien spaceship or Mike’s football. They went to the big tree again, but to their surprise, when they reached the far end of the tunnel, the jelly-like window had disappeared, and there was no trace of the bright control room or the metallic logs, instead the tunnel led to a big hole on the ground near the riverbank.
“Strange! Where’s everything? Is this the same tunnel you think?” Peter scratched his head.
“I’m sure this is the one, see these bits of straws, your dad must have taken the straw away.”
“Where’s your football then?”
“I think it went space travelling with the logs!”