“Jaska! Slow it down!” instructed Jake. “You need to pull it slowly and smoothly.”

“Slowly and smoothly,” she repeated, her tongue lolling out of her mouth in concentration.

“That’s right. Follow my lead. Left a bit, now right a bit. Up… slowly and now down.”

“You’re a good teacher Jakey,” said Jaska.

“Thanks, you learn fast,” he replied. “We’re moving exactly in tandem now.”

“We are. We’re gliding together. It’s quite romantic isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. We have stolen a ship so that we can leave Crawk together.”

“Jakey…”

“Yes?”

“Does this remind you of anything?”

Jake went red, and any neutral observer would have noticed the ship moving up and down in a slow, deliberate fashion before it began to plummet, spiralling downwards.

“Get off me Jaska!” shouted Jake, who was trying to fight his way up from the floor, where a slobbering co-pilot was trying to drag him. “We’re going to crash!”

Jaska gave out a little yelp.

“Jakey!” she whimpered as the floor came into clear sight. “Save us!”

Jake did what he could, given that he could only control one half of the ship, and righted it. The space ship skimmed and bounced across the surface of a desolate planet, before it buried itself in a deep, sandy crater.

Jaska pounced on Jake and hugged him, teary eyed as tightly as she could.