Fortunately the Milk

it was night and, according to Professor Steg, we had only gone back about a thousand years. The moon was nearly full.
    “I am even further from my children and our breakfast,” I said.
    “You have your milk,” he said. “Where there is milk, there is hope. Ah, over there. That looks like a perfect landing platform for time-traveling scientists in Floaty-Ball-Person-Carriers.”

    We landed on the platform and got out. The platform stuck up out of the jungle and had flaming torches on each side. There were people standing on it with very black hair and sharp stone knives.

    “Is this a balloon-landing platform?” I asked the people.
    “It is not,” said a fat man. “It is our temple. We had a very bad harvest last year and we had just asked the gods to send us a sacrifice, to make sure that this year’s harvest is better, when you floated down in that thing, with your monster.”
    “Thank you, by the way,” said a little thin man. “I was going to be the sacrifice if no one else turned up. Much obliged.”
    “So now we will sacrifice you and your monster.”
    “But my children are waiting for their breakfast,” I said. “Look!” I held up the milk.
    “Why did they all just fall to their knees?” asked Professor Steg. “Is this usual hairless mammal behavior? Perhaps I should hold up some hard-hairy-wet-white-crunchers and see what happens.”

    “Coconuts!” I told him. “They are called coconuts!”
    “What is that you are holding?” the fat man asked.
    “Milk,” I said.
    “MILK!” they exclaimed, and they prostrated themselves on the ground.
    “We have a prophecy,” said the fat man, “that when a man and a spiny-backed monster descend from the skies on a round floaty thing—”
    “Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier,” said the little thin man.
    “Yes. One of those. We were told that when that happened, if the man held up milk then we were not to sacrifice them, but we were meant to take them to the volcano, and give them, as a present, the green jewel that is the Eye of Splod.”
    “Splod?”
    “He is the god of people with short, funny names.”
    “It is,” I said, “a remarkably specific sort of a prophecy. When did you receive it?”

    “Last Wednesday,” said the fat man, proudly. “The priest of Splod was woken in the night by a voice whispering from the heavens. And when he went to look and see who it was, there was nobody there. Also, he was sleeping on the top of the temple, and nobody else could have been up there with him. So it must have either been Splod himself talking, or one of his angelic messengers.”

    We walked together down a jungle path. Professor Steg carried the rope in his mouth that led up to the balloon, and he dragged the balloon along. After half an hour we reached the volcano.
    It was not a very big volcano. There were wisps of smoke coming from the top of it.
    On the side of the volcano there was a carving of a big scary face with one eye in the middle of its forehead. The eye was the biggest emerald I had ever seen.
    “A special-shiny-greeny-stone!” said Professor Steg, with his mouth full of rope.
    The fat man clambered up the side of the volcano.
    “It is a good thing that Splod himself told us to give you the Eye of Splod,” said the little thin man who had narrowly avoided being sacrificed, “because there is another prophecy that if the Eye of Splod is ever removed, Great Splod will awaken and spread burning destruction across the land.”
    “Here you go,” said the fat man.
    He handed us the emerald. Professor Steg nipped up the rope ladder into the balloon’s gondola and began to install the emerald in the Time Machine.
    “ Hang on. He was a stegosaurus?”
    “Yes.”

    “Then how could he just nip up a rope ladder?”

    “He was,” said my father, “a large stegosaurus, but very light on his feet. There are fat people who are excellent dancers.”

    “Are there any ponies in this?” asked my sister. “I thought there would be ponies by now.”

I was standing on the ground, holding on to the rope ladder, when the ground shook and the very small volcano began to belch smoke and lava.
    “Splod is angry!” shouted the little thin man. “He wants his eye back.”
    There was a rushing wind, and the balloon jerked me up into the air, high above the splurting lava.
    Unfortunately, I dropped the milk. I wasn’t holding on to it tightly enough. It landed on the top of Splod’s head.
    Professor Steg hauled the rope ladder up