ET- Turnip Rockets

 “Main engines firing.”

  The lower rings of Dagon Sabad began to quiver, plant after plant stirring. From their centers tongues of fire leapt into the mouths of the Fusion Blooms.

  Outside the lizards watched, as the bottom half of the turnip lit up, Fusion Blooms belching plasma. The turnip seemed to hiccup off the ground; then suddenly it was lifted higher, camouflage blowing off it in a swirl of leaves.
...

  Within the turnip, the robot continued to work his control board. “Second stage,” he said, and his large round eyes began to fill with a grid of sparkling constellations, as his internal navigational mode came on.

  E.T. went from place to place in the lattice work of Dagon Sabad, as the plant shot forth its power—streams of it flowing and feeding the rocketry of the Fusion Blooms. His turnip ship lifted rapidly now, into the night sky.
...

  E.T. shuffled nervously back and forth, coaxing Dagon Sabad to pour its true form out, the universal force that quickens the Cosmic Egg, the force stored in this simple unassuming plant. “Please,” begged E.T. “Show your stuff!”

  To what end? asked the spirit of Dagon Sabad.

  E.T. tried to answer, but no language from Earth or the stars could describe what he felt. His heart alone glowed, and from it came many vibrations—of a simple love he’d known, given by a stranger in the universe, a boy, whose soul was somehow the hope of the world. “His love is just a speck of dust in the ages, Dagon Sabad, but I believe it is the only treasure.”

  Acceptable, said Dagon Sabad.

  “Net formation stabilized.”

  The starcruisers were fused as one craft, their arrow shape inverted now, into a scoop, bearing in on their target. The Far Moon had been passed, and the stars alone were ahead.

  The commander, leading the formation, gave the order. “Full acceleration.”

  “Full power, Commander.”

  The net closed, encircling E.T’s ship. But Dagon Sabad, quickener of the Cosmic Egg, released a burst of seventh magnitude power, which it used for stirring sleeping nebulae.

  At his viewing window, Micron saw the stars ahead cluster and shift to the blue spectrum, as the turnip accelerated to light speed and beyond.

  “Briiiicck . . . we have escaped the net. Setting course, constellation Nahaz Erdu, Gate of Dimension.”

  I’ve just been outrun by a turnip, said the Commander of the Star Fleet to himself.

  “But I can’t control it!” cried Micron, tilting off his seat and dangling by his safety belt.

  The turnip was wobbling, going into a spin, its walls beginning to shake. They had full power, of the seventh magnitude, but the untried ship, the experimental turnip, was unable to stand up to it.
...

  Pieces of the wall cracked, fell inward. Wires sparked and burned. The Lumens careened around, their light flickering. E.T. slid the other way across the floor, his mind a net of anguish and regret. How had he dared fly in the face of the unknown? There were unwritten rules and he had broken them all.
...

  And then, inside the turnip, an odd thing happened:

  At first E.T. thought it was a puncture in the shell of his ship. A curling wisp of something floated in the air before him, like a little cone of fog. He tried to grasp it, but the turnip pitched madly, and he went sliding once more, across the floor.

  When he looked up, the wispy cloud had grown larger and rounder. He pitched back across the floor, sliding with his Flopglopple, and when he looked again, the cloud had grown yet more substantial and was, moreover, now resembling nothing so much as a large bulb of garlic. The bulb moved, semitransparent, ethereal, a walking cloud, toward the command console where Micron and the robot were struggling to maintain control of the turnip. The ghostly garlic bulb stood in beside Micron, and as it did so, it gained final shape, and its cloves unfolded with a metallic gleam, and long sinewy arms extended.

  Don’t get nervous, you sawed off transistor.

  “Sinistro!” cried Micron.

  The wraith smiled, and gestured, to a second wisp of ethereal substance forming in the room. We’ve projected a bit of our mind power your way.

  The second wisp of mental stuff took shape on Micron’s other side; as the wisp gained density, it began hopping up and down like an excited toadstool.

  “Electrum!”

  At your service, said the old wraith, bending over the control board, his once-bruised umbos now nicely shaped again and shining. Then beside him, a third wisp formed, like a mummy appearing from some buried chamber of the galactical tombs. It was Occulta’s wraith, eyes burning with flames of yellow diamonds. And now, said his spectral voice, let’s trim this turnip.

  In the viewing screen, the Lucidulum fleet appeared, drew closer, nets deployed. But Sinistro took over the controls, and Occulta and Electrum floated out onto the exterior surface of the turnip, where the Fusion rockets were blasting.

  They separated, one to each side of the turnip, riding on its edge. Then they extended their arms, and a current leapt from their fingertips, sparkling and brilliant, and circled the turnip. Two of these magnetic rings they laid, like the frame of a gyroscope, the currents weaving, spinning, setting up a magnetic balance for the ship, and calming its fearful quaking.

  From sun to sun, said Occulta, raising his arms to the stars, let our rings be charged.

  Then he turned to the pursuing fleet of Lucidulum and gave them a smiling wave, as their ships again fell behind in the chase, lost in the stabilized turnip’s exhaust.

  “On course,” said the robot, inside. “Approaching constellation Nahaz Erdu, Gate of Dimension.”

  E.T. crawled to his feet, as the constellation appeared on the viewing screen, rushing toward them.
...

  And here we must leave you, said Sinistro, at the control board, and even as he spoke his ethereal substance began to fade, unable to enter the Gateway of Dimension. Sinistro became just a wisp of fog again, as did Occulta and Electrum.

  “Mind projection fading,” said the Flopglopple, as the wisps became no more than thin quivering plumes of disappearing crystals. But E.T. could hear, across the void, Electrum calling:

  Don’t forget my bicycle!

  E.T.’s turnip ship entered the constellation of Nahaz Erdu, flying straight to the wormhole in its center, the Gateway of Dimension.

  The turnip slipped from one time-space to another, and emerged at the second lap of its journey, in the Outer Sea of Light. Ahead were other wormholes, by which they would bridge the immensity of the universes, emerging ultimately in the Milky Way.

- E.T. The Book of the Green Planet, chapter 21