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Piggins was not permitted to take a crowbar or wrench onboard. The technicians insisted that the equipment was too delicate. Instead they gave her a tiny allen key, a tiny screwdriver and a tiny flash-light. Then she was given strict instructions not to use any of them without writing a full report both before and after, detailing exactly what she had done.
    As they drove across the runway towards the space shuttle, they could see it was much bigger than it looked on television, and much more peculiarlooking. It was kind of like a squat stubby aeroplane that someone had accidentally parked pointing directly upwards at the sky.
    When they arrived at the launch site, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children rode a lift up to the nose of the shuttle.
    ‘Are you sure this is safe?’ worried Samantha.
    ‘It’s fine,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We catch lifts all the time in department stores.’
    ‘Not the lift,’ said Samantha, ‘I mean the space shuttle.’
    ‘I’d worry more about the lift,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But then I have always had a dread fear of being caught in a confined space with insufficient cake supplies.’
    ‘We forgot to leave a note for Father saying we wouldn’t be home for dinner,’ said Michael.
    ‘What is he going to think if we are in a terrible space shuttle accident?’ panicked Samantha.
    ‘That he will have to get his own dinner, I suppose,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘which, no doubt, he’ll find upsetting. But I’m sure he’ll struggle through.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Boris, giving the children a reassuring hug. ‘Nanny Piggins knows what she’s doing.’
    ‘But she doesn’t know anything about computers, space shuttles or space travel,’ said Derrick.
    ‘Yes, but if anyone can pick it up in five minutes, Nanny Piggins can,’ said Boris confidently.
    ‘Difficult things are almost never as difficult as they seem,’ explained Nanny Piggins, ‘except for sudoku. They’re impossible.’
    Entering the cabin was tricky, because the space shuttle was pointing up and all the chairs were lying back. So getting about inside was more like climbing around a jungle gym than walking about inside an aeroplane.
    The hardest thing was getting Boris in through the doorway. Apparently the space shuttle door had not been designed with a 700 kilogram bear in mind. Fortunately Boris happened to have a seven litre bucket of honey with him, which they were able to smear around the doorframe as lubricant. So, eventually, with the children and Nanny Piggins pulling on the inside, and the NASA ground crew pushing from the outside, he was able to get inside with one big ‘POP’.
    ‘What do we do first?’ asked Derrick.
    ‘Let’s see,’ said Nanny Piggins thoughtfully. She looked about. Then she sniffed about. Then she licked her trotter and held it in the air. The children were completely silent while she concentrated.
    ‘There!’ declared Nanny Piggins, pointing dramatically at one small panel in the wall. ‘There is something wrong with the wiring behind that panel.’
    ‘There is?’ said Derrick, astounded.
    Nanny Piggins clambered across the shuttle and used her allen key to access the panel (without writing a full report beforehand).
    ‘Aha, just as I suspected,’ announced Nanny Piggins. ‘These two wires are crossed!’
    ‘How do you know?’ asked Samantha in amazement.
    ‘There was a faint aroma of quadruple espresso coffee, parmesan cheese and poorly made burritos coming from this vicinity,’ explained Nanny Piggins, ‘which tells me that someone, who was overtired after a night of being sick from eating bad Mexican food, was working on this panel. And as soon as I opened it I could see it was all wrong.’
    ‘You could?’ marvelled Michael, as he looked at the web of hundreds of different coloured wires woven in every direction.
    ‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘As you can see, this blue wire leads to this green wire. And everyone knows those two colours