Truckers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Four inches

Nomes grew to four inches in height and were stocky in build and they lived on Earth unknown to humans. They either lived among humans in urban areas in the sorts of places mice and rats might occupy, such as under floorboards, or they lived away from humans in the countryside.

Nomes lived at a faster rate than humans, so that one year to them was the same as ten years to a human. Despite their height and girth, nomes moved many times faster than humans and also spoke very quickly in high-pitched squeaky voices. To them human speech was too slow to be understood and they referred to it as 'mooing'.

Answer: They stowed away in one of the Store's lorries

Masklin, Grimma and the older nomes lived in a burrow in the countryside. Masklin hunted and foraged for food for them all while Grimma looked after the older nomes and did all the work inside the burrow.

Country nomes were prey for such animals as foxes and rats, so that the numbers in Masklin's group had gradually reduced to eight. Masklin realised they would not last the winter, so devised a plan for them to travel to a better place by stowing away in a lorry. The nomes did this and the lorry happened to be from the Arnold Bros Store (est 1905) and took them to the Store where they met the other nomes who already lived there.

Answer: Monitored telephones and computers

The Thing was a small black cube that had always been just an object which Masklin's group had looked after for countless generations and which they regarded as a kind of holy relic. Once they were in the Store near electricity the Thing began to show a lot of small lights and started talking to the nomes.

It told them that it was a Flight Navigation and Recording Computer and that their ancestors were originally from another planet. Fifteen thousand years ago their scout ship had crash-landed here but the mother ship was still nearby in space waiting for them. Then the Thing monitored telephone calls and the Store's computer and found out that the Store was going to be demolished in twenty-one days' time.

Answer: Gurder

Nomes in the Store were divided into departments according to where they lived. There were often inter-departmental quarrels, but nomes from the other departments respected and listened to those from the Stationeri department, who were all monks and whose leader was the very elderly Abbot.

The monks at first pretended publicly not to see Masklin and his companions as they preached, and at least most of the other Store nomes believed that there was no Outside, just the Store. In private, though, the Abbot and his assistant, the young Gurder, acknowledged and listened to the Outsiders. The Abbot soon died of old age and had left instructions that Gurder was to be the new Abbot. So Gurder took over the role, despite not really wanting to be a leader.

Answer: Angalo

Masklin realised the nomes had to leave the Store, and managed to convince some of the Store nomes, particularly the younger ones. With the Thing's prompting, he had worked out that the way to escape with all the things they would need outside would be to take and drive away one of the Store's lorries.

None of the nomes knew how to drive, but Angalo, the son of the Duke de Haberdasheri, was fascinated by lorries and especially eager to drive one, so volunteered to be the one to stow away in a lorry and observe how humans drove. He was away for several days but came back full of enthusiasm and having written down a set of instructions on how to drive a lorry.

Answer: Drove straight through the door

Although nomes were far too small for one of them to drive a lorry built for humans, the nome inventor and electrical expert, Dorcas, devised a system of levers and strings connecting floor pedals, the gear lever, the steering wheel and a viewing platform. Once installed in a lorry, this system enabled the lorry to be driven by many nomes working together.

They had to leave more quickly than they had expected after the Store had closed down but a human security guard heard the lorry's engine while it was still in the Store's garage, and they had no time to get the locked garage door open. Masklin pointed out that the door didn't look very thick, so the nomes drove the lorry at the door and it gave way, so they were able to get out.

Answer: It was engulfed by fire

While trying to drive the lorry in the Store's garage, the nomes had knocked over some drums of diesel and realised this was potentially dangerous. When the human security guard came in to investigate the noise he tried to get into the cab of the lorry. He was scared off by Gurder and ran away, but dropped his lighted cigarette.

Just after the nomes had escaped in the lorry they heard a 'whoomph' noise and saw a red and orange fireball come out of the garage because the security man's cigarette had set fire to the spilled diesel. Later they saw the Store itself was on fire and the entire top floor was falling in, although firemen were trying to fight the blaze.

Answer: Cut some wires underneath the car

The theft of the lorry had been quickly reported by the security guard, so the police were looking for it. The nomes were not used to steering a vehicle, and caused a lot of damage while they were leaving the town where the Store was situated, so left a trail behind them. After they drove around a police car trying to block the road, the police car followed them closely.

Following a plan Masklin devised, the nomes stopped the lorry then the police car stopped behind them. While the police officers were running to the lorry and then looking in the hedges for the human driver they thought had run away, Masklin and Dorcas ran underneath their car and cut some wires. They ran back to their lorry and it drove away but the police were unable to start their car to follow.

Answer: In an abandoned quarry

The nomes drove some way into the countryside outside the town and then abandoned the Store's lorry. They took all of its contents and even all the wiring and other potentially useful parts of the lorry itself, but left a lot of pieces of string behind. The humans found the lorry after a while but did not understand what had happened.

The nomes set up home in a large abandoned quarry they found, repairing the old tumbledown buildings there and also spreading out in the quarry and settling in. They were able to hunt for rabbits and take vegetables they found growing in the fields while predators, such as foxes, learned to keep away from them.

Answer: Steal an aeroplane

The Thing had told Masklin that an airfield with flying machines could be the next step to reaching their real home on another planet. After the nomes had moved into the quarry, Masklin led a party to explore the way to the airfield they saw jet aeroplanes flying from and towards. Once there, Masklin and Dorcas watched the aeroplanes for hours and Masklin started to believe they could steal one, while Dorcas was confident that they could 'drive' it.

Terry Pratchett's book 'Truckers' is the first book in a series of three and this ending leads into events in the two later books, 'Diggers' (1990) and 'Wings' (1990).