Too Many Aliens
Page 8
“Let’s just go,” I said quickly, then realized that that brought us back to the question we had been discussing when Tim walked up. “But where? We don’t know where they’ve gone.”
“I’ve got it!” said Maktel. “We should start by checking Ellico vec Bur’s spaceship. Maybe we’ll find some clue as to what they’re up to.” He paused, blinked, then said, “What if they’re planning to kidnap Chris? We’d better hurry!”
I thought the idea that Ellico vec Bur wanted to kidnap Chris was stupid. But the tiny possibility that it might be true scared me. After only a moment’s consultation, Tim and I agreed with Maktel that we should start our search with the ship. This meant taking the transport tube down to the lowest level of the embassy, where we could enter the docking pod.
“This is great,” whispered Tim as the door to the tube slid open. “I’ve been dying to get a look at Ellico vec Bur’s ship ever since I saw it dock here.”
The tubes are silent and fast, and we were at the bottom of the embassy in no time. I went to the control panel, but it took me a moment to remember how to open the docking pad. I was excited and nervous, terrified that Ellico vec Bur would catch us snooping, and even more terrified that Maktel’s suspicions were correct and the Trader(s) were already here, about to blast off with Chris.
The silvery tube providing the entry to the ship lifted from the floor. Its door opened. Nervously Tim, Maktel, and I peered in. As we did, someone came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.
I cried out in fright and leaped into the air. This terrified the Veeblax, which tightened its grip on my neck.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Pleskit,” said Linnsy. “It’s just me. What are you three up to, anyway?”
I was so close to kleptra that I could not answer. Maktel stepped in for me. “We’re trying to prevent an interplanetary crime!” he said, his voice furious. “What are you doing here?”
Linnsy shrugged. “I needed to get away from the party for a while. Jordan was starting to annoy me.”
Tim smiled. “That’s a healthy reaction. Glad to hear you’re coming to your senses.”
Linnsy glared at him so fiercely that I wanted to fetch Wakkam Akkim to perform a peace ritual. “The other reason I came looking for you,” she said coldly, “was because Maktel seemed so concerned about Chris. I just wanted to tell you he’s fine. He came back into the party a few minutes after Tim left.”
“Good,” I said with relief. “We can go back now!”
“No!” said Maktel. “We should check the ship anyway. We might not get another chance, and I am sure Ellico vec Bur are up to no good.”
“You were sure he was going to kidnap Chris too,” I said.
“Maktel might be right,” said Tim softly, which surprised both Maktel and me. It also made me angry.
“Why do you say that?” I demanded.
Tim made one of those Earthling shrugs. “Look at all that’s happened since you came here, Pleskit. I know you think things in the galaxy are all sweet and nice. But we’ve sure had a lot of people out to get us. I don’t feel like we can trust anyone anymore. Add up what Maktel heard last night, the message his Motherly One sent, and how weird Ellico vec Bur acted when I asked about seeing this ship, and things sure seem suspicious to me. If Maktel thinks Ellico vec Bur are up to something, why not check it out?”
Maktel beamed in approval at this speech. I emitted the bitter smell of resignation. “All right. But we’d better do it fast. I don’t want them to catch us!”
Slowly, moving as silently as we could, the four of us took the tube down into Ellico vec Bur’s ship.
CHAPTER 21 [TIM]
TRUE ALARM!
I was more nervous about searching Ellico vec Bur’s ship than I had expected to be.
“What are we looking for?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“I don’t know,” muttered Maktel. “Something suspicious.”
I figured he and Pleskit would have better luck spotting something than I would, since I couldn’t tell what was suspicious and what was normal here. Heck, I couldn’t even figure out how to open the doors until Pleskit showed me the right buttons to push.
The ship had four passenger cabins, plus one room that was clearly for relaxation and exercise, though the machines it held were so weird, I couldn’t begin to think how you would use them. While I was staring at the machines, Linnsy crossed to the other side of the corridor.
“What’s this room for?” she called.
Pleskit, Maktel, and I went to join her.
“Storage space,” said Pleskit. He poked his head in and looked around. “Nothing looks suspicious. We’ll come back to it.”
We made our way forward to the control room. I kept wanting to touch things, and drawing back for fear I would set off some sort of alarm. The oog-slama, dangling in the bag at my shoulder, began to wiggle, almost as if it were picking up on my nervousness.
The control room itself was beautiful, a sci-fi fan’s dream—though, as in the exercise room, the equipment baffled me.
Not so Maktel. Clutching Pleskit’s arm, he whispered, “This ship is not designed merely for going to a transit point. It can do time/space jumps!”
“Time/space jumps?” asked Linnsy.
“Most personal ships are designed just to carry you to an urpelli,” said Pleskit.
Linnsy looked puzzled, and I quickly filled her in on what an urpelli is.
Pleskit picked up the explanation. “Standard procedure once a ship this size reaches an urpelli is to load it onto a much larger ship, one designed to go back and forth through the urpelli.”
Linnsy nodded in understanding. “Like a ferryboat.”
Pleskit paused, as if searching his brain for the word, then said, “Exactly. And having a personal ship that can go through an urpelli is like having a car you can drive across an ocean! Ellico vec Bur must be either far more important or far richer than we realized.”
“Or more dangerous,” muttered Maktel darkly.
No sooner had he spoken those words than we heard a noise at the entrance to the ship.
“Someone’s coming!” said Pleskit, his voice low and urgent.
“We’ve got to hide!” whispered Linnsy.
“This way!” hissed Maktel, scurrying back into the corridor.
We scrambled to join him in the little storage room that Linnsy had found. I was the last one in, and pushed the buttons to close the door behind us. It was dark and crowded with all four of us in there. We pressed ourselves to the back wall, trying to find things to hide behind. I was flooded by deep terror. “What will we do if they find us?” I whispered.
“We’ll say we were playing a party game,” replied Maktel. “Now be quiet!”
Suddenly I felt a curious motion, just a slight stirring, so soft that it would have been easy to miss if I hadn’t been so hyperalert at the moment.
Pleskit’s eyes went wide. A terrible smell gushed from his sphen-gnut-ksher.
“What is it?” cried Linnsy. “What’s happening?”
Maktel’s sphen-gnut-ksher began to spark. “The engines! Ellico vec Bur have started the ship!”
“We’ve got to get out of here!” I cried.
“We can’t let them know we’re here!” said Maktel. “There’s no telling what they might do if they realize we were spying on them.”
“It’s a little late to think of that now,” I said.
I was relieved to see that Pleskit had already gone to the door. My relief vanished when he turned back toward us. Face twisted with terror, he said, “It’s locked! It must lock automatically when the engines start.”
“Help!” I shouted. “Get us out of here!”
“They can’t hear you,” said Maktel contemptuously. “The ship is—”
His words were cut off by a movement that made us all stagger.
“We’re separating from the embassy!” cried Pleskit, his sphen-gnut-ksher emitting a shower of horrified sparks.
Maktel staggered to his fe
et. “It wasn’t Chris that Ellico vec Bur wanted—it was us!”
Cold with terror, we stared at each other as Ellico vec Bur’s ship picked up speed.
I heard Pleskit counting. “Thirty-seven,” he whispered, “thirty-eight, thirty-nine.” His shoulders slumped. “That’s it,” he said softly. “We’ve just left Earth.”
I shivered in terror.
We had been snatched into space!
More from this Series
Snatched from Earth
Book 8
There's an Alien in My…
Book 9
The Revolt of the…
Book 10
Aliens, Underwear, and…
Book 11
More from the Author
Goblins in the Castle
Goblins on the Prowl
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR
Bruce Coville has published more than one hundred books, including My Teacher Is an Alien; Into the Land of the Unicorns; and Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. He is a frequent speaker at schools and conferences, and has presented on five continents. He is also the founder and producing director of Full Cast Audio, an audiobook company that creates recordings of the best in children’s and young adult literature. He lives in Syracuse, New York, with his wife, author and illustrator Katherine Coville. Visit him online at BruceCoville.com.
Glen Mullaly is an award-winning illustrator whose work can be found in books, magazines, greeting cards, and posters. He has also created puzzles and paper crafts for McDonald’s, and his Star Wars kids comics with legendary artist Ken Steacy have been released by Marvel Comics in graphic novel format. In addition to the Sixth-Grade Alien series, he also illustrated Bruce Coville’s My Teacher Is an Alien series. He lives on the West Coast with his wife and cat. Visit Glen at GlenMullaly.com and follow him on Facebook at glenmullalyillustration.
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DON’T MISS THE REST OF THE SIXTH-GRADE ALIEN SERIES!
Sixth-Grade Alien
I Shrank My Teacher
Missing—One Brain!
Lunch Swap Disaster
Zombies of the Science Fair
Class Pet Catastrophe
Too Many Aliens
Coming Soon: Snatched from Earth
A GLOSSARY OF ALIEN TERMS
Following are definitions for the alien words and phrases appearing for the first time in this book. Definitions of extraterrestrial words used in earlier volumes of Sixth-Grade Alien can be found in the book where they were first used.
For most words, we are only giving the spelling. In actual usage many would, of course, be accompanied by smells and/or body sounds.
The number after a definition indicates the chapter where the word first appears.
BORZNIK (PLURAL: BORZNIKKI):
A fruit grown on Ur-Borz-Ikl 5 and exported throughout the galaxy. Like all exported foods, it can be copied by replicators, or grown on any planet in reproduced conditions. But, as is also true of exotic foods, true gourmets say they can tell the difference. Borznikki are prized as much for their appearance—each ugly green fruit looks as if it has a face—as for their taste. True borznikki fans love to compete, with tales of the ugliest fruit they ever ate. (13)
FAELENGA:
A kind of gemstone formed in the digestive system of the akl-bing, a ferocious water beast that roams the oceans of Skatwag Six. The stones actually annoy the beasts, which try desperately to cough them up. Divers brave enough to enter an akl-bing’s nest can make a fortune from a single stone. (Alas, these faelenga harvesters tend to have a very short life span.) (9)
FEEBO BEEZBUDS:
Hevi-Hevian candy of extraordinary sweetness and caloric value; the recipe was first devised by Feebo Poylinga, legendary candy-maker to Glikksa the Fool. The sweet is widely considered to be the only good thing to come out of the tragic period when Glikksa ruled Hevi-Hevi with unprecedented (and never duplicated) stupidity. (2)
FUSHLOOB:
A hopeless idiot. (9)
GEEZBO:
(vulgar) A butt, or a hind end. (12)
GERTS
A carbonated snack food that fizzes and bubbles in the mouth. A great favorite at children’s parties on Hevi-Hevi, despite the persistent bit of folklore that warns of a boy who stuffed his mouth with these nuggets and died when his head exploded. (13)
GLORPTIOUS:
An expression of delight having to do with how good it feels to squish mud through the toes of your bare feet. (5)
ORKLIT:
Nonsense word used as an insult by children on Hevi-Hevi. (17)
PEEVLIK (PLURAL: PEEVLIKKI):
A tiny animal found in the northern wampfields of Hevi-Hevi. Traveling at night, a peevlik will sneak into the nostril of a large beast—usually a plonkus or a herklump—where it may then live for the next several years. Peevlikki have become synonymous with “annoying sneakiness.” (17)
QUOINK-ZOOPL:
Small, hard-shelled creatures that have a fierce sense of territory. Their parental units separate the males, which usually come in sets of three, immediately after they hatch. If they are not separated, they will instantly begin to fight, and only one will be left alive by the end of the day. (17)
SNERGAL:
A small green coin, often given to Hevi-Hevian children to mark a special occasion, such as their Hatching Day, or as a reward for learning a particularly difficult fart. (3)
TIGLOOP:
A wormlike creature, two or three inches long, that likes to shelter in small holes, such as a nostril or an ear canal. If a tigloop enters a nostril already occupied by a peevlik, there will be a fight, which can be quite distressing to the owner of the nostril. (5)
URKLE-PIDSPOO:
A high-protein snack made from ground-up fish heads. It is often claimed that the snack, which is quite spicy, will improve brain functioning. However, there is no actual proof that this is so. (19)
URPELLI:
A warp in time/space that will propel any object that enters it a vast distance almost instantly. The analogy that teachers on Hevi-Hevi often use is that it is like having a door in your bedroom that opens onto another planet. This, however, does not take into account that any object not properly prepared and shielded for an urpelli jump will arrive at the other side in several million pieces. (2)
VEC:
A term of relationship, signifying that two beings are linked in a permanent symbiotic union. Galactic scientists have cataloged over three hundred and fifty different kinds of vec relationships among intelligent beings. (3)
VECCIR (PLURAL: VECCIRI):
The collective word for two or more beings merged in a symbiotic union. (3)
YEEBLE:
An indeterminate pronoun, very useful when a speaker does not know if the thing yeeble is speaking of is a he, a she, an it, or any of the other seven generally recognized genders. The term is Standard Galactic, though it is also in common use in the local language of Hevi-Hevi. (2)
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Control Number 2020952029
ISBN 9781534487253 (hc)
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ISBN 9781534487260 (ebook)