“No telling,” said Phil. “Sometimes just a few minutes. Sometimes a few weeks.”
Weeks? I thought in horror as I dwindled past Elspeth’s knees.
Elspeth asked the more important question: “Is it permanent?” she screamed, waving her green tentacles in front of her face.
“Not usually,” said Phil.
Then he split down the middle and began to melt.
* * *
Just as suddenly as it had begun, the Reality Quake was over. Phil snapped into his natural form. Elspeth’s tentacles retracted into her body. I shot back up to my regular height.
“Ohmigod,” gasped Elspeth. “That was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I didn’t say anything. The Reality Quake had made me extremely queasy, and I was busy trying not to throw up.
Plink was shrieking and leaping from branch to branch of Phil’s body. I couldn’t blame the poor little guy.
Before I could begin to think of what to do next, the Ferkel landed on the table next to us. It was strange: The last time I had seen the Ferkel on a table, it had been my own table, and the Ferkel had been slightly larger than a football. Now it was full size, but given the fact that the table it had landed on belonged to Smorkus Flinders, it appeared to be no bigger than it had when it first landed in my vat of papier-mâché that spring.
A ramp extended from the side of the ship.
Out stepped Grakker. Like Phil, he stood only slightly higher than my waist. Unlike Phil, he was a “meat person.” He looked just as I remembered him: body like a bulked-up Greek statue, face like King Kong (if you don’t count the green skin and nubby horns) and an expression that made you think he had just smelled something unpleasant and was trying to figure out who had done it.
“Deputy Allbright,” he roared. “How in the name of the Seven Stars of Singala did you get yourself into this mess?”
While I didn’t appreciate him yelling at me, I did appreciate that he was simultaneously using his ray gun to melt the lock on our cage door. I wasn’t sure if he was expecting me to answer or not.
Elspeth leaped in. “It wasn’t our fault!” she shouted. “This monster just came out of nowhere and—”
“Silence!” bellowed Grakker. “Escape first, talk later.”
This seemed sensible to me. As soon as Grakker finished melting the lock, he yanked open the cage door. Elspeth and I sprang for it. As I was passing through, Grakker fixed me with a furious glare. “Deputy Allbright, abandoning a comrade in the line of duty violates Galactic Patrol Guideline 1047.38.762. The penalties can be severe.”
At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then it hit me. Turning, I saw Phil struggling to follow us out of the cage. Since he didn’t have his pot, he had to walk on his roots, which made his progress very slow indeed. I blushed with shame. “I didn’t think—”
“You rarely do!” snapped Grakker.
Before he could say anything else, I darted back to help Phil. It wasn’t easy, because I wasn’t sure how to do it. If he had been a human being, I would have slipped an arm around his shoulder. But he didn’t have a shoulder—just a stem, a blossom, and a lot of leaves. I might even have scooped him into my arms, since he was small enough for me to carry, but I wasn’t sure how he felt about being touched.
“How . . . how can I help?” I stammered.
“Stand in front of me,” burped Phil. “I will climb onto your back.”
I did as he asked. It felt weird to have his tendrils grab my shoulders, and even weirder when he pulled himself up and wrapped his roots around my waist. But the reason Phil didn’t have his pot to begin with was that he had abandoned it to rescue me, so it would have been really ungrateful to complain. (As my mother sometimes points out, I may be clumsy, but I’m polite.)
Once he was in place he burped softly, “Do not let Grakker’s anger bother you. I am not offended by what you did. After all, you are not a trained member of the Galactic Patrol.”
His words made me feel better and worse at the same time. While I was glad Phil was not offended, I didn’t really want to be a young fool, either.
I didn’t have time to worry about such things. Our main job at the moment was to escape. Moving slowly but steadily forward, I carried Phil through the cage door, past Grakker, to the ramp of the Ferkel. Elspeth had already gone into the ship. Grakker followed us.
Waiting inside was the rest of the crew: Madame Pong, the tall, elegant diplomatic officer; four-legged Tar Gibbons, the Master of the Martial Arts; and Flinge Iblik, sometimes known as Snout because of his long face, who was the Master of the Mental Arts. Though I was incredibly glad to see them, we had no time to greet each other. We had to get out of the home of Smorkus Flinders.
The moment the ramp had pulled in behind us and the door closed, Snout pushed a button that set the ship into motion.
Madame Pong and Tar Gibbons helped Phil down from my back and into his pot. Once his roots were safely tucked in place, he scooted over to join Snout at the control panel.
Madame Pong turned to me. Putting her yellow hands together, she made a little bow and murmured, “I welcome your return to the Ferkel, Rod Allbright.”
I bowed back. Then, remembering that Madame Pong took great store in proper form, I said, “Allow me to present my cousin, Elspeth McMasters.”
Elspeth looked at me in astonishment, as if she couldn’t believe it was possible for me to do something polite. But she bowed to Madame Pong and said, “Very pleased to meet you.”
Long neck stretching, Tar Gibbons scurried over to greet us. I was going to introduce it to Elspeth, but instead I fell over. This was not due to my old problem of basic clumsiness. I fell over because the ship had suddenly lurched wildly to the right.
“What was that?” roared Grakker.
“We’re under attack,” burped Phil.
The ship lurched again, this time to the left.
“What sort of attack?” asked Grakker.
“Fists,” replied the plant. “It’s Smorkus Flinders. He’s hitting us!”
The ship lurched a third time, then shot forward.
“We’ve eluded him,” reported Snout. “And we have escaped from Castle Chaos.”
We all began to cheer.
Our joy was short-lived. The Ferkel began to slow down.
“We’ve sustained damage,” reported Phil. “I can’t get her to move.”
“Where’s the damage?” asked Grakker. “What will it take to repair it?”
“In the aft section,” said Phil. Uncurling a green tendril, he pushed a button, lighting up a view screen.
“Uh-oh,” he burped.
He didn’t have to explain what the problem was. We could all see the screen.
Smorkus Flinders was coming after us, coming fast.
Grakker looked furious. But he didn’t hesitate. “No time for repairs,” he said. “We’ll have to abandon ship.”
CHAPTER
8
Ground Level
I COULDN’T BELIEVE GRAKKER WAS going to abandon the Ferkel, but that may have been because I had watched too many episodes of “Star Trek.”
Flinge Iblik, his long face trembling, handed me something that looked familiar. I examined it more closely and realized it was a flying belt, the same kind I had worn the last time I worked with the aliens.
“I trust you remember how to use this,” he said, winking at me as I strapped it on.
I didn’t know if it was possible for me to forget. Snout himself had taught me, using a mind-to-mind data transfer that nearly blew out his mental sockets when I unexpectedly broke the connection. I blushed at the memory of how I had come so close to permanently injuring him.
“No time now to train your cousin,” said Phil. “She will have to ride with you.”
Elspeth and I looked at each other uneasily. But just as there was no time to train her, there was no time for us to worry about little things.
“Climb on my back, as if we were
playing piggyback,” I said. “Get high enough so that you’re above the belt.”
She nodded, and did as I said. It would have been easier if I could have held her in my arms, but I needed my hands free to manipulate the controls.
Grakker had already opened the door of the ship. The others were lined up, ready to leave. He turned and saluted the empty cabin. “Farewell, my fine Ferkel,” he said solemnly. “I swear I will return for you.” Turning back to the crew, he snapped, “All right, everybody out! Try to stay close. Someone give Deputy Allbright a homing device. We’ll gather on the ground as soon as we are able. Tar Gibbons, you first. Madame Pong, follow him.”
As Grakker spoke the aliens began to leave the ship. After Madame Pong, Grakker called for me. With Elspeth on my back, I stepped up to the door. Looking down, I saw that we were about fifty feet above some of the macaroni-looking stuff Smorkus Flinders had waded through when he carried Elspeth and me to Castle Chaos.
I hesitated, then jumped.
I might have hesitated longer, but I spotted Smorkus Flinders racing toward us.
Elspeth and I plummeted downward, until I managed to adjust the belt’s controls to handle both of us. The belt kicked in and stopped our fall just above the macaroni stuff. Though I didn’t want to go into it, Tar Gibbons and Madame Pong had already disappeared beneath the surface. Phil shot past us, waving his leaves at me to follow.
Hoping we would be able to breathe in the stuff, I filled my lungs and plunged in.
It was utterly weird. The macaroni-like tubes slid and slithered around us almost as if they were alive.
“Rod,” whispered Elspeth. “I hate this stuff.”
“Me, too,” I replied. Not that there was anything I could do about it.
At least the tubes were not closely packed. There was plenty of air surrounding them, and we could breathe comfortably. I wondered what held them up.
Down we went. It was hard to gauge how far we had to go. I assumed the stuff was piled about as high as Smorkus Flinders’s waist (which is to say, about forty feet). But was there ground below it, or did the tubes simply became more and more densely packed, until they were solid enough to walk on?
A moment later I had my answer. We emerged from the macaroni stuff into a clear space about ten feet deep. At the bottom of the space was ground—or at least what passed for ground here in Dimension X. Tar Gibbons, Madame Pong, and Phil cheered when they saw us break through, and motioned for us to join them. As we touched down, I looked up. The macaroni stuff, as close as a ceiling, stretched on as far as I could see in every direction. I wondered if it always stayed at the same level, or if sometimes it got lower, even settled to the ground like some weird fog bank. I shivered at the thought of having to walk through it.
As Elspeth was climbing down from my shoulders, Flinge Iblik landed beside us, followed closely by Grakker.
“All together at last,” said Madame Pong happily.
Grakker snorted. “All together only because we have been forced to come here to rescue Deputy Allbright. By allowing himself to be captured by Smorkus Flinders, he has endangered our entire crew.”
I started to protest, but Snout beat me to it. “Ah, my mighty captain, had you not offended Smorkus Flinders so badly that he was thirsting for revenge, perhaps the problem would never have occurred in the first place.”
Grakker wrinkled his face, but said nothing. I had noticed that he would take criticism from Snout that he would accept from no one else. I also wondered just how he had “offended” Smorkus Flinders.
This didn’t seem like the time to ask.
“Blame is not important,” said Madame Pong. “The important thing is to decide what to do next.”
“What we must do next is finish escaping,” said Tar Gibbons.
Indeed, somewhere above us we could hear Smorkus Flinders bellowing in rage at losing sight of us. Before any of us could suggest what to do about completing our escape, the ground shook as if with a minor earthquake. I was looking past Madame Pong, and I cried out in horror when I saw the cause. Smorkus Flinders had thrown himself to his stomach and was lying with his head pressed to the ground, staring straight at us. With a cry of satisfaction he thrust his arm in our direction. His fingers came within inches of me.
“Fly!” shouted Madame Pong.
I needed no urging. The instincts Snout had installed in my brain, the automatic instructions for manipulating the flying belt, took over and I launched myself away from those groping orange fingers. Grakker himself snatched up Elspeth. “Follow me!” he shouted.
Traveling about five feet above the ground, halfway to the macaroni stuff, we flew away. Smorkus Flinders roared in frustration. His size worked against him now, because the only way he could keep us in sight was by slithering along on his belly with his head pressed to the ground. If he rose even to his knees to pursue us, he would be blinded by the strange atmosphere.
With Grakker in the lead, we made a quarter circle around our enemy, then flew straight away from him. After a time his cries of anger grew faint behind us. Grakker kept flying for another half hour or so, then motioned for us to land.
We gathered in a knot on the ground. It was spongy feeling, as if we were standing on a giant mushroom. Our joy at escaping from Smorkus Flinders was tempered by the fact that we were lost in one of the five strangest dimensions in the Pandimensionality.
For a moment no one spoke. Elspeth came to stand beside me. Her eyes wide, she was staring at the aliens.
Finally Grakker turned to Madame Pong. “Do we have any allies in this place?” he asked.
Madame Pong pulled a wire from the silvery band that circled her wrist. With one end of the wire still connected to her wrist, she inserted the other end into her ear and closed her eyes. After a moment she shook her head and said, “We have no formal alliances here.”
Grakker snorted, as if dismissing all diplomats for this failure. Turning to Snout, he said, “See if you can locate a friendly presence.”
“With pleasure, my captain,” said Snout. Wrapping his long blue cape around him, the lizard-faced alien settled to a cross-legged position and closed his eyes. I started to ask what he was doing, but a look from Madame Pong cautioned me to silence.
Suddenly Snout’s eyes flew open. Leaping to his feet, he cried out in terror. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, his body grew stiff, and he fell to the ground, where he lay as if dead.
CHAPTER
9
Wherefore Art Thou, Snout?
FASTER THAN I COULD BLINK my eyes, Grakker was kneeling at Snout’s side. Tenderly he lifted one of his friend’s eyelids and stared into the motionless eye. Then he held a hand in front of Snout’s tapered purple-brown face. After a moment he turned to the rest of us and grunted, “He’s alive.”
“What happened to him?” asked Elspeth nervously.
Grakker wrinkled his nose. “I do not know. In his search for friends, he must have encountered some great evil instead.”
“Or simply some great power,” murmured Madame Pong.
“Possible,” said Grakker grudgingly.
Elspeth looked puzzled. “What do you mean, ‘his search for friends’?”
“Snout is the Master of the Mental Arts,” I answered excitedly. “He can do things with his brain that you can hardly imagine. Once I actually felt him slow down time!”
Elspeth looked at me as if she thought something had gone seriously wrong with my own brain. Maybe she was right. If my brain was working properly, I would have read more of that book Snout had given me when I had the chance. Why hadn’t I done that? At first I had been eager to read it, but for a while I was so wound up from our adventure that I hadn’t been able to concentrate. Then I had just let it slide, figuring I could do it later. Now I couldn’t believe how many nights I had wasted watching TV instead of reading that book. Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
“Look!” said Madame Pong. “He’s moving!”
Twitching would have been a more precis
e word. As we all turned back to Snout, his body began to vibrate like a plucked rubber band. Suddenly he turned clear, then began to fade. Soon he was little more than a ghostly image of himself.
“No!” cried Grakker, throwing himself across Snout’s chest.
Alas, the captain’s great strength was no match for whatever was happening. A moment later Snout had vanished completely.
Pushing himself to his knees, Grakker raised his head to the boiled macaroni sky and howled in rage and sorrow. Suddenly he turned toward me and roared, “Deputy Allbright, this is entirely your fault!”
I was long used to Grakker shouting at me. But when he actually took a step toward me as if he were about to throttle me, I got nervous. Fortunately, Madame Pong stepped in. Slipping up behind him, she pulled something about the size of a half-used pencil from the back of his head. Moving quickly, she inserted another in its place.
Glancing around Grakker’s massive shoulder, she said apologetically, “I hadn’t had a chance to change modules yet. He was still in full battle mode.”
“You know, of course, that I believe that battle module to be badly programmed,” said Tar Gibbons, blinking its huge eyes in disapproval. “Warrior Science demands self control, not mindless rage.”
Stepping around Grakker, Madame Pong said, “I have noted your complaints and forwarded them to the appropriate authorities many times, Tar Gibbons.”
“Where’s Snout?” asked Elspeth, asking the only question that mattered at this point. “What happened to Snout?”
“He has been stolen from us,” said Grakker. His voice was fierce but controlled, and I wondered what module Madame Pong had inserted in his head. “How this was managed, I do not know. But I swear by Zarkov’s Ray Gun that we will do all in our power to get him back.” He turned to Madame Pong. “Are you aware of anyone—any power, any technology—that could have done this?”
I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X (9781439113240) Page 4
