“Klyk!” Kevin shouted, and ran over to where Mim had swatted the hovercraft to the ground.
The mini hovercraft was beyond repair, and Klyk was lying perfectly still in the grass.
“Is he . . . ?” TJ asked.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said, shaking the alien softly. “Klyk?”
The miniaturized alien cyborg’s eyes flickered open, and he sat up. “What happened?”
“We got him!” the four campers cheered, and started high-fiving each other again.
Then Kevin offered his pinkie finger to their pint-size alien friend, and he high-fived it, too. Klyk let out a mighty yelp and raised his tiny arm in victory. “Mission accomplished.”
As the group continued their celebratory dance around the campground, Kevin glanced at the mess hall, which was entirely cocooned in Poobah’s silk. “How are we supposed to get everyone out of there?”
“Get the de-atomizer,” TJ said. “Mim dropped it before he got wormholed.”
They ran to the spot below where Mim had been sucked out of the sky and found the small dumbbell-shaped device in the grass. Kevin picked it up and ran over to the mess hall.
“Good news, everyone!” Kevin shouted through the cocoon. “We’re about to get you guys out of here.”
The camp cheered and then quieted down.
“Kevin, is it safe out there?” Dimpus asked.
“Yes, sir,” Kevin said. “I think we pulled through.”
“May I do the honors?” TJ asked Kevin.
“Here.” Klyk stopped TJ for a moment and showed him how to turn off the blast setting and turn the de-atomizer into a laser-cutting tool.
“Cool,” TJ said, and stood ready to cut through the cocoon. “Everybody stand back!”
The red-hot laser beam sizzled through the arachnopod silk as TJ cut a hole through the cocoon to the actual door.
The campers slowly filed out of the mess hall and gasped at the now even bigger arachnopod lying conked out on the ground.
“What are we going to do with that thing?” Dimpus slapped his forehead. “It’s huge!”
“Has anyone seen Cody, Nick, or Bailey?” Tara’s counselor, Marissa, asked.
“Oh yeah,” said Kevin. “They got trapped in these alien cocoon things.”
“But they’re all good,” Warner said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get them back to normal soon.”
“Oh,” she said, a bit bewildered. “Okay . . .”
“Let’s hear it for Kevin and the Extraordinary Terrestrials!” little Bobby Little shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Hip hip hooray!” they all cheered, picking Kevin, Warner, and Tara up onto their shoulders. Kevin looked around for TJ but couldn’t spot his once-silent buddy anywhere. “Hip hip hooray!”
Once their fellow campers put Kevin, Tara, and Warner back on the ground, Dimpus and the rest of the counselors attempted to regain control of the camp. Suddenly a hand tapped Kevin on the arm and pulled him away from the pandemonium.
“Hey, there you are, Teej!” Kevin said, turning around. “I was looking for you. You missed—” But he stopped short, seeing the panic on his friend’s face. “What’s up?”
TJ’s eyes were bugging out, and he kept trying to say a million things at once. “You’re not gonna—I don’t know—the galactascope—I found—come on!”
Behind the observatory building, their galactascope was pointed toward the bright-blue afternoon sky. Klyk hopped out of his bag, and Kevin set the little alien down on top of the machine.
Onscreen, the instant messenger menu was already open, frozen on a message written in a strange language.
“What is that?” Kevin said to Klyk. “Do you know what it says?”
TJ hit the translate function, and they all squinted at the computer monitor. “THE FEAST ENDS TODAY. THE TAKEOVER STARTS TOMORROW.”
“Wait,” said Klyk. “There’s a return message from Z&N777. It says: ‘On our way.’”
“Who’s on their way?” Warner asked.
“I’m not exactly sure whose alias this is.” Klyk scratched his head. “Mim runs with a pretty rough crowd. It could be any number of his associates.”
“They’re on their way here?” Kevin asked, a tight, sick feeling brewing in his stomach.
“Come on, then,” Tara said. “We have to contact your planet and tell them we need reinforcements.”
They aimed the galactascope’s satellite dish up at the sky. Klyk typed a new message to his commanding officer and hit send, but the message wouldn’t transmit.
“What’s going on?” Klyk said. “It’s not working!”
“Uh-oh,” TJ said, inspecting the wire hookup. “Mim must have snipped a bunch of these wires after he received his response. I can probably fix it in a few hours, but I don’t think we have hours.” TJ pointed to the sky, and they all turned to look.
The clouds overhead roiled furiously as a fleet of four UFOs descended over the camp.
“Uh-oh,” TJ said.
“Is that—?” asked Warner.
“Whoever that is,” Klyk said, gasping a bit. “I doubt they’ve come in peace.”
As Kevin stood with his friends looking up at the alien spaceships, he felt his nervous stomach begin to churn again, but he wasn’t scared. He’d brought Mim here and he’d sent him back, and he was going to do the same to Mim’s partners in space crime. So what if he and his friends didn’t win the Invention Convention or the trip to Hawaii? If they didn’t come up with a good plan soon, there might not be any more Hawaii, or anywhere else for that matter. Kevin looked over at Warner, TJ, and Tara.
“Put on your thinking caps, guys,” he said. “Time to brainstorm.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my editor, Emilia Rhodes, for guiding me safely through the alien underworld; to Josh Bank and Sara Shandler for their otherworldly brainstorming skills; to Rachel Abrams for her extraterrestrial attention to detail; and to Ryan Harbage for keeping peace throughout the galaxy.
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About the Author and Illustrator
JOHN KLOEPFER is the author of the popular undead series The Zombie Chasers. He is currently unzombified and figuring out ways to stop aliens from taking over the planet. He lives in New York City.
NICK EDWARDS is a cartoonist, illustrator, and character designer from London, UK. He earned his illustration degree at Brighton University. Nick’s work can be seen on Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel, as well as in Dinopopolous, his first comic with Blank Slate Books.
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Credits
COVER ART BY NICK EDWARDS
COVER DESIGN BY RAY SHAPPELL
Copyright
GALAXY’S MOST WANTED
Copyright © 2014 by Alloy Entertainment and John Kloepfer
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kloepfer, John.
Galaxy’s most wanted / John Kloepfer; illustrated by Nick Edwards.—First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “When thirteen-year-old Kevin Brewer and his camp buddies summon an alien to earth, they know they’ll win a blue ribbon in the science competition—but they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of an interstellar war”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-223101-7 (hardback)
[1. Extraterrestrial beings—Fic
tion. 2. Camps—Fiction. 3. Science fiction. 4. Humorous stories. 5. Youth’s art.]
I. Edwards, Nick, date, illustrator. II. Title.
PZ7.K6845Gal 2014 2013047945
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
EPub Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780062231031
14 15 16 17 18 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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