by Steve Cole
“Glad you noticed!” spluttered Danjo from the water.
“It’s too dark to see properly,” Zill complained, as she and Furp struggled with the net.
“I’ll hit the headlights,” Plog panted, bundling into the Slime-mobile. Twin beams of brilliance shone out onto the thrashing water, revealing Danjo, the sub and—
PLOOP! At once the tentacles disappeared.
“It’s gone,” said Danjo weakly, clinging onto the sub as it bobbed in the water. “Done its ghost act again.” But his friends’ relief didn’t last – as suddenly Danjo was dragged back under. “It’s got hold of my legs!” he gasped.
“Throw the net!” Zill commanded. With Dolofin’s help, she and Furp threw the slime-net. But the crazed goopfish and sponges tore it to pieces the moment it touched the water.
“The Slime Sub!” Plog shouted helplessly. “Get inside it, Danjo. NOW!”
Danjo reached for the sub and dug his pincers into the roof. Kicking and struggling against gobbling goopfish as well as the terrible tentacles, he managed to open the hatch – just as a huge wave of filthy water slooshed over his head. The next moment, both he and the sub were lost from sight.
“Oh no!” Zill wailed. “The squid’s disappeared again – and taken Danjo with it!”
“And the Slime Sub too.” Furp stared at the still waters in disbelief. “It’s almost as if it knew we’d made weapons and defences to help us catch it – and stole the whole lot before we could!”
“I just hope Danjo got inside the sub before . . . before . . .” Zill wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh, he must be all right!”
“He’s a strong swimmer,” Plog reassured her. “And without our sub, we need strong swimmers to go after him.” He looked hopefully at Dolofin. “Well?”
“That grisly ghost never came so close ashore before,” said Dolofin with a shiver. “I is betting it be after the last of our precious seaweed.”
“There be nowhere safe from it,” wailed the wrinkly junkjack.
“Look at this!” Furp picked up a small orange fish and a pale, blubbery scrap from the edge of the shore. “The goopfish are friendly again, and I think this is a bit of squid tentacle! Plog, you must have blown a bit of it off when you fired the bazooka.”
“See?” Plog turned to the junkjacks. “If we still had our Slime Sub I’ll bet we could deal with that thing for good.”
Zill looked pleadingly at Dolofin. “But without your in-built glow to guide us in the water we’ll never find Danjo or the sub.”
“What if it steals our seaweed while us be gone?” Dolofin protested. “Without it, us’ll starve to death on the way to Nosepick Ocean.”
“And what happens if you find supernatural squid there too?” Plog demanded. “Where will you run to then?”
Furp nodded. “We are here to help you – but you have to help yourselves too.”
“And as for taking care of your seaweed, I’ve got a brilliant idea,” said Zill, pointing to the Cast-Iron Cliffs. “See that crater we blasted over there? If we fire again and make it a bit deeper we can create a special cave for your seaweed. You can keep it safely out of the way for as long as you like.”
Plog grabbed his bazooka. “I’ll get up there now and start blasting – if you’ll guide us on this rescue mission.”
The junkjacks looked at each other nervously. But Dolofin nodded and glowed a fraction brighter. “Us’ll be rescuing ourselves as well as your pal.” He placed his flipper in Plog’s hand and shook. “It’s a deal!”
“Perhaps there’s enough of the net left to use as a ladder.” Furp splashed into the water, still lit by the Slime-mobile’s headlights – and frowned. “Funny. Where the squid was hiding, it’s left some sort of cloudy goop behind.”
“Arr,” said Dolofin. “It be ghostly goo.”
“Maybe.” Furp pulled a test tube from his pants and scooped up a little. “Or maybe this is what the squid uses to make itself disappear . . .”
“Well, right now it’s Danjo who’s disappeared,” Zill reminded him. “And we need to get him back. So the sooner we get this cave built. . .”
“Yes, of course,” Furp said distractedly. He pulled out the remains of the net and threw it across to Plog. “Use this to climb up to the crater. I’d better run some tests on this goo in the lav-lab right away! It might help us follow the squid’s trail. Excuse me . . .”
Plog watched Furp hop off to the Slime-mobile. “Let’s hope he learns something that will help us find the squid faster.” He hurled the net up at the cliff and it caught on a twisted spur of metal. “Come on – let’s get climbing!”
Chapter Six
CAPTIVES IN THE CLIFFS
Plog and Zill soon reached the hole in the side of the cliff. The wall of iron reflected the moon’s pale disc, and with its light to guide him, Plog took aim with the bazooka. BLAMM! With a big green splat and a cloud of seething smoke, the hole was blown deeper into the cliff side, making a shallow cave. BLAMM! He fired again, and the sizzling slime ate deeper still. “There.”
“I’ll just quickly smooth out some of the rough edges,” said Zill. “We don’t want the junkjacks hurting themselves when they climb up here to grab their supper.” She banged about with the hammer . . . and suddenly something cold splashed into her face. “Urph!” she spluttered. “What’s that?”
Plog pulled her clear. “Water’s that, you mean.” A jet of liquid was squirting out from a little hole in the metal. “I don’t get it – this is solid metal. How can there be water inside it?”
“It smells as septic as the sea.” Zill shrugged.
“Well, the seaweed won’t mind, I’m sure. Come on, Fur-boy, let’s tell Dolofin his high-rise larder is ready and get him looking for Danjo.”
“Wait,” Plog hissed. He’d just glimpsed movement somewhere above them in the dark and caught a strange, sweaty smell on the night air – quickly followed by a furtive, scuttling sound. “I think I heard something . . .”
“Something like this?” came a throaty snarl above him. The next moment, two white, pongy, maggoty creatures dropped down into sight. Their thick arms ended in even thicker fists, and their eyes burned angry red. Before Plog and Zill could even react, the maggot monsters jumped forward – and attacked!
“Whoa!” gasped Plog as his attacker grabbed him by the snout. “Where did you spring from?”
“You’ll soon see,” growled the other maggot-man. “We’ve been sent to take you there.”
“Don’t think so,” Zill snarled, pushing back her attacker with a swipe of her tail. As he returned to the attack, she spat out a slime-line like a tripwire at ankle-height. The maggot-man fell over it, landing with a clang.
At the same time, Plog managed to shove away his own assailant, then he raised the giant slime-shooter to cover both maggot-men. “Thanks for the exercise,” he growled. “Now, who are you?”
“I’m Marvin,” said the biggest one.
“I’m Maynard,” his friend added. “And there’s a very unfriendly squid just behind you . . .”
“What?” Plog and Zill turned quickly – only to find there was nothing there. And while they were distracted, the maggot monsters pounced!
WHUMP! Plog was knocked to the floor by a sock to the jaw from Marvin. He banged his head on the metal and the world seemed to erupt in stars. Then he heard Zill struggling furiously in Maynard’s clutches. Must help her, Plog thought desperately, trying to reach for the fallen bazooka. But his body would not respond.
“Take them to the control centre,” Marvin snarled. It was the last thing Plog heard before blackness closed over his throbbing head . . .
Meanwhile, in the lav-lab, Furp was running tests on the scrap of squid tentacle and the cloudy goo he’d found in the seawater. “How very curious,” he murmured, comparing the two. “They are both made from the same stuff – only one is solid, and one is liquid. How can that be?” He scratched his head under his crash helmet, trying to puzzle things out. “Now, the goop app
eared when the squid disappeared, just as Plog turned on the Slime-mobile’s headlights.” He frowned. “Come to think of it, the squid disappeared before when I boosted the Slime Sub’s headlights. I wonder . . .”
“Ahoy there, Furp!” Dolofin’s voice floated in from outside. “Us heard some funny noises from up yonder in them cliffs. And us can’t be seeing no sign of Zill or Clog.”
“Plog,” Furp corrected him, opening the door. “That’s funny. They know we’re in a hurry to find Danjo and the sub – and I’ve got a quite incredible theory about these squid I want to share with them. Why would they go wandering off?”
A little anxiously, Furp hopped over to the cliff face and used his slimy hands and feet to scale the smooth metal surface. Dolofin followed more slowly using the slime net.
In the soft glow from the junkjack’s skin, Furp looked around the empty cave. “Plog! Zill!” he cried, but only a mournful, metallic echo carried back to him. The slime bazooka lay on the ground, together with a handful of Plog’s fur and hairs from Zill’s bushy tail. “Oh, dear. I fear something may have happened to them.” Stepping forward, Furp saw that water had pooled in the bottom of the crater.
“Where did that come from?” Dolofin wondered.
“I don’t know.” Furp used his crash helmet as a bucket to bail out the water. “There’s something at the bottom of this puddle, squashed into the ground.” He went on ladling away. “It’s . . . it looks like a cork!” He pulled a magnifying glass from his pants and beckoned Dolofin to cast a little more light. “Very interesting. A cork sticking out of a solid metal cliff in a puddle of water.”
“Zill and Bog must have plopped it in there,” said Dolofin.
“No, no, no.” Furp shook his head, peering through the magnifying glass. “There are tiny metal splinters on the top of this cork – and scratches on the side. Which suggests to me this cork was pushed up from inside the cliff face!” “What?” Dolofin’s nose curled in confusion. “How could anyone push a cork up from inside the cliffs? They be solid metal.”
“Remember those strange rumbles and vibrations you heard in these Cast-Iron Cliffs? I don’t think we can put them down to cast-iron mice . . .” Furp nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I think I’m starting to understand what’s really going on around here. And I also think I’d better show you junkjacks some clever stuff I’ve invented called Slime-Power Plus . . .”
Some time later, Plog woke with an aching head and opened his eyes. Where am I? He frowned – it was still dark. Had his eyes stopped working?
“Fur-boy?” whispered Zill, somewhere close by. “Are you OK?”
“I have the world’s biggest headache,” he muttered. “How about you?”
“Those maggot things hit me pretty hard,” said Zill. “When I stopped seeing stars I found we were here, tied up in the dark.”
Listening to Zill speak, Plog realized there was a strange, metallic echo to her words. He could hear water lapping close by, and a powerful electric hum. “Those maggots said they were taking us to a control centre. But where?”
“Inside the Cast-Iron Cliffs, as it happens!” came a shrill squawk from somewhere close by. A smellyvision set – like a kind of TV, only whiffier – flickered on nearby to present a sinister, shadowy form. Part bird, part demon, part who-knew-what, the misshapen figure puffed itself up, its true features hidden from view. “Welcome,” it rasped, “to my most secret and deadly lair of all . . .”
“I know that voice.” Plog closed his eyes and groaned. “It’s Lord Klukk!”
Chapter Seven
HIGH TIDE AND LOW-LIFES
“Greetings, buk-buk-bear-rat!” Lord Klukk hissed, peering out from the smellyvision set. “Good day, poodle-skunk!”
“It was a good day till I saw you, pants-head,” Zill retorted.
“We guessed you’d be involved in this business somehow, Klukk,” said Plog. “Why are you trying to scare away the junkjacks? And what do you mean, we’re inside the Cast-Iron Cliffs?”
“Turn on the safety lights, my maggoty minions,” rasped Klukk. “Let our prisoners see my power and tremble!”
Marvin hit a switch, and dim red lights flickered on in the solid metal ceiling not far above their heads. Plog saw that he and Zill were tied up on a kind of long platform made of wire mesh and crammed with strange machinery, sticking out from the wall. He gasped as he realized just how vast this secret lair really was – bigger than fifty monster-football stadiums put together. And the entire place was filled with dark, evil-smelling water. If the level rose much higher it would be lapping at the platform.
Plog looked at Klukk’s image. “Aren’t there easier ways to get your own indoor swimming pool than hollowing out the biggest range of cliffs in Trashland and pumping them full of water?”
Lord Klukk gave an unpleasant laugh. “This is no mere swimming pool. This water will buk-buk-bring me power over Trashland.”
“You’ve tried to get power over Trashland before,” Zill shot back. “We always stop you.”
“But this time I shall buk-buk-be victorious,” clucked Klukk. “While you shall perish at the many tentacles of a radio-actipus!”
Plog boggled. “A radio-what-i-pus?”
“I invented the name myself,” said Klukk grandly. “It is short for ‘radioactive octopus’ – what you could call a supernatural squid.” He laughed again. “These wonderfully revolting creatures will make me triumphant over all . . .”
“Creatures?” Zill gulped. “We thought there was only one that kept disappearing and reappearing, like a ghost.”
Marvin smirked. “Them squid can’t vanish and come back again, silly lady!”
“We’ve seen them disappear with our own eyes,” Plog retorted.
“It is you two who will disappear,” said Klukk, changing the subject. “I like to reward my squiddy servants with an extra tasty treat now and then.” He leaned forward, sniggering. “I sent one to swallow up that silly sub with your friend on board . . . and soon I will let its friends feast on YOU!”
As Klukk laughed long and hard, Plog thought of Danjo being swallowed up and his heart sank deeper than the dark waters below the platform. By stretching out his fingers he could just reach one of Zill’s paws and gave it a comforting squeeze. “I know things seem bad,” he whispered. “But Danjo’s tougher than any monster I’ve ever met.”
Zill nodded. “And we’re not finished yet.”
“Marvin,” Klukk commanded. “Summon the squid and activate the starv-o-matic aggravator.”
“The what?” asked Zill as the maggot-man pressed a button.
Klukk sneered. “Why should I tell you?”
Plog glared at the screen. “Because you can’t resist any opportunity to boast about how clever you are.”
“Fair point,” Klukk conceded. “Very well then – I’ll tell you.”
Plog leaned closer to Zill, his voice a low whisper. “And while he yabbers on, maybe we can untie these ropes and break free!”
Klukk cleared his throat. “While gathering toxic waste from the Radiation Reefs for my experiments, I discovered these remarkably unpleasant radio-actipuses. They not only live in water, they have the power to create it.”
Zill was surprised. “They make water?”
“Tons of it,” Klukk said happily. “It squirts out of their buk-buk-bottoms whenever they’ve eaten. Now, usually the buk-buk-beasts dwell down in the deepest depths and eat only a few scraps of seaweed – so they don’t make much water.”
“But the boss created a special transmitter,” said Maynard. “The starv-o-matic aggravator. It sends a mind-controlling signal through the water that makes the squid extra-hungry and very aggravated.”
“The signal forces them to go out hunting and come back here,” added Marvin. “They just can’t help themselves. Course, we have to keep it dark, ’cos the squid can’t stand bright light, it makes them—”
“Silence!” roared Klukk, and the maggot-men cringed. “How dare you interrupt
my evil explanation?”
Plog, working his wrists free of his bonds, decided to interrupt too. “So that aggravator thing has made the squid go scoffing all the junkjacks’ seaweed. And signalling through the water like that, I bet it’s made the rest of the sea-life aggravated and hungry too.”
Zill nodded. “So that’s what turned the goopfish and jellyfish and the rest so cranky!”
“Yes, yes,” said Klukk impatiently. “That is simply a side-effect of my squid-enslaving signal – the radio-actipuses are all that concern me. I can even direct them to follow simple instructions such as attack, destroy and gobble up . . . Buk-buk-but aren’t you going to ask me why I want them to make so much water in the first place?”
Plog shrugged. “Because you get very thirsty?”
“No,” said Klukk. “So I can flood half of Trashland with a deadly tidal wave whenever I choose!”
“Oh.” Plog gulped. “That would’ve been my second guess.”
“What do you mean, flood half of Trashland?” Zill demanded.
“My minions have built a tunnel stretching from the Septic Sea, underneath Pongo Buk-buk-Beach, and into these hollowed-out cliffs,” Klukk hissed gloatingly. “The squid swim inside after feeding, squirt out their buk-buk-bottom-water and my demonic dams carefully contain it here. When the cliffs are full to buk-buk-bursting, I will announce my demands to the monsters of Trashland: they must worship me as their most wonderful ruler, or else I will detonate the many buk-buk-bombs I have stuck to the cliff walls to unleash a tidal wave and wreak widespread destruction . . .” He threw back his head and laughed uproariously.
