Starship Bloopers

by John Kloepfer

  DEDICATION

  For Mary, Jim, Barbara, Dennis, Linda, Charlie,

  Little Mary, Devon, Chad, Connor, Tim, and Matt

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ads

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The smell of scorched flesh and alien slime drifted through the night air.

  The entire science camp reeked like a bonfire that had just been peed on.

  Only a few minutes ago Kevin Brewer and his friends—Warner Reed, Tara Swift, TJ Boyd, and an alien cyborg cop named Klyk—had almost been blown up by two of the most dangerous aliens in the galaxy. Zouric and Nuzz were trying to turn the human race into a bunch of robo-slaves. But luckily for the inhabitants of planet Earth, the four friends had used their wormhole generator to blast the evil aliens across the galaxy.

  Kevin glanced through the crowd of campers, who were all a bit shell-shocked from the extraterrestrial invasion. Alexander stared back at him with a dirty-diaper scowl on his face. Kevin broke off eye contact with his nemesis and looked over at their head counselor, Mr. Dimpus. The camp director and the other counselors were gathered in a circle, whispering to one another.

  For the past eight hours or so, a freeze-ray bomb had immobilized the camp and everyone in it except for Kevin and his friends. The girls’ soccer campers from across the lake, as well as an alien race of reptilian warriors, known as Kamilions, had been brainwashed by alien nanobugs designed by Zouric and Nuzz.

  It was a lot to process, and Kevin could tell that nobody really knew what was going on. Probably better that way, he thought. Kevin wished they had a memory eraser like in the movies, but he’d just have to hope that it would all blow over somehow.

  The odds of that happening, he knew, were slim.

  In the past twenty-four hours Kevin and his friends had gone from science-camp dorks to interstellar crime fighters who had saved the world not once, but twice in a single day. First thing that morning, before taking down Zouric and Nuzz, they had stopped Mim, a furry purple alien with a mean appetite, from eating their planet.

  Kevin couldn’t take all the credit, though. If it weren’t for a little help from Klyk, their intragalactic bounty hunter friend, the planet would now be brainwashed and their camp would still be frozen in time. They were short a wormhole generator and some force-field gloves. But along with two freeze rays and a shrink ray, there was one other special thing that they had in their possession.

  “Let me see that comic book again,” Kevin said, and snapped his fingers at TJ.

  TJ handed him Max Greyson’s latest comic book. The newest edition of the famous comic book series Brainstorm had just come through an alien transmitter, materializing as if by magic. Even weirder than that, all the illustrations showed Kevin and his friends taking down Zouric and Nuzz, which had just happened. It was almost as if the famous comic book creator had seen the events before they happened.

  But that wasn’t all Max had sent. His transmission also said he was being held captive in outer space. The entire galaxy, he also said, was in grave danger. Kevin and his friends needed to rescue him before something really bad happened.

  What that was, exactly, they had no idea.

  They all peered over Kevin’s shoulders as he flipped through the comic book. Tara shone a flashlight to see the pages in the dark. “You guys notice anything?”

  “Not really, except us being awesome and saving the world!” Warner said.

  “The page numbers,” Tara gasped. “They’re out of order!”

  “Maybe that’s because they’re not page numbers,” Kevin said.

  “Exactly!” TJ started to write down the digits in a sequence: 2, 3, 5, 13, 89, 233, 1597.

  “Do these look familiar?” He showed Kevin, Warner, Tara, and Klyk.

  “Two, three, five, and thirteen are all prime numbers,” Kevin said, the wheels turning in his head.

  “And eighty-nine, two hundred thirty-three, and fifteen ninety-seven,” Tara said. “Those are all primes, too, but they’re also part of the Fibonacci sequence. . . .”

  Klyk leaned over them as they studied the comic. “Those are coordinates,” Klyk told them. “Somewhere in the Globula Nebula. Near the outer quadrant of the Centaurus arm of the Milky Way.”

  “Max is telling us where he is!” Warner exclaimed. “I knew he wouldn’t leave us hanging like that.”

  “But that’s, like, sixty thousand light years away!” TJ exclaimed. “On the other side of the galaxy.”

  “Then we better gear up,” Warner said, looking through his bag of alien gadgets. “We have two freeze rays and one shrink ray.”

  “One transmitter,” TJ said, and held up the device that had sent the comic book through space and time.

  “We should get the telepathy helmet before we go, too,” Tara said.

  “Who cares about the telepathy helmet?” said Warner. “Let’s go find Max Greyson.”

  “No, she’s right,” said Klyk. “Telepathy helmets are hard to come by, if not impossible. I have no idea how Mim got one in the first place.”

  Tara had left the telepathy helmet inside one of the girls’ cabins at the soccer camp.

  Kevin, Warner, Tara, TJ, and Klyk sprinted off into the shadowy forest, leaving the rest of the campers and counselors behind. They wove through the trees until they hit the lake. Kevin led the way as they skirted the lake and made their way through the girls’ soccer camp.

  “Let’s go,” Klyk said, and pushed the cabin door open with his bionic arm. The kids ducked under and ran inside.

  The floorboards creaked as they walked through the empty cabin. Zack’s eyes swept back and forth across the floor. The telepathy helmet stuck out from beneath one of the beds.

  Kevin shuffled across the mattress and hopped off the other side. The high-tech headgear glinted in the moonlight. He bent down and was about to pick up the helmet when a cylinder of magenta light appeared in front of him. The thick beam of light was perfectly round and cast a reddish-purple glow throughout the room.

  “What the—” Kevin jumped back, startled. He flinched at the sight in front of him.

  An alien had appeared that looked like a giant hairless cat with four eyes across its brow. The feline-esque creature stood on two hind legs and was as big as a tall human, only a few inches shorter than Klyk. Kevin counted six arms total, three on each side, starting from its hips and working up its ribcage to the shoulders. The paws had long, sharp claws coming out of them. It had a long, scaly tail with dinosaur-like spikes that ran all the way up its spine.

  The alien looked at them with all four of its eyes as its tail menacingly whapped to and fro. The spikes on its back prickled like a porcupine’s as Klyk’s hand went slowly for his hip, like a Wild West gunslinger getting ready for a duel.

  “Hold it right there!” Klyk said calmly. “Don’t move.”

  But the alien didn’t listen. It quickly bent down and snatched up the telepathy helmet in its sixfold clutches.

  Klyk drew a small gadget, aimed it at the alien, and fired. Kevin stepped back.

  A bolt of electric-blue light zapped across the room and struck the alien in the arm. The beast squawked and disappeared into its magenta beam of light, along with the telepathy helmet held tightly in its paws.

 
; “Did everybody see that?” Tara asked. “’Cause I want to make sure I’m not the only one who just saw a seven-foot, four-eyed cat with six arms and a dinosaur tail. . . .”

  “What the heck was that thing?” Kevin asked.

  All the kids gazed up at Klyk, who was putting the small remote-control-like gadget back in his hip holster. “That, my friends, was a Sfink. . . .”

  “And what’s that thing you just shot it with?” TJ asked.

  “That was a tracking device,” Klyk said. “Give it a minute and it should tell us where he went with our helmet.”

  “Cool,” Warner said. “But what’s a Sfink?”

  “They’re kind of like space pirates,” he said. “They’re very unfriendly. I’ve actually never seen one in person. But I’ve heard stories.”

  “What kind of space cop are you?” Warner shook his head.

  “The galaxy’s huge,” Klyk said defensively. “I’m more familiar with the aliens in my sector. We’ve never had a problem with the Sfinks in my neck of the galaxy. Phirf and Drooq would know more about it.”

  “Who are Phirf and Drooq?” Kevin asked.

  “My partners,” he said. “The ones you zapped with the wormhole generator. They will know more about the Sfinks than I do, since they work in the outer sectors. That’s where some of the more unsavory aliens spend their time.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, though,” Kevin said. “Why would this alien randomly want our telepathy helmet?”

  “I don’t think it was random,” Tara said.

  “But, how did it know that we even had a telepathy helmet?” Kevin said.

  “It must have been watching us somehow,” TJ suggested.

  “Like, it knew exactly where we were,” said Warner.

  “That’s okay, because now we know exactly where it is . . . check it out.” Klyk showed them the readout from the tracking device.

  Kevin’s eyes bulged with excitement.

  The numbers on Klyk’s tracker were precisely the same coordinates as the pages of Max Greyson’s comic book.

  The wheels turned in Kevin’s mind. The Sfink was in the same place as the coordinates Max had given them. What did that mean? Did the Sfinks have Max? Were they the ones who were holding him captive? And if so, what were they after? And why were they interested in the telepathy helmet?

  Kevin didn’t have any of the answers yet. But he knew what they had to do. They had to go to outer space and figure out what was going on.

  The five of them left the cabin and ran back through the woods. Klyk’s spaceship was right where they’d left it on the outskirts of camp. Through the trees, Kevin could see the counselors trying to regain order.

  “Let’s get out of here before the counselors realize we’re gone,” Tara said.

  “Too late.” Kevin heard a rustle in the grass and whipped his head around.

  “Not so fast,” Dimpus said. Their head counselor ducked under a few low-hanging branches of a pine tree. “No one’s going anywhere if I have anything to say about it.”

  TJ looked at Klyk and raised his eyebrows. “You wanna take care of this?”

  Klyk walked up to Dimpus, towering over the camp counselor. “Let’s have a talk. . . .”

  Dimpus tilted his head back and stared up at the giant alien cyborg, his voice trembling. “M-m-mister, I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but I can’t let y-y-you . . .” Dimpus’s voice trailed off.

  “I understand you are only looking out for the well-being of these children,” Klyk said. “But they are now part of an intragalactic investigation. I can assure you I will look after them and I give you my word that no harm will come to them.”

  Kevin rolled his eyes. At least Klyk’s a good liar, he thought.

  Dimpus’s brow crinkled and his eyes narrowed to a squint.

  “I pinky swear.” Klyk curled his littlest finger and held it out.

  “Pinky swear,” Dimpus said, and hooked his pinky with Klyk’s little finger. “Don’t let me down.” Dimpus took two steps back and saluted his campers.

  Kevin and his friends followed Klyk onto his spaceship.

  “Good luck, my little scientists!” Dimpus called up from the ground.

  “How do you know about pinky swears?” Tara asked Klyk.

  Klyk pointed at the side of his head that held his robotic brain. “I tapped into your network servers and downloaded some of your most highly valued customs onto my hard drive. According to your internet, pinky swearing is one of the most sacred bonds you humans make with each other.”

  The four humans climbed up into Klyk’s ship. Klyk closed the hatch behind them, and they all took their usual positions. The alien sat down in the main captain’s seat like a king on his throne. He cracked his knuckles, then gripped the throttle with his left hand and placed his right hand on the steering controls.

  Warner cleared his throat. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m going to fly this ship into outer space so we can rescue Max Greyson from the Sfinks,” Klyk said matter-of-factly.

  “Huh?” Warner said. “No, no, I think you’re confused. I’m the captain. This is my ship!”

  “You’re a funny little human, aren’t you?” Klyk said. “Now sit down and buckle up.”

  The spaceship rumbled to life and the interior lights dimmed. The control panels lit up with a neon glow and the flatscreens lining the control boards scrolled with data for takeoff. A low hum filled the cabin, and Kevin looked at Warner. A huge smile stretched across his friend’s face, and his eyes were bugging out of his head. Warner pointed toward the sky and mouthed the words this is really happening.

  Kevin could hardly believe it.

  TJ was more thrilled than any of them. Their little friend bounced in his seat with a goofy look on his face, clapping his hands excitedly as they prepared to blast off.

  “Don’t we need spacesuits or something?” Tara asked.

  “Not necessary,” Klyk said. “The ship’s gravitation is carefully calibrated and the cabin is climate controlled. All the planets we’ll be going to are within Earth’s range of livability, so you’ll all be safe.”

  Kevin’s stomach dropped as they lifted up into the sky, as if he were in an elevator about to stop. It felt like a million little butterflies were fluttering around in his belly. Kevin could hardly believe it. They were actually going to outer space.

  Like, for real.

  Klyk tapped a couple holographic buttons that hung in midair on translucent touch screens.

  “What’s all that?” Tara asked, waving her hand at the computer.

  “I’m just plotting our course through the wormhole superhighway. That’s how we’ll get to the coordinates.”

  Klyk then pushed the accelerator, and they shot straight up into the stratosphere.

  “Is there an antigravity drive on this thing?” TJ piped up. “There must be, right?”

  “There is . . . unless, oh no! Are we about to get ripped apart from the g-force?” said Klyk.

  TJ’s eyes crinkled. “So there is one.”

  “Yeah, there is one,” Klyk said. “But don’t worry about it.”

  “What kind of propulsion system are we using?” TJ asked.

  “The kind that gets us where we need to go,” Klyk said. “Now stop asking so many questions, sit back, and relax.”

  The kids watched their home planet get tinier and tinier as they zipped past Mars, wove through the asteroid belt, and shot toward Jupiter.

  The gaseous planet was bigger than Kevin had ever imagined. He knew in his head that Jupiter was 318 times more massive than Earth, but only now did it really sink in what that meant. It was the difference between knowing something and seeing it firsthand. They were two completely different things.

  It suddenly dawned on Kevin just how enormous the galaxy and the universe really were. And how teeny they were in comparison.

  “This is, like, the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Tara said. “And I o
nce met Taylor Swift.”

  “Wow, that’s really saying something.” Warner rolled his eyes. “Not.”

  Klyk put the ship into hyperdrive and they zoomed through outer space.

  “Dude, check it out.” Kevin’s jaw dropped as he looked out the viewport. “It’s Saturn!”

  As they whizzed past the multi-ringed planet, Tara spun around in her seat. “Klyk, slow down a little!” she yelled. “Believe it or not, some of us have never been to space before.”

  “Sorry, kid, this isn’t a sightseeing tour,” Klyk said, and kept on accelerating faster and faster.

  Kevin wished they could slow down, too, but he knew they had to keep going. The Sfinks had Max Greyson, and apparently the entire galaxy was in jeopardy. They knew the what and the where. Now they just had to figure out the how and the why.

  Just then the fabric of time and space seemed to open up like a portal and they zipped full-throttle into a large swirling wormhole. It was like getting sucked down the whirlpool in a draining bathtub.

  In a split second, the starscape of outer space disappeared and they were in a warp tunnel of space-time—red and green rays stretched with blue and white beams. Despite the swirling colors around him, Kevin couldn’t even feel the shift in direction. The antigravity drive must be working, he thought.

  “What is this thing?” Warner yelled at their alien ship captain while gripping his seat.

  “Welcome to the wormhole superhighway,” he told them. “Constructed a millennium ago by the IF, who were able to extend wormholes to certain portions of the galaxy for quick interstellar travel.”

  “What’s the IF?” TJ asked.

  “The Intragalactic Federation,” Klyk told them. “They make the laws for all the different star systems in the Milky Way galaxy. If there are ever any threats to the galaxy, the IF is on the job.”

  “Well, shouldn’t we be calling them then?”

  “Sorry, Warner, but a missing Earthling and a stolen telepathy helmet don’t exactly get the IF’s attention. They work on real threats, not petty misdemeanors.”