“But Max’s message,” Kevin said, waving their comic book at Klyk. “He said the whole galaxy was in grave danger.”
“Fine,” Klyk said. “We can call for backup once we get to our destination.”
A few minutes later they came out of the spiraling time warp. As they shot out of the wormhole, Klyk yelped in surprise and jerked a hard left, then a sharp right to slow them down.
“Dude, what the heck?” Warner said, holding on to his seat to keep steady.
“There’s an asteroid belt,” Klyk said, steering and swerving like a madman. “It shouldn’t be here!”
The large floating boulders sailed past Kevin’s window, only a few feet away.
“Klyk, heads up!” TJ shouted. “There’s a big one coming up on our left!”
The ship jerked to the right and they barely dodged the asteroid.
KABAM!
“What was that?” Tara yelled, as a smaller asteroid sideswiped them. The ship spun as the asteroid bounced off the side and Klyk struggled to keep them level.
“Hold on!” he shouted. Kevin could see a crisscrossing obstacle course of asteroids in front of him.
Kevin braced himself, preparing for impact. They were about to ram into a huge rock when all of a sudden, the laser cannon fired and blew the asteroid into a zillion pieces.
“Woo-hoo!” Warner yelped.
“Nice shot, buddy!” Kevin yelled to him.
“Don’t celebrate too soon, boys,” Klyk warned them. “We’re not out of the woods just yet.”
As they wove through the rocky debris, a new threat appeared.
Kevin’s stomach dropped and a panicky dread washed over him.
They were drifting into the rear of a fleet of black battle cruisers, hovering in attack formation. The black cruisers were facing off against a fleet of silver spaceships.
“Who are these guys? And where are we?” Tara asked, a bit of fear in her voice.
“It looks like we’re above planet Glomm,” Klyk said. “I recognize the Glomms’ silver cruisers. But I don’t know who they’re fighting.”
Kevin looked to see who was flying the black spaceships. Squinting through the windshield, Kevin saw a huge, hairless, misshapen cat with four eyes above its wet, slimy nose. It had humongous ears springing off the sides of its head with little squiggly tentacles coming out of them.
It was the same four-eyed alien beast they had seen back in the cabin, the one who stole their telepathy helmet.
“It’s the Sfinks!” Kevin said.
Then the black battleships pivoted in their formation, aiming directly at their ship.
Klyk flipped the invisibility shield on and tried to slip away. One of the enemy cruisers charged up with a neon-red glow. Two large laser cannons dropped beneath the hull.
“I thought they couldn’t see us,” Tara said.
“They must have invisibility scanners on their ships,” Klyk said.
“Well, what’s the point of invisibility shields if everybody has invisibility scanners?” Tara shouted.
“Not everyone has invisibility scanners, smarty-pants,” the alien’s voice boomed. “They’re hard to come by!”
“Everybody, chill out!” TJ called for a truce. “We gotta get out of here!”
The laser cannons powered up on the enemy space cruiser, ready to fire, and Klyk slammed the accelerator. Their spaceship lurched forward as the Sfinks’ laser cannons exploded in two wide streaks of light.
Klyk’s spaceship zipped between the alien forces just as the standoff erupted in a flurry of flashes. The vast, starry black of outer space lit up like a lightning storm from all the laser beams.
Klyk’s ship wove through the crossfire and photon blasts. Kevin bumped around in his seat. His head knocked on the high metal sides of the gunner’s chair.
Both of the alien fleets split into smaller formations and clashed in an aerial dogfight, hundreds of ships whirling around in complex spirals.
“Everybody!” Klyk shouted over the shrieking of photon blasts. “Man the cannons! Fire at will!”
Their spacecraft dipped steeply and they dropped below the crossfire.
“Klyk, get us out of here!” Kevin hollered.
“That’s what I’m trying to do!”
“Do or do not,” Warner said. “There is no try!”
“Look out!” Tara shrieked, and dove out of her seat and onto the floor.
A huge explosion hit the outside of the ship. Tara’s laser cannon backfired, destroying the control panel in a puff of thick smoke.
The aftershock rippled through the cockpit. Klyk rocked from side to side, losing control of the steering.
“Hang on!” Klyk yelled.
Klyk smacked a button on the side of his seat, and the turbo thrusters propelled them forward with a quick jolt. The spaceship broke through the outer atmosphere of Glomm and headed toward the planet’s surface.
The ship spun out and Kevin felt like he was on the cup ride at a carnival. He was afraid he might get sick. His stomach started to churn and he tried to focus on the planet rotating beneath them. He steadied his gaze and tried to stay calm.
Planet Glomm had a circular region that was lush and green. The forested land was surrounded by stark, endless badlands, like an oasis in the middle of a desert. Around the desert, there was a vast ocean. The planet looked something like Earth might have a billion years ago, before Pangaea split up into the continents.
“Klyk, we’re gonna be all right, right?” TJ called as they plunged toward the ground, gripping the armrests of his seat like a terrified kid in a dentist’s chair.
Klyk ignored him and focused on the task at hand.
“I’m serious, man, I don’t want to die!”
“Be quiet, TJ!” Tara shouted, equally frightened. “And let the alien do his thing!”
“Not trying to say I’m the best or anything,” Warner called out. “But if I’d been flying, we never woulda got hit.”
“Get ready!” Klyk called out from the front. “Hang on tight. . . .”
Kevin winced and tensed up as they crash-landed with a plunk.
They skidded to a stop, and Kevin reopened his eyes. He was curled up in a ball, strapped into his seat. He peered out of the viewport of the spaceship, checking out the alien terrain.
Something was churning out of the dirt, emerging out of the ground, like a giant insect. It was some subterranean vehicle with a spinning drill bit on its nose. The machine surfaced and drove right next to their crashed spaceship.
Warner stood next to Kevin and looked through the viewport.
Eight aliens stepped out of the burrowing vehicle and hopped to the ground, surrounding Klyk’s ship.
Kevin unbuckled himself from the seat. “Klyk, get us out of here. We’ve got company. . . .”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Klyk said. “The engine is shot!”
Tara and TJ were both pushing each other, trying to get a look outside. “Get out of the way!” she said.
“Let me see!” said TJ.
Kevin narrowed his eyes, peering out of his window. These aliens were roundish, oval-shaped creatures with soft, blob-like skin. They each had two arms and two legs, if you could even call them that. The limbs didn’t seem to have joints. The aliens didn’t look like they even had skeletons. They just sort of blobbed around, like washed-up jellyfish. Their uniforms looked like some kind of computerized smart suit that held their wobbling figures together.
One of the aliens only had one arm. A stream of blue-green fluid oozed from a stump at its shoulder, as if the arm had been blown off. Kevin watched as the alien’s appendage slowly began to grow back, inch by inch, creating a new one where the missing limb had been.
“Yo, check it out,” said Warner. “His arm’s growing back!”
“What the heck are those things?” Tara asked. “I feel like we should totally be hiding right now.”
Klyk came over and looked out at the small group of gooey alien blobs. “It’s okay. Those are the G
lomms. They have the ability to regenerate if they get injured. This is their planet. They won’t hurt us, but they’re going to want some answers.”
And maybe we’ll get some of our own, too, Kevin thought.
The hatch doors slid open and two Glommian lieutenants stood in the doorframe. The Glomms gurgled orders for them to come out. Kevin, Warner, Tara, TJ, and Klyk stepped down into their twilit planet, and in an instant they were all hit with an awful stink.
“Oh my gosh,” Warner said, hopping down behind Kevin. “What is that horrible smell?”
“Uck!” Tara pinched her nose, and TJ made an air mask with the collar of his T-shirt. “That’s the worst thing ever!”
“It’s just the way it smells here. You’ll get used to it,” Klyk said. “And stop talking about it. We ‘aliens’ can be very sensitive, too.” He made quotation marks in the air around his head.
The commander of the Glomm platoon stepped forward. Its Jell-O-like mouth jabbered and a stream of grotesque sounds came out.
None of them had any idea what he was saying, except for Klyk.
Klyk raised his arms up in surrender and took one careful step toward the alien squadron. He flipped his language chip to a different setting and then uttered something in the gross-sounding alien language.
The aliens tapped a button on their smart suits, switching their language to English.
“Tell them we want to speak with their leader,” Warner whispered to Klyk.
Klyk shushed him. “Let me handle this.”
“We want to speak with your leader!” TJ spoke up.
“You are trespassers here,” one of the Glomms said. “Now we will bring you to Narbok for questioning.”
“See?” Warner said. “It works.”
Kevin breathed in the alien stench and almost vomited on Tara as the Glommian soldiers approached them. He wasn’t sure that he’d ever get used to it. He gagged and then breathed out, forcing himself not to throw up.
It’s gonna be okay, he thought. Mind over matter.
Kevin and his friends dropped down onto the surface of the alien planet. The Glomm crew huddled around the humans. A Glommian soldier grasped Kevin by the arm. The Glomm’s hands squished against Kevin’s skin and left a wet, sticky mark, and then all of a sudden the alien locked both his wrists in high-tech shackles.
Uh-oh. Kevin hoped that these were really the good guys, and this was all a precaution. Otherwise, tracking down Max Greyson was going to be tougher than they thought.
Now captives, they trudged through the thick jungle. Kevin felt as small as a bug within the hugeness of the landscape. Every tree trunk, every leaf, every flower was enormous. What looked like small townships hovered over the terrain. Walkways connected them thirty or forty feet above the ground. The Glomms ushered them into a metal elevator that rose up off the forested floor.
When they reached the treetops, Kevin could see a number of the walkways leading from the alien town to a vast mountain range peaking off the side of the planet’s western hemisphere.
In silence, the Glomms escorted the five of them through a covered walkway high above the ground.
From there, they entered a large military command center with digital screens everywhere: control boards and mainframe computers, data displays, tactical computer readouts, and surveillance windows. Two dozen Glomms hustled and bustled every which way. On one of the main screens, there was a real-time radar display of the aerial warfare still raging outside the planet.
The Glommian general appeared in the doorway of the war room. He was twice as large and globular as any of his blob-like soldiers, and wore a high-tech armored suit, different from the others’.
The general clicked a button on his smart suit and spoke to Klyk in English. “I am General Narbok. What are you doing here with these Earthlings?” he asked.
Before Klyk could answer, Kevin jumped in and interrupted. “We’re trying to find Max Greyson.”
The alien general turned to Kevin. “Who gave you permission to speak?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but we think the Sfinks have Max Greyson,” Kevin said. “Do you know him?”
“Never heard of him,” Narbok said. “Now you tell me what you know about the Sfinks.”
“Like I said,” said Kevin. “We think the Sfinks have Max Greyson.”
“I don’t care about Max Greyson!” Narbok roared. “The only thing that matters is keeping the crystals safe.”
“Crystals?” Kevin asked, and twisted his face in confusion.
Just then one of the Glommian soldiers turned away from the control panel and addressed his commanding officer. “The Sfinks are entering our atmosphere, General,” he said. “It’s time.”
Time? Kevin thought. Time for what?
General Narbok strutted to the center of the war room and gazed into a large, glowing orange crystal. A sphere of clear glass encased the gem, which was attached to a computer console and linked to the Glomms’ high-tech equipment.
The general’s eyeballs rolled into the back of his head as he studied the crystal intently for a few moments. “Blark-glark-phlark,” Narbok said, then calmly ordered his crew of Glommian soldiers into action.
On one of the screens, Kevin could see another part of the battle. A whole group of black cruisers hovered just over the planet. A dozen Sfinks prepared to jump down onto the surface, but before they could take a step, a tremor shook the earth beneath them. Four of the Glommian drilling vehicles rose up out of the ground in a surprise attack. The Sfinks were blasted with some type of freeze-ray plasma before they even knew what hit them.
Kevin watched similar fights play out all across the planet, and the battle was over just as quickly as it had begun. He asked the general, “How did you know where they would attack you?”
“This is one of our crystals,” Narbok said, pointing to the console at the center of the room. “The crystal shows us what’s coming before it happens.”
“You mean to tell us you have crystals that know the future?” Tara asked.
“Not all futures,” Narbok replied. “But important events across time. Some events can’t be allowed to happen or the universe will end.”
“This battle, for example,” Warner said, “must have been important.”
“Very,” said the Glomm general.
“Incoming!” Tara yelled, and gripped Kevin’s arm with both hands.
All of a sudden the alien war room rumbled and the Glomms snapped to attention.
Two of the Sfinks’ jet-black enemy cruisers swooped out of the sky over the Glomms’ command center.
They were under attack.
The Sfinks’ battle cruisers fired at the war room, and the photon blasts streaked toward them.
Two defense cannons fired up force-field shots that deflected the Sfinks’ air strike well before it could do any damage.
The Sfinks’ cruisers then zipped back up into the atmosphere as the Glomms’ laser cannons shot across the sky.
General Narbok marched over to the crystal and smashed his gelatinous fist down on the console. “Blark!”
“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked.
Narbok looked down at him. “This should not be happening. The Sfinks are getting too close. They’re getting trickier. Like they know what we know and can alter their course.” Narbok paused to collect himself. “I need to see the rest of the crystals. I can show them to you if you wish,” Narbok said to the kids, raising what would have been an eyebrow.
“We definitely wish,” Kevin said, a little overexcited, and then swallowed a nervous gulp.
“Follow me,” the Glomm said. The alien blob led them to a hover pod located on the opposite side of the war room. “But in return you must share what you know about the Sfinks and this Max Greyson.”
The outer rim of the hover pod looked like an oversized inflatable life tube made out of shiny silver steel. An array of panels, handles, and vents detailed the aircraft’s smooth silver metal exterior, and a curve
d glass hood covered the cockpit area. Under the bottom of the craft, three circular engines throbbed with an electromagnetic pulse.
They all hopped in the hover pod, and the vehicle launched off the airlocked docking station.
From the cockpit of the hover pod, Kevin could see in all directions. They glided through the air toward the mountain range. During the short flight, Narbok had a worried look on his face. The five of them all remained quiet as the alien mountain range grew closer and closer.
“Hey, Narbok.” Warner eventually broke the silence. “You and your guys just destroyed those Sfinks. So what’s the matter?”
“I am not happy that the Sfinks got two shots off at us,” Narbok replied. He shook his head, eyes cast down. “Very troubling.”
“Why?” TJ asked, pushing up his thick-lensed eyeglasses onto the bridge of his nose. “They weren’t even close!”
“No one has ever gotten shots off inside our planet’s atmosphere before, but since the Sfinks arrived, the crystals have been going a little haywire. If it hadn’t been for your girlfriend here, we might all be dust.”
“Well, you know, I do what I can,” said Tara. “And just so you know, I’m not his girlfriend.”
“I don’t get it,” Klyk said. “If you’re having so much trouble with the Sfinks, why not call the IF?”
Narbok’s gelatinous forehead crinkled into a glob that resembled an eyebrow. “You don’t think we’ve tried? The Sfinks have set up jamming satellites all around Gamma Major. All communications are being blocked. We’ve tried to take them out, but they’re being heavily guarded.”
The alien general then turned his head to look at Kevin and Tara. Well, his head didn’t really turn. The neck just sort of twisted around and he was staring at them. “Now, what is this about the Sfinks and the one you call Max Greyson?”
“Back at our science camp on Earth, one of the Sfinks just appeared in this red light and stole our telepathy helmet,” Kevin said. “Klyk tagged him with his little space tracker and we followed him here. They have Max Greyson, this really awesome comic book writer who got abducted by aliens. And now he can see the future. He sent us a message that the galaxy’s in grave danger.”
Starship Bloopers Page 2
