Starship Bloopers

by John Kloepfer

“Well, we know I’m flying,” Warner said, and ran over to stand next to Kevin.

  “I’m in,” Tara said.

  “Me too,” said TJ.

  “Here,” Max said, giving them a detailed map of their route inside the Sfinks’ mother ship. “Take this and follow the path into sector seven.” The comic book author took a step back and saluted them. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you, too, Max,” Kevin said.

  TJ handed the shrink ray to Klyk and stood next to his friends.

  Kevin, Warner, Tara, and TJ all held hands and closed their eyes while Klyk lined them up in the viewfinder of the shrink ray. “My, how things come full circle sometimes.” Klyk cracked a smile and zapped the kids down.

  Kevin opened his eyes and looked up at Klyk, Phirf, and Drooq. They looked like hundred-foot-tall giants looming over them.

  “Good luck,” Klyk said. “You’re going to need it.”

  “We all are,” Kevin said and then turned and boarded the black battle cruiser with his three friends.

  Kevin sat next to Warner in the copilot seat. TJ and Tara were crammed in the backseat. TJ nudged her. “Scoot over,” he said. “You’re taking up too much space.”

  “Ready, Warner?” Kevin asked and took a deep breath.

  “All systems check,” Warner said. “We got the invisibility shield activated. This is going to be a stealth mission, guys. In and out as quick as we can.” He scanned the map Max had drawn for them. “We’re going to cruise into sector seven and take out their communication interceptor.”

  Warner hit the controls, and the cruiser leaped off the ground and soared into the air. It was a little wobbly at first, but he quickly got the hang of it.

  The flight smoothed out and Kevin looked down below.

  Klyk, Phirf, and Drooq were standing with Max at the base of the mountain range. Kevin watched from way up as the three aliens and the comic book author entered the side of the mountain through a small cavern.

  Down below they could see a giant bluish-green puddle of Glomm soldiers splattered on the ground around the mountain, squiggling and squirming, trying to regenerate.

  This better work, Kevin thought as they zoomed invisibly up toward the giant black sphere. Or else we are all going to be in big trouble.

  “See that open air dock on the bottom hemisphere?” Tara gave instructions. “Take that!”

  “Got it!” Warner cruised inside the Sfinks’ mother ship undetected.

  They flew through the port and into the depths of the outer shell.

  “Take the next right,” Tara said.

  Warner banked their invisible cruiser right at the end of the spaceship’s corridor. “Whoa,” he said, and pulled back on the throttle, slowing down as two Sfinks marched at them down the hallway.

  Warner swerved around the giant Sfink’s legs and then lifted the ship up as high as it could go without hitting the ceiling.

  “Left!” Tara shouted out. “Now!”

  Warner swiveled the controls with his left hand and they zipped around the corner.

  “Okay,” Tara said, “now take the next left, and the control center should be about halfway down the hallway.”

  They propelled around another corner and stopped in front of the door to the control room. They hovered in midair, looking through the window. Three Sfinks manned three different control panels inside the room.

  Kevin gulped. How were they supposed to get inside the room? They hadn’t thought of that. His only comfort was the fact that he knew they were protected by the invisibility shield.

  “Bingo!” Warner said, as one of the Sfinks rose out of his seat and made his way to the door.

  The Sfink walked out and Warner dipped down and glided in between the closing double doors.

  While the two other Sfinks stared at their computer screens, monitoring the communications system, Warner guided the cruiser to the main computer module and hovered over it for a moment.

  “Engage target,” Kevin said.

  Warner tapped the control panel, and the laser cannons lined up at the back of the Sfinks’ computer system.

  “Ready,” Kevin said.

  “Aim,” said TJ.

  “Fire!” Tara said.

  Warner launched the photon missiles at the back of the computer. The machine erupted into flames and blew the two Sfinks out of their chairs. The kids’ mini cruiser soared backward from the explosion, too.

  Warner spun them around toward the door and they whizzed toward it. Just then, the third Sfink ran back into the room to see what was wrong, and they zoomed past him and back into the hallway of sector seven.

  “Whooo!” Kevin shouted as they cruised down the corridor back the way they came.

  “Way to go, guys!” Tara high-fived TJ in the backseat.

  “We did it!” TJ shouted.

  “Next left!” Tara navigated them back toward the docking port.

  They sailed around the corner.

  WHAM!

  The face of an enormous Sfink came into the view and they nailed it at full speed. The humongous alien howled and whapped one of its six arms at the invisible craft.

  Their battle cruiser careened into the wall and clattered to the floor. Kevin felt a surge of energy fail around their ship as the invisibility shield shut off. This isn’t good, Kevin thought. His stomach dropped as he remembered he was the size of a mouse with a giant alien cat lurching after them.

  Now exposed, Warner hit the thrusters and lifted off the ground as the Sfink pulled out his space pistol and started shooting at them.

  They flew down the hallway, the Sfink sprinting behind them, firing photon blast after photon blast, trying to take them down.

  NYuRP! NYuRP! NYuRP!

  Warner dodged and weaved through the blasts whizzing by the ship.

  “Right!” Tara shouted, and they made a hard right, almost crashing into the far wall.

  They shot into the loading dock and Warner accelerated through the open hatch and back out into the atmosphere of planet Glomm.

  “Phew!” Kevin wiped the sweat from his forehead as they descended toward the cave of crystals. Their cruiser accelerated faster and faster, speeding away from the Sfinks’ mother ship.

  “Hold on to your hats,” Warner hollered.

  “We’re not wearing hats,” TJ said.

  “It’s just an expression,” said Tara.

  “Duh, I knew that,” said TJ. “I was just messing with him. . . .”

  “Come on, TJ,” Kevin said. “Get your head in the game.”

  “Okay, coach!” TJ quipped.

  Kevin raised his eyebrow, not amused. “Guys, focus. And be on the lookout for Sfinks.”

  Putting the ship into a lower gear, they flew into the back passage of the crystal cave. Their cruiser was silent. Their lights were off, and the cave was pitch-dark, making it hard to see anything that might be coming up ahead.

  They slowed at the end of the narrow opening, where the light from the glowing crystals shone through. The light flickered back and forth between orange and blue. Max’s interference must be working.

  Idling in midair, Warner turned the nose of the battle cruiser around the corner and saw two Sfinks marching along the dimly lit tunnel.

  They swerved through the small tunnel opening to the main cave, undetected by the roaming Sfinks. They hovered near the high ceiling. Down below Kevin could see the Sfinks’ leader, Miaow, approach his newfound fortune. Two Sfinks knelt down and placed a device in front of the pulsing blue-orange crystals. It was clear that they were trying to fix the device so they could see into the future, but the crystals were on the fritz. Miaow yelled at them in some high-pitched alien language.

  If only Miaow knew, Kevin chuckled to himself.

  “I think I see our friends,” Tara said. “Warner, seven o’clock.”

  In the back of the cave, Klyk, Phirf, and Drooq were hiding behind an outcropping of crystal stalagmites. They were circled around Max, who had on the telepathy helmet. The ma
n looked like he was in a trance as he transmitted the signal. Warner swooped down to join them.

  Kevin opened the hatch of the cruiser as they hovered at eye level with their alien friends. “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s working,” Drooq replied.

  “How’d it go out there?” Klyk asked.

  “The communication blocker is done-zo,” Warner said.

  “Now that the satellites are disabled,” Klyk said, “the IF should be on their way.”

  “How do you know that?” Kevin asked.

  “Whatever messages they intercepted would now finally get to their original destination,” Phirf said. “The IF is probably getting flooded with requests.”

  Phirf turned on his interstellar radio and dialed a number. “There’s a busy signal.”

  “Try to call someone else to see if it’s working,” Kevin said.

  Phirf dialed another number.

  “Who are you calling?” Warner asked.

  “Just my wife . . . ,” said Phirf.

  Tara made a funny face. “You have a wife?”

  Phirf put a finger to his mouth and shushed them. “Hey darling, just calling to see if the line’s working. Having some reception problems . . . Oh, you know, everything’s fine. In a little tangle with some Sfinks, but nothing to worry about. IF’s almost here. Yeah, yep . . . uh-huh . . . got it! Love you, too, baby!”

  They were all staring bug-eyed at the alien as he hung up the call.

  “What?” Phirf shrugged.

  Just then a deafening air-raid siren blared, echoing throughout the cave.

  “What’s the meaning of this? I want to know what’s going on meow, right meow!” Miaow threw his paws into the air, sending all his troops out of the cave to see what was wrong.

  But Kevin knew the IF was already here.

  As the Sfinks rushed outside, Warner steered their miniature cruiser after them, hovering at the mouth of the cave. There were IF spacecraft everywhere, filling up the sky. The federation forces had been dropped to the surface of the planet, and headed toward the crystal cave.

  The Sfinks weren’t backing down. The six-armed feline aliens charged, clashing with the IF troopers in a dazzling blaze of laser rays.

  The sky flashed with light as IF warships and the Sfinks’ battle cruisers blasted away at each other with their photon cannons.

  Kevin glanced down and saw three Sfinks setting up what looked like some kind of high-tech rocket launcher.

  “Over there!” Kevin shouted. “Shoot their rockets!”

  The Sfinks were aiming at a group of IF troops near the mountain range. Warner rotated their ship in the air, and TJ fired the cannons. The mini laser blasts sailed down and drilled the Sfinks’ weaponry. The alien rockets exploded and the Sfinks went flying, flailing through the air, their rocket launcher destroyed.

  “Yeah!” Kevin shouted. “Direct hit!”

  “You guys, let’s go back inside!” Tara said. “It’s too dangerous out here. Don’t forget we’re still little!”

  “Are you kidding?” Warner said. “This is awesome!”

  “Seriously!” Tara yelled.

  “Watch out!” TJ cried as a stray photon blast streaked toward them.

  Warner jerked the controls and they jolted out of the way as the laser beams scorched the mountainside.

  “Okay, that was a close one.” He whirled the ship around and flew back into the cave.

  Miaow was the only Sfink left inside. It was time to close in on the most repulsive villain in the galaxy. As Warner flew their miniature cruiser out into the open, Klyk, Phirf, Drooq, and Max stepped out from behind the crystals. Miaow was furious, nearly spitting with rage.

  “It’s over, Miaow,” Kevin said from the mini spaceship.

  “You little mouserats!” The Sfink leader turned to look up at the tiny ship. “What have you done?”

  “It’s kind of self-explanatory,” Warner said. “Isn’t it?”

  “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” Miaow said, letting out a hiss and a snarl.

  “Yeah, well, the future’s not always what it’s cracked up to be,” Warner said.

  “What do you know about the future, tiny little idiot boy?” Miaow said.

  “More than you, apparently,” Kevin said.

  “Well, I knew a little bit myself,” Miaow said coyly.

  “Knew?”

  “Obviously you didn’t know enough,” Kevin said.

  “It’s not about what I knew,” said Miaow. “It’s about what you’ll soon find out.”

  “I’m getting a little sick of this guy’s attitude,” Drooq said, and trained a freeze ray on the Sfink overlord.

  “Can you please stop pointing that at me?” Miaow said. “You’re making me itchy.”

  “What’s the matter, Miaow?” Drooq said. “Got fleas?”

  “I never!” Miaow sounded offended. “But it’s just that when I get itchy I get twitchy and when I get twitchy there’s no telling what I might do. . . .”

  Miaow held up something in his hand.

  “What’s that?”

  “What this?” Miaow said. “It’s just a little mechanism that—should I press this button right here—will blow this whole place to bits, crystals and all.”

  “You went through all this trouble just to blow it all up?”

  “No, you imbecile, this is my failsafe in case anything went wrong,” Miaow said. “I wanted the crystals so I could take over the galaxy, but somehow you stopped me from doing that. Well, if that’s how you want to play it, fine, but if I don’t get the crystals, then no one does.”

  “That’s crazy!” TJ yelled. “Those crystals share the same life force as the Glomms. If you destroy the crystals, the Glomms get wiped out, too!”

  “Really?” Miaow smiled. “Then I guess that’s just an added bonus. Never liked those stinking sacs of ooze.”

  “I’m about to ice this guy,” Drooq said.

  “That would be unwise,” said Miaow. “A Sfink’s reflexes are ten times faster than any of yours are. By the time you freeze me, you’d all be blown to bits.”

  “Take it easy now, Miaow.” Kevin said. “Let’s just talk this thing through.”

  Just then the IF ground troops stormed the mouth of the cave. Their ray guns were drawn. Kevin heard a voice call out in the Sfinks’ native language, a high-pitched, fast-paced string of irritating sounds, coming from a loudspeaker outside.

  “What are they saying?” Kevin asked Klyk from the cockpit of the cruiser.

  Klyk flipped his language chip to Sfink and listened, repeating, “We have the place surrounded. Put down your weapons. Come out of the cave with your hands up. You are under arrest.”

  “Stop!” Klyk shouted at them. “He’s got a bomb!”

  The alien SWAT team paused on the threshold of the cave.

  “Miaow, if you set that bomb off, you’re going to die, too,” Kevin pleaded.

  “I’m pretty sure I’ll survive,” said Miaow.

  “Oh yeah, how’s that?” TJ said. “What makes you invincible?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Miaow. “Maybe the fact that I’m not even here.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re standing right in front of us,” Kevin said.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m back on the ship.”

  “I told you he was crazy,” Tara said.

  “Crazy enough to design an android that looked exactly like me? Send him out to do my dirty work, so I never get hurt? You can call it crazy, but I prefer to call it genius.”

  The Miaow in front of them then pressed a button on his cheekbone to reveal the computerized circuitry behind his face, running through his whole body. The Sfink in front of them wasn’t really a Sfink at all. It was only a robot Sfink. It didn’t matter if it got blown to bits!

  “I’ll tell you what,” Miaow said. “You have impressed me. So I’m feeling playful and in a fun mood. What would really impress me is if you and you
r gang can get out of the cave before it goes boom.”

  “He’s gonna do it!” Klyk screamed up at the kids’ mini cruiser. “Get outta here!” Drooq and Phirf sprang into action, pulling on Max and running out of the cave.

  Warner hit the accelerator and spun them around in the air. The engines thrust them full-throttle toward the crowd of IF soldiers. The IF team ran toward the opening of the cave.

  As they flew out, the bomb detonated and the blast shook the ship. Warner lost control in the huge puff of dirt and rocks, and they slammed hard into the rubble. Below them, Klyk, Phirf, Drooq, and Max went flying wildly into the air from the blast.

  The kids waited in suspense, buried in the alien rubble. What if the shrink ray had been destroyed, or there was no one left to make them normal size again? It was completely dark underneath the dirt—what if they were stuck here?

  “Is everyone okay?” Kevin asked in the pitch black.

  “I think so,” Warner said.

  “I’m good,” TJ said.

  “Me, too,” said Tara.

  A few seconds later, their battle cruiser shifted and lifted up. Daylight shone through the windshield of the cockpit. The nose of their ship was pointed straight down at the ground, and Kevin had to hold on tight as everything shook.

  A disgusting alien face stared at them through the viewport.

  “Drooq!” Kevin and his friends cheered as their alien buddy set them on the ground. Kevin opened the side door of the cockpit and looked up at Klyk, Drooq, Phirf, and Max, who was alive but appeared to be in his own world. “What happened to the crystals?”

  “Gone, I’m afraid.” Phirf hung his head, and Klyk cast his eyes down at the ground.

  “What about the Glomms?” Tara asked from the back of the cruiser.

  The three aliens shrugged, a bit shell-shocked and covered in dirt.

  “We have to go check. Warner, take us up to the command center,” Kevin said, closing the hatch as his friend started the engines.

  They rose up off the ground and flew to the bombed-out command center. Their tiny ship cruised over to the spot where General Narbok had been.

  There seemed to be no life in the gelatinous glob that was once the head of the Glomms. Kevin heard a sniffle from the backseat. He turned around and Tara and TJ were both starting to cry.