Starship Bloopers
Page 10
Kevin’s eyes welled up a bit as he stared down at the puddles of Glomms splattered across the floor.
“Good-bye, Narbok,” Kevin said and wiped the tears from his eyes.
On the floor below, Narbok’s eyeballs opened up and his mouth took shape in the gathering puddle.
“I’m not going anywhere,” the Glommian general said to the ship floating above him.
“Narbok! How are you alive?” Warner said. “The Sfinks destroyed the crystals. . . .”
Narbok gasped. “They did?”
“No, they didn’t,” TJ said. “Look!”
They all peered out of the command center, down to the demolished mountain range. Through the cracks and crevices of the rubble, a faint blue glow shone up at the sky.
“How is that possible?” Warner asked. “Miaow bombed the place sky-high!”
“And yet the crystals remain,” Narbok said. He was slowly starting to gain his form back on the ground.
“The core must be indestructible,” Warner said.
“Or stronger than we thought,” said Tara.
“Or maybe the future just can’t be destroyed,” TJ said loftily.
Kevin didn’t know how the crystals had survived, and for the first time in his life, when it came to something scientific, he didn’t really care. Sure, he wanted to know the answer, but he could wait to find out.
You don’t have to know everything all at once, he thought. And it dawned on him that being a know-it-all could be a very dangerous business.
A new sort of wisdom took him over as one of the Intragalactic Federation starships descended over the wrecked command center. Klyk, Drooq, Phirf, and Max walked down the high-tech hover steps and onto the platform.
Warner lowered their mini cruiser to the floor, and the tiny science campers jumped out. From behind the group, a fourth alien walked down to greet them. “Kevin, Warner, Tara, TJ,” Klyk said. “I’d like to introduce you to the commanding officer of the Intragalactic Federation, Byzi.”
“Hello, sir.” Kevin nodded respectfully.
“Hi,” said TJ.
“Howdy,” said Tara.
“Yo,” Warner said. “Whatup, man?”
Byzi looked like the type of alien you might see in a Hollywood movie: short, gray, wrinkled skin, spindly arms and legs, wide head with big black saucer eyes.
The head of the IF gestured to Klyk.
“Oh yeah, before we forget.” Klyk pulled out the unshrink ray and aimed it at Kevin and the gang. He fiddled with the controls. “Uh-oh . . .”
“What’s that mean?” TJ asked.
“I think it’s broken,” Klyk said. “Looks like you guys are going to be itty bitty until we find another one.”
“Are you kidding me?” Warner asked. “I’m gonna be the smallest kid in school!”
“I’m just messing with you,” Klyk said. “It works.”
“Check it out, guys!” Tara said. “Klyk made a joke!”
“Hahaha,” said TJ. “So funny I forgot to laugh.”
Klyk aimed the alien device at the kids and zapped them back to full size.
“What brave humans here stand before me,” Byzi said. “Thanks to your efforts, the galaxy is a safe place once again.”
Byzi cleared his throat and continued.
“We now have the Sfinks under control, and we’re going to make sure they never get out of hand again,” the head of the IF went on.
From atop the bombed-out command center, Kevin looked down on the scene below. The Glomms were beginning to rise from their puddles and take shape once again. The IF forces were rounding up the Sfinks and throwing them into spaceships to take them to space prison, where they belonged.
Kevin looked up, and the sky was calm and free from the Sfinks’ warships. The federation starships hovered in the atmosphere, some of them docking on the Sfinks’ mother ship to raid the remaining Sfinks. Most of the Sfinks were already on the ground under arrest.
The nasty feline aliens each had six arms shackled behind their back, hissing and snarling at the alien police officers barking orders at them.
“Hopefully we don’t run out of handcuffs.” Byzi chuckled.
“Good one, sir.” Klyk laughed a little aggressively.
Byzi ignored him and looked up at the kids.
“I commend you for your excellence in the heat of battle and hereby make you honorary members of the Intragalactic Federation.” He produced four pins in his long spindly hand, and Kevin and his friends accepted them.
Warner looked at his IF pin, turned it in his hands, and made a face. “That’s all we get? A lousy pin?”
Kevin elbowed his friend, while trying to keep a smile on his face. “This is the head of the IF, dude. Just take the pin and say thanks.”
“What else can we give you?” Byzi said. “Anything at all?”
Kevin looked at his friends, and they all nodded at one another.
“We want to go home,” Kevin said. “Back to Earth.”
“Wait,” said Warner. “Was that what you guys were thinking? ’Cause I totally thought we were trying to get our own spaceship.”
“We can’t give you a spaceship,” Byzi said.
“Aww, man!” Warner groaned.
“Your planet doesn’t belong to the Intragalactic Federation,” he said. “Your leaders would rather lie about the existence of others in the galaxy outside their own people. Absolutely ridiculous. You are the first humans to ever be members of the IF. Just don’t tell your leaders. I hear they can be pretty cruel to people who believe in aliens.”
“But how are we going to get home without a spaceship?” TJ asked.
“We got you covered,” Klyk said, and Phirf and Drooq both nodded.
“These boys will take you home in a brand new spacecraft. But right now I have to get back to work. There is a lot of cleanup to be done. And don’t even get me started on the paperwork.”
Byzi marched back up into his starship and turned to face them. “Farewell, young humans, and thank you again for your service to the galaxy.”
The starship doors closed, and Byzi flew away back to the surface.
A few minutes later, a brand new, gleaming space cruiser arrived to take them home.
“Sweet!” Warner said.
“What do you say, guys?” Klyk said. “I think we should let Warner fly home.”
“Really?” Warner’s eyes lit up.
“Nah!” Phirf and Drooq both laughed, weird alien cackles, but laughter nonetheless.
“I’m starting to like these guys,” Tara said.
“Ready to go?” Kevin asked, turning to his friends.
“Yeah,” said Tara. “We totally are.”
Kevin walked up to Narbok, who was half formed on the floor, along with the other Glomms, who were slowly but surely putting themselves back together.
“I don’t know how we did it, but we did it,” Kevin said.
“Because of you, Kevin,” Narbok said. “You believed we could win, and so we did.”
“It was a little more than that,” he said. “We all had a lot to do with it.”
Kevin reached down to Narbok and shook his hand, which was growing out of a blob on the floor. He then knelt down and gave him a hug. His face squished into the side of the Glomm general’s goopy skin. He let go, and Tara tried to give Narbok a hug, too, but Kevin stopped her.
“Not a good idea,” he whispered. “Kinda nasty, actually.”
“Well, so long!” She waved good-bye instead.
They turned away from the alien general and walked onto their new spaceship.
Kevin wished he had one of those fizzer drinks to try again. He bet it would taste pretty good right about now.
The spaceship door closed behind him, and Kevin sat down next to his friends and Max while Klyk, Phirf, and Drooq started the engine.
The spaceship then lifted off the ground and soared up into the sky, away from the distant alien planet, and into the wormhole superhighway that would take
them home.
The spacecraft entered Earth’s atmosphere in the middle of the night. They had been gone for what felt like a day at the most, but Kevin soon realized it had been a few more than that.
When Klyk lowered them down over their science camp, Kevin and his friends looked down and saw the whole area lit up with floodlights. There were police cars and search parties all over the place.
“Holy cow,” TJ said. “Are they looking for us?”
“I don’t know, man,” Kevin said.
“Klyk, can we get some surveillance down below?”
Klyk hit a few buttons and zoomed in on the scene beneath them. There were police questioning all the counselors. Mr. Dimpus, the camp director, was surrounded by cops in blue uniforms. Alexander, the nerd bully, was in a straitjacket, and was getting lifted into an ambulance. All the other campers and their parents were off in search parties.
“Looks like we’re going to have some explaining to do,” Tara said.
“Or,” Klyk said, “you could just say you got lost in the woods.”
“Are you kidding me?” Warner said. “How are we not going to tell everyone that we saved the universe?”
“Because you might end up like that kid down there going to the loony bin,” Max said.
“Good point,” said TJ.
“I’ll drop you off away from everybody, and you can walk back,” Klyk said. “Sound good?”
“I can’t believe this is it,” Kevin said. “Klyk, Drooq, Phirf. I’m gonna miss you guys.”
“Awww,” Tara said. “This is sad.”
“I know, right?” TJ said, wiping a tear from his eye. “I hate good-byes.”
“We’ll miss you guys, too,” they said.
“And Max,” said Warner. “Do you think we’re ever going to get another comic book about us?”
Max laughed. “Eventually,” he said. “But probably not as fast . . . don’t worry about me. Go back to your families; I’m sure they’re worried sick.”
“Right,” said Kevin.
Klyk guided the spacecraft down to the earth’s surface, away from the hectic bustle of the search parties. The kids hopped down into the dirt of their home planet.
Kevin glanced back for one last look at the spaceship as it soared off, zipping away into the sky. The four kids walked through the woods until they came upon the search party headquarters at the center of camp.
They paused at the edge of the forest, taking it all in. Soon they would be back with their friends and reunited with their parents. There would be a million and one questions they would have to answer. Right now, they had no idea how they were going to answer them—but they were scientific geniuses and heroes of the galaxy—they would figure it out.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Hayley Wagreich, Josh Bank, and Sara Shandler for helping me figure out the future of the galaxy; to Alice Jerman and Emilia Rhodes for pushing me past the limits of the solar system; and to Ryan Harbage for his zen-like understanding of the cosmos. You have all helped save the known universe from complete and utter destruction, and for that we are all grateful.
BACK ADS
CREDITS
COVER ART BY NICK EDWARDS
COPYRIGHT
GALAXY’S MOST WANTED #3: STARSHIP BLOOPERS. Copyright © 2016 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943567
ISBN 978-0-06-223106-2
EPub Edition © January 2016 ISBN 9780062231086
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FIRST EDITION
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