“Mildred, you say? Mildred . . . ,” mused Gluck. His good eye rolled back, as if looking for something inside his own skull. . . . “Well, I’ll be plucked and peppered!” he exclaimed, lowering his weapon. “Do I have the Kosmo Kidd, Spacetronaut, right here in my very own Gas-’Em-Up?” He tilted his head back, and let out a crow that rang off the stone walls.
“Sh-sh! Keep a lid on it, fella!” whispered Kosmo.
“I trust you’ll forgive an ol’ bird being cautious in these unkindly times.” He hobbled over to a wall covered in posters and flyers printed in red, white, and black ink. Lily could barely make out the words. She was an A-plus reader for her age, but the lighting in Gluck’s was D-minus, and the print was small. Still, her eyes managed to pick out a few slogans, like:
At the top of every poster was the same emblem: a coiling black mustache.
Gluck ripped down a sheet of paper, and waved it at Kosmo. “Young man, could I trouble you for an autograph?” Kosmo took a yellow crayon out of a pouch on his belt, and scribbled on the paper.
“Can I see that?” asked Lily. He handed it to her. Between a printed picture of Kosmo’s face, and the words “Kosmo Wuz Heer” written in yellow crayon, she read the printed words:
Gluck lovingly folded the paper and tucked it into his breast pocket.
“Who’s the Mean-Man of Morgo?” asked Lily, and that name was enough to sap the twinkle right out of Gluck’s eye.
“Never mind about him,” said Kosmo, but Gluck had already worked up the courage to answer, “The Scarlet Sourpuss, they call him. Menace of the Murky Way. Why, the Mean-Man of Morgo’s about the evilest, drattedest, kid-snatchinest fiend that ever there was. He’s got a face as red as the blood in your veins, and more meanness in that long, twisty black mustache o’ his than all the other space villains in Outer Outer Space put together. Up there in his gloomy gray tower, scooping up all the stray kiddies he can get his evil red hands on!”
“What for?” asked Lily.
“Beats me, but it ain’t for tiddlywinks!”
“That’ll do, bird!” said Kosmo. “No need to go scaring the lad.”
“I’m not scared,” said Lily, but before she could even finish that short sentence, she found herself plenty scared. The blast of a foghorn shook the walls of the asteroid, so low that it was more felt than heard. Gluck’s wattle shook, and his good eye glazed over with terror. Outside the entrance to the station, a tide of red fog rolled in, blotting out the stars and asteroids.
“The Murky Way!” Gluck squawked.
“Looks like it caught itself a whiff after all, rookie!” said Kosmo.
A cement wall, covered with snaking pipes and steaming vents, rolled by outside the entrance. Lily guessed it was the side of some impossibly huge, unpleasant spaceship. It jerked to a halt, spurting steam, and hovered there, rumbling from deep inside its mechanical guts.
“That’ll be the Morgonites, out prowlin’ for kiddos to haul back to their boss, ol’ you-know-who. Batten down, little chickens, and I’ll try to get rid of ’em. And if you’ve got any kiddish thoughts scampering about in them little heads o’ yours, stomp ’em out pronto, or those Morgonites will smell it on you.”
A gangplank clanged open, blasting cold light into the station. Lily and Kosmo crawled into Mildred. Kosmo sealed the hatch, and they balled up on the floor. Lily peered over the dashboard. Through the windshield, she saw two men in tall red helmets, with long gray faces, and long gray cloaks that hung all the way around their bodies. One carried a weird red space baton, with a trumpet shape at one end. The other had what looked like an extra-large—or, kid-size—butterfly net. They marched down the gangplank into the station, chanting in dreary unison:
Oobly-Eye, Oobly-Oo,
Find ’em, fetch ’em!
Rack ’em, stretch ’em!
Morgonites? Lily mouthed. Kosmo nodded.
Oobly-Eye, Oobly-Oo,
Seek ’em, find ’em!
Scoop and bind ’em!
Slithering alongside the Morgonites, a wisp of red fog branched off from the big fog outside, sniffing, seeking, zigzagging across the floor. The Morgonite with the weird baton loomed over Gluck.
“Decrepit yard-fowl!” he barked, in a low, bossy, bored tone. “We detect an air of juvenility on these premises.”
“Juvenility?” said Gluck. “What, like young’uns and such? Why, we don’t get much o’ that up this way.” Lily couldn’t hear much of what the old rooster said, but it must have done the trick, because the two Morgonites turned back toward the gangplank. But then, from the back seat:
“Mommy!” cried Alfie, sitting upright, wide-eyed, chin quivering. Kosmo and Lily clapped all four of their hands over his yap, but it was too late. The Morgonites spun around. The red wisp darted straight at the windshield, and slid back and forth across the glass, sniffing. . . .
“Who occupies this derelict vehicle?” barked the net-carrying Morgonite, tapping Mildred’s hull.
“Oh, there’s nobody at all occupying it,” clucked the rooster. “That’s just some ol’ junker I keep lyin’ around for parts. Hasn’t run in donkey’s years!”
“Then explain the utterance.”
“Utterance, you say? I’m sure I didn’t hear any utterance.”
“I distinctly heard this vehicle say, ‘Mommy,’ as in, ‘I want my Mommy!’ or ‘Mommy! I crave sugar-rich fodder.’ ”
“Oh, well, I reckon I musta left the radio on, is all, last time I was tinkerin’.” He jostled the rocket with his talon. “Ahem—I said, it must’ve been the radio you heard!” He gave the rocket another kick.
Lily muffled her mouth behind Nonna’s teacup, and mimicked the sound of radio static: “Fsshhhh . . .” Then she spoke in a high, squeaky voice, like the kid from the Sugar-Roos commercial that always played during Trip Darrow: Star Pilot: “Gee whiz, Mommy! That sure is some big crunch!” Then, speaking as low as she could, she imitated the announcer: “Remember, kids! For that sweet crunch you crave, make it a Sugar-Roos morning! Fffshhh—”
Gluck silenced the rocket with another kick. “Funny, fussy contraptions, those ol’ radios. Signal just comes and goes as it pleases!”
Lily heard a thump, as one of the Morgonites slapped something on Mildred’s windshield. Then she heard their chanting voices fade back the way they came:
Oobly-Eye, Oobly-Oo . . .
Finally she heard the rumble of the ship fading away.
Tap-tap. “All clear, kiddos,” clucked Gluck. Lily peeked over the dashboard, through the windshield. Sure enough, where there had been red fog and gray cement blocking the passage, now there was a clear view of stars and asteroids.
Kosmo popped the hatch.
“Well, old bird,” he said. “For a rooster, you’re sure no chicken.”
“Much obliged, Spacetronaut. Oh!” he exclaimed, handing Kosmo a slip of red paper from the windshield. “Morgonites left you a little something.” Kosmo looked it over. . . .
“Bleeding parking ticket!” he sneered. He stuffed it in his mouth, chewed it, then spat the soggy wad at the wall. SPLAT! It hit the Mean-Man of Morgo—printed on a recruitment poster for Morgo Industries—right between his scowling eyes and stuck there.
CHAPTER 9
A Whisper of Whiskers
Mildred arced out of the Gas-’Em-Up, leaving a trail of sparks, and one cheerfully waving rooster, in her wake. . . .
• • •
Meanwhile, the soggy SPLAT! of Kosmo’s spit wad had sent an invisible ripple through the vapors of the Murky Way. The echo traveled straight to the chilled heart of the nebula, to a curling precipice of red smoke, where a cement tower loomed. On the top floor, the SPLAT! echoed its way through an enormous circular window, into the secret laboratory of His Meanness, the Mean-Man of Morgo.
The lights were off. Techno-sorcerous gizmos and sharp tools glinted red in the nebula’s glow. In their midst, slumped and slumbering in his high-backed chair, darker than the darkness all around him, sat His Mea
nness. His snore sounded like a rattlesnake on the loose, and with each breath, the two sides of his mustache coiled and uncoiled like lizard tongues.
At last the SPLAT! ’s exhausted echo—dwindled to almost nothing after its long journey through the Murky Way—reached those sleeping whiskers, and managed to tickle them ever so slightly, before snuffing out forever. But that was all it took.
PWAANG! The mustache sprang to attention, spearing the darkness. . . .
• • •
Now, this might seem like a strange way for a mustache to behave, but not if you know a thing or two about Morgothronian anatomy. The whiskers on their faces work as antennae, tuned in to the vibrations of childish mischief, monkeyshines, and tomfoolery, which are the bane of every Morgothronian’s existence. And in Outer Outer Space, there was one frequency more patently, potently juvenile than all the rest. . . .
• • •
The eyes of the Mean-Man jolted open. His hands groped blindly through a residue of nightmares, until he fully awoke to the meaning of his mustache’s message: Wherever the little scamp had been, whatever he’d been up to lately in the far corners of the universe, Kosmo Kidd had come home.
WE INTERRUPT THIS BOOK WITH AN URGENT MESSAGE FROM HIS MEANNESS, THE MEAN-MAN OF MORGO:
ATTENTION READER:
SINCE YOU HAVE REACHED PAGE 53 OF THIS INFANTILE DRIVEL INVOLVING WIND-UP ROCKETS AND TALKING CHICKENS, WITHOUT FEELING THE NEED TO DEPOSIT IT INTO THE GARBAGE, I MUST CONCLUDE THAT YOU ARE EITHER:
A. A CHILD, OR
B. A CHILDISH GROWN-UP
. . . NEITHER OF WHICH HAS ANY PLACE IN THE TOT-FREE GALAXY WE AT MORGO INDUSTRIES ARE BRINGING ABOUT.
I HEREBY ORDER YOU TO CLOSE THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY AND CAST IT INTO THE NEAREST WASTE RECEPTACLE OR (PREFERABLY) FIRE*. FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY RESULT IN YOUR DETAINMENT AND REHABILITATION AT THE HANDS OF MORGO INDUSTRIES.
UNKINDEST REGARDS,
MMM
*MINORS SEEK ADULT ASSISTANCE BEFORE INCINERATING THIS BOOK
WARNING:
BY TURNING THE PREVIOUS PAGE, YOU ARE NOW IN DIRECT DISOBEDIENCE OF MY ORDERS.
BE ADVISED THAT IF YOU TURN ONE MORE PAGE, I WILL BE OBLIGED TO DISPATCH MY OFFICERS TO YOUR PRESENT LOCATION, WHEREUPON YOU WILL BE APPREHENDED AND DELIVERED INTO MY CUSTODY, TO BE DEALT WITH AT MY DISCRETION.
SO, DO NOT TURN ANOTHER PAGE!
(I REALLY, REALLY MEAN IT.)
SCOWLINGLY,
MMM
VERY WELL, JUVENILE. YOU ASKED FOR IT.
READ ON AT YOUR PERIL!
PERTURBEDLY YOURS,
MMM
CHAPTER 10
To Fort Spacetronaut
The barrier of red fog was finally starting to thin and pull apart, leaving an opening for Mildred to zip across, into the heart of downtown Outer Outer Space. A pack of hot rod rockets growled by, rattling Mildred’s hull, and trailing black smoke. Mildred revved her engine, and roared straight to the head of the pack. They weaved between clacking billiard ball planets, skimmed tufts of cotton candy nebulae, and dodged the spinning, rocking rings of Planet Tilt-A-World.
They sailed over a sparkling mountain range of rock candy asteroids, when Mildred split off from the others, and plunged into a dense forest of floating trees, whose gnarled roots dangled like old men’s feet over the starry night. Branches whipped the windshield as Kosmo steered Mildred, pitching and yawing, through the thickening wilderness. Soon the trees were clustered so close that Lily could no longer see any stars between them. At last they reached the shining, golden heart of the forest, cradled in the knobby arms of the tallest, twistiest tree: Fort Spacetronaut, a tree-borne tin space shack, with trash-can-lid satellite dishes, and wire hanger antennae.
“Mildred, set entry course,” said Kosmo.
“Aye, Captain,” chirped Mildred (but what Lily heard was more like SPWOP-dibbit). Kosmo throttled forward, and Mildred hurtled toward a small opening in the lower half of the tree house. She barreled through, clipping the edge in a spray of splinters, skidded along a bumpy deck, and slammed to a halt against the far wall of a small hangar.
Kosmo opened the hatch and slid out of the rocket. Lily followed, coughing on the dust stirred up by their landing.
“Welcome home, old man!” Kosmo hoisted Alfie, still clutching Colonel Shanks, out of the rocket. “Whew! What’s that smell?”
“That’s Agent Argos. I hope you have diapers in Fort Spacetronaut,” she said.
Kosmo placed Alfie at the base of a fire pole. “Right, old man. Up you go!” Zhoop! The toddler slid up the pole, through a hole in the ceiling. Kosmo was about to follow, but stopped, and looked at Lily in her nightgown, with the faded blue flower pattern, and frilly trim around the shoulders.
“Hang on, son,” he said. “Make yourself presentable.” From a rack on the wall, he handed her a pair of silver, space-age overalls.
“What’s wrong with what I have on?”
“Spacetronaut Rule Number One.” Kosmo pointed to a message, slapped on the wall next to the fire pole in drippy white paint:
“What? How come?”
“ ’Cause females bring nothing but trouble, that’s how come.”
“Well, too bad, ’cause I am one!”
“Right, lad. Time to drop the charade!”
“It’s not a charade. I am a—”
“Sh-sh!” Kosmo leaned close and whispered. “See here, lad! All that ‘I’m a lady’ talk might pass muster back on Planet Earth, but this is Outer Outer Space. Now, do you want to be a Spacetronaut, or don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then make like a man, and slip on them Space Trousers.” Kosmo grabbed the pole and—Zhoop!—up he slid.
Lily stared at the Space Trousers.
She put her left foot in. She put her right foot in. She pulled up the trousers, tucked in her nightgown, and looped the straps over her shoulders.
She checked her reflection in Mildred’s windshield. The trousers were baggy, and bunched in weird places. No matter how she shifted and twisted, the bulges never went away, they just popped up somewhere else. She got the feeling Mildred was looking at her.
“What!” said Lily.
But Mildred said nothing. Lily took hold of the pole, and—Zhoop!—up she went.
CHAPTER 11
The Spacetronauts
Lily slid up through a hole, onto a balcony overlooking the Main Command Deck of Fort Spacetronaut. “Looking sharp, rookie!” said Kosmo. “Welcome to Fort Spacetronaut. Not bad, eh?”
Not bad at all! The deck buzzed with the hijinks of rowdy young spacemen. There must have been at least a dozen boys, from the very small, to the slightly less small. Some were just back from, or just heading out to, jaunts amongst the stars, in fishbowl space helmets.
Two more were out on the porch, having a shooting contest.
“Pull!” cried a Spacetronaut marksman with a vaporizer rifle. Another pulled a lever, launching a fleet of miniature flying saucers into the night sky. The marksman shot every one of them out of the air like clay pigeons.
Another bunch of Spacetronauts sat on the floor, playing an explosive game of Dyna-Marbles that left all their faces blackened, and filled the air with the aroma of gunpowder.
The costumes of the Spacetronauts covered the gamut from buckaroos to buccaneers, but each and every outfit had one thing in common: a cutout star stitched to the tummy.
“Only the real crackerjack space chaps wear the star of the Spacetronauts,” Kosmo explained. Then he leaned out over the balcony and bellowed:
“Oy, Spacetronauts!” Every boy in the fort dropped what he was doing, and performed the Spacetronaut Salute, an elaborate three-part routine ending with one finger blasting skyward like a rocket, while mouthing the fffwoosh of the engine.
“Behold, lads: Agent Argos, back from the dreaded prison planet Earth, all in one piece!” He stood Alfie on an apple crate, for all to see. “What do you say, old man? Any wise words for your old crew?”
&n
bsp; The Spacetronauts waited, breathless. What new sights had he seen? What perils had he braved? What wisdom had he found in the far reaches of space?
Alfie opened his mouth. The Spacetronauts leaned in. . . .
But they got no wise words from Agent Argos’s mouth that day, only a strand of drool that rolled off his chin and stretched all the way to the deck. Lily covered her mouth to hide her smile, or maybe to keep the words “I told you so” from slipping out.
Kosmo stammered, “He’s . . . uh . . . had a bit of a trauma, see. Maybe it’s best we just give him some room to recover.” The toddler climbed down from the balcony, and the Spacetronauts parted, holding their noses, as Alfie tottered toward the nearest shiny object.
“But!” shouted Kosmo, with a triumphant clap. “I couldn’t have done it without our newest recruit, Lily Something!”
“Lupino,” Lily said, and performed the Spacetronaut salute—fffwoosh—nailing it on her first try.
“He’s an Earth Man, but let’s not hold that against him. He’s right clever, good in a pinch, and a fine barber. See there?” He pointed at Lily’s head. “It’s called the ‘Trip Darrow.’ ” The Spacetronauts murmured and nodded. “Play your marbles right, he might just give you a trim!”
Lily saw two boys in the corner, scowling in her direction, whispering things that, from the looks of it, weren’t too friendly. One was a tall, freckly boy in a coonskin cap, red cowboy boots, fringed gloves, and a rhinestone-encrusted space onesie. The other boy wore a chef’s toque, and had a mustache that looked like it was smeared on with shoe polish.
“Right, lads!” shouted Kosmo, hopping down onto the main deck. “Space villainy ain’t gonna battle itself, is it? Back to work!”
Lily & Kosmo in Outer Outer Space Page 3
