“No-no-no. Ze Coleopter-copter!”
“I think you mean chiropractor,” said Elliot. “But isn’t that like a crazy masseuse? I don’t see how that’ll help us—”
“No! No! No!” cried Jean-Remy. He took a moment to catch his breath. Then he spoke each syllable very slowly. “Now listen. KOH . . . LEE . . . OP . . . TER . . . COP . . . TER. Come. We will show you.”
Patti, Jean-Remy, and Harrumphrey led Elliot and Leslie deeper into the laboratory. They were taken through a small, nondescript door that emerged into yet another warehouse-like space even bigger than the cavernous laboratory they had just left. Once again, the children were reminded of the impossible dimensions of a building built with creature physics.
“We have a prototype stored in here,” said Patti, “but Harrumphrey’s right. None of us have the know-how—or the guts—to fly it.”
“What prototype?” asked Leslie. “Where is it? This just looks like a deserted airplane hangar.”
“An airplane hangar, yes,” said Jean-Remy. “Zat is a good comparison. But it is not deserted.” He flitted to the wall and tapped an intricate combination into a wall-mounted view-screen.
After a moment’s silence, the floor began to tremble.
Leslie grabbed Elliot’s arm. “What’s happening?”
“Watch,” said Harrumphey, “and stand back.”
Before their eyes, a vast spiral of blue light, as broad as an Olympic-sized swimming pool, glowed on the floor. The lines of the spiral broadened and separated as a massive circle opened up to reveal . . . nothing. There was nothing there but a vast darkness. Leslie squeezed Elliot’s arm. They sensed they were staring into the most bottomless of bottomless pits. They swayed on their feet. They felt dizzy. Dimly flickering stars appeared before their eyes.
Stars!
Those weren’t sparkles of dizziness floating before their eyes. They were actual stars! Staring into the darkness below them, Elliot and Leslie saw the glitter and swirl of countless distant suns.
Elliot was breathless. “You’ve got a whole universe down there!”
Harrumphrey chuckled. “Not even close. Barely enough room for a galaxy! Maybe two, in a pinch.”
“A g-galaxy?” Elliot stammered. He tried (and failed) to stifle the quaver in his voice.
“But of course!” said Jean-Remy. “Down zere is where we keep our very biggest inventions!”
“Inventions . . . like w-what?” asked Leslie.
“Like ze Coleopter-copter!” said Jean-Remy. Again, his tiny fingers danced across the glowing controls, and suddenly, the stars began to vanish. Something was blotting them out, rising to the surface of the empty circle. It was something huge.
“Look,” said Leslie. “It’s . . . it’s a . . . it’s a . . .”
“A beetle!” cried Elliot.
It was an enormous insect, its huge body covered with emerald-green forewings, veined with streaks of yellow. The head was entirely black, with two enormous horns protruding from the upper and lower jaws, one on top of the other. The upper horn was largest, looming forward nearly as long as the rest of its body. It curved up and then down to a pointed tip, while the lower horn arced upward to meet it at two-thirds its length. On either side of the head, at the point where the horns connected, were its eyes—shining, impassive, and dark.
For a moment, Elliot and Leslie were stunned. They expected the enormous creature to crawl off the rising platform and gobble them up. But the giant beetle didn’t move. Then they saw why.
“It’s not alive,” said Elliot. “It’s a machine.”
It took a bit of squinting to make out the rivets that speckled its metal skin, and the huge gears hidden in the shadows of its mouth. In fact, it looked like a beetle in every respect but one. It was huge. Jean-Remy had been serious when he called this place an airplane hangar. The beetle was the size of a jet fighter!
The platform supporting the monstrous insect locked into place. The Coleopter-copter rocked gently on its three pairs of improbably narrow legs, all of them barbed with claws at each joint. The whirlpool once again vanished under the floor, and the room returned to an eerie silence—even more eerie than before, thanks to the incredible mechanical beast that stood before them.
“Elliot, Leslie,” said Harrumphery. “Meet Hercules, our newest flying machine.”
Elliot snapped his fingers. “Hercules! Of course! As in Hercules beetle, the biggest of them all!”
“Precisely,” said Harrumphrey. “Coleoptera is the scientific name for the order of insects commonly known as beetles.”
“So,” said Leslie, “what you’re saying is you built a jetliner-sized beetle that lives in a glowing galaxy and that no one can pilot because it’s too dangerous to fly?”
Harrumphrey nodded. “That about sums it up.”
“And what made you think,” Leslie went on, “this was a good way to get to Simmersville without being noticed?”
Patti shrugged as if that was the easiest question anyone had asked all day. “Because it’s undetectable,” she said.
“Undetectable?!” Elliot spluttered. “It’s gigantic!”
“Also,” Leslie added, “shaped like a beetle.”
“It’s the craziest flying machine ever,” Elliot protested. “How could anyone miss it?”
“Quite easily, in fact,” said Patti, “thanks to my design. The underbelly is camouflaged to look like the night sky. The onboard computers record what’s above it and then project it across the bottom. It could be flying right over your heads and you’d never know it!”
“And what about radar?” asked Elliot. “It’s sure to pick you up.”
“Actually, no,” said Jean-Remy. “Zat is precisely ze reason we built it. A Coleopter-copter is utterly invisible to radar!”
“That’s impossible!”
“Exactly,” said Harrumphrey, “which is why it works. You see, what not a lot of people know about computers is that they come with a keen sense of the impossible.” Harrumphey spread his stumpy legs and thrust out his chin. It was the professorial posture he took whenever explaining the trickier concepts of creature science. “We creatures, on the other hand, we’ve known about the Computational Plausibility Field for years. In a nutshell, computers are only as good as what they believe. For example, you know when you get one of those error messages? ‘Illegal operation,’ it says and up pops the ‘fail whale.’ This usually happens because you’ve asked your computer to do something it just doesn’t believe is possible. Or, to use the more technical term, you’ve ‘ruptured its Plausibility Field.’ You’ve asked it to do something, but—even if that thing may be theoretically possible—the computer’s thinking, ‘What do you take me for? A wristwatch with a calculator?’ What you see is the error message, but believe me—that’s really what the computer’s thinking. You’d be surprised how skeptical they can be. And the same goes for radar systems, which are basically just computers with ears. Oh, sure, they can detect all kinds of things. But what if they detect something they just don’t believe in—like, say a two-hundred-foot mechanical beetle that flies by opening a set of gigantic elytra and flapping its inner wings? Lemme tell you, when radar picks up something like that, it blows that radar’s mind. Boom! You see what I mean?”
“Barely,” said Leslie.
Elliot sighed. “I think you just ruptured my Plausibility Field.”
“Trust me, it works. The only problem,” Harrumphrey explained, “is that we don’t have anyone who can fly it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that!” called a voice from the hangar entrance.
It was Reggie.
Elliot and the others peeked back into the laboratory and saw the blubbery bombastadon scaling up a great heap of old equipment that was pushed off in one corner.
“Reggie?” asked Jean-Remy. “What are you doing?”
; At first, Elliot and Leslie thought Reggie was scaling nothing more than a pile of old junk. Then they spotted the very comfortable-looking chair at the top of the heap.
“That’s the teleporter prototype,” said Elliot, “isn’t it?”
“It is,” said the professor, rushing across the laboratory to join them, “and Reggie, you of all people should know it isn’t working properly. It still sends everything to Antarctica!”
“Precisely!” Reggie lowered his great bombastadon bottom into the second-most comfortable chair in the universe. “That is the very place I intend to go.”
“What? Right now?”
“Of course! I know just the fellow we need.”
“Just the fellow we need for what?”
“To pilot your flying machine, of course.”
Before the professor could ask who Reggie had in mind, there was a great blue crack of electricity, and Colonel-Admiral Reggie T. Pusslegut was ZZZZAPPED into nothing but a puff of smoke.
CHAPTER 6
In which Cosmo Clutch (almost) sets a record
Cosmo Clutch looked over the edge of the iceberg. It was a long way down. (It was always a long way down.) He was about to set the new Antarctic record for Greatest Distance Traveled in an Unpowered Ice-Glider. He had already set seemingly unbeatable records for Fastest Pole-to-Pole Voyage in a Trans-Dimensional Zeppelin, Highest Altitude Achieved on a Pedal-Powered Flying Machine, Ice-Speed Record for Fastest Downhill Run on a Rocket Sledge, and many others. But in all his years of daredevilry, he had never attempted a record in an unpowered ice-glider. Anyone else would have been trembling in their boots, but not Cosmo Clutch. He never trembled for anything.
On the far side of the gorge, he could make out his awaiting fans. He took out his pocket mirror and held it up to his face. It was important to make sure there was nothing stuck in his teeth. After all, once he had set the record, the press photographers would want their pictures. Lots of pictures.
After picking some straw from between his incisors, Cosmo turned the mirror sideways to check his profile. He looked good (as always). His snout still had the leanness of youth, his antlers were polished to a high shine, and his eyes sparkled with the steely gleam his fans expected.
Perfect!
He turned to face his ice-glider. It sat silently in its launcher, the largest slingshot in all of creaturedom. (To be honest, calling it a “glider” was generous. It was little more than an icicle the size of a sofa. Once it was shot out of the launcher, however, it would become so much more. It would become his one-way ticket to posterity!)
Cosmo checked the winches, the pulleys, the springs, and the extremely elastic bands that would propel him across the gorge like an arrow. Just to be sure he’d make it all the way, he had pulled them back significantly farther than he had ever pulled them back before.
He donned his helmet. It was bright red, perfectly round, and so fiercely waxed it shone like the sun. Moreover, it had been specially designed for him by a bespoke haberdasher in Greenland. Two slots had been cut out of the helmet so his antlers could comfortably stick out on either side. When he slipped it on, he knew he was ready.
A voice crackled over his walkie-talkie. “Mr. Clutch?” It was the official from the Creature Book of World Records. “We’re ready on this side. What about you?”
Cosmo responded with a phrase he had believed all his life: “I was born ready.”
He made one last check of the glider’s parachute mechanism. It would deploy on final descent and allow him to gently touch down on the far side of the gorge. After that, there was only one thing to do: He climbed aboard the icicle (or rather, the “ice-glider”).
He strapped himself in and used the slingshot’s calibrators to account for air temperature and wind speed. Then, using his feet, he pushed the massive elastic one inch farther back. (Just in case.)
“Countdown from ten,” Cosmo spoke into his walkie-talkie.
“Roger that.”
“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .”
Cosmo dug his heels into the ice-glider’s stirrups.
“. . . six . . . five . . . four . . .”
Cosmo narrowed his eyes.
“. . . three . . . two . . .”
Cosmo picked his teeth one last time. (Just in case.)
“One!”
The sudden blast of speed made Cosmo gasp. Not in fear, but because the slingshot had whisked him into the air so fast, the sudden change of pressure sucked the air from his lungs. For an instant, there was a silence so profound he thought he might have been knocked unconscious, but then came a thunderous whoosh of air, and Cosmo Clutch knew he was on his way.
The Antarctic sea spread out below him, vast ice sheets extending in every direction. It was quite beautiful. That was when it all went wrong.
His first clue was an unsettling dampness between his legs. At first, he assumed he had wet himself out of sheer excitement. Then he realized the source of his soggy bottom was something much more alarming: The ice-glider was melting! But how? It wasn’t possible. Unless . . .
He slapped one palm to the shiny red forehead of his custom-made helmet. Friction, he thought. Air speed. He was going too fast! How could he have been so stupid?! Why-why-WHY had he put that extra bit of tension in the elastic bands?! (Because he wanted to make it to the other side, of course.) But now look what was happening!
Nevertheless, he didn’t lose his cool. He gazed calmly left and right and saw the leading edge of both wings were melting, sagging and dripping away to nothing. Meanwhile, down between his legs, the fuselage had shrunk to the size of a small pony.
Then the size of a coffee table.
Then the size of a pillow.
Then the size of a pop bottle.
Then the size of a toothpick.
Then . . .
Nothing.
All that remained of the ice-glider was an embarrassingly drenched pair of pants.
Cosmo Clutch, the greatest daredevil record-breaker in all of creaturedom (or so he claimed), was soaring through the Antarctic air with nothing to hold him up but a flak jacket, a shiny red helmet, and the mad flapping of his own two arms.
“Well,” he said to himself, “I guess this is it.” He tried to appear debonair as he sailed over the crowd of screaming fans, flashbulbs popping as he went. He was traveling so fast, he overshot the target completely. In no time, he was flailing over nothing but an empty field of snow and ice.
Then Cosmo Clutch saw something he didn’t expect: a bombastadon. He was dressed in high-ranking military garb, his saber rattling as he scampered across the ice field. Where had he come from? Cosmo was sure there hadn’t been a bombastadon there a moment ago. After all, they were difficult to miss against the endless white of Antarctica. This one was waving his arms and shouting something. Cosmo couldn’t hear him, of course; he was too high up. But that was about to change.
“Geronimoooo!” screamed Cosmo Clutch, soaring down into the soft, blubbery arms of—
FWWWHUMP!
“Pusslegut, is that you?”
Reggie nodded. “Another record attempt, I see. Good man!”
“Wouldn’t call it good, myself,” Cosmo told his old friend. “Wouldja believe the darn thing melted on me up there?”
Reggie released one arm and set Cosmo down on the ice. “I’m sure next time you’ll succeed with flying colors. See what I did? Flying colors! Ho-ho!”
Cosmo sighed. He had forgotten about the Colonel-Admiral’s dippy sense of humor. “If I do ever succeed, I’ll owe it all to you for catching me today. If there’s any way I can repay the favor, you go ahead and let me know.”
“In fact,” said Reggie, “there is something I have in mind.”
“You name it.”
“Well, Old Clutchie, I was just wondering . . . have you ever flown a beetle befo
re?”
CHAPTER 7
In which Elliot discovers that some buildings are even stranger than the ones in which his uncle works
On the way home from DENKi-3000 Headquarters, Elliot wondered what his parents would say when he asked to spend the weekend in Simmersville, with Leslie and her mother. He certainly didn’t want to mention the food festival. They might get the wrong impression. They might think he was taking an interest in their work as food critics. That would be a disaster! But he definitely couldn’t tell them why he was really going. His parents had a habit of screwing up their faces whenever he mentioned Uncle Archie.
As it turned out, none of this mattered. When he arrived home, his parents were waiting for him.
“Elliot!” cried his mother. “We’re so glad you’re home!”
“You are?” Something fishy was going on. Elliot could tell.
“Of course we are, son,” said his father. “We’ve got some big news for you.”
“Actually,” Elliot started, “I have some news mysel—”
“No time for that now. Look at this!” His father flipped open the morning’s copy of the Bickleburgh Bugle, opening it to the food section. A bright full-page advertisement blazed across the page:
THIS SATURDAY!
COME FOR THE FOOD!
COME FOR THE DRINK!
STAY FOR THE WORLD-FAMOUS
DINNER-THEATRE-STYLE
COSTUME CABARET!
THIS YEAR FEATURING THE AMAZING
BORIS MINOR AND THE KARLOFFS!
THE SIMMERSVILLE ANNUAL
FOOD FESTIVAL!
A FEAST FOR ALL THE SENSES!
“The must-do, must-chew event of the year!”
—Peter & Marjorie von Doppler, “Chew on This.”
Elliot’s mother cleared her throat. “Now, Elliot, before you say anything, I want to explain. We know you aren’t keen on following in the family footsteps and becoming a restaurant critic, but you really ought to consider it.”
Gobbled by Ghorks Page 4
