“Ha ha ha! That’s nothing but a pack of lies, Pete. You know it, I know it, the whole world knows it. It’s exactly the kind of rubbish a chicken might . . . will you stop staring at me!”
Again, I shifted my position 23 degrees to the right, so that my face was out of his view.
“Hankie, why do you keep moving away?”
“Moving? Oh, you mean . . . uh . . . moving? It’s not me, Pete. If you knew anything at all about astrolomy and physics, you’d know that nothing in this world stands still. See, the earth is spinning around on a pair of axes and it’s also in orbit around the moon. We think we’re standing still but we’re not. We’re constantly in motion, so . . . well, things move around. No kidding.”
I saw his eyes peeking at me again. “Hankie, this is more serious than I thought. If I’d ever suspected that you’d get so upset, I never would have told you about the sky falling.”
There was a moment of silence. Then I heard myself say, “Really? You mean that sincerely? Let’s face it, Pete, you and I have a long history of . . . well, dirty tricks, let us say, and to be honest . . .” I turned and looked the cat in the face. “Pete, let’s go straight to the bottom line. This business about the sky falling has me worried. Tell me, honestly and sincerely, is it just a silly rumor or is there something to it? I must know the truth.”
His eyes widened and he began flicking the end of his tail back and forth. “Well, Hankie, everything’s a rumor until it happens. What you really want to know is . . . can you do something to keep it from happening?”
“Right. I mean, as Head of Ranch Security, I feel some personal responsibility here. If the sky fell on top of my ranch . . . well, I would feel terrible.”
“There might be a way of preventing it.”
My ears shot up. In the half-light of dawn, I could see his big shimmering eyes. “What did you just say?”
He began purring and . . . well, rubbing on my front legs. Have we discussed my position on Cats Rubbing? Maybe not. I hate it. It drives me nuts to be rubbed by a purring cat. But since he was about to give me some important information, I decided to, uh, let him rub.
He rubbed and purred and spoke in his whiny voice. “I said, Hankie, there might be something you can do to prevent the sky from falling.”
“No kidding? Hey, Pete, that’s terrific news! And I’m sure you’ll tell me, right? Talk to me, Pete. I think we’re close to something big here.”
“Well . . . it sounds crazy and I doubt that you’d want to do it.”
“Hey Pete, nothing’s crazy if it’ll save the ranch. Let’s hear it.”
“Well . . . okay, Hankie.” The cat glanced over both shoulders and vopped his drop to a whisker . . . dropped his voice to a whisper, shall we say. “All you have to do, Hankie, is jump up onto the roof of Sally May’s car . . . and sit there for one hour.”
I stared at the little creep . . . at the cat, that is. At Pete. “What? That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
“See? I knew you wouldn’t do it. Well, good-bye, Hankie. I tried to help.”
He started walking away. I ran after him. “Pete, wait, don’t get your tail in the ringer. I was just . . . look, you have to admit that it sounds crazy. It might help if you’d . . . well, explain how it works.”
“Well, all right, Hankie, but you have to swear never to tell anyone the secret. Promise?”
“Sure, no problem. Talk to me, pal.”
Again, the little snot . . . the cat, that is, glanced over both shoulders and whispered, “The sky falls when the gravitational pull of the earth gets too strong. Did you know that?”
“No. I mean, yes, of course I knew it. You’re not talking to chopped liver, Pete. I’ve done a whole lot of study in science and stuff. Go on.”
“Well, Hankie, when you jump on top of the car, it changes the load on the earth’s surficial plentitude.”
“Wow, good point. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Keep going.”
“And the longer you sit there, the more it reverses the polarity of the atmospheric razzmatazz.”
“Of course! And that creates an upward force on the sky and . . .” I beamed the cat a triumphant smile. “I think it’ll work, Pete, and we owe you a huge debt of gratitude.”
“Well, thank you, Hankie.”
I stuck my nose in his face. “Unfortunately, nobody will ever know that it was your idea. Too bad you were dumb enough to give me the whole formula. Ha ha ha!”
“But Hankie . . .”
“Don’t you get it, Pete? You came here to spy on us, but I’ve turned the tablecloth on you. I spied on you and I’ve just stolen your Secret Calculations!”
“But Hankie . . .”
“You walked right in to my trap, Pete. How dumb is that, huh? Now, run along, kitty. Go chase your tail. Go catch a mouse. I’ve got important work to do and I won’t be needing you anymore. Scat!”
“But Hankie . . .”
He didn’t leave, so I gave him a little barking program we call Air Horns. Heh heh. I love doing that to cats. Heh heh. You give ’em your deepest, loudest bark, see, and point it at the ears. If you do it just right, it’ll blow ’em right out of their tracks.
BWONK!
Hee hee, ha ha, ho ho!
You should have seen him! It blew him out of his tracks and sent him rolling. And to make it even more delicious and exciting, he hissed and yowled, which was like music in my wicked ears. And then the little pest went scampering off into the shadows, out of my hair and out of my life.
What a glorious moment that was for the Security Division! Not only had we humbled a cat who needed humbling, but we had broken up his spy ring and had intercepted secret information that was vital to our Ranchional Security.
What a deal, huh? You bet. I could hardly wait to see Drover’s reaction. No doubt he would be . . . where was he?
“Drover? Drover?”
I ran through the office, searching every corner and cranny for . . . okay, he was curled up on his gunnysack bed, and would you care to guess what he was doing?
Sleeping.
I had just pulled off the most important espionage triumph of the year and the little mutt had slept through the whole thing! I stood over his bed for a moment, looking down at his twitching carcass and listening to his usual orchestra of weird sounds: squeaks, yips, moans, honks . . .
It’s amazing, all the different sounds he makes in his sleep, but I didn’t have time to marvel at the full glory of his weirdness. I had a job to do, an extremely important job.
I glanced up at the sky. It was still there, but I could see that it was beginning to . . . well, crack and crumble. Yes, daylight was coming and the cracks were very plain and obvious, and unless I initiated the Anti-Sky Falling Program, the entire ranch would be destroyed and buried under . . .
Something. We weren’t entirely sure what kinds of material would fall from a falling sky, but we knew that it would be a catastrophe of unsnickable proportions. And so, without another moment’s delay, I leaped into my Rocket Dog suit, hit the Go Button, and went streaking up the hill to Sally May’s car, which was parked in the gravel drive beside the yard gate.
Did I get there in time to save the ranch? Was I able to reverse the terrible gravitational forces that were pulling and tugging on the sky, and causing it to crumble before my very eyes? Would Rocket Dog be able to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory?
Pretty scary, huh? You bet.
I hope you’ll stay with me on this deal. I can’t reveal any answers at this point in the story, but I will say this. I was beginning to see the light at the end of the turnip.
Chapter Seven: I Perform the Secret Procedure
Okay, are you still with me?
Great. Thanks. I really appreciate this.
You know, when you’re Head of Ranch Security, you get used to the te
rrible loneliness of the job. We don’t expect help from anyone else HICK and that’s okay, because all our training has prepared us to HICK . . .
You won’t believe this. What a lousy time to get the hiccups. Hang on a second whilst I hold my breath.
HUUUP!
Are you still with me? Okay, I think that worked. Sorry for the interruption.
Where were we? Oh yes, I had leaped into my Rocket Dog suit and was roaring up to the gravel drive at the rear of the house, and things had gotten very tense and scary, and when I arrived at the scene of the . . . HICK.
This is embarrassing, and I mean, very embarrassing. We dogs don’t get hiccups very often, but when we do they often strike at the worse of HICK times. See what I mean? If we got hiccups in the middle of the night when nobody was around, that wouldn’t be any problem. But now?
We don’t expect the world to be perfect, but it really annoys me when I get frazzling hiccups right in the middle of a HICK . . . right in the middle of a tense and crucial mission. I mean, hiccups make a dog sound about half-goofy, right? And that would be a very false impression, because those of us who go into Security Work are anything but goofy.
Hold everything. I think they just went away. Terrific! What made my hiccups go away? I have no idea, but if you ever get the hiccups, you might try it.
Where were we? Boy, there is no feeling to compare to the feeling you get when you’ve suffered a bad attack of hiccups and then they quit. At first, you’re almost afraid to move or talk, for fear the slightest change in your bodily whatever will bring back the hiccups.
But as you can see, this time we’ve chased away the hateful little hiccups and now we can return to our story.
Once in the Rocket Dog Procedure, I went to Full Throttle on all engines and went roaring up the hill, leaving Drover to sleep his life away. As I approached the gravel drive behind the house, I eased back on the throttle and executed a smooth landing.
A glance toward the kitchen window told me that my friends in the house (Loper, Sally May, Little Alfred, and Baby Molly) were beginning to stir, and perhaps were gathering around the breakfast table for . . . well, breakfast, of course.
To them, it was just another morning, nothing out of the ordinary, and they had no idea of the crisis that was brewing outside their kitchen window. But that was okay. They didn’t need to know and I had no intention of disturbing their moments of peace and tranquittery.
With a little luck, I would get things wrapped up and they would never have to know about the grave HICK dangers the ranch had faced outside their window.
See, one of the marks of a top-of-the-line, blue-ribbon cowdog is that we don’t expect a lot of glory and praise. If it comes, that’s nice, but if it doesn’t, well, that’s just part of the job. Our most important reward is the satisfaction of knowing that we’ve done our duty.
Anyway, we’ve come to the crucial moment, and you’re probably sitting on the edge of your chair. I don’t blame you. If I had a chair, I’d be sitting on the edge of it, but I don’t, so . . . let’s get to the scary part.
HICK.
Did you hear that? They’re coming back, the stinking stupid pig-nosed hiccups! How can we present the full dramatic impact of this very tense and crucial situation, when I’m hicking on every other sentence?
Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll just have to bull our way through and hope for the best, but let me urge you not to laugh if I start hicking again. Please try to remember how humiliating this is for a dog in my position.
Okay, Sally May’s car was parked on the gravel drive behind the house, just where it was supposed to be. A quick scan of the area told me that all four tires were on the ground, which meant that the gravel had not yet interrupted the gravitational whatever of the so forth.
That was good HICK news, so I went straight into the next phase of the procedure, the Deep Crouch Position. Curled up in the DCP, I felt power and strength gathering in my enormous leg muscles, the same power and strength that would soon propel me upward and launch me onto the hood of . . .
You know, the thought of jumping onto the hood of Sally May’s car made me a little . . . uneasy, shall we say. I mean, she’s pretty fussy about that car and tries to keep it clean and nice. If you want to see Sally May mad, just let a sparrow fly over and drop a whitewash on her car. One of the few times she ever yelled at her precious kitty came when Pete walked across the hood and left muddy prints on it.
Wait a second, hold everything, HICK halt. Pete once got into big trouble for walking on the car, right? Yet he was the one who had told me the secret procedure for . . . hmmmm. Was there something here I hadn’t thought of? Was it possible that the cat had . . .
No, I had forced him to reveal the secret procedure, don’t forget that. And besides, he wasn’t smart enough to pull such a sneaky trick on the Head of Ranch Security, so . . . no problem.
Anyways, I was ready for Liftoff, and in my deepest heart of hearts, I knew that Sally May would understand. If she happened to look out and see me up there on top of her car, she would realize that I was doing this to protect her family from falling sky debris.
I hit the Go Button and launched myself up onto the . . . screech, scrape . . . hood, and drat the luck, my claws must have been extended because they caused, uh, tiny scratches to appear on the, uh, hood of the . . .
HICK.
. . . car, but it was too late to spill milk or to pour any more water under the bridge, and once I had reached the hood, I recoiled my legs and sprang up to the summit of the roof of the car. There! I had climbed the mountain and reached the summit of my ambition, and you know what? Already I could feel a difference in the gravitational atmosphere, no kidding, and a glance toward the sky told me even better news: the sky seemed to be stabilizing!
In other words, this deal was working to perfection! Not only had our rescue team stolen vital secrets from the cat, but the vital secrets were already making tiny adjustments in the gravitational HICK that would reverse the geofoozic forces in the skyosphere.
Was I proud? You bet. It was one of the proudest moments in my whole career, and to make things even better, guess who showed up at that very moment to admire my work. Drover. I couldn’t imagine what had pulled the little slacker out of his bed, but there he stood beside the car, looking up to the top of the mountain and, well, at ME.
“Gosh, what are you doing on top of Sally May’s car?”
“Louder, Drover. The wind is really howling up here on the summit. What did you say?”
“I said, if Sally May catches you on top of her car, she’s going to blow a gasket.”
“Oh, that. No problem, son, it’s all been taken care of. See, it might appear that I’m merely sitting on top of her car, but I’m actually following secret procedures that will keep the sky from falling.”
Drover stared at me and twisted his head to the side. “Sitting on top of the car will keep the sky from falling?”
“Yes, that’s correct. Pretty impressive, huh?”
His gaze went up to the sky and then back down to me. “Who told you that?”
“What makes you think that anyone told me anything? Have you no faith in my ability to solve complex equations and come up with HICK solutions of my own?”
“Well . . . it sounds kind of crazy. And you’ve got the hiccups.”
“Drover, over the years and centuries, small minds have always found it hard to grasp the workings of science.”
“Yeah, but . . . you didn’t hear about it from Pete, did you?”
“Pete? Ha ha ha! What does a cat know about . . .” The laughter died in my throat. “Why do you bring up Pete at a time like this?”
“Well, I don’t know. It sounds like something he might tell a dog . . . to get him in trouble.”
“Trouble? Rubbish. Pete had nothing to do with it, almost nothing at all, and eve
n if he had . . . what are you saying, Drover? Out with it. Are you saying that I was dumb enough to fall for one of Pete’s famous tricks?”
“Well . . . I was wondering about that.”
“Let not your heart be troubled, son. I’ve got everything under control. Did you happen to notice that the sky hasn’t fallen?”
Drover looked up at the sky. “Yeah, but I thought we’d decided it was just a silly chicken rumor.”
“We did, but . . . Drover, things are changing all the time. It’s too bad you happened to fall asleep and missed out on an important conference on Celestial Collapses.”
“You mean, with Pete?”
“No, I don’t mean with . . . okay, maybe Pete was there, but let me hasten to add that his part in the deal was small, very small, almost . . .”
At that very moment, we heard . . . well, the sound of a door opening . . . the back door of the house. Drover’s eyes went to the door, and whatever he saw caused his ears to jump. “Uh-oh.”
“What? Say that again?” At that point, our communication link with Drover went dead. Do you know why? Because the little goof scrambled under the car. “Hello? Drover? I must warn you that it’s very hard to carry on a HICK conversation with you when . . .” Derned hiccups. I just couldn’t get rid of ’em. “Drover, come out here at once! And that is a direct . . .”
I heard the squeak of the gate hinges. Apparently, someone or something had just come out of the house and had walked through the . . .
HUH?
Uh-oh. It was . . . uh . . . Sally May. And I seemed to detect a certain . . . well . . . fire in her eyes, almost as though . . . she looked mad, might as well blurt it out, but mad at what? What could have caused that fire to erupt in her . . .
At that very precise moment, I heard another sound, and this one wasn’t caused by the squeaky gate hinges. It sounded almost like . . . well, muffled laughter. Perhaps the muffled chortling of . . .
The Case of the Falling Sky Page 4
