by Mark Crilley
“Yeah, ya got a point there, 'Kiko,” Spuckler replied after a moment.
“Indeed,” Mr. Beeba said, “you're entirely super-fluous at this stage in the game, there's no getting around that.”
“Okay, okay, don't rub it in,” I said. “The point is, why don't you just beam me back to Earth—”
“TRANS-MOOV ULATE YOU BACK TO EARTH,” said Gax.
“Yeah, right, moovulate me back to Earth, zap me back to Earth, whatever it takes. Then you can do the race without me. A ship with fewer people in it goes faster, right?”
“Sorry, 'Kiko,” Spuckler said. “We're outta range now. Best we could do is Trans-Moovulate'cha back to somewhere near the edge of the Milky Way. Then you'd hafta try'n' hitch your way back home.”
“Highly inadvisable, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba said. “That area of the Milky Way has really gone to seed lately. There's no telling what sort of riffraff you'd find hanging about.”
I pictured myself standing in the middle of some alien desert with my thumb stuck out. Suddenly, joining them in the race didn't seem like such a bad idea.
I pulled my watch out of my pocket. It was 11 A.M.
“Just one thing,” I said. “You've got to get me back to Earth before dinnertime. My parents will start to worry.”
we arrived at the starting gate of the Alpha Centauri 5000. It was a huge open-air space station about a mile long but not very wide, like an aircraft carrier floating among the stars. There were small spectator-filled grandstands on either end, with the restof the surface given over to ten sleek rocket ships, most of them covered in shiny chrome. They were all facing the same direction, parked neatly behind a thick white line that ran the entire length of the platform.
“Platinum's in this year,” said Spuckler. “Looks like we're gonna be the only ones with personality round here.”
Gax clicked and buzzed his agreement.
Spuckler steered the ship in for a landing on one of the few remaining spots and killed the engine. Pulling a knob on the dashboard, he popped open a door in a nearby wall. The clean and quiet air of our ship was immediately overtaken by revving engines and exhaust fumes. I spent the next few minutes trying to plug my ears and my nose at the same time. Spuckler encouraged us to get out and stretch our legs. (He must not have been talking to Poog and Gax, since they have no legs to stretch.)
“Once the race gets started there won't be time for dawdlin',” he said as he leaped out the door, “so y'all might as well dawdle while the dawdlin's good!”
Mr. Beeba and I stepped carefully out into the strange noisy world surrounding us. Multi-antennaed aliens dashed back and forth carrying oddly shaped wrenches and crates full of freshly oiled spare parts. Silvery androids beeped and bleated as they made last-minute repairs on the wings of ships high above us. Rocket engines backfired repeatedly, each followed by a series of unintelligible cries from their respective owners—alien cussing, I'll bet. It was definitely not my kind of hangout.
“I really should have brought more reading material along,” Mr. Beeba said as he strolled away, followed closely by Poog. “I wonder if anyone's left any scientific journals lying about.”
I was so busy taking in all the sights and sounds I almost forgot to turn around and look at our own ship, which until now I'd only viewed from the inside. Once I did see it, I kind of wished I could un see it. Ours was just about the rustiest, clunkiest, all-around junkiest ship of them all. It was brown and orange with charcoal-colored stains all over the place, and here and there big sheets of scrap steel had been hammered haphazardly into place: jagged-edged patches that looked like they had been torn out of abandoned space cars, tin roofs, vending machines—whatever Spuckler had managed to lay his hands on. The whole thing was supported by three wheels, each a different size and color, and one almost entirely deflated. It looked as if a single nudge would cause the entire ship to collapse back into the pile of rubbish it had been constructed from.
“Purty, ain't she?” Spuckler stroked his jaw like a proud skipper. “Built her m'self, believe it or not.”
“No way!” I said, trying my best to sound as if I hadn't already come to that conclusion several minutes earlier.
“Oh yeah, 'Kiko. Pounded 'er together with my own two hands.” He pulled out a filthy rag and rubbed away a stain on the ship's hull that must have struck him as less appealing than the other stains around it. “Take it from me, little lady. If you want somethin' done right, ya gotta do it'cherself.”
FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
A loud, high-pitched horn blast echoed across the space station, followed by a staticky announcement in several alien languages.
“Only a minute to go,” Spuckler said as he dashed back behind the engine.
“SIR, ONE OF THE ASTEROIDS MADE A HOLE IN THE ROOF,” Gax said from somewhere above us. “I'M AFRAID IT WILL REQUIRE SEVERAL MORE MINUTES TO BE PROPERLY REPAIRED.”
“We ain't got sev'ral minutes, Gax!” Spuckler said. “How big is it?”
“APPROXIMATELY 5.8 INCHES IN DIAMETER, SIR.”
“Here, stick this in it.” Spuckler tossed something soft and gray up to Gax. “That'll hold her at least till we get to Gorda Glassdok.” Was that the same oily rag I'd seen him using just a minute ago? I decided I didn't really want to know.
FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
Assuming the second horn blast meant there were only thirty seconds left, I reboarded the ship and buckled myself into one of the seats. A moment later Mr. Beeba came bustling in, a stack of oil-stained books tucked under each arm. Poog floated after him, his mouth curved into an amused smile.
“Engine-maintenance manuals,” Mr. Beeba said as he adjusted his safety-belt straps. “Not my ideal form of literature, of course. But it'll do in a pinch, I suppose.”
Gax lowered himself back into the ship through a passageway in the ceiling, which appeared to have been cut especially for him. He then scooted over to a spot on the floor, where he locked himself down like a boot snapping into a ski.
FLOO-FLOOOOT!
“Fifteen seconds!” Mr. Beeba said as the revving of engines outside rose to a roar.
“Well, of all the dagnabbed ding-dang &” Spuckler's voice echoed with tin-can hollowness from a vent in the wall. It sounded like he was repairing the engine—or, more likely, failing to repair it—from the inside.
“Spuckler, you idiot!” Mr. Beeba cried. “Get your flabby little tush inside here!” (Spuckler's tush was not the least bit flabby, actually. But, hey. People say funny things when they're under pressure.)
KLAANK!
There was a loud metallic noise that I figured was something getting whacked with a wrench out of pure frustration. A moment later Spuckler hurled himself through the door, somersaulting in midair and landing squarely in the driver's seat. It was a pretty cool move, I have to admit.
“Five seconds!” Mr. Beeba said.
Spuckler punched madly at buttons all over the dashboard, like an organist gone insane.
“Four!”
Our ship's engine finally rumbled to life, causing the walls to vibrate with tooth-chattering intensity.
“Three!”
Spuckler lurched violently to one side and yanked a big brass knob. A spritz of blue wiper fluid splattered across the windshield and began oozing down slowly.
“Two!”
“Dagnabbit!” Spuckler said, apparently unable to get the wipers to work.
I reached down and gripped the edge of my seat as tightly as I could.
“One!”
BLA-BLAAAAAAAM!
The engine exploded into high gear, sucking the ship backward for a moment, then shooting us all forward at breakneck speed.
VOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
Somewhere beneath all the competing noises I heard a final trumpet blast, and with that we rocketed over the edge of the platform, veering unsteadily off to the left before joining the pack of shimmering spaceships surrounding us.
The Alpha Centauri 5000 had begun.
to the back of the group, and with each passing minute the other ships moved farther ahead of us.
“We need more grull!” Spuckler said as he pulled a lever on the dashboard.
“More grull?” asked Mr. Beeba. “Already? But we've only just started!”
“That's right,” said Spuckler, “and we ain't never gonna get anywhere near the front of this pack if you don't start shovelin' grull, and I mean like right-now-pronto!”
Mr. Beeba grabbed a shovel from underneath his seat and Gax slid open a door in one of the walls near the back of the ship, revealing a large compartment filled with angular dark green pellets.
“I thought the plan was to conserve our grull until we reached Gorda Glassdok,” said Mr. Beeba as he thrust the shovel into the compartment and loaded it with pellets.
“Change of plans, Beebs.” Spuckler yanked a knob that caused a dome-shaped portion of the floor to pop open just inches from Mr. Beeba's feet.
SP'SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHH!
Flames shot up from the hole, nearly touching the ceiling. The entire room quickly grew as hot as a sauna. Mr. Beeba tossed in several shovelfuls of the green pellets.
B'SSSSSSSSSHHHH!
The flames leaped higher and my nostrils filled with a horrible burned-plastic kind of odor: the soon-to-be-familiar stink of burning grull.
“More!” said Spuckler.
“But—”
“More, I said!”
Mr. Beeba sighed and fed another shovelful of grull into the flames.
“That's the stuff!”
Then another &
“Stop scrimpin'!”
& and another &
“Don't get stingy on me, Beebs!”
& and several more, until finally Mr. Beeba dropped the shovel in exhaustion and kicked the lid back over the flames. Gax raced over to monitor a glass-covered dial on the wall.
GUDDA-GUDDA-GUDDA-GOOOOOOM!
The whole ship rocked from side to side and the floor shook beneath our feet. A drawer full of tools near Spuckler's side rattled open, coughing its contents onto the floor, where they clattered from one end of the ship to the other. My safety belts dug into my stomach as I slid several inches toward the back of the ship. Whatever this grull was made of, it certainly packed a punch.
“Whuh-hooooooh!” shouted Spuckler. “Comin' through, folks!”
We passed spaceships left and right, eventually settling into a position near the front of the pack: nine ships behind us and just one ahead.
“That's more like it,” said Spuckler. “Front and center's the only place for Boach's Bullet!”
“‘Boach's Bullet'?” I asked Mr. Beeba, who had just strapped himself into the seat beside me with great difficulty.
“A perfectly dreadful name for a spaceship, don't you think?” he replied. “I lobbied very hard for the Gossamer Galleon, but to no avail.”
Poog floated forward to Spuckler, opened his little mouth, and let out a series of high-pitched gurgling noises. He looked a little worried.
“Poog says we are now approaching the Labyrinth of Lulla-ma-Waygo,” translated Mr. Beeba.
“Great!” said Spuckler. “One down, two t' go!”
“You mean none down,” Mr. Beeba said. “We haven't made it through the Labyrinth yet.”
“The glaaaahss is aaahlways haahlf empty, Spucklaaah,” Spuckler said, doing his best impression of Mr. Beeba, “nevaaah haahlf full!” It was actually a pretty lousy impression, but I got the general idea.
“What's this about a labyrinth?” I asked.
“Racin' straight from one side of the universe to the other'd be as dull as dishwater, 'Kiko,” Spuckler explained, “so they tossed in a few hurdles along the way, jus' to make it a challenge.”
Mr. Beeba cleared his throat and laid a hand on my arm. “The Labyrinth of Lulla-ma-Waygo is a uniquely structured planetary entity. Solar currents and various electromagnetic phenomena have, over a period of many millennia, sculpted its surface into an enormous maze of limestone and graphite.”
“Every ship's gotta get through the maze before carryin' on to the next parta the race,” Spuckler said. “The trick is to go as fast as you can without crashin' into too much stuff. Don't worry, though,” he added, “Boach's Bullet's crashed hunnerds of times and it ain't never fallen apart once.”
“That's very reassuring,” I said.
“Ain't it, though?” replied Spuckler, stroking the dashboard proudly.
the Labyrinth of Lulla-ma-Waygo came into view. It was a lovely pale shade of moss green, spinning on a gently tilted axis. The closer we got to it, though, the more frightening it became. Every square foot of the landscape was cut into narrow valleys and mountain ranges, with countless gorges and gulliestwisting off in all directions. I swallowed hard and hoped that Boach's Bullet would be able to withstand one or two more crashes.
“OUR CURRENT TRAJECTORY WILL CAUSE US TO OVERSHOOT THE ENTRANCE,” announced Gax.
“Don't fret, buddy,” Spuckler replied, steering the ship into a nosedive. “This way is funner.”
“More fun,” said Mr. Beeba.
“Comin' right up!” Spuckler pulled a lever near the floor, instantly doubling our speed.
We were now rocketing straight down toward a huge opening in the surface of the planet. There was a mass of flashing lights in the shape of an arrow directing all the ships into the hole. I dug my fingers into theupholstery of my seat, preparing for what I figured would be the most horrifying roller-coaster ride of my ten-year-old life.
I was wrong.
It was a lot worse than that.
Boach's Bullet shot into the hole and immediately veered off to the left, then the right, then the left again, then up, down, back, forth, sideways, inways, outways, and everywhichways as Spuckler steered us through a series of hair-raisingly narrow passages. The sides of cliffs blurred into a pale green haze as we raced by, often so close that it felt like we were skidding across them like a stone skipping over water.
Within minutes I was feeling extremely queasy, and it was all I could do to keep the pancakes I'd had for breakfast that morning (back on Earth! It seemed so long ago now!) from coming right back up the way they'd gone down. Mr. Beeba looked unwell too, and Poog had a very troubled expression on his face. Even Gax looked like he was beginning to question his unquestioning faith in his master's flying abilities. Only Spuckler remained thoroughly chipper, singing a sea chantey—I guess it was a space chantey, actually—as he sent the ship careening through one unbearably tight squeeze after another.
“Oh, there ain't no life like a life in space,
Where there ain't no strife and I knows my place,
And I'll take first place in this gol-durned raaaaaaace,
Oady-hoady oady-hoady ode-alooooo &”
It was the sort of tune you found pretty annoying the first time, really annoying the second time, and by the fifteenth time you were about ready to strangle the man, I swear.
He was doing an excellent job of steering, though. No matter how rough the ride got, no matter how certain it seemed that we'd never make it through that next gap, we always came through all right. After a few minutes I relaxed my grip on the edge of my seat and started to breathe like something approaching normal.
I should have known it was too good to last.
SKRRREEEEEEEEEEEEETTCHHH!
Spuckler was pulling on four different knobs at once, heaving his body backward. The whole ship rattled and shook, and the tools that had spilled out of the drawer earlier came dancing back across the floor. Bit by bit the vibrations grew less jarring and the high-pitched scream of the engines died down to a low, steady rumble.
There in front of the windshield stood a solid wall of pale green stone, not more than a foot beyond the nose of our ship. If Spuckler had put on the brakes even a second later, we'd all have been done for. I had this sudden vivid picture in my head of spitballs permanently plastered to the wall of my Middleton Elementary homeroom.
“Dead end,” sa
id Spuckler. He threw the engine into reverse.
A ship roared by somewhere in the distance.
Spuckler turned Boach's Bullet around and retraced our path, eventually taking us into an entirely different gorge. He seemed to be flying the ship even more recklessly than before, probably trying to make up the time we'd lost turning around. Judging by the roar of our engines, we were nearly back to our original speed. Then &
SKRRREEEEEEEEEE-
PAAAAAAAAAAASSSH!
tumbled through the air. The safety belts dug into my sides so deeply I thought I was going to bleed. I covered my head with my arms but wound up banging it on the wall anyway. One of my shoes nearly came off.
“Dagnab the dingle-hoffer!” cried Spuckler.
We now found ourselves face to face with another wall of stone, this time having crashed right into it. All the lights in the ship went out for about five seconds, then unsteadily flashed back on again, revealing spare parts and loose grull spilled all over the floor, along with nearly every door to every compartment now open and swinging back and forth like loose window shutters. There was also a good-sized crack in thewindshield. (A new one, I should say, since there had been several from the start.)
“WE'VE CRASHED, SIR,” said Gax.
“I know we've crashed!” Spuckler hollered. “I'm the guy who did the crashin', you little idgit!”
“A DECIDEDLY MINOR CRASH,” added Gax, “AS CRASHES GO.”
Gax was being kind. Clearly we had done some very serious damage. Yellow steam was pouring out the front of the ship just beyond the windshield, and several red lights above the dashboard were flashing and buzzing.
“Aw, there goes the Twerbo-Fladiator coolant!” Spuckler gazed longingly at the yellow gases fading into the air. “I knew I shouldn'ta put that coolant tank in the nose of the ship.”
“The Twerbo what?” I asked.
“The Twerbo-Fladiator coolant,” replied Mr. Beeba. “It cools the Twerbo-Fladiator.”
“And the Twerbo-Fladiator is &”
“A device for fladiating the twerb.”
