‘Now Jay, now!’ they all shouted at once.
Jay breathed, shut his eyes, stepped to the side and held his hands up. He could suddenly feel the container move past him with a rush of air. His hands were up, his eyes closed tight.
‘Ow.’ His arms were almost jerked off his shoulders and suddenly his legs were in the air.
‘Yee-hah!’ Zed shouted. ‘See ya losers!’
The container was hurtling along the passage again. The technicians leapt back to avoid the speeding containers as the Lab Rats escaped them. The container rushed forward. Dee, Emm and KT clung to the side, terrified of the wall that was just a centimetre or two away from them. Zed and Jay hung from the back.
As they hurtled along, unable to see anything in the pitch dark, Emm could sense how close to the wall they were.
‘Ouch!’ she cried. A clump of her hair had flown up in the wind, caught on the wall and been ripped out. She turned her head to the side and pressed her cheek to the side of the container. It was cold on her face, but she pressed hard, determined to keep her hair safe.
‘Open your eyes!’ said Zed as he held on to Jay at the back.
Jay opened one eye. He couldn’t see anything. He opened the other eye and then closed them again. It made no difference. There was absolutely no light.
‘Freaky isn’t it?’ Jay could hear that Zed was actually enjoying himself.
He had both Jay’s arms in his hands and he was flying along behind the container. Zed was even waving him from side to side.
‘Hold still!’ Jay shrieked.
Zed stuck his tongue out, even though Jay couldn’t see him.
‘Everyone on board?’ he shouted.
‘Dee here!’ she shouted.
‘KT here.’
‘I don’t like this!’ said Emm.
‘Don’t let go of me!’ XL thought.
‘Don’t worry little thing, I won’t let go!’ Dee said to him.
‘Curious,’ XL thought to himself, ‘it seems they can hear me after all.’
The long run down the endless white corridor had one powerful effect. XL was now out of range of the telepathic dampening field. Xanax had created it to stop him communicating with anyone. First Emm and now Dee seemed to have heard some of his thoughts. He decided to try an experiment of his own.
‘How much longer is this going to take?’ he asked into Dee’s head.
‘How long do you think this will last?’ Dee shouted to the others.
‘Who cares, it’s fun!’ laughed Zed.
‘Wheee!’ shouted KT wanting to look like he was having fun too. In reality his arms were getting very tired. He wasn’t as strong as Zed.
‘My arms are killing me,’ said Emm. Her heart was pounding. She tried to breathe slowly to calm herself down.
‘Me too!’ said Jay. He wasn’t enjoying this. He was sure his arms were growing longer by the minute.
‘I won’t let go of you. It doesn’t matter how tired you get,’ Zed tried to make him feel better.
‘Thanks.’
As they all clung on as hard as they could, XL felt pleased his experiment had worked. He would not admit to being afraid, but he thought it might be wise to put the thought of holding him tighter into Dee’s head. He thought it and immediately he could feel Dee’s grip tighten.
Dee’s arm wasn’t tired. Her hammer was safely hooked over the rail so she couldn’t fall. She kept her eyes closed because the wind stung them. Every now and again she peeped open an eye. Once she thought she could see something ahead. It sped towards them.
‘There’s some light ahead,’ she shouted. ‘It might be a station. Hold on, we’re nearly…’
Bam! The container came to a halt. Dee, Emm and KT were all thrown forward onto the ground. Jay’s huge honker slammed into the back of the container.
‘Dow!’
Dee decided the best thing to do was to make sure the container didn’t move again. She stood in front of it while Emm and KT stood up. Zed and Jay joined them.
The container had come to a halt behind another container. There was a queue of them leading up to the light.
‘I’ll go and have a look at what’s happening,’ Dee said as she handed XL to Emm. ‘You all wait here.’
Dee crept up along the gap between the wall and the containers until she found the source of the light. She peeked. It was very bright after the dark tunnel they had been in. When her eyes adjusted, she could see she was in a docking port.
One by one, each container was rolled out of the dark corridor. A mechanical arm swung down, scanned a blank panel on the side of the container and beeped. A small truck drove forward, lifted the container and moved it onto one of the six spaceships docked at the port. As each container was placed on a ship, the ship’s doors were sealed and the spaceship took off.
Dee couldn’t see any assistants; just machines working away, clicking and whirring to themselves. She leaned forward to see if anyone was there. A high-pitched alarm rang out. Dee realised it was a life form sensor and pulled back quickly. It stopped. She just hoped it had not gone off long enough to alert Xanax’s assistants.
She crept back to the others to explain what she’d found.
‘The good news is that it’s a loading dock. Ships are flying in. They’re loaded with containers and then they fly off again.’
‘That’s great, let’s go!’ KT was about to charge off.
Zed knew better.
‘And the bad news?’
‘There’s a life form sensor,’ answered Dee. ‘The minute we set foot in there, lab assistants will be summoned. They’ll be able to stop all the ships leaving and we’ll be caught. And I may have already set it off.’
They all sighed as the containers lurched forward, edging closer to the unloading area.
‘We need to hide somehow,’ said Zed.
‘Inside a container,’ said Emm. She was holding XL and was rather impressed with herself for coming up with a good idea. XL was impressed too because she had actually thought it before he did.
‘Let’s see if there’s a way inside one of them,’ suggested Zed. He grabbed the rail and swung himself up onto the top. ‘You all check the sides, I’ll look up here.’
The sides had no doors or hinges. Nothing that could have opened up. The top appeared to be one smooth sheet of metal with no opening. Zed felt around the edge of the container to see if there was a lock or catch. Towards the back he found a small box next to the edge. He could feel there was a slight gap between the box and the sheet. It had to be some sort of lock.
‘Everyone up here!’ he said over the edge. Reaching down with his rear arm, he gave them a hand up.
Emm placed XL down on the metal sheet.
‘Aha!’ he thought and realised what had to be done.
‘Dee,’ said Zed, ‘if you use your hammer hand on this small box, it might trigger the lock and we can open the top up.’
‘I’ll give it a go. Keep back.’
Dee did a few practice swings, sweeping her arm across the top of the sheet towards the box.
As she did so XL was communicating in a new way.
‘I knew I was intelligent, but this is impressive, even for me.’ By being placed on the container, he could hear the microchip which controlled the box Dee was about to hit. Not only could he hear it but he could talk to it as well. It was quite simple. All he had to do was tell it the right code and it would release. He began to exchange some numbers with the microchip.
‘OK, here goes!’ Dee swung her arm for real and smashed the hammer hard on the small box.
A spark flew up, XL said the right code and the sheet slid back so quickly they all fell straight into the container.
Inside there were more metal boxes. Hard metal boxes which hurt when they landed on them.
‘Ow! Why do I always land nose first?!’ complained Jay.
‘Well done… I think,’ said Zed rubbing as many parts of his sore body with his hands as he could.
‘Onl
y problem is, we’re now going to have to shut the container again or the sensors might spot us,’ Emm said.
They tried pulling the closing sheet back but it stuck fast. Even with all of them pulling together, it wouldn’t budge.
The container lurched forward towards the unloading area. Zed stuck his head up to see how close they were— just two containers away from the dock.
‘Come on, push harder!’ he said. ‘We’ve got to close it again.’
They lined up and pushed with all their might.
XL had fallen onto one of the boxes but because he wasn’t touching the container itself, he had lost contact with the chip controlling the closing sheet.
‘Hold me up to the sheet!’ he shouted. But noone was touching him so noone heard him.
‘Push,’ Zed strained with all his might but it still didn’t work.
‘It’s no good,’ said Jay, exhausted. He sat back and felt something soft under him. It was XL. He moved quickly and picked him up.
‘Sorry little one,’ he said and he stroked the creature’s head, as the container lurched forward again. Their container was next in line to be unloaded. Unless they could close the lid in the next ten seconds, the life form sensors would summon the lab assistants in no time.
‘One last effort,’ Zed said. ‘Come on, we can’t give up now. We opened it, we can close it. There’s no way I’m letting Xanax keep us here. Everyone, give everything.’
Out of the blue, Jay decided it might help if XL touched the edge of the sheet so he held him up. As soon as XL made contact with the roof, he was chatting once again to the controlling microchip.
‘He-ave!’ shouted Zed as the container lurched into position to be unloaded. Suddenly the container roof shot across, plunging them into darkness.
‘We did it!’ cheered KT.
‘Well done, Zed. It was your pep talk that did it. I’ve never pushed so hard in my life!’ said Dee.
‘How do you know?’ asked Emm, suddenly afraid in the darkness. ‘How do we know anything when we can’t remember?’
They all fell silent. In the dark they could hear the sounds of the docking area and could feel themselves being moved. Without saying a word, they all huddled closer and held hands.
The Lab Rats were about to be loaded onto a ship and plunged into an unknown universe. They didn’t know where they were going, they didn’t know where they wanted to go or even who they were. All they knew was that they wanted to escape the Research Station and that they had each other. As they held hands—and hammer— in the dark, they hoped that this all might be enough.
Chapter 9
Unauthorised Life Forms
‘Captain, there are reports of unauthorised life forms on the ship.’
Captain Redlock looked puzzled at the news.
‘What, from the Research Station?’ he asked Rudi, his second in command.
Captain Redlock was the captain of the Interworlder, a massive cargo ship that transported containers around the galaxy. It wasn’t a very exciting job. He would much rather have been chasing bandits in outer space in a small fighter ship. But he had a family and bills to pay so he collected and delivered containers instead.
Collecting cargo from the Research Station was fully automated. The Interworlder would dock, machines loaded the containers onto his ship and they were given clearance to leave by an automatic signal. Of all the places he collected containers, Professor Xanax’s Research Station was the one Redlock liked least. His crew thought it was creepy.
Nobody on the Interworlder ever opened up the containers. They all knew they contained Xanax’s inventions and creations but they did not know what they were. They did not want to know.
All they knew was that every five minutes another ship took off from the station with another container that had been ordered by someone in the galaxy.
In all the time Redlock had collected from the Research Station, he had never met Professor Xanax. In fact he had never seen another living being there. The crew told wild stories about terrifying creatures which didn’t exist anywhere else in the universe. Redlock did his best to ignore them, but it was hard not to wonder what was actually in the big white station as it floated alone in space.
It was always white. Most space stations were dirty. Things bumped into them. Some got patched during repairs, others had huge advertisements painted on them. Not this one. It was pure white, without a blemish. It was hard to believe anything natural could live on it.
‘They want us to check the containers for life forms. If we find any we are to return immediately to the station,’ Rudi said. ‘They’ve transmitted access codes to open them up.’
‘OK, we better not make a big thing about this,’ said Redlock. ‘You and I will go down and check it out.’
Captain Redlock knew his crew would not like the idea of anything escaping from the Research Station on their ship.
The Interworlder had three huge cargo bays. The Research Station containers were in Cargo Bay 3, along with four hundred other containers. Captain Redlock and Rudi rode a hovercraft to the far end of the bay where the containers were.
‘There’s something funny going on here,’ said Rudi as they glided along. ‘I’ve never seen anything get in or out of their containers and we never receive any communication from the station.’
‘I know,’ said the captain, ‘but we really don’t want to get on the wrong side of Professor Xanax.’
‘I’ve heard he pulled the hairs off a mouse, one by one,’ said Rudi.
‘Let’s not spook ourselves with gossip. We’ll just check the containers, report back and get on our way as fast as we can,’ assured the captain.
They arrived at the first container, raised their hovercraft to the top of it and transmitted the access code. The lid slid back. Inside was a round metal ball floating in the middle of the container, spinning around slowly.
‘How does it do that?’ asked Rudi.
‘I don’t know, but it doesn’t look like a life form. Let’s move on.’
The next container was packed to the top with metal boxes.
‘No room for anything in here,’ said Rudi.
They opened up the last one.
Captain Redlock couldn’t believe what he saw. Five faces stared up, squinting at the light.
‘They’re kids!’ he said.
‘Look!’ Rudi pointed at Zed, who had leapt to his feet. Blinded after having sat in the dark for so long, he held up his fists towards the sound of the voices, all three of them.
‘We’re not going back!’ he shouted.
‘He’s got three arms!’ Rudi said, amazed. ‘And that one has a hammer for a hand!’
Captain Redlock looked horrified. What were these creatures? The one with the hammer answered his question.
‘We’ve escaped from Professor Xanax’s lab. He’s been experimenting on us.’
‘Please don’t send us back,’ begged Jay.
Redlock was stunned. He was really hoping not to find any life form at all. At the most he was expecting some rats, not real people and certainly not children. How could he send children back to that Research Station? He thought of his own children and how angry he’d be if someone had done this to them.
‘Please don’t send us back!’ they pleaded.
‘We’re not moving until you promise,’ KT said stubbornly.
Captain Redlock looked at Rudi who just shrugged his shoulders.
‘OK, climb out,’ he said. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’
He knew a pile of trouble was going to crash down on him.
‘Say it,’ said KT. ‘Say you promise.’
‘I promise I won’t send you back,’ the captain said.
Jay started to move. Emm stopped him.
‘He didn’t put his hand on his heart.’
‘Fine,’ the captain put his hand on his heart.
‘Him too,’ Emm pointed to Rudi.
They put their hands on their hearts.
‘We prom
ise not to send you back to the Research Station.’
‘Or give us over to Xanax’s research assistants,’ Zed added.
They repeated that too.
‘Or leave us somewhere where it’s obvious they can pick us up and take us back.’
‘Or leave you somewhere where it’s obvious they can pick you up and take you back.’
‘Or…’
‘Stop or we’ll be here all night.’ Redlock cut them short.
They all piled onto the hovercraft, which dipped with the extra weight.
‘What’s that?’ Rudi pointed to XL.
‘He’s one of us. He escaped too.’ Emm patted his fur as they set off.
‘The crew aren’t going to like this,’ Rudi said quietly to the captain.
‘I know. Take them as quickly as possible to my room and stay there with them. I’ll report back to the Research Station.’
Captain Redlock hoped they would believe him when he said they had found nothing. Xanax’s message had gone out to all the cargo ships which had docked at the station that day. With any luck they would not send a ship out to check every one.
The minute Redlock returned to his command post on the control deck, he knew his worst fears were about to come true. Hovering in the middle of the bridge was a holographic projection of a head. The shiny head looked like it had been polished for hours. Redlock could just see the collar of a white rubber lab coat.
His crew stared at the head, too scared to move. They didn’t have 3-D holographic projection on their ship, just a flat screen. They had no idea how this head had suddenly appeared.
‘Captain Redlock,’ the head smiled at him, ‘how good of you to help us.’
‘Professor Xanax, I presume,’ the captain said. ‘What an honour.’
‘I do apologise for troubling you. This is quite embarrassing.’ The professor smiled like his lips were being pulled apart by a machine. It wasn’t pretty. One of the crew shut his eyes—the smile was the scariest bit yet.
‘It seems the life forms which escaped from our lab found their way into a container on your ship. Could you come back so we can clean them up?’
Xanax spoke like some germs had escaped from a test tube.
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