“We’ve got to stop them!”
“How? Look how many there are.”
“First,” said Leslie, “we have to go back. We can’t let the creatures ignore what’s happening right under their—”
Elliot slapped his hand over Leslie’s mouth. Something was coming toward them.
Silently, he took out the GPS. There were no green dots nearby. It wasn’t a ghork coming up the tunnel toward them; it was the same thing they had seen before, the same hunched creature with the lizard-like tail.
“It’s coming this way,” Leslie whispered.
Elliot looked down over the ledge where they stood. He saw only a precipitous, overhanging cliff. “Where can we go?”
As he whispered the question, an odd thing happened. The light from the luster-bug domes shifted and twinkled (it was always shifting and twinkling, of course, but something about this time was different). They looked up at the dome of glass protruding from the wall above them. The luster bugs inside were suddenly fluttering in unison.
“What are they doing?” Leslie whispered.
The luster bugs arranged themselves into a tapered tube of light. One end broadened to create a triangular shape.
“It’s an arrow!”
The radiant insects flashed like the signs on a highway, the ones that guide the way to safety.
“But it’s pointing straight over the ledge.” Elliot looked in that direction and only saw open air. “Is that where they want us to go?”
Every luster bug in the dome went dark.
“I guess not,” said Leslie.
A low, gurgling growl echoed down the tunnel. The creature was getting closer.
The luster bugs brightened once again, but this time the arrow was curved, looping backward on itself.
“Maybe they want us to go around the side,” said Elliot.
The luster bugs twinkled excitedly.
“Yep, I think that’s it.” Leslie tiptoed out to the overhang, leaning forward to peer around the wall of the cave. “Look! There’s another ledge out here.”
Another growl echoed down the tunnel. The creature was very close now. Hiding out on the second ledge was their only hope. Out there, however, the ghorks might see them; they would only have to look up. But what choice did they have? There was nowhere else to go.
“Thank you,” Elliot whispered to the miraculous luster bugs. They blinked once in the dome and dispersed, going back to their random flutter.
Holding hands, their backs pressed against the wall of the cavern, Leslie and Elliot carefully stepped around the wall to the other ledge. Just as they reached the other side, they heard the slow, lumpish footfalls and ragged breath of whatever had been following them. It came right out on the ledge where they had just been standing.
Leslie had gone first, so she was too far from the other ledge to see anything, but Elliot, who was still close, could make out a small patch of the creature’s skin. All he saw were shimmering red scales. What could it be? he wondered. A small part of him was curious, but a much larger part simply wanted to get as far away as possible. Elliot nudged Leslie farther along and suddenly, she vanished.
It was another tunnel. She had backed into it and pulled Elliot in after her.
“Where are we?” Elliot whispered.
“Check the GPS thing. Can we get back this way?”
According to the Ghork Positioning System, however, the tunnel didn’t exist. It simply wasn’t on the map. But since there was no going back (not with a big scaly monster waiting for them), they followed it.
The tunnel ended at a heavy iron door. It was rounded at the top and windowless, made from slats of metal studded with countless rivets.
“Now what?” asked Elliot.
“Aren’t we going to try the door?” asked Leslie.
“It’s gotta be locked.” Elliot put one hand on the enormous latch. “Doors like this are never—”
It opened.
Inside was a large room that looked like a shabby imitation of the Creature Department laboratory. Crumbling desks featured dusty computer equipment and smashed chemistry sets. There were tables and shelves strewn with broken components and wrinkly, old books, as if each one had been dropped in the bath and left to dry.
Despite the cluttered, ramshackle state of the room, it was the heavy table in the middle that caught Elliot’s attention. Or rather, what was lying on top of it.
“Uncle Archie!”
CHAPTER 25
In which the professor coos like a baby and Elliot reads the fine print
Elliot’s uncle lay unconscious on the table. His head was strapped into a makeshift cerebellows. Its poorly made canopy opened and closed in time with the rise and fall of the professor’s chest.
“They’re stealing his ideas!” Elliot cried. He ran to his uncle. “Uncle Archie! Wake up! We’re here to rescue you!”
But the professor only responded with a stream of cooing nonsense.
“Bworble-bworble-quackle-mickle-zumpty-zizz-suuuwahmbah-bah-bah-baaah . . .”
“Elliot, look at this.”
There was a computer on a cluttered table against the wall. The rubber tube on top of the cerebellows was connected to it.
“What’re these supposed to be?” Leslie pointed at the screen.
At first it was just a stream of words, symbols, and equations, but as Elliot watched, they melted away to reveal what appeared to be a large pair of bright red metallic ski boots. The peculiar footwear bristled with pipes and gauges and coiling wires, and they were decorated with red and orange flames, blazing upward from the soles.
On the one hand, they looked super-cheesy, but at the same time, they were . . . kind of cool, like something a robotic biker gang might wear in a science-fiction future.
Once again, the image shimmered and vanished, returning to scrolls of schematics and data.
“I guess this is what my uncle has inside his head.”
“But what are they?” Leslie asked.
Again, the words and figures disappeared and the garish ski boots were back.
“What if Reggie was right?” Elliot whispered.
“About what?”
“Super-galoshes.”
Leslie screwed up her face. “Is that going to impress the shareholders?”
Elliot was a little disappointed too. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s try to wake up my uncle.”
They returned to the professor and shook his arms, shouting into both his ears. They jostled him so hard the flap of his white lab coat fell open. Slipping from an inner pocket was a single sheet of paper.
“What’s that?”
Elliot stooped to pick it up. Even before he touched it, he could see what it was.
“It’s a page from a Captain Adventure comic.”
“What does it say?” Leslie leaned across the table.
Elliot unfolded the paper. “Looks like the end of a comic book story.” He held it up to show Leslie, who squinted at the page.
“Why would he carry it around? It’s just a random page from an old comic.”
“No,” said Elliot. He was looking at the opposite side of the page. “That’s not what it is at all.” He stepped past Leslie and stood beside the computer. “These aren’t super-galoshes. They’re rocket boots.”
Elliot raised the comic page, showing Leslie the other side. It was an advertisement with a picture of Captain Adventure soaring through the cosmos. Printed below him was a drawing of boots just like the ones on the computer screen. In bold, daredevil lettering, it said:
This Halloween, get your very own
CAPTAIN ADVENTURE ROCKET BOOTS!*
(only $19.95 plus shipping & handling)
Elliot knew what the little star beside Rocket Boots! meant. He moved his eyes to the fine print at the bottom of the page.
Typed in tiny, almost illegible lettering, it said: *Rocket boots are not real.
“What’s going on? Where am I?”
Behind them, Professor von Doppler was sitting up, removing the cerebellows from his head.
“Hello, you two.” He blinked at them, obviously dazed. “What’s going on? I remember picking up supplies, tinkering with the boots, and then . . . and then . . .” He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“And then,” said Leslie, “you were kidnapped by ghorks, who are actually working for Quazicom and helping them to take over DENKi-3000!”
The professor raised his eyebrows.
“We came down to rescue you,” Elliot told him.
His uncle gazed at them with a grogginess that showed he wasn’t quite fully awake. His eyes tracked from Leslie to the computer monitor to Elliot and the comic book page in his hand. He reached into his lab coat, feeling in the now-empty pocket.
“It fell out when we were trying to wake you up.” Elliot folded the page and gave it back to his uncle.
The professor gazed at the advertisement. “I’m beginning to remember,” he said. “I came down here because some of these passages lead to Creature Depots.”
“Depots?”
“Shops, really, ones that sell the strangest things you can imagine.” He swung his legs over the side of the table and rose unsteadily to his feet. “I had gathered everything I thought I might need, but on my way back to the laboratory, I was attacked.”
“By ghorks,” said Leslie.
“Five of them.”
Elliot shuddered. “I think we know the ones.”
“They took me down here and forced me to begin work on my secret invention. I did as they said, but only because I thought it would help me escape. But as you can see, I was barely conscious much of the time.” He glanced at the table and the ghorks’ flimsy imitation of a cerebellows. “They kept me in that thing for hours at a time. Whenever I was awake, I was under close guard. I suppose the only reason you found me is because every one of those beastly things is in that meeting with—”
“The Chief,” said Leslie.
The professor nodded. “Quazicom and the ghorks, working together. It’s abominable!”
“Well, you’re free now,” said Leslie. “So let’s get moving before any of them come back.”
“Wait,” said Elliot. “You said the ghorks forced you to make your invention.” He looked around at the room’s ramshackle equipment. “Where is it?”
The professor’s jaw tightened and his face took on an expression of steely resolve. Even though he was still dizzy, he stumbled across the room to a wooden cabinet in the corner. When he opened the doors, all three of them looked in on something amazing.
Rocket boots.
They were identical to the ones on the monitor and on the page of the comic book, but they weren’t drawings.
“They’re real,” Elliot whispered.
His uncle reached in and picked up one of the boots. “When I was a kid, I worshipped Captain Adventure. When I saw the ad in the back of his comic, I really believed it. I saved up for months and sent off for what I thought were genuine rocket boots.” He chuckled to himself. “Imagine how disappointed I was when they arrived. As soon as I opened the box, I knew they were only toys.” He brought the boot up close to his face, his eyes poring over every detail. “It’s the reason I became an inventor. I wanted to make them real.” He put the boot back beside its mate and hung his head.
“Uncle Archie? What’s wrong?”
“They don’t work. I’ve never been able to figure out the essence to power them.”
“Yeah, we found out the hard way,” said Leslie. “Picking essences—that’s the tricky part.”
“The ghorks want the boots for themselves,” said the professor, “but they need the all-important final ingredients. The essences. That was why they kept me in the cerebellows. They thought they could pick the answer straight out of my brain, but I didn’t have it. There was no answer to find.” He sighed again, sounding even more hopeless than before. “I guess it’s true what they say in the fine print. Rocket boots aren’t real.”
Elliot didn’t like seeing his uncle so upset. “We’re breaking you out of here and taking the boots up to the Creature Department,” he said. “If we all work together, we’ll figure it out.”
Professor von Doppler was still a bit dizzy. Leslie and Elliot took one boot each and stood on either side, helping him toward the door. When they opened it, however, all three of them screamed.
CHAPTER 26
In which a new creature is discovered
On the other side of the door was a chubby, bright red, one-eyed dinosaur. It screamed too.
“BLEEEEEEEEAAARGH!”
After that, however, likely seeing it easily weighed more than all three of them put together, it stopped. “Sorry,” it said, regaining a kind of portly composure. “You startled me.”
“We . . . startled you?” asked Elliot.
The dinosaur nodded.
“What about you startling us?!” asked Leslie.
“I know,” said the dinosaur, sighing deeply. “I’m horrible to look at. Anyway, I’m really sorry if I frightened you, but maybe you can help me. I’m a bit lost.”
“Why do I recognize your voice?” Leslie asked.
“That’s because we’ve already met. Well, sort of.”
“No offense, but if we had met, I think I would remember.”
“Earlier this week,” said the dinosaur, “at the shareholders’ meeting. You’re those two kids who live in the ventilation shaft.”
“We don’t live there,” Leslie corrected him. “We just happened to be there at the time.”
“How do you know about that?” asked Elliot.
The professor was equally puzzled. “I was up onstage for that entire meeting, and I can assure you, there were no one-eyed dinosaurs present.”
“The official term is cycloptosaurus.”
“I should have known,” muttered the professor. “Well, I didn’t see any of them either.”
The dinosaur lowered his voice. “I was in disguise,” he whispered. “You see, my name’s Charlton. Just Charlton, that’s all, but when you three met me, I was called—”
“Chuck Brickweather!” Leslie snapped her fingers. “That’s how I know your voice!”
“You’re telling us you’re the guy from Quazicom?” Elliot leaned a bit closer and whispered, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look anything like him.”
“How is this possible?” asked the professor.
Charlton shrugged. “I told you, I was in disguise.”
“Some disguise!” said Leslie.
“Actually, it’s more of a . . . treatment than a disguise. For weeks I’ve been drinking a concoction that makes creatures look like human beings, at least temporarily. It’s called Dr. Heppleworth’s Knoo-Yoo-Juice.” Charlton looked down at himself, his mouth frowning in disappointment. “I’m sure you can see why I take it.”
They couldn’t, however.
“Change your appearance?” asked Elliot. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I’m a fat, scaly cycloptosaurus when all I really want to be is sleek, trim, and handsome. But look at me! I’m the kind of creature that makes people scream whenever they see me coming. You three are proof of that.”
“Only because we weren’t expecting you,” said the professor.
“I think you look cool,” said Leslie.
“You do?”
“Me too,” said Elliot. “Who wouldn’t want to be an eight-foot thunder lizard with shiny red scales?”
Charlton looked left and right, as if to make sure no one was listening. “Let me tell you a secret,” he whispered. “I’m scared of creatures. They’re all so . . . weird looking. They give me
the creeps!”
“You do realize,” said the professor, “you are one yourself. I’m sure among other, uh . . . cycloptosauri, you’re everything you dream of. Sleek, handsome . . .”
“Trim?”
“Well, maybe not trim, no, but what self-respecting dinosaur—sorry, cycloptosaurus—wants to be ‘trim’?”
“Me!” Charlton pointed to his snout. “I never asked to be part of creaturedom. All I ever wanted to be was sleek and handsome. And maybe get a job in finance. I wanted it so badly I was willing to gulp down nothing but Dr. Heppleworth’s for months! That was why I took this position with Quazicom. I had a hunch they were buying up creature departments. So I knew the job would eventually lead me to one that specialized in new inventions—and that would lead me to you.”
“Me?” asked the professor. “But why?”
“You and your department are the only ones who can make my invention.”
“You’re an inventor?”
Charlton shrugged. “Not really.” He had a leather satchel slung across his body, from one shoulder down to the opposite hip. He flipped it open and took out a large scroll, tied with red ribbon. Unraveling the paper, he revealed the thin parchment of a technical blueprint, which he pressed flat on the tabletop.
On the left-hand side of the page, scrawled in childish crayon, was a stick-figure drawing of a creature, complete with horns, fangs and tentacles. An arrow pointed from the creature’s body toward a large black square dominating the center of the page. Emerging from the opposite edge of the square was a second arrow, this one pointing to a human stick figure.
“Pretty brilliant, huh?”
Professor von Doppler tilted his head, squinting at the page. “It’s not a very detailed schematic.”
“That’s where you come in,” said Charlton. He nodded confidently. “I’m more of an idea man.”
“You mean idea cycloptosaurus,” said Elliot.
“Sorry, I’m still adjusting. . . .”
The professor sighed, spreading his arms over the poorly drawn blueprint. “So what is this thing?”
“It means no one will ever again have to drink Dr. Heppleworth’s Knoo-Yoo-Juice!” Charlton grinned, teeth sparkling all around his formidable snout. “I call it the Humanizer! It turns creatures into human beings. Permanently.”
The Creature Department Page 19
