Escape from the Pipe Men!

by Mary G. Thompson

  Another Pipe Man pushed through a door right between Becky and me, holding a calculator in its top-hole. Its three bottom eyes bent back toward the door, straining to blow out enough air to keep it in the same place. The top two eyes of another Pipe Man appeared through the door next to it, but it didn’t seem to be able to get any farther. The sides of its top-hole smacked together.

  “You’re not scary!” Becky gave the Pipe Man between us a push between its fifth and sixth eyes.

  It doubled over with a yelp and then, with a whoosh, was sucked back through the door. As the Pipe Man’s last two eyes vanished, the calculator slipped out of its top-hole’s grip. It fell to the gooey ground with a plop.

  “I’m not infinitely sorry!” Becky cried. At the same time, I dropped to my knees and grabbed the calculator. Even if Becky thought she could figure the doors out, it would still come in handy.

  A Xaxor leg wrapped around both the calculator and my hand.

  “Come on, not now!” I tugged the calculator, but the Xaxor, who wasn’t our Xaxor, held on. Everyone else had stopped behind us.

  “You let go of it,” said Dad to the Xaxor.

  The rest of the Xaxor glared at me from behind all twelve of their eyes, which bulged out as their bodies strained against the wind.

  “You owe it to us,” said Tast-e, who appeared completely unfazed by the wind, even though it was blowing his plasticky blue hair against his skull.

  I was acutely aware that Hon-tri-bum was watching me, too. But its bottom eyes were struggling so hard against the wind that it couldn’t say whatever it was thinking. In fact, its whole body was pressed against Ip, as if without the Horn-Puff behind it, it would be blown down the passage.

  Becky grabbed the calculator too. “We’re not letting go,” she said. We both pulled.

  The Xaxor wrapped another leg around the calculator and pulled against us. My feet were slipping on the gooey ground, and I wasn’t sure how long I could do this. Those Xaxor legs were really strong.

  The calculator broke open with a pop. All three of us were still holding on to it, but there was now a gap running lengthwise between its two halves. Pink goo dripped from the hole, along with a thick greenish-brown mud.

  “That goo—it’s just like the passage before it turned green!” I said.

  “I guess it makes sense,” said Becky. “This stuff must make portals.” She let go of the broken calculator, so I did, too.

  The Xaxor held the device up to its eyes and pried the halves farther apart. That was when I remembered: Front had said no one could ever see what was inside a calculator. But it was too late. Everyone had seen now. I just wondered why Front cared so much.

  Hon-tri-bum shot forward on a burst of air, whooshing between Mom and Dad. Its top and bottom eyes leaned back in the wind. With much effort, it pushed its bottom two eyes forward, pointing its mouth up at me. “We protected you. We taught you. And you betrayed us. You helped the Frontringhor escape.” The Pipe Man fell back against Dad.

  “Why do you care about Front? It’s just a zoo from like me,” I said.

  “You know nothing!” said Hon-tri-bum. Its voice was labored as it struggled to speak. “Why did it give you the calculator? Why did it imprint the device to you? To help you? No! It needed you to help these idiot Hottini create a rift!”

  “How do you know any of that?”

  Behind Hon-tri-bum and Mom and Dad, Grav-e and Tast-e conspicuously didn’t look at each other. Great. I should have known they’d tell on us. I translated for Becky. “Glad you saved them now?”

  But Becky didn’t seem to care. She hopped up and down. “Ryan, you get it, right? You get it?”

  “I get what?” I asked. The wind was just as harsh as ever. We should have been moving again instead of standing here. One of those Pipe Men was going to make it through a door soon.

  “Front is the passage!”

  “What?”

  “He said they were inside him! And the Pipe Men are in here. He didn’t want anyone to open a calculator, and it’s got the same stuff inside as the passage. And the passage is nowhere. It’s the place between all points. So he can be bigger inside than out!”

  “No way! Becky says Front is the passage!” I tried to wrap my brain around this. I remembered how the passage had been changing, how it had felt and looked like flesh, how its floor had rearranged itself for me while Front was guiding me to the hospital door. And how Front had wanted to leave his planet, but the Pipe Men wouldn’t let him.

  “And you helped it!” Hon-tri-bum cried. “If it escapes, there will be no more space travel, except by spaceship. It will take lifetimes to get anywhere!”

  “I’m right!” said Becky. “He said I’m right, didn’t he?”

  I translated.

  Becky narrowed her eyes and pushed past me. She poked Hon-tri-bum between the eyes. “You’re hurting him. That’s why he’s not pink anymore.” She grabbed Hon-tri-bum around the middle and pulled him away from Dad.

  “Becky, what are you doing?” Dad cried. “That’s a Master!”

  “He’s not our master!” Becky pushed Hon-tri-bum toward the nearest door.

  Hon-tri-bum’s top three eyes fell into the portal, but it pushed out a gust of air beneath it, keeping its mouth visible. “May your eyes—” The rest of Hon-tri-bum was sucked away.

  “Becky!” said Dad.

  Everyone else stood still for a few seconds.

  “Come on!” I yelled. The wind was getting even stronger. “We have to get out of here! Becky, where are we going? Where’s Front’s planet?”

  “Here!” Becky sprang forward and began to run.

  We all followed, our various from feet pounding into the ground, which I now knew was actually Front’s flesh. And it was so green and gooey and sick. We had to help him, and not just because we still needed him to help us.

  Becky stopped in front of a door. “Come on, before it changes!” She jumped through.

  “Everyone, quick!” I waved at them, waited until it was clear that everyone had seen, then followed her. I fell about four eyes to the ground. The door was hanging in midair above me.

  “Ryan, move!” Becky yelled.

  I rolled out of the way. The wind was still blowing through the portal, sending debris whooshing around my head and shoulders. I was in a bog, and my hands and knees were rapidly sinking. I pushed against the soggy ground, trying not to jiggle my backpack too much, and struggled to mostly upright. My legs were sunk into the bog up to my calves. Mom and Dad dropped through the door.

  “Mom, Dad, move!” Becky yelled.

  As they rolled aside, out came Ip and Gript.

  “Roll!” I yelled, getting my wits back.

  Gript rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being tackled by Grav-e and Tast-e, who did not avoid getting trapped under a ball of many Xaxor. The Xaxor hummed, and the Hottini growled, and Gript squeaked. Ip sat up and began shaking with laughter.

  At any other time, I probably would also have noticed how funny it was to see the arrogant Hottini struggling to get the stinky Xaxor off their faces. But this wasn’t the time. I had to make sure we were on Frontringhor. There was bog, bog, and more bog.

  “Ryan, look!” Becky pointed behind me.

  I struggled to turn myself around. There, only a few yards away, so close that I surely would have seen it at once if not for all the commotion, was a giant wall of blackness. The rift of variable infinity.

  The five Xaxor, having finally gotten unwrapped from the Hottini, stood just out of the way of the swirling portal we’d fallen through. The Hottini stood up to their knees in bog, both watching the rift.

  “Well, this is a sty on a fine eye,” said Ip, who had stopped laughing. “Where are we supposed to go now?”

  “How will we get home?” said Gript, at Ip’s feet.

  “We have to help Front,” I said. “It can help us, but the Masters are hurting it. It must have gone through that!” I pointed at the rift. “Front!” I shouted. “
Where are you? What’s going on?”

  The blackness of the rift rippled in front of us.

  I took a step forward.

  “Ryan!” Mom put a hand out to stop me.

  “It’s okay,” I said, tossing her hand off. “It’s just a big portal. I’ve seen one before.” I walked right up to the blackness. “Front?”

  The tip of an antenna appeared in front of me at knee level.

  “Front, it’s Ryan. And Becky’s here.” I waved at her.

  She broke away from Dad and plopped down on her knees next to me. “Are you hurt?”

  Another antenna slowly pushed through the portal, and both antennae reached down for the ground. They patted around the ground, finally reaching me, poking me in the leg.

  I got down on my knees next to Becky, trying to ignore the way my hands and knees sank into the bog. “Front, tell us what we can do. How can we help you? What happened?”

  The edge of Front’s head appeared through the portal, then an inch, and then more, until his head dropped with a thump into the bog. One antenna stayed on my knee, but the other fell flat next to his head.

  “Front? What happened to you?” Becky lifted Front’s head in both hands and wiped the mud off of his mouth with her sleeve. The lips moved a little. “Front?” Becky rubbed the creature’s head, wiping more mud off.

  Very slowly, Front raised his head up and moved his lips.

  We had to lean in very close to hear what he was saying.

  “Help me,” he whispered.

  “We will,” I said. “What can we do?”

  “The Pipe Men are trying . . . to bring me back. They want to trap me here . . . forever.” The limp antenna jerked.

  “Where are they? What are they doing?”

  “Outside.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Get them off me. I can fight them inside. Just get them off me.” Front’s head collapsed again.

  Becky gently laid it on the ground. “We have to go through the rift and help him,” she said.

  I imagined a planet full of Pipe Men, with wires and spaceships and weapons we didn’t even know about. What could we do against an army of them? Still, I knew she was right. We had to help him. I nodded at her and put my hand on Front’s head, feeling my way along the neck that stretched into the portal. The back of his body was rough, but also clammy, as though he had been sweating for some time. “Keep your hand on him,” I said. “If there are too many, we have to come back, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Too many what?” Mom demanded.

  “Pipe Men,” I said. “They’re hurting him.” I looked back at the rest of the froms assembled in the bog. “The Masters are hurting it, and it’s our only way back to our own planets. I don’t know how many are out there, but we have to try. We have to do everything we can to save it.”

  There was silence for a few seconds.

  “We have to go!” said Becky. “Look at him!”

  “Take off your backpack. Gript? Can you watch your family? There’s water here, at least.”

  Gript scampered forward as I opened Becky’s and my backpacks and lifted the Brocine out one by one. Our Xaxor appeared next to us and began siphoning water from the bog into their listless mouths. “Go, Ry-an,” said Gript. “We will follow.” He looked around. “We all will, I know.”

  “You can’t fight the Masters,” said Dad. “How are you going to fight the Masters?”

  “We just are,” I said.

  “Not with your little sister, you’re not. Come here, Becky.”

  “We’re going to fight them, and we’re going to win,” Becky cried, and ran through the rift.

  “Becky!” I followed her, running on the other side of Front. I even got a few steps before I stopped to gasp at where we’d gone.

  Thirty-Two

  I WAS STARING AT EMPTY SPACE. Empty except for three giant spaceships looming in front of me, backed up by stars and galaxies, tiny points of light spread out forever. There was no planet beneath us, no planet close enough to be anything but a light in the distance.

  I shouldn’t have been able to breathe, but I could. I should have been floating weightless, but I wasn’t. I was standing next to Front’s body, which stretched out into space. For the first time, I could see all the way to the end of him, a tiny second head at the edge of blackness. I was on some kind of platform that extended from the underside of Front’s body like a wing. It was almost completely clear but shimmered with a light pink color, just enough for me to see that it ended only three feet from Front’s body. It was solid beneath my feet, but its edges were jagged, and beyond it there was nothing but space.

  I pressed my chest against Front’s body and wrapped both arms over his back. My hands barely reached past the middle of his five-foot-wide body. If something happened to the platform, if there was a wind, if anything went wrong at all, I could fall out into empty space. And I was pretty sure that whatever was making air and gravity around Front’s body was not going to be out there. I willed myself to keep my eyes open. I couldn’t panic.

  Becky was standing on the other side of Front’s body, hanging on, staring up at the spaceships. They were long and thin like the Pipe Men themselves, though each was larger than any of the ships I’d seen in the spaceport on O-thul-ba. Windows rose vertically up the sides, eye-shaped giant ovals shining dim light. The ships rose up in a pyramid shape above Front’s body. Each had a hatch open where a Pipe Man’s mouth would be, from which came two thick lines of deep black Pipe Man fabric. All six lines ended at Front, wrapping around him, cutting into his hide. They were taut, as if the Pipe Men were pulling him, but Front didn’t move. His body was tense, fighting against them, shaking a little. The lines also cut right through whatever we were standing on, so that the wing-like platform had six three-inch-long holes. I did not like the idea that the only thing protecting me from empty space was fragile enough to be ruined by some Pipe Man fabric. Breathe, I told myself. But my vision blurred. I clung to Front’s body for dear life.

  Becky didn’t look afraid at all. She was examining the setup, planning her move. Maybe she hadn’t noticed that the lines were cutting into the platform. Maybe she didn’t know as much about outer space as I did. But she had the right idea. Front was not going to let us fall. For some reason, we could walk and breathe, and I couldn’t waste time thinking about it.

  “We have to get these lines off him!” I called. Though Becky was only a few feet from me, my voice echoed back. Becky slid along her side of Front’s body, still holding on, and I ran along mine. In a few seconds, I reached the first Pipe Man fabric line. Three inches wide and half an inch thick, it snaked around Front’s body, cutting in. “Becky, get the line! It ends on your side! And watch the hole!”

  She got to where I was and reached under Front. “I’m getting it!” Her head disappeared from view. One second, two seconds, three seconds.

  “Are you all right?” I looked up at the spaceships and couldn’t believe what I saw. Out of each of the three open hatches, Pipe Men were coming down the lines. Holding on with skinny armlike assistants, they wore close-fitting black suits that left clear spaces for their eyes.

  A Pipe Man was using assistant hands to slide down our line toward us, followed by two others, all watching me, sliding closer. They looked very alien in their spacesuits.

  “You don’t want to come here!” I called. I made a kicking motion with my right leg, then jerked the line, hoping I could throw the Pipe Men off.

  Becky emerged, grinning, holding the free end of the line. “The end of the line was wound around. But it wasn’t a knot, it was just stuck like the bag Mom’s cake came in!”

  I grabbed the line from her and jerked it again. This time it was slack, and the jerking actually did something. The Pipe Men slid down the line too quickly. The first one caught itself with its assistant arms, and the next one crashed into the first one, then the next, until all three were smashed together, only inches from my face. Pan
icked, I let go of the line and pushed the closest Pipe Man. All three of them, clinging to the line, floated slowly away.

  “Front must be making gravity!” Becky cried. “It doesn’t work outside these wing thingies.” She stomped on the ground to make her point.

  “Watch that hole!” I cried. She was right, but the Pipe Men weren’t helpless. There were still five more lines wrapped around Front, and Pipe Men were now sliding down all of them.

  “Come on!” I called to Becky. “Let’s get the next one!”

  Front’s whole back was clammy. As I ran along next to him, one hand tracing his back, the thick alien skin pulsed.

  A scream came from behind me. Mom was standing just in front of the rift, staring at the scene with sheer terror.

  “It’s okay,” I yelled, grabbing the next line. The ship attached to the line I’d tossed off was now pulling the line and its Pipe Men in. More Pipe Men lined the hatch, staring at us across the gap. We had to get the rest of the lines free before the Pipe Men could send out more.

  Dad stepped halfway out of the rift, took one look, and pulled Mom back through.

  The ship above and to the left of me thrust out a new line. It landed behind me with a smack, wrapped around Front’s body, and dug in. Front thrashed weakly.

  I slipped. My foot was half over the new hole in the platform. I wrapped my arms around Front for support and slid my foot back to solid ground.

  “Take it!” Becky tossed me the line she’d just managed to release. I grabbed it and tossed it away, sending the two Pipe Men attached to it floating off. But at this rate, we’d never make any progress. We had to work faster.

  Ip’s head appeared through the portal, then his body. He stepped slowly out onto the shimmering platform and patted Front’s back with an entire blobby arm. His pomegranate eyes took in the scene, focusing on the Pipe Man ships. He tested the platform, sticking one large leg out and tapping. “We’ll get you out of this,” Ip said, patting Front’s back again. “Just hang on to us.”