The Fantastic Flatulent Fart Brothers Go to the Moon!: A Spaced Out Comedy SciFi Adventure that Truly Stinks (Humorous action book for preteen kids age 9-12); US edition

by M. D. Whaleb

  “AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”

  Two creatures which looked like giant green lima beans stared back through three huge yellow eyes.

  Willy tried to start the Lunar Rover, but green shoots snaked from the creatures’ bodies like sprouting plants, looped around Willy and Peter, and plucked them right out of their seats.

  A moment later they were soaring over the ground, roped to their captors, who spewed blue exhaust from their rear ends. These creatures used fart power to fly!

  They flew through an opening in the cone-shaped ground structure, then released Willy and Peter inside, dropping them on the floor.

  The interior was one big brightly-lit chamber, filled with lima bean aliens and strange machines. In the center, a huge rotating corkscrew slowly drilled into the ground.

  Willy lay on the floor, too scared to move or even breathe, as more aliens gathered around him and Peter.

  We’re dead, Willy thought. They’re going to eat us, or cut us up for experiments.

  He blubbered and snorted and sobbed and squeaked.

  Wait a second, those weren’t his squeaks. They sounded familiar, though.

  A hamster crawled onto his foot. Squeaky! But where was his hamster ball?

  Peter sat up. He undid his helmet clamps, signaling Willy to do the same. “Squeaky can breathe in here. That means so can we!”

  He was right. It was like inhaling pure, sweet mountain air, fresher than the stuff in their oxygen tanks.

  The aliens stood around belching at each other. Either they were more immature than Earth first graders, or that was what their language sounded like.

  Peter bent over in obvious pain. “What do I do? I gotta fart so bad after all that onion dip. When they smell it, they’re going to kill us for sure.”

  But it was too late. Peter’s face pinched up, then he tooted so loud they could have heard it on Mars.

  The aliens instantly stopped talking. One of them grabbed Peter and pulled him out of his space suit. The alien raised Peter to its mouth.

  Peter fought like a wildcat. “It’s gonna eat me! Help!”

  “Try farting in its mouth!” Willy said.

  Peter ripped a loud one, but the alien only bit down harder.

  “Help! It’s sucking my butt!”

  Willy ran at Peter’s tormentor, but an alien tentacle caught and dragged him out of his space suit, then held him to its lips just like Peter. Willy was so frightened he let out a blistering fart.

  Was he imagining things? The creature was drinking it in!

  The way his and Peter’s aliens wobbled a little, Willy could have sworn they seemed drunk.

  The two big beans slapped branches, like they were high-fiving each other. Willy would have laughed if his life weren’t in danger.

  Or was it?

  Willy’s captor passed him to another alien, which wrapped its lips around Willy’s butt, then tapped Willy’s belly. It wanted Willy to fart! He gave the alien what gas he had left.

  The alien seemed to sigh with happiness, then set Willy back on the floor. Peter’s alien put him down too. The other giant beans chattered in their belch language.

  Another creature, taller than the rest and a darker shade of green, lumbered forward and extended a tentacle.

  “We not hurt you,” said a deep, gargly voice. It was speaking to them. In English!

  “Where are you from? What do you want from us?” Peter said.

  “We from Planet Uranus. We breathe methane. You make finest methane in all universe.”

  “Is he saying what I think he’s saying?” Willy whispered.

  “Yup. They breathe farts. And think ours are the best.”

  “Then I don’t get it,” Willy said. “Why is this place filled with oxygen?”

  A deep rumbling noise came from inside the tall alien’s rubbery green body. It built into a burble, rising faster and higher until it sounded like a trombone orchestra.

  A fat blue cloud shot from the alien’s rear end, blanketing Willy and Peter before they could escape.

  They covered their mouths and tried fanning the mist away. Then, without thinking, Willy sniffed.

  Just to make sure, he sniffed again.

  It was the sweetest-smelling air that had ever entered his nose—like a flowery meadow beside the sea, with a hint of fresh-baked bread and movie theater buttered popcorn.

  He gulped in deep breaths. Peter’s eyes bulged out in wonder, then he did the same.

  “Wow, we’re breathing alien farts,” Peter said. “I guess that’s how our farts smell to them.”

  Willy looked up at the tall alien, who he guessed was their leader. “But what are you doing here?”

  “I tell after eat,” the alien leader replied.

  “No way are you eating us!” Willy tried to run, but an alien tentacle lassoed his ankle and tripped him to the floor.

  “Not you.” The alien leader pointed to the ground. “Eat onion dip.”

  “By itself?” Peter said.

  “Of course not,” the alien said. “Universal Law of Snacking: can only eat onion dip with rippled kablooga chips. Come try.”

  Peter nodded to Willy. “I think we’d better cooperate.”

  They sat in a circle with the aliens. The kablooga chips tasted like stiff shredded cardboard. In other words, no worse than the ‘organic health snacks’ they were always forced to eat at home.

  “There’s something I need to know first,” Peter said. “How do you say the name of your planet? Is it Urine-Us or Your Anus? Either way it’s pretty hilarious.”

  “You think funny?” The alien leader sneered. “You should hear what Earth sound like in our language.”

  He unleashed a gnarly, gargling belch that sounded sort of like “Uuuurrrrrrpthhhhhhhh.”

  The other aliens slapped their sides and popped a lot of short burps, which was clearly their way of laughing. They laughed so hard several of them let out big blue saxophone-like farts, which smelled to Willy like fresh-baked cherry pies.

  The leader clapped his tentacles. Snack time over.

  “Now I tell story why Uranus mission to Earth Moon.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Uranian Plot

  The alien leader released what might have been an ordinary burp, or might have been orders for everyone to shut up and listen.

  He introduced himself, though his name was an unpronounceable, throat-rattling belch.

  “We are sent here by our president, the Great Big Pupu Head in Uranus.”

  “We have a President like that, too,” Peter said.

  “Quiet! Only one Great Big Pupu Head! He appoint me number one Big Fat Pupu Face.”

  “Then who are these guys?” Willy asked.

  The Big Fat Pupu Face pointed to a pair of his companions.

  “My chief officers, Pipi Face and Pipi Pants. In charge of workers we call Little Pipi’s.”

  Willy gulped back a laugh, which set loose a little rump ripper. The Big Fat Pupu Face leaned over and slurped every foul drop into his lungs.

  The alien leader whistled with pleasure and continued.

  “On Planet Uranus, atmosphere is hydrogen, helium, and methane. We breathe methane. But only one source of fresh methane on whole planet: Uranus cow-snail farts! Everywhere billions of cow-snails, all day eat and fart, fart and eat, refill atmosphere with methane. Everybody happy.”

  “What do they eat?” Peter said.

  The alien leader, annoyed at the interruption, turned his back on Peter, blew a disgusting-sounding blue fart that smelled like fresh mountain air, before answering: “Dingleberries.”

  “You have dingleberries on Uranus,” Peter said.

  “What I just told you!” the alien leader barked.

  “No, I meant you really have...oh, never mind.” Peter shrugged.

  “Cow-snails eat only dingleberries, fart methane,” the Big Fat Pupu Face explained.

  “What’s that have to do with our Moon?” Willy asked.

  “Uuuurrrrrrpt
hhhhhhhh boy try listen.” This triggered burpy-laughs from the Big and Little Pipi’s. The Big Fat Pupu Face belched for silence.

  “Now too much people on Uranus, fart oxygen all day. Too many factories, too many drive Uranus car, need too many power plants burn dingleberry wood, pollute air with oxygen. Make bad, bad climate change!

  “Worse: climate change is making dingleberries all sick and dying. No dingleberries, no cow-snail farts. Soon no methane to breathe.”

  He spread his branch-like arms. “Then we discover cow-snails also eat onion dip. So we come to Earth Moon.”

  So that was it—the aliens planned to fill a ship with onion dip and carry it back to Uranus!

  Peter raised his hand.

  “Okay, let me get this straight. The Great Big Pupu Head in Uranus had trouble with dingleberries, so he called you a Big Fat Pupu Face, and you told Pipi Face and Pipi Pants to put their Little Pipi’s on the Moon and dig up a ship load of snail fart food.”

  “Correct, Earth boy, except for one thing. We take whole Moon. Take you, too.”

  Everything became clearer now: the giant corkscrew, slowly cutting deeper into the Moon’s surface; the cable attached to the huge powerful spacecraft. They wanted to drag the Moon out of Earth’s orbit and tow it all the way to Uranus.

  “Wait a minute!” Willy said. “Uranus has its own moons. Why not use those instead?”

  The Big Fat Pupu Face put on a sad look, if big-eyed beans could even look sad.

  “Unfortunately, our moons made of pistachio ice cream. Nobody in whole universe likes pistachio ice cream. Even cow-snails spit out.”

  Willy nodded. That made sense. But the rest didn’t. He cried to Peter, “They’re going to steal our Moon!”

  “Cool,” Peter said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, not that I’m necessarily in favor of letting them steal the Moon, but if they were able to pull it off, it would be kind of awesome to watch.”

  “You—!” Willy was at a loss for words. How could Peter even think such a thing? He leaned close to his brother and whispered, “We need to stop them. Our entire planet is depending on us!”

  But Peter had a weird, far-away look. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Uh-oh,” Willy muttered to himself. Every time Peter started thinking, it ended up with both of them in even bigger trouble.

  Peter put his hand on Willy’s shoulder. “Pupu Face said he wants us to go with them. Maybe we should.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No. Think about it,” Peter said. “Remember they claimed our farts were the finest in the whole universe? We’ll be rock stars on Uranus! Instead of being punished for farting in public like at home, people on Uranus will line up and pay big bucks to sniff our butts. We can bottle the stuff. We’ll get rich off it! We’ll live like kings!”

  “I don’t know...” Willy said.

  “Think of the other advantages! No more math homework. No tidying our rooms or taking out the garbage or visits to smoochy Aunt Bertha. No more being dragged to the mall to try on shoes, or being forced to eat peas. And best of all...no icky kindergarten pageants to sit through ever again!”

  Willy had to admit that last argument was fairly convincing. But to leave Earth forever? Think of all the things he’d miss, like... Uh. Like...

  Certainly not Jimmy Crawford, the school bully. Or Ms. Watkins, his history teacher who hated his guts. There hadn’t been a decent kids’ TV show in a long time, and none of the new games coming out was anything special. There actually wasn’t much worth missing!

  Anyway, did they have a choice? The Uranians weren’t about to let them go and warn Earth, plus they had nothing to fight with. And yet...

  “I won’t do it!” Willy reached into his pocket and held up the key to the Lunar Rover. “I’m leaving!”

  Peter turned his back and walked away.

  “Fine. Go back to Earth yourself.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Home Alone

  Willy couldn’t believe what was happening.

  His brother stood across the room laughing and joking with the Big Fat Pupu Face, while the other Uranians continued working on stealing the Moon. Alien tools clanged and clattered around the giant turning corkscrew. Something twinkled like a sparkler.

  Tears covered Willy’s cheeks. Snot flowed over his lips. He was so upset he didn’t even eat it.

  He could get furious at Peter. He could accuse Peter of being stubborn. But that would violate their sworn policy to always blame everything on their little sister. So, instead, he thought:

  If only Skyler weren’t a sheep in the kindergarten play, he and his brother wouldn’t have been forced into stealing space suits and running off to the Moon, to be captured by fart-sucking alien lima beans, and Peter wouldn’t be spending the rest of his life stuck in Uranus.

  Now Willy had to figure out how to fly back to Earth all by himself. He’d never see his big brother again.

  Worse, it would be just him and his dumb little sister, the one who caused this mess in the first place.

  Peter ran over and grabbed Willy’s shoulders.

  “You’ve got to come to Uranus! I was just talking to them about a business plan. We’ll package our farts, make them into perfumes, air fresheners, stuff like that. Sell them all over the planet, even Jupiter and Neptune. We’ll be stinking rich! Ha ha! Get it?

  “Maybe that’s what we’ll call our brand: Stinking Rich Fragrances. Or how about Flatulence Number Five?”—he said it in a French accent: flawt-you-lawns. “Come on, it’ll be so much better if we do it together.”

  “I want to go home.” Willy picked up his space suit.

  “Yeah, well, don’t say I didn’t offer you. One day when I’m living in my mansion on Uranus, and you’re just sitting there picking your nose down on Earth...”

  “If I get back to Earth.”

  New tears welled up in Willy’s eyes.

  “My oxygen tank is nearly down to zero. How am I supposed to make it back to the lunar lander?”

  Peter examined the tank, then snapped his fingers. “I know.”

  He ran back to the Uranian leader, who returned with one of the Little Pipi’s.

  The Little Pipi scooped up a heaping wad of onion dip with a kablooga chip, wolfed them down, then immediately bent over. The Big Fat Pupu Face picked up Willy’s oxygen tank.

  Oh no, gross, Willy thought. He wasn’t really going to shove the tank in there, was he?

  He was. That is, he did. And not just in, but all the way inside.

  Loud rumbling and grumbling, a spitter and a spatter. Muted horns blew a concert in the alien’s gut, along with burbles and pops and what sounded like pigs squealing.

  The Little Pipi clenched its butt and pushed.

  “Eeuw,” Willy said.

  The oxygen tank slid out, sparkling clean. The gauge showed one hundred percent full!

  It was time to say goodbye. Willy turned to shake his brother’s hand, but Peter had already wandered off with his new alien friends. All Willy had to do now was find Squeaky.

  He searched behind boxes and in dark corners. He worked his way to the giant corkscrew in the center of the room.

  The hole it had drilled was so deep and so dark Willy couldn’t see the bottom. A narrow board formed a dangerous-looking bridge across it. If Squeaky had fallen down there, he had no hope.

  Peter and the Big Fat Pupu Face stood a few steps away, drinking a toast with blue-green liquid in strange cups. Peter swallowed his in one gulp, getting burps of approval from the other aliens.

  Peter replied with a deep, long, bubbly belch of his own.

  Every alien in the room froze. The Uranian leader frowned deeply. His body looked like it was about to erupt, changing from green to red to fiery orange.

  “How dare you talk about my mother that way!”

  The Big Fat Pupu Face grabbed Peter by the neck and shook him like a rag doll, while the other aliens whipped him with t
heir tentacles. Peter’s hands clawed the air. His face went purple.

  Willy leapt through the air and landed on the Big Fat Pupu Face’s back. He pinched and punched and kicked the cold, slimy alien skin.

  “Leave my brother alone, you ugly, stupid alien! Your mother is a—burrrrp!”

  A tentacle flung him across the room. He came down hard—actually, not that hard in the Moon’s low gravity—beside the giant corkscrew pit, its yawning darkness just an arm’s length away.

  The alien leader dropped Peter and lumbered in Willy’s direction.

  “Stop, or I’ll—” Willy said.

  “You’ll what?” The Big Fat Pupu Face spun around and aimed his butt at Willy.

  What’s he going to do, fart oxygen in my face? Willy thought.

  A supersonic jet-powered fart swept Willy over the edge of the corkscrew pit. Grabbing the side of the narrow bridge just in time, he was left holding on for dear life, dangling over the gaping hole.

  A Little Pipi walked over with one of the strange sparklers Willy had seen earlier, and waved it behind the Uranian leader.

  His fart turned into a flaming blowtorch.

  The Big Fat Pupu Face belched through clenched teeth:

  “Now you die.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Dueling Gassers

  The Uranian leader’s flaming fart narrowed into a blue-hot fart-saber.

  It jabbed and scorched Willy’s fingers, loosening his grip. Below him lay nothing but blackness.

  Peter, meanwhile, was tied up in the tentacles of two Little Pipis.

  “You’ve got to fart your way out!” Peter yelled.

  “I can’t,” Willy said. “There’s nothing in my guts.”

  “Eat Moon onion dip!” Peter said.

  It was useless advice, and they both knew it. Even in an emergency like this, it was against the Universal Law of Snacking to eat onion dip without chips.

  The Big Fat Pupu Face slashed again and again with his fart-saber. Willy began to lose his grip.