Galaxy's Most Wanted

by John Kloepfer

  Tara’s eyes brimmed with tears, and TJ was speechless once again. Warner’s face was fixed in an expression of disbelief. Kevin gulped down the knot that was beginning to form in the back of his throat. Mim was in trouble, and they had to help him.

  “Are there going to be more of those things coming after you?” Warner said finally.

  Mim nodded. “Most likely. Hopefully not right away. It’s pretty difficult to trace the wormhole network. Almost impossible to keep track of who goes where.”

  “So you do use wormholes,” TJ said. “I knew it!”

  Mim’s attention turned to a big fat spider scuttling across the floor. Kevin watched as Mim reached down and grabbed the eight-legged bug by one leg, letting it dangle in front of his four-eyed face.

  “Oops, I must have missed this one earlier.” The furry little alien popped the spider into his mouth and chewed furiously.

  “Ew, you just ate that spider!” Tara proclaimed. “Gross!”

  Kevin looked up at the ceiling. All the spiderwebs and spiders from earlier were now gone.

  Mim belched. “I was starving!”

  “Dude, we can bring you some real snacks tomorrow,” said Warner. “I’ll even give you the team discount.”

  “Really?” Mim said, licking a spider leg that was stuck to his finger. “I can be part of the team?”

  “Of course,” said Kevin with a smile. “Listen, we should probably get back to our bunks. Are you sure you’re going to be all right in here for the night?”

  “I think so. I’ll sleep with one eye open just in case.” Mim closed three of his eyes and winked with the other one.

  “G’night, Mim,” Kevin bid their new alien friend farewell for the second time that night and closed the door.

  The next day, Kevin could barely stay awake during his afternoon astronomy lab. It didn’t help that they were in the dark planetarium either.

  The guest lecturer had canceled and Camp Director Dimpus was the substitute, fumbling through a PowerPoint on the gravitational fields of supermassive black holes. It was the perfect time to take a little nap. Kevin already knew all there was to know about black holes anyway. His eyes grew heavy as he slumped in his seat, listening to the drone of Dimpus’s lecture.

  A few moments later, Kevin felt an elbow jam into his ribs. “Stop snoring, dude,” Warner said. “You’re gonna get us in trouble.”

  Two rows ahead, Alexander turned around and shot them a sourpuss. “Some of us are trying to pay attention.”

  Kevin opened his eyes and sat up straighter. The clock on the wall read quarter to four, only fifteen more minutes till they could go see Mim again. When the minute hand finally reached the twelve and the lesson came to an end, Kevin, Warner, and TJ bolted out the door and back to their cabin. TJ grabbed a pencil and started adding a few more questions to his list of things to ask Mim. Warner gathered up a bunch of candy bars, and Kevin grabbed an empty duffel bag from under his bed in case they needed to transport Mim. They had to be extra careful not to let him be seen by anyone, especially with Alexander watching them closely.

  The walkie-talkie on the desk crackled, and Tara’s voice radioed in. “Hey, boys, heading over to see you know who. See you in a few! Over.”

  “We’ll be there in five,” Kevin said.

  “Come on,” TJ said, racing out the door. “Last one there’s a purple alien!”

  When they reached the sports shed, Tara was already inside, but Mim was nowhere to be found. A knot of worry began to form in Kevin’s belly.

  “Wait,” Warner said. “You don’t think more insectoids found him?”

  Kevin, Warner, Tara, and TJ searched around the shed frantically, pushing aside bins filled with orange and blue pinnies and digging through piles of baseball mitts. Kevin was about to look through the tennis equipment when he heard a rustle come from behind them.

  “What are you nerdbombers doing in the sports shed?” Alexander said as the Vainglorious Math Nerds came up from behind them.

  “Actually,” said Tara, “we’re having a supersecret meeting and you’re not welcome.”

  “Oh really?” Alexander said. “How is the new project coming along? Spying on anyone else today? I hear Team Quasar’s working on a soda pop that makes your hair turn a different color.”

  “None of your beeswax,” said Kevin.

  “Actually, it would be my beeswax,” Alexander retorted. “I’m president of the Beekeepers Club.”

  Warner glared at Alexander. “I don’t think it qualifies as a club if there’s only one member.”

  “We’re members, too,” said Dante and Luke.

  “And you each have one third of a brain, give or take,” said TJ. “So that still only makes one member. Sorry, guys.”

  “Oh, so it really does talk,” Alexander said, patting TJ on the noggin. TJ flinched and glowered at the bully. “I was starting to worry. There was a rumor going around that you’d been abducted by aliens.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Kevin nervously. “Like aliens actually exist.”

  “You don’t believe in aliens?” Alexander scoffed, turning to Luke and Dante. “He doesn’t believe in aliens! What a lamebrain!”

  “Whatever, Alexander,” Kevin said. “We’ll see what happens at the convention.”

  “Whatever is right, Brewer. You’ve got no chance.” Before he stalked off with his minions in tow, Alexander stooped to the floor just inside the door and picked something up from the ground. He held it up curiously, pinching a little tuft of purple fur between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Hmmm,” Alexander said. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”

  “I don’t know,” Warner said. “Maybe it’s from one of Team Quasar’s soda experiments?”

  Alexander glowered at Warner. “Maybe, but that means their soda works! We better get this back to the lab, boys.”

  Kevin’s stomach dropped. They couldn’t let Alexander make off with a sample of their alien, but Tara was all over it.

  “Watch out,” Tara yelled as she smacked the tuft of fur free from Alexander’s grip. The fur went flying in every direction like the puffs of a dandelion.

  “Hey!” Alexander growled at her. “That was my specimen!”

  “Sorry,” she said. “There was, like, a super-huge mosquito about to nibble your arm.”

  Alexander’s eyes narrowed, and his lips curled up into a sneer.

  “Who cares, Alexander?” Luke said to his captain. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Alexander said, staring at Kevin. “Time to leave these losers to their losing.”

  “See ya,” said Tara as the VMNs walked off. “Wouldn’t want to be ya.”

  Once Alexander and his cronies were gone, Kevin went back to searching for their extraterrestrial friend.

  “Mim!” Kevin called out in a whisper. “Mim!”

  They all heard a crash that sounded like it was coming from outside the shed, and Kevin braced himself for another Alexander intrusion.

  “Hello, friends,” Mim said as he darkened the doorway to the shed. He waved with one hand while holding a couple of wet suits and a scuba tank in his three other hands.

  Kevin breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Where’ve you been, Mim? We thought you got kidnapped . . . or alien-napped or whatever.”

  “It’ll take more than a de-atomizer to take me out, trust me,” Mim said. “Do any of you have something to eat? I ran out of spiders.”

  “No problem, Mim,” Warner said. “I got just the thing.” He tossed the fluffy little alien two candy bars and a couple of bags of chips. Mim dropped his gear and caught each snack item with a different hand. “Try these. Way better than spiders.”

  Mim’s mouth widened to twice its normal size, and he tossed all four in at once, wrappers and all. “Mmm . . .”

  “No, dude, you’re not supposed to—” Warner started to say. “Never mind.”

  “So, Mim,” TJ said, producing the neatly folded-up list of questions.
“I have a few more things I want to ask you.”

  “Shoot,” said Mim, wriggling his tongue to dislodge a piece of candy wrapper stuck in his teeth. The bit of plastic wrapper seemed to dissolve as he salivated. “I’m feeling much livelier today.”

  “Do all aliens know how to speak English?”

  “No, only those of us who have a language chip.”

  Mim pulled back a thatch of fur on the side of his head to reveal something square and bulging from under the skin. “It’s a computer chip that translates for your brain. I don’t even have to think about it.”

  “Sweet,” said Warner, sounding a little bummed. “We still have to learn stuff the old-fashioned way.”

  “Speaking of old-fashioned, who here knows how to use these things?” Mim said, picking up the scuba gear again.

  “I do,” said Kevin. “And so does Warner.”

  “We took scuba last summer,” said Warner. “We even got the gold medal at the scuba scavenger hunt.”

  “Do you think you could use your gold medal skills and get my stuff from the lake? If we don’t get my supplies, we’re not going to stand a chance against any other poachers.”

  “I guess we could do it,” said Kevin. “We’ve never dived down that far, though.” He chewed a fingernail.

  “But you’ll do it?” Mim asked, and the four Extraordinary Terrestrials nodded. “Great! You guys are the best. Tonight, we dive.”

  After sundown, Kevin and Warner were back in their room, pulling on their wet suits. A tuft of bright orange hair flopped out of Kevin’s black scuba cap, and he tucked it back under, trying to smooth out the rubber. He turned to TJ, who was awkwardly trying to wear his glasses underneath the goggles. Kevin had borrowed a spare pair of Warner’s contact lenses, and since they had the exact same prescription, Kevin could see fine.

  “I guess I couldn’t go anyway,” TJ said, giving up and fumbling to put his eyeglasses back in place.

  “Don’t worry, dude,” Kevin said. “You and Tara both have important jobs.”

  “Yeah, man,” said Warner. “You’re our eyes and ears. If anything’s about to go down, just give us the heads-up.”

  TJ held up the walkie-talkie and saluted them both. “You know I got your back.”

  Warner went back to checking himself out in the mirror. “I look pretty good in this thing, huh?”

  “Yeah, if by good, you mean—”

  Knock-knock!

  “Who’s there?” Kevin asked as his perfectly worded wet-suit insult slipped his mind.

  “Check-in time,” Bailey said on the other side of the door.

  “Check-in time who?” Warner said, taking the goggles away from TJ and stuffing them under his pillow.

  “Come on, little dudes. I haven’t got all night.” Bailey’s voice grew irritable behind the door.

  Kevin yanked off the swimming cap and he and Warner quickly threw on pajama pants and sweatshirts over the wet suits.

  “One second!” Warner said, pushing the rest of the diving equipment under the bed. “I’m just getting dressed.”

  Kevin opened the door, now wearing his pajama bottoms. “Hey, Bailey.” His counselor towered over him.

  “Hi, fellas,” Bailey said. “What are you guys up to?”

  “Up to?” said Kevin, trying to sound carefree. “Whole lot of nothin’.”

  “Is that true, Warner?” their counselor asked.

  “Yeah, I mean nothing’s going on,” Warner said. “Why?”

  “We’re supposed to be on the lookout,” said Bailey. “Apparently, there’ve been some reports of certain strange goings-on around here lately.”

  “Goings-on?” asked Kevin, playing stupid.

  “You know,” Bailey said. “Campers sneaking out at night. Flashing lights. You guys don’t know anything about that, do you?”

  “Nope,” said Warner, his eyes darting away to the scuba flipper sticking out from under the bed.

  “Good,” Bailey said, scribbling something on his clipboard. Then he chuckled to himself. “One camper even claims he saw a monster prowling around the campgrounds. You kids have the craziest imaginations.”

  “You know us kids,” Kevin said, laughing nervously, when suddenly there was a rapping underneath Warner’s window.

  “Are you guys expecting company?” Bailey asked.

  Kevin jumped to the windowsill and peered out. Mim was standing on the ground below. “There’s nobody there.”

  “Must have been a squirrel or something,” said TJ.

  “Yo, you’re talking!” their counselor said. “I just won twenty bucks off Cody. Ha ha! I knew you could talk.”

  TJ shrugged and looked away nonchalantly.

  “All right, sleep well, fellas,” Bailey said as he headed to the common room. “See you tomorrow.”

  As the door to the bedroom closed, Kevin sighed loudly and started pulling out the scuba gear from under the bed. Warner and TJ ran to the window, where Mim was waiting.

  Warner climbed over TJ’s bed and lifted the window. Mim hopped up nimbly, bounding over the sill onto the mattress, then bounced onto the floor. “Howdy, partners! You guys ready?”

  “Soon,” Warner said, as they finished putting on their diving gear.

  “Dude, that was way too close!” Kevin said. “We’ve got to start being more careful.”

  At the edge of the lakeshore Kevin and Warner put on their flippers, secured their goggles, and checked the oxygen tanks. Kevin looked down at his waterproof watch and pressed the glow button so he could see in the dark.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “The night patrol should have passed by the lake already. We should be good to go.”

  “Come in, Tango-Alpha-Romeo. Tango-Juliet. Over,” Warner said into his walkie-talkie. They’d come up with new code names for one another earlier that day. “Remember, you guys are the lookouts. If you see anybody heading our way, call Mim on this radio.”

  “Got it.” TJ’s voice crackled through the transmitter a bit loudly.

  “Be careful, you guys,” Tara chimed in.

  “We will.” Kevin turned the volume down a little lower.

  “So, what’s the plan, Mim? Where is this stuff?” Warner asked, handing him the walkie-talkie for safekeeping.

  “For you and you.” Mim handed each of them a folded piece of paper.

  Kevin opened up the note to reveal a hand-drawn map of the alien spacecraft. “Whoa.” The craft was shaped like a flattened diamond, with two long wings stretching out on either side. There was a point at the top and another at the bottom, where a small exit hatch had been marked with an arrow.

  “The exit shaft will still be open,” Mim said, motioning to the small square door on the map. “Get the black bag underneath the seat in the cockpit. That’s the stuff we need.”

  Kevin and Warner studied the diagram closely, committing the map to memory. A circular corridor ran around the interior of the ship, and the cockpit was positioned at the front, opposite the exit shaft. “Got it,” Kevin said, and handed his paper back to Mim.

  “You ready?” Warner asked Kevin. The boys faced the middle of the lake, where Mim’s spaceship had plunged just the other night. Kevin and Warner lowered their goggles and double-checked their air tanks.

  “Let’s do this,” Kevin responded.

  The boys put in their mouthpieces and waded into the shallow water. When it got deep enough, Kevin dove, wriggling his legs and kicking his flippers, propelling himself to the bottom of the lake. Now below the surface, the boys flicked on their underwater flashlights and immediately saw the sunken spaceship wedged in the sand like a Frisbee that had landed cockeyed.

  As they approached, the beams of light wavered through the dark volume of water and shined down on the open hatch of Mim’s submerged ship.

  The two boys swam through the door and turned down a narrow steel corridor until they reached the cockpit. High-tech control panels lined the large window in front of a fancy pilot seat, and some kind of transparent helme
t hung above it.

  Kevin kicked his flippers together like a dolphin and zipped through the underwater spacecraft to the base of the pilot seat. He reached underneath, feeling for a strap handle. When his hand grazed the bag Mim had described, he pulled on it hard. With a pop and a flurry of bubbles, the bag burst out from under the seat and swayed in the water while Kevin held on tight.

  He glanced over to give Warner the thumbs-up, but his friend was distracted, training the light on something behind Kevin. Warner pointed, his eyes wide with fear. As Kevin saw what Warner was looking at, his heart skipped a beat. A mutant octopus monster twice the size of an adult lion swam in place. It stared at them with the face of a tarantula.

  Kevin turned back to Warner, whose eyes were still popping out of their sockets. They had to get out of there. But when Kevin moved an inch, the alien beast stirred, revealing a set of four thick arachnid-like legs covered in coarse hair.

  The creature extended one of its five-foot-long tentacles toward them, and Warner shrieked. A torrent of air bubbles shot out of his scuba mouthpiece as Kevin grabbed Warner’s arm and swam away through the spacecraft’s circular passageway. Looking over his shoulder, Kevin saw a dark blur of movement whoosh past his line of vision as the spider-fish rounded the corner fast.

  The boys shot out of the exit hatch and kicked their flippers, swimming for their lives toward the surface. As they burst out of the water, Kevin could see Mim waving them in to shore excitedly, but they weren’t out of harm’s way yet. Behind them, the water stirred and rippled and the head of the alien octo-spider rose from the depths of the lake. The alien lake monster bobbed like a lurking crocodile and then disappeared back underneath.

  “Whoa,” Kevin mumbled through his mouthpiece, holding on tightly to Mim’s black bag as the boys swam frantically toward the shore.

  “Come on, Kevin!” Warner shouted from ahead. “Don’t look back!”

  Kevin caught up with Warner, and they both raced out of the lake onto dry land. Kevin dropped the bag on the ground with a clank, then took out his mouthpiece. “What the heck,” he gasped, “was that thing, Mim?”