by Jim Benton
started to choke on the smoke.
Huge sections of the ship were breaking
away, and the Groogling crew ran in all
directions. Some began preparing to aban-
don ship.
“What are you coloring?” Victor asked.
“A duck. Like your duck.”
“It’s a chicken,” Victor said firmly, and
he picked up Dumpylumps.
“I have to go, Patti.” He signed off, and
hung up.
He stroked Dumpylumps’s tiny head.
“We’re in a pretty bad situation,
Dumpylumps,” Victor said, and Dumpy-
lumps nodded sadly.
“It’s over for us, you know,” Victor said
as he hugged Dumpylumps fiercely. “I love
you, Dumpylumps.”
Dumpylumps jumped up on the control
panel and shook his butt at Victor.
“That’s not a very nice thing to do,”
Victor said.
Dumpylumps picked up Patti’s phone
and waved it at him.
“Like the game! Of course!” Victor said,
grabbing Dumpylumps.
Victor pounded Dumpylumps’s butt on
the control panel.
“If it worked in the game, it will
work here!”
Dumpylumps’s butt feathers flew as
the Groogling ship whirled around and
began firing at the Frappletonian ship.
Like a skilled surgeon, Victor managed
to shoot off only their guns, leaving the
Frappletonians alive but unable to fire back.
He turned and spoke to Captain Grulf.
“The Frappletonians are helpless, sir.”
“Attack them!” Sergeant Skulgo shouted.
“Now! While they’re at our mercy.”
“You
could
do that,” Victor said. “Or you
could do something like we were discuss-
ing earlier. You could explain the situation
to them. Tell them that you could destroy
them, but that you would rather have
peace.”
“But how can we forget everything
they’ve done to us?” Sergeant Skulgo hissed.
“You can forget
anything
. I forget stuff
all the time. Nobody can remember every-
thing,” Victor said, happily poking him in
the belly. “Just add all the stuff to the list of
other things you’ve forgotten.”
“Maybe it is time to forget,” Captain
Grulf said. “Yes. We’ll try that, Victor,
and this time, Sergeant Skulgo, DON’T
INTERFERE!”
CHAPTER 12
THERE’S GOOD NEWS AND
THERE’S BAD NEWS
THE BAD NEWS IS THAT THERE REALLY
ISN'T ANY GOOD NEWS
Mrs. Nozzleburp looked up at the sky as she
listened nervously to Victor on her phone.
“I think we’re just about done here, so I
should be back any minute,” he told her.
“Hey, just for fun, put my boots out on
the playground and I’ll try to beam right
into them.”
“Victor, I know that you’re not really in
space, but I need you to return to class
immediately. I’m really quite worried.”
“I am in space. I can prove it,” he said.
“Wait, I’ll send you a picture to prove it.”
A photo came through on Mrs.
Nozzleburp’s phone. It was a picture of
Dumpylumps.
“Did you get the picture I sent?” Victor
asked.
“It’s just a picture of your bird.”
“Yeah, but it’s a picture of him in space.”
Captain Grulf put his big alien hands on
Victor’s shoulders.
“I have some great news,” he said.
“Is it somebody’s birthday?” Victor asked
hopefully. “We’re getting cupcakes, right?”
“No. We communicated with the
Frappletonians. We explained everything,
and we’ve all agreed to just forget the
past and work toward peace.”
“That’s great,” Victor said. “But you
know, we could still ask around. There are
a lot of crew members on this ship. It’s
probably somebody’s birthday.”
“We could not have done this without
you, Victor.”
“That’s very nice of you to say, sir. I did
have some help from this butt.”
He held Dumpylumps up to the cap-
tain’s face.
“Yes, we’re all very grateful to that butt
as well.”
They all saluted Dumpylumps right in
the butt.
“But here’s the thing. If something like
this comes up again, we’re going to need
you here. We’ve decided to make you a per-
manent crew member.”
“That sounds pretty good,” Victor said.
“As long as I can do it from home, and not
during school or on the weekends. Also,
after school isn’t so good for me. And I’m
pretty busy in the summer.”
Dumpylumps pulled out a calendar.
“Schedule something with my chicken
here. We can make something work, I’m
sure.”
He winked at the captain.
“Now let’s beam me back to the play-
ground. Look for my boots and try to beam
me right into them.”
Captain Grulf snorted.
“First, that thing is a duck. And second,
you don’t have a choice in the matter,” he
said. “You are now a full-time member of
this crew. You’re never going back to Earth,
and that’s final. We need you here.”
Victor was upset. He didn’t mind being
the battle expert on an interspace alien
ship; in fact, he had planned to do that later
on that month anyway. He just didn’t like
the idea that he wouldn’t be able to do other
things as well.
“Things are what I like best,” Victor
murmured to Dumpylumps, who tried to
remember all the things they had done just
that week.
Victor frowned and secretly sent a text
to Patti.
Please send me picture of Nozzleburp,
it said.
CHAPTER 13
THE BEAUTY THAT IS NOZZLEBURP
Victor sat at the control panel and watched
Earth get farther and farther away.
“I’ve thought about it, Captain Grulf,
and I’ve decided that I’m looking forward
to spending the rest of my horrible life as
a prisoner on this busted-up and nasty
alien ship.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Victor. You may
come to love this nasty ship.”
“I’m just sad that I’ll never get to see my
beautiful Nozzleburp again.” Victor sniffed.
“What a lovely name,” Captain Grulf
said. “Is she your mother?”
“My wife,” Victor said sadly. “And she’s
the most beautiful woman on Earth.”
He showed Captain Grulf the picture
of Mrs. Nozzleburp that Patti had just
texted him.
Captain Grulf’s red eyes bulged and his
mouth fell open.
“Hot bananas,” he
whispered. “She’s
gorgeous. From her woolly head to her
majestically flapping elbow meat.”
“Yes, she is,” Victor said. “I made her
that way.”
“She’s a robot?” Captain Grulf asked.
Sergeant Skulgo and the other crew mem-
bers handed the phone around to look at
the picture.
“No, she’s real. I said that I made her
because I’m a beauty expert. It’s just one of
the things I do. I can do it for anybody.”
Captain Grulf stroked his chin and
leaned in close to Victor.
“Listen, Victor,” he whispered. “I’ve
always felt that I could use a little help in
the looks department. Do you think you
could make me a bit more handsome?”
“I could,” Victor said. “But the kind of
good looks I can give you could cause a prob-
lem on the ship. The whole crew would be
jealous. It’s a bad idea. We shouldn’t do it.”
Captain Grulf frowned.
“Wait. I have an idea,” Victor said.
“What if you made us all beautiful? Then
nobody would be jealous!”
He turned to his crew.
“How about it, guys? Do you all
want to be beautiful? Beautiful like the
Nozzleburp?”
They all cheered and began making very
beautiful poses.
Victor quietly placed one more call home
and talked to Patti.
“I need you to do a thing,” he told her.
CHAPTER 14
IT'S NOT EASY BEING BEAUTIFUL
Captain Grulf, Sergeant Skulgo, and the
rest of the Grooglings sat patiently and
waited for Victor to begin. They clapped
their gross hands in excitement.
“Please prepare yourself to be magnifi-
cent,” he told them, and Dumpylumps held
up a little sign to make sure they didn’t
forget.
“I will now apply my top-secret beauty
treatment. It will make you unbelievably
gorgeous and would probably also be pretty
good on a sandwich, if one of you brought
a sandwich.”
Victor moved quickly down the line,
sprinkling the substance on them the way
he had used it on Mr. Plumporski.
“It tingles,” one of them said.
“Interesting,” Victor said. “It has the
same effect on janitor heads.”
“It’s working,” Captain Grulf shouted,
and his antennae started to curl. And then
his eyebrows, and then his whiskers.
“We’re beautiful!” Sergeant Skulgo
cheered, and they all admired one another’s
curls.
“Nice work,” Captain Grulf said. “You’re
a great addition to the crew, and
.
.
.” He
stopped talking mid-sentence.
The other aliens clutched their antennae
and started to whimper.
“It’s not stopping!”
“We’re curling too much!”
“It hurts!” they yelled.
“Victor! Make it stop!” Captain Grulf
cried. He fell to the ground and rolled
around in pain.
“I can’t,” Victor said. “The only stuff that
will reverse this is on Earth, and you said
we could never go back there. Sorry.”
“Just go back!” Captain Grulf said.
“Go now!”
Victor put on the turn signal and steered
the ship around and headed back toward
Earth.
“Hurry! We’re becoming too beautiful!”
CHAPTER 15
MOPPING UP
Patti heard a loud screech, like the sound
a school bus makes when it puts on the
brakes. She looked out at the playground
and saw the huge alien ship hovering over
the ground.
The door opened and Victor waved.
“Is it okay to leave this ship here for a
minute?” he shouted.
Mrs. Nozzleburp wobbled out to the
playground.
“Victor! Come out of there!” she yelled.
“Okay, but I have to get these guys
out first.”
Victor operated the controls and began
shaking the ship up and down until the
weeping Grooglings spilled out onto
the ground.
He then tossed Dumpylumps out of
the ship and climbed down carefully onto
Sergeant Skulgo’s face.
“Patti, did you bring my equipment?” he
asked.
“I did,” she said, and handed him Mr.
Plumporski’s filthy mop.
“I always felt that I’d be pretty good with
this thing,” he said, and he dunked it in the
mop bucket.
Victor carefully applied the mop to their
faces and washed off some of the beauty
treatment.
“I’m leaving just enough on for you to
keep these flattering waves,” Victor said.
“You guys really applied too much. You
shouldn’t have used so much.”
He turned to Dumpylumps.
“I thought I told you we needed a warn-
ing label on the bottle. You’re fired.”
Dumpylumps immediately fainted.
“Oh, get up,” Victor said. “You’re rehired.
But I’m not going to pay you as much.”
Dumpylumps thought for a moment,
and realized that he had never been paid in
the first place.
CHAPTER 16
ALL GOOD THINGS MUST
COME TO AN END
Victor walked into his bedroom, followed
by Dumpylumps.
“I guess we managed to do a thing
today,” Victor said. “And if you can do one
of those every day, I think you’re doing
all right.”
Dumpylumps nodded and put what was
left of the beauty treatment up onto Victor’s
Special Shelf of Things.
“Remember to put a warning label on
that. Put that on your to-do list. First, learn
to write, then second, make that label,”
Victor instructed.
“It was a good idea that Patti had, mak-
ing the Grooglings promise to keep peace
with the Frappletonians,” Victor said. “She
told them that I could reactivate those
beautiful curls by remote. I can’t, of course,
but they don’t know that.”
Dumpylumps tried to give a thumbs-up,
but he wasn’t sure he even had a thumb.
“And I was glad that Mrs. Nozzleburp
didn’t agree to marry the captain. One day,
when I’m old enough, I plan to marry that
big beautiful doll myself.”
Dumpylumps imagined what he would
like to wear to the wedding.
Victor checked to see if his mustache
had grown yet. He planned to propose to
Mrs. Nozzleburp the moment it came in.
“Patti was a big help today,” Victor said.
“I’m thinking about giving her a permanent
position on the rock.”
Dumpylumps spun around and eyed him
angrily. He did NOT want Patti to have a
permanent position on their rock.
He threw his little notebook angrily to
the floor and stood in the corner.
“Patti thought you should have this,”
Victor said.
Dumpylumps was mad, but couldn’t
resist turning his head slightly to see.
Victor opened a box and showed it to
him. It was a rock.
“This will go right next to mine,” he said.
“Look. Patti painted something on it.”
It said MR. DUMPYLUMPS, EXECUTIVE
DUCK, and she had taped the picture she
had drawn of him next to it.
His very own rock.
“I know what you’re thinking. I told her
over and over that you’re a chicken, but
she insisted that this is exactly what it
should say.”
Dumpylumps hugged Victor, and the
two of them looked out the window.
A broken laser cannon that Victor had
shot off the Frappletonian ship had fallen
to Earth and landed right on his front lawn,
where it smoldered and sparked.
“I always thought that would be a good
spot for a thing,” he said.
Dumpylumps nodded, and took a seat
on his own personal rock. He picked up his
little notebook and pretended to write some-
thing down.
Victor looked at him and grinned.
“Good week so far, Mr. Dumpylumps,”
he said. “Let’s take a look at my calendar
so you can tell me if
I have a thing
scheduled for
tomorrow.”
FROM VICTOR SHMUD #2:
VICTOR WEARS KINDERGARTNERS AS
BASKETBALL SHOES!
Jim Benton
is an author and artist,
and the creator of many licensed properties. You may know
some of the other things he’s made, like It’s Happy Bunny,