Star Attack

by Lucy Courtenay

  “Very well,” said Dark Wader. “I’m building a penguin paradise so I can rule the universe in comfort. But it’s lonely being the only penguin here. I want you all to join me. Permanently.”

  The Space Penguins blinked in surprise.

  “I was going to get in touch when I finished this place,” Dark Wader went on. “But then you turned up uninvited, so I’ve decided to ask you now. Imagine it! We can recreate all our best days on the Tunafish. We had fun, didn’t we? Who remembers the day I ran engine oil through the plumbing and nearly wrecked Krill’s waterproof feathers when he was taking a shower? Happy times!”

  “You’ve got a funny idea of happy times,” said Captain Krill.

  “If you stay here with me, you’ll have all the snow you want,” the big pengbot coaxed. “All the best rocks for nesting. Fish all day, every day. No more rattling through space in that old heap of fish-shaped junk. And some of the iceslides…” He paused temptingly. “There are iceslides in this place you wouldn’t believe. We could live in comfort and companionship, and rule the universe together. What do you say?”

  “Could we maybe try another iceslide before deciding, Captain?” Rocky asked hopefully. “And a couple of mullet sandwiches?”

  “We want to know where the Doughball’s pilot is,” Captain Krill said with determination. “We demand that you release him and his craft, and then we want to leave. We don’t want to rule the universe. We want to help it. It needs us.”

  “I need you too!” said Dark Wader. “I’m LONELY!”

  “Sorry,” said Captain Krill. “But that’s our final decision.”

  The pengbot looked utterly furious. “Oh POO!” he said. “Then you’ll all have to die instead.” He turned to his RoboSeals. “Take them away!”

  The jail cells were right next door to the sleeping pods in Point Two, but they couldn’t have been more different. The Space Penguins’ cell had three walls of steel and one wall of bars, plus a large door with a whopping steel padlock.

  “We have to get out of here!” Fuzz shouted, rattling the bars. “Who does that metal moon loon think he is?”

  Rocky waddled up and down the cell, his eyebrows bobbing. “What if…” he began. “No, scrap that. We could … no, that won’t help either. How about … oh, no way. Why—”

  Just at that moment, a peculiar yellow creature crept into view from a dark corner of the cell, waving three of its six arms.

  “Um, hello?” it said, sounding excited. “I’m Bobby Cheese. Pilot of the Doughball and fastest pizza-delivery commander in Section D of the universe. Are you the intergalactic heroes of the Tunafish?”

  The penguins looked at each other.

  “That’s us,” said Splash.

  Bobby Cheese started stuttering. “Oh, wow! I can’t believe you came! I’m honoured!” He shook the penguins’ flippers so hard that their blubbery bits started wobbling. With so many arms, it took no time at all.

  “So what’s the rescue plan?” Bobby Cheese asked eagerly.

  “We’re working on something right now, Cheese,” Captain Krill assured him. “Aren’t we, crew?”

  “I’m considering strategies,” said Fuzz.

  “I’m considering strategies too,” said Rocky.

  Which basically meant neither Fuzz nor Rocky had a rescue plan yet.

  “Splash?” said Captain Krill.

  Splash smiled. “Naturally enough, I have a solution to our dilemma, Captain.”

  He lifted his plump white belly with both flippers and revealed a small egg-shaped toolbox nestling on top of his feet.

  “Oh happy haddock,” said Fuzz. “We’ve slid. We’ve swum. We’ve danced through falling icicles. We’ve avoided the steel jaws of a robot killer whale and we’ve wound up in jail. And all that time you’ve kept a toolbox balanced on your feet! You’d make one heck of a dad!”

  “I took the precaution of glueing this toolbox into place shortly before the RoboSeals broke down the door of the Tunafish,” said Splash. He rummaged inside the box and produced a small pair of pliers and a pile of prawn shells. “I took the prawn pieces while we were having breakfast,” he added. “You never know when things might be useful. Stand aside now. Things could get fishy.”

  Splash’s flippers worked in a blur of flashing steel and prawn bits.

  “Ta-da,” he said with a final flourish of the pliers. “One shellfish skeleton key. Guaranteed to open anything.”

  It was miraculous! It was perfect! It was orange and slightly stinky!

  Fuzz snatched the key from Splash and inserted it into the padlock. The cell door flew open. At once, the little jelly-cam – which had slid into the jail cell a short distance behind the penguins – sent a silent alarm coursing through the Death Starfish.

  BREAKOUT, it transmitted. The screen in the Control Room flashed in big red letters: BREAKOUT.

  “This way!” Captain Krill shouted, spotting a hole carved into the icy wall outside the cell. It was too dark to read where it led to.

  The Death Starfish’s alarm system kicked into action. The walls flashed with warning lights and alarms ripped through the air, deafening the penguins. WHOOPWHOOPWHOOP!

  They hurtled down the tunnel. Each time they approached a fork, steel doors slammed shut and forced them to change direction. Captain Krill had a nasty feeling they were being herded.

  At last they shot into the air and crashed, beak-first, into a familiar-looking snowdrift. The jelly-cam landed in the drift behind Captain Krill with a muffled plip.

  Crabba snapped his claws in front of them. Masher and Cruncher snarled. The army of RoboSeals clapped their metal flippers and the penguins heard the familiar sound of falling icicles. Ching. Chang.

  They were back on the Great Ice Deck.

  “Ice of you to drop in,” said Dark Wader.

  “You used that joke already, Wader,” said Rocky.

  “I told you I was good at recycling,” said the pengbot.

  There was only one thing for it.

  “Waddle for your lives, crew!” shouted Captain Krill. “And do whatever you do to escape from things, Cheese! Follow me!”

  They bolted. The ranks of RoboSeals raced after them, red eyes glowing. They were a lot faster than they looked. At times like this, Captain Krill wished he had a set of wheels like Dark Wader’s.

  “Do you have anything useful in your toolbox, Splash?” Captain Krill shouted.

  The RoboSeals were closing in as Splash pulled out a flask of sloshing purple liquid from his toolbox. “This might do the trick!” he shouted.

  He opened the flask and emptied it on to the ice. A familiar sock-like smell blasted through the penguins’ nostrils. There were a series of loud bangs and fizzes behind them as the RoboSeals touched the stinky gunk and started exploding.

  “I analyzed the corrosive properties of the blobs shortly after we left the planet Tentakle,” Splash explained breathlessly. “Then I recreated it in liquid form. The battle with the RoboSeals at the Tunafish showed me that it might prove useful.”

  Captain Krill could feel the hot metal breath of the surviving RoboSeals on the back of his tail. Splash’s blob-bomb had slowed them down, but not by much.

  “Got any more?” he asked.

  “Nope,” said Splash.

  “Looks like we’ll just have to go a bit faster then,” said Rocky.

  “STOP WADDLING AND GIVE UP!” roared Dark Wader.

  “Never!” Fuzz shouted back, struggling to keep up with the others on his short legs.

  An ice hole in the ground marked SPACEPORT loomed into view.

  “Head for that hole!” Captain Krill yelled.

  The little jelly-cam leaped on to Rocky’s belt as Rocky and Splash jumped down the hole first. Captain Krill gave Bobby Cheese a brisk shove in the back. But as he leaped after the pizza commander, Captain heard something behind him that made him groan.

  “Take THAT, you ridiculous rustbucket! You bionic bilge pump! And that! And THAT! No one chases Fuzz Allgrin an
d lives to tell the tale!”

  The penguins landed with a WHUMP on the ice beside the gleaming spaceport where they’d first arrived. There was not a RoboSeal in sight. The landing bays and shiny Squid-G fighters were quiet.

  Rocky suddenly noticed the jelly-cam on his belt. He knocked it off in disgust. “Ugh,” he said. “I picked up something icky. I hate to think where it’s been.”

  The jelly-cam skidded across the icy ground towards the Tunafish.

  “Where’s Fuzz?” asked Rocky, looking around.

  “Fuzz stayed back to fight,” Captain Krill said grimly.

  “Is he mad?” gasped Bobby Cheese. “He’s no bigger than an anchovy!”

  “You should be glad Fuzz isn’t here, Cheese,” Splash said. “He’d grill you for that.”

  “Then you’d be toasted Cheese,” Rocky added.

  The pizza commander goggled at the spectacular spacecraft parked in the cargo bays in front of the Tunafish.

  “That’s my ship!” he squeaked. “What have they done to it? It’s amazing!”

  The Doughball’s rust had gone. Tentacles of steel sprouted from its tail. A sharp beak-like nose stuck out at the front and bright new engines glittered on its belly.

  Rocky whistled. “They’ve turned your rustbucket into a Squid-G fighter, Cheese!”

  Captain Krill clapped his flippers under Rocky’s beak. “Concentrate, Rocky! We have to go back and rescue Fuzz before Wader sends his RoboSeals after us!”

  “We’ll have to use our strengths,” said Splash. “Where are we at our fastest and most unstoppable?”

  “Somewhere without RoboSeals,” said Rocky.

  Captain Krill slapped his forehead with a flipper. “Of course! Somewhere we can swim!”

  “I hate to point it out, but this place is no Antarctic Ocean,” said Rocky.

  “We need zero gravity, not water!” Captain Krill said. “In zero gravity we can swim at incredible speeds. We were designed for it.”

  “When Beaky rebuilt himself as a robot, I bet he lost the ability to swim in zero gravity,” said Splash. “You’ve seen how well he moves on land with those wheels. I don’t think you can have it both ways.”

  Captain Krill smiled. “So in zero gravity…”

  “Wader’s toast,” whooped Rocky.

  “Now all we have to do is find the mechanism which controls the gravity on this space station and switch it off,” said the captain. “Right, Splash?”

  “One hundred per cent accurate, Captain,” replied Splash. He pointed at an ice hole carved into the opposite wall. The sign said CONTROL ROOM. “And there’s a good place to start looking.”

  “Rocky?” said Captain Krill. “We need your speed through these ice tunnels if we’re going to find and disable the gravity system before Wader catches up with us. Cheese can go with you. Three extra pairs of arms could come in handy.”

  “Um,” said Bobby Cheese. He backed towards the new-look Doughball. “I think you’re ace and I can’t thank you enough and everything, but anti-gravity missions and fights with weird penguin robots and their metal seals aren’t really my thing. In fact, I need to be going. I have pizzas to collect and deliver.”

  “But we need your arms!” Captain Krill said. “You have so many of them, and—”

  But Bobby Cheese had already reached the new-look Doughball and was swinging himself into the driving seat. “I’m rechristening my ship the Cheeseball!” he shouted. “Sorry, but I have to go. Any time you want pizzas, give me a call and I’ll give you ten per cent off!”

  The gleaming Cheeseball’s engine roared smoothly into life, filling the cargo bay with the pong of old sardine oil.

  “Ten per cent off?” said Rocky in disgust. “His distress call said we could have them for free!”

  “We’re wasting time,” said the Captain. “Fuzz needs us. Can you find the gravity system and turn it off by yourself, Rocky?”

  “Leave it to me, Captain!”

  “Get to the Fish Station as soon as your mission is complete. Splash and I will meet you there. We need all flippers on full.”

  Rocky leaped into the Control Room ice tunnel just as a set of vast steel doors sealed them off from the spaceport and the Cheeseball blasted away.

  “Are you sure you did the right thing, sending Rocky, Captain?” said Splash. “His sense of direction isn’t entirely reliable.”

  “I thought about sending you instead, Splash,” said the Captain, “but I need you for something else. Follow me. We have to find a tunnel to the Fish Station.”

  Thousands of fish swam through huge glass tanks above and around Splash and the Captain. Their scales flashed and gleamed in the icy light. The two Space Penguins could hear Dark Wader shouting at his RoboSeals in the next room.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find them? LOOK HARDER!”

  Splash dusted himself down after an extra speedy ride through the Death Starfish tunnels. “Now what?”

  “Come on then, you corrugated cake tin!” came Fuzz’s enraged voice. “Take a bite!”

  Through the connecting door to the Great Ice Deck, Captain Krill and Splash caught sight of Fuzz dangling over the water tank in a cage, kicking and punching at the bars. With a creak and a lurch, the cage holding Fuzz dropped a little lower.

  “Wader’s feeding Fuzz to the whale!” gasped Captain Krill, rushing towards the connecting door for a closer look. One waddling foot caught the edge of a nearby fish vending machine.

  CCCLLLAAANNNGGG!

  “OW!”

  Hundreds of red RoboSeal eyes swivelled to face Captain Krill as he hopped about in the doorway.

  “Don’t worry about me, Captain!” shouted Fuzz, flinging himself at the bars of his cage like a maddened hamster. “That barnacled banana doesn’t stand a chance against the Fuzzmeister!”

  “We have unfortunately lost our element of surprise,” said Splash.

  “GET THEM!” roared Dark Wader.

  Captain Krill tried to close the Fish Station door as the RoboSeals raced towards them. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Here’s the plan,” panted the Captain. “We’ll have to act a little faster than I had hoped, but we should still be OK. I’m going to jam the button on this vending machine. Then you can help me move the machine so that it blocks the door, face out. We’ll need your toolbox, Splash.”

  “GET A MOVE ON, YOU MECHANIZED MUDFLAPS!” Dark Wader screamed at the RoboSeals.

  The penguins heaved at the vending machine until it sat snugly in the doorway. They could hear the sound of mackerel hitting the Great Ice Deck on the other side. PING. PING. PING.

  “Can you make the mechanism throw fish out any faster?” said Captain Krill.

  “How fast do you want?”

  “What’s the fastest thing you can think of?” said Captain Krill.

  “Light moves at three hundred thousand kilometres a second,” said Splash.

  “Perhaps not that fast,” said Captain Krill. “But do your best.”

  Splash whipped off the back of the machine and started tinkering with the mechanism. Captain Krill could see the cogs and wheels speeding up, turning quicker and quicker. PING, went the mackerel. Then PING PING.

  Then PING-PING-PING-PING-PING-PING-PING…

  Through the tiny gap between the edge of their new fish cannon and the door frame, Captain Krill watched the RoboSeals lurch about in confusion as the fishy missiles battered into them.

  The cage dropped further. Fuzz’s shrieks of rage grew louder. “Gimme what you’ve got, blubberchops!”

  Captain Krill and Splash exchanged worried looks.

  “Where’s Rocky?” said the Captain. “We’re running out of time!’

  And then time ran out completely as the great robot whale leaped up towards Fuzz with its jaws gaping wide.

  Somewhere in the middle of the Death Starfish, Rocky hurtled along with his eyebrows flowing behind him like streamers. He’d got lost three times already, but at least he was getting faster with every tunne
l he tried.

  Zooming out of the fourth and final tunnel at sixty kilometres an hour, he hit a massive wall of flashing buttons feet first.

  WHEEPWHEEPWARPWARPWAAARPP went the buttons. Half of them dropped out of the control wall and hit the floor in a tangle of wires. Three light bulbs exploded.

  “Whoops!” Rocky waved at the three stunned-looking RoboSeals beside the broken control panel. “Is this the Control Room?”

  One of the RoboSeals gave a menacing nod.

  “Did I hit the anti-gravity button?”

  The nodding RoboSeal lunged at him with a snarl. It only got halfway when its back end lifted off the ground and floated up towards the ceiling, making the RoboSeal do a clumsy somersault in mid-air. The other two joined it with surprised expressions on their gleaming silver faces.

  “Looks like I did,” said Rocky as his body lifted off the ground as well.

  Angling his flippers, he made a smart turn in mid-air. He spotted an ice hole marked FISH STATION just behind the nearest upside-down RoboSeal.

  “Gotta go,” he said with a wave. “Sorry to leave you hanging about.”

  And Rocky zoomed away down the tunnel to find the others.

  Giving a little kick, Captain Krill shot sideways through the Fish Station with a whoop.

  “Zero gravity!” he shouted. “Rocky did it!”

  Splash and Captain Krill rocketed around the room a couple of times to test their speed, dodging the peculiar blobs of water rising from the Fish Station tanks and carrying lots of confused-looking fish. Then Rocky zoomed out of the Fish Station ice tunnel and almost smashed into Splash.

  “Sorry it took a while,” he panted, pushing his eyebrows out of the way. “What did I miss?”

  “Me, you idiot,” Splash shouted. “But only just.”