Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow

by Nathan Bransford

  But then Sarah Daisy stepped over and put her hand on Jacob’s shoulder, and he unclenched his hands. He knew what she meant with the gesture, and he knew she was right, although he never would have admitted that to her out loud. Mick had Lucy trapped and they had no way of knowing how to get home. Jacob would have to find a way to escape that didn’t involve pulverizing the ego out of any famous, or, correction, “extremely famous” bandits.

  Jacob nodded to Dexter and Sarah. “Let’s go see what his ship looks like.” He tried to ignore Mick’s triumphant smirk.

  “Children,” Lucy said with a pained sigh. “Please return to me as soon as possible so we can get out of this mess. I don’t particularly like you very much, but I sure as Jupiter like you better than Mick Cracken’s insufferable nav system.”

  “We will,” Sarah said. “Thanks, Lucy.”

  Jacob, Dexter, and Sarah grabbed their space helmets and trudged down the stairs, following Mick Cracken and the space officers.

  When they reached the cargo door, Jacob looked out into space at Mick Cracken’s ship. Up close, Jacob saw that it wasn’t actually dark gray, as he had originally thought, but rather a clumsily painted black. It was a rounded square and looked very ornate under the slapdash paint job, with majestic horses carved into the edges. There were dainty, almost feminine touches with swooping lacy swirls and flowers, and a hint of glittery silver peeked through some of the places where the black paint had worn off, almost as if . . .

  “Is this a girl’s ship?” Jacob asked.

  Sarah Daisy looked over at Mick Cracken’s ship and immediately saw what Jacob saw, namely that underneath the shoddy black paint was a spaceship that Cinderella wouldn’t have minded taking to an outer space ball. She pointed and burst out laughing.

  “Hey Mick,” Jacob said with a big grin. “Maybe after we’re done robbing aliens we can go take some space ponies for a picnic.”

  Mick glared at Jacob. “If you’re asking if this ship once belonged to a girl, then yes, I personally stole it from the princess while evading the entire royal guard and half of the armed fleet. It is extremely fast, it is powerful, and as you can see from how easily I captured your own pitiful excuse for a ship, I have made some rather tremendous additions. Happy?”

  Jacob nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “It’s a beautiful ship,” Officer Erard said. “I wish I had such a wonderful ship. Truly a specimen.”

  “One in a million,” Officer Bosendorfer said. “My eyes hurt from looking at its spectacular . . . ocity, uh, ness. I would arrest you for stealing it from the princess were it not for the fact that your father would surely—”

  “Don’t talk about my father!” Mick Cracken turned around and jabbed them both in the chest with his finger. “That’s it, you’re walking the star plank!”

  Officer Bosendorfer exhaled and nodded, his face relaxing. “Thank you Mr. Cracken,” he whispered with a quiet shudder. “Thank you for showing us mercy.”

  “Helmets on, everyone,” Mick said. “Let’s go.”

  Jacob, Sarah, and Dexter put on their helmets and followed Mick and the space officers as they stepped out into the vacuum and sailed through space toward Mick Cracken’s ship. Jacob allowed himself a quick glance back at Lucy, all wrapped up in knotted cable. Even though Lucy was the ship that had taken them so many billions of miles from home, away from their families and from Earth, somehow the fifty yards between her and Mick’s ship seemed even greater than all those miles they’d traveled. Home was now a lot farther than just a comfortable spaceship ride away. He had no idea how he would get back to Lucy, let alone back through the Spilled Milky Way galaxy and through the solar system and back to his house on the little block where all the houses looked the same. If home was still there at all.

  Mick escorted the officers to the top of the ship, and Jacob followed them. He stood atop the ship in the blackness of space and stared at Mick’s shiny helmet, wondering what he would do.

  After a long, deliberate pause, during which Jacob imagined Mick silently gloating that he had their undivided attention, Mick reached down and pressed a button. A thin plank extended out from the ship into space.

  “Walk the star plank!” Mick yelled through the intercom, using his vocal modifier to lower his voice. He jabbed the officers in the back.

  “Good-bye, children,” Officer Bosendorfer said.

  “Now!” Mick shouted.

  Officers Bosendorfer and Erard shuffled to the edge of the plank and stared out into space. They turned back to give the group one wave good-bye and then they stepped off the plank one after the other.

  Jacob, Sarah, and Dexter rushed over to the edge and saw Officers Bosendorfer and Erard sailing comfortably and safely through space. They turned back to wave once more before they continued on in the direction of their police cruiser.

  Mick joined Jacob, Sarah, and Dexter at the edge of the ship, watching the officers spacewalk away. “I wish there were water and sharks and alligators. It would be so much more fun.” He sighed. “Oh well.” He turned to Jacob, Sarah, and Dexter. “Who wants to go steal something?”

  CHAPTER 12

  Dexter walked around Mick’s spaceship and marveled at the massive ordeal the ship had clearly undergone after Mick had stolen it. Pre-Mick the ship had evidently been a princess’s luxury cruiser, with rooms of pink and purple, massive walk-in closets, statues of horses and lap dogs, stuffed animals, and plush carpet galore. Post-Mick the walls were covered with garish graffiti, ornate fixtures had been broken and strewn about, and the ship looked as if it had not been cleaned in several months. Dexter stared in particular at a large, beautifully painted portrait of a brunette girl, upon which Mick had drawn horns, thick eyebrows, and a large curling mustache.

  “Um. Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you have psychological problems?” Dexter asked.

  Mick stood beside Dexter and looked at the defaced painting. “Trust me, it’s an improvement.”

  Sarah Daisy walked around the ship munching on a cucumber sandwich and sipping a glass of tea in a dainty porcelain cup. The tea had been highly recommended by Praiseworthy, the ship’s nav system, whose voice followed her around the ship no matter which room she was in. Sarah uh-huhed occasionally out of politeness, but Praiseworthy did not need any encouragement to continue speaking.

  “Oh, we’ve had the most wonderful and dangerous adventures,” Praiseworthy said in his exceedingly proper accent. “I am operating fully outside of my capacities, but the excitement, the dramatics, the theatrics! My previous owner was Mistress Silver Spoon, which is Master Cracken’s name for Her Highness, not mine, and you shan’t tell Master Cracken I said this, but she is quite a lovely young lady, but you see I just always wanted to be a pirate ship, or dare I say a buccaneer ship because Master Cracken feels that buccaneer is a more impressive name than pirate, which is just so pedestrian, don’t you think? Have I told you about my rocket boosters? No? They are quite advanced and—”

  “So listen up.” Mick waited for a few long seconds to build anticipation, and gathered Jacob, Sarah, and Dexter around. “We’re going to steal . . .”

  After waiting a few moments for Mick to finish, Dexter said, “We’re going to steal what?”

  Mick paused a few more seconds for good measure. “We’re going to steal . . . the Dragon’s Eye.”

  Mick waited expectantly for a reaction. Jacob, Dexter, and Sarah looked at one another, and since none of them showed any hint of recognition, they unanimously reached the conclusion that they had never heard of a Dragon’s Eye.

  “We’re not impressed,” Sarah said. “Look, Cracken, we really need to see if our planet is okay.”

  Mick rolled his eyes. “Earth? Who cares. I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “How do you know?” Jacob asked.

  “People. Dragon’s Eye. The biggest diamond in the galaxy. Focus.” Mick waited for them to react with suitable excitement, but when it was clear they didn’t know what he was talking about,
he continued: “A long time ago some space explorers came across an asteroid orbiting a planet in a backwater corner of the galaxy. The planet was tiny, dusty, and not very interesting, and it smelled like burp breath. So everyone left it alone. But then some explorers were in trouble because their ship was having mechanical problems, so they decided to land on the planet, even though it smelled like burp breath.”

  “Quite right,” Praiseworthy said. “Fine storytelling, Master Cracken, and if I may interject . . .”

  “As the explorers were trying to land, they crashed into a foreign object. It was about twenty feet in diameter, and it seriously damaged their ship. It was the asteroid. But here’s the thing. When the ship issued a distress call, they swore that they had been hit by a huge, pure, perfectly round diamond. A diamond twenty feet in diameter. The single biggest diamond in the galaxy.”

  Sarah looked at Jacob and Dexter and shrugged. “Still not impressed.”

  “What happened to the explorers?” Dexter asked.

  “Who cares, they probably landed on the planet and smelled bad. The point is, the biggest diamond had been discovered, and the people who received the distress call went and found it. They could have sold it and gotten rich beyond their wildest dreams, but instead they completely lost their minds and donated it to science.” Mick leaned in. “What do you say we do the right thing and steal it? I just need a few subordinates for my plan to work.”

  “We really should be trying to get back home,” Sarah said.

  “Agreed,” Dexter said.

  Mick sneered and shook his head. “You have to be joking. It’s a huge diamond!” When none of the children signaled that they were changing their minds, Mick waved for them to lean in closer. He looked around carefully, as if someone could possibly be eavesdropping on them on a ship in the middle of nowhere in outer space. “What if I told you this diamond has the power to grant a wish?”

  “What kind of a wish?” Sarah asked.

  “Any wish,” Mick said. “The Dragon’s Eye is more than just a diamond. It’s a machine. The greatest machine ever created. It uses quantum manipulation to create any possibility in the entire universe. It can create anything out of thin air. All you have to do is place your hand on the Dragon’s Eye and wish.”

  “How many wishes?” Dexter asked. “Can you wish for a million wishes?”

  Mick smiled. “There’s only one way to find out. Why do you think I want to steal it so badly?”

  Jacob narrowed his eyes. He didn’t think there was any possible way a diamond could grant a wish, no matter how much technology they had in outer space. And as a highly skilled liar himself, he was fairly good at knowing when someone wasn’t telling the truth. “I don’t believe you,” he said. He turned to Sarah and Dexter. “He’s full of it. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Jake,” Sarah whispered, “if you told me yesterday that it was possible to fly through the solar system in a talking spaceship I would have thought you were bonkers. What if the wish thing is true? We could wish ourselves back to Earth! If it was destroyed maybe we could wish it back to life! How else are we going to get back home?”

  “I agree,” Dexter whispered. “The quantum whatever thing seems possible.”

  “He’s lying,” Jacob said through clenched teeth.

  Sarah shook her head and turned away from Jacob. “I want to go for it,” she said to Mick.

  “I’ll go if she goes,” Dexter said.

  Mick Cracken looked at Jacob and beamed. “Well, well, well. Seems as if your friends are the smart ones. You shouldn’t be surprised. I’m very persuasive.”

  “Oh, jolly day,” Praiseworthy said. “How I love adventure. Master Cracken, I do wish you would find me a proper buccaneer flag to display. My fellow cruise liners would be so jealous if they knew what dangerous voyages I was embarking upon.”

  Jacob couldn’t believe that his friends sided with Mick and his stupid diamond instead of him. They didn’t even care what he thought. He was billions of miles away from home. Billions. They had been gone for hours. But even those hours and billions of miles weren’t as long and vast as the twelve years of friendship that had just been fractured by the appearance of Mick Cracken.

  Jacob turned and walked away.

  “Jake,” Sarah said.

  But Jacob didn’t stop. He could feel Mick’s smile burning a hole in his back.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jacob sat in the rear hold of Mick Cracken’s ship, and as he often did when he was upset, he thought about his father. Jacob’s dad was the type of person who was a little too much fun for his own good. He would always dress up like Sherlock Holmes with a crazy hat and wooden pipe on Jacob’s birthday and give Jacob clues about where he could find his presents, although sometimes he would end up forgetting where he hid them. Everyone liked him because of his silliness, and Jacob grew used to hearing his friends and classmates say his dad was cool. Jacob really wanted to believe them, even though his dad had a special talent for turning ordinary events into catastrophes. When he took Jacob fishing in the mountains one time he ignited a massive lighter-fluid soaked campfire that quickly spread to a nearby bush, and Jacob had to help stamp out the flames. Only Jacob Wonderbar and a North Face sleeping bag stood between a fatherly mishap and a raging forest fire, but thankfully boy and camping gear were up to the task. They never caught any fish either.

  Sometimes Jacob’s dad would look at him like he was surprised that Jacob was there. It was as if he couldn’t imagine that life had given him a small person who followed him around and depended upon him and had the same color eyes but different color skin and represented the one thing in his life that perhaps needed to be taken somewhat seriously. So while Jacob was too old and had seen too many movies to think that his parents’ divorce was his fault exactly, he knew that he was a part of it. Not that he drove his parents apart because he was so much trouble to deal with, but rather he knew that his dad couldn’t really picture himself being a dad. Jacob was a human-sized shirt that didn’t fit. His dad looked at Jacob and saw a kid, and the presence of that kid made him an adult, and adults were people who grew old and died. Jacob’s dad left his kid and ran away so he could go be a kid himself again. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier.

  Jacob didn’t want to be like his dad, and yet he knew he had gotten himself into a mess that would make his dad’s antics look tiny and inconsequential in comparison.

  Jacob heard footsteps, and Sarah Daisy came around the corner. She tipped up her head a little in greeting and sat down beside him without saying a word.

  They sat together a while, staring at the pink walls of the spaceship’s hold, and Jacob thought about how long he had known Sarah Daisy. He remembered the time she hit him with a well-aimed rock when she was in second grade and the time she came over to his house, rang the doorbell, and quietly gave him a flattened four-leaf clover when she found out his dad had left.

  “I know you’re mad,” she said.

  “I’m not mad.”

  Sarah turned her head a little and looked at Jacob out of the corner of her eye.

  “I’m not,” he said.

  “Jake . . .”

  “I’m happy for you guys. Go get your diamond. Whatever. I’ll find my own way back.”

  “Be serious,” she said.

  “I am being serious. If you want to follow a demented kid pirate around the galaxy, go right ahead.”

  “He’s not a demented pirate.”

  “Oh, excuse me, a demented buccaneer. And you clearly have Dexter wrapped around your finger, so you can both go and run off together.”

  Sarah didn’t say anything. She rubbed her nose and cleared her throat. “So just now, were you thinking about your dad?” she asked.

  Jacob didn’t say anything.

  “I know you probably miss him a lot even though he’s a total jerk for leaving you behind.”

  Jacob stared at the floor. “Don’t call him that.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Bu
t anyway, this diamond thing isn’t about our friendship or whatever. I really don’t know what to do. How else are we going to get home to see if everything’s okay?”

  Jacob just nodded, even though he didn’t believe the diamond even existed. He had to admit that he didn’t really know what to do either. They were quiet for a little while, and then Jacob pulled out a crumpled photograph and handed it to Sarah.

  It was a picture of Mick Cracken in knee-high socks, black shorts, suspenders, and a top hat, and he looked like he was in the middle of a dance. The expression on his face was so sour he was clearly aware that he was wearing an outfit that probably would have gotten him kicked out of the Outer Space Buccaneer Guild.

  “I found it in one of the storerooms.”

  Sarah let out a high-pitched giggle, and then raised her hand to her mouth, wondering where such a laugh came from. Jacob flinched because usually when Sarah was embarrassed she found a way to inflict physical pain on him, so Jacob was surprised when she instead she just bumped him gently, shoulder to shoulder.

  “You’re a good guy, Jake,” she said.

  CHAPTER 14

  Dexter Goldstein watched Mick draw a big spiral on the wall with a large black marker as a mechanical duck followed Mick around the room. Dexter was unimpressed by the creativity or talent reflected in the sloppy drawing, but he had to admit it lent a certain sense of earnest destruction to Mick’s massive opus of graffiti art.

  “So, uh, are you really from outer space?” Dexter asked.

  Mick stopped drawing on the wall long enough to smirk at Dexter. “You really don’t know where Astrals came from?”

  Dexter didn’t have time to answer because Sarah and Dexter returned to the cabin. Mick tried to pretend that he was still interested in his graffiti art, though Dexter could tell he was waiting to see what Jacob was going to say.

  “All right, Mick,” Jacob said. “We’re in. Let’s go find this diamond.”