by Mark Crilley
I looked over and saw that Spuckler was no longer touching the ground either. In fact, he was hovering about six inches above it!
“Lordy!” he called out, laughing nervously. “So am I! I’m sittin’ on thin air!” Gax buzzed and whirred as he watched his master slowly float farther and farther away from the ground.
By that time Mr. Beeba had also started to rise into the air. Though normally I would have expected him to be in a panic, he was actually giggling and chuckling like a little child.
“Astounding!” he cried, beaming as he turned himself over in the air. “It must be something in the fruit! It’s causing us to defy the law of gravity!”
I floated about two feet off the ground before leveling off, just bobbing up and down in the air like a duck on a pond. Spuckler rose about four feet before stopping and floating there in pretty much the same way. But Mr. Beeba was already nearly six feet off the ground and continued to float steadily upward with no sign of stopping. Rather than trying to slow himself down, he began flapping his arms around and swimming through the air as fast as he could. He was obviously enjoying himself.
“I’m soaring to the treetops!” he cried as he hurled himself into the air like a rocket. By the time he stopped he was at least forty feet above us, swimming in wide circles through the branches of the trees.
“Hey, Beeba, take it easy!” Spuckler shouted. “You ate too many of them things!”
“Yes, Mr. Beeba,” I cried. “Come back down! It’s too dark for you to see up there.”
“Don’t be silly!” Mr. Beeba called to us as he flew from one tree to another. “It’s exhilarating up here! You two really ought to give it a try!”
“Beeba, I ain’t kiddin’!” Spuckler yelled, his voice growing angrier. “You’re gonna get yourself killed!” It was odd and somehow very frightening to see Mr. Beeba acting so recklessly. It wasn’t like him at all.
“Oh, listen to you!” Mr. Beeba laughed, flipping through the air like a trapeze artist. “For once I’m having a good time, and now suddenly you’re crying out for prudence and caution! If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous!”
“’Kiko,” Spuckler whispered, turning to me, “who is that guy up there, and what’s he done with the real Beeba?”
“I know what you mean, Spuckler,” I said. “He’s kind of lost his mind, hasn’t he?” We both strained to make out Beeba’s silhouette against the ever-darkening sky. By that point he must have been seventy or eighty feet above us.
“Akiko! Spuckler!” we heard Mr. Beeba shout. “There’s some kind of animal up here! I can hear him breathing!”
“Stay away, Beebs!” Spuckler cried, now very agitated. “You’re probably invading his turf!”
Mr. Beeba pulled himself through the trees by grasping first one branch, then another, apparently trying to get a better look at the creature.
“Don’t worry, little fellow,” we heard Mr. Beeba say in a singsong voice. “I mean you no harm.”
Just then there was a rustling from the trees, followed by a deep, rumbling growl. It sounded like a lion or something!
“Beeba!” Spuckler shouted as loudly as he could.
There was the sound of a brief struggle as twigs snapped and branches shook. Then the rustling grew quieter and quieter as it moved higher and higher into the trees.
A handful of leaves drifted slowly down from above.
A bird called out from somewhere far away.
Then it was completely quiet.
“BEEBA!” Spuckler howled, his voice echoing in the silence.
Spuckler and I, still floating just a few feet off the ground, stared at each other in shock as we realized Mr. Beeba was gone. Poog frowned and Gax made a long wheezing noise. Our little gang had just gone from five members to four!
“You idiot!” Spuckler shouted up at the trees, clenching his fists and spinning in circles. “I told you not to go up there!”
“What are we going to do?” I asked, suddenly feeling very scared.
“There’s only one thing we can do!” Spuckler exclaimed, grabbing a piece of fruit from one of the piles beneath him. “I’m gonna eat some more of this stuff and go up there after him!”
“No, Spuckler!” I cried, my voice trembling. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone down here!” Stars were already visible through the trees, and it was starting to feel damp and chilly.
“Take it easy, ’Kiko,” Spuckler said between mouthfuls as he swallowed one piece of fruit after another. “You ain’t gonna be alone. Ya got Gax an’ Poog here to keep ya company!”
Spuckler swallowed five or six more pieces of the fruit, then began floating up into the treetops.
“Don’t worry, ’Kiko!” he called down to me before disappearing into the dark. “I’ll be back with Beeba before ya know it!”
The forest grew very quiet except for the steady chirping of insects in the bushes. Gax stretched his neck and watched the trees above us, as if already waiting for Spuckler to return. Poog just floated there in the darkness, his eyes blinking every so often, his face almost expressionless.
Gradually the effect of the fruit began to wear off, and I slowly floated back down. First one foot touched the ground, then the other, and a moment later I was sitting down just like I had been before. I crossed my arms in front of me, trying to keep warm. Having spent most of the journey with Spuckler and Mr. Beeba at my side, I suddenly felt frightened and very alone. I thought maybe I could take my mind off things by starting a conversation.
“I don’t know how you can float around like that all day, Poog,” I said, coughing and rubbing my hands together. “I started feeling kind of queasy after just a few minutes.” Poog just smiled and blinked some more. The conversation was already over. I sat there a little longer in the darkness, trying to think of something that would help the situation.
There was a hooting somewhere up above, followed by the snapping of a twig just a few feet behind me. I spun my head around, half expecting to see some terrible hairy creature staring back at me. My heart was beating like a rabbit’s, and I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
There was nothing there but bushes and tree trunks.
I looked around at Gax and Poog and gradually became more and more aware of how completely alone we were. I tried my best to stay calm, but panicky questions kept creeping into my mind. What if that strange creature had really hurt Mr. Beeba? What if Spuckler got lost? What if the creature had already defeated both Spuckler and Mr. Beeba and was coming back to . . .
I stopped myself from finishing that thought.
There was another hooting sound. Then a distant howl, like some strange sort of wolf. I suddenly had this very clear image in my mind of a gigantic, lizardy looking animal with glowing red eyes, prowling around somewhere out there in the forest. I was so scared I was shaking all over, and I almost felt like I was going to cry.
“Spuckler,” I said to myself, my voice sounding very shaky and scared, “you have got to get back here soon. I can’t spend the night out here all alone. I’m not going to sleep a wink!”
Fortunately it got pretty quiet over the next ten minutes or so, and I managed to relax a little, even though I was still very nervous.
For some reason I started to think about a camping trip I went on with my parents back when I was about five years old. We went to a little campsite out in the woods, in the middle of September after the real camping season was over. My favorite part was when my dad built a fire at night. It helped keep us all warm, of course, but it also made it a lot less scary to be out there in the woods.
“That’s it!” I said, turning excitedly to Gax. “We need to build a campfire!”
“A CAMPFIRE?” Gax asked, cocking his head.
“Yeah. All we need to do is get some pieces of wood, put them in a pile, and then . . .” It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have any matches.
“ . . . AND THEN?” Gax asked.
I sat there in the darkness looking at Gax an
d then at Poog and then at Gax again. I remembered my science teacher saying you could start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, but every time I’d tried that all I’d ended up with was a couple of warm sticks. There had to be another way.
“Gax,” I asked, “you’ve got a torch somewhere there inside you, don’t you?”
“YES, MA’AM,’’ he answered, his robotic voice sounding very odd among the chirping of the insects, “BUT I’M UNABLE TO OPERATE IT WITHOUT SPUCKLER’S ASSISTANCE.”
“Well, maybe I can figure it out,” I said, refusing to give up on the idea. “What does Spuckler usually do to turn the thing on?”
“THERE’S A BUTTON ON THE SIDE OF MY BODY,” Gax explained. “IT TURNS THE TORCH ON AND OFF.”
I looked at the side of Gax’s rusty, beat-up body. There was a button there, all right—about twenty of them! They were all laid out in neat little rows on a small rectangular panel.
“Which one of these is for the torch?”
“I’M AFRAID I DON’T KNOW, MA’AM,’’ Gax said apologetically. “SPUCKLER GENERALLY JUST KEEPS PUSHING BUTTONS UNTIL HE GETS WHAT HE WANTS.”
“I see,” I whispered, staring at all the buttons and trying to detect some difference among them. It was already so dark, though, that I could hardly see anything.
“Let’s try this one,” I said, pushing a button in the lower left-hand corner of the panel.
SPROING!
A little door in Gax’s side popped open and out came a long metallic arm with a set of tools at the end: a hammer, a wrench, and a tiny little screw driver.
“WOW. Cool!” I said. “But that’s not what we’re looking for, is it?”
I pressed another button.
BROING! FROING!
Immediately the little tool set drew back and folded out of sight. At the same time another door opened on the opposite side of Gax’s body and a weird mechanical extension popped out with tubes at the end like some kind of plastic octopus.
“I wonder what that’s for.”
I kept pushing buttons.
TLUNK!
Things kept popping out. There was something that looked like an old-fashioned camera . . .
SPUP! BWANG!
. . . A boxing glove . . . a bottle of window spray . . .
GRONK! FRING!
. . . A bicycle horn . . . a shiny metallic toaster . . .
“YOU’RE ENJOYING THIS, AREN’T YOU?” Gax finally asked, a note of irritation in his crackly mechanical voice.
“I’m doing the best I can, Gax, honestly,” I answered. He was right, though. It was kind of fun, I had to admit!
FRAAAAW!
Finally I pushed the right button and Gax’s torch sprang out: a blindingly bright white flame flickering at the end of a long mechanical arm. I had to turn my face away for a minute while my eyes adjusted to the light. Suddenly all the tree trunks around us were brightly lit and even very distant trees became clearly visible. A couple of mothlike bugs immediately fluttered in and began circling Gax’s flame.
“All right, Gax! Hang on a minute, now,” I said excitedly as I cleared a spot on the ground. I didn’t want to take any chances of starting a forest fire, so I cleared a nice big area and surrounded it with stones. Then I made a little pile of dry wood in the middle of the stones. I took a long stick over to Gax’s torch and set it aflame, then brought the burning stick over to the pile of wood. It took a minute or two, but slowly the dry pieces of wood lit up, and before long we had a nice little campfire.
Gax extinguished his torch, carefully folding it up and stowing it inside his body. Poog hovered near my shoulder, the bright flames of the fire perfectly mirrored in his big, glassy eyes. I leaned back on my elbows and watched the flames jump back and forth.
There was no sound at all except for the quiet chirping of the forest insects and the crackle of the campfire.
“How long do you think it’ll be before they come back, Gax?” I asked.
“IT’S HARD TO SAY, MA’AM. SOMETIMES SPUCKLER IS GONE FOR WEEKS,” he answered. That’s the problem with robots. They always tell you the truth, even when you’d rather they didn’t.
“Well, he told us to stay here, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” I said, doing my best to sound determined and unafraid. “We’re going to sit right here and . . .”
I felt a yawn coming on.
“. . . and . . .”
I stretched my mouth open and let out one of the biggest, longest yawns I can remember. Even Poog looked a little surprised!
“Boy, I’m beat!” I said, rubbing my eyes with both hands. “Gax, would you mind keeping watch while I take a little nap?”
“NOT AT ALL, MA’AM,’’ he answered, raising his head into a position of complete alertness. “IT WOULD BE MY PLEASURE.”
I gathered a bunch of leaves to use as a pillow and flopped over on my side, turning my back to the warmth of the fire.
I started to think about Queen Pwip. I wondered what she looked like. Was she was friendly? Did she wear fancy clothes and live in a big palace? I wondered if she really could see the future, and if so, how she did it. Did she use a crystal ball, or just close her eyes and concentrate really hard?
Then I started to think about my parents again. I remembered that camping trip and how we all slept together in a tent every night. My parents seemed like they were having a ball, but I wasn’t too crazy about the whole experience. It was awfully cold at night, and even during the day it still wasn’t warm enough to go swimming, so there really wasn’t much of anything to do. Then there was the food! My mom and dad kept telling me how great it was to eat fresh salmon that had been grilled over the fire, but I thought it just tasted like burned, salty fish.
Now, though, it all seemed like a very happy memory. I suddenly wished I could be with my parents again, just for a minute or two, so I could talk to them and be sure they were okay.
I rolled over onto my back and opened my eyes again. I stared up past the treetops into the starry sky and wondered if one of those stars wasn’t really the planet Earth. Maybe I was so far from Earth that it looked just like a tiny point of light up in the sky. . . .
In the middle of the night I woke up. The fire had died down a little but it was still quite warm. Gax was slowly turning his head back and forth as he kept watch over us. The sound of the insects seemed much louder than it had before. There was still no sign of Mr. Beeba or Spuckler.
Then I noticed Poog staring at me. He had floated over until he was just a foot or two from my face. I could see my own groggy expression reflected in his big black eyes. He had this very serious look on his face, one I was sure I’d never seen before.
“What is it, Poog? I asked, sitting up. “Are you okay?”
Poog opened his mouth and said something in that weird warbly language of his. It was only about a second or two long, but seemed to be made up of eight or nine syllables. He said it again.
“I’m sorry, Poog,” I said, wishing Mr. Beeba were there to translate. “I don’t understand.”
But he kept saying this thing to me, this same short little alien phrase, like it was very, very important. He must have repeated it about ten times. Slowly I realized what Poog was trying to do. He was teaching me the words. He wanted me to listen to them and repeat them.
So I tried. I listened as best I could to the little phrase, but it was very hard to repeat the whole thing. I decided just to start with the first couple of syllables and try to learn it a little at a time, I guess Poog knew what I was trying to do, because he broke the phrase down and gave it to me in little pieces. There were some sounds that required sticking my tongue up against the roof of my mouth in a very uncomfortable way. There were also a couple of clicking sounds that reminded me of an African language I’d heard on television once. It was so difficult to pronounce, I really didn’t think I’d be able to do it. I could tell by the way Poog would sort of wince every once in a while that my pronunciation was pretty awful.
But he wo
uldn’t give up. He kept repeating the phrase, the first part of it, the second part of it, and the last part of it. Finally I said it once all the way through from beginning to end. Poog smiled. I got it wrong again once or twice after that, but then I said it right again, and eventually I started saying it right more often than saying it wrong. He made me practice it twenty or thirty times, until finally I was able to say it pretty quickly. When Poog seemed satisfied that I had memorized the phrase, he smiled and closed his eyes. Then he floated back until he was a couple of yards away from me and began humming quietly to himself. I watched him for a minute or so, but soon I put my head back down and closed my eyes too. A moment later I was fast asleep again.
The next sound I heard was a little voice right next to my face.
“Just as I suspected,” the voice said. “She’s dead.”
I opened my eyes. It was morning, and a soft yellow light covered the ground in front of me. There, an inch or two from my nose, stood the tiniest little man imaginable. He was no taller than two or three inches from head to toe! He was dressed in military uniform, with an oversized helmet and big clumsy boots. His back was turned to me, and I realized that he was not alone. Two or three feet before him stood an entire army of little soldiers just as small as he was. There were hundreds of them, standing at attention in neat little rows!
I lifted my head from the ground and they all jumped back in fear. The little man in front of my face, who I figured was their leader, whirled around and looked me in the eye. His mouth dropped open and his knees seemed to buckle underneath him.
“She’s not dead!” he sputtered. “Sh-she’s moving!”
He drew a miniature sword from a sheath at his side, held it high in the air, and spun around to address his army at the top of his voice.
“Troops!” he bellowed. “Take your positions!”
I sat up and watched in amazement as the army divided itself into three perfectly equal groups and marched left, right, and center to form an impressive arc around me. They all carried tiny swords and shields and were dressed in suits of gray-and-black armor. I could tell by their speed and precision that they had practiced this sort of maneuver many times before.