Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “I didn’t probe no-one!”

  “To remember her, I guess,” Dave said, the solemn tone of his voice cutting the argument short. “And it didn’t used to be like this. It’s just since…” He glanced left and right, then leaned in closer to Cal. “Since the incident.”

  Cal leaned in closer, too, dropping his voice. “The incident?”

  Dave’s voice became a whisper. “Yep. The incident.”

  Cal nodded. “Gotcha,” he whispered. Then, more loudly, he added, “What incident?”

  Dave looked from Cal to Mech and back again, confusion curving his features. “You mean… you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “About the incident?”

  “What fonking incident?” Mech snapped.

  Dave leaned back and blinked several times, his gaze tick-tocking between them. “Why did you come to Funworld?”

  “Well, you might not believe this,” Cal began.

  Mech loudly cleared his throat.

  “So, we were flying through space, minding our own business...”

  Mech coughed, louder still.

  “When all of a sudden there’s this, like, cyber-attack on our ship. Bam. Straight out of nowhere.”

  Mech’s throat clearing rattled the glass in the window. Cal sighed and turned to him. “What is wrong with you? Do you have, like, robot throat cancer, or something?”

  “No. There ain’t nothing wrong,” Mech snapped. He motioned very deliberately towards Dave with his eyes.

  “Then why do you sound like you’re choking on one of Miz’s hairballs?” Cal asked, completely missing the signal. “Seriously, if you’re going to do that, can you do it somewhere over there? I can barely hear myself— Ulp!”

  Cal was hoisted off the chair by the back of his jacket. Mech looked down at Dave and managed a grim smile. “Excuse us. We’re gonna be right back,” he said, then he whirled around and marched away from the booth, with Cal dangling limply in his grip.

  “Hey, cut it out!” Cal protested. “Do you know how much this jacket cost?”

  “You stole it,” Mech pointed out.

  “That’s not the point! Put me down. What are you doing?”

  “No, what are you doing?” Mech hissed, bringing Cal closer to his face. “Why are you telling that dude our fonking life story?”

  “Who, Dave? Dave’s OK. He’s one of the guys. You can trust him,” Cal said. “And, for the record, this really hurts.”

  “Oh, I know it does,” Mech grunted. “But you know what I don’t know?”

  “The right size for an elephant?”

  “That guy. I don’t know him,” said Mech, pointing towards Dave, who was politely looking the other way and pretending he couldn’t hear them arguing. “That guy could be anyone. Hell, maybe he’s the one who hacked us.”

  Cal gasped. “Oh God, you’re right. He probably stole all our money, then felt so guilty he spent some of it paying us into a theme park to try to make up for it.”

  Mech shrugged noisily. “Stranger things have happened.”

  Cal couldn’t really argue with that. Stranger things had happened. They happened fairly regularly, in fact, and they mostly happened to him. “That may be, but Dave’s fine. We can trust him. I’ll vouch for him.”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “I’ve known him longer than I’ve known you,” Cal pointed out. “Technically, we go way back. I mean, in a way, he’s my oldest friend.”

  “What’s his last name?” Mech asked.

  Cal blinked. He rotated slightly as he dangled there, his jacket digging in under his armpits and forcing his arms out like a scarecrow’s. “Dave…” He rolled the word around in his mouth, hoping it would lead on to the next part of the answer. “…Dave?”

  “Dave Dave?” said Mech. “You think his name’s Dave Dave? Seriously?”

  “OK, no, that would be insane,” Cal conceded. “But hey, stranger things have happened. You said so yourself.”

  Mech ground his jaws together. His voice lowered, his tone softening. “Look, man. Whatever brought us here, it came from inside my head. It was tucked away in there since… since I don’t know. But it’s important. I can feel it. And I don’t want no random Earth guy screwing it up.”

  “Are you talking about me or him?” Cal asked.

  “Both. Either,” said Mech. “We clear?”

  Cal sighed. “Fine. Fine. I won’t tell him. But did it occur to you that he might be able to help? He knows about this place. Maybe he can, I don’t know, point us in the right direction.”

  Mech glanced over at Dave, then shook his head. “Until we find out what we’re doing here, I don’t want anyone else brought in on it.”

  Cal shrugged, which wasn’t easy. “OK. Your call. We’ll keep it between ourselves.”

  Mech eyeballed him for a few seconds, then let him drop. “Thanks,” the cyborg grunted. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” said Cal. He pointed to the window. “And look, the guys are back.”

  Mech turned to the window, and Cal seized his chance. Darting out of Mech’s reach, he blurted out, “Mech had a secret bit in his brain and there was all this stuff hidden in there including co-ordinates that led us here to Funworld and we think there’s something hidden here and we’ve come to find out what it is!” all in one big breath.

  “Uh… OK,” said Dave.

  “Son of a bedge!” Mech snapped.

  “Trust me, it’s for your own good,” said Cal, keeping his distance from the furious-looking Mech. He was furious-looking most of the time – his face just naturally fell into that sort of position – but right now it was very clearly a deliberate choice, and not just an unfortunate arrangement of facial features.

  Mech advanced, shoving aside a table Cal tried to hide behind. It had been fixed in place, and came free with a bang of snapping metal bolts.

  “Mech, come on now, old pal,” Cal said, holding his hands up in surrender as he backed further away. “Easy, now. It’s for the best that Dave knows. He can help us.”

  “Um…” said Dave. “I’m not sure that—”

  Cal silenced him with a point. “Dave. Please. Not now.”

  Another table was thrown aside. The robot that had taken their order turned its head their way, then sunk down behind the counter, its rusted hinges creaking as it lowered out of sight.

  “I asked you not to tell him,” Mech said. “I said those fonking words. This shizz?” He tapped the side of his head. “Whatever it is, this shizz is private.”

  “I get it, I do,” said Cal. “Totally private. But Dave’s OK. He’s one of us.”

  Cal stretched and looked over Mech’s shoulder. “Hey, the guys are back. Really this time.”

  Mech turned, and Cal took advantage of his cunning distraction. He made a move to dodge past Mech, only for the cyborg’s hand to grab him by the front of his jacket.

  “I ain’t falling for that again,” Mech said, but before he could do anything, the sound of sirens filled the restaurant. Outside, some kind of police vehicle skidded to a stop.

  It was small. That was the first thing Cal noticed. It looked like a tiny bubble car, with wheels that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a toddler’s first bike. It was blue. No, it was blue. An eye-popping shade of electric blue, just one peek at which threatened to give Cal a migraine.

  A red light flashed atop the car’s curved roof, the glass dome comically oversized for the rest of the vehicle.

  A door in the side of the car opened, and someone fell out. Literally fell out. They landed face-first, their bulbous red nose emitting a loud honk as it hit the ground. Another figure flailed out behind it. This one tripped over the first, but performed a full forward roll before springing onto their feet. A little badum-tish accompanied the move, apparently from nowhere.

  “What the fonk is this?” Mech muttered, as a third, then a fourth, fifth and sixth figure emerged from the car. They were all under three feet tall, an
d wore variations of police-style uniforms, but with the additions of big bow ties, enormous shoes, and the occasional brightly-colored pom-pom.

  “Clown police,” Cal guessed.

  “Park security,” said Dave, sliding out of the booth and dusting down his shirt. “Maybe you’d better let me handle this.”

  They all watched as three more security guards tumbled out of the car. They all bickered and fought, fumbling with batons and stun-guns as if they were props in a comedy show.

  Eventually, following what appeared to be a well-rehearsed skit that involved trying to push open a pull-door, they piled into the restaurant, chirping and chittering in a high-pitched register that somehow managed to make them sound even more irritating than they looked.

  Dave held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Hey, guys,” he said, then a taser-style weapon shot him in the testicles and he fell, convulsing, to the floor.

  “Ooh, Jesus, that looks painful,” said Cal, wincing. “Still, I guess I should be grateful it didn’t happen to me for once.”

  A taser-style weapon shot him in the testicles.

  “Motherf—” he groaned, then he fell, convulsing, to the floor.

  The security guards fanned out, surrounding Mech. He bunched his metal fingers into fists and gave a slow, deliberate shake of his head. “Trust me, you do not want to do this,” he said.

  And then, with a chorus of chirps and honks and mysterious drum-stings, a dozen tiny clowns all pounced on him as one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cal had a nagging feeling he’d been here before.

  He had opened his eyes to see a child-sized figure being spun around by the ankles, its frantically flapping body knocking aside several other, equally child-sized figures, as it scythed through the air.

  At first, he’d thought he was having some sort of out of body experience, and was watching himself fighting the horde of man-eating space scouts inside their crashed ship.

  Then he realized that, for that to be the case, he must not only have traveled outside his body, but backwards in time. One of those things was plausible, he reckoned. But both? Unlikely. Very unlikely.

  Also, he wasn’t made of metal or seven feet tall, and none of the space scouts had – to the best of his memory – been wearing police uniforms. Nor, for that matter, had they been clowns.

  A realization crackled through his lightly-charred brain. He wasn’t watching himself, he was watching Mech.

  At the same time, he realized something else. He realized his nuts hurt.

  He remembered the taser.

  Cautiously, his hand crept down to his crotch. He let out a tiny scream when he found a metal barb there. It had torn clean through his pants and got its hooks deep into one of his two most prized assets.

  “Oh Jesus,” he grimaced, as he was filled with the very specific sinking feeling that comes only from discovering a projectile weapon is embedded half an inch deep in one’s scrotum.

  Several feet away, Dave let out a little yelp of his own, having just made the same grim discovery.

  “It’s OK, Dave. We’ll get through this,” Cal said, trying to sound reassuring. The fact the sentence ended in a loud, throaty sob didn’t exactly help, though.

  A clown-cop sailed through the air above him, hit a table, and slid over the other side. It sprang back upright almost immediately, and raced towards Mech again. Cal stopped it with an uppercut to the balls that lifted it clean off its oversized feet. As the punch connected, the clown’s gonads made a comedy ding noise, like the chime of a tiny bell. It wasn’t laughing, though, when it crumpled to the floor, coughing and spluttering and cupping its hands to its groin.

  “Not so funny now, is it?” Cal said, then he howled as two other clown-cops jumped on him from behind, their batons rattling against his skull with a series of hilariously exaggerated thonks.

  * * *

  Loren limped across the weed-ridden paving slabs, a tiny groan escaping through her lips with every step. Miz padded along beside her, her tongue flopping limply, her fur shiny with sweat.

  Splurt skipped on ahead of them both, leaping from slab to slab, studiously avoiding any that had cracks on them. As most of the slabs had at least some sort of damage, it had taken a full ten minutes to get from the Helter Skelter to where they’d last seen Cal and the others. Neither Loren nor Miz had complained once about the slow pace.

  “So, any ideas?” Loren asked, her leg muscles screaming at her as she shuffled around on the spot, searching for any signs of life.

  Miz sniffed the air, but there was a pile of yellow goo on the ground nearby that was masking the scent of pretty much anything else. “I can’t smell them,” she admitted.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Loren. “I’ve found them.”

  “Where?”

  Loren gestured past a small row of sideshows. A tiny police car was parked outside a building, its light flashing. As they watched, a mini police officer in a small, polka-dotted hat exploded through the window, bounced once on the ground, then immediately got up and raced back inside.

  Miz nodded. “Yep,” she said. “That’s totally got to be them.”

  Taking Splurt by his stubby not-quite hands, they led him in the direction of the building. He swung himself off the ground several times as they walked, his face – what little there was of it – a picture of pure, innocent joy.

  Loren found herself trying to reconcile the Splurt beside her with the shapeshifting killing machine she’d watched single-handedly take out a dozen heavily armed Xandrie enforcers, but her brain refused to let the two images join up.

  They arrived outside the building to find Mech surrounded by a number of semi-conscious tiny clowns. They watched as he swung one final clown above his head with one hand, before smashing it through a table like a sledgehammer.

  Cal and Dave were lying on the floor beside each other, shoulder to shoulder. One of Cal’s hands was on Dave’s crotch. One of Dave’s hands was on Cal’s crotch. They both appeared to be crying.

  “What the fonk did we miss?” Miz wondered.

  Loren shook her head. “I have no idea,” she mumbled.

  “O-OK,” Dave whimpered. “On three.”

  “Wait!” said Cal. “Are you actually going to go on three, or are you going to go on two so you surprise me?”

  “You’re holding a metal spike in my balls. Why the fonk would I want to surprise you?” Dave said, his voice bordering on hysteria.

  The wailing of the police siren was starting to annoy Loren. She opened the driver’s door, only for several colorful snake-like springs to boing out at her. She was looking for the off-switch when Miz knocked the flashing light off the top of the car, and the siren squealed into a strangled silence.

  They returned to the window. Mech was stacking unconscious clowns in a pile. Cal and Dave were still hand-to-crotch with each other.

  “You didn’t pull!” Dave said.

  “Well neither did you!”

  “I started to, then I realized you weren’t!”

  “Well… same here,” said Cal. He puffed out his cheeks several times, drawing in oxygen. “OK. This time. Three. Two…. One!”

  Neither of them pulled.

  “God damn it!” Cal cried.

  “You didn’t go!”

  “Neither did you!”

  They both took their hands away, but slowly, so as to avoid any accidental snagging. “OK. OK, we can do this,” Cal said.

  He closed his eyes, but opened them again when he heard a faint scuffing down near his feet. Splurt stood there, one stubby foot between Cal’s legs, one between Dave’s.

  “Oh, h-hey, buddy,” said Cal, then he and Dave both howled as Splurt reached down and plucked both prongs free in a couple of swift tugs.

  “Yaaaargh!”

  “Fooooooonk!”

  “Splurt! Never do that again!” Cal spluttered. “You could have pulled it right out. And I don’t mean the spike.”

  His face fell. It had already fall
en all the way to ground level, but now it was practically subterranean. “Oh Jesus, what if you did? You might have pulled my balls out.”

  “What?!” Dave wailed.

  Slowly, gingerly, Cal felt around the damaged area. To his relief, everything felt present and correct.

  “They’re still there. Thank God.”

  Dave let out another strangled sob. “Mine, too.”

  Splurt studied the metal barbs for a moment, then shrugged and tossed them over his shoulder. When he looked back at Cal and Dave, both men were attempting to maneuver themselves into an upright position without closing their legs. Loren and Miz watched them from the doorway.

  “So,” Loren began, crossing her arms and leaning against the frame. “Anything happen when we were out?”

  “Oh, you know,” said Cal, gesturing around at the trashed restaurant and the pile of groaning clown-cops. “The usual.”

  Loren nodded. “So I see.”

  “This was all Mech’s fault,” Cal said.

  “Say what? How was this my fault?” the cyborg demanded, as he deposited the final clown on the pile.

  “Uh, well let me see. Maybe because you started breaking shizz and trying to kill me?” said Cal.

  “Only because you went blabbing my secrets to a fonking stranger,” Mech countered.

  “A stranger? May I remind you, Mech, that this man just took a nut-shot while trying to help us. An electrified nut-shot. That practically makes him family.”

  Mech scowled. “No, it don’t.”

  “Have you ever taken a nut-shot for the team, Mech?” Cal demanded.

  Miz shook her head. “He doesn’t have—”

  “That ain’t the fonking point!” barked Mech.

  “And why are you stacking up clowns?” Cal asked.

  Mech glanced back at the neat pile of unconscious bodies. They were all set out in variations of the recovery position. “I don’t want them getting hurt.”

  “We literally just watched you smash one through a table,” Loren pointed out. He glared at her, and she held her hands up in a gesture of mini surrender. “Hey, just saying.”

  “Um… Sorry to interrupt,” said Dave. He shrunk back a little under the full-beam of everyone’s gaze. “It’s just, they’ll send reinforcements. More bio-bots. These ones will probably be bigger.”