by Philip Reeve
“Oooh, they’re so brave and resourceful!” said the ghosts, looking on admiringly.
“Now,” said Jinks, “Emily told me that young George here said the Rustlers came up through the floor. Is that right?”
“I saw them!” said a lady ghost, drifting forward. Emily guessed this must be Headless Maude. She wasn’t really headless, though. She had a very nice head: it was just that it wasn’t attached to her neck; she was carrying it in a sort of handbag with an opening for her face to look out of. “I saw them coming up through the loose floorboards in the Haunted Kitchen!”
“Will you show us?” asked Jinks.
The ghosts all looked very worried, but at last See-Through George came over and put his ghostly hand in Emily’s living one. “I’ll show you,” he said.
“Good lad!” said Jinks. “That’s the spirit, young spirit!”
They made their way back downstairs with See-Through George billowing above them like a small flag, if small flags carried cuddly penguins. Some cars full of schoolchildren were just going by when they stepped out of the STAFF ONLY door, and O’Hare had fun startling them, throwing his big hairy shadow up the walls and making hideous groans. “No time for that, O’Hare,” said Jinks crossly (but Emily could tell that he thought it was funny, too).
The Haunted Kitchen was just as big and shadowy as the rest of the mansion, with a maze of rusty pipes running up the wall and across the ceiling. Drips fell spookily into a basin of cold water, and heaps of dirty dishes were piled up on the draining board. There was a big, covered dish on the table. “When the cars come,” said See-Through George, “Uncle Reg is supposed to lift the cover off, and Headless Maude’s head is underneath. You should hear them scream when she sticks her tongue out at them! But when they came down to get ready this morning, he lifted the cover off and there was a Rustler underneath. He screamed even louder!”
O’Hare went over to the corner and lifted a loose floorboard. Underneath was a hatch marked SECRET. Underneath the hatch was a dark shaft, with a metal ladder going down into it.
“It must lead down into the old access tunnels that run under the fair,” said Jinks. “I’m surprised anyone even knows they’re down there. They haven’t been used since my grandmother’s day.”
“Is that where the Rustlers live, do you think?” asked Emily, looking nervously down the shaft.
“Let’s find out,” said Jinks, and started climbing down. The piles of dirty dishes beside the sink were starting to rattle as another car approached, so he said, “Distract them, See-Through George!”
See-Through George gave Emily his penguin to hold and floated across the kitchen to hang just in front of the door as the car full of children came in. They were far too busy screaming to notice Emily and O’Hare climbing down through the hole in the floor, and once the car had gone on its way into the next room, See-Through George came down the shaft after them.
It was dark at the bottom and Emily was a bit scared, but then Jinks and O’Hare turned their flashlights on and she saw that they were standing in a sort of passage. Just an ordinary, boring passage, with white walls, and linoleum on the floor.
“Hmmm,” said Jinks. He was peering at a map that was pinned to the wall. “Let’s head that way. It should lead us underneath the Space Twizzler; that’s where the trouble started this morning.”
They began walking, or, in See-Through George’s case, floating. They went by some other passages branching off, and some other shafts, which must lead up into other rides, but there was no sign of spiny creatures. Then, from one of the side passages, they caught a faint sound.
A clink of metal on metal. A faint, faint rustling.
“Ooooo-err,” said See-Through George.
Emily knew how he felt. But she told herself she wasn’t scared as long as Jinks and O’Hare were there, so she took George’s hand again and they went after the repairmen down the new passage. The floor of this passage sloped quite steeply downward, so she guessed that they were descending deep inside Funfair Moon. Pretty soon the walls weren’t painted white anymore; they were just bare moonrock. Little stalactites dangled from the ceiling.
Soon, Jinks and O’Hare switched off their flashlights. It wasn’t dark without them. There was light coming from somewhere ahead. They hurried on and came out into a huge, bright room. It was full of Rustlers. The sound of their rustling filled the big room like the sea.
“What’s going on here, then?” asked Jinks in a voice as loud and stern as a Space Commando’s.
The Rustlers all stopped what they were doing. An instant later, they had vanished. There was a tremendous rustling, a blur of black movement, and they had gone. In the silence, a cupboard went, “Mmmf mmf mmmf!”
“Why is that cupboard going ‘Mmmf mmf mmmf’?” asked Emily.
O’Hare leaped across the room and flung the cupboard door open. It was quite a large cupboard and looked quite comfy inside—there were cushions and things, and a big TV. Sitting on the cushions and watching the TV was a small, dark-haired boy. Emily had thought that he was gagged and that was why he had gone “Mmmf mmf mmmf!” But when she got a proper look at him, she realized he had just been trying to say, “What’s going on?” while eating an enormous slice of cake.
“What’s going on?” he said again, putting the cake down this time. “Where have the servants gone?”
“Servants?” asked Emily.
“I thought they must be servants,” said Colin, son of Krull. “They brought me here, and gave me cake and things when I asked, like servants do. Are they yours?”
“Those weren’t servants!” Emily said. “Those were kidnappers! You were kidnapped, and you didn’t even know it!”
“Oh,” said the boy. He looked disappointed.
“Didn’t the creatures explain why they’d taken you?” asked Jinks. “Didn’t they say what they wanted?”
Colin shrugged. “Why don’t you ask them yourselves?”
Emily and her friends turned around. While they had been talking to Colin, the Rustlers had got over their shock. From their hiding places in the nooks and crannies of the walls, they had come silently out, and now a great spiny crowd stood watching, softly rustling to themselves.
“Who are you?” demanded Jinks. “Why have you come here? Why did you break our rides and kidnap this child?”
The Rustlers rustled. They spread toward the cupboard like a spiky oil slick.
They weren’t very big, but there were an awful lot of them. Emily started to feel a little bit afraid, even though Jinks and O’Hare were with her. She could hear See-Through George’s see-through teeth chattering. Even Jinks was starting to look nervous.
But O’Hare wasn’t having any of that. He took a deep breath, then scared the Rustlers just the way he’d scared those kids back in the ghost train. “Raaaargh!” He jumped forward roaring, stretching his arms out wide, and the Rustlers rolled away with nervous crackling noises and little startled squeaks.
This time, though, they didn’t vanish into their hiding places. They clustered in black clumps in the corners of the room, then slowly started to gather together again. They began to climb on top of one another. Their spines interlocked. They made a sound like the sound you’d hear if you quickly undid the Velcro tabs on your shoes and recorded the noise, then played it backward, slowly. The Rustlers piled themselves up in wobbling towers, in spiny pyramids that slumped against one another and combined to make bigger pyramids. They formed a spiky figure, a big round body balanced on two leglike Rustler towers. It spread out long spiky arms, which were chains of Rustlers. It looked like a prickly black shadow of O’Hare.
“RAAAAAARGH!” it roared.
“Hmmm,” said Jinks.
O’Hare raised an eyebrow.
“What shall we do?” asked Emily.
“Run!” said Jinks.
They ran, Emily in the lead, Colin behind her, Jinks and O’Hare bringing up the rear, while See-Through George flapped along above them. They dashed bac
k into the corridor. The Rustlers tried to follow them, but now that they were all stuck together, they didn’t fit through the doorway anymore; the rustling giant collapsed and swirled about in spiny confusion for a moment, then formed itself into a new shape—a Rustler snake. It came hissing and crinkling behind Emily and her friends as they dashed back toward the surface.
They didn’t bother looking for the ladder they had come down. With the Rustlers close behind them, they ran to the first ladder they saw and scrambled up it as fast as they could. When Emily popped open the hatch at the top, she saw that they had come out in the middle of the main fairway, not far from Terror Mountain. The carousels were tootling, the waltzers were whirling, and everything looked pretty much normal. But when she scrambled out and pulled Colin up behind her, there was a sudden shout.
“Krull-va!”
Lord Krull came striding through the crowds and gathered Colin up in a big, armored hug.
“Hello, Dad!” said Colin.
“Are you all right?” the space lord asked. “If these fools have harmed you, I shall obliterate their puny moon!”
“Oh, don’t do that, Dad!” said Colin.
“Certainly not,” snapped another voice. “Obliterating puny moons is a job for the Galactic Council’s planning department, not you, Lord Krull.”
Mr. Moonbottom stepped out of the crowd. He was wearing a white bandage around his head, but other than that he looked as if had recovered completely from the fudge-splosion. He had put his hat on top of the bandage, which made the hat look bigger than ever. Miss Weebly was behind him as usual. She started to wave when she saw Emily, but stopped when Mr. Moonbottom gave her a hard stare.
“And who are you to tell ME what I can do?” roared Lord Krull.
“Jeremy Moonbottom of the Galactic Council (Leisure and Entertainment Subcommittee),” said Mr. Moonbottom, holding up his badge.
“I shall cut you to pieces!” said Lord Krull, and reached for his power-sword.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Mr. Moonbottom. “Cutting council officials to pieces is against regulations. You’ll have to complete a full Risk Assessment and fill in Form R-176(B). If you strike me down, the paperwork will be more time-consuming than you can possibly imagine.”
Lord Krull lowered his sword and stood fuming. He hated filling in forms.
Mr. Moonbottom turned his attention to Emily and her friends. Jinks and O’Hare had climbed out of the hatch now, and they were sitting on its lid. Every now and then the lid gave a sort of jolt, as if someone or something was shoving it from below.
“Don’t tell me something else has gone wrong?” he said gloatingly, as if that was exactly what he wanted them to tell him.
“No,” said Jinks, struggling to hold the lid shut.
“Everything’s fine,” said Emily.
Mr. Moonbottom sniffed. “I don’t believe you. Not only is this the most badly run funfair I’ve ever inspected, but I believe it’s infested with spiky black creatures!”
“We haven’t seen any spiky black creatures, have we, Mr. Jinks?” squeaked Emily.
“No, not at all,” said Jinks, and then added, “Ooops!” The lid beneath him burst open, he and O’Hare went flying into the air, and a geyser of Rustlers came shooting out of the open hatch.
Everyone jumped backward in alarm as the Rustlers bounced across the grass, rebounded off the merry-go-rounds, and quickly started gathering themselves into a great, dark mass again.
“I knew it!” crowed Mr. Moonbottom. He had dropped his briefcase again, and he was scrabbling around on the grass, gathering up his fallen sandwiches and papers. He paused to point at the bouncing Rustlers. “There they are! Spiky black things, as large as life and twice as pointy! That’s the last straw! I declare Funfair Moon CLOSED!”
“No!” wailed Emily.
“That’s not fair!” shouted Colin.
Jinks and O’Hare didn’t say anything. They were watching as the Rustlers formed themselves into another prickly giant. Towering above the merry-go-rounds, the monster waved its arms and roared as if it was getting ready to flatten the two repairmen, and then the rest of the fair.
“There won’t be much of Funfair Moon left to close once that thing starts rampaging,” muttered Jinks. “Stand back, everybody!”
O’Hare tried doing his “Rargh!” thing again, but the spiky giant wasn’t frightened of him anymore. Why should it be? thought Emily. It was twenty times taller than O’Hare. Nothing would frighten it now…unless…
She turned and ran as fast as she could to where a bumper car stood. (It must have been abandoned there by one of the Space Commandos.) Then she drove as fast as she could back to Terror Mountain. The cotton-candy monster still lay where they had left it, but it was starting to twitch in its sleep and grumble. The roller coaster staff were watching it uneasily and arguing over which of them should be the one to shoot it with more tranquilizer darts.
Emily pushed past them. She ran up to the cotton-candy creature and poked it. “Hey!” she shouted. “Do you want a fight?”
The monster raised its flossy pink head and blinked at her. It tried out a sleepy growl, which turned into a roar. A gale of cotton candy–scented breath nearly blew Emily off her feet.
“Not me!” she shouted as the creature started scrambling to its feet and swiped at her with one huge pink hand. “Pick on someone your own size!”
And she pointed across the roofs of the rides to where the spiky black giant towered.
The cotton-candy creature glowered at it. It scratched its head and got its finger stuck and had to tug it free.
“You may be just a lot of angry pink cotton candy,” said Emily, “but Funfair Moon is your home, and those creatures are going to get it closed down! What are you going to do about that, eh?”
The ground shuddered as the cotton-candy monster stepped over her and started shoving its way between the rides. Emily jumped back in her bumper car and drove after the creature as fast as she could, trying not to get the car stuck in its big, sticky footprints.
“Come on, Cotton Candy!” she yelled.
People who had been hurrying away from the Rustlers stopped and turned back to watch as the cotton-candy monster lumbered out onto the fairway. The Rustlers lurched toward it. They swung one rustly fist in a huge punch, right in the monster’s belly, but the fist sunk into the cotton candy and stuck there.
The Rustlers reached out one rustling foot, trying to trip up the cotton-candy creature.
The foot stuck fast as well.
The cotton-candy monster raised a huge fist and slammed it down on the Rustlers. They scattered in every direction, no longer a giant, just a cascade of scared Rustlers.
“Thank you!” shouted Emily.
“That’s all right,” mumbled the cotton-candy monster shyly.
“Don’t think this means I’ll be changing my mind,” snapped Mr. Moonbottom. “Those spiky creatures are a pest. You may have scattered them, but they’ll keep on making rides go wrong!”
“Er, no, actually,” said a small voice behind him. Miss Weebly had her hand up. “Actually they won’t. Not if we tell them nicely to stop.”
“You keep out of this, Weebly!” snapped the funfair inspector.
“But I know what those creatures are,” said Miss Weebly. “I was reading all about them in that very interesting book of yours while I was waiting at the Lost Property Office for you to wake up.”
“Book?” spluttered Mr. Moonbottom. “What book?”
“How to Keep and Care for Your Peladorian Puffball. Here it is!” She reached down and picked up the book, which was still lying in the grass near the inspector’s feet. She held it up so that everyone could see it. From the front cover a cute and cuddly Puffball smiled back at them.
“But these Rustlers don’t look anything like that!” said Emily. One of the spiky creatures was hiding nearby in the shadows under the Flying Pony Carousel. She could see it shivering there, the sharp pinpoints
of its spines aglitter. She had never seen anything that looked less like a lovely, fluffy Peladorian Puffball.
“The spiky form is just the first phase of their development,” said Miss Weebly. “In the valleys of the planet Pelador, where they hatch, there are all sorts of fierce creatures waiting to eat them, so they have developed this coat of spines. When they are old enough, they learn how to band together, and that allows them to climb to the high mountain pastures, where they change into a new form. They make perfect pets because they’ll do anything their owner tells them to.”
Emily watched the Rustler beneath the carousel. It was quivering more and more quickly. Suddenly, with a sort of soft popping sound, it changed. The hard black stuff that had covered its spines flew off in a cloud of tiny splinters, and soft fur exploded from beneath. “Meep!” said the Rustler, rolling out into the light. It looked like a purple pom-pom now.
“Meep! Meep! Meep!” other Puffballs were going, in the shadows and the narrow spaces between the rides, and people in the crowd were saying “Aaaawww!” as they caught sight of the new creatures and saw how cute they looked.
“But how did they get all the way from Pelador to Funfair Moon?” asked Jinks, taking his hat off and scratching his head.
Emily pointed at Mr. Moonbottom. “I think he brought them here,” she said.
Gasp! went everyone except Emily and Mr. Moonbottom. Mr. Moonbottom went, “Who, me?”
“Yes!” said Emily. “You came here last week, in disguise. There’s a picture of you riding the ghost train. I bet you went on the Space Twizzler and the merry-go-round and loads of other rides, too, and wherever you went you left some baby Puffballs!”