by Natale Ghent
“We can’t just rush in,” Sam said. “If we alert the clones, then we’ll all be in trouble. We’ll follow him until we have a chance to get him back without attracting any attention.”
“That would be the best plan,” Squeak agreed.
Boney ran his hand through his hair. “But what if they discover he’s not one of them?”
“I don’t think that should be a problem,” Squeak said.
The three friends watched as Itchy plodded toward the clones and took his place at the back of the line. Henry clucked and fussed. The kittens growled. Itchy moved in rhythm with the rest of the clones, small meeping noises bubbling from his lips.
All at once, a whistle screeched, shattering the silence. Boney, Sam, and Squeak covered their ears, buckling in agony. Henry squawked in alarm while the kittens mewed with terror. Itchy and the clones turned their pale faces upward in one synchronized sweep, staring at something only they could see. After several excruciating seconds, the whistle stopped. The line of clones lurched forward as they began to march, their feet stomping on the forest floor, their motions exaggerated and rigid.
Boney lowered his hands from his ears. “What was that?”
“Some sort of signal.” Sam cleared her ears with her fingers, then checked to make sure Fluffy was okay.
Boney pulled Itchy’s sling over his other shoulder and placed Henry inside, positioning the two slings so they wouldn’t interfere with each other. “Let’s go,” he said. “And stay frosty. We can’t afford any mistakes.” He rushed off, Squeak and Sam following behind.
The three friends trailed Itchy and the rest of the clones, careful not to be seen. The kittens hissed, while Henry clucked angrily.
Squeak noted a group of clones that seemed to appear from nowhere in the woods. “There are more joining the procession.”
The clones took their position in line, marching mechanically. Sam jerked to a stop, grabbing Boney and Squeak by the sleeves. She pointed to a spot in the woods ahead. “I don’t see anything,” Boney whispered.
Sam continued to point. “See how the clones seem to just disappear …”
Boney squinted through the filtered light of the forest. Then he nodded. “Yeah, I see what you mean. The clones are fading into nothing.”
“Not fading,” Squeak corrected him. “They must be stepping into something we can’t see—probably hidden by some sort of cloaking device.”
Boney looked at him with confusion.
“The Mother Ship,” Squeak said.
The clones continued to vanish, one by one, until Itchy was third in line.
Boney clenched his jaw. “We have to stop him before he disappears.”
But it was too late. Itchy marched forward, vanishing into thin air. The remaining clones followed, until the three friends were alone in the woods.
“Come on,” Sam said. “We have to move or we may lose him forever.” She raced toward the spot where Itchy had seemed to vapourize.
Boney streaked after her, Henry and Tiger bouncing in their slings. “Man, she’s fast.”
“Wait for me!” Squeak ran behind him, holding his sling with one hand like a football to prevent Spock from flying out.
Sam skidded on her feet, turned and waved Boney and Squeak on, hesitated, then stepped forward and vanished. Boney ran faster, but, in his haste, he caught his combat boot on a log and tripped. Flying through the air with a yelp, he somehow managed to twist mid-flight so as not to crush Tiger and Henry when he fell. The rooster squawked resentfully as they hit the ground. Tiger yowled with fright. Without missing a beat, Boney jumped to his feet with a grunt, just in time to see Squeak scuttle to a stop at the exact point in the woods where Sam had hesitated.
“Look!” Squeak said, retrieving Sam’s electro-node-a-metre from the ground. “She must have dropped it.”
Boney ran up and stumbled into him, sending Squeak crashing forward to disappear without a trace. “Whoa.” Boney stared at the spot of ground where Squeak had stood. The trail of footprints ended there. Henry and Tiger looked at him with serious faces, as though they understood the situation. Boney straightened himself. “I guess it’s now or never.” He took a deep breath and stepped forward.
A strange buzzing sound filled his ears. The air pressed around him. He seemed to be passing through a mild electrical field that pulsed in waves through his body. The air felt thick and magnetized. Boney shouldered against the force, leaning heavily, until he popped out the other side. Staggering to regain his balance, he found Squeak blinking angrily up at him from a heap on the floor of the craft.
“You pushed me,” Squeak said, his voice strangely muffled and high-pitched.
“I didn’t mean to.” Boney’s hand flew to his throat when he heard the ridiculous pitch of his own voice. “Wow, this is totally freaky. We sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.”
Tiger mewed a high-pitched little mew.
“Even the kitten is affected,” Boney said. “I hope this doesn’t hurt him.”
Squeak shook his head. “It’s okay. It’s just helium, I think. They must pipe it into the air to prevent the clones from getting the bends when they board the ship.”
Boney held his hand out to help Squeak up. “What’s ‘the bends’?”
“Decompression sickness.” Squeak stood and adjusted his goggles. “It happens when you move from an area of high pressure to an area of lower pressure, like when a scuba diver rises to the surface of the water too quickly. The aliens must live in an environment with less gravity than ours, therefore requiring some kind of transitional chamber for non-alien visitors.”
Boney thought about this. “Non-alien visitors? As in, humans?”
“Or clones of humans,” Squeak said.
Boney looked around the chamber. They were standing on some kind of silver gangplank. The air was a strange blue colour, like the light they’d seen glowing through the warehouse windows. There was a tunnel of some kind at the top of the gangplank, with an eerie white mist swirling around inside. Rows of little lights ran along the length of the tunnel so that it looked like an airstrip illuminated in the fog. Boney shivered. “It’s cold in here.”
Squeak examined the wall of the ship. It appeared to be sweating, despite the cold temperature. “Helium conducts heat away from the body.”
Boney rubbed his arms to bring the warmth back to them. “Will we sound like the Chipmunks forever?”
“It’s temporary,” Squeak assured him. He gave Spock a scratch under the chin, then continued to inspect the wall. “I’d like to get a sample of this.”
“Where’s Sam?” Boney asked.
“She must have gone ahead.” Squeak ran his finger down the wall, and then lightly tasted the liquid on his fingertips.
“We should get going, too.” Boney walked to the top of the gangplank. He stopped and stared into the tunnel, listening to the muffled peeps and blips swirling around in the mist. As he stood there, he began feeling light in the head. He poked delicately at the mist with his finger. “What do you think it is?”
Squeak walked up the gangplank and studied the fog in the tunnel. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Boney pushed his hand into the mist. “It feels okay.”
“It’s probably another transitional zone to help us acclimatize to the alien atmosphere,” Squeak said. “I’m sure it’s safe.”
The two boys looked at each other.
Boney swallowed. “Well … here goes …”
The boys stepped simultaneously into the tunnel.
“Hey, it’s kind of neat in here,” Squeak giggled.
Boney waved his arms up and down, making swirling patterns in the mist. The kittens chirped contentedly while Henry swayed happily back and forth in his sling. Boney looked at Squeak in surprise. “What is this stuff?”
Squeak twirled around, smiling. “I believe it’s nitrous oxide.”
“Nitrous what?”
“Ox-ide,” Squeak answered, emphasizing the syllables. �
��Otherwise known as EN-TWO-OH. Otherwise known as laughing gas.” He snorted and doubled over. “It enhances suggestibility and … and i-ma-gi-NA-tion.”
Boney pointed at him. “Hey, look at Mr. Spock, being all hilarious.” He started laughing like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Then he stopped and became serious. “Do you think the … ‘space people’” — he made exaggerated quotation marks with his fingers — “are trying to control our minds?”
Squeak stared at him soberly, then gave a huge, gap-toothed grin. “Naaah. Nitrous oxide is a natural … uhhh … component of the earth’s atmosphere.” He traced a big circle in the air with his hands. “This must be where the ‘space people’” — he mimicked Boney’s exaggerated quotation marks—“generate the atmosphere for the ship.” He cackled and jumped, kicking his feet in the air. “Look! I’m as light as a feather!” He floated several yards along the tunnel before touching down. “The gravity is really light in here.”
Boney’s eyes bulged with astonishment, and then he took a huge leap, turning a somersault before landing on his feet.
Squeak laughed hysterically. “That was really cool.”
“Yeah? Watch this!” Boney scuttled his feet, walking right up the side of the tunnel, flipping over, and scurrying down the other side.
The two boys giggled as they grabbed hands, waltzing together through the mist. They twirled each other around before stumbling out into a strange white vestibule. They stood, hand in hand, until their giddiness slowly lifted and they jumped away from each other with embarrassment.
“That was weird,” Boney said in a normal voice. “Hey! I have my voice back!”
“I told you it was temporary.” Squeak looked around the room.
The vestibule was some kind of hub, with a dozen identical corridors radiating from its centre. The entire room was seamless, like a giant mushroom, and blindingly white.
“Everything looks the same,” Boney said. “How are we supposed to know which way to go?”
Squeak reached into his bag and held up Sam’s electro-node-a-metre. “With this.” He depressed the button on the device. The arms rose and the little glass globes began to whirl and glow. Squeak slowly turned where he stood, testing the corridors for recent activity. The arms of the electro-node-a-metre whirled fast, then slow, alternating according to their position. Squeak swept the unit back and forth several times. “This middle corridor seems to elicit the strongest response—if I’m reading the metre correctly.”
Boney shrugged. “It’s the best we’ve got. Come on.”
The two boys advanced along the corridor, eyes as big as searchlights. From time to time little bursts of mist puffed from small portals in the walls and ceiling, causing the boys to jump in alarm.
“This ship must be huge,” Boney said.
Squeak held his finger to his lips and nodded toward Spock. The kitten’s ears were flat; he growled deep in his chest. Tiger and Henry were also on red alert, their eyes wide and searching.
“We must be close,” Squeak whispered. He tilted his head, listening. “Do you hear that low thumping?”
Boney strained his ears. “Yeah, I can hear it. What do you think it is?”
Squeak pushed on the bridge of his goggles. “It sounds somewhat mechanical. Like a pump motor of some kind. I wonder where it’s coming from.”
“Over there!” Boney pointed down the corridor to a pool of green light wavering over the floor.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A CHASTLY SIGHT
Boney and Squeak slunk along the corridor toward the green light, the thumping sound growing louder with every step. Crouching low, they approached an opening in the wall, Henry and the kittens growling warnings that the clones were near. As they drew closer to the light, Boney put his hand over his nose in disgust.
“What’s that wretched stench?”
Squeak winced, pinching his nose. “Ugh! It smells like rotten eggs.” He pulled two camouflage bandanas from his messenger bag and handed one to Boney, tying the other over his nose and mouth like a bandit from the Old West.
Boney quickly did the same, choking on the disgusting smell.
When they reached the edge of the doorway, Boney prodded the green light with his finger to be sure it was safe before he and Squeak peeked around the corner into the room. The two friends stared in horror as their eyes adjusted to the nauseating green light.
At the centre of the room sat a gigantic, blubbery blob of a creature, the size of a small school bus, reclining on a giant, round white cushion. Its skin was green and slimy, and its toothless mouth was so big it eclipsed the creature’s entire body as it flapped open and shut. It had bulging yellow eyes like a bullfrog, and it slobbered and burped and gurgled and farted as it ate, filling the room with a putrid green gas.
To one side of the creature was a two-storey chute firing cannonballs of candy and cakes and sweets into the blob’s gaping maw. The chute was fed by the Itchy clones, shuffling in a long line, waiting to climb the metal stairs that led to the opening of the machine to dump their cargo. Once deposited, the sweets were shot from the chute with a loud bang, the clones making their way across a catwalk and down another set of stairs to gather in a loose group on the other side of the room.
The boys cringed as the cannon suddenly misfired, overshooting the blob and splattering the food against the wall in a revolting smear of blue icing and whipped cream. This caused the creature to scream with rage and pound the floor with its tail, knocking several terrified clones off the catwalk to be gobbled up as they tumbled into the creature’s flapping mouth. The blob shuddered as it swallowed the clones. It convulsed and grew in size.
Boney stared at Squeak. “Did that blob thing just get bigger?”
Squeak raised his eyebrows. “It appears to have grown after eating the clones.”
“Who’s that over there?” Boney pointed to a shadowy figure crouched behind a low white wall near the front of the room.
The figure seemed to hear him, because it turned, the features of its ghoulish face wavering in the noxious green light. Its eyes were big and round, and it had a long trunk stretching down where its nose and mouth should have been.
The boys gasped, ducking out of sight.
“It’s an alien!” Boney said, trying to remain calm. “I think it saw us!”
After several moments when nothing happened, the boys peeped around the corner again. The alien was still staring at them. Only this time, it gestured for them to come forward.
Squeak strained to see through the green atmosphere in the room. “Ummm … that’s not an alien. It’s Sam, wearing a gas mask.”
Boney rubbed his eyes. “Are you sure? It’s hard to see anything through this disgusting air.”
Henry blinked against the fumes. The kittens rubbed their eyes with their paws.
“How’d Sam get in there without being seen?” Boney wondered.
“She must have waited until there was a distraction,” Squeak guessed.
“Good thinking. The next time that blob freaks out, we’ll dash behind that wall and join her.”
No sooner did Boney say this than the cannon misfired, blasting a huge lump of chocolate éclairs over the blob’s head. The éclairs exploded against the wall, sending the creature into a fit of pounding and screeching. It knocked more clones off the catwalk and into its voracious jaws.
“Now!” Boney said, as the blob shuddered and increased in size. He grabbed Squeak by the sleeve and dragged him into the room, skidding to a stop beside Sam.
“What took you so long?” Sam’s voice sounded tinny and clipped through the voicemitter on her gas mask.
“We thought you were one of them,” Boney said. “Where did you get that gas mask?”
Sam’s voicemitter clicked. “I keep it in my military knapsack at all times, just in case.”
The three friends turned to watch as the blob continued to eat, its giant mouth blubbering and slobbering, big clouds of green gas filling the air.
“What is that disgusting thing?” Boney asked.
Sam shook her head. “Some kind of intergalactic glutton that requires massive amounts of sugar to sustain itself. It’s obviously dangerous, judging by the height of that chute and the way it keeps eating the clones.”
There was a loud rasping sound, like someone pinching the air out of a balloon, and the blob released another giant plume of gas.
Boney grimaced. “Why doesn’t it stay on its own planet and eat? Why does it have to come here and eat all our cakes and stuff?”
The blob belched, causing Boney and Squeak to cover their noses with disgust.
“It likely consumed its entire planet and needed a new source of sugar.” Squeak choked against the fumes.
Boney gagged. “It’s giving me the dry heaves.”
Squeak scoped the room. “Where’s Itchy?”
Sam pointed to a figure near the end of the clone line.
“How can you tell it’s him?” Boney coughed. “They all look identical.”
Sam handed her binoculars to Boney. “He’s carrying red licorice. And look at his neck. There’s no mark. The clones have small puncture marks on the backs of their necks, as though they’ve been inflated by some kind of needle—like a football.”
Boney held the binoculars to his burning eyes and studied the hordes of clones as best he could. “Okay, I see him. But that puncture mark on the clones will be difficult to use as a form of detection. It’s just too small. The minute Itchy drops that licorice into the chute, he’ll join that big group and we’ll never be able to tell him apart from the clones.” He handed the binoculars back to Sam. “We have to get him out of here now.”
There was a sudden loud clunk and a series of panels on the ceiling slid open, revealing dozens of large grey fans. They powered up, whirling faster and faster until the entire ship seemed to vibrate. The fans drew the noxious green gas from the room, the gas whirling in huge funnel clouds toward the ceiling.
“Thank heavens,” Boney said, letting go of his nose as the fans cleared the air.
Sam removed her gas mask and stuffed it into her bag. She investigated the fans through her binoculars. “I wonder what that’s all about?”