Elliot and Leslie covered their ears. So did everyone else.
“Reggie! Stop!” cried the professor. “The show’s over!”
But Reggie was oblivious. With his eyes shut tight, his jowls flapping freely around the huge O of his mouth, he held that seemingly bottomless final note.
“Reggie! No!”
But it was too late. The vibration of Reggie’s singing was so violent that—
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRRRACK!
The windows began to shatter. They broke in quick succession from the stage all the way to the front of the cabin. When the sound reached the cockpit door, it shattered too, splintering to bits.
Cosmo Clutch’s antlers flailed in the pilot’s seat. The gauges and readouts were smashed. Smoke rose from the controls. Warning lights blinked in panic and then gave up completely, falling ominously dark. Perhaps it was this dire image that finally got through to Reggie. Or maybe he simply—finally—ran out of air. In any case, he stopped singing.
In the ruins of the cockpit, Cosmo Clutch’s cool concentration had shattered as effectively as everything else. He whipped his head frantically from side to side, searching the dashboard for anything that still worked. But nothing did. Old Clutchie could only howl over the wind, rushing in through all the broken windows.
“Pusslegut, you numbskull! We’re going to crash!”
CHAPTER 12
In which Elliot, Leslie, and Cosmo share an embrace
The Coleopter-copter tumbled through the air. The interior of the cabin had become the strangest tableau in history: a whirling Victorian music hall, filled with creatures of all shapes and sizes, each one dressed in top hats and tap-dancing shoes, flailing and floating in zero-gravity panic.
“YEEE-HAW!” cried the danger-moose in the cockpit.
“AAAIIEEEEEGH!” screamed everyone else.
Every gauge in the cockpit flashed and bleeped and spun. The mohawk of levers flailed like legs of a millipede as Hercules toppled through cloud after cloud. Through the windows, Elliot and Leslie saw brief glimpses of the ground, soaring up to meet them. At one point, Leslie caught sight of an enormous knife slicing toward them out of the night.
“The Heppleworth towers!” she cried.
Then they were swallowed by another cloud.
“Any chance I could I get some help up here?” Cosmo called into the cabin. “Might be a few too many levers for just one danger-moose.”
Leslie and Elliot were closest to the cockpit, so they fought against the tipping and flipping of the flying machine to drag themselves forward.
“Glad you could make it,” said Cosmo Clutch.
“What can we do?” asked Elliot.
“Group hug,” said Cosmo.
“What do you need a hug for?” asked Leslie. “I thought you were fearless.”
“Not each other. I mean hugging the levers!” Cosmo was struggling to gather all of them toward him, but there were simply too many. “If we can pull ’em all in, all at once, they’ll lock the wings open and set us steady. I think. A group hug oughta do it.”
Elliot reached for a lever, but it whipped beyond his grasp.
“Not yet,” Cosmo instructed. “On my count. Three . . . two . . . one . . . now!”
All three of them scooped as many levers as their arms could hold, drawing them together. Coincidentally, pulling all these levers together did indeed result in a group hug, with Elliot, Leslie, and Cosmo all huddled together at the center of the cockpit.
“This is cozy,” said Cosmo Clutch.
“Now what?” asked Elliot. He was keen to get away from the pilot, whose furry face smelled a bit too strongly of bitter cocoa. Also, his left antler was poking into his cheek.
“Keep holding on,” said Cosmo Clutch. “The forewings haven’t locked yet.”
It was true: The flying machine was still careening this way and that, and the multitude of levers still twitched against their chests. Then, all at once—kerrrr-LUNK!
Every one of the levers locked in place, and the flying machine steadied itself. Back in the main cabin, everyone came down with an unceremonious whoomp (and dizzily returned to their seats to fasten their seat belts).
“See? Nothin’ to it!” said Cosmo Clutch.
Leslie peered out through the windows, but all she saw were the flying machine’s enormous pincers, jutting forward into a dark mist. “Can we please land now?” she asked.
One of Cosmo’s furry fingers tapped the dashboard. “Hard to say. Pusslegut’s smash-tastic singing voice fried my instruments. Won’t even know how high we are till we make it out of this cloud.”
As he said this, the fog in front of them took on an eerie green glow that brightened slowly as the mist cleared to reveal: a wall of glass.
“AAIIIEEEEGH!”
They were only meters above the ground, skimming over a grassy courtyard. The three cutlery towers loomed above them. They were flying through the grounds of the Heppleworth Food Factory . . . straight for the lobby of the spoon building.
CRASH!
The flying machine’s beetle horns ruptured the glass, and they skidded across a huge marble foyer until, at last, the bizarre beetle-shaped machine bumped to a halt.
“Everybody okay back there?” asked Cosmo.
Harrumphrey groaned from where he lay under Gügor’s knees. “I feel like I just had a knucklecrumpler tap dancing on my face.”
“Sorry,” said Gügor. “It wasn’t on purpose.”
Gügor politely lifted his legs so his friend could wriggle out from under him. He climbed to his feet and peered out the window. “Vitamin supplements,” he read off a huge sign, now lying on the marble floor, strewn with shards of broken glass. “Wholesome breakfast cereal. Organic canned goods . . .”
“We’re inside the Heppleworth headquarters,” said Elliot, emerging from the cockpit.
“We just crashed into the lobby of the gigantic spoon,” said Leslie.
“So much for taking them by surprise,” said Patti.
“Taking who by surprise?” asked Elliot. “There’s nobody here.”
“Just a lot of elevators,” Gügor observed. There were ten in all, lining one entire wall of the lobby. “Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . . seventeen . . .”
“What are you doing?” Leslie asked him.
“Counting down,” said Gügor. “See?” He pointed to the numbers above each of the elevators. The dials above every one counted down in eerily silent unison.
“Five . . . four . . . ,” Gügor counted, “three . . . two . . . one . . .”
DA-DING!
All ten elevator doors opened at once, and out poured ten raging waves of ghorks!
CHAPTER 13
In which Elliot and Leslie demonstrate their inventions, and Cosmo Clutch raises a problem with Wednesdays
Ghorks!”
The horde of hideous creatures swarmed around Hercules. Nose-ghorks sniffed the landing gear. Ear-ghorks listened to its thumping innards. Eye-ghorks blinked in the windows. Hand-ghorks peeled away strips of the Coleopter-copter’s metal flesh and fed them to the mouth-ghorks, who chewed the iron and copper as thoughtfully as food critics.
Gügor frowned out the window. “Poor Hercules!”
“Time to see if our disguises work!” said the professor. “I’ll tell them we’re here to perform in the cabaret.” Before anyone could object, the professor stuck his head out the nearest hatch. “Excuse us,” he called to the swarm of ghorks, speaking in a stiffly polite voice. “We are but humble dinner-theatre-style cabaret performers, already dressed in our outlandish costumes and eagerly looking forward to the Simmersville Food Festival Final Feast. I fear we may’ve taken a wrong turn. If you would be so kind as to direct us—”
The ghorks growled at him, and the flying machine was pelted with snot-balls (courtesy of the n
ose-ghorks).
The professor ducked back inside. “I don’t think they’re buying it.”
Jean-Remy, top hat in hand, whizzed across the cabin to alight on Leslie’s shoulder. “I believe Elliot and Leslie can help us in zat department.”
“We can?” asked Elliot.
“Bien sûr! We took ze liberty of packing your inventions.”
“Our anti-ghork devices?” asked Elliot.
“But they aren’t finished,” said Leslie. “We never even tested them.”
Patti pointed out the window. “Now’s your chance.”
The professor pressed a button, and a section of the seats slid away to reveal a hatch in the floor. Inside were five separate compartments filled with a number of the children’s devices.
Elliot and Leslie were amazed. At DENKi-3000 Head-quarters, these inventions had hardly progressed further than blueprints and a few rickety prototypes. But here in the compartments, there were ten of each invention, all of them shiny and perfectly built.
“You actually made them!” Elliot cried.
“Precisely to your specifications,” said Harrumphrey.
Elliot reached into the first compartment and brought out something that looked like a small crossbow, but in place of the bow it sported a large blue funnel, the narrow end pointing away from the handle. An electric fan was positioned to blow air into the funnel’s larger end.
Elliot turned it in his hand, admiring the creatures’ handiwork. “This is for the nose-ghorks,” he explained. He directed the pointed end of the funnel at Harrumphrey and switched on the fan. A cyclone of air spiraled down the funnel, delivering a fine jet of wind. Harrumphrey’s beard rustled.
“No offense,” said the hufflehead, “but how’s that going to stop a ghork?”
“It’s not loaded,” said Leslie. “That’s what those are for.” She pointed to the enormous wheels of cheese, sealed in red wax and stored in the same compartment. “Each of those is a wheel of Buffalo Butt Blue cheese. According to Patti, it’s the smelliest cheese in the world.”
Patti nodded, wrinkling her nose.
Elliot pointed to a small porcelain plate, mounted between the electric fan and the large opening of the funnel. “You put a chunk of Buffalo Butt Blue right here, and fire the smell straight up their noses. We call it the Funky Cheese Wafter.”
“Ingenious!” cried Jean-Remy.
Next, the children demonstrated the Onion Stunner, an automated onion-grater device, complete with the world’s most pungent onions—for the eye-ghorks, of course. Then there was the Slobber-Robber, a kind of shoulder-mounted cannon designed to lob huge, extra-long-lasting gobstoppers into the jaws of mouth-ghorks. Perhaps the oddest of all was the the Four-Stringed Ear-Stinger, a contraption like a chest-mounted papoose, with a pair of robotic arms sticking out of either side. One robotic claw held a poorly tuned violin, while the other clutched a bow. The arms were programmed to play the instrument like a first-time music student. This, of course, was a tactic to annoy the ear-ghorks into submission. The fifth and final compartment contained wooden catapults that fired extremely soft cushions.
“The rest I understand,” said Patti, “but this? Fluffy cushions? What’re you gonna do, send ’em to sleep with a bedtime story? Good luck with that.”
Reggie came to the children’s defense. “Please, do not underestimate the power of a fluffy cushion! My own regiment made memorable use of bed linen during the berg-biter uprising of 1981. Bombastadon historians refer to our victory as the Million- Pillow Blitz!”
Some of the other creatures groaned (especially Bildorf and Pib). They sensed the blustery arrival of another one of the Colonel-Admiral’s long-winded war stories.
Before Reggie could go any further, Elliot agreed with him. “Sometimes the best weapons are the unexpected ones.” He picked up one of the handheld catapults. It was loaded with a plump pink pillow. “We call this a Fluffy Pillow Pitcher. It’s a diversionary tactic.” He ran his fingers through the pillow’s luxuriant fabric. “With their heightened sense of touch, those hand-ghorks are going to find these irresistible—which’ll hopefully give us time to escape.”
“Maybe we should escape right now,” said Bildorf, still quivering in his tiny tuxedo.
Pib nodded enthusiastically. “Are you sure we can go up against those things with nothing but stinky cheese and fluffy cushions?”
“We have to,” Elliot told them. “We can’t run away.” He pointed out the nearest window. “Those ghorks are going to tear their way in here whether we like it or not, and if we don’t fight back, who’s going to save Eloise-Yvette? We have to find her, not to mention find out what the ghorks are up to!”
“Elliot is right,” Jean-Remy said. “My sister and I may have our problems . . . she may be terribly vain and selfish, buuut . . . as Leslie says, she is my family. Today we are ze only hope she has.”
“Or, to put it another way,” said the professor, “it’s time for us to save the day!” He stooped to retrieve a Funky Cheese Wafter from the hatch, raising it bravely above his head. “And if there’s anyone here who knows a thing or two about saving the day, it’s—”
“Me,” said Cosmo Clutch. The danger-moose stood at the front of the cabin, legs akimbo, hands on his hips, a fiery glint in his one uncovered eye. “I’ve saved enough days to fill a calendar!”
Patti whistled in appreciation. “He does look quite heroic.”
Cosmo winked at Patti. “Not just heroic. Intrepid.”
Patti swooned (a dollop of mud fell from her hair and dribbled down her dress).
“Lemme tell you,” said Cosmo, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of day-saving, it’s this.” He took the chocolate cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at the professor. “There are some days—usually Wednesdays—that can’t be saved by fighting. Days like that can only be saved by . . . hmm.” He tapped the cigar thoughtfully against one of his antlers. “What was it again?”
“You see?” said the professor. “Just as I’ve always said! There’s more than one way to—”
He didn’t finish the familiar phrase. A band of hand-ghorks broke in. They came straight through the back of the cabin, emerging onstage like villains in a Christmas pantomime. In seconds, they had torn the curtains to shreds. The professor, already armed with a Fluffy Pillow Pitcher, fired a lemon-colored cushion into the midst of the ghorks.
The first of them tried to bat it away, but the moment she touched it, she stopped. She hugged the pillow to her chest, and a look of dimwitted satisfaction melted across her face. Shocked by the sudden pacification of their comrade, the other ghorks approached her. Their huge cucumber-like fingers reached for the yellow cushion as if it were a sacred relic. The moment their fingertips touched it, a fight erupted.
Elliot and Leslie smiled proudly at each other. “It’s working!” Elliot cried. “I can’t believe it’s working!”
Seeing the hand-ghorks incapacitated by a fight over a fluffy pillow, everyone’s confidence was bolstered. Each of the creatures from DENKi-3000 armed themselves with one of the strange weapons. They threw open the flying machine’s bay doors and leapt out, ready for a battle of epic (and very odd) proportions.
CHAPTER 14
In which Bildorf and Pib use the direct approach, Cosmo Clutch proves he’s an excellent multitasker, and Leslie finds an uncommon carrot
Banzai!” cried Bildorf and Pib.
They had strapped swimming goggles over their eyes and tied tiny polka-dotted handkerchiefs over their faces. They looked like shaggy miniature Wild West banditos! The transformation wasn’t to disguise their identities, however. It was to protect them from their own stench. Both hobmongrels were too small to carry one of Elliot and Leslie’s anti-ghork devices, so they had gone for a more direct approach. Bildorf had rubbed himself in the extra-stinky cheese, while Pib had soaked her fur in onio
n juice. They both reeked unbearably, which was perfect when they scaled up the backs of the ghorks and smeared themselves across their hideous faces (which was quite effective).
Gügor, meanwhile, went berserk. He rounded up a small herd of ear-ghorks and crumpled them into an ear-flapping mass. When he was done with them, they looked like an enormous pitted green basketball (with gigantic ears).
“What have you done with Gügor’s 1TL?!” he hollered at them.
“Look at these ears,” one of them whined back at him. “We can hear you just fine! Quit shouting!”
“Also, what’s a 1TL?” cried another.
“Eloise-Yvette,” Gügor growled. “She’s Gügor’s One True Love!”
The massive green basketball trembled with laughter. “What a sap!”
Gobstoppers, fluffy cushions, onion slices, and clouds of cheesy stink soared in every direction, all to a soundtrack of excruciatingly off-key music.
“It’s working!” cried the professor. He waved a pair of polka-dot cushions over his head. “We’re doing it! We’re fighting back! We’re saving the day!”
For once, it seemed the professor was right. All across the lobby, the ghorks were taken by surprise, thanks to Elliot and Leslie’s ingenious weapons. Even though they were outnumbered ten to one, the creatures of DENKi-3000 were—astonishingly, miraculously—winning.
Cosmo Clutch lived up to his word when it came to saving the day. He had an Onion Stunner in both hands, an Ear-Stinger strapped across his chest, and a Fluffy Pillow Pitcher tied into his antlers. Even with all that extra equipment, he still flipped among the ghorks as nimbly as a gymnast.
Over near the elevators, armed with an Onion Stunner (Leslie) and a Funky Cheese Wafter (Elliot), the two children were able to hold back a pair of ghorks. They had cornered a nose-ghork and an eye-ghork, pinning them to the wall with the unspeakable bouquets of onions and Buffalo Butt Blue cheese.
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