by Steve Cole
To keep my mind busy while we worked, Big G talked (with occasional contributions from Herbert) and I finally got my head round some stuff – which I present now in a stupendous comic strip format:
“How come?” you might cry.
The answer was quite simple:
KA-ZAAAPP!
Elodie was the first to undergo Big G’s brief tour of outer space. She came back, eyes wide and bulging, groaning and gasping for breath. Big G flopped down on the floor beside her in the TAMASSISS.
It was such a relief to see someone not sleeping. “Elodie, you’re awake!”
“You could tell that just by looking, huh?” she said dryly. “Man, I had this awful, awful dream . . .”
“That every other person on Earth has been put to sleep by Giant Extra-Terrestrial stink machines? It’s true!”
“No, that my estranged father didn’t want to see me while my mother was all gooey over my dimwit brother,” Elodie said meanly. “That’s true too.” She paused. “So. You OK, Tim? We thought you were dead for sure.”
“It was a close one,” I said, leaving the other stuff for now. “You don’t know how close.”
Kimmy was the next to be brought back to the land of the living. She came round with a high-pitched whine. “Ooooof.” She clutched her ears. “Who turned my flippin’ head inside out? Elodie? I don’t care if we’re friends, I’m still taking serious legal action against you.”
“Welcome back, Kimmy,” I said.
“Tim?” She sat up and grinned. “Hey! You’re alive!”
“Thanks to your suit,” I said truthfully.
“Who’s inside it?” Her face darkened. “Who’s wearing my flippin’ suit? Ray, is that you?”
“No, it’s taking Ray into outer space,” I said, reassuringly.
Kimmy, for once, was lost for words. Unfortunately she soon found them again and went off on a foul-mouthed, panic-stricken, and legally questionable rant until Ray and her precious suit came back.
“Hey,” said Ray weakly, pushing himself up on his elbows. “I think I’m OK. I think. Ow. It hurts to think – I think. OW!”
Elodie glared at me. “Explanations, Tim?”
“Hello.” Big G took off the TAMASSISS helmet and Herbert burst out of his mouth like . . . like a slimy goldfish on the end of a long alien tongue.
“Greetings!” he squeaked.
“AAAAAUGHHH!” screamed Ray, Kimmy and Elodie, banging their heads as they jumped backwards and collided.
“OW!”
“OOF!”
“ARGH! I’M GONNA SUE YOU!”
“Four kids, an alien and a goldfish with a law suit,” I muttered dismally over the ragbag racket. “All that’s left to save a planet.”
“Shhhh!” cried Herbert imperiously. Then I realised that a whispering, scratching sound had crept into the hyper-beam room. With a sick feeling I also realised that I had taken my eyes off the scanner showing the GET ship. It was pulsing now with strange light – as the GETs’ monstrous, shadowy chittersnipes began to blur into existence all around us . . .
“Oh, man, no way!” cried Elodie, rubbing her head. “What the hell are those things?”
“Scary,” I suggested, hauling Elodie quickly to her feet.
Ray boggled as the creatures grew darker, more solid. “Must be our imaginations . . .”
“Mass hallucination,” Kimmy agreed.
“No. A mass of chittersnipes.” I dragged them both into a standing position. “The GETs sent them. They chased me and Big G all over their spaceship.”
Ray boggled some more. “They did what?”
“Big G?” Kimmy echoed. “Chittersnipes? Spaceships? How much did I miss?”
Big G had swallowed Herbert back down and was busy fiddling with some controls on the far wall. “The chittersnipes are GET slave animals, OK? Used by the GETs for pest control.”
Ray nodded thoughtfully. “And we’re the pests!”
“So, let’s get out of here and shut the door on them,” I said. “Like, now.”
“Nearly done.” Big G pulled wires from the wall, which spat sparks at his camouflage jacket. “OK! Nearly nearly done.”
“Nearly done what?” I yelled, shoving Ray, Kimmy and Elodie towards the open doorway.
“Don’t push me!” Elodie snapped.
“The chittersnipes were sent here by GET hyper-beam,” Big G called over. “I am widening the range of our hyper-beam here so that as soon as they are solid, OK, I can project them back out into space.”
Herbert burst out on his gloopy organic party blower. “That was my idea!”
“Ugh!” Kimmy complained. “You flippin’ freak-fish!”
“Oi! That’s my goldfish you’re talking about,” I told her, bundling her out of the door with Ray and Elodie. “Now, shift!”
“There!” Big G turned from his work, grabbed the TAMASSISS and bounded towards us, dragging it behind him. “Hyper-beam now on a ten-second timer. OK? Shoo!”
“Wait!” I gasped, even as the heavy door THUNKed shut behind him. “Sergeant Katzburger’s still in there. Adults can’t use the hyper-beam. She’ll be killed!”
Elodie looked horrified. “We’ve got to get her out!”
SLAM! Something heavy and many-legged struck the door.
“Um, or not,” said Kimmy quietly.
The chittersnipes had fully arrived on Earth. SLAM! SLAM!
“Those things are trying to bash their way out,” said Ray. “We can’t go back in there. We can’t!”
The next moment it was irrelevant in any case. We heard the whooshing shoosh of the hyper-beam in operation . . . Bright red light flared under the door . . . The SLAM-SLAM-SLAMs grew fainter, then stopped – but the light glowed brighter still, until then . . .
BLAMMMM! That was the sound of something big and expensive blowing up.
“The hyper-beam must’ve blown a fuse,” said Elodie, holding a hand to her chest.
Ray was gnawing his nails. “Were the chittersnipes sent back out into space?”
I hung my head. “What about Sergeant Katzburger?”
Big G boldly hit the keypad and the door clunked open. I peered tentatively inside.
The room was smoky, but empty. On the scanner, the GET ship had stopped pulsing.
“Power boost blew the contra-space funnel!” Big G groaned.
“We have spare parts in the Crèche!” Elodie was already racing away down the corridor. “We can track Katzburger down in space . . .”
We all chased after her. “Hurry!” puffed Big G, bundling the TAMASSISS above his head. “Hurry!”
“Hey!” Kimmy yelled. “You flippin’ thief! Where you taking that?”
Big G shook his head. “You must fix the intangibility field in the suit so it’s stronger – so it makes many transparent at once, not just someone right up close.”
Kimmy gasped. “You want to mess with PERFECTION?”
“Come on,” I told her, pulling her along.
By the time we’d caught up with Elodie and Ray, they were standing in front of the big screen, staring at empty space.
“Sergeant Katzburger was sent to this spot, just as we were,” Elodie said slowly. “Even if we fixed the hyper-beam in time . . . there’s no trace.”
Ray took a deep, deep puff on his inhaler. “We’ve lost her.”
It was an awful moment. I had a silent little cry for the miserable sergeant who’d had such bad luck with pets. Such bad luck full stop. Despite everything I wished Dad was there to hold on to. Instead he was asleep somewhere in the base, out of reach. Like my newfound mother . . .
And like every other person in the world.
Still, just then it was Katzburger filling my thoughts. The next chapter will be silent, as a mark of respect.
Once our minute’s silence ended, we watched miserably as the alien ship shimmered and flickered even through the high-tech filter on the screen.
“This is all the fault of those GET things,” said Elodie. “Just what ARE they?”
“They come from the Monnos galaxy, billions of light years away,” Big G explained. “Such big beings need lots of space, like the Ova-Many – so they spread far and wide buying up property.”
“Earth’s their holiday home,” I explained casually. “They said the last time they came here was about 350 million years ago.”
“You’ve actually talked with those things . . .” Ray was looking at me with new respect. “What happened?”
“Work on suit!” Big G insisted. “Now you awake, you must boost the intangibility!”
So while Ray and Elodie helped Kimmy with Big G’s improvements to the suit, I explained all that had happened in chapters twenty-seven to twenty-nine (without the pictures). I thought someone might comment on how brilliantly brave I’d been, surviving all that stuff without going totally mad. But the Crèche lot were maybe too busy working, and their curiosity was scientific as usual.
Elodie glanced up from the circuit she was building. “So it turns out that the GET ship is parked in front of another, way-larger ship – owned by the Ova-Many?”
“Yep,” I said. “The big one’s stuffed full of alien babies ready to move in.”
“All those lights in the sky after the Big Miracle got rid of the pollution,” Kimmy called, her legs sticking out through the neck of the TAMASSISS as she fiddled about inside. “They were prospective buyers, checking out the Earth!”
“But the GET sellers had a problem.” Herbert burst out of Big G’s mouth, surfing his tongue as it unfurled. “Under intergalactic law, the human race is a protected species – because you’ve lived on the planet for over two million years, you have squatter’s rights.”
“What’s a squatter?” asked Kimmy.
“Someone who lives in someone else’s property even though they don’t own it,” said Elodie, holding Ray’s new improved fission chip up to the light for study. “Like, back in Ontario, if you stay in an unoccupied building for ten years, it’s yours.”
Ray put down a screwdriver. “So, even though the GETs see humans as nothing more than pests on their property, they can’t just wipe us out. It’s like if we get bats nesting in our roof, we can’t just clear them out because they’re protected by law. Like the natterjack toad and the great crested newt and the little whirlpool ram’s-horn snail and—”
“And me!” cried Kimmy. “Protected by law! You’d better flippin’ believe it!”
“Yes, OK, OK,” said Big G. “Under galactic law, the GETs must get your agreement in writing for the sale to the Ova-Many to go ahead.”
“But the human race would NEVER agree to that,” Elodie pointed out.
“Of course not.” Big G looked doleful. “But if the GETs can prove they’ve asked you, and that you have not bothered to reply within one Earth year, they can proceed with the sale without your consent.”
“So, that’s why the GET sellers filled the air with a tricksy coded message, even though they’ve learned perfect English,” I realised. “They didn’t want us to understand!”
“Indeed, Timothy!” Herbert popped out of Big G’s mouth again like the cuckoo in a particularly fishy cuckoo clock. “The GETs scanned human technology levels and found the hyper-beam in operation. They knew full well that humans didn’t really understand it – but it gave them the excuse to contact you in an advanced alien manner.”
Kimmy peeped out from inside the suit to give Herbert a suspicious look. “How would you know, weirdo fish?”
“It was the GETs’ amazing alien scents that transformed my meagre mind into a mighty organ,” Herbert said grandly. “And since they communicate using smells in the air, I learned to do it too. That meant that when the GET building the stink machines was talking to his fellows back on the ship, I could pick up on some of their conversations – once the odours eventually reached my fish bowl.”
I felt slightly hurt. “All that time I thought you were listening to me confiding all my troubles!”
“Er . . . well, yes, I was, Timothy.” Herbert looked sheepish – if a fish can look sheepish. “And I was, er . . . most interested.”
“I’ll bet,” said Elodie, yawning.
“Right.” I looked at him doubtfully. “Well, anyway – in the end, we did translate the GETs’ coded message, and made it to their ship. So by law, the GETs had to get human agreement to the sale.”
“And obviously no president of a big power or whoever is just gonna agree to sign.” Elodie slotted the finished fission chip into her circuit. “So the GETs prepared smelly illusions to trick him . . . to make him believe his biggest fears would come true if he didn’t sign.” She looked at Tim. “But instead of the president, they got you.”
“Right.” Kimmy took her friends’ new, improved lash-up and slotted it deep inside the workings of the suit. “Obviously, if they’d stinkified the real president, he would have seen stuff like nuclear wars, or the whole nation going up in smoke, or himself being sued. Serious grown-up stuff! Not rubbishy fears like the ones in Tim’s head.”
“Oi!” I protested – though I knew she was right.
“I guess it shows you’re kind of scared of me, eh, bruv?” Elodie looked somewhat pleased. “I suppose you feel intimidated by my superior intelligence.”
“Superior?” I scowled. “Pooperior, you mean!”
“Wow, I can see Dad must’ve loved living with someone so witty.”
“I can see why Mum was so keen to meet someone normal like me instead of a stuck-up brain on legs like you!”
Herbert made another pop-out appearance on the super-tongue express. “Please! This is no time to argue.”
“Don’t fight, guys, please.” Agitated, Ray took two puffs on his inhaler. “Elodie, Tim did really well. And Tim, Elodie’s not just a brain on legs. She, er . . . has arms too.”
Elodie rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Ray.”
“The fact remains, Timothy,” Herbert went on, “that you did sign a contract saying Earth was fair game for GET development.”
“True,” I cringed. “But . . . I’m not President, am I? It doesn’t count.”
“But the GETs don’t know that!” Herbert shook his head on the gooey tongue. “That’s why they sent chittersnipes here. They have to get hold of the signed contract.”
I hid my face in my hands. “Their legal permission to end the human race . . .”
“Nice going, stupid,” came Elodie’s mutinous mutter.
“You’d have signed it too,” I told her.
She shook her head. “I’d have used logic to resist their dumb illusions.”
“Oh? Before or after you pooed your pants?”
“Pants,” said a familiar voice from the Crèche doorway. “Yes, pants. I love pants. Let’s talk about pants . . .”
Big G, Herbert, Ray, Kimmy, Elodie and I – we all just stared.
There, swaying in the doorway – her hair spikier than ever and a weird, unnerving smile on her face – was Sergeant Katzburger.
“You won’t believe what’s happened to me,” she murmured, walking slowly inside and shutting the door. “Please, now. Pants! Let me tell you all about it . . .”
“Wow! Fantastic!” I started forward to hug Sergeant Katzburger, amazed she could possibly be alive. But she was smiling so hard her face looked ready to break. And I had never once seen her smile before.
Glancing around, I saw the others looked wary too.
“Sarge!” I said, suddenly awkward. “We, er, thought you were dead!”
“Dead? Me? Pants!” she cried, running a hand through her extra-spiky Mohawk, still smiling like a loon. “Of course I’m not dead. You guys are such pessimists!”
“We’re pessimists?” murmured Ray, looking confused.
“How did you get back here?” asked Elodie.
“The GETs picked me up with the chittersnipes in space,” said Katzburger. “I escaped usin
g their hyper-beam when they weren’t looking. Talk about getting away by the seat of my pants! Or, actually, just talk about pants.”
“You’ve, um, had a bit of a shock,” said Elodie. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“She smells . . . different!” Herbert declared. “How did she survive the hyper-beam, hmm?”
“Oh, Little G, it was a piece of pants!” she said, ignoring Herbert’s existence, totally unfazed. “Um, cake I mean. Piece of cake! Piece of pants cake!”
“Little G?” I echoed incredulously, some nasty suspicions forming. “Er, Sergeant, aren’t you surprised to see him like this?” I gestured to Big G. “I mean, don’t you see how he’s changed . . . ?”
“Changed his pants?” Katzburger grinned again. “Well, I think I should check – don’t you, everybody?”
Kimmy grimaced. “I think the hyper-beam has put you back together messed-up.”
“Trash talk, missy! The GETs put me back together with their mega-alien technology, and they’re too smart to mess up . . .” She trailed off. “Anyway, let’s not talk about them. It’s pants time! Someone’s got something naughty in their pants, haven’t they?”
“This,” said Ray, anxiously, “is all kinds of wrong.”
“She’s American,” Elodie reminded us. “Pants equals trousers.”
“Pants!” Katzburger agreed.
Suddenly, it struck me – or rather, it crinkled damply against my butt-cheeks – that I had stuffed the GETs’ sneaky agreement thing down the back of my trousers. Could Katzburger know that somehow? What if this wasn’t the real Katzburger at all, but some kind of GET trick?
Playing a hunch, I grabbed some paper from the desk behind me and pretended to pull it from the back of my trousers.
“Hey, look what I found in my pants!” I cried.
“GIVE ME THAT,” Katzburger screamed, lunging towards me and snatching the paper. “Ha! THERE! I have it, human-thing scum! I have the contract from your pants where we sensed it resided!” She laughed wildly. “Now, I shall be hyper-beamed back to the GET ship with it, and conversion of this world can proceed as planned.”