“Wrong again, Genius. Don’t worry about it, though. I’m going to help you inspect yours real good.”
Aw, c’mon. Are we really back to this again? Dorn must have a death wish.
“Grimnee’s not going to like this!”
“Sorry, Genius, but it’s just you and me. Your little bodyguard went to see the doctor.”
What’d I do? I guess at this end of the galaxy it’s a crime to get stuffed into your own space helmet. Well, at least I should be safe here, what with Principal Ort’s office right across the hall. And no other helmets in sight. Although the door is closed. And I’m sure Dorn would be just as happy to cram me into that recycle slot over there. Man, how much must he hate me to risk getting taken out by Grimnee like that?
I feel the bench shift slightly. I turn in time to see Dorn leaning down toward me. Maybe he doesn’t need to cram me into anything. Maybe he’s planning a more basic fist-to-body-part type of interaction. I lean away and close my eyes. I may not have a choice whether or not to feel what’s coming, but I sure don’t have to look at it.
“You know,” Dorn says, in a surprisingly normal-sounding voice, “I used to be a pretty big deal around here before you showed up.”
Hey, no stuffing! No pummeling! I decide to risk it and open my eyes.
“Huh?”
“My mom is the head of security on the space station, so we were one of the first families to come out here. I pretty much ran the show at school. Then you guys started coming in from all over the place.”
“You guys?” I ask.
“Yeah, you know, the scientist kids.”
“Scientist kids? What’s wrong with us?”
“What’s not wrong with you?” Dorn’s getting a little agitated now. “You come in here and you’re all so smart and everything and the teachers like you and Principal Ort likes you. Even the lunch ladies like you guys. And it all just makes me want to barf.”
“And cram me into my helmet.”
“Yup.”
“Over and over again.”
“Yup.”
I can’t believe I’m actually having a conversation with Dorn. Don’t get me wrong. It still feels sort of like a wildebeest-and-crocodile situation. I just know at some point Dorn is going to lunge at me and drag me under the water. But for now we’re actually talking.
“But you seem to hate me even more than the other kids. I’m not the only one with a parent who’s a scientist.”
“Yeah, but you’re the only one with two. And all I heard for weeks before you even got here was how you were the smartest kid in the whole galaxy. A real supergenius. ‘Be nice to Kelvin,’ they said. ‘Be sure to make Kelvin feel at home,’ they said. Makes me want to stick my finger down my throat.”
Again with the regurgitating? It’s as if the very thought of me makes Dorn sick to his stomach.
“Actually, it’s Mighty Mega Supergenius,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
“What?”
“You called me a supergenius, but I’m actually a Mighty Mega Supergenius.” Crap! Stop talking, Kelvin! You’re just asking for that croc to drag you down.
“Well, at least I was supposed to be. But it’s no secret anymore. You know as well as everybody else—I’m just average.”
“If that.”
“So why are you still picking on me, then?”
“Because I’m the bully. It’s what I do. It’s what everybody expects me to do. And I can’t go letting everybody down, now can I?”
Dorn looks horrified.
“Uh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Principal Ort.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Dorn. It’s a wonderful idea. A WONDERFUL idea! A SPECTACULAR idea! A SENSATIONAL idea! Ah, here she comes now.”
I glance over at Dorn. He looks even more horrified. And now I can hear voices coming from inside Principal Ort’s office. Actually, it sounds more like just one voice. One loud voice. One very, very, very loud voice. And then everything is quiet for a few seconds before the door slides open and Dorn’s mom appears.
“Let’s go,” she says to Dorn, glowering.
Dorn pulls himself up off the bench and shuffles along behind her as she heads back down the corridor. It’s just me and Backpack now.
“Hey, Backpack. Why do you let Dorn carry you around everywhere and treat you like that?”
“Oh, it’s not so bad. Nobody teases me about being little anymore. And he helps me with my math homework.”
“He does? But he’s failing math.”
“Yeah. I think he doesn’t want anybody to know he’s good at it. Weird, huh? See you later, Kelvin.”
Now, this is the life that I, Erik Failenheimer, was born to live! No longer must I feel the disappointment, the shame, of coming in second to Klyde and Klara Klosmo. Or would it be third? Bah! It matters not. Soon all the universe will bow before my awesome might. And those cretinous Klosmos will be the ones fanning my overwhelming gloriousness with palm fronds. For the remainder of their miserable lives! BWAHAHAHA!!
Imagine their dread as I lead my pinion army against the pathetic defenses of the Galactic Science Hub! Imagine their horror as I take young Melvin hostage from right under their noses! Imagine their despair as they hand the Zorb over to me in ultimate defeat! Imagine my disappointment when I realize I have no way to get my army over to the space station. ZARFLOOTS! What was I thinking?!
I suppose I could take them over one at a time in my Harrowing Handship!!! BWAHAHAHA!!! (Yup. Still sounds breathtaking.) But that could take weeks, or maybe months. Even Klosmo would suspect something was up. No, I need a vessel large enough to stuff them all into at once. Maybe these pinions are more advanced than they are letting on. Perhaps their ridiculous appearance is not a true indicator of their technological capabilities.
“Brunswick! Front and center!”
“Do you possess a ship capable of transporting your entire populace through space?”
“…”
“Well? Do you?
“…”
“Speak up, man! I don’t have all day!”
“J xjti J dpvme iju zpv xjui b usff csbodi.” (I WISH I COULD HIT YOU WITH A TREE BRANCH.)
“And there it is. Zarfloots! This language barrier is beginning to chap my hide! Look here, you ignoramus!”
Well, it looks as though my ship isn’t the only one to have crash-landed on this planet. And this certainly explains the goofy outfits. These ships don’t appear to be too badly damaged, though. With a little TLC, I should have them up and running again in no time. And then… NOTHING CAN STOP M-jeez, am I an idiot, or what?
Uh-oh. There’s the bell. I hurry over to my science class and plop down in my usual seat between Spotch and Rand-El. Lucky for me, Mr. Jeddee is late. Even though I’m 99 percent sure of the answer, I ask Spotch if Brian’s been able to get anywhere on his beam design since lunch. I figure maybe with a full stomach the thought of it doesn’t scare him quite as much. It’s actually more hoping than figuring, since nobody else has come up with a different plan.
“See for yourself.”
“Wow. That might be the smallest I’ve ever seen his brain.”
“Yup. He was fine, but as soon as I mentioned the Zorb again, he totally stressed out.”
The door glides open. It’s Mr. Jeddee.
“My apologies for being late today. I had to shuttle back to the space station in order to pick up a very special visitor.”
“Say hello to the professor. He was kind enough to take time out from his busy day in the laboratory to talk to us about a special project he’s working on.”
“Hello there, everyone. I must say, I was quite, quite, quite excited when Mr. Jeddee invited me to your classroom today. I certainly welcome any opportunity to talk about my incredible Growth Ray.”
“Cool! So it makes things bigger?”
“No. Smaller.”
“Then why did you call it a growth ray?”
“Because that’s my name—Professor Growth. But you
make a good point. Perhaps to avoid confusion I’ll call it my incredible Growth Shrink Ray from now on. Yes, yes, yes indeed. I do like the sound of that!”
The professor spends the next twenty minutes explaining all the boring details of his Growth Shrink Ray. At least, it’s boring to me, since I don’t recognize half the words. Then he answers a few questions from the class (“How long have you been working on it?” “Three hundred twenty-five years.” “Why did you invent it?” “Because I wanted to make things smaller”). I’m just about to drift off into another daydream when…
“ And now for a little demonstration.”
Okay. NOW we’re talking! The professor pulls a chair to the front of the classroom and aims the ray at it.
“At this point the ray only has a range of a few feet. First I set the reduction dial to the desired level of shrinkage. Let’s say twenty percent of original size. Then I simply pull this lever and…”
“Well, now. That is definitely, definitely, definitely not right. Let’s take a quick little look-see here. There must be something blocking the randorf cabobbulator.”
Okay. That might have been the best classroom demonstration ever! Even better than that time in third grade when Wendy Festnook’s mom brought in her supposedly house-trained raccoon troop. It also gave me an idea.
“Hey, Spotch,” I whisper. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah,” he whispers back. “We may not need Brian’s brain after all.”
You know, this just might work! Every minute that Zorb is on this station, the danger grows. Spotch and I can run our idea by the gang tomorrow and see what’s what. But we have to act fast. And we’re going to have to take care of everything ourselves.
It’s still frustrating knowing that I can’t count on Mom and Dad to take this whole thing…
… seriously.
“Uh… what’s going on in here?”
“We’re getting our boogie on! What’s it look like?”
“It looks like you’ve been watching your Saturday Night Fever videotape again.”
“Well then, in this case, looks are not deceiving! Your mom and I left the lab early today to come home and watch it. There’s still some synthetic popcorn in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”
I’m hungry, all right. But not for popcorn-shaped pencil erasers, thank you very much.
“Where did you get those outfits?”
“Professor Haaarvaaartan let us borrow the clothing synthesizer he’s been working on. Doesn’t your father look handsome? Just like John Travolta!”
I recognize John Travolta’s name from the movie poster Dad has hanging in the den back home on Earth. Mom and Dad have seen that movie at least fifty times, and they’ve never done this afterward. Something must be up.
“Sweetie, come join us. We hear you’re trying to learn how to dance.”
“Bula. Why, is it a secret?”
The little mole must have been listening through the air vents or something yesterday when Zot and Grimnee were over. Funny how even a genius can be an annoying pest when she’s your little sister. Even so, I’m definitely not interested in learning dance moves from the Jurassic period. Especially from my mom and dad.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m good. So I guess you can take those outfits off and throw them in the trash compactor. And then burn them. And dump the ashes into space.”
“What? Then we won’t have anything to wear when we chaperone your dance Thoosday.”
“Yuppers. We’re going to glide and groove like greased geese at the Galactic Getdown! HAR!”
No!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
No!
“But the dance is right after school. You guys will still be working.”
“Oh, don’t you worry. We’ll be there. And when we let loose of our sweet moves in front of your classmates, they’ll never look at you the same way again!”
Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.
Ms. Gassias better not be counting on much class participation this morning. I can hardly keep my eyes open. It’s tough to get a good night’s sleep when every time your lids close, visions of your parents dancing in front of the whole school fill your head. If you can call what they were doing “dancing.” I can’t believe anyone actually did that. And dressed like that when they did it. With my luck, Bula inherited their brains, and I’ll get stuck with their dance moves and sense of style.
I’m sitting in the back of the class, with Spotch, Rand-El, and Brian. Zot’s in this class, too, but she’s strictly a front-rower, so that the teacher can clearly see her hand raised to answer every question. Grimnee sits up there, too, but her hand stays down on her desk.
We need to talk about our plan to destroy the Zorb, but it looks like that will have to wait until lunch. Somebody just walked into the room, but it’s not Ms. Gassias.
Giggles fill the classroom. I mean, how could they not, right?
“Yes, go ahead and laugh. But I’ll have you know that Pphhfftt is the third most popular surname on my planet, right behind Bbrraapp…”
Louder giggles.
“… and Bblleecchh.”
Riotous laughter. One kid even falls out of his chair, but he was pretty slippery to begin with.
“It pleases me that our names bring you all such joy. Hopefully, this writing assignment will as well—a two-page paper titled ‘What Gives Me Strength.’ I know you have a big dance tomorrow, so we’ll make this due the following day.”
“A paper? But this is math class.”
“Alas, I am not a math teacher. I am a writing teacher. And what you will write is a paper on what gives you strength.”
“You mean like push-ups and stuff? Or protein shakes?”
“No, I mean your inner strength. You all came here from distant worlds to start new lives. What is it that helps you handle everything that is being thrown at you every day? This certainly isn’t an easy situation to be in. I’m looking for thoughtful, well-written papers that you can share with the class.”
Share with the class? Thoughtful and well written? Dang. This is definitely not going to help me lose my nongenius genius label.
“As for today, I haven’t had time to prepare a lesson, so we’ll be watching an informative film.”
Mrs. Pphhfftt turns out the lights and starts the informative film. It’s called Hygiene Hints for Space-Bound Students.
Spotch, Brian, Rand-El, and I all rank pretty high on the cleanliness scale, at least compared to some of the kids at this school. So we decide to put the next thirty minutes to better use. We huddle up and go over the revised Zorb Destruction Plan, which is basically the same as Brian’s original plan except for one detail.
“Whatever! Tell you what. Let’s just call it the Ray That Shrinks Things. How’s that?”
“Actually, that sounds a little awkward.”
“Yeah. How about just Shrink Ray? It’s a lot simpler and to the point.”
“I think what Kelvin’s trying to say is we can use the ray to shrink the whole containment vault, with the Zorb inside it, down to nothing.”
“Exactly. But the ray only works at extremely close range, so we have to get in tight. We can use Brian’s original idea of having Lightyear hork up a copy of my dad in order to get past the sentry robots. Then we shrink the Zorb until it’s gone. Or at least so small that nobody will ever find it. Easy as pie.”
“I don’t know. I still think we should leave it up to the adults.”
“Already tried that, Rand-El. Now it’s on us to do something. And the sooner the better. When we get home today, Spotch and I will get Lightyear to make a copy of my dad. Rand-El, you and Brian get ahold of the Shrink Ray.”
“How the heck are we supposed to do that?”
“You’ll think of something. Then we’ll meet outside my dad’s lab at eight o’clock. I still have the duplicate key card from a couple months ago. We can hide the ray and dupli-Dad in the lab until we’re ready to use them.”
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Just then, from somewhere in the room, comes the sound of someone… uh… cutting the cheese. Very loudly.
Ah, it’s great to be me! Only I, Erik Failenheimer, would have the good fortune of the two cargo ships being in near-perfect working order. Just a little fine-tuning and they’ll be ready to serve my purposes—capturing Kelvar Klosmo (or whatever his name is), trading him for the Zorb, and taking over the Galactic Science Hub to use as my own orbiting space lair. BWAHAHAHA!!!
But before I launch my awe-inspiring attack, I must appraise the readiness of my newfound army for battle. I’ve been working with my number two, that dolt Brunswick, on his English. But after nearly three whole hours of my incomparable instruction, minus a couple of forty-five-minute nap breaks, he still hasn’t mastered the language. He does know a few words, though, so it’s time to put my subjects through the paces.
Zarfloots! What these pea-brained pinions lack in intelligence, they more than make up for with sheer, blinding speed! Those galactic Goody Two-shoes on the Science Hub won’t know what hit them! I can actually smell the sweet scent of victory in the air! Although that may just be leftover traces of Bula’s lip balm on my nose.
Hmm. We’ll have to work on that.
“Is this really the best you could do?”
“He needs to eat enough to convert it into a full-size copy of my dad. Running the food synthesizer over and over was the only thing I could think of.”
Crash Landing Page 5