Lab Rats in Space

by Bruno Bouchet

  XL groaned.

  ‘No, this is XL talking through the computer.’

  ‘So do you run this ship then?’ asked Zed.

  ‘I can do if you let me,’ replied XL.

  ‘You don’t work for Professor Xanax do you?’ KT asked.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ XL answered. ‘It’s me, XL.’

  ‘Yes we know,’ said Dee, ‘but we already have one XL, so we’ll have to call you something else.’

  She picked up XL and held him up in the air to show the computer who she meant.

  ‘Is that OK?’ Emm asked aloud.

  There was no answer.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Emm, ‘I don’t think the computer liked that.’

  The Rats discussed the issue and decided they could call the computer XL2 because it was the second XL they’d met.

  The first XL screamed with silent frustration. The children thought the computer was angry with them because it was silent.

  ‘What if it won’t speak to us again?’ asked Jay.

  Dee eventually put XL down allowing him to communicate through the ship’s computer again. He decided it was simpler to let them think the computer was called XL too.

  ‘Very well,’ the computer said, ‘you may call me XL2… but you must place XL down on this control panel whenever you are in here… so I can see where he is.’

  ‘Deal,’ said Zed.

  ‘Thank you, Zed,’ XL tried to sound sarcastic but the computer’s voice couldn’t do sarcasm so it sounded quite polite.

  ‘How do you know who we are?’

  ‘I scanned your conversation and matched it with digital pictures I have constructed of you from the sensors around the ship.’

  ‘Cool!’ said KT.

  XL shook his internal head. Wherever they were going, he thought, it was going to be a very long journey.

  Chapter 12

  Life on Board

  The Lab Rats settled into their new home. The boys had taken the biggest room. They deserved it most they said because there were three of them and Jay’s bed needed to be as far away as possible from the others in case he sneezed during the night.

  Captain Redlock had recorded a message for them telling them about the ship and asking them to look after his plants. He had used the ship as his garden.

  ‘These are water sprays,’ he said holding one up to the camera. ‘Fill them with water and press this lever to spray water onto my plants and keep them moist…’

  He then smiled like he knew something they didn’t.

  ‘You better be careful though, if you turn the nozzle like this the water shoots like a water pistol… you might soak someone.’

  He winked and wished them luck.

  KT knew exactly what the captain had meant. He grabbed one of the water sprays, twisted the nozzle and fired straight at Zed, Emm and Dee.

  Jets of water shot out and hit each of his targets.

  Emm screamed, she’d just got her hair neat again after falling over and now it was dripping wet.

  ‘Right, you’ve had it,’ Zed grabbed a weapon while KT shot off down a corridor. Jay trotted after him and the battle was on.

  Armed with spray bottles, Zed and the girls set off after them. They were ambushed again at the next corner.

  KT and Jay jumped out, sprays blazing. This time they fired back.

  Within seconds everyone was soaked.

  ‘The control room,’ shouted Zed and his team retreated with KT and Jay in full pursuit.

  Once in there, they all circled around XL.

  ‘Seems a pity XL should miss out on the fun,’ said KT.

  ‘Yes, he is a member of the gang after all,’ added Dee.

  XL assessed the situation and quickly decided on a strategy. An alarm went off.

  ‘Please step into the access corridor for further instructions from Captain Redlock,’ the computer said.

  ‘Saved in the nick of time XL. XL2 must be your friend after all,’ Zed laughed.

  The gang all went out into the corridor and stood waiting to hear a message from the captain.

  Instead of the captain, they heard another alarm and a torrent of water shot down from the ceiling above them, soaking them even more than they had soaked themselves.

  XL chuckled to himself. ‘The brilliant mind that is XL strikes again.’

  ‘I’m soaking!’ shrieked Emm with delight, for once not caring what she looked like.

  ‘I’m sure that furry brick had something to do with this,’ said Dee. Her short brown hair was plastered down making her face look quite round.

  ‘Yeah right, he’s communicating with the ship through brain waves!’ KT said.

  They all laughed at the ridiculous idea.

  The game with the water sprays lasted several days but the girls soon grew tired of being blasted with water every time they walked around a corner.

  ‘KT, stop it!’ Emm had copped a shot for the third day in a row. ‘It’s not funny anymore!’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he squirted her again and ran off laughing.

  Emm went back to the girls’ room to change yet again. Captain Redlock had left them whatever children’s clothes he could find. Emm had her choice of all the dresses because Dee wasn’t interested in wearing them. She loved the jeans she was in.

  Dee saw her soaked friend enter and sighed.

  ‘I’m down to the red dress, all the others are drenched,’ moaned Emm. ‘But it makes my skin look all blotchy… I think I’ll wait until the blue one’s dry.’

  ‘You could wear a dirty bed sheet and look better than I do,’ Dee said.

  ‘No, I look HIDEOUS in the red!’ Emm rolled her eyes and laughed.

  ‘We’re never going to get anywhere like this,’ Dee tried to change the subject.

  Emm stood in front of the mirror looking at her face closely.

  ‘You’re right. Look at me, I’m heinous.’

  ‘You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,’ said Dee impatiently. She wished she had just a neat little body, cute nose and hair that needed a snot attack from Jay to look at all messy.

  Emm snorted. To her, Dee’s stocky figure, wiry brown hair and freckles were prettier.

  ‘I’m sure I’m not meant to look like this. I think I was made to look ugly as an experiment.’

  Dee pulled her away from the mirror.

  ‘We’ll never know what we’re meant to be if we don’t do something. We’ve been flying off in any old direction, letting the ship take us wherever it wants. We need a plan.’

  ‘The boys want to spend their entire lives playing with water sprays. It’s soo moronic,’ Emm agreed with her.

  ‘Sooo moronic… I’ve got a plan,’ announced Dee. She had done some research on the ship’s computer. It hadn’t recognised what sort of life forms they were so it couldn’t tell which planets they were from.

  ‘But I did find out that there is a planet called Libris which has more information than anywhere else in the universe. They collect information on everything and every planet.’

  ‘If we go there, they’ll be able to tell us where we’re from and then we can go home!’ Emm jumped up excitedly.

  ‘That’s the best plan ever! Let’s get the boys.’

  Emm was so excited she pulled on the red dress without even thinking about it.

  They walked to the boys’ room. As the door slid open, the girls knew to duck back immediately to avoid jets of water.

  After the shots had been fired, the girls entered determined not to get annoyed.

  ‘Dee’s got a plan to get us all home and it’s really good so you better put those sprays down and listen,’ Emm said.

  Dee told them her plan.

  ‘So what you’re saying is we need to go to the library and do some research!’ KT said in disbelief. ‘How boring is that?’

  ‘It’s not boring, it’s sensible,’ argued Emm. ‘Libris will have the information we need. All we have to do is go and ask.’

  ‘But I thought we wo
uld have some adventures,’ said Jay.

  ‘We will but we still want to get home. There’ll be plenty of opportunity to get attacked I’m sure.’ Dee was becoming exasperated. ‘What do you think, Zed?’

  ‘I’m not going to a library!’ Zed jumped up from his bed and folded his front arms. His hand sat definitely in a fist on the small of his back. His face was set hard making his ears stick out and his jaw look square.

  ‘We’ll head for the nearest planet and see what we find there. If they don’t help, we’ll make them,’ he announced.

  ‘Yeah,’ said KT agreeing.

  ‘And if they don’t like it, tough, we’ll move on to the next planet. We’ve beaten Xanax, we can beat anyone!’

  Dee sighed, it was hard reasoning with Zed when he was in action mode.

  ‘That could take forever!’ Emm said. ‘We could just hop from planet to planet for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘We have to try Libris… come on guys!’ pleaded Dee.

  They argued back and forth for an hour and got nowhere.

  ‘Let’s put it to a vote,’ announced Zed confidently.

  ‘That’s not fair, there’s more boys than girls,’ Dee complained.

  ‘It’s democratic, you can’t get fairer than that,’ KT smirked.

  ‘All those in favour of going to the planet Libris raise your hands,’ Zed called out.

  Dee and Emm raised their hands wearily knowing what the result would be.

  ‘All those in favour of heading to the nearest planet and having adventures,’ asked Zed.

  All the boys raised their hands and cheered.

  ‘Agreed then!’

  The girls trudged out of the room annoyed that they were outnumbered.

  ‘Good grief, who would have thought asking for directions would be such a big issue?’ Dee grumbled.

  ‘Boys,’ Emm tutted.

  Chapter 13

  In Training

  As the spaceship travelled in no particular direction, it seemed like everyday there was something new to explore. They found a gym on the ship. The computer even created exercise programs, flashing up an instructor on the screen in the gym. The boys didn’t think much of the instructor. He just wanted them to jump up and down off boxes and kept saying things like ‘V-step’ and ‘round the world with your arms.’

  Dee and Emm thought he was very handsome so they did his program every day. Even though he was just a computer program, Emm still flushed when he said ‘Good work, Emm,’ at the end of their session. Dee tried her best but going ‘round the world’ with her arms usually meant her hammer arm smashed into her own thigh. It hurt. It wasn’t easy doing sit-ups without hitting her own head either.

  The girls wanted to show XL just how gorgeous the instructor was but when they carried him down to the gym, the program didn’t work. The computer then asked for XL to be returned to the control deck. (XL had programmed XL2 to ask for his return whenever they were disconnected.)

  The boys were more impressed when they discovered a combat training program.

  ‘We’ve got to learn how to fight Professor Xanax,’ Zed declared. The boys were soon throwing each other to the ground. Jay didn’t enjoy it much as he continually bashed his nose on the floor.

  Dee was scared of hurting the others with her hammer. Bruising her own thigh was one thing but when her arm flew out and smashed KT on the head, he burst into tears. He was knocked out and had to lie down for a while. Emm didn’t enjoy it at all. It wasn’t very elegant.

  After a couple of days only Zed and KT were fighting under the watchful eye of the computer combat trainer. He looked older than the gym instructor, had a big scar across his face and spoke in a growl.

  One morning they were all just waking up. KT lay in bed yawning trying to open his eyes. He stretched, moved around and then sat bolt upright. He realised something was missing. Something wasn’t there.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Zed.

  ‘Err, nothing,’ KT replied, ‘…must have been a dream.’

  ‘Let’s all head to the gym,’ Zed announced jumping out of bed wide awake.

  ‘Oh no!’ Jay really didn’t like the training.

  ‘There’s bound to be some advantage to having a humungous nose. Look at my arm,’ Zed waved his third arm around, ‘it’s quite useful really… Xanax did me a favour.’

  ‘You try getting Dee’s hammer shoved up your nose and see if you think it’s still a favour!’ said Jay.

  ‘We have to be able to defend ourselves. Come on, Jay, you’re getting better and we can think of ways to stop you falling on your nose.’

  ‘OK,’ Jay agreed. Zed did have a way of making him feel better about himself. Perhaps he was right.

  ‘C’mon, KT,’ Zed was doing a one-arm push-up with his rear hand and clapping with his two front hands to get them all going.

  ‘Err… you two have some one-on-one practice and I’ll come down later.’

  ‘Cool.’ Zed pushed Jay out of the room and down to the gym.

  Once he was sure they were gone, KT got out of bed and went to their bathroom to look at himself in the mirror.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said when he saw his reflection. ‘So that was Xanax’s experiment.’

  Tears welled up in his eyes. His was the worst experiment of all he thought. The others must never find out.

  When he arrived at the gym, KT found everyone there. Dee and Emm had decided they needed some exercise too. They had hoped to turn on the hunky aerobics instructor, but Zed had got there first. He suggested they join in the combat training.

  ‘What else is there to do?’ asked Dee. ‘We’re just floating around in space going nowhere, may as well take it out on each other.’

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ Zed said. ‘We made a decision, let’s stick to it.’

  Dee and Emm rolled their eyes at each other.

  ‘OK Zed,’ Emm asked. ‘What do we do then?’

  They turned on the program. The trainer soon had them standing in a row, pushing one fist out and shouting ‘heeya!’ as loud as they could.

  ‘This is pretty stupid,’ muttered Emm.

  ‘The exercise focuses your mind on the power of your fist,’ the virtual combat trainer answered her comment.

  He made them pair up. Zed worked with KT, Jay and Emm worked together. Dee sat it out because it involved locking hands, which was hard with her hammer. She looked at her hammer, trying to wiggle fingers she didn’t have.

  ‘I’m so clumsy with this thing,’ she thought and wondered if she’d be better with it chopped off. She couldn’t even feed herself properly. If any food needed cutting up, one of the others had to do it for her.

  ‘Stupid arm.’

  She hit the hammer with her screwdriver fingernails. A spark flew up.

  ‘Well,’ she thought with a little smile. ‘At least I could make us fire if we get lost in a forest somewhere.’

  Zed and KT wrestled as instructed. Zed, being the strongest, managed to flip KT onto his back, then jumped on him.

  ‘Ow!’ said KT. ‘That really hurt. Do you have to jump so hard?’

  ‘Please, that wasn’t hard… this is hard.’

  Zed jumped again.

  ‘Get off! Why are you being such a bully?’

  Zed was amazed. They always fought and mucked around. It was fun. It was why they were friends.

  ‘Why are you being such a girl?’ Zed asked.

  ‘Nice one Zed, great insult. What could be worse!’ Dee was annoyed with Zed now.

  Before she could continue, KT had charged at Zed knocking him to the ground.

  ‘I’m not being a girl!’ he shouted and hit Zed with his fists. His face was red with anger.

  ‘I’m not!’

  He continued hitting his friend.

  Zed tried to grab KT’s hands to stop him. He couldn’t believe KT was so upset over a silly comment.

  ‘KT!’ shouted Emm. ‘Stop!’

  Zed punched his friend.

  ‘Perhaps h
e needs a beating,’ said Dee, still annoyed at Zed’s comment about girls.

  ‘Dee, they’re friends, stop them!’ Emm looked horrified.

  ‘I don’t care, let them go at each other.’

  Soon Dee and Emm were arguing about whether to stop the boys fighting, while the two boys rolled over the floor. KT tried to press Zed on his back to keep his third arm out of the way, Zed was trying to roll him off.

  ‘Guys!’ shouted Jay. ‘C’mon, we’re supposed to be friends!’

  ‘Oh shut up nosy!’ all the others shouted at him at the same time.

  Jay tried to pull the two boys apart but just ended up with a fist on either side of his nose.

  ‘Ouch!’ He retreated holding his nose.

  The virtual combat trainer hadn’t been programmed for this scenario.

  ‘Troops stand to order!’ he repeated and seemed to stick on a loop, saying the same thing over and over.

  ‘Troops stan… troops stan… troops stan…’

  Suddenly the trainer stood to attention while a red light flashed throughout the ship and an alarm sounded.

  ‘All crew to report to the control deck immediately. All crew report to the control deck immediately.’

  The children stopped fighting and looked at the combat trainer. It was like someone else was talking through him.

  ‘This is an emergency announcement. All crew report to the control deck.’

  Chapter 14

  Triumph of the Snotbuster

  The alarm continued as they ran to the control deck. Everything was drowned in a red light, making the ship look completely different.

  ‘What’s going on?’ shouted Dee over the noise as they entered the control deck.

  ‘Computer, turn down the alarm!’ said Zed. The volume of the noise was reduced.

  ‘We are being attacked,’ XL announced through the ship’s computer.

  ‘Xanax?’ Jay managed to look even more scared than he had been before.

  An image flashed up on the wraparound screen. It was the outside of their ship—covered in big flying creatures. Their bodies were a flat diamond shape—brown with green speckled lumps on them and long thin tails with little flaps on the end. The creatures flew onto the ship and seemed to lie on the surface.