by Mo O’Hara
“I can’t wait to breathe some fresh air,” I said.
“I prefer the air in the dome. Better for my sinuses,” Sanj said.
As I headed out, I looked around the trash can for Fang, but she wasn’t there. “Sanj, have you seen Fang?” I whispered as we got outside.
“Oh … yes … I saw her dash outside behind Neil Strongarm as soon as he opened the door. But don’t worry, no one else did,” he said. “Come on. We can’t keep Neil Strongarm waiting.”
That totally sounded like what Fang would do. She wouldn’t want to stay in that dome a second longer than she had to. She was probably out here enjoying herself, climbing an actual tree or picking a fight with a squirrel.
As we put our rockets on the launch pads outside, it occurred to me for the first time—what if Fang didn’t want to come with me into space? My thinking was interrupted by a popping sound. We looked back and the dome had started to deflate. It was getting sucked back into the capsules that it had come out of, which was impressive. But the big rocket-shaped silo it revealed as it deflated was even more impressive.
Then two gigantic arms sprang out from the silo and extended. Drapes of material unfurled into two huge, powerful wings.
“He stole my idea!” Geeky Girl said. “The WOOSSH technology! Winged Onboard Oscillating Solar Sail Hybrids! He stole it!”
At that moment, Neil Strongarm stepped out from behind the silo and walked toward us. “All’s fair in space and war,” he said, grinning. “So now you see the culmination of my plans. Here is what it was all for. Oh, and thanks for the wing idea too, kid,” he added, and winked. “This is your chance to show me that you could be my evil apprentices on my journey into space. Launch your rockets into space now and my giant space ark will follow!”
“Wait, do you mean ark as in two by two and Noah and animals and stuff?” I asked. “Because I might have changed my mind about space if it’s going to be filled with bears and raccoons too.”
Neil Strongarm laughed a really full-belly laugh like an evil Santa Claus. “I can promise you, there are no animals on my ark. It has only human passengers.”
“Not really sure what you mean with all that ark stuff, but we are ready to rocket!” Diablo said.
Geeky Girl caught my eye and mouthed the words, “Is the ark full of the space pods?”
I nodded.
“Is Igor on that ark?” she mouthed again.
I nodded a second time.
Geeky Girl walked up to the launch pad and put the helmet down by her feet. Then Diablo strode up and patted the rocket on the side. “Fly well, Fuego,” he said.
Diablo leaned over and set the launch sequence. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six”—the countdown was on—“five, four, three…”
Then Geeky Girl got a glint in her eye and slightly tapped the helmet on the ground with her foot.
“Two…”
Boris flapped up into the air and flew right into Diablo, who stumbled back into the rocket, knocking it off center.
“One.” The rocket launched.
“Nooo!” Diablo shouted as he scrambled to his feet and Boris flew up into a nearby tree.
“That’s heading right for…” Neil Strongarm stared at his winged ark in disbelief.
14
The rocket shot into the air and tore a hole through the sail on the left side of the rocket. Then it continued up into the atmosphere and out of sight.
“That is unfortunate,” Neil Strongarm said, shaking his head.
Geeky Girl stopped herself from smiling and put on a look of shock. She was a better actor than I thought.
Neil stepped toward Diablo and Geeky Girl. “There are no second chances in space,” Neil said as he pulled out a spray can from his bag. The label on the side said:
He turned toward Diablo and sprayed. “What? Man … why am I feeling so … zzzzzzzz.” Diablo was snoring in seconds.
“Did you have to—” Geeky Girl started to say, but Neil interrupted.
“Yes, mistakes can’t happen in space. But lucky for you, that just increased your chances of winning. You should be pleased,” he said.
“I am definitely pleased,” Sanj said, and wheezed a feeble “Mwhaa-haa-haa-haa.”
I looked down at Diablo, knocked out by the sleeping gas, and then up at the big rocket ship with all the campers inside and the left sail dangling loosely from the side.
“Yeah, great news about the winning and all, but don’t you think it’s kind of a big problem that there’s a massive hole in your sail now?” I said.
“You see, that would be a problem, if a clever young evil apprentice hadn’t come up with an Evil Super Space-Expanding Foam,” he said. “I’ve made some modifications, so it works well on fabric now too.”
Strongarm opened a briefcase with a control panel inside. He pressed some buttons and a little robot flew out of the silo with what looked like a fire extinguisher. He sprayed the hole and the expanding foam blocked it up perfectly.
“See.” Strongarm smiled. “I knew you would be useful to have along for the ride.” He paused. “In fact, I’ve just decided that you, Mark, have won a place as my evil space apprentice.”
My mind was in full-throttle spin. I was going into space with Neil Strongarm! The only problem was that it looked like Neil was kidnapping the whole camp to take with us.
Neil looked down at Geeky Girl and Sanj. “The two of you will have to convince me which of you is most worthy to get the other place.”
Geeky Girl spoke up right away. “Can I just say that you wouldn’t have wings on that ark in the first place if it wasn’t for my idea that you stole … I mean, borrowed?” she added.
“Please. We are evil. We don’t borrow, we steal.” He laughed. “I stole your idea and I made it better. Like I did with Mark’s. It’s what I do. It’s my own form of evil genius.”
Sanj interrupted, “Mr. Strongarm, speaking as one evil genius to another, I think I can prove to you that I will be even more useful as an evil space assistant by showing you my ingenious upgrade to our rocket. Besides, Mark and I have worked together on so many evil plans over the years, you would be getting a ready-made team of evil apprentices if you take us both.”
Neil Strongarm looked back and forth between them and then declared, “I have the perfect way to decide.” He turned to me and held out his hand, clutching the can of Quick-Acting Evil Scientist Sleep Spray.
“You choose, Mark,” Neil said, and handed me the spray. “The loser gets a long sleep and the winner gets to join you at my side. Simple and evil.”
I took the spray and stared over at Sanj and Geeky Girl. “I choose?”
“We’re so close, Mark,” he said, putting his one hand on my shoulder and pointing into the sky with the other. I seriously thought that if evil people in the future ever made a statue of me and Neil Strongarm to mark this moment when the evil exploration of space started, this would be the pose on the statue. And it would be epic.
“All the years of planning. All the countless talk shows, books and interviews where I had to talk about space travel when what I really wanted was to start my own evil planet with an evil space station on it filled with all my evil minions. And now I can!” Neil laughed a pretty impressive mwhaaa-haa-haaa-haa laugh, and ended it with, “You are lucky that you are going to be a part of it. You can help write evil history. To evilly go where no one has gone before!”
“I hate to interrupt when you are busy misquoting Star Trek and all, but…” Geeky Girl turned to me. “Who are you going to pick?” She looked me right in the eye.
“I think you know what you have to do, Mark,” Sanj said. “My evil best friend.”
I took the spray and strode up to Geeky Girl. When I was blocking Neil Strongarm’s view of her face, she nodded slightly and winked. “Do it. Quick,” she mouthed. She closed her eyes and held her breath. I pointed the can toward her face so Strongarm could see and sprayed.
Geeky Girl collapsed at my feet. Boris flew down from the t
ree and perched on her shoulder, gently nudging her with his beak to try to wake her. I shooed him away with my hand. “Get outta here, you random bird that’s not connected to Geeky Girl in any way.”
“What are you mumbling, Mark?” Strongarm asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“So, good decision, Mark,” Strongarm said. I handed him back the spray can while Sanj stood by our rocket on the launch pad, holding it steady so it didn’t fall over.
Neil stepped out in front of the launch pad. “So, you two are my evil space apprentices,” he said, looking us up and down. “I guess I can live with that. We can fly off into space and you can both help me rule my new evil space station with all the campers and counselors as my minions.”
He broke out into a loud “Mwhaaa-haa-haa-haa.”
Sanj joined in with his own wheezy version of his laugh, and I could feel a deep mwhaa-haa-haa-haa welling up inside me. This was what I had dreamed of. I’d be an evil ruler. I could boss around Trevor, Phillipe and Kirsty, and most definitely Bob and Diablo and Dustin. I could even get someone to make me a proper crown for my space helmet. But I wasn’t laughing. I was thinking about Igor and Geeky Girl, and I was thinking about Fang. She would HATE space. Why was I doing this?
Then it hit me. Sometimes thoughts sneak up on you like a super-sly ninja with ultimate stealth powers. This was one of those thoughts. Where was Fang?
“We still need to launch our rocket into space,” Sanj said when he got his breath back from the mwhaa-haa-haaing. “Like your rocket there, I have modified ours so that it can carry passengers … well, one small passenger.” Sanj laughed his evil wheeze. “Mwahhh-haaa-haa haa-eaaaazzz.”
I ran over to the rocket and saw a gray paw clawing at the hatch!
“Fang!” I shouted, and pounded on the hatch. “You put Fang in the rocket, Sanj!”
“I had to see if my life-support system would work, and I’m certainly not going to try it out on myself,” he said.
“Get her out of there!” I pulled at the hatch door, trying to find the release switch.
“Why do you care about a stupid cat?” Neil Strongarm sneered. “Is it yours?” He paused. “Well, you wouldn’t be able to take it into space anyway, so you might as well let Sanj here use it to further the cause of science.”
“I’ll use you to further the cause of science if you don’t shut up about my kitten,” I shouted at Strongarm. I stepped toward Sanj. “Now, let her out now!”
“No time. The launch is starting,” Sanj said, and stepped away from the launch pad.
I had to get Fang out of there.
The countdown started. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…”
15
I looked around for anything that I could use to jam open the hatch and get Fang out of there.
Then I saw Geeky Girl move on the ground. “Boris!” she shouted. “The rocket hatch! Hurry!”
“Five … four…”
“That bird won’t be able to smash the glass. It’s meteor proof.” Sanj laughed.
Boris flapped over and slipped his claws into the latch of the rocket door, like he was picking a lock.
“Three, two…”
“CLICK!” The lock turned, and the hatch pinged open.
“One.”
Boris flew back to Geeky Girl’s side. Fang leaped out of the rocket into my arms, and I dove out of the way as the rocket ignited and took off!
The rocket whooshed up into the sky, but then it wobbled, probably because the hatch was blowing back and forth in the wind. It veered off and crashed down to the ground in a ball of fire.
“Noooo!” Sanj whined.
I ran over to Geeky Girl and Boris with Fang squirming under my arm.
“Are you OK?” I whispered.
Geeky Girl sat up. “Yes, I’m fine. I used to free dive in Tahiti. I can hold my breath for like five minutes straight.”
“Cool,” I said.
“As touching as this little reunion and cat rescue are, I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop you there,” Neil Strongarm interrupted. “You’ve just given up the opportunity of a lifetime, Mark. I can’t take you into space now.”
“I think I changed my mind about wanting to go into space anyway,” I said. “And I think we’re going to stop you from taking everyone else into space too.”
Neil laughed a powerful “Mwhaa-haa-haa-haa.”
“You can’t stop me,” he said. “Now that I have the super-expanding space foam, I can fix any hole you manage to put in the space sails. I will blast off and take the whole camp with me, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Yeah, so there,” Sanj added.
“It’s a shame it has to end like this, Mark,” Strongarm said as he took the cap off the sleep spray and started walking toward Geeky Girl and me. “I thought you would make a fine space apprentice, but you tricked me about spraying the girl and you sabotaged the rocket just to rescue a stupid kitten,” he continued.
“I think you are going to have to stop calling Fang a stupid kitten if you don’t want to get shredded,” I said.
Then I looked down at Fang, who was still squirming and itching for a fight.
“Yeah, shredded,” I said, and smiled at Geeky Girl.
“Shredded. As in, not able to be repaired by any space-foam stuff? Hmmmm?” she said. “I think we might know someone who could do that.”
I bolted with Fang toward the WOOSSH sails and shouted to Neil as I stood below the sails, “Hey, change of plans. How about instead of you gassing us and taking us up into space as your minions, we stop you from launching the whole camp into space instead.”
Strongarm was between me and Geeky Girl. He could spray only one of us at a time, and all I needed was a moment to get away. Geeky Girl knew just what to do.
“Oh, and Neil,” Geeky Girl shouted, “Neil Armstrong was a way better astronaut. That’s why they sent him to the moon first.”
Neil Strongarm turned Fuego Rocket red, lurched toward Geeky Girl and sprayed.
In that second, I pulled the mini lunar pogo stick out from my sock and bounced. “Hang on, Fang!” I yelled.
That pogo stick had some spring in it. We were up over the top of the sails in a second. Fang waited until the pogo stick had sailed past the right wing before she jumped. Her claws caught the side of the wing and dug in. Eighteen kitty-cat blades of destruction cut into the wing. The sound of fabric shredding filled the air.
“My beautiful wings!” Neil Strongarm yelled.
Fang was sliding down the sail with her claws out, slicing the fabric as she slid.
“Get off my space wings,” Neil Strongarm yelled as he grabbed the bottom corner of the material and flicked it. The wobble went up the material until it hit Fang and shook her clean off the sail.
I landed with the pogo stick and bounced up again. “I got you, Fang!” I shouted.
“Not this time,” Sanj shouted as he threw his backpack toward me. It knocked into the stick and sent me falling.
“Oooof!” I hit the ground with a thud. “Fang,” I mumbled, looking up at the sky.
She was crashing down on the other side of the silo. There was no way I could get there. “Fang!”
Then I saw a flash of green and yellow streak past me. Boris flew up and caught Fang’s fur in her claws. He wobbled under the weight of the kitten, but he staggered down to land by the launch pad. They tumbled to a halt just by where the rocket had taken off. I scooped up Fang in my arms. “You did it, Fang! Those wings are toast! Who’s my evil kitteny whitteny?” I squished her in a bear hug as strong as Igor could. Which reminded me …
“Igor?!” I shouted. “We’ve got to get him out. And the others.”
Geeky Girl was already at the rocket silo. “I’m on it!” she shouted back. “I think I can override the commands on the control panel.”
As Fang wriggled free, she jumped down into a natural attack stance.
Neil Strongarm was headed toward us and he did not look happy
.
16
“You’ve ruined everything!” he said. “My beautiful wings on my beautiful spaceship!”
“Yeah, sorry, did we ruin your plan to kidnap the whole Evil Scientist Summer Camp and take us off to some stupid planet to be your space minions? Boohoo,” I said.
Then I saw he had a box in his hand. One of those boxes with a big red button on it. The kind that you don’t want to see get pressed.
“This is the self-destruct button for the rocket. If I can’t launch my rocket, then I’ll blow the whole thing up here.” Neil Strongarm was ranting now.
“I’ll do it too. I’ll—” But Neil Strongarm didn’t get to finish his threat. A helmet, held by a very sleepy-looking Igor, came down on his head, and Strongarm stopped talking and started snoring pretty fast.
“Igor!” I said. “Hey, are you OK, man?”
“Urgh, urgh, urgh.” He grunted and rubbed his eyes. Fang curled around Igor’s legs. “Urghhhhh.” He scratched her behind the ear.
Then Trevor emerged from the silo, yawning and stretching. Followed by Kirsty, Phillipe and some of the missing kids.
“Time for you pets to hide again,” I whispered to Fang and Boris. “No sense in saving us all from being shot into space just to end up sent home in the Canoe of Shame instead.”
Fang jumped and Boris fluttered into Igor’s space helmet. I picked it up and tucked it under my arm.
Trevor, Kirsty and Phillipe walked onto the launch pad and looked around. They saw Sanj still bent over our rocket, whining, saying how it would have been perfect if I hadn’t messed it up.
Igor grabbed another spray can from Neil’s bag that said SUPER EVIL SLEEP SPRAY ANTIDOTE, and walked over to Diablo. One spray and he was mumbling.…