Attack of the Spider Bots (5 page)

“Yeah,” chimed in Bruzelski, “and probably crashed right into that planet.”

In the lower left corner of the screen was an angry-looking planet. Not a very pleasant place, thought the commander. What he could see of the orange and black surface was pockmarked with erupting volcanoes. No question about it: only guys with pitch forks and red horns would feel comfortable down there.

“If it were to sink out of orbit, it wouldn't be to the planet,” Captain Ives corrected them. “According to my readings, the floating city is following a cockeyed orbit around that ice-sheeted moon just above us.”

Sure enough, just at the top of their view screen was the edge of a blue-white moon.

“How does a planet on fire get a frozen moon?” asked Bruzelski.

“'Who knows? Maybe it's the hot planet's lollipop,” quipped the commander, getting groans from the others in response. His expression suddenly morphed to high anxiety, and his fingers flew over his panel. “Captain, controls are no longer responding!” he shouted.

They flinched in unison as the speakers squawked with gibberish. “Hey!” yelled Bruzelski as she banged on the universal translator. Now they heard an automated voice speaking in another language, this one more familiar. “Whaddya think, maybe French?” she asked.

The captain came over and banged on the box several more times before they heard the announcement in English — well, English with an Australian accent.

The message, with lots of static and dropouts, announced: “G'day, mates. You are approaching terminal 847B. All attendants prepare for landing.”

“Please stow your trays and return your seats to their up-right position,” Bruzelski said with a crooked smile as she held a mock microphone. “I guess it thinks we're the morning flight out of Chattanooga.”

A moment later, the ship's engines shut off. “Uh . . . Captain — ” the commander said with a gulp.

“MacIntyre,” shouted the captain. “Reverse thrusters!”

The commander punched all the right dials and entered the proper commands, but —

“No response, Captain. They've got us in their tractor beam!” He gulped so hard he almost swallowed his Adam's apple as the floating, ruined city grew larger in their view screen.

“Officer Bruzelski,” Captain Ives ordered. “Open all frequencies!”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she said as she adjusted her controls.

“Attention, space platform,” announced the captain as if he were a TV announcer. “We do not wish to land at this time. We are just passing through.” He paused and then added, “Nice to see you, though . . . uh, hope you are doing well. Feel free to drop by when you are in our . . . uh . . . sector of the galaxy.” He winced and gave the others a “whatever” shrug.

The only answer was more static.

The captain could see sets of trams and monorail trains skimming across the surface as they drew closer to the floating city . . . and robots — lots of robots. The problem was he couldn't see any people.

It reminded the Ghoulie within the captain of Solomon Parker's train set, except that the space platform wasn't a toy and looked a lot more dangerous. Unfortunately, there was not a tree branch to be seen. They were lost in space!

Moments later — without so much as a bump — they were on the surface of the space platform. “Well, at least some things in this place work,” said Bruzelski.

“Welcome to the International Peace Station,” announced the speaker. “Please exit in an orderly manner and enjoy your visit.”

“Some peace,” said the captain. “Let's just hope they can't open the door remotely. I'd just as soon stay in an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere.”

Suddenly, machines near them on the platform started coming to life. Some ground immediately to a halt; others cast off showers of sparks; and still others took twisted courses toward their ship.

“Let's not panic now,” ordered the captain, “but I suggest we put weapons on standby.”

“Actually, I don't think we're under attack, sir,” said Bruzelski. See that? It looks like a fuel line. And those robots over there look like they're holding wrenches.”

“Well, they might not be intentionally hostile,” said the captain, “but they are not exactly in tip-top shape.” He definitely had that right.

Robots approached the ship, some limping on broken limbs, others spinning in circles on tracks instead of wheels. There were even some that looked fairly functional but just marched back and forth like tin soldiers. Every once in awhile, one stopped, as if its battery had run down. Then the ones behind it crashed into it and fell.

It would have been funny — like a tin-man version of the Keystone Cops — if the Star-Fighters had been watching it on TV instead of worrying that those walking cans might bang a hole in their ship.

“Duck!!” Bruzelski suddenly yelled as she hit the deck. A flying-saucer-shaped machine about the size of a serving plate zipped by. It had little eyes that peered menacingly at them. Another one suddenly spun into a dive and skimmed across the hull of the tree ship in a shower of sparks.

“Just what we need, kamikaze robots,” grumbled MacIntyre. Officer Bruzelski picked herself up from the floor in time to hear something scratching at the window. Out the window, she could see what looked to be spiders about the size of her hand scrambling all over the hull. “Hey y'all,” she said with a gulp, “we've got bugs — big ones with metal legs.”

Actually, Scilla found them kind of cute, with their little bodies tilting up, down, and around mechanically, sputtering out oil and whirling their foot pads around to clean and polish their ship. It was particularly funny how they could squish down to the smallest size to clean in the cracks.

Then Officer Bruzelski heard the intruder alarm sounding within their ship. “Someone's triggered the air lock!” she cried as she jumped up and ran toward the bridge door. But she never got there. Squeezing out from beneath the door was a seemingly endless stream of spider bots!

6

Hide and Seek

“Help! Captain! We're being boarded!” cried Bruzelski as she began to swat the mechanical bugs. The good news was that the little buggers didn't squish into bug juice when she trounced on them. The bad news was that more spider bots kept coming.

Commander MacIntyre once again tried to fire the thrusters. “Still nothing, Captain,” he shouted as he swiped a couple of the metal bugs off of his control panel.

The spider bots didn't look like they were trying to harm anybody. In fact, the control panel was shining and clean after they crawled across. Places on the floor were also showing a nice polish.

“Hey y'all, look at my hand,” Bruzelski shouted as she shook a spider bot off. “It polished my nails!”

But just when they were ready to laugh, they noticed a wobbling spider bot moving across a wall, cutting out a slice as it moved. “Uh, oh, some of these guys are out of wack too. Stop that!” cried Bruzelski, taking a broom to the malfunctioning arachnid. “Yipe!” she yelped as another one scrambled across her shoe, shaving off the front edge just in front of her toe. Then it scrambled across a table and cut a groove across the top. “Captain, these guys have lasers. We'd better do something quick, or we're going to get sliced up like pastrami.”

“MacIntyre, open fire!” ordered the captain.

“At what, the spider bots?” asked the frustrated commander.

“No . . . at everything outside!” Captain Ives yelled. “We have to deactivate the tractor beam that pulled us onto the space platform.

The control transmitter has to be out there somewhere!”

The commander shrugged and started shooting all the ship's weapons at once, including the veton depth charges and the stickeyon emissions. With the gravitation field of the space platform no longer functioning, the stickeyon emission traveled much farther than usual. That sticky substance must have gummed up a rotating radio control transmitter because everything ground to a stop, including the spider bots. Even better, whatever was pinning the ship to that platform was also shut off.

“We're on our own power!” cried MacIntyre. He gunned the thrusters, and they took off.

They were no sooner back in space than they suddenly found themselves back in the tree.

“It's about time!” sputtered Scilla, erupting from beneath a cluster of disabled spider bots. Her uniform was in tatters. “I was within seconds of becoming human confetti.” At that moment, her uniform transformed once again into jeans, sweater, and an overcoat. She looked down at the spider bots. They had turned into piles of twigs and shirt buttons.

“I'm just glad the ship is still in one piece,” said Ghoulie with a huge sigh. He fingered a burn streak across one corner of a plywood table. “Do you ever wonder how much of our adventures might be real?” he asked thoughtfully.

“Like if that space platform is really out in space somewhere?” Beamer echoed his thoughts.

“Come on, y'all,” said Scilla with a twisted grin. “Do you really think we could be whisked to the farthest edge of space in the blink of an eye? Not possible. Hey, Mr. Spock,” she said to Ghoulie. “Come on, where's your science?”

“Of course, you're right,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear his mind. “It's just that it always seems so real. After all, it wasn't our imagination that sliced through this table.”

“Whether it's real or not, I wish we knew what happened to that space platform,” said Beamer. “I mean, if it was attacked or bombarded by asteroids, why didn't anybody bother to fix it? Did they all die or just give up?”

That night, while he was staring up at the water-stained ceiling above his bed, the idea of giving up rolled around in Beamer's head like a loose marble. He was thinking that it was about time to do just that with his baseball career. The season was long over, of course, but soon he'd have to make a decision about the next season. It wasn't like he'd had this big dream of becoming a major league star.

Among the ranks of little league baseball players, he was a fairly decent pitcher. But when it came to batting, all he ever hit was air.
Why can't I get the stupid bat to go where my eyes tell
me it's supposed to go?
His dad had told him about “eye-hand coordination” — that some kids got it earlier than others. But that didn't help much when the guy wearing a bag on his chest shouted, “Strike three!” Beamer remembered how, after his last time at bat in the championship game, the umpire had jerked his arm back like he was cocking a rifle.
Talk about rubbing
it in. Where did that ump think he was, Yankee Stadium?

But the worst moment came when he heard a rasping chuckle behind him. He looked over to see Jared watching him through the chain-link fence. Jared had stopped being a direct threat to the Star-Fighters, thanks to that little battle in the tree last fall. Nor could he any longer get away with fleecing kids at school of their milk money. Still, Beamer knew that this underage Terminator was aching to return to the top of the middle-school food chain.

On that day, though, Jared wasn't using his fists. He was using his bat to intimidate everyone. He was a year older than Beamer, but they were in the same division. And while Beamer was fanning away, his cud-chewing nemesis had the highest batting average and the most home runs in the league. How was Beamer supposed to compete if his brain and his reflexes wouldn't cooperate? So why not just give up? Besides, if he didn't compete, he couldn't lose. Right?

The next morning, Middle America got hit by another snow storm, and Beamer was forced to wear his snow boots again. As he pulled them out from the closet, he noticed something stuck to the bottom of one of the boots. It was an old piece of paper — old as in ancient Egyptian papyrus — dull yellow-brown and extra crispy. The huge wad of bubble gum that glued it to the tread was also holding the paper together, since it was cracked into about a million pieces.