The Fantastic Family Whipple (6 page)

Mr. Whipple stopped, then whirled around. “Where have you—?” he stammered. “Who’s been—?”

“On Rueing Day,” Arthur spluttered. “After the French toast fell—you said…”

The hysteria slowly faded from Mr. Whipple’s eyes. “I see,” he said, letting out a deep sigh. “I—I wish you hadn’t heard that.”

Sighing again, he peered up at the portrait of the solemn, mustachioed man smoking the World’s Longest Pipe in a framed photograph that stretched across the entire rear wall.

“The Lyon’s Curse,” Arthur’s father began, “marked a dark time in our family’s history. A time, I’m afraid, whose end your distinguished grandfather never saw. It was a time of fear and of catastrophe—and of failure…. But thank God it is all behind us now. There is no use in looking back, Arthur. We must look forward. What you heard the other day, it was just, well—a momentary lapse of clarity. I shan’t let it happen again.” He cleared his throat and straightened his jacket. “Now, I trust you will leave such matters alone. Surely, you’ve enough to worry about in your future—such as improving your failure quotients—without bothering about the past.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied. “But I just—”

Arthur’s father gave him a stern look.

“Yes, sir,” said the boy.

“Very good, Arthur,” Mr. Whipple replied. “You are excused.”

Arthur’s rare, one-on-one meetings with his father never seemed to last long enough—and this one had somehow left him with more questions than it had answered. As the boy exited the Whipple Hall of Records, his mind swam with budding hopes and nagging doubts swirled together in a cloud of nameless fear.

Fortunately, the Whipple estate did not lack for distractions. Glancing at the tiny bonsai-wood clock on the mantel, Arthur was consoled to see he might still catch his sisters’ trial attempt at the Highest Hamster-Piloted Model Rocket Launch Ever Recorded.

Indeed, as the boy stepped out onto the south lawn, he came upon several of his siblings gathered in a semicircle. Wearing a white lab coat, Cordelia was hunched over at its center, tinkering with her custom-built rocket, while Abigail stood beside Penelope, Beatrice, Franklin, and George, clutching an adorable and utterly unsuspecting hamster with both hands.

If he had only been given the luxury of a mirror, the fluffy little rodent might have had a better clue as to what the near future had in store for him.

He was wearing a tiny astronaut suit.

“Is our daring space explorer ready?” inquired Cordelia as she made one last adjustment with a socket wrench.

Abigail kissed the top of the daring space explorer’s furry little head, then placed a tiny astronaut helmet over it. “Aye. Ready, sir. Ready and eager to serve his country,” she replied.

“Excellent,” said Cordelia. “I trust the pilot has been checked for enemy bugs?”

“Aye, sir,” said Penelope, holding up a stoppered tube with three bouncing black dots inside it. “Pilot is now certified flea-free.”

“Very good, Private,” said Cordelia. “Unlocking cockpit.” She flipped a latch on the side of the rocket that allowed the nose to hinge outward, revealing a miniature control room with pushpins for dials and tin foil for navigation monitors. “Pilot may now take position.”

Abigail stepped forward and handed the miniature pilot to Cordelia, who placed him in the miniature pilot seat and buckled him in with a tiny seat belt.

“Pilot secured,” announced Cordelia. “Sealing cockpit.”

She hinged the nose of the rocket back into launch position. The little hamster astronaut looked a bit worried beneath his space helmet.

Cordelia and Abigail took a few steps back. Abigail put her tiny arm around Hamlet, her towering canine companion and typical mode of transportation, who was sitting on his haunches and waiting patiently for the launch sequence to commence. Beatrice swallowed the last bite of cider-braised lamb chop she’d been having as a light snack and tossed the bone at the dog’s feet. With a tip of his bicorne
hat, Franklin handed the remote control switch to Cordelia, who stood up straight and proud and said, “We are cleared for launch.”

A wave of excitement rushed over Arthur. He had made it just in time.

“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven…”

Cordelia began the countdown, and Arthur made his way around his siblings to get a clear view of the launchpad.

“Six. Five. Four…”

By the time Cordelia had called out “Three,” Arthur had walked to the end of the line of onlookers and could see the rocket perfectly. What Arthur did not see, however, was the spool of fishing line that had been anchored into the ground behind him—and the single strand that had been attached to the side of the rocket as a way of measuring the height of the launch.

“Three. Two. One. Ignition!”

As Cordelia pressed the big red button on the remote control, Arthur took one last step to his right—and caught the strand of fishing line with his foot. To the shock and horror of all who had gathered, the rocket suddenly jerked toward them, its nose pointing menacingly in their direction—as flames began to stream from its thrusters.

Arthur, realizing what he had done, yanked his foot off the line and threw himself onto Penelope and George, who were standing nearest to him.

Just as the three siblings tumbled to the ground, the
rocket launched off its base at a 45-degree angle and shot over them—whizzing through the space that, only moments earlier, George’s head had occupied.

The children spun around to watch, as the Uncontrollable Flying Object sped away over the treetops.

When the rocket was only an orange speck against the evening sky, the children could just make out the profile of a parachute, attached to a small shiny blob drifting on the horizon. It seemed the tiny ejection seat had functioned properly, and there was, at that moment, an uncommonly confused hamster floating through the troposphere, considerably more world-weary than he had been just thirty seconds before. The children watched it for another moment, before the parachute descended behind the trees and out of sight.

Arthur picked himself up off the ground, and immediately felt the icy glare of his sister piercing through him.

“Arthur!” squealed Cordelia. “What have you done?!”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Arthur stammered. “I didn’t see the string, and—”

“Our official attempt is scheduled to launch at 0900 tomorrow morning, and thanks to you, we no longer have a rocket! You know we can’t afford the slightest setback if we’re to make our record quota by our birthday—it’s like you’re
trying
to lose the championships for us!”

“Please, Cordelia—don’t say that. The attempt’s not spoiled yet, is it? If we just follow the string, shouldn’t it lead us to wherever the rocket’s landed? Perhaps we’ll be able to retrieve it fairly easily.”

“If it hasn’t landed in a lake!” cried Cordelia. “And even if it hasn’t, what about our daring space explorer? How do you propose to retrieve
him
? He could be anywhere—and how are we going to launch a hamster-piloted rocket without a hamster pilot?!”

“What about one of the other hamsters?” Arthur suggested.

“Don’t be silly, Arthur. Corporal Whiskerton is the only hamster trained for this mission. Do you really think just any old hamster can be a successful rocket pilot?!”

Arthur shook his head. The training to which Cordelia referred consisted solely of persuading their twitchy subject to sit still while wearing a seat belt attached to a tiny chair. It had truly been a breakthrough in hamster conditioning.

“I’m really very sorry, Cordelia. But I’m sure he can’t have gone too far—what with the space suit and parachute and all. We’re bound to find him before the sun goes down.”

“Well,” said Cordelia with a sigh of resignation, “if we don’t find him soon, he’ll run off and join a pack of wild hamsters, and we’ll never see him again.”

Arthur had not been aware of the apparently enormous population of wild hamsters in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t remember seeing a single wild hamster in his entire life—not even in books. But he figured the tame ones had to come from somewhere.

As the group set out from Neverfall in search of the missing rocket and its furry little pilot, Arthur kept a constant lookout for any uncivilized hamsters who might have
absconded with the good corporal. The thought of savage hamster packs roaming the streets was really rather unnerving—albeit in an adorable sort of way.

Surprisingly, Corporal Whiskerton proved much easier to find than anyone had expected.

His parachute had caught in one of the elm trees on the neighboring Nesbit estate, on a branch just out of reach of Mrs. Nesbit’s Irish terrier, Fergus, who was now leaping up and down beneath the tree, barking furiously as he tried to catch the hamster’s dangling feet in his slobbery jaws.

Corporal Whiskerton wore an expression that suggested he had become rather disillusioned with space exploration. Luckily, help was not far off.

Upon spotting their downed comrade, the children rushed to his aid, appalled that a hero of such courage should be made to suffer such abuse. One bellowing bark from Hamlet sent the once-intimidating terrier cowering toward the Nesbit house with his tail between his legs.

“Enemy unit eliminated,” announced Cordelia. “Prepare for retrieval.”

The giant Great Dane, still carrying Abigail on his back, stretched out his neck and removed the parachute from the branch with his teeth, then dropped the traumatized hamster into his rider’s hands. Corporal Whiskerton looked relieved. Arthur shared his sentiment.

The boy stroked Hamlet’s shoulder. “Thanks, Hammie,” he whispered. “I owe you one.”

The dog licked Arthur’s face in reply.

Having completed their first objective, the Whipple children set out once again after their vanished aircraft, following the strand of fishing line to the far edge of the Nesbit estate.

From there, they continued across the estates of their next two neighbors—until they came to an imposing stone wall, which brought their recovery mission to an abrupt halt. Over the wall’s crest, between two of the spear-shaped iron shafts that jutted up from it, the line disappeared from sight.

It was far worse than they had feared: the rocket had landed on the Crosley estate.

Maxwell Crosley had been the president of the Rikki-Tikki Toffee Company—the Largest Toffee Manufacturer in the World—whose confections had once been loved far and wide by children of all ages. Ironically, Mr. Crosley detested children—but there was a lot of money to be made in the toffee business, so he purchased a majority stake in the company when its original founder had died. To cut costs, Mr. Crosley proceeded to alter the century-old family recipe to include substandard ingredients and barely edible industrial chemicals. After several children died upon ingesting his company’s products, Mr. Crosley avoided financial ruin
by slightly altering the recipe again and changing its name to Miracle Mud®, a product that went on to revolutionize the tiling and grout industry. In a bizarre twist of fate, Mr. Crosley met an untimely but fitting end when he fell into one of the Miracle Mud® vats while giving a factory tour to a group of potential investors.

In the six years since its owner’s demise, the Crosley estate had fallen into disrepair and was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the unfortunate children killed by Mr. Crosley’s greed. Needless to say, it was not the sort of place one would want her custom-built, hamster-piloted model rocket to crash-land.