Lab Rats in Space (4 page)

A
s the alarm sounded and Xanax's bald head glowered at them, pictures of the six escapees appeared around it. The Lab Rats were too busy staring at the professor's scary scowl to notice themselves, until Emm looked up.

‘That's you lot… and some horrible girl!' said Emm.

‘That's you!' said Dee. As they looked at their faces, they realised that none of them had any idea what they looked like.

‘I'm not pretty!' Emm said to herself surprised. She had assumed she was quite beautiful but she didn't like what she saw at all.

‘Which one am I?' Zed said as he looked and realised his face was the only one he didn't recognise. He could see his third hand sticking up behind his own head, like
he was taking the mickey out of himself in a photo. It looked stupid.

Beep beep beep. Their faces had made them forget that the technicians were approaching and their priority was now to capture them.

‘We need to go!' Zed shouted. He could see the technicians' hovercraft clearly now. They would be on them at any moment.

‘Didn't think I looked like that,' said KT, still puzzled at his own face.

‘Good grief, I really am a furry brick,' groaned XL at the sight of himself.

‘Excuse me!' Jay called from in front of the container. ‘I'm about to look like squashed tomatoes in a minute.'

There was now a line of containers backed up. They started swaying backwards and forwards in unison as if building up strength to push Jay over.

‘Come on!' shouted Zed.

‘But I'm so ugly!' moaned Emm.

‘Emm, you're gorgeous!' said Dee. ‘You haven't got a hammer arm for a start.'

‘Girls! Come on!' shouted Zed at them. They all climbed back into the dark transport corridor.

Dee hooked her hammer arm over the rail.

‘Give me XL, my arm's secure enough,' she said to Emm, who handed him up to her.

KT and Zed held Emm up and she grabbed the rail with both arms. Then KT jumped up and grabbed on too.

‘What about me! How do I climb up?' Jay called from the front.

Zed thought for a moment.

‘Shuffle towards the edge and hold your arm in front of it so the box knows you're still there. I'll hold on at the back with my third arm. When I shout “ready”, jump to the side and stick your arms up.'

Everyone was holding onto the container. The gap between the side of the container and the wall was very narrow.

‘Make sure you stay close to the container,' Dee said to Emm. Emm nodded, trying not to think about her head hitting the wall.

‘We'll be OK,' Dee smiled at her.

The technical assistants were seconds away. As the assistants travelled down the white corridor, Professor Xanax projected images of the children's faces directly in front of them. There was no way they wouldn't recognise the Lab Rats.

Beep… Beep… Beep.

The beeping of their craft grew louder and louder and then suddenly stopped. They had arrived.

Zed scrambled up at the back of the container. His rear arm gripped the rail with his feet against the container wall for extra grip.

‘OK now!' he shouted.

Jay didn't moved. He was frozen with fear.

‘I can't do it!'

‘You can,' said Dee, ‘it's easy.'

‘Move it you idiot!' shouted KT from the side. He was looking around at the gap in the wall, waiting for the moment the technicians would appear. Emm closed her
eyes and pressed her body as close to the container as she could.

‘I'm not an idiot,' said Jay. ‘You try standing with this huge box pushing your nose!'

‘Dee,' Zed said, ‘talk him through it.'

‘Listen to me Jay,' Dee spoke calmly. ‘Just move one little step to the side. A tiny one.'

Jay moved.

‘OK.'

‘Now another… and again. You can do it, Jay. It'll be fine.'

He moved another step.

‘You ready Zed?' Dee shouted to the back.

‘In here!' One of the assistants poked his head though the doorway and spotted the children. They had to go.

‘Now Jay, now!' they all shouted at once.

Jay breathed, shut his eyes, stepped to the side and held his hands up. He could suddenly feel the container move past him with a rush of air. His hands were up, his eyes closed tight.

‘Ow.' His arms were almost jerked off his shoulders and suddenly his legs were in the air.

‘Yee-hah!' Zed shouted. ‘See ya losers!'

The container was hurtling along the passage again. The technicians leapt back to avoid the speeding containers as the Lab Rats escaped them. The container rushed forward. Dee, Emm and KT clung to the side, terrified of the wall that was just a centimetre or two away from them. Zed and Jay hung from the back.

As they hurtled along, unable to see anything in the pitch dark, Emm could sense how close to the wall they were.

‘Ouch!' she cried. A clump of her hair had flown up in the wind, caught on the wall and been ripped out. She turned her head to the side and pressed her cheek to the side of the container. It was cold on her face, but she pressed hard, determined to keep her hair safe.

‘Open your eyes!' said Zed as he held on to Jay at the back.

Jay opened one eye. He couldn't see anything. He opened the other eye and then closed them again. It made no difference. There was absolutely no light.

‘Freaky isn't it?' Jay could hear that Zed was actually enjoying himself.

He had both Jay's arms in his hands and he was flying along behind the container. Zed was even waving him from side to side.

‘Hold still!' Jay shrieked.

Zed stuck his tongue out, even though Jay couldn't see him.

‘Everyone on board?' he shouted.

‘Dee here!' she shouted.

‘KT here.'

‘I don't like this!' said Emm.

‘Don't let go of me!' XL thought.

‘Don't worry little thing, I won't let go!' Dee said to him.

‘Curious,' XL thought to himself, ‘it seems they can hear me after all.'

The long run down the endless white corridor had one powerful effect. XL was now out of range of the telepathic dampening field. Xanax had created it to stop him communicating with anyone. First Emm and now Dee seemed to have heard some of his thoughts. He decided to try an experiment of his own.

‘How much longer is this going to take?' he asked into Dee's head.

‘How long do you think this will last?' Dee shouted to the others.

‘Who cares, it's fun!' laughed Zed.

‘Wheee!' shouted KT wanting to look like he was having fun too. In reality his arms were getting very tired. He wasn't as strong as Zed.

‘My arms are killing me,' said Emm. Her heart was pounding. She tried to breathe slowly to calm herself down.

‘Me too!' said Jay. He wasn't enjoying this. He was sure his arms were growing longer by the minute.

‘I won't let go of you. It doesn't matter how tired you get,' Zed tried to make him feel better.

‘Thanks.'

As they all clung on as hard as they could, XL felt pleased his experiment had worked. He would not admit to being afraid, but he thought it might be wise to put the thought of holding him tighter into Dee's head. He thought it and immediately he could feel Dee's grip tighten.

Dee's arm wasn't tired. Her hammer was safely hooked over the rail so she couldn't fall. She kept her eyes closed because the wind stung them. Every now and again she
peeped open an eye. Once she thought she could see something ahead. It sped towards them.

‘There's some light ahead,' she shouted. ‘It might be a station. Hold on, we're nearly…'

Bam! The container came to a halt. Dee, Emm and KT were all thrown forward onto the ground. Jay's huge honker slammed into the back of the container.

‘Dow!'

Dee decided the best thing to do was to make sure the container didn't move again. She stood in front of it while Emm and KT stood up. Zed and Jay joined them.

The container had come to a halt behind another container. There was a queue of them leading up to the light.

‘I'll go and have a look at what's happening,' Dee said as she handed XL to Emm. ‘You all wait here.'

Dee crept up along the gap between the wall and the containers until she found the source of the light. She peeked. It was very bright after the dark tunnel they had been in. When her eyes adjusted, she could see she was in a docking port.

One by one, each container was rolled out of the dark corridor. A mechanical arm swung down, scanned a blank panel on the side of the container and beeped. A small truck drove forward, lifted the container and moved it onto one of the six spaceships docked at the port. As each container was placed on a ship, the ship's doors were sealed and the spaceship took off.

Dee couldn't see any assistants; just machines working away, clicking and whirring to themselves. She leaned
forward to see if anyone was there. A high-pitched alarm rang out. Dee realised it was a life form sensor and pulled back quickly. It stopped. She just hoped it had not gone off long enough to alert Xanax's assistants.

She crept back to the others to explain what she'd found.

‘The good news is that it's a loading dock. Ships are flying in. They're loaded with containers and then they fly off again.'

‘That's great, let's go!' KT was about to charge off.

Zed knew better.

‘And the bad news?'

‘There's a life form sensor,' answered Dee. ‘The minute we set foot in there, lab assistants will be summoned. They'll be able to stop all the ships leaving and we'll be caught. And I may have already set it off.'

They all sighed as the containers lurched forward, edging closer to the unloading area.

‘We need to hide somehow,' said Zed.

‘Inside a container,' said Emm. She was holding XL and was rather impressed with herself for coming up with a good idea. XL was impressed too because she had actually thought it before he did.

‘Let's see if there's a way inside one of them,' suggested Zed. He grabbed the rail and swung himself up onto the top. ‘You all check the sides, I'll look up here.'

The sides had no doors or hinges. Nothing that could have opened up. The top appeared to be one smooth sheet of metal with no opening. Zed felt around the edge of the container to see if there was a lock or catch.
Towards the back he found a small box next to the edge. He could feel there was a slight gap between the box and the sheet. It had to be some sort of lock.

‘Everyone up here!' he said over the edge. Reaching down with his rear arm, he gave them a hand up.

Emm placed XL down on the metal sheet.

‘Aha!' he thought and realised what had to be done.

‘Dee,' said Zed, ‘if you use your hammer hand on this small box, it might trigger the lock and we can open the top up.'

‘I'll give it a go. Keep back.'

Dee did a few practice swings, sweeping her arm across the top of the sheet towards the box.

As she did so XL was communicating in a new way.

‘I knew I was intelligent, but this is impressive, even for me.' By being placed on the container, he could hear the microchip which controlled the box Dee was about to hit. Not only could he hear it but he could talk to it as well. It was quite simple. All he had to do was tell it the right code and it would release. He began to exchange some numbers with the microchip.

‘OK, here goes!' Dee swung her arm for real and smashed the hammer hard on the small box.

A spark flew up, XL said the right code and the sheet slid back so quickly they all fell straight into the container.

Inside there were more metal boxes. Hard metal boxes which hurt when they landed on them.

‘Ow! Why do I always land nose first?!' complained Jay.

‘Well done… I think,' said Zed rubbing as many parts of his sore body with his hands as he could.

‘Only problem is, we're now going to have to shut the container again or the sensors might spot us,' Emm said.

They tried pulling the closing sheet back but it stuck fast. Even with all of them pulling together, it wouldn't budge.

The container lurched forward towards the unloading area. Zed stuck his head up to see how close they were— just two containers away from the dock.

‘Come on, push harder!' he said. ‘We've got to close it again.'

They lined up and pushed with all their might.

XL had fallen onto one of the boxes but because he wasn't touching the container itself, he had lost contact with the chip controlling the closing sheet.

‘Hold me up to the sheet!' he shouted. But noone was touching him so noone heard him.

‘Push,' Zed strained with all his might but it still didn't work.

‘It's no good,' said Jay, exhausted. He sat back and felt something soft under him. It was XL. He moved quickly and picked him up.

‘Sorry little one,' he said and he stroked the creature's head, as the container lurched forward again. Their container was next in line to be unloaded. Unless they could close the lid in the next ten seconds, the life form sensors would summon the lab assistants in no time.

‘One last effort,' Zed said. ‘Come on, we can't give up now. We opened it, we can close it. There's no way I'm letting Xanax keep us here. Everyone, give everything.'

Out of the blue, Jay decided it might help if XL touched the edge of the sheet so he held him up. As soon as XL made contact with the roof, he was chatting once again to the controlling microchip.

‘He-ave!' shouted Zed as the container lurched into position to be unloaded. Suddenly the container roof shot across, plunging them into darkness.

‘We did it!' cheered KT.

‘Well done, Zed. It was your pep talk that did it. I've never pushed so hard in my life!' said Dee.

‘How do you know?' asked Emm, suddenly afraid in the darkness. ‘How do we know anything when we can't remember?'