Lab Rats in Space (6 page)

‘D
o you reckon we can move yet… my nose hurts.'

‘Shh.'

‘It's been ages,' Emm added her voice to Jay's complaint.

‘Shh,' Zed repeated.

‘Shh yourself, Dee,' said KT.

‘Shh… it wasn't me,' said Dee.

‘Shh,' everyone said at the same time. They giggled and then shut up.

Jay sniffed.

‘Ssshhhh.'

‘Shh.'

‘Will everyone please stop shushing?' asked Zed.

‘Aaah… aah.' Jay felt a sneeze coming on.

‘That's it, Xanax or not, I'm not staying in here with him blowing his trumpet.'

KT pushed open the panel over their heads. Light poured in and he climbed out.

‘Aaah… aaah.'

There was a rush towards the hole to climb out before Jay unleashed his snot. Dee scrambled out after KT. Zed pulled himself up. Emm was halfway through.

‘Aah… choo!'

‘Gross!' screamed Emm as she felt the snot fly over her feet.

Jay apologised to her as he crawled out. She was holding herself up against the wall of the corridor because her feet were slippery. Emm wrinkled her neat little nose up as she tried to shake off the goo.

They were on a shuttle craft from the Interworlder. It was small compared to Redlock's massive ship, but it still had plenty of room for them all. Because the Interworlder was too big to enter the atmosphere of any planet, the shuttle was used to ferry crew and cargo down to planets.

Redlock's plan was to hide them on board the shuttle and then, right at the last moment, dispatch the shuttle while Xanax's men searched the Interworlder. The button Redlock pressed had launched the shuttle. Hidden under the floor of one of the shuttle's corridors, the Lab Rats had no idea what had happened on board the ship.

‘This is so cool. Our own spaceship. Let's explore!' said KT.

‘Yeah, come on!' Zed agreed.

Dee rolled her eyes.

‘Shouldn't we check if it's safe first… argh!'

Dee was pulled to the ground. Emm had tried to take a step but had slipped because of her snotty shoes and fallen, taking Dee down with her. She lay on the floor, her long shiny blonde hair splayed out. Jay had made Emm look like a mess for the first time.

‘Take off your shoes until you can clean them.' Dee was losing patience with everyone. They could tell because her cheeks went red and her freckles stood out even more. ‘Redlock said we should go to the control deck first. If you want to explore, find that first.'

‘Let's go!' Zed charged down the corridor waving at everyone to follow him with his third hand. KT ran with him. Jay trotted after them.

‘Come on,' Dee held out her hammer for Emm to grab and pull herself up.

Soon KT and Zed shot past them, running in the opposite direction.

‘Other way… the bedrooms are down there. We've chosen ours!'

The only Lab Rat who wasn't trying to find the control deck was XL. He'd been left in the hole under the floor. He tried using his mind messages to remind them not to leave him there, but they'd been too busy escaping Jay's snot to hear him.

‘Great,' he thought to himself, ‘I'll be stuck here forever.'

He too had been covered in snot, but luckily his underside was on the metal floor of the hole. He could
communicate with the ship. After a few trial signals, he was communicating clearly.

‘That's impressive,' he thought to himself. ‘Now how do I communicate with those stupid children?'

Being quite brilliant, it only took a second for him to come up with a clever solution.

As the Rats opened doors and looked at rooms, they heard a voice all around them. They couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman speaking. It sounded very calm and clear, like it wasn't even human.

‘Zed, Dee, KT, Emm, welcome aboard.'

They looked at each other in shock. Was this a Xanax trick?

‘What about me?' said Jay.

‘Jay, welcome also,' said the voice.

‘Can you hear us? Who are you?'

‘There is a life form remaining under the floor of corridor C4…'

‘Where's that?' KT shrugged his shoulders.

‘…where you were hiding,' said the voice.

‘XL!' said Dee and immediately started running back to their hiding spot. The others waited for her.

‘If you can hear us, say “hello”,' Zed spoke to the voice. It didn't answer.

‘Do you think it's the ship?' asked KT.

‘How did it know who we were?' asked Jay.

‘Redlock could have programmed it,' Zed suggested.

‘To reach the control deck, enter the lift at the end of this corridor and press the button with the letters “CD” on it.' The voice spoke again.

‘You must all enter together… all SIX of…'

The voice stopped suddenly as if the power had been cut off.

‘Where's Emm?' KT looked around before they set off.

‘Here I am.' Emm appeared out of a doorway. She had found a bathroom to wash her hair and clean her shoes.

‘That's better!'

The boys stared at her.

‘What's wrong?' Emm was worried she looked awful.

‘How do you look so tidy so quickly?' asked KT. ‘It used to take me ages to get rid of Jay's snot from my hair.'

Emm's hair was wet but it looked so superneat even the boys noticed it. She looked like she had just got dressed. Emm smiled, she liked it when they said she looked good. It made up for hating the sight of herself in a mirror.

At the hole where they had been hiding, Dee shouted down ‘sorry' eleven times for leaving XL behind. She climbed down to collect him.

XL was telling the others to make sure he was taken to the control deck when Dee picked him up and he lost contact with the computer. That was why the voice had stopped.

He was annoyed he'd suddenly lost his only way of communicating with them, but at least he had been rescued. Once they put him down in the control deck, he would be able to explain everything. He looked forward
to them knowing he wasn't a dumb furry brick, but a very advanced life form.

‘Wow, this is so cool,' said Zed as they entered the control deck. There was a screen which wrapped around the entire room above their heads giving them a view of space all around the ship. All the seats at the control units tilted up to give a perfect view of the 360-degree screen.

KT jumped into one of the chairs and swivelled around as fast as he could.

‘We can see everything!' Dee exclaimed turning around.

‘But there isn't anything there!' Jay stood at the front. With his head tilted up, his nose stuck out above his ginger hair. It looked funny from behind. Dee was so awestruck with the view she didn't hear XL silently screaming to put him down.

‘Spaceship,' Zed tried to talk to ship, ‘show us where we are.'

Nothing happened.

‘Put me down!' XL said into Dee's mind.

Without taking her eyes off the screen, she put him down on the nearest surface.

XL got to work re-establishing the connection.

‘Hello children, this is XL speaking,' he said through the ship's computer system.

The children were amazed.

‘What are the chances of that?' said Emm. ‘The ship's computer having the same name as our XL.'

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.

T
he 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 would 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.