Lab Rats in Space (8 page)

T
he Research Station was in its worst mood ever. It was never in a good mood but few could remember Professor Xanax being so angry. He had been in bad moods before, but he normally wiped everyone's memory so they couldn't remember. Everyone was on edge, worried that their memories might be wiped at any moment.

Bumface was in her lab. It was back to its spotless order after the chaos of the Lab Rats' escape. None of the lab assistants spoke. The only noise was the rattle of test tubes as the assistants' hands shook with nerves.

Bumface was attempting to graft an elephant's trunk onto a parrot. It didn't serve any purpose but it might cheer Xanax up to watch as the poor parrot tried to flap its wings and fly with a massive trunk. She wasn't having much success. The operation required very
delicate surgery but every time she was almost done, Xanax's holographic head would burst into the middle of the lab.

‘All leave for all assistants in sector 9 has been cancelled for the next five years,' he growled and then vanished.

Bumface pursed her lips so hard the wrinkles around her mouth grew bigger and tighter as she tried to concentrate on her work.

‘All lab assistants in sector 3 have been fired, please report to the departure bay for immediate expulsion from the station,' Xanax snarled again.

Bumface tried one more time. If only she could perfect the experiment, Xanax might snap out of his horrible terrible mood. The fact that the Lab Rats had escaped from the Interworlder cargo ship made him furious and his fury hadn't softened with time. The longer he went without knowing where the Lab Rats were, the angrier Xanax became.

Bumface was afraid he would blow up the whole station just out of spite. Once again she lowered her eye to the microscope to connect the last important nerve from the elephant's trunk to the parrot.

‘Bumface,' Xanax appeared once again. He had taken to using the name the Lab Rats gave her. She didn't like it. Bumface looked up at the holograph. Xanax wore the closest thing to a smile on his face she had seen since the escape.

‘Report to my personal laboratory for your performance appraisal!'

Bumface's heart sank. On the Research Station, Xanax tested everyone's performance. It was nothing to do with how well they did their job, he measured how well they performed in random tests to see how much pain they could withstand. Xanax said it was vital research but Bumface had never seen any results. As one of his most senior assistants, Bumface normally didn't have a performance appraisal. But while he was in this mood, anyone could be tested.

One of the other lab assistants grunted, trying to suppress a laugh.

‘Makes a nice change,' he muttered under his breath.

‘Silence!' she said as calmly as she could. She didn't want anyone to know how scared she was. She walked up to the assistant, looked at the neatly arranged test tubes he had been working on and slowly pushed them all off the bench, smiling as they smashed on the floor.

‘Clear up this mess before I return!' Bumface commanded. She grabbed the parrot with the trunk and headed to the professor's personal lab.

She was hoping the parrot would save her from the pain tests but if it didn't, she had a back-up plan. She'd discovered some information in the Rats' data files which might help locate them.

The Typetor was hovering at the door when Bumface arrived. Its screen was splashed with dirt and scratched where Xanax had thrown things at it. The Typetor had been programmed to self-clean as often as possible. It had also been programmed for complete obedience to
Xanax, who had commanded that it not wipe its screen. The Typetor was as close to agony as a computer could get, programmed to hate being dirty and yet commanded not to clean itself.

It flashed a ‘Please clean my screen' message to Bumface, hoping she would wipe it. Bumface snarled, and wiped the parrot's backside on the screen. She was in no mood to be nice.

‘Bumface,' the professor said to her and pointed to the pain threshold testing chair, ‘do sit down… just routine, as you know. Everyone must have their performance appraised.'

‘Yes professor,' Bumface tried to smile.

The chair looked like a comfortable old armchair. It even reclined. When anybody first sat there, it seemed harmless and very comfy. However, as the victim sank into the chair, tiny magnetic hooks gripped them, entered their skin without them realising and connected directly into their nerves. The professor could then send any sensations he wanted to the subject's brain.

Bumface knew what the chair could do. She perched on the edge of it.

‘Please, make yourself comfortable,' Xanax commanded her. She sat back in the chair, clutching the parrot with the trunk, hoping it might save her.

The parrot squawked.

‘What's this?' the professor's interest was peaked.

‘I thought perhaps it might amuse,' Bumface offered her most horrible smile, placed the creature on the floor and sat back in the chair. The parrot flapped and flapped
its wings trying to take off into the air, but it could not lift its huge trunk. Backwards and forwards, its wings flew but it simply did not have the strength. Eventually the bird gave up and collapsed on the floor with a pitiful little squawk.

The professor arched his eyebrow.

‘Not exactly going to conquer the universe is it?' he said. ‘You've been wasting my resources on this? HOW DARE YOU!'

The professor projected holographic images of his head, surrounding Bumface as he screamed, ‘THIS IS NOT AN AMUSEMENT PARK, IT IS A RESEARCH STATION!'

He decided to push Bumface's pain threshold tests to level 89F—the highest possible level only a few species in the universe could survive.

‘I did some probability tests on the children's decision making based on their races, ages and gender mix.' Bumface quickly turned to her back-up plan.

Xanax held his finger dramatically above the ‘begin test' button.

‘Well?'

‘I examined all the data including their intelligence levels, their races and also the facilities on the type of ship they are on. Taking into account variations of…'

Xanax interrupted her with a sharp jab of pain. It was only at level 62D so it was agony but bearable.

She screamed and then composed herself.

‘Quickly Bumface, I've plenty of experiments to complete today.'

‘With a majority of boys on board, the most likely outcome is that they will wander space aimlessly, never finding anything. And they will not be found either.'

‘That's not exactly good news.' He jabbed Bumface with a level 71C.

It made her lips vibrate so quickly she made an odd humming noise. That at least amused Xanax.

‘Anything else?' he poised his finger over the button again.

‘If there is a majority of girls, they are likely to access the ship's computer to discover the location most likely to reveal the identity of their home planets.'

Now Xanax was interested. He sat up in his chair.

‘A cross-reference with planets in their sector reveals…'

‘Libris!' Xanax leapt up and kissed Bumface on her tight little lips.

‘You're a genius, Bumface… well, I'm a genius, you're very intelligent. You may skip your performance appraisal.'

Bumface jumped off the chair before he changed his mind, but she was still worried.

‘Professor, I'm almost afraid to point out that there is a majority of boys in the group.'

‘Don't worry my ugly, clever little friend. I've no doubt the girls will soon be in control.'

‘Come, Bumface, Typetor, it's time we returned some books to the library! And Typetor, your screen is filthy, clean it.'

‘B
y Bose Dith Thaw,' Jay spoke and the exhausted Lab Rats looked puzzled. Jay's nose was bright red after so much furious blowing and it seemed bigger than ever.

‘His nose is sore!' Emm worked out what Jay had tried to say.

‘I'm not surprised. That was awesome,' said Zed. ‘You were a snot-hurling zorbat-killing machine!'

‘Yeah!' Despite their sore hands and blistered trigger fingers, all the others clapped and cheered.

There was still one major problem to overcome.

‘How do we get rid of a zillion dead zorbats?' asked Dee. They were standing knee-deep in dead space beast. The gym floor was piled high as were the corridors they'd fought their way down.

‘We'll never clear all these! We should ask the computer if there's an automatic cleaning system,' KT suggested.

‘Good idea!' Dee was impressed that KT had actually suggested asking for help. Normally he just liked to charge off and do things.

They waded through the piles of dead zorbats to the control deck.

XL was ahead of them. He was upset he hadn't been with the gang to share their victory but he'd watched it all on the monitors. When it was over, he'd accessed the computer's databanks to figure out a way of removing the dead zorbats.

When the zorbats had burned a hole through the side of the ship, the computer had automatically generated an energy field across the hole to stop air from escaping the ship. It couldn't stop the zorbats passing in and out but it meant they did not lose the atmosphere on the ship.

‘If the energy field is removed,' he explained to the kids through the computer, ‘everything that isn't fixed down will be sucked out of the hole into space.'

The children were relieved that all they had to do was remove loose items from the walls of the corridor and the gym, seal off those sections of the ship and then watch from the control deck as the bodies were sucked out into space.

‘That's the zorbats sorted!' Zed said and brushed his hands, all three of them. ‘Reckon Xanax may have done us a favour,' he said. ‘Without Jay's nose, Dee's hammer and my extra arm, we'd probably be dead by now!'

‘Thanks Xanax!' Dee held up her hammer arm.

They all laughed except for KT who just swallowed hard and stared ahead. He clenched his lips shut and tried to stop himself from bursting into tears, but he couldn't, they sprang out of his eyes.

As soon as he realised he was crying, KT turned and ran from the control deck.

‘What was that for?' Zed was amazed. They stared at the door as it slid shut behind KT. Nobody moved.

‘For goodness sake, he's your mate, go after him!' Dee prodded Zed.

‘No… he's crying… he would't want me to see that!' Zed didn't really like the idea of comforting KT. It was a bit weird.

‘Boys!' Emm and Dee shook their heads and went after KT. Zed thought they were wrong. The last thing he would have wanted if he was upset was girls coming and asking him about his feelings. He stayed in the control deck. Jay went off to find something soothing for his nose.

An hour later there still had been no word from anyone. Zed couldn't think of what they might have been talking about all that time. He realised that KT probably needed rescuing from the girls. They would have been talking emotions and soppy stuff at him for an hour.

He suddenly felt guilty. KT would be going mad, wondering where Zed was and why he'd abandoned him to the girls. He ran to their room.

When Zed shot through their door, KT looked up from his bed. Emm and Dee were sitting on either side of him.

‘Thanks so much,' he said to them, dabbing his last
tears away with a hankie. ‘I feel so much better for talking, I really do.'

‘What?!' said Zed, amazed to find KT with the girls hugging pillows like they'd been having a slumber party. And they'd all been crying. KT even looked different, sort of softer.

‘What have they done to you?' he asked.

The girls stood up and started to leave.

‘It's not us that's done anything,' Dee said.

‘D'you want us to stay, KT?' asked Emm.

‘No, thanks, we'll be fine.'

‘Sure?' said Emm.

‘Yeah,' smiled KT, ‘thanks.'

‘OK, but we'll be in our room if you need us,' Dee smiled. They all smiled at each other. Zed thought perhaps the zorbat fluids had sent KT mad.

‘Enough with the lovey dovey stuff!'

Dee turned sharply.

‘Just don't be horrible, Zed, this is very serious and KT needs all our support.'

The girls left.

‘Thank goodness for that!' said Zed when the door closed behind them.

He sat down on his own bed. There were way too many pillows, tissues and girl germs on KT's bed.

‘What's up?'

‘I don't know how to tell you… you know how we all thought that I was still waiting for Xanax to experiment on me…'

‘Yeah.'

‘Well, I reckon now he did… and it's pretty weird.'

‘You look normal except…' Zed was about to say his friend looked a bit softer but realised it wasn't a good idea, ‘…except you look knackered right now, like we all do.'

‘Thanks… but it's not in my face… it's down here.' KT pointed to his pants.

‘What, another leg's growing?' Zed joked. KT smiled awkwardly.

‘No… kind of the opposite… when I woke up this morning, I could tell there was something different.'

‘That's right, you stayed in bed after we went to training.'

‘Right. Well I got up and went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror…'

‘And?'

‘Mmm, well, something was missing and there was something else there.'

‘What do you mean?' Zed was getting frustrated.

‘My tiddler's gone!'

‘Huh?' Zed still didn't understand.

‘I know what Xanax did to me. He fixed it so that after some time…'

KT gulped and then just said the words, ‘I became a girl.'

Zed's jaw dropped open and his rear hand slapped the back of his head in disbelief.

‘You're a girl!'

KT nodded.

‘That explains the tears then!'

KT rolled his eyes. ‘Boys cry as well you know. Jay cries and you probably will.'

‘I've never cried.'

‘Well, I'll make you cry.'

KT rolled his fist as if they were about to practise fighting again.

‘Go on then!' Zed smiled, he saw KT was still his friend even if he was a girl now.

‘Plenty of time for that. I'm still me, I'm just a bit different… a lot different, but still me.'

‘That evil… wait till I get…'

‘Guess I really am a Lab Rat now.'

After the girls left they found Jay and explained what had happened. He was speechless. His sore and swollen nose meant he couldn't say anything understandable, so it was just as well.

When they all got together again in the control deck, KT felt really relieved that his friends seemed to be OK with him being a girl. So relieved he started crying again.

‘You really are a girl!' Zed handed him a tissue and patted him on the shoulder. He wanted KT to know they were still friends.

‘So where's he going to sleep now?' Zed asked.

‘It's up to
her
I think,' said Dee.

‘Do we say him or her?' Zed asked KT.

KT shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well I guess it's her now, but I'm not wearing any dresses.'

‘Good, 'cos I don't have any to lend you,' said Dee. ‘You'd have to go to Emm for that.'

‘No thanks,' said KT. She wasn't ready to be that much of a girl yet.

‘Dwe can dall you datee!' Jay was trying to speak.

They all frowned.

‘Dot Day T, but DaayTeee.'

‘Yes!' Emm got it first. ‘He's saying we should call you Katy not KT.'

‘It sounds the same!' said Zed.

‘Perfect… you gave me the right name Zed, it doesn't matter if I'm a boy or a girl, I'm still called the same. Katy it is… but no dresses!'

It took them all a few days to adjust to Katy… particularly Katy. She kept trying to go to the toilet standing up and then remembering she had to sit down. To begin with she wanted to stay in the boys' room. She was used to sleeping with them; Jay's snoring and Zed's hand waving in the air while he dreamed.

As she adjusted to her new body, she found she thought a bit differently as well. She wasn't quite so obsessed with combat training anymore. She also began to wonder if just striking out for any planet and seeing what ‘adventures' they had was really the best plan. Just a few days ago it felt like exactly what she wanted to do, but now Dee's idea of asking for help seemed a lot less boring than it had before.

Katy raised the idea of going to the planet Libris to find out where their home planets were when they were all together in the control deck.

‘What? I thought we'd agreed not to do that,' Zed was surprised that Katy was thinking about it.

‘I just think we should talk about it some more,' said Katy, ‘perhaps Dee has a point.'

Katy knew Zed would feel he was being betrayed. She could tell he was upset.

‘We made a decision and we've got to stick to it,' Zed stood with his hands on his hips.

‘There's no harm in talking about it,' said Dee.

‘Well I'm not!' Zed stormed away to the boys' room and threw himself down on his bed.

He started doing one-handed push-ups with each of his hands, right to left to rear, going round and round, trying to make himself dizzy. He was confused. Katy was still the same person but she was different, she thought differently.

‘She's… she's,' he repeated to himself trying to find the right word, ‘she's… a real girl.'

He stopped the push-ups, dizzy and tired. It was like he'd lost his best friend and now he couldn't rely on her. He started doing push-ups again, getting angry. Round and round he went, but the more he did, the more annoyed he got. When he had exhausted himself he lay on the ground panting. He was upset and angry, but the thought that annoyed him most was the fact that the girls were probably right.

The zorbats proved space was a dangerous place. They could wander for years before they found their homes, if they didn't get killed before then. Just as he thought that, Katy turned up.

‘Oh it's you… traitor, come to get your things and move into the girls' room have you?'

Katy had thought it would be easier if she did sleep with the girls now, but that wasn't the reason she was there.

‘I'm still your friend,' she said.

Zed shrugged his shoulders.

‘It's not the same.'

‘I know. It's hard for me too. I've got a whole new body. I keep surprising myself and thinking I look really weird and then other times I'm OK with it and then I wish I was a boy again and then…'

Katy started crying.

Zed felt bad. However hard it was for him, it must have been ten times worse for Katy.

He put his arm around her.

‘You'll be OK, we're still friends.'

‘I'm sorry, I can't help it. I think it's part of the change. Dee reckons I'll settle down and stop crying so much. She and Emm don't cry this much. What's wrong with me?'

Zed didn't have a hankie so he pulled out a corner of the sheet from his bed so Katy could wipe her eyes.

‘See,' Katy smiled at him, ‘we couldn't do this before.'

‘Too right!'

‘But I think it's best if I do move into the girls' room, you know, it's sort of, more comfortable.'

‘Great, leave me with the deafening nose every night.'

Katy laughed. ‘And leave your arm thrashing around in the air.'

They sat still for a moment.

‘About Libris…' Zed started to speak.

‘We don't have to talk about that now.'

‘It's a good idea. You're right, Dee's right. We should go to the planet Libris.'