The Incredible Space Raiders from Space! (11 page)

He had to save Martin.

Jonah perched himself on all fours and started crawling through the air duct.

He thought back to Alex's map. The Haunted Passage and Squirrel Street were on the bottommost level of the Squirrel. There were five levels in all, with the top one being Captain White Shark and his crew's realm. That's where he needed to go.

Jonah looked down in disgust as the dust billowed around his hands. It was thick and dry, and at certain points his fingers hit areas where it was an inch thick. He just wrinkled his nose and kept crawling. Jonah soon reached the spot where he and Martin had overheard the discussion about someone named Grouter and the missing kids. This time he kept going.

But Jonah soon ran into a problem. About twenty feet ahead, the air duct suddenly veered straight upward and disappeared into the shadows. There was no way to climb it. Jonah sighed. He would have to venture back into the Haunted Passage.

Turning around in the cramped air duct proved difficult. He slid his legs up the vertical shaft and then slowly rolled onto his stomach. He felt his cheek brush against the dusty metal floor and tried not to think about what Alex had told him about the dead human skin cells. Clambering onto all fours, Jonah crawled back to the nearest air grate and cautiously popped it open. Even the faint scraping noise of detaching metal echoed through
the ominous corridor. He took a quick look both ways, put the grate down, and climbed out.

The Haunted Passage looked much the same as it did farther down the ship. The walls were still gray and rusted and lined with doors, the floor was still worn down and stained with grease, and the ceiling panels still flickered with a pale, eerie light. But the groaning, moaning sounds of the
Squirrel
's engines were far louder, and Jonah knew he must be getting close to the Unknown Zone: the home of the Shrieker.

His stomach did another little flop.

Jonah spotted more grates up ahead. While he was out here, he figured he might as well investigate.

He slowly walked down the Haunted Passage, inspecting the walls and doors and listening very carefully for shrieks and manic laughter. The doors were all very similar. Most were gray, while a few were red and one was even yellow. He did notice with interest and a bit of alarm that a few of them had scratches in the metal. Not as long or deep as the blue door, but definitely scratches. The creatures had been here, too.

He was just about to start looking for another grate when he noticed one gray door with a very small difference: a little symbol carved into the bottom corner. It said
SP.

He knelt down to have a closer look. This symbol had been carved with a knife or tool; it hadn't chewed into
the metal like the claw marks. A human had put the symbol here.

Jonah stood up and tried the door, expecting it to be locked. To his surprise, it slid right open, not even catching and straining like Jonah's door in Sector Three.

This one had been oiled.

A few light panels flickered on as he opened the door, and Jonah quickly stepped inside and shut the door. He didn't want any crew members stumbling upon him. Once it was firmly shut, he turned around and had a good look at the room.

It was a cafeteria with tables and chairs and a counter and a sink, but it was also completely littered with toys. Some sort of playhouse stood in the corner, a little pink house with white shutters and fake grass and plants bordering the doorway. Someone had even drawn a smiling yellow sun on the wall behind the house—barely visible against the dull gray metal—and white fluffy clouds around it. Jonah saw stuffed animals and dolls scattered on the floor and sitting up on the tables with teacups and plates of plastic food. But that wasn't all.

Empty glasses were lined up on the counter beside the sink, along with a few stacks of food bars. A garbage bin sat on the floor, full of silver wrappers. On one of the cupboards, someone had written
home sweet home
in a pink marker.

Then it hit him.

SP. The space princess. This used to be her playroom.

Jonah went to the counter to get himself a food bar and a glass of water. He figured now might be a good time for a break, since he was about to try to rescue captured Space Raiders from an evil captain and his crew and all. So he sat down, pulled his journal out of his pocket, and started writing.

Dear Mom and Dad and Mara,

I am currently trapped in the Haunted Passage, and my companion was just abducted by an evil space crew member. I have now decided to go rescue him and the rest of the captured Space Raiders. You're probably thinking that Jonah the baby would never do these things, but I seem to be more heroic in space. Probably because I have no choice. This place is full of evil things, and there's no time to be cowardly.

I think I had too much space sadness to ask this before, but did you know they were taking me? Did they ask you? Did you want to get rid of me? I hope you didn't, though the more time I spend in space, the more I realize how bad it was that I left my clothes on the floor and always forgot to take out the garbage and called Mara ugly.

And now I just thought of something. If you did want to give me up, then I am an orphan, and that's why the Space Raiders chose me. Maybe I belong here after all. Now I'm getting space sadness again.

Jonah sat back for a moment, staring down at the page. This was a disturbing thought. But he decided he couldn't end on a bad note. It wasn't very formal.

Never mind. I will just assume you didn't know and are sad, since if you are reading this letter I've probably been eaten and I'll never know anyway. And so I just wanted to say I love you and I'm sorry for the bad things I did and I know I am very lucky. You were a very good family.

I just wasn't always a very good boy.

Sincerely,

Jonah

Jonah closed the journal and took a last bite of his food bar. He grimaced.

He thought about what he'd written. His parents couldn't have given him up, could they? His mother had kissed him on the forehead the very morning Jonah was
abducted, right before she went to work. Unless it was a good-bye kiss. Did she usually kiss his forehead? Yes, but she had also stroked his hair. Was she saying good-bye before they took him? It was impossible to be sure.

He tried to think back to the last time he'd seen his father.

His father was sitting on the couch, reading something on his tablet. He was wearing his brown housecoat and matching slippers, and his thinning salt-and-pepper hair was still slicked back from work. Jonah was watching the projector—he remembered that. But what were his father's last words to him? Jonah's eyes widened.

“Turn that down,” his father had said, not even lifting his eyes from the tablet.

Those were his last words to Jonah. Had he annoyed his father so much that he gave him up? Why hadn't he just turned it down without being asked? He knew his father didn't like it that loud. Jonah started putting the pieces together. He'd annoyed his father, and after he'd gone to bed, his father had convinced his mother to give him up. She had argued, maybe, but ultimately agreed and then kissed him good-bye, knowing full well that the Incredible Space Raiders would snatch him up that very afternoon. It was a stretch, but yet here he was, sitting on a spaceship.

He was busy remembering all the other bad things he'd done when he noticed the empty glass sitting beside
him on the table. A silver wrapper from a food bar lay beside it, surrounded by crumbs.

But much more important, there was also a little spill of water under the glass.

Jonah frowned. The air was dry and musty and cool, but water would still evaporate over time. He slowly walked over and touched the spilled water.

It was still cold.

Which meant the glass had been filled recently. Maybe that very day.

He glanced back at the door, suddenly alarmed. He'd assumed that journal was old and that the space princess and her father and Mr. Monkey had been trapped in the room with the blue door, hiding from those creatures, many, many years ago.

But now that he thought about it, he didn't know that. The space princess could still be on board. And that meant she could come back at any moment.

Jonah quickly filled a glass of water and chugged it down. Then he stuffed a few more food bars into the pockets of his uniform and reluctantly headed for the door. It would have been nice to spend a few hours in Home Sweet Home. It had stuffed toy frogs and teacups. But things were never easy on the
Fantastic Flying Squirrel.

Jonah slowly slid the door open and risked a quick peek into the hallway. It was empty, so he stepped out,
shut the door, and continued down the Haunted Passage. He was very confused. The space princess had to be a little girl, judging by the toys.

How was she avoiding the Shrieker? Was she a crew member's daughter?

He was still thinking about that when he came across something very, very disturbing. Jonah stopped midstep, his eyes widening. He'd found another open door.

Sort of.

It was a plain gray door, or used to be. The same kind that led into Jonah's bedroom back in Sector Three. In fact, there was a bedroom behind this one too. But it was the door that had Jonah trembling.

There were claw marks, but only on the few sections that were left. The rest had literally been torn open. The metal was stretched and torn and jagged, and a huge hole had been ripped in the middle where something large could squeeze its way inside.

Whatever it was—the Shrieker or the EETs—could rip doors open.

The blue door must have been reinforced, which made sense if they kept guns in there. Normal doors—the kind on every Space Raider's bedroom—didn't stand a chance.

He just hoped no one was in there at the time.

Jonah decided he was ready to head back into the air ducts. There were fewer signs of monsters in there.
He climbed into the nearest grate and saw that it led to a main supply duct that ran alongside the Haunted Passage, just like farther down the hall.

It was just as dusty and dark, too.

Sighing, Jonah started crawling down the duct, his fingers sliding on the dust. It occurred to him that if the space princess was still on the ship and still a kid playing with dolls, then it couldn't have been that long ago that the creatures attacked. Which meant they might very well still be on the ship.

He was definitely staying out of the Haunted Passage.

Jonah was still thinking about the claw marks as he turned left into the main duct. He stopped. There, crawling right toward him, was a girl.

She saw him and came to an abrupt halt. “Uh-oh,” she said.

B
EFORE JONAH COULD SAY ANYTHING,
the girl started backing down the air duct with surprising speed.

“Hey!” Jonah said. “Wait!”

She ignored him.

Jonah started crawling after her. “Wait!”

He chased her down the air duct, slowly closing in. He should have caught up quickly, considering she was moving backward, but she was clearly an experienced air-duct adventurer. She kept shooting annoyed glances at him as he called out for her.

The chase continued for another minute, until she finally backed past a supply duct and then crawled headfirst toward the Haunted Passage. Jonah picked up his pace. If she got out of the air duct and ran, he would never catch her.

“This is really unnecessary!” he called, pumping his arms and legs.

He turned down the supply duct and saw that she was almost at the grate. From this angle he noticed she
was wearing blue jeans and dirty sneakers. She clearly wasn't a Space Raider. The girl spared another annoyed look back at him. Jonah thought she might just push the grate off and run, but she was too careful. She was forced to pause for a moment, listening for footsteps and taking a peak out into the Haunted Passage.

She waited just a second too long.

Just as she was removing the grate and crawling out, Jonah took a desperate lunge and grabbed on to her right ankle. It wasn't very polite, but he was desperate. She tried to kick him off, but he held on tight, even as her left foot kicked him in the forehead.

“Ow,” Jonah said. “Can you just wait a second? I need advice. I need to save the other Space Raiders.”

The girl stopped kicking and looked back. “You're going to the top level?” she asked. She had a fairly thick British accent.

“That's the plan,” Jonah said. “If I let go, will you kick me?”

She seemed to consider this. “I guess not.”

Jonah tentatively let go, half expecting her to kick him in the head and run. Thankfully, she just slowly climbed to her feet and stood back, letting him crawl out of the air duct and stand up. She was a few inches taller than he was and probably a couple of years older. He saw now that she was wearing a purple woolen sweater over her ripped blue jeans. Both were stained. Even though her
black hair was filthy and clumped together, it fell to her shoulders and framed delicate cheekbones and brown eyes. Her skin was the same light brown as Martin's. She looked almost regal—in a dirty, stuck on an old, musty ship kind of way.

It suddenly clicked into place.

“You must be the space princess,” Jonah said, almost in awe.

She looked at him for a moment and then laughed. “The space princess? What have you been eating, dimwit?” She didn't really speak like a princess. “You must be Prince Rat Boy, crawling through the ship to save me.”

“Uh,” Jonah said, confused. “No.”

“Sally Malik,” she said, extending her hand. “Fellow space rat.”

Jonah tentatively shook her hand. She had a very strong grip, and he winced a little. “Jonah the Now . . . Jonah Hillcrest. What are you doing on this ship?”

She looked down the Haunted Passage. “This isn't the best spot. Follow me.”

Without waiting for him to agree, Sally Malik took off down the hallway, moving with light, almost silent footsteps. Jonah felt clunky and awkward behind her. They must have been close to the engine by now, as the moaning noise was even louder and there was a slight vibration in the floor. Jonah listened carefully for shrieking.