That was when the Galactic Union of Nasty Killer Aliens (GUNK) was born. Its mission: to find human life and drain its snot. Rockets were sent to the four corners of the universe, each carrying representatives from the major alien races. Three of those rockets were never heard from again. But one of them landed on a planet quite simply full of humans.

This one.

CHAPTER ONE

It started like any other Saturday, but for Jack Brady this particular weekend was the beginning of an adventure he would never forget.

Little realising that he was destined for greatness, Jack woke up, went to the loo, washed his face and hands and cleaned his teeth. Jack was a very clean nine-year-old boy.

He was also very clever. A genius, in fact. Only no one else seemed to have noticed.

At school he got into trouble for drawing sketches of his latest inventions all over his exercise books. At home Mum just wanted him to keep his room tidy. In his heart, however, Jack knew that it was just a matter of time before his genius was recognised.

He slipped on his glasses and took a look at the ‘TO-DO LIST’ pinned on his notice board.

COMPLETE CANINE SCUBA DEVICE.
DRAW UP BLUEPRINTS FOR AUTOMATIC TOAST BUTTERER.
SOLVE WORLD ENERGY PROBLEMLIF TIME BFFORE TEA).

He shook his head in annoyance. He
never
got round to the last item on his list. There just weren’t enough hours in the day!

Oscar thought Jack was a genius. Oscar was Jack’s best friend. He was taller than Jack, braver than Jack and better-looking than Jack but he wasn’t
smarter
than Jack. In fact sometimes Jack wondered if Oscar was actually a bit dim. He was certainly courageous though – he was always first to volunteer to be a crash-test dummy for Jack’s latest invention.

Thinking of Oscar made Jack frown and check his watch. It was Saturday morning. Eight o’clock. Why hadn’t Oscar come round? Most kids, after a long, boring week at school would choose to lie in on Saturday morning. But not Oscar. Oscar didn’t like to waste a single
minute
of the weekend.

Normally he was up before Jack, planning some kind of adventure. So where was he?

Oscar lived in the house that backed onto Jack’s garden. They shared a den – a tree house – perched in the branches of the tree at the bottom of Oscar’s garden. From Jack’s bedroom he could see into Oscar’s house.

Jack opened his bedroom window.

THWACK!

“Ouch!” exclaimed Jack.

“Sorry!” came an apologetic voice from the tree-house opposite.

Whatever Oscar had thrown at him had lodged in Jack’s unruly mop of hair. He reached up to see what it was. It was small, ovoid and very hard.

“Why are you throwing acorns at me?” he demanded.

“Because I couldn’t find any pebbles,” said Oscar, as if the answer was obvious. “Come on” he continued, “climb down the drainpipe and let’s get started.”

Jack leaned out of the window and cast a suspicious glance at the drainpipe. “Since when do I climb down drainpipes?” he asked.

“Got to be a first time for everything,” grinned Oscar.
“I’d do
it.”

Yes,
thought Jack,
but you’d stick your head in the oven to see if the gas was still on.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he promised, and closed the window.

Having taken the safer option – the stairs -he hurried through the kitchen and out into the garden, squeezed through the gap in the hedge that separated the two plots and climbed up the wooden ladder that was fixed to the trunk of the tree.

The tree house the boys shared was pretty impressive. Oscar’s dad had won it in a competition in the local paper. It was actually a small shed that had been lifted into place by a crane and secured safely to the tree. It had a little porch area at the front, a pair of windows and room for Jack’s workbench where most of his brilliant ideas
took shape. It was, without doubt, the coolest tree house in town.

Jack found Oscar lying on a beanbag, clutching a skateboard to his chest. Oscar sighed loudly and theatrically as Jack, slightly breathless from the climb, came into the tree house.

“Good afternoon,” he sighed.

“Hilarious,” said Jack.

Oscar was always like this – everything had to happen
right now.
Jack felt that most things that were worth doing needed proper planning and preparation. But for Oscar if it wasn’t instant it wasn’t interesting.

“What’s the plan then?” asked Jack, sitting down in the other beanbag.

“Mum got me this,” said Oscar, holding up the skateboard. “But it doesn’t go fast enough.” He sat up with a wild look in his eyes. “So I
thought…you could maybe fit it with some rockets. Or, you know, something…”

Jack stared. “You want me to put
rockets
on your skateboard? Why? So you can do an ollie into orbit?”

Oscar stopped to consider this – for half a second. “Could you?” he asked.

“No,” said Jack firmly. “Hurtling at high speed into brick walls might be your idea of fun, but I prefer to spend my time working on my gadgets.”

He got up and went over to his workbench, where a number of projects were underway. He picked up a dog-shaped rubber suit which had twin silver tubes running down its back. “See this,” he announced proudly, “it’s a scuba kit for a dog. Now man’s best friend
doesn’t have to sit by and wait when you go for a scuba dive.”

“You don’t have a dog,” Oscar pointed out.

“Well, no,” agreed Jack, “but I’d like to.”

“And you don’t scuba dive,” continued Oscar.

“Er…no. But—”

“You’d like to?”

Jack shot Oscar a dirty look. “Not really,” he confessed. “It looks a bit dangerous.”

Oscar sighed again. If it wasn’t a bit dangerous then what was the point?

“What else have you got then? There must be something we can have fun with.”

“There’s the heli-frisbee,” offered Jack. “I was thinking that it’s really annoying that I can’t ever throw a Frisbee properly so I designed a Frisbee that even I can use.”

Jack showed his friend his prototype: it was a normal Frisbee, but attached to the
middle of the disc was a pair of model helicopter blades.

“It’s remote-controlled,” he explained.

Oscar jumped to his feet. “Brilliant. Let’s go to the park. You can fix up my skateboard and then we can test drive your remote-control Frisbee. OK?”

Jack nodded and then looked concerned as Oscar started to climb out of the window.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Oscar turned and grinned. “You’re not the only one who can come up with brilliant ideas you know. I thought we should have an emergency exit, so I fixed up this zip line.” Now Oscar could see there was a cable running from the tree house to Oscar’s house. Jack watched in fascination as Oscar clipped a karabiner to the line, grabbed the rope
running through it and slid off down the zip wire.

Jack looked at where the zip wire was connected and made a rapid mental calculation. He started to call out a warning but it was too late.

SPLAT! Oscar slammed into the side of his house and dropped into the muddy flowerbed below.

“Just a few technical hitches to iron out” Oscar croaked weakly, before falling back into the squelchy mud.

CHAPTER TWO

Jack made some final adjustments to the makeshift ramp and stood up, brushing his hands together with satisfaction. He’d found a couple of bits of wood and some bricks in a skip on the way and had put them together to form a jump at the bottom of the largest slope in the park.

Jack looked up at the top of the hill where Oscar was waiting. Oscar waved his hand, enthusiastically.

This isn’t going to go well,
thought Jack.

He had insisted that Oscar put on some protective gear. Oscar, of course, didn’t have any. So Jack had produced some of his own design that he had been working on. Adapted from swimming floats, the knee and elbow protectors were inflatable and as Oscar stood at the top of the hill, wearing the gear and the foam-lined strap-on yellow hard-hat that Jack had also made, he looked like a badly-dressed superhero from an old TV programme.

At Oscar’s feet was the now-rocket-powered skateboard. Before they had left home Jack had found two old lemonade bottles in one of his ‘Useful Materials’ boxes and these were now firmly taped to the sides of the skateboard. Fixed to the centre of the board was an old foot pump with twin rubber
pipes connecting it to both fuel tanks.

“Pump!” shouted Jack, after checking that the path at the bottom of the hill was clear of dog-walkers and other park users.

Oscar frantically pumped with his right foot, rapidly filling the bottles with air. The bottles began to swell, the plastic straining. Oscar kept pumping. Something would have to give. If Jack had made a mistake in his calculations the plastic would rupture and Oscar would end up – not for the first time -on his bottom. If Jack was
right,
the corks he had wedged into the bottle tops would be expelled like bullets from a gun, propelling the skateboard – and Oscar – forward at great speed.

POP!
The two corks blew at exactly the same moment and Oscar’s jet-powered skateboard launched on its maiden voyage.

Oscar came hurtling down the hill with his
arms outstretched to balance. The launch velocity had given him a much faster than usual start and now, as the board careered down the path, it picked up even more speed.

Oscar let out a cry that could have been excitement or fear (or possibly both). Moving at maximum speed, he hit the ramp.

Thrown violently into the air, he threw his arms back behind him, like the ski-jumpers he had seen on the Winter Olympics. Jack watched with a mixture of awe and pride as, for a long glorious moment, Oscar flew through the air.
It worked!
he thought.

But then he had another thought.
What about landing?

At that moment, gravity woke up and remembered about Oscar. Jack had to cover his eyes as his friend returned rapidly to earth. Luckily, he landed in a bush, which absorbed the impact like one of the gym mats at school.

Unluckily, it was a rose bush.

“Ow!” said Oscar, picking thorns out of his bum. And then, more enthusiastically, “Wow! How cool was that?”

“Why don’t you ever learn?” asked Jack, helping Oscar disentangle himself from the
hedge. “You always crash when you do stuff like this”

Oscar grinned. “Yeah but the bit just before the crashes – that’s awesome!” He dusted himself down and noticed that one of the inflatable arm bands had burst on impact. “And your safety gear was brilliant.”

Stripping off Jack’s now deflated limb protectors – and the helmet – Oscar stowed them all in his bag and turned to Jack.

“How about that Frisbee thing now?”

At the very moment that Oscar was climbing out of the bush, a grey squirrel appeared on the path nearby. Neither of the boys saw it. If they
had
seen it they may have noted that it was acting rather oddly. Rather than
scurrying across the path between trees like normal squirrels it was sitting perfectly still and looking around like an automated security camera scanning a car park. There was a very good reason for this – as anyone who looked closely at the squirrel’s eyes would know. Because they
were
cameras.

There was a mechanical hum as the mysterious robot squirrel moved forwards to get a better view. Then it scanned the park and zoomed in on the boys as they began to play with the remote-control toy.

Nearby, a man watched carefully as the images from the Squirrel-Cam were fed back to his monitor. Could these boys be the ones
he was looking for? They had courage, certainly, and ingenuity too. Both qualities the Watcher needed in any recruit. He sent a signal to the squirrel. Focus on the two boys. Follow them…

The heli-frisbee proved to be a great success. It was flying like a dream. The boys each took turns with the remote control and practised swooping it around, taking it low to the ground and then back up into the sky again. At one point when Oscar was at the controls it almost took the head off a rather dense squirrel that seemed mesmerised by the boys’ activity. The heli-frisbee flew right at the poor creature, but all it did was stand there as still as a statue, looking at the device.

At the very last moment Jack managed to push the creature out
of the way, saving it from decapitation.

Interesting,
thought the Watcher from his secret hiding place.
Very interesting.

“No, no, no” shouted Jack suddenly.

Oscar looked over at him, alarmed. “What’s up?” he asked.

“The heli-frisbee” answered Jack.

“Well, duh, of course it is!”

“No, I mean it’s
too far
up!” explained Jack. “If it gets too high in the sky it’ll go out of range and…”

Oscar frowned, then frantically jigged the controls. “It’s not responding!”

Jack sighed. “And we won’t be able to control it”

He took the controls and had a go but it was no use. The boys watched helplessly as the heli-frisbee flew off over the bush – which still bore an Oscar-shaped imprint from his recent impact.

“Wait here with the other stuffy,” Jack shouted and bolted off.

Following the heli-frisbee, Jack ran along the fence until he found a gap leading into the ornamental gardens. Jack continued his pursuit, taking care to stick to the paths and not to damage any of the flowers. He didn’t
notice a squirrel taking a more direct route through the flowerbeds behind him.

The heli-frisbee was beginning to lose height – it only just managed to clear the fence on the other side of the garden. Jack burst through another gap in the fence and stopped dead. A group of older kids, three or four of them, were bunched together in front of him. They had their backs to him. Something about the way they were standing troubled Jack.
What are they looking at? he
wondered. Then one of them moved and Jack could see the object of their attention.

It was a girl of about Jack’s age. Jack didn’t know much about girls; as a rule he tried not to have much to do with them. They confused him with their talk about things he had little interest in – boy bands, fashion, toy ponies – and this one looked like any other that he had come across. She had long black
hair, pulled back in a pony tail, brown skin and bright intelligent blue eyes. She was also wearing a bright pink ballet dress thing…What was it called? A tutu? It was this distinctive and unusual fashion choice that had attracted the older kids’ attention.

“Nice dress,” said one of the older kids. Now Jack recognised her. It was Jess, a heavily-built girl from the nearby estate. When Jack and Oscar had started at primary school she had been in Year Six and everyone knew that she was a horrible bully. Jack realised that he was looking at the back of Jess’s latest gang.

“Give us a twirl then,” said Jess and the other kids laughed, and not in a nice way. “How about showing us some ballet?” Jess pronounced the word in the wrong way, sounding the final “t” to rhyme with jet.

The dark-haired girl just looked at them – her face set.—

“I didn’t
choose
this dress” she replied bravely. “Ballet’s rubbish.”

Jessica laughed. “In that case maybe we’d better put you in the bin.”

Jack saw that there was a large rubbish bin further along the path. He didn’t remember ever seeing it before. It was bigger than the usual park bins. The gang started milling around the tutu girl, pushing her towards the new bin.

“Hey, leave her alone!” said a boy’s voice. In fact, Jack was surprised and a little worried to realise that it was
his
voice!

Jessica turned to look at him and Jack swallowed hard. Jess was even bigger -and scarier – than she’d been back in Year Six.

“Or what?” she demanded. Jess took a few steps towards Jack. Suddenly he heard a familiar buzzing sound. The heli-frisbee was spiralling downwards. WHACK!

It barrelled into the back of Jess’s head and she fell forwards, squealing in shock. The older kids laughed at the very girlish sound that the usually tough Jess had just made.

Jack held up the remote control and pressed a button, hoping he was now in range. The heli-frisbee responded and flew up into the air again.

“You want some more?” he asked. The heli-frisbee had hit Jess by pure accident, but he figured it wouldn’t be smart to let the bully know that.

Jess got to her feet.
“\
don’t play with kids’ toys,” she sneered at him, then started to
walk off. “Come on” she ordered her gang, who seemed a little less in awe of her now. But slowly, they followed her. As the older kids wandered off, Jack was left alone with the tutu-wearing girl.

“Well, aren’t you the hero?” she said sarcastically. “I could have taken them, you know.”

Jack stared at her, not sure what to say. Then to his relief Oscar appeared, clutching his rocket-powered skateboard.

“Hey – where’s the heli-frisbee?” he asked.

Moments later his question was answered as the remote-controlled flying machine flew into his back and knocked him to the ground.

The girl burst out laughing, and turned to Jack. “Sorry about that’/ she said. “I
am
grateful, really. It’s just that I can handle myself. My name’s Ruby, by the way.”

Jack politely introduced himself and Oscar,
who was grumpily getting to his feet.

“Nice to meet you” said Ruby, “now, any chance I can have a go on that skateboard?”

BOOK: The Verruca Bazooka

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