Beetle Blast (4 page)

“
I
don't like me much!” gasped Danny. He got his back legs going and powered away from his cloud of stinky wet fart. “But Josh—what about the crocodile? You said we didn't have any predators!”

“You donkey!” laughed Josh. “That was a newt!”

“But…”

“You could eat
him
if you really wanted to.”

“But … why do we need the killer farts if we don't have predators?”

“Well, we haven't got any predators in
here
,” said Josh. He landed on a large rock and hung onto it with his rather sticky front feet. “But we have up
there
.” He looked up through the gloopy skin of the pond's surface. It broke into waves and widening rings every so often and made booming, singing, pinging noises as creatures moved around on it or dived through it. “Herons mostly. They'll try to get us.”

“OK—that's one predator too many!” Danny was still shaking after the crocodile scare. “We've got to get somewhere safe!”

“We're probably safer here than anywhere else,” said Josh. “We can just wait here until the S.W.I.T.C.H. wears off. Then we'll splash up out of the water when we turn back into boys.”

“Haven't you forgotten something?” asked Danny. “Ugh!” He jumped as two small but very ugly wiggly brown things swam past. They stared at him with big dull eyes and grimaced with sharp spiky teeth.

“Watchoo lookin' at?” one of them said and then vanished under some boggy leafy stuff.

“Yeah?” said the other as it followed.

“Dragonfly nymphs,” explained Josh. “Don't mind them. They've got issues. They're going to be gorgeous one day, but for now, they've got faces like a smashed toilet.”

“Ri-ight,” said Danny. “But not predators, eh?”

“Nah—we could take 'em if we wanted. Although they'd put up a fight,” said Josh, happily. It was a wonderful experience to be at the top of the food chain for a change.

“Anyway,” went on Danny, clinging to the rock alongside Josh. “I said, aren't you forgetting something?”

“What?” said Josh. He eyed a small winged creature struggling on the pond surface. He felt a bit hungry.

“Well … let me see … Biff, Ollie, and Milo—the pocket freaks. And
lovely
Poppy with her fascinating tub of ants' eggs? What are
they
going to make of you and me suddenly shooting up out of the water? Huh? We'll get banned from Wild Things—definitely!”

Josh ran his front leg across his mouthparts and managed to crease his beetle face into a worried frown. “It is going to be hard to explain,” he agreed. “But they've probably nearly finished the pond dipping now. They'll go back inside soon to look at what they've got.”

Danny gazed up through the skin of the pond surface. He saw vague shapes and colors moving around. It wasn't unpleasant, sitting here in the pond. OK, the inhabitants weren't too pretty. But at least they weren't trying to snack on him.

“Ooh—ooh! Come and see this!” said Josh. He pushed off the rock and scudded toward some green and brown stems. They snaked up through the water and connected with big, round, flat green and pink platforms on the surface. Lily pads, Danny figured out. Among the stems were some clumps of fine drifting weeds. There was a large silvery bubble lodged in one of these drifts.

“Come on,” called Josh, and half of him vanished inside the bubble. Danny hurried after him. Danny noticed another one of those weird nymphs coming at them from under a stick.

PLOLLOP!
With great surprise Danny found himself looking into a little dry chamber. It was like a diving bell with a green stick running up through it. Josh was gazing around it, only his head and two front legs poking into the bubble. It wasn't big enough for them to get right into it.

“What is it?” breathed Danny. His voice sounded more normal without all the water pressing in on them.

“It's someone's home,” whispered Josh. He noticed some little silky threads wound around the green stick and a small bundle, wrapped tightly in white strands, among them. He wondered whether he should tell Danny what it was. Danny would probably freak out.

“
Whose
home?” asked Danny. But he didn't need to ask. The homeowner was getting back from work. A long, fine brown leg pierced the wall of the air pocket, followed by another. And another.

“Oh … I don't like this,” gulped Danny. The elegant shape of the legs—four of them now—and the fine hairs running along them looked horribly familiar.

All of a sudden, with a “
thwip
,” four more legs, a brown body, and several eyes arrived too. The face around the eyes looked none too pleased to see them there.

“
SPIDER!!!
” shrieked Danny, trying to hide behind Josh. He knew he shouldn't be afraid anymore. After all, he had
been
a spider. He knew they were amazing creatures. It was just hard to forget that he'd once nearly had his insides slurped out like soup from a thermos by one of these creatures while he was a bluebottle trapped in a web.

The spider stared at them, and they stared back.

“It's OK,” whispered Josh. “She can't get us. We can eat
her
!”

The spider reared up with her front legs and said, “Well, I call that
rude
!”

“Oh,” Josh looked very surprised. His feelers shot up like astonished eyebrows. “Sorry. I didn't think you could understand us. The last spider we met didn't speak English …”

“Well—I can!” huffed the spider, her mouthparts flipping about like twitchy fingers. “And if you
think
you can eat me, just try it!” “Nah … not really very hungry, thanks,” said Josh. He edged backward out of the air pocket.

Danny continued to stare, appalled, at the spider. She glared back at him angrily. Then he was dragged suddenly out of her home by his rear end. He was delivered back into the water world by his brother. “SPIDERS!” he yelled at Josh. “You didn't tell me there were spiders—down
here
!”

“Sorry,” said Josh. “Water spiders. They're cool, though, aren't they? I love that little air pod. Brilliant! This is the best thing we've been!”

Danny shuddered. But scooting powerfully through the water was pretty cool. He began to relax and enjoy himself. “Anything else good about us?” he asked.

“We-ell,” said Josh. “There's something you should probably know. It's happened before. We were fine, so don't freak out.”

“What?” demanded Danny, his antennae twitching nervously.

“We're girls again.”

“NO! No—I refuse to be a girl again!”

“It's no big deal,” said Josh, scooting on through the golden-green underwater glade. “When you were an ant girl, you'd never have known if I hadn't told you.”

“Apart from all the giggling,” grunted Danny.

“Well … yeah, there was the giggling,” grinned Josh.

“How do you know we're girls?” demanded Danny.

“It's our stripes,” explained Josh. “You don't get 'em on boy great diving beetles. Just the girls. Let it go, Danny.”

Danny shuddered again. And this time the water shuddered around him. Then it shuddered again. A very BIG shudder.

Josh and Danny spun about and stared at each other. “What's that?” whispered Josh, sounding scared for the first time.

Suddenly there was an ear-splitting crash. The water churned about wildly, sending them spinning away from each other. Dancing fragments of light, waterweed, and tiny see-through creatures flew in all directions. Danny felt himself being thrown around uncontrollably.

He shut his eyes, hoping he was returning to being a boy. And that nobody would see. But when at last the storm around him calmed down, he realized he was still a great diving beetle.

Light streamed all around him in a very odd way. It was coming from above—and around—and underneath. He tried to swim through it and find Josh but—CRACK. His head whacked into a solid force field that sent him spinning back again. What? Danny tried again. CRACK! And then he understood why it was so bright. And why he couldn't travel for even three pushes of his legs before being smacked in the face.

He was in a jar.

He had been pond dipped.

Josh lay on his back, waving his legs in the air. For a few seconds he thought he must have morphed back into being a boy. He waited for everyone to start shouting at him for falling in the pond.

But after a few seconds he opened his eyes and realized he was still a beetle. A beetle on its back. On the bank of the pond. A flash of white and gray zoomed across the blue sky. A heron? Josh let off a killer fart and flipped himself over onto his front. He scurried under the shelter of a rocky outcrop. He gasped with shock (and disgust—wow—that fart was
awful
!). Now, he thought, as he surveyed the nearby water and the clumps of bog weed,
where
was Danny?

“Oooooh!” came a familiar voice. “Oooh, Scratch, look! Someone's left chocolate cake! Look! Oh, it's our lucky day!”