Beetle Blast (5 page)

Josh peered around the edge of the rock. He saw two brown rats sniffing at something in the undergrowth, not far from the picnic bench, which now rose up like a huge wooden monolith. “WAIT! STOP!” yelled Josh, scurrying toward the rats. “DON'T EAT THAT!”

The rats paused and looked over toward him. “What's
that
about?” murmured one of them.

“Oh, I expect he wants a bit for himself. Well, tough luck!” said the other one, turning back to the crumbly brown treat.

“SCRATCH! SNIFF! STOP!” bellowed Josh. All of a sudden he found himself up in the air. His wings had shot out of their cases. He was flying, low to the ground, straight for the rats. He had to save them from being S.W.I.T.C.H.ed. After all, they'd saved him and Danny from death quite a few times!

“Josh? Is that you?” asked Sniff, her delicate spray of whiskers twitching as she peered at the beetle flying toward her. “Oh my! What has she changed you into this time?” Scratch and Sniff knew all about Petty and her S.W.I.T.C.H. spray. They had spent time in her lab, listening in as she talked loudly to herself.

“Yes—yes it is me,” said Josh, landing at their feet. “And you
mustn't
eat that cake! Petty's put S.W.I.T.C.H. pellets in it! That's how I ended up like this.”

“Oh, you poor love!” clucked Sniff. “She just keeps getting you, doesn't she?”

Josh sighed. “Well, she doesn't
deliberately
try to get us. It just seems to keep happening!”

Sniff gave her husband a
look
. He shrugged back at her. “Whatever you say, dear,” she said to Josh. Then she gazed sadly at the cake. Sniff
loved
chocolate cake. Danny or Josh occasionally put some under the shed in their back garden, where Scratch and Sniff lived. Sometimes the rats would come out to eat it with them. When they were in boy form, Danny and Josh couldn't understand what the rats said. But the happy waves of thanks worked well enough.

“Such a shame,” sighed Sniff, turning her back firmly on the contaminated cake. “But where's your brother?”

“That's just it,” said Josh. He looked around anxiously. “I don't know. He was in the pond with me. Then there was a big sort of waterquake, and now he's gone.”

“Well—that's what caused your waterquake,” said Scratch. He pointed his brown furry paw at the looming shapes that moved around the pond. “Your human friends were splashing about in the water with jars.”

Josh gulped. “Oh. Oh
no
. They were pond dipping! What if Danny's been pond dipped?”

“Well, he might not have been, love,” said Sniff. She gave a reassuring smile that revealed her long yellow front teeth. “He might just still be in the water, wondering where you are.”

Josh stared at the large green lake. It was going to take a while to search through it. It was probably a better idea to check the pond-dipping jars first. He could fly into the wildlife center building and have a quick look. If Danny wasn't in a jar, he could zip back to the pond and look for him there. Of course, Danny might just turn back into a boy at any time and burst out of the pond anyway. And Josh knew he could change at any time too. He would have to be careful to land as soon as he felt that peculiar feeling that came just before the change back occurred.

Then Josh shivered.

“What's up, mate?” asked Scratch.

“If Danny is in a glass jar…” murmured Josh, … what's going to happen to him when he changes back to being a boy?”

The rats and the beetle stared at one another. They looked as worried as it's possible for two rats and a beetle to look.

“You'd better get going!” advised Scratch. “We'll stay here for a while, in case you need us.”

“OW!” Danny's head smacked against the lid of the jar. He had remembered that he had wings. He had shaken them out of their cases and then tried to fly up out of the captured pond water. But he'd only succeeded in knocking himself silly and splashing back down again.

He noticed something looking at him. It was one of the ugly little dragonfly nymphs. “Watchoo tryin' to do?” it sneered at him. “Yous crazy, huh?”

Danny ignored it and eyed the lid of the jar through the ever-shifting water. The jar itself had been set down now on an orange shelf. Danny knew it must have been put into the learning center. He could just make out the room beyond his curved glass prison.
How
was he going to get out of here?

“Ain't no good tryin' to get out,” said the nymph. “Weez well prizzed up.”

“No—I can fly out!” argued Danny.

“Me too, bruv,” warbled the nymph. “Just gotta wait a while. Deze wings'll be full growed in a while, yep.”

Of course, remembered Danny, Josh had said these weird little creepy-crawlies turned into dragonflies. This one didn't look as if he was going to change anytime soon though. Danny gulped.
He
could change at any moment, he suddenly realized. Back to a full-sized eight-year-old. But what if he changed now? While he was trapped in a glass jar? What would that do to him? What would give? The glass? Or
him
?

Danny stared out into the wavy lines of the room where he'd hung around, bored, only minutes ago. He thought he had, truly, never been more terrified. There was a musical thud on the other side of the glass as the string attached to the jar flopped down across it. It was pink string.

Danny gulped again. He had seen that pink string before. Where … ?

You don't want to know!
whispered a voice in his head.

Then a giant, warped, freckly face suddenly wrapped itself around the jar, grinning and steaming up the glass.

No, no, no
, whimpered the voice in Danny's head.
I said you didn't want to know!

But Danny did know. It was too late to block out the awful truth. Poppy had caught him in her pond-dipping jar. Poppy might very well be taking Danny home …

Petty Potts sat in the sun. Through her binoculars, she watched a pair of rats under the picnic bench. They were definitely sniffing around the S.W.I.T.C.H. pellet-infested cake.

“Come on! Why aren't you eating it?” she whispered. She tapped on the little plastic tub she had brought to collect newly morphed creatures in. She usually had a few seconds to get them while they flapped about in confusion.

Petty huffed to herself. Nothing was going according to plan today. She really hadn't
meant
for Josh and Danny to end up getting S.W.I.T.C.H.ed again. It was all Danny's fault for being such a greedy little so and so. She hoped the brothers were getting along OK as great diving beetles. At least they were a bit less likely to get eaten this time. There wasn't much in a pond that would take on such a ferocious predator.

It was a relief when all the children finished their pond dipping and went back inside. At least when Josh and Danny morphed back into human form again, they wouldn't be in full view of all their friends and the grown-ups who ran the Wild Things group. Petty knew she must sit tight and wait for Josh and Danny to come back. They would need help in explaining what had happened to them. Petty would have to come up with something to convince everyone that they had just fallen into the pond. Maybe while helping her to retrieve her hat or something. Petty took off her hat and threw it out onto the pond, just in case.

She looked at the rats again, while she waited. They were still not eating the cake. Rats, though, were very intelligent. Maybe they'd smelled something and decided not to take the risk. Not that being very intelligent always helped you through life, reflected Petty, with a sigh.
She
was superintelligent. But she had still gotten tricked by her old friend, Victor Crouch, when they worked together in the government's top secret underground labs.

If Victor hadn't stolen her work and burnt out her memory so he could not be caught, she wouldn't be sitting here now, worrying about Josh and Danny. She would have carried on with developing the REPTOSWITCH spray, as well as the BUGSWITCH spray. She would be the most famous scientist in the world.

“Still—
Victor
isn't the most famous scientist in the world either, is he?” muttered Petty to herself, with a smile. “No, Victor! You messed up! What you didn't know was that I always suspected someone would try to steal my work. So I faked all my paper codes and put the
real
codes into my cubes. My wonderful cubes!”

But Petty frowned now. She had all the BUGSWITCH cubes, and she could make her sprays using the code hidden inside them. But the REPTOSWITCH code was not yet complete. She had only five cubes, each with a beautiful hologram of a reptile twinkling in its glass center. Josh and Danny had not yet found the sixth. With parts of her memory burnt out, Petty just could not remember where she'd hidden the cubes. Josh and Danny had managed to find most of them. But without the last one, she would never be able to make any REPTOSWITCH spray.

“Oooooh!” Petty slapped her forehead. “Why did you have to get your memory burnt out, you fool?” she hissed at herself.

A man standing in the bush behind her scratched his chin with a pointed black fingernail. He grinned to himself before moving silently back to the pond dippers in the learning room. Josh flew into the wildlife center learning room, aghast at the amount of noise his wings were making. They were whirring and buzzing, the way beetles' wings often do. He just had to hope that it wasn't very loud to human ears. The last thing he needed was for some fascinated Wild Thing to spot him and try to catch him.