Earthling Ambassador (16 page)

The spaceship quivered, as if it wasn't certain what to do next.

“Mmmm.”Tyler scratched his head.

Suddenly they blasted straight into the night air through the garage roof, which was now flipped up and open. (Luckily Shimlara had remembered to press the button marked SPACESHIP roof EXIT.)

“WHOOOEEEE!” yelled Sean.

All around them was silent velvety blackness and the silver glow of starlight.

“Look! There's Globagaskar!” Shimlara pointed down at what looked like a golf ball disappearing in the distance.

The princess made a squeaking sound through her taped mouth.

“Maybe we should take her tape off so she can talk now,” suggested Katie.

Nicola began to speak, but Tyler interrupted her. “Esteemed passengers, please prepare for—”

It was like the spaceship had just slid over the very highest point of a roller coaster.They plunged down so fast that the air rushed out of Nicola's lungs.

I don't even like roller coasters
, thought Nicola. She closed her eyes and waited for the huge crash that was sure to follow and would probably hurt.

“... landing,” said Tyler calmly.

Nicola opened her eyes. “What happened?”

“We're here,” said Tyler.

“But there wasn't even a bang,” said Katie.

“Yep, I got it under control at the last second,” said Tyler modestly. “Sorry about the nosedive.Won't happen again.”

“Tyler, you're a
natural
!” said Shimlara.

Tyler blushed pink. “I don't know about that.”

“It was very quick,” said Nicola. “It seemed faster than five minutes.”

Sean unbuckled his belt and clapped Tyler on the shoulder. “Good one,Tyler. So, whereabouts on Earth have we landed?”

He pulled the lever on the spaceship door and looked out.

“What's that awful
smell
?” Greta wrinkled her nose.

A strange, horrible smell filled the spaceship. It was a mixture of dried out seaweed, Nicola's dad's tennis shoes, and old cat-food tins.

Nicola unbuckled her seat belt and went to peer over Sean's shoulder.

“All I can see is ... mud.” She held her nose. “Bubbling ... black ... mud.”

They weren't going to have much luck convincing the princess to save Earth if this was all they could show her. Besides the smell, the sky was a menacing dirty yellow and there wasn't a tree or bird in sight, let alone a butterfly. The mud stretched as far as she could see. It was like they'd landed on a huge mud desert.

“Hopefully we can catch a bus to somewhere nicer,” she said to Sean.

“Yeah, but I don't exactly see any bus stops.” Sean took off his baseball cap and scratched the top of his head.

Shimlara appeared behind them. “Is this Earth? It doesn't look like I thought it would look. Actually it reminds me of something we studied in intergalactic geography. Now what was it?”

Just then Nicola saw a figure in the distance coming toward them. It looked like a rather plump woman carrying an umbrella.

“Oh good,” she said. “We can ask that lady about the nearest bus stop.”

“I'll go.” Sean jumped out of the spaceship.There was a glooping sound as he sank up to his knees in the black mud.

“Huh!” said Sean, in a pleased way, as if he enjoyed being knee-deep in mud. He began wading his way toward the lady with the umbrella.

Nicola turned back around to find the princess having some sort of fit. She was wriggling around in her seat, bobbing her head up and down, and rolling her eyes like a frightened horse.

“I guess you'd better take the masking tape off now,” said Nicola to Katie. “Let's hear what she has to say. As long as her hands stay tied for now.”

Katie was nervous as she reached over and tugged gently at the edge of the tape. “This might hurt a little, Princess Petronella.”

“Oh for heaven's sake,” said Greta, and she ripped the tape from the princess's mouth in one swift movement.

“We're not on Earth, you ridiculous fools,” Princess Petronella spat out. “We're on ARTH!”

At the word “Arth,” Shimlara gasped.

“And that's NOT a
lady
your brother is so cheerily waving at
,
” continued the princess. “It's an
Arth-Creature
looking forward to a delicious Earthling snack!”

“She's right.” Shimlara spoke so fast and breathlessly, she could barely get the words out. “Our teacher showed us pictures.That's why it looks familiar. Arth is at the top of the Galaxy's Ten Most Dangerous Planets list. Arth-Creatures eat ALL other species—Globagaskarians, Earthlings, whatever!”

“I mustn't have pressed the
E
key hard enough.”Tyler sounded devastated. “I should have been more careful.”

“You were rushing,” said Katie. “It could have happened to anyone.”

“So are you just going to sit around and have a good long chat about it?” asked Princess Petronella. “May I suggest we get out of here,
fast
?”

“SEAN!” yelled Nicola. “COME BACK RIGHT NOW!”

Sean didn't seem to hear. He kept wading through the mud toward the creature, waving his arm to get its attention. Either he was too far away to hear Nicola, or he was just pretending not to hear her, which was something he often did when it suited him.

“Nic-o-la.”

It was such a croaky, quivery voice and it sounded so unlike Greta that it took Nicola a confused moment to identify the voice. Greta's face was chalky white. “Look.” She pointed a shaky finger to the left of Sean and the lady.

Nicola felt a jolt of pure fear. A line of squat furry brown creatures with large umbrella-shaped heads, curved, cruel claws, and hungry, sharp-toothed mouths came lumbering toward Sean.

Nicola could hear a strange low humming sound becoming louder and louder.

“They're smacking their lips,” explained Princess Petronella.

“Right,” said Shimlara. “Let's go rescue Sean.”

“Wait!” Nicola grabbed her by the elbow just before she launched herself from the spaceship. “We need to arm ourselves.”

She pulled the silver case Mully had given her from underneath the seat. She never expected that she would have to use it.

“Untie the princess,” she told Greta. “She can help us.”

“Do you really think it's wise to be untying our
prisoner
?” asked Greta, but she was already starting to untie the ropes around the princess's hands.

“I'm going to give you each a freeze-grenade,” said Nicola. “We'll have to surround the Arth-Creatures to make sure we get every single one of them.”

“Quick!”Tyler took another look out the spaceship window. “They're getting closer.”

Nicola twisted the first dial to 55.

But what were the other two numbers?
Her mind was like a blank sheet of paper.

“Hurry!' cried Shimlara.

“55-77-99,” snapped Greta.

Nicola stared at her.

“Mully told me to remember those numbers just in case you needed them,” said Greta. “She said that they were important, but she didn't tell me what they were for.”

“Thank you,” said Nicola.

“Lucky some of us have got good memories,” huffed Greta.

Nicola twisted the dials and opened the case, handing a freeze-grenade to each person in the spaceship, including the princess.

“Just throw them as close as you can to the creatures. When they hit the ground and explode, they give off a cloud of gas that will freeze anything within a five-meter radius.”

“
I
know how to use a freeze-grenade,” said the princess haughtily. “Although I don't see why I should help save the lives of my kidnappers.”

Nicola looked at Shimlara's injured arm. “Can you throw with your left hand? Maybe you should stay here in the spaceship.”

Shimlara grabbed a grenade with her left hand. “I can do it.”

“NICOLAAAAAAAAAA!” It was Sean yelling.

“We're coming. Just stand still!” Nicola poked her head out of the spaceship.

“Okay.” She looked back at the other members of the Space Brigade. “We've got to spread out and surround them. Don't throw your grenade until you're in a position where you can get as many Arth-Creatures as possible. If we don't get all of them and we haven't got any grenades left then we're—”

“Lunch,” finished the princess, smiling grimly. “They'll be having us for lunch.”

The members of the Space Brigade—minus Sean—stood crowded together in the small spaceship cabin, clutching their freeze-grenades and looking expectantly at Nicola.

“Let's go, everybody!” she ordered, trying to sound confident instead of terrified.

Her eyes watered as she stepped onto the steps of the aircraft and the horrible stench filled her nostrils. She realized that they'd actually landed on the outer edge of what appeared to be a gigantic, scooped-out crater. It was like an Olympic stadium, except the steep sides were lined with boulders instead of seats, and the middle was a vast prairie of black, bubbling mud.

Right in the middle of the crater was a heart-stopping sight. At least twenty Arth-Creatures were purposefully plodding through the mud from all directions, forming a big, uneven circle around Sean. He had turned his baseball cap around backward and was bending at the knees, his arms crossed in kung fu attack position. Only Sean would think he could single-handedly take on a pack of dangerous alien creatures, after three beginner kung fu lessons.

Nicola clamped her mouth shut to stop herself from screaming for her mom and dad.This wasn't a bad dream. It was real. Her brother could be torn to bloody shreds and eaten in front of her. She needed to
think
. If the Space Brigade was going to make it out of this alive, they needed to be smarter than the Arth-Creatures.

With quivering legs she walked clumsily down the spaceship stairway, tightly holding her freeze-grenade.

“Quick!” she shouted to the others as they followed her down the steps. “We need to be close enough to throw our grenades, but not so close they can come after us. Luckily it doesn't look like they move very fast.”

“What if I don't throw it straight?” Katie held her grenade cupped in both hands as if it might explode at any second. “You know how hopeless I am at softball.”

“You'll be fine.” Nicola tried not to think about Katie's habit of letting the softball slip straight through her fingers. The nasty girls called her Butterfingers.

“Just concentrate on what you're doing for once, Butterfingers,” said Greta.

“Ignore her,” said Nicola to Katie. “You can do it. Come on! Split up, everybody!”

Mud flew, splattering everybody's clothes and faces as they tried to run, slipping and sliding and clutching their grenades.

“Stick to the sides. It's drier!” advised Tyler.

With their longer legs, Shimlara and the princess led the way. Greta and Tyler followed Shimlara to the left, while Katie and Nicola followed the princess, who had shot off like a bullet from a gun, to the right.

Was the princess trying to escape? Everything was happening so quickly, Nicola didn't even know where to direct her attention first.

“Take
that
!” she heard Shimlara shout.

Without stopping, Nicola looked back over her shoulder to see Shimlara throw her freeze-grenade from the far-lefthand side of the crater. It soared high in the yellow sky, hit the mud, and exploded with a billowing cloud of purple smoke.

The smoke cleared to reveal a group of Arth-Creatures blinking and turning their massive heads this way and that. Their lip-smacking sounds became a low, spine-chilling growl. No longer were they out to dine on a leisurely lunch. Now they were really, really
mad.
The freeze-grenades didn't seem to be working.

Shimlara slowly, cautiously tried to back away up the side of the crater. Her sling was muddy. She held her good hand out, like a policeman saying “stop.” Nicola skidded to a halt. Now what? Were the freeze-grenades broken? Had she misunderstood Mully's instructions?
We're all going to die,
she thought.

Suddenly she remembered Mully saying, “I've set them aside especially for use against the palace guards.”

With trembling hands, Nicola turned over the grenade and noticed a small control panel on the back with instructions in small red letters. It said:

THIS FREEZE-GRENADE CURRENTLY SET

FOR ONE (1) USE AGAINST:

There was a movable arrow on the side pointing at “Bossy bad-tempered types.” Quickly, Nicola slid it down to “Hungry Arth-Creatures.” She looked up to see who was the closest person to help Shimlara. It was Tyler, lurching gamely along, his arms flailing. His glasses were caked with mud. He was probably half blind.

“Tyler!” she yelled. “You need to change your grenade setting to Arth-Creatures! There's a control panel on the back!”

Luckily Tyler was good with anything mechanical.

The Arth-Creatures Shimlara had tried to freeze were pawing the ground like angry bulls. Suddenly they charged straight for her. Shimlara screamed.