The Gas Giant (2 page)

Sensing Kip’s UniTaxi approaching, MoNa’s landing-bay door slid open. As the UniTaxi flew towards the starship, MoNa’s colour seemed to flicker.

‘Did I just see that?’ Kip said to himself, shaking his head. It looked like MoNa had turned from black to pink then back again!

The UniTaxi touched down inside MoNa’s landing bay. Kip jumped out and headed straight for MoNa’s main cabin. The air was breathable there, so Kip took off his helmet.

‘Kip! I am
so
glad you’re here,’ said Finbar, rushing over.

Finbar was Kip’s second-in-command (or 2iC for short). Half-human and half-wolf, he lived aboard MoNa when he and Kip weren’t on missions.

‘MoNa’s been
impossible
since she was selected for the Flying Space Ninjas,’ Finbar continued in a whisper. MoNa could hear everything he and Kip said.

‘MoNa’s a
Ninja
?’ Kip asked. ‘As if!’

That would explain why MoNa had changed colour earlier, though. Ninjas had a special coat of Chameleon Paint, which had colour-change particles. Their tricks looked extra spectacular when they changed colour in mid-air.

To prove she really was a Ninja, MoNa spun into a triple upside-down corkscrew.

‘OK, OK,’ said Kip, picking himself up from the floor. ‘I don’t care what you do in your spare time. But when we’re on missions,
I’m
in charge.’

‘You should be downloading your mission brief,’ MoNa said snippily.

Kip rolled his eyes.
Typical!
MoNa loved having the last word.

Kip and Finbar headed for MoNa’s command centre, the Bridge. Here, giant windows looked out to space.

By now MoNa had piloted herself out of the Hoverport. They’d left Earth’s atmosphere and were heading for deep space.

Sitting in his captain’s chair, Kip activated his holographic console. A cylinder of blue light appeared around him. MoNa’s controls were projected in mid-air.

Kip touched the holographic button labelled Download Mission Brief.

Kip had to pull this mission off. Earth needed him to! And on top of saving humanity, Kip was desperate to win WorldCorp’s top award, the Space Scout Shield of Honour.

Kip gulped. The mission was mind-bending. Normally, MoNa beamed them to the surface of each new planet. This time, there
was
no surface! How would he and Finbar land on thin air?

Kip wasn’t even sure where a gas planet started and stopped. Finbar explained that Jupiter was completely surrounded by cloud. This cloud formed the border between space and the planet itself.

‘The wormhole to Vapod is about to open,’ MoNa suddenly chimed.

Wormholes were extremely useful shortcuts between galaxies. Kip and Finbar could travel the billions of light years between Earth and Vapod in seconds. Kip watched as MoNa piloted towards the swirling mass ahead of them.

As soon as they were in the wormhole, Kip took over the controls. Wormholes were unpredictable, and needed a skilled human pilot like Kip to fly safely through them.

Kip held MoNa steady until she popped through the wormhole into Vapod’s galaxy. The bright orange planet lay directly ahead. Kip knew that what looked like a surface was really just cloud. Beyond the cloud was a vast, gassy nothingness.

Kip took a deep breath as he looked out the window towards Vapod.

Time to get out there,
he thought.
Time to save Earth!

So,
thought Kip,
how do we get down there?

‘There are two CondorCrafts waiting in the landing bay,’ MoNa piped up, as if she’d read his mind.

Kip had been dying to try a CondorCraft. He’d seen pictures in the Space Scout digital magazine,
iScout
, which was only available as a download to SpaceCuffs.

The CondorCrafts were hypersonic space gliders designed to look like condors, giant birds that lived on Earth. Unlike old-fashioned hang-gliders, CondorCraft wings actually flapped. There was a harness and a crossbar for steering underneath the wings. The CondorCrafts would be perfect for getting around on a gas planet.

Kip and Finbar headed down to the landing bay.

‘How do we control these wings?’ Finbar muttered as he and Kip clipped on their harnesses.

Beneath his fangs and claws, Finbar was teddy-bear soft. The idea of plunging through space in a CondorCraft was his worst nightmare.

‘Get into your CondorCraft and my SlingShot Cannon will fire you towards Vapod,’ MoNa explained in her know-it-all voice. ‘When the CondorCraft detects that you’ve entered the atmosphere, its engines will fire and the wings will automatically start flapping.’

‘Isn’t that a bit dangerous?’ Finbar whimpered, but Kip was already climbing into the SlingShot Cannon.

‘You’ll be fine, Fin!’ Kip called over his shoulder. He settled into the cannon, bracing himself for the ride.

Kip hurtled through space toward the giant orange planet, impossibly fast.
This…is…AWESOME!
he thought. It was about a million times better than the BulletCoaster, the fastest and longest rollercoaster on Mars, which Kip had ridden six times in one day last year.

Then…

Kip hit the cloud layer of Vapod. The CondorCraft’s wings caught the wind and flapped powerfully.

Kip looked around and spotted Finbar, who had just entered the cloud layer a little way away. Kip waved, grinning, but Finbar looked a bit sick.

They steered down through Vapod’s orange cloud layer. By shifting their body-weight, Kip and Finbar could steer up and down, left and right.

They didn’t pop out the other side of the cloud layer quickly, as they would have on Earth. Vapod’s clouds went on for hundreds of kilometres.

Eventually the cloud layer thinned. When they finally burst through the other side, Kip gasped.

Below them lay a breathtaking, gravity-defying floating city. It was built on several metal platforms with long arms. The platforms were suspended below small balloons.

Those balloons don’t look big enough to hold up huge platforms
, Kip thought.

Kip and Finbar dipped and dived closer. They noticed clear domed buildings on some of the platforms. As Kip watched, a pair of aliens flew out from a nearby dome.

The aliens were shaped liked stingrays, but instead of the flat bodies that Earth’s stingrays had, these aliens were inflated like balloons. Underneath their billowing tummies were two fat legs.

Kip noticed something else — the aliens were clutching their heads with their wings.

Maybe that’s a kind of dance or something in their culture,
he thought.

Before he attempted to make contact with the Vapod aliens, Kip wanted to test the planet’s atmosphere to find out which gases were in it.

Kip flicked his SpaceCuff on. But just as he was about to open the Air Analyser mode, a plume of smoke belched out of the SpaceCuff.

‘Uh-oh,’ Kip said to Finbar through the intercom system inside their helmets. ‘I forgot to fix my SpaceCuff on the way here! Jett’s mum spilled Supernova on it at the party.’

Suddenly Kip froze. He knew that some gases caught fire super easily. What if they were surrounded by those kinds of gases? A single spark from his SpaceCuff could blow the entire hanging city to smithereens. He switched off the SpaceCuff immediately, but the smoke kept spewing out the side.