forceps to cut pieces of the plant
.
.
.
but the
more she cut, the more the seaweed grew
back and
twisted
around us!
After a few minutes, we heard some
frightening
sounds:
Scrick . . .
screek . . . scraaaak!
Galactic Gouda! The tightening
seaweed
was breaking our spaceship apart!
“There’s nothing else to do!” Thea
explained. “If I
blast
the engines, I
might make the situation worse.”
“We’re running out of time!” Sally
exclaimed. “If we don’t do something soon,
we’ll all be seaweed food!”
Ouch!
The next tremor caused
an enormouse spaceship
instruction
manual
to
fall on my head.
Bonk!
Ouch! I leaned over to get it, and saw it
was open to a page on spaceship
maintenance. Not knowing what else to do,
I began reading aloud.
“Cleaning the spaceship with stellar
soap . ..” I muttered. Of course —soap!
“Sally, start the
auto-cleaning
cycle
!”
I crossed my paws and hoped it would
work. In less than a second, the spaceship
was covered with a
special
ultra-cleaning
soap. The sudsy
bubbles
made the surface
of the spaceship very, very
slippery
.
The seaweed slipped right off the
spaceship. Thea
blasted
the engines
and we got out of there
immediately.
We were free!
We all cheered and
hugged.
“Uncle G, you
were
amazing
!”
Benjamin cried.
“It was just luck,”
I said modestly.
Suddenly, the
inside
of the spaceship
was full of
soap
bubbles
. Giant
brushes scrubbed everything from top to
bottom, including the crew!
“The auto-cleaning cycle covers both the
exterior and the
interior
of the spaceship,”
Sally explained as two enormouse brushes
rolled over my fur. Oops! At least it was just
soap. Finally, a strong squirt of
warm
air
dried us off and fluffed our fur.
Thankful to be safe (and
squeaky-clean
!),
we continued with our expedition.
attack of the
Piranhax
I had just leaned back in my chair to relax
and admire the underwater
scenery
outside the porthole window when the
control panel began beeping.
“What’s going on now, Thea?” I asked.
“It looks like we’re heading toward a
swarm of . . . something!” she replied.
Sally activated the
infrared
super-telescope
.
“It’s a
swarm
of fishoids! And they’re
heading toward
us
!”
My whiskers
trembled
with fear.
“Calm down, Geronimo,” Trap said.
Beep
. . .
Beep. . .
Beep
. . .
BEEP
. . .
beep
. . .
BeeP!
“What could be worse than the
fur-
eating seaweed
?”
Professor Greenfur turned to us, a
serious look on his snout.
“Let’s not underestimate the
dangers
of the underwater world,” he warned us.
Meanwhile, Sally had
connected the telescope to
the control panel computer
screen. A weird
alien
fish
appeared on the
screen. It was tiny but had
very
SHARP
teeth!
“I knew it!” the professor exclaimed.
“They’re
bigteeth piranhax
! These
fishoid creatures will eat pretty much
anything
that’s in their way. They are
extremely dangerous. We absolutely
must
avoid them!”
Thea didn’t waste a second more. With
a sudden
turn
, she wedged the spaceship
between some sand dunes. We all held our
breath, waiting for the
piranhax
to pass
by. Sally peered through the telescope again.
“Well done, Thea!” Sally cheered. “We
lost
them!”
We all
squeaked
with joy.
“Uh-oh,” Benjamin said, pointing out
the porthole. “Maybe we’re celebrating too
soon.”
Sally aimed the headlights into the
abyss ahead,
illuminating
dozens . . . no,
hundreds . . . no,
thousands
of hungry
piranhax
! And they were lined up
in a very threatening attack formation!
What had I done to
deserve
this?
All I wanted was a nice, quiet
vacation
day
at the beach. And now I was stuck on
an underwater spaceship, about
to be eaten alive by alien fishoids!
But as usual, my sister would not give up.
“I’ll show them what I’m made of!” she
shouted. “
HOLD ON TIIIIIIIGHT !
”
Thea powered up the engines and the
spaceship
took off
. She executed a few
very fast and unpredictable maneuvers.
There were
twists
, abrupt stops, and a
sudden change of
direction
. My stomach
lurched up and down and from side to side. I
thought I was going to
toss my cheese
!
But every time we
thought we had
lost
them, the piranhax would
reappear in
hot
pursuit
.
Arhg!
an escaPe Plan
After what seemed like the twentieth failed
maneuver
, Trap was ready to throw in
the towel.
“We’ll never lose them,” he groaned.
“They’re
too fast
!”
But Benjamin suddenly had an idea.
“Wait!” he said. “At school we studied the
behavior of sea aliens in a swarm. They will
always follow a
single target. If we
manage to direct their attention to something
else, we might be able to get away!”
“But
how
do we do that?” Bugsy asked.
“We would need a second spaceship.”
“We have the
escape pod
!” Sally exclaimed.
Then she explained her plan. “We’ll slip
behind a rock and then we’ll launch the
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
escape pod. Once the piranhax
change course, Thea will
accelerate to maximum speed
and we’ll leave the
deadly
fishoids behind!”
“Great idea!” Professor
Greenfur agreed.
But I was
worried
.
“If we launch the escape pod, we’ll be left
without it,” I reminded everyone.
“Cousin, do you hear that noise?” Trap
asked.
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
CLICK
“Yes . . .” I said hesitantly.
“That’s the
clicking
of piranhax
teeth!” Trap continued, his squeak getting
higher. “Would you rather become fish
food?”
“No!” I said, coming to my senses. We
didn’t have a choice: We had to sacrifice
the escape pod if we wanted
to
survive
!
“Let’s implement the plan!”
“
Buckle up
, everyone,” Thea said.
We took our seats and Thea guided the
spaceship as
quickly
as it would go,
squeezing into a
narrow
space between
two rocks.
The piranhax were disoriented. It was the
perfect
moment to carry out our plan!
Sally launched the escape pod, which
shot
far away. Thea turned the engines off
so the piranhax wouldn’t
hear
us.
In the meantime, I
squeezed
my eyes
shut in fear.
The sound of the water above our heads
could only mean one thing: The swarm of
piranhax had rushed past us, following the
escape pod
! The plan had worked!
more trouble!
Once we had escaped, Professor Greenfur
consulted the map.
“I have good news,” he told us. “According
to the map, we’re halfway there!”
Only halfway? Was he kidding?!
The trip was turning out to be much more
dangerous
than I had imagined.
Our ship had almost been
crushed
by fur-eating seaweed tendrils, and then a
school of deadly piranhax had almost turned
us into fish food! Not to mention the fact
that we were who-knows-how-far below the
surface of the ocean on an alien planet . . .
I
shuddered
. How could we be just
halfway
through this fur-raising mission?
Maybe focusing on my
sweet
nephew
Benjamin and his friend Bugsy Wugsy would
help keep me from
panicking
.
For a short while, I was able to
relax
as we played a game of I Spy. But when Sally
interrupted us, I knew it was
bad
news.
“Captain, we have a
problem
,” Sally
said. Oh no, not again! I did my best to
remain
cool
, calm, and collected.
“What is it?” I asked.
Sally showed me the control dashboard,
which was covered in little flashing
red
lights
.
“Take a look for yourself, Captain,” she
replied. I stared at the
screen
, but I was
out of my league. I didn’t have a clue what
was happening!
“Hmmm,” I murmured sheepishly. “Maybe
you can explain it to me.”
“These signals indicate
breakdowns
that need to be fixed right away,” Sally
explained kindly. “Otherwise we won’t be
able to continue with the mission!”
Martian
mozzarella!
Breakdowns?
That’s all we needed!
“The spacecraft was
weakened
by the
seaweed tentacles, and the maneuvers
to escape the piranhax have made things
worse!” Sally continued. “We have to stop
as soon as possible to make the repairs.”
Professor Greenfur pointed to a
dark
Underwater
helmet
Navigational
backpack
(with minirockets!)
All-purpose,
fix-everything drill
opening in front of us.
“We could take shelter in that
underwater
cave
!” he said.
“Yes— according to radar,
it’s
empty
,” Thea agreed.
Then she
gently
steered our
ship into the shelter.
Sally wasted no time. She put
on her
underwater
and grabbed the special
navigational
backpack
(complete with minirockets).
And of course she took her all-
purpose, fix-everything
drill
,
which was another one of her
useful
inventions!
At that moment, Trap
jumped to his paws.
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
“I really need to stretch my
paws
! But you
should stay here, Cuz. After all, someone
needs to keep Benjamin and Bugsy Wugsy
company.”
Solar-smoked Gouda!
Trap was going
to make me look like a real wimp in Sally’s
eyes. I sighed. Even though I was completely
scared to go out and
explore
that
dark
cave,
I knew I had to do it. Before Sally and Trap
were out of the ship, I had pulled on a helmet
and a backpack, too.
“Wait for me!” I
squeaked
. “I’m
coming with you!”
The Belly of
the Beast
The cave was much darker than it had
appeared from inside the spaceship. We
turned
on
our helmet headlights, which
illumina
ted the bright red cave walls. I
touched one to find that it was strangely
soft
. It almost felt like a mattress!
Trap was swimming around as if he was on
a scuba-diving vacation while Sally was busy
fixing the spaceship’s external computer
screen
with her drill.
“Hey, come here, Geronimo!” I heard Trap
shout through his helmet
microphone
.
“It’s super
soft
!”
But I couldn’t see my cousin
anywhere!
I
t
’
s
s
u
p
e
r
s
o
f
t
!
H
u
h
?
T
r
a
p
?
“I can’t find
you, Trap ... It’s
too dark!
” I replied. I
tried my best to remain
calm, but my teeth were
chattering with fright.
“I’m almost done,” Sally
updated us through her helmet’s
microphone. “Just another minute.”
I turned around so I could start
going back toward the mouth of the
cave, but it was very
difficult
to move
through the water in the
dark
. Somehow,
I found myself
upside down!
As if that wasn’t enough, a strong
current suddenly
knocked
me over. I
grabbed a piece of sea coral and hung
on for dear life
, hoping I wouldn’t be
dragged away!
“Everything okay, G?” Trap asked. I was
about to answer when I was interrupted by
an enormouse
roar
.
Black holey galaxies! What was that? The
water around me started
churning
and I was tossed from left to right. Thank
goodmouse I had found that
coral
to
hold on to!
“Come back to the ship right away!” Thea
called into our helmets from a microphone
in the command room.
“Geronimo!” Trap’s voice squeaked in my
helmet. “We have to go!”
“I can’t make it!” I replied. “I’m holding
on to some coral and if I let go, I don’t know
where I’ll
end up
!”
“Okay, I’ll come get you!” Trap replied.
A moment later, Trap was at my