side. But I still couldn’t let go: I was
too
afraid
! So Trap began to
pull
me
with all his strength. The more he
pulled, the more the cave
shook
and the
louder the
scary
howl became.
Eventually, with all that pulling,
the coral I was holding on to
snapped
. A moment
later, we were all
floating in the
water
toward the
spaceship. And, strangely,
the trembling of
the cave and the
scary
howling had
stopped!
Once we got back inside the spaceship,
we took off our helmets and backpacks.
“Are you ok, Uncles?”
a scared Benjamin asked me and Trap.
“We’re fine,” I assured him. Now that I was
back inside, I was feeling a little
calmer.
“But we’d better get out of here soon. I don’t
want to feel another underwater earthquake
in this lifetime!”
“Yes, we should go,” Thea agreed. “And
we should do it quickly, because the
cave
entrance is closing!”
“Wh-what?” I exclaimed. “How can it be
c-closing?”
Suddenly, I realized what was happening.
A Thorny Issue
Thea
pushed
the engines to their
limits and managed to guide the spaceship
out right before the cave entrance
—
or
what
seemed
to be a cave entrance
—
snapped
shut.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I
asked everyone.
“Yup,” Trap replied. “We just came
through some really
giant
teeth!”
“Then we were in the
mouth
of a giant sea
creature?!” Benjamin asked, incredulous.
“Exactly!” Professor Greenfur confirmed
as he glanced back at the giant beast through
the porthole. “We were inside an enormouse
silverix whale
!”
“And why didn’t you let us know this
earlier, Professor?” Thea objected, her paws
on her hips.
“I didn’t notice,” Professor Greenfur
replied. “The whale had perfectly camouflaged
himself to look like a cave. I imagine he was
trying to attract
prey
!”
“Yeah
—
us!” Trap chimed in. He peered
out the porthole. “What’s he doing now?”
The
whale
had started moving toward us.
“He thinks we’re food and wants to
eat
us!” I squeaked at the top of my lungs. “This
time, we’re done for!”
“Full speed ahead, Thea!” Sally shouted.
“We’re already at
top speed
!” my
sister replied.
The creature caught up to us in three
shakes
of a whale’s tail.
But to our great surprise, he didn’t slurp
us up in one
gulp
. Instead he lifted a
gigantic fin in front of
his
eyes
and let out
a strange whistle:
“It seems like he
wants to tell us
something,” Bugsy
Wugsy mused.
Fiiiiuuuuuuiiiii!
“Let’s activate the
translator
I installed to
be able to
understand
alien languages,”
Sally suggested.
But I was
suspicious
.
“A-are you really sure?” I asked. “It could
be a setup . . .”
“Uncle, look at those
big, sweet eyes
!”
Benjamin remarked trustingly. And to be
honest, if Benjamin wasn’t
afraid
, why
should I be?
Sally’s device began the translation:
“My name is Lucas. Thank you for
pulling the thorn from my throat!”
We all looked at one another, dumbfounded.
What thorn was the whale talking about?
But then Trap understood.
“Of course!” he realized. “He’s talking
about what you thought was a piece of
coral
, Geronimo. When I pulled you, it
was dislodged from the whale’s mouth.”
I stepped up to the
microphone
.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Lucas,” I
replied. “We are
spacemice
, and
we’re
happy
we were able to help you!”
“I’ll always owe you, spacemice!” he
replied. “
Bon voyage!
”
We waved from the porthole and the whale
winked
back at us before he disappeared
into the abyss. We had finally made a
friend
on the strange underwater planet
of Aquarix!
An Underwater City
Galactic Gorgonzola
, this had been
a really difficult trip! Luckily, the map was
showing that we were getting closer to our
destination. Thea
guided
the spaceship
over a steep reef, around an underwater
mountain
with sharp peaks, and
through a narrow canyon. Finally we
reached the point that was marked by an
X
on the map.
A
beautiful
city came into view.
“It’s so pretty,” Benjamin said. “But it’s
also so
dark
!”
It’s true
—
the few lights in the city
seemed to barely
illuminate
the
houses and streets.
Thea gently landed the spaceship outside
the gates to the city.
“We’re finally here!” Trap announced.
“Come on, everyone. Let’s go! I can’t wait
to see if there really is a
treasure
. Then
we can get back to the
MouseStar 1
. Boy,
do I miss Cook Squizzy’s lunar cheese
fondue!”
I had no desire to get out of the
spaceship
again, but I knew I had
to. So I reluctantly pulled on my
helmet
and headed for the door.
“I’ll wait on the ship,” Thea said.
“And we’ll
keep in touch
through
the helmet microphones.”
1.
Here I go!
2.
Ha, ha, ha!
3.
Oof!
Sally was
already standing
by the door, lining
everyone up.
“Here we go!”
she announced briskly.
“Professor Greenfur and
I will go last. Trap
—
OUT
! Benjamin and Bugsy
Wugsy —
OUT
! Captain
Geronimo Stiltonix
—
OUT
!”
Knock!
Knock!
Knock!
As soon as I stepped outside, I immediately
flipped
upside down
in the murky
water. It took me a while to
flip
back over
and join the others, so I was the last one to
arrive at the gate to the underwater city.
“Finally, Captain!” Trap said, rolling his
eyes at me. “Now what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Knock?”
No one objected, so I reached out a paw
and knocked
three
times:
Masters of the
Light
A few moments later, the door opened.
Some small, friendly-looking
blue
aliens
greeted us. Each alien had
four
eyes,
eight
tentacles, and some unusual
pipes
on its head. Tiny
bubbles
out of the pipes.
“This would be a good time to introduce
yourselves,” Thea reminded us through our
helmet microphones.
Trap
pushed
me forward.
“It’s your turn, Captain!” he whispered.
Me?
Why, oh why is it always
me
? Oh,
right . . . because I’m the
captain
!
“Hello! We are
spacemice
,” I told
the aliens. “We come in peace!”
“Nice to meet you!” one of the aliens
replied. “We are
polpyx
. Welcome to
Aquarix City, our capital! If you follow us,
we’ll take you to our
wise ones
!”
“And who are these wise ones?” I asked
hesitantly. I hoped they were
friendly
, too!
“They are our three Masters of the Light.”
Masters of the Light?
What
in the cosmos were they?
We had no other choice but to
follow the polpyx, so we
swam after them
along the city’s
dark
streets.
As we passed
each little
house, other
polpyx came
W
e
l
c
o
m
e
!
out to say
hello
.
“What nice,
friendly
aliens,” Benjamin
remarked. “I could do a
paper
about
this planet for school!”
“That’s a
great
idea!” I agreed.
We soon arrived in a small
underwater
cavern. The wise ones were three polpyx
with
thick white beards
. Each one held
a long stick topped by a small,
shiny
star.
The wise ones slowly rose and
swam
toward us. The polpyx that had led us to the
cavern whispered something to one of the
wise ones. The alien nodded his head.
“Hello, spacemice!” the wise one said in
a
WELCOMING tone. “We are happy to have
you visit. We are a friendly species.”
Then he stopped and another wise one
took over.
“We have been living at the bottom of the
sea for
thousands
of years,” the second
alien said in a voice that was
lower
than
the first alien’s. “We like to meet new friends
from
faraway places
.”
Finally, the third wise one spoke. His voice
was the
lowest
of all of them.
“Yes, you are most welcome here in
Aquarix City
,” he agreed. “But please do
tell us what brought you all the way down
It was the sphere!
here to the
dark
abyss.”
Before I could reply, Trap stepped forward.
“Excuse me, Captain,” he
whispered
in my ear. “Mind if I speak? Otherwise we’ll
never get through these pleasantries, and
I’m
starving
!”
Before I could protest, my cousin grabbed
the
sphere
with the map from Professor
Greenfur’s paws and showed it to the polpyx.
“This
sphere
brought us here!” he
announced.
A Secret Key
When they saw the sphere, the three aliens
were
speechless
. After a moment
of silence, they finally spoke:
“I-I . . .”
“C-can’t . . .”
“B-believe it!”
Then they began chattering quickly among
themselves,
us completely!
Finally, the creatures turned back to us.
“Oh, please
forgive
us,” the first one said.
“We thought this sphere had
disappeared
forever!” the second one added.
“The last time we saw it was three
lunar cycles ago, just before the
great
tsunami!” the third one concluded.
“
How did you find it?
” they asked in unison.
“Well, it happened to be on our
SPACESHIP,” I replied.
“After we
activated
it, we decided
to follow the map,” Professor Greenfur
explained. “We wanted to find out where
the sphere had
come from
!”
The wise ones smiled widely.
“We are extremely grateful to you for this,
spacemice!” the first wise one said. “This
isn’t just a map
—
it’s also the secret key to
the
light chest
!”
I didn’t have a clue what they were
squeaking
about!
The
wise
ones
began mumbling among
themselves again.
“Did you understand any of that?” I asked
Professor Greenfur.
“I think so,” he murmured. “The stars on
top of the sticks they’re carrying look like
extremely rare
marine cos
mostars
. They are
packed with
energy
that helps plants
grow in really
dark
places like this city.
Maybe the light chest has something to do
with that.”
The second wise one turned back to us.
“That’s
correct
!” the alien said. “Our
civilization has been able to grow down here
in the dark abyss thanks to the
marine
cosmostars
.”
“But we only have a few cosmostars
left,” the first alien added. “And
it’s extremely difficult and
dangerous
to find new
ones!”
“Our ancestors hid an
emergency supply of
cosmostars in a
special chest,”
the third alien explained. “They wanted to
keep our civilization from using them all up
RIGHT AWAT. But we thought the key to
the chest had been lost forever
!”
So the strange blue sphere really was a
treasure
map! And the treasure was very
precious
to these aliens and their entire
underwater civilization.
“Spacemice, we trust you,” the first wise
one said. “Follow us!”
Follow us!
The wise ones
illuminated
the
way with their
sticks,
and we followed
them toward a tall,
dark
building.
A
chill
ran
down my tail. The
polpyx seemed
friendly, but
I was afraid of the unknown. I turned to
Benjamin and Bugsy.
“This could be
dangerous
,” I told the
little mice. “Why don’t you two wait here?”
Benjamin was a little disappointed, but two
young polpyx came up to us and began to
play with him and Bugsy Wugsy right away.
I waved good-bye and
entered
the tall
building with the others.
Unexpected
Visitors
We followed the Masters of the Light all the
way to a great hall.
“There it is!” the second wise one
exclaimed, pointing to a
big chest
in the
center of the room.
As soon as we got closer to the chest, the
sphere began to
shine
!
“The sphere is letting us know that we have
reached the ultimate
destination
,”