believe something.
112
‘It’s true, Ratboy . . .’ said Jamjar, and
then she said the ridikeelest thing I’d
ever heard.
‘About a million years ago, all the
cows on earth started saying “MOON”
instead of “MOO”. Scientists realised
the cows wanted to go to the moon!
So they flew them all to the moon!
Now all the cows in the whole world
live on the moon!’
113
The lift doors hissed open again
and Bunny stepped back out, minus
Dr Smell. ‘Ratboy doesn’t believe all
the cheese is made on the moon!’ said
Splorg, and Bunny sighed, looking all
tired like my mum does sometimes.
She wandered over
to the fridge and
stuck her hand
through the door,
scrabbling around
for something inside.
‘Keelness times a
millikeels!’ I said,
because I’d never seen
a reach-through-able
fridge door before,
and Bunny pulled out
a wrapped-up
rectangle of Cheddar.
114
‘Made on the moon!’ said Bunny,
holding up the Cheddar for me to see
it. The label on it was a photo of a
pretty-looking cow, with her name,
‘Delores’, written underneath.
Delores had very long eyelashes, and
earrings in the shape of half-moons
hanging off her big, hairy ears. At the
bottom of the label, in tiny letters,
were the words, ‘Made on the Moon’.
115
Twoface stuck his tongue out and
did a raspberry noise with his other
mouth. ‘Told you, Ratboy!’ he grinned,
then he snapped his fingers. ‘Jamjar!
You’ve got a UFO,’ he said. ‘Let’s fly up
to the moon and get Dr Smell’s nose
back!’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ I said, which is
something I’ve always wanted to say.
‘Me and Not Bird haven’t got time to
go to the moon - we’ve got to work
out how to get home!’
116
Jamjar pulled the Triangulator out
of her pocket. She pointed it at my
wheelie bin, which had been sitting
next to me minding its own business
the whole time.
‘Hmmm, very interestikeels,’ she said,
pushing her glasses up her nose. ‘Seems
like this bin is some kind of portal.
Only problem is, its coordinates have
been blown. Perhaps if we reversed the
we could reboot its circuit boards and
restabilise the field generators,’ she
blurbled, and I turned to Splorg, hoping
he might know what she was going on
about.
117
‘What she’s saying is, the only way
you and Not Bird are ever going to
get home is if your bin gets zapped by
lightning again - with you two inside it,
of course!’ said Splorg, and Twoface
sighed.
‘Are we going to the moon or not?’
he moaned, stomping his foot, and
Jamjar started tapping her
Triangulator again.
118
‘Looks like there’s a big space storm
coming . . . might be a bit blustery,’
she said, and then she paused for a
millisecond and clicked her fingers.
‘Hey!’ she cried, looking up at me
through her big round glasses. ‘We
could zap you and Not Bird home with
some space-lightning while we’re there!’
119
‘The UFO’s in the bedroom!’ said
Jamjar, so we all zoomed upstairs
in the lift, me floating a centimetre
off the floor thanks to my tail still
being plugged into Socky.
Dr Smell was lying face-up in my bed,
snoring through his mouth. It was the
bottom bunk of a bunk bed, and I
guessed the top one was Splorg’s,
because on the wall next to it was
a 3D photo of two bald blue-headed
aliens.
120
‘Are they your mum and dad?’ I said,
wondering if it was OK to ask, then
realising it was too late because I
already had.
121
‘Yeah,’ said Splorg, plucking the photo
off the wall and sticking his finger
into it. The finger poked against his
dad’s big bald blue head, and it
wobbled like a raspberry-flavoured
jelly.
‘What happened to them?’ I said,
peering over Splorg’s shoulder at
the photo. His fat, sweaty dad was
wearing a suit and shouting at
someone on his phone. His mum was
staring into the lens of the camera,
pouting her lips like a blue duck.
‘Oh, not much. They went out to
dinner at some flashy new restaurant
right next to a black hole. The black
hole swallowed them up whole while
they were eating their puddings,’
said Splorg all normally, like he
was telling a really boring
story.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ I said in my
superhero voice, patting Splorg on
over, and he shrugged.
123
‘Don’t be. They were always going off
somewhere, leaving me at home to
watch TV on my own,’ said Splorg,
and I thought how lucky I was that my
mum and dad hardly ever went out.
Twoface was on the other side of the
room, standing next to his and Jamjar’s
bunk bed. A pink, scratched-up little
UFO, half the size of my mum and
dad’s car, was standing on the carpet
with Jamjar inside it.
124
‘Bagsy sitting in the front!’ shouted
Twoface, jumping into the passenger
seat next to Jamjar, who was fiddling
with some flashing buttons and
adjusting the rear-view mirror.
Splorg stuck his photo back on the wall
and smiled his dinosaur smile. ‘Anyway,
Bunny took me in after that. She’s
the keelest - just like a real mum!’
he said, and
Jamjar and
Twoface both
nodded.
Bunny ran into the room, huffing and
puffing as she handed me a brown
paper bag. I peered into it and spotted
a donut sitting on top of a pile of
other donuts that went on into the
distance as far as I could see.
126
‘Just a silly little farewell pressie,’ she
warbled, giving me a ten-armed
cuddle.
‘You be careful up there, Ratboy,’ she
said, peering out of the window at the
moon.
Splorg clambered into the back seat of
the UFO, and Not Bird fluttered after
him, landing on his head.
127
‘Thanks for everything, Bunny,’ I said,
even though she hadn’t done that
much apart from be really nice to me.
I plonked my bin in the back seat next
to Splorg and slid in next to it, making
myself as comfortable as possible,
which wasn’t very.
128
Jamjar pressed a thumb down on her
Triangulator and the bedroom wall
lowered like a drawbridge on a castle.
‘Ooh, and don’t forget to pick me up
some Edam!’ shouted Bunny, as the
UFO hovered off the carpet and we
zoomed into the sky.
129
‘Everything keel, Not Bird?’ drawled
Splorg, as we wobbled through space
at a millikeels miles per keelness.
130
‘NOT!’ squawked Not Bird, who was still on top of Splorg’s head, looking like a wig that was about to be sick.
I grabbed a donut out of my brown paper bag and stuffed it into my mouth. ‘WAAAHHH!’ screamed the donut, as I chomped it up with my teeth and swallowed it whole.
131
‘Mmm, talking donuts!’ I smiled, grabbing another one and holding its hole up
to my eye like a squidgy telescope.
I peered through it and spotted
Earth, floating away from us at superkeelness speed. ‘Keel times a
millikeels!’ I gasped, dropping the donut back into the brown paper bag, and it breathed a sigh of relief, even though I was definitely going to eat it later.
132
Twoface twizzled one of his faces round from the front seat, bonking Not Bird off of Splorg’s head.
‘Remember gang, if Dr Smell’s nose is on the moon, that means Mr X and the killer robot grannies might be there too,’ he said, and Not Bird fluttered over to me for a cuddle, looking a tiny bit scared.
‘Don’t worry Not Bird, I won’t let
Mr X and his horrible killer robot
grannies stop us from getting home!’
I said, my eye swiveling down to look at donut number two again, and the UFO jolted, then swerved, then spluttered.
133
‘We’re entering the moon’s meteorocheesiological force field!’ cried Jamjar, dodging a passing taxi, and the driver waggled his arm out the window. Not that it looked much like an arm. It was more of a leg. With three feet on the end of it. Also, each foot had nineteen toes.
Twoface grabbed the sides of his seat and gritted both sets of teeth as Jamjar spun the steering wheel to
the right and prodded about fourteen buttons, all at the same time. ‘Firing up the reverse-velocity turbo-thrusters for landing!’ she said, and my telly belly started to fizzle.
134
I looked down and spotted a familiar-looking cow, peering out of the fuzzy screen. ‘HELP ME!’ mooed Delores the made-on-the-moon-cheese cow. There was something different about her, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
‘Hey, isn’t that Delores?’ said Splorg, pointing at my telly belly, and the UFO started to shudder.
‘Hold on, this is going to be bumpy!’ cried Jamjar, as I slotted donut number two into my mouth and we shot through a storm cloud, crash-landing on the moon.
136
I opened my eyes and didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered I was in a UFO. On the moon. Which was made out of cheese.
I stuck my head out of the window and looked around. We’d landed on
an island of Cheddar, surrounded by
a sea of wavy milk. Parmesan flakes circled in the sky like snow, and a couple landed on my hood, making me feel like a bowl of spaghetti Bolognese.
137
‘Argh, my nose!’ cried Twoface. ‘Argh, my other nose!’ he cried again. He was upside-down on top of Jamjar, his bum squidged into her face.
‘Everyone OK?’ whimpered Splorg from his seat, poking his head over the top of my bin, and Not Bird squawked ‘NOT’, even though he was fine.
‘All keel here!’ I said, looking down at my belly for Delores, but she’d disappeared.
There was a hover-bridge in front of us leading to the main part of town, so we all jumped out of the UFO and ran across the bridge to look for her.
139
An enormous purple cloud rumbled above us like a giant space-monster’s duvet. In the distance, a bolt of lightning zigzagged through the sky. ‘If this weather keeps up we’ll be home in no time!’ I said to Not Bird, wheeling my bin behind me.
‘NOT!’ squawked Not Bird, as a
cow drove past us in a Brie-shaped hover-van, heading towards a mahoosive cheese factory in the shape of a slice of Emmental. A floating screen hovered next to the factory, playing cheese adverts at full volume.
‘Mooooon cheese is the keelest!’ mooed Delores on the screen, her moon earrings swaying, and I tried to work out what’d been so different about her on my
telly belly.
140
I parked my wheelie bin and pulled donut number three out of my brown paper bag. ‘OH PLEASE DON’T, MR RATBOY,’ it begged, as I held it up to my mouth, and my eyes zoomed in on Delores’s ears.
141
‘I’ve got it!’ I said, swallowing the donut in one go. ‘She didn’t have any ears!’
I cried, running towards the cheese factory with my bin behind me.
‘Where in the unkeelness are we going?’ cried Twoface, running after me. Splorg and Jamjar were behind him, also running, even though no one knew what the keelness was going on except for me.
142
‘The cheese factory, of course!’ I shouted, Not Bird fluttering next to me like a donut without a hole. ‘Delores’s ears have been stolen, just like Dr Smell’s nose!’ I said.
Twoface skidded to a stop, and his two faces stopped nodding. ‘Hang on a millikeels, why are we running to the cheese factory then?’ he said, and I swiveled my head around.
143
‘Delores MUST work in the cheese factory!’ I shouted, hover-jogging backwards, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. ‘All we have to do is find her, then we can catch Mr X and the killer robot grannies that stole her ears - and Dr Smell’s nose!’ I cried, running out of breath from all the explaining I was doing.
Twoface screwed his two faces up into one big stupid one, trying to work out what was going on. ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, clicking his fingers. ‘Let’s head to the cheese factory and look for Dolores!’
he boomed, starting to run towards
it, and I looked up at the storm cloud, which was rumbling even
more than before.
144
The doors of the giant cheese factory whooshed open and we skidded to a stop in front of the reception desk. ‘Welcome to the cheese factory!’ mooed a stupid-looking cow with cross-eyes and buck teeth from behind the desk.
145
Twoface slammed his hand down on the desk and tried to lift it back up, which wasn’t easy, what with it being all sticky. ‘We need to see Delores!’ he boomed, looking left and right at the same time.
‘Just one second,’ said the cow, pressing
a button on his phone with his hoof
and smiling at us pleasantly while
waiting for an answer.
146
I smiled back, feeling bad about that Cheesebleurgher Meal Deal I’d eaten earlier. From now on I was going to be a vegetarian, I thought to myself. Then I thought about how tasty
the cheesebleurgher had been, and
I changed my mind.
‘Delores? This is Dwayne from reception,’ mooed Dwayne into his phone. ‘I’ve got a boy with two faces, an alien with a big blue bald head, a girl with five arms and and a floating ratboy with a TV on his belly here in reception for you . . .’
Not Bird did a cough and pointed
one of his wings at himself. ‘NOT!’ he squawked, and Dwayne held his hoof up, mouthing ‘sorry’ for le
aving him out. Which isn’t easy when you’re a cow. Actually, wait a second, yes it is.