Jonny Moon - The Sewers Crisis

Gunk Alines

4

Special thanks to Colin Brake, GUNGE agent extraordinaire.

Cover Page

Title Page Gunk Alines 4

Introductions Introductions A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a bunch of Slimy aliens discovered the secret to clean, renewable energy……snot! (Well, OK, clean-ish.) There was just one problem. The best Snot came from only one kind of creature. HumanS. And humans were very rare. Within a few years, the aliens had used up all the best Snot in their Solar System. That was when the Galactic Union of Nasty Killer Aliens (GUNK) was born. Its mission: to find human life and drain its Snot. Rockets were sent to the four corners of the universe, each carrying representatives from the major alien races. Three of those rockets were never heard from again. But one of them landed on a planet quite simply full of humans.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

Copyright

About the Publisher

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a bunch of Slimy aliens discovered the secret to clean, renewable energy……snot!

(Well, OK, clean-ish.)

There was just one problem.

The best Snot came from only one kind of creature.

HumanS.

And humans were very rare. Within a few years, the aliens had used up all the best Snot in their Solar System.

That was when the Galactic Union of Nasty Killer Aliens (GUNK) was born. Its mission: to find human life and drain its Snot. Rockets were sent to the four corners of the universe, each carrying representatives from the major alien races. Three of those rockets were never heard from again. But one of them landed on a planet quite simply full of humans.

Jack Brady was worried.

By rights he should have been as happy as Larry – whoever Larry was. It was the first day of the summer holidays. No more school for six weeks! Jack should have been full of joy and excitement but instead he was anxious. He had unfinished business to deal with before he could enjoy the holiday.

For months now Jack had been engaged in a top-secret mission as an operative of GUNGE – a covert group of agents engaged in the fight to protect the planet from aliens. Along with his friends Oscar and Ruby, Jack and his robot dog Snivel (in reality a shape-changing alien-trap) had already captured three dangerous aliens but his GUNGE contact – a man known only as Bob – had told him that there were four aliens at large on Earth. Jack knew that it would soon be time to go after Number Four.

He just hoped he and his friends would be ready.

After three exciting alien-hunting adventures, Jack was still amazed at how lucky he had been to be chosen for this special work. After all, Jack was just an ordinary boy. Well, OK, he was a genius and an inventor as well but he was still pretty ordinary at heart. He went to school, had to clean his room when his mum told him to and loved hanging out with his friends – all pretty normal activities for a ten-year-old.

Jack’s best mate Oscar lived in the house whose garden backed onto his own, and they shared the tree house at the bottom of both their gardens. Oscar was completely different to Jack. Where Jack was a thinker Oscar was definitely more of a do-er. If anything involved going very fast, or very high, or if it was in any way dangerous or risky then Oscar was always first in line.

When Jack had first been contacted by the mysterious Bob he had soon told Oscar all about the threat of the GUNK Aliens and why they wanted humankind’s snot.

At first Oscar had laughed. Snot? But Jack had been entirely serious. Snot was like gold to the GUNK Aliens. It was the most precious resource of all: the raw material from which they could create endless energy. All of the aliens’ technology was powered by snot – but they had exhausted the natural supplies in their own galaxies, and now they needed a new source…

Four alien races, deeply suspicious of each other, had formed an alliance to search far and wide into the depths of space to find the energy source they all needed. The alliance was called the Galactic Union of Nasty Killer Aliens and their mission was simple: to boldly go to the four corners of the universe to seek out snot wherever it could be found.

The four alien races all really hated and distrusted each other so they made sure each scout ship had just one crew member from each race. In addition each crew member had a separate piece of the Blower – a pan-dimensional signalling device that could summon the mass invasion fleets of all four species. Only with all four parts of the Blower could such a signal be sent. It was a kind of insurance policy, forcing the four aliens to work together and ensuring that none of them tried to betray the alliance and keep any snot they found for their own kind alone.

Bob – and now Jack – worked for GUNGE (the General Under-Committee for the Neutralisation of Gruesome Extra-terrestrials). This was a human organisation with one mission: to prevent alien invasion of Earth. Bob had explained to Jack that one of the alien scout ships had discovered Earth and found it populated with millions of little snot-factories: the human race.

Luckily, before they could act on their discovery, the aliens had managed to crash their ship. The four aliens – and their respective parts of the Blower – had been scattered in all directions. Jack’s job, as an agent of GUNGE, was to find the aliens, trap them using Snivel and secure the components of the Blower.

Jack and his friends had already captured three aliens: a Squillibloat, a Burrapong and a Flartibug, but there was one more to complete the set. Jack just knew that this last one would be the grossest, most disgusting of all. But why hadn’t Bob made contact yet? It had been weeks now since Jack had last heard from the GUNGE controller. Every day of the last agonising week of the summer term – which seemed to drag on for ever – Jack had walked home from school hoping to hear Bob’s voice from each postbox, cash point and rubbish bin he passed but it never came. Even Snivel didn’t seem to know where Bob was.

In actual fact Bob was exactly where Jack might have expected him to be – in his top secret base. The problem was that the base was both mobile and transdimensional—which was why it had on previous occasions been located in a park bin, a postbox and a cash point. The energy needed to maintain such a blatant attack on the laws of physics was enormous, however, and so Bob’s base spent most of the time at normal size, hidden within an anonymous grey warehouse in an industrial estate on the edge of town.

Although boring and featureless from the outside, the inside of the base was dark, mysterious and full of alien technology. It also contained a long dark corridor of glass-walled cells. In three of these cells, the captured aliens were being held in suspended animation. At the far end of the corridor was a glass shelved trophy cabinet with four display spaces. The Blower parts that the children had obtained from the Squillibloat, the Burrapong and the Flartibug were illuminated on three of the platforms. Just one platform remained dark and unoccupied.