Jonny Moon - The Dog’s Dinner

Jack bit his lip. Now for precision flying – one mistake and his precious experiment would be smashed to pieces.

Carefully Jack made the helicopter bump gently into the window. Back and forth, back and forth; the chopper tapped quietly on the glass. Would it be loud enough for Oscar to hear? Suddenly the window opened and Jack wrestled with the controls to back the aircraft out of the way of the glass. Oscar appeared at the window and saw the helicopter hovering there, with the ball hanging underneath it.

Pressing the joystick, Jack flew the helicopter forwards so that Oscar could reach out and take the message. He read it and then gave a big thumbs-up sign to Jack. Mission accomplished.

A few minutes later the pair of them were in the tree house. Oscar held up the helicopter.

“Your latest invention?” he asked.

“Yep,” said Jack.

“What’s so special about it?”

“It can lift really heavy weights,” said Jack.

Oscar pulled a face. “Wow. That’ll come in really useful”, he said sarcastically.

Jack ignored him, pulling another gadget out of his pocket. “Now to get Ruby over here”, he announced.

Oscar was peered at the small black object in Jack’s hand. “What’s that then?” he asked. “Modified GPS? A radio transmitter?”

Jack waved it under Oscar’s nose.

“Mobile phone,” he said and, laughing, began to dial Ruby’s number.

It didn’t take long for Ruby to reach them. Less than ten minutes after making the phone call Jack and Oscar heard a loud crashing sound from somewhere below the tree house.

“That sounds like Ruby”, said Oscar with a grin.

Ruby was a girl, but she wasn’t like most of the girls at Oscar and Jack’s school. She shared both the boys’ interests: she liked gadgets as much as Jack did and she loved any kind of dangerous sport, the way Oscar did. If anything, she was even more of an adrenaline addict than him – she was forever trying her hand at all sorts of wild activities, but always while keeping it secret from her mum.

Jack and Oscar ran to the door of the tree house and looked down. Below them there was a large hole in the hedge that ran between Oscar’s garden and the alley.

The hole was Ruby-shaped.

Ruby herself, dressed in knee- and elbow-pads and a helmet, was standing on a skateboard in the garden. Jack saw that Ruby was holding on to a string and was pulling in a large kite attached to the other end.

“I’ve been trying kite-boarding,” she yelled up at them, while wrapping the string deftly round a handle.

“Does your mum know?” wondered Oscar.

“Course not,” replied Ruby, grinning. “She thinks I’m pony-trekking!” She sniffed, then took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose. “Actually, my mum wanted me to stay in today, because I’m getting a cold. But I convinced her that my pony needed brushing”.

Jack saw that beneath her knee pads she was wearing jodhpurs.

Having finished wrapping up the string Ruby placed the kite and skateboard at the bottom of the tree and began to remove a large heavy belt.

“What’s with the utility belt?” asked Jack, noticing that the belt was decorated with wide pockets that looked full of heavy objects.

“Ballast,” said Ruby, but with her blocked nose the word came out strangely.

“No need to be rude, he only asked!” replied Oscar.

“Ballast,” said Ruby more slowly, dropping the belt on the ground. “This is an adult-size kite, if I didn’t weight myself down like this, I’d be flying!”

“Sounds cool!” said Oscar, wide-eyed.

“Yeah, flying would be cool, but how would you land safely, doughnut?!”

Ruby started climbing the ladder to join the lads in the tree house.

“So what’s up?” she asked. “Another alien?”

“Let Snivel explain,” said Jack. A few minutes later the three of them were settling down inside the tree house, ready for Snivel’s briefing.

Snivel was a poor abandoned dog that Jack had adopted.

At least, that’s what Jack’s mum thought.

In reality Snivel was a sophisticated robot made using alien technology acquired by GUNGE operatives. Most of the time he looked like a relatively normal dog (albeit a rather scruffy one with three eyes) but at the right command from Jack he would transform into an alien trap.

Oh, and he ran on snot, instead of batteries.

The third eye was a design flaw that Jack was beginning to find endearing. Snivel, on the other hand, said it made his vision blurry and gave him a headache.

Snivel sat in front of the three kids and pressed a concealed button behind his ear. Instantly a holographic image was projected from his nose into the air in front of him. Jack and the others had a brief glimpse of a revolting-looking insectoid creature before the hologram flickered, and disappeared.

Startled, Jack turned to Snivel. The robot dog’s eyes were half-closed (all three of them) and he was swaying on his feet.

“Need… power…” said Snivel. “Need… snot.”

Jack gasped – Snivel hadn’t had any food since hed eaten one of Jack’s sneezes two days before! Jack turned to Ruby. “Your snotty tissue,” he said. “Hand it over.”

“You’re kidding,” said Ruby.

Jack just looked at her.

“You’re not kidding,” she said, sighing. Then she took the tissue from her pocket and handed it to Snivel. The Snotbot began licking the snot from it.

“Oh, gross,” said Oscar.

Snivel looked up, his eyes wide open now. “Got any more?” he asked Ruby.

“I’m getting a pretty bad cold,” said Ruby. “There’ll be plenty more where that came from.”

“Fantastic,” said Snivel. “Your snot is prime stuff.”

Jack and Oscar stared at him with disgust. “Can we please get on with it?” Oscar asked.

Snivel nodded. There was a whirring sound, and then the projection started up again.

The alien displayed in the blue light of the hologram was the most disgusting thing the kids had seen so far in their GUNGE careers. It looked a bit like a giant cockroach with a multitude of long thin hairy legs and thin insect wings protruding from its back. Its head was covered in smeared food, like a baby eating chocolate.

But even on the holographic image, the gang could see that it wasn’t chocolate the alien was eating. It was a mess of decaying mulch. A thick soup of rotting vegetable matter dripped from the disgusting creature’s mandibles.

“It’s called a Flartibug,” explained Snivel.

Oscar laughed out loud.

“It’s called what?” he asked.

“A Flartibug,” said Snivel again.

This time Ruby and Jack joined in the laughter. Oscar repeated the name, making the most of the sounds.

“Flartibug!” he giggled.

“There’s nothing funny about the Flartibug, I assure you,” insisted Snivel in a huffy tone.

“Except his name,” muttered Oscar, laughing so hard that tears began to roll down his face.

Snivel tried not to notice the laughter of the children and continued his briefing.

“The Flartibug,” he continued, “lives on a planet that is totally covered with rotting, mouldy vegetation.”

“Bet that stinks,” said Jack.

“It’s universally known as the smelliest planet in civilised space,” said Snivel.

“So it likes stinky places?” asked Ruby.

“And it eats the most revolting food imaginable,” continued Snivel.

Oscar managed to stop laughing for a moment.

“I know exactly where we’ll find him then,” he said, grinning, “we need to check out Greasy Joe’s!”

Then, slightly ruining the dramatic moment, Ruby sneezed.

“Ooh,” said Snivel. “Save that for me.”