Comet Chaos Read online

  For Hector, my man in the East

  For Brig

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  MEET THE SPACE PENGUINS…

  INTRODUCTION

  1. UNDERDONE ONION

  2. A MYSTERY

  3. EIGHT SPACE DOLLAR

  4. A STICKY SITUATION

  5. THE PROPHECY

  6. SNIP, SNIP, SNIP

  7. BROWBEATEN

  8. THE CHALLENGE

  9. GOING HOME

  POSTSCRIPT

  BIO PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  Greetings, cosmic explorers. I am ICEcube, the onboard navigation computer for the Space Penguins and their spacecraft, the Tunafish. And I’m sorry to tell you, but this ship has smelly feet.

  I can’t smell them, of course. Computers don’t have noses. But according to my sensors, Rocky Waddle has parked the Tunafish in a puddle of something wet and nasty. It is clinging to the landing gear. It is covering the chassis. My database says: peeeyooo.

  We have seen a lot of pongy planets on our voyage through the universe. Offl was awful. Smelibot was as bad as it sounds. But Ba-Ghin is the stinkiest planet we’ve ever visited.

  We arrived here an hour ago on instructions from Fuzz Allgrin, the ship’s chef. He has downloaded several new recipes from the Space Penguins’ robot servant, Marin-9, and wants to find the right ingredients. Marin-9 was Marin-8, the crazy chef of intergalactic space cruiser the Superduper Startrooper, until Splash reprogrammed him. He’s much nicer now.

  There are 7,362 market stalls on this planet, selling everything under the suns and stars of the entire universe. The Space Penguins have only reached market stall number five. This is going to be a long day.

  My crew doesn’t smell very nice at the best of times.

  Captain T. Krill is large and brave and smells of fish.

  Pilot Rocky Waddle has long eyebrows and smells of fish.

  Ship’s Engineer Splash Gordon is super-brainy and smells of fish.

  Fuzz Allgrin the chef is small and fierce and smells of fish.

  I smell of fuel, hot wires and cold metal. And also of fish. You can’t be an onboard computer guidance system for a crew of penguins without the smell rubbing off on you. My sensors have grown used to it. But now they are approaching overload.

  Oh. A small hairy creature has just lifted its leg on the Tunafish’s thrusters. My database says: something very rude. The Space Penguins had better come back soon, or this whole ship will explode in a cloud of stinky green smoke.

  Market day on Ba-Ghin was busy. Creatures with blue fur, green scales and purple feathers jostled for space with the penguins. Stallholders shouted their wares in a hundred different languages, enticing bargain hunters with light shows and bright music, wafting scents and dancing puppets, lassos and nets and sharp sticks. The chink and rustle of space dollars was everywhere.

  “What a wonderful aroma,” said Captain Krill, lifting his yellow striped head and beak to smell the thick market air. “It reminds me of my old enclosure at the zoo.”

  “It reminds me of Splash’s feet when he’s been wearing his spacesuit all day,” said Rocky Waddle. Catching sight of himself in a large market-stall mirror, he smoothed his long yellow eyebrows with his flippers. Rocky’s eyebrows were his pride and joy.

  “We’ve lost Fuzz,” said Splash Gordon, peering through the crowd. “I wish he wasn’t so small.”

  Fuzz Allgrin appeared by Splash’s side in a deadly ninja pose. With a shopping list tucked under one flipper, the ninja pose was difficult.

  “If you call me small again, Splash,” he warned, “I will bash you like a barracuda.”

  “Sorry,” Splash said. He patted Fuzz on the back. “It won’t happen again.”

  “That was foolish, Splash,” said Captain Krill, as Fuzz plunged back into the crowd. “You know better than to call Fuzz … that word.”

  Splash adjusted his goggles. “It was deliberate, Captain,” he said. “I needed to summon Fuzz to my side so that I could plant a tracking device on the back of his neck. We’ll know where he is now.”

  The Space Penguins continued through the crowds, following Fuzz on Splash’s tracker. It was difficult to stay focused. There were so many amazing things on sale.

  “An album by Doobee Boobee Baxter!” Captain Krill gasped, pausing at a music stall to snatch up a little silver disc. “What’s that tremendous tune he wrote? Something about vegetables…”

  “‘Underdone Onion’,” said the stallholder. The three eyes on his three heads gleamed in the hope of a sale. “You’re a creature who knows his music, sir.”

  “I do have some knowledge of classic crooners,” the Captain said modestly. “How does the song go again?”

  “Underdone onion,” the stallholder’s three heads sang in harmony. “Pale and crunchy, I hate it when the bits are hard…”

  “…and spoil your yummy lunchy,” Captain Krill sang back.

  “Yum, yum, yum,” they both sang, beaming at each other. “Yum, yum, yum!”

  “Worst song ever,” Rocky said, as the Captain handed a flipperful of space dollars to the stallholder. “And that’s official.”

  They headed on through the market. Fuzz was up ahead, haggling fiercely with a two-nosed stallholder for a basket of shrivelled black pods.

  “Ten space dollar!” the stallholder shouted.

  “Two!” Fuzz shouted back.

  “Ten space dollar and kick up bottom!”

  “Two and punch on nose! Both of them!”

  Fuzz threw two space dollars at the furious stallholder and headed off into the crowd. “Flobber pods, done. Just three more items to find,” he said, waddling on with the others trailing behind him. “Whistleberries, ponkle powder and dried thostril nostrils. I’m cooking up a feast tonight!”

  “What are whistleberries?” asked the Captain. “And flobber pods, and the rest of them?”

  “I have no idea,” said Fuzz happily.

  “Thostril nostrils is a real beak-tweaker,” said Rocky. “Try saying it fast, Captain. Thostril nostrils. Thostril— Ooh, is that an eyebrow comb?” He picked a slim red comb off a nearby stall. “Nice weight. Teeth not too close together.” He ran it through his eyebrows and admired his reflection in the stallholder’s mirror.

  “You have to buy it now,” said the stallholder.

  “I’ll take four,” Rocky said. “In different colours.”

  While Fuzz haggled for a bunch of bright orange whistleberries, Captain Krill studied his new album and Rocky tested his different combs, Splash waddled across the street to a dusty stall piled high with wires, screens and plugs.

  The stallholder had rounded ears and was covered in bright green fur. There were patches on his shirt that said things like: “I went to Arcturus and all I got was this lousy badge”, “I heart Orion” and “Keep Calm and Teleport”. The sign above his stall said “Grizzly’s Gadgets”.

  “Are you Grizzly?” Splash asked.

  “Only when someone annoys me,” the stallholder replied in a deep and growly voice.

  “Ancient technology is so adorable,” Splash said, stroking a touchscreen gadget as thin as a playing card. “I haven’t seen anything this old-fashioned since we left Earth.”

  The stallholder rubbed one of his furry green ears. “That’ll be one hundred space dollars,” he said.

  Splash put the touchscreen gadget down again. “I was hoping for something closer to twenty?” he said.

  The stallholder sucked his sharp teeth. “We’re talking very low tech for that kind of money,” he said. “Let’s see what I can find.”

  After rummaging around for a while, the stallholder pulled out a rectangular tablet carved with pictures.

  “What
is it?” Splash asked.

  “No idea, mate,” he shrugged. “I picked it up at a space boot sale a couple of years back. Not my thing normally, but it smelled nice.”

  Splash stared at the tablet. It was chunky with rounded corners and smelled strongly of honey. But the strangest thing about it were the pictures carved on its smooth waxy surface. Especially the picture right in the middle. Because it showed a penguin that looked exactly like Rocky.

  “Remarkable!” Captain Krill said. He brought his face so close to the waxy tablet that his beak was almost touching its carved surface. “Even the eyebrows are identical.”

  “Rocky would know if someone had carved his portrait,” said Fuzz. “He’d have five copies over his sleeping pod.”

  Pleased to be the centre of attention, Rocky brushed his eyebrows with a flourish of his new blue comb. “There’s no such thing as coincidence,” he said. “That’s definitely me. I’d recognize the brows anywhere.”

  “But the stallholder told me that this tablet is several hundred years old,” said Splash. “How can it possibly show Rocky?”

  “Maybe I went through a slughole,” Rocky suggested, “and travelled back in time.”

  “The correct term is wormhole, Rocky,” Captain Krill said.

  “Same difference,” said Rocky. “Slugholes do funny things with time and space. We lost Earth the last time we went through one.”

  “We’d have noticed if we’d travelled through another wormhole,” Splash pointed out.

  “Maybe it hasn’t happened yet,” Rocky said. “Maybe I’ll go through one tomorrow.”

  “I have so many questions,” Splash said.

  “So have I,” said Rocky. “Like, what’s for dinner, Fuzz?”

  “Whistleberry whip,” Fuzz answered, wiping his floury flippers on his apron.

  “Not that sort of question,” said Splash. “Questions like: where is this tablet from? And, more importantly, what does it mean?”

  The penguins looked at the other images clustered around the penguin figure in the middle of the tablet. There was a round shape and a jagged shape, something with wings and a slim stripy body, and several squiggles that looked like writing in a strange language.

  “Do you think it’s a recipe?” asked Fuzz. He adjusted his chef’s hat, which was sliding over his eyes.

  “I hope you’re not suggesting that I’m an ingredient,” Rocky said.

  “Are we all agreed that we have to solve the mystery of this tablet?” Splash asked.

  “Absolutely,” said Captain Krill. “We are the Space Penguins and we demand answers.”

  “I love new adventures,” said Rocky. “Especially adventures starring me. Splash, did the stallholder say where he’d got it from?”

  “He couldn’t remember the planet,” Splash said. “But it was in a solar system around a hundred light years from Ba-Ghin.”

  “ICEcube?” said Captain Krill, pressing a communications button set into the wall of the Tunafish. “How many solar systems are within a hundred light years of this place?”

  “Searching now, Captain,” ICEcube replied.

  “Who’s for whistleberry whip?” asked Fuzz.

  “Does it have fish in it?” Captain Krill asked, as Fuzz put a large bowl of wobbly bright orange stuff on the table.

  Fuzz put his flippers on his hips. “Does it matter?”

  “Not at all,” said the Captain quickly.

  The whistleberry whip was as slippery as a soaped mackerel. It tasted a bit like a soaped mackerel, too. Everyone was relieved when ICEcube crackled back to life and they had an excuse to leave the table.

  “I have found three solar systems within a hundred light years of our current position,” said ICEcube. “Containing a total of seventy-nine planets.”

  “How long will it take us to explore all those planets?” asked the Captain.

  “Longer than the average life span of a penguin,” ICEcube replied.

  The penguins tried to decide what to do next. They couldn’t spend their whole lives exploring solar systems, however much they wanted to solve the mystery of the tablet.

  Marin-9 appeared with four brooms and mops to clean up what was left of the whistleberry whip. “Clean,” it said. “Tidy. Put Away.”

  “Good robot,” said Fuzz.

  “Awaiting further instructions to depart Ba-Ghin,” said ICEcube, sounding hopeful. “Charting a new course to a planet with fewer smells to scramble my sensors.”

  “On your marks, tiger sharks,” said Rocky. He waddled over to the controls and pressed the thruster button, blasting the Tunafish skywards. “Where to, Captain?” he called over his shoulder, as the horizon darkened and a thousand stars whizzed past.

  “I suppose we should start with the nearest of the solar systems,” said the Captain. “We might strike lucky.”

  “We need more information,” said Splash. He brushed a blob of whistleberry whip off the tablet. “Let’s look at the rest of the pictures on this thing.”

  “I think the round shape might be a planet,” said Rocky, squinting at the images.

  “A planet that looks a bit like Earth,” Fuzz added.

  The penguins stared at the planet shape with its wiggly coastal lines.

  “Maybe it is Earth!” said Captain Krill suddenly. “It shows an earthly species, after all. How many other penguins have we met in space?”

  “Apart from evil penguin robot Beaky Wader?” said Fuzz. “None.”

  Captain Krill started to feel excited. “Maybe we’ve found the key to getting home,” he whispered.

  Splash was looking excited, too. “Perhaps the aliens that created this tablet know a way of returning us to Earth,” he whispered back. “A wormhole, like the one Rocky was talking about earlier.”

  “Why are we whispering?” Rocky whispered as well.

  “BECAUSE WE DON’T WANT TO JINX THINGS!” Fuzz shouted. “Whizzing whitebait, guys! This might be IT! A way home at last! We have to solve this puzzle, Captain!”

  Captain Krill couldn’t help himself. Moving from side to side, he threw his head back in a long and joyful squawk. The others joined in. Everyone was thinking about all the things they loved and missed about Earth.

  Normal fish in normal buckets! thought the Captain.

  Floor-to-ceiling mirrors and super-speedy icebergs! thought Rocky.

  Cookbooks specializing in seafood! thought Fuzz.

  Particle physics! thought Splash.

  When everyone had calmed down, they looked at the symbols on the tablet again.

  “What do the rest of these pictures mean?” Rocky said.

  “Comet approaching from the left,” interrupted ICEcube.

  Rocky scrambled to the controls and pulled up the Tunafish as a large lump of ice with a long dusty tail sped past the windshield with a rumble.

  “That was close,” said Rocky, returning to the others. “Comets can be trouble. Show us the tablet again.”

  “A comet,” said Fuzz suddenly.

  “Yes, Fuzz,” said Captain Krill. “Rocky steered us past a comet. But we’re talking about the tablet now.”

  Fuzz clapped his flippers. “So am I, Captain. The jagged shape. It’s a massive comet!”

  Round with a spiky burst of a tail, the comet was arcing across the top of the tablet. It seemed so obvious now that Fuzz had said it.

  “Are there any large comets causing trouble in those solar systems you found, ICEcube?” asked Captain Krill.

  “There’s one very large comet in the second system I located,” ICEcube replied. “It’s on course to crash straight into a planet called Bumbl-B in approximately three days’ time and destroy it.”

  The penguins gazed at the final picture on the tablet: a strange insect creature with wings and a stripy body.

  A bee.

  “ICEcube?” said Captain Krill. “Set the coordinates for the planet Bumbl-B. Rocky? Warp speed, I think. As fast as you can!”

  “Faster than that, Crabba!”
/>   The crusty little alien at the controls of the Lovely Loot rolled the eyes set on the tips of his claws. “I’m going as fast as I can!” he whined.

  “Well, it’s not fast enough. We need to leave Serac now. Those fish-eating fiends, the Space Penguins, are getting away!”

  Crabba twiddled another knob. “They got away weeks ago,” he muttered under his breath.

  There was a furious clanking sound. A huge robot penguin glided across the shiny golden cabin of the Lovely Loot and clonked Crabba around the head with one armoured flipper.

  “Say that again,” Dark Wader hissed.

  Crabba crawled underneath the control panel. It was safer down there. “I said, they got away weeks ago, boss!”

  “I heard you the first time, you awful little appetizer,” screamed Dark Wader. “We’re weeks behind them, but all cannot be lost. I didn’t rebuild this armour from scrap metal for nothing.”

  “I rebuilt it,” Crabba said sulkily.

  “I didn’t tie that idiot Bigbutt to a tree by his nose ring and escape from the planet Flogiston and its crazy metal-eating inhabitants for nothing!” Dark Wader raved on. “I didn’t take fresh command of this ship just to lose those prawn-munching plankton because you aren’t going fast enough!”

  “I tied Bigbutt to that tree,” Crabba moaned. “I hitched us a ride to the moon of Serac so we could get the Lovely Loot back.”

  “You are nothing without me, Crabba,” said Dark Wader. “I am the biggest, baddest penguin in the cosmos. And nothing will stop me getting my revenge!”

  Crabba was starting to think his boss was going a bit crackers. It was understandable. The Space Penguins had beaten Dark Wader more times than he could count.

  “How do they do it, Crabba?” Dark Wader asked feverishly, gliding up and down the cabin with his armoured flippers behind his back. “How do those Space Penguins foil me time and time again? I’m not doing anything wrong. So it must be your fault.”