Eddy Stone and the Alien Cat Attack Page 13

  Brutus tugged at the washing line that was acting as his lead, eagerly following his nostrils towards the great smell of cat. The other end of the cord was wrapped securely round Eddy’s left hand. The big dog was far too powerful to pull back, and either didn’t know or didn’t care what the command “Heel!” meant. Eddy was being dragged along, sometimes at a trot, and sometimes with his feet sliding over the icy pavement. Thursday and Millie, who was clutching her favourite cuddly Horaceboris, could only just keep up.

  As they neared the harbour, Eddy signalled to Millie. The little girl filled her lungs, opened her mouth and bellowed, “Yaaayyyy! It’s Hero Hound! He’s superpowered and strong and brave and absolutely nothing can stop him!”

  “That little lady is loud!” said Thursday.

  “You should hear it from where I am,” Professor Blubblubblabblubblubblubblap rumbled from inside Millie. “I’ve known exploding comets that made less noise.”

  They rounded the last corner. Now they could see the harbour, and the crowd of people gathered by the reflector wall.

  “Look!” Eddy panted as Brutus dragged him on. “No cats. Henry has done a brilliant job. He’s got them all out of the way. All we’ve got to do is keep Drax occupied so the others can get to the reflector wall without him noticing.”

  And there up ahead, in the feline form of Ginger Tom, was Drax G’varglestarg, sprawled fast asleep on the silver cube of his communications interface in the middle of the High Street.

  Brutus didn’t care about names. Or space aliens in artificial bodies. As far as he was concerned, it was just a cat. And Brutus knew what cats were for. Cats were for chasing.

  Barking loudly, he set off across the frozen ground, paws skittering on the slippery surface as he accelerated towards his target. Eddy skidded and slithered along behind him on the end of his lead.

  This was the moment that Henry had been waiting for. He broke cover from the shadows of the alleyway and headed for the reflector wall, a set of spanners clanking in his trouser pockets.

  “Come on!” he yelled to Millie and Thursday.

  The two hundred cats in the alley behind him took this as their cue. Cat logic said that if the man with the fish was moving, it must surely be to get more fish to feed to them. They chased after Henry and surrounded him, mewing and pawing and pleading and forming a barrier that completely blocked his path. He couldn’t take a step without tripping over the tangle of furry bodies. And neither could Millie or Thursday. There was no way that they could follow the plan to get to the reflector wall and start undoing the bolts that held it together.

  Step three of the plan was starting to go wrong.

  Back in the High Street, Drax G’varglestarg was still fast asleep and blissfully unaware of the huge dog that was rapidly bearing down on him. Brutus took one last bound and launched himself at his target. As he did so, he barked out a mighty “ARF!” that ruffled Drax’s whiskers and woke him with a start. Seeing the slavering open jaws heading his way, Drax leaped straight upwards with every ounce of bounce he could find in his legs. He was just in time. Brutus’s mouth snapped shut on empty air.

  Bounce over, Drax came straight back down again and landed on the dog’s head. Front paws on Brutus’s ears and back paws on his snout, he dug in for a firm grip. The dog yelped as claws found soft flesh and sank deep. Drax clung on, hugging tight to the dog’s head and covering his eyes, so that all Brutus could see was a curtain of fur. Surprised, in pain, and with no idea where he was going, there was only one thing for Brutus to do.

  He went bonkers, charging round in circles trying to shake his unwelcome passenger off his head. Behind him, Eddy still had hold of the makeshift lead. He wished he hadn’t wrapped it round his hand quite so many times to make sure he had a firm grip, because having a firm grip no longer seemed like a good idea. As Brutus turned and twisted, Eddy felt himself losing his footing on the icy ground. His feet flailed around for a moment, and then he fell flat on his back.

  “Owwww!” he shouted. His cries mixed with the dog’s howling and Drax’s yowling, as he was dragged helplessly up and down the frozen street like a human sledge.

  Step three had really gone right off the rails. But it had one more nasty surprise in store.

  As Eddy was dragged along, his hat came off.

  His head was suddenly full of the recorded message that was coming from the communications interface.

  “IT’S A LOVELY DAY,” it said. “EVERYTHING IS NORMAL. BUILD THE REFLECTOR WALL.” It was Drax’s voice. The voice that he had heard way back in the woods the first time he and Millie had seen the podule. The voice that had taken control of everyone in Tidemark Bay. And Eddy knew that very soon it would take control of him, too.

  THE PLAN. STEP 4 –

  USE TOWELS AND STICKY TAPE TO WRAP…

  But it didn’t matter what step four of Eddy’s plan was. Or steps five to eighteen, come to that. They were in no position to do anything. Henry, Millie and Thursday were surrounded by cats, and couldn’t get near the reflector wall. Eddy was even more helpless, being dragged around the ice on his back, with an alien voice slowly taking over his mind. It looked like things just couldn’t get any worse.

  And then they did.

  Brutus, who couldn’t see where he was going because Drax was over his eyes, ran slap bang into a lamp post. Drax jumped out of the way at the last moment and clambered up the pole, and Brutus took the blow full on his head. He staggered woozily.

  Eddy slithered across the frozen High Street towards him, and arrived just as the dog gave up the battle to stay on his feet. Brutus collapsed in a daze right on top of Eddy, pinning him to the ground.

  Eddy could still hear Drax’s voice in the recorded commands coming through the communications interface.

  “IT’S A LOVELY DAY,” the voice repeated. “BUILD THE REFLECTOR WALL.” He could feel it starting to work on him. His legs twitched to get moving, but Brutus was too heavy for him to shift. Eddy was going nowhere.

  So that was it, Eddy just managed to think over the voice in his head. The plan to make the Malvalians think that they could never beat Hero Hound, the plan to make them give up and go home, the plan to save the water and the planet – all over. They had lost. Earth had lost.

  It looked like what Henry had said was turning out to be true. The best laid plans of mice and men really did often end up in a right old mess.

  Although, in fact, it was a bit too early to judge how the mouse’s plan had worked out.

  The mouse in question was hiding in a burger box in the gutter just across the street from where Eddy was lying. It had found the box in the early hours of the morning when the streets were empty. And it had also found what was left of the burger, polished it off, got indigestion, and decided to take a nap while its meal went down. When it woke up hours later ready to head for home, it was horrified to find the street crawling with cats, and decided to sit tight while it worked out what to do.

  After a long think, it had come up with a plan. It wasn’t a very good plan, but if you are expecting something more complicated, you’ve probably got the wrong idea about mouse intelligence. This was the plan, in its entirety: Run for it.

  The mouse peeped cautiously out from the burger box. The cats seemed to have gone. This was the moment to put the plan into action.

  It was also the moment when Drax G’varglestarg jumped down from the lamp post to find out just who had tried to cause him trouble. Who had managed to get this far without being hypnotized – and how? He peered at the figure lying on the floor. It was no good – they all looked alike to him.

  Eddy peered back. He had run out of ideas.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t take the water.”

  “How do you know about the water?” Drax’s voice thumped into Eddy’s head over the message that everything was lovely. “Wait. You?” His eyes narrowed. “I can’t imagine how you managed to get back here. But I obviously made a mistake when I didn’t deal with you in the first place. St
ill, that’s easily put right.”

  “What do you mean?” said Eddy out loud. “You’re not allowed to use weapons on another planet.”

  “I don’t need weapons,” said Drax. “I’ve got a town full of people and two hundred cats who will do the job for me.” Drax’s voice boomed between Eddy’s ears. “INSTRUCTION FOR ALL TUBEOIDS AND ALL CATS…”

  And at that very second, the mouse counted down – which in mouse numbers went lots…some…a…none – and made its run for safety. It streaked across the High Street, and into the corner of Drax’s vision. Drax’s head snapped to one side to follow it. The cat instincts buried in his body rose to the surface irresistibly. One thought and one thought only filled Drax’s mind.

  CATCH THE MOUSE!

  And one thought and one thought only was transmitted as an instruction to a town full of people and two hundred cats.

  “…CATCH THE MOUSE!”

  Drax twisted round and flailed a paw. The mouse swerved wildly out of reach.

  Two hundred cats turned away from Henry and the hope of more fish, ears pricked, and charged up the High Street, mewing wildly. Around the harbour people dropped the metal objects that they were carrying and hurried away from the reflector wall, muttering, “Catch the mouse!

  Catch the mouse!”

  The middle of the High Street was soon filled with a wriggling scrum of cats and people, arms grabbing and legs scrambling.

  “What is happening?” said Millie.

  “I have no idea,” said Thursday. “But Eddy’s in the middle of that mayhem. We’d better get him out of there.”

  Henry picked Millie up and pushed through the crowd towards Eddy, past yowling cats and people shouting “Have you seen it?” and “Mind my foot!” and “It’s over there!” – even though the mouse had already slipped unseen out of the edge of the crowd and scurried away to safety.

  “STOP!” Eddy could hear Drax in his head. The Malvalian had clearly managed to overcome his urge to chase the mouse. “BACK TO WORK! EVERYTHING IS NORMAL!”

  People started to split away from the mouse hunt.

  Henry put Millie down by the lamp post, and strained to lift Brutus off Eddy. The dog slowly staggered to its feet and shook his head. Then he saw the crowd in front of him, and leaped into it, barking enthusiastically and scattering cats in all directions.

  “Back to work!” said Eddy, scrabbling to get up. “Everything is normal.”

  “Whoa!” Thursday grabbed hold of him with most of his legs. “You stay right where you are.”

  Eddy struggled to break free.

  Millie picked up Eddy’s bobble hat.

  “So,” she asked him, “is the plan working?”

  “Is it going well?” Millie added. “Are we winning?”

  And then a very strange thing happened.

  Henry laughed.

  He had carefully studied all eighteen stages of Eddy’s plan, and learned exactly what he had to do. He had watched it collapse almost instantly into confusion and chaos. He’d seen Eddy dragged flat on his back along the ice by a howling dog with a cat stuck on its head. He’d been mobbed by hundreds of fish-crazy cats. He’d seen a crowd of people scrambling together like wild animals. He was now watching Eddy try to break free of Thursday’s grip so he could join in with building the reflector wall. Their whole plan had gone about as wrong as wrong could be. And now, when Millie asked her wide-eyed question, he could think of no other answer.

  He laughed. For the first time since the Malvalians had taken him prisoner so long ago. All those years without even a smile. And now the dam burst, and it all came flooding out. He laughed and laughed till tears ran down his cheeks and he bent double, gasping for breath.

  “Are – we – winning?” he panted. And then he started laughing again.

  The sound rang through Eddy’s head. Drax’s voice, the voice that was telling him to build the reflector wall, started to break up, like a badly tuned radio. All he could hear was Henry laughing. And then his own jaw started to wobble. It was all such a shambles. He broke into laughter, too. Laughter that completely drowned out Drax.

  Some of the people around him started to giggle.

  “I can’t hear Drax any more,” said Eddy, through snorts of laughter. “I don’t need my hat. The laughter is blocking him out.”

  “How very interesting,” said Professor Blubblubblabblubblubblubblap from Millie’s stomach. “It must be breaking up your normal brain patterns. It’s not something I have ever been able to study, of course. Laughter is beyond my experience.”

  “There’s not much humour out in the galaxy, you know, kid,” said Thursday. “And none at all among the Malvalians. They probably never came across it before.”

  “Which means they won’t know how to deal with it,” said Eddy.

  He looked around. Laughter was spreading through the crowd. And everywhere it passed there were puzzled faces as minds began to shake off the Malvalian control.

  “We can beat them!” chuckled Eddy. “We can break the hypnosis. All we have to do is get everyone laughing.”

  “We should find my daddy,” said Millie. “He knows loads of jokes. Even some funny ones.”

  “And mine does, too,” said Eddy. “They must be in this crowd somewhere.”

  The laughter around them was getting quieter now. Drax’s message was coming through the communications interface more clearly again. “Build the reflector wall.”

  “We need to find them fast,” said Eddy.

  It didn’t take long to drag them out of the crowd. They both looked confused.

  “What?” said Eddy’s dad. “Where?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Uncle Ken. “We were just…”

  “Jokes,” said Eddy. “We need you to tell jokes. Keep this crowd laughing.”

  Eddy’s dad perked up.

  “Jokes,” he said. “Well, you’ve got the right man.”

  “You certainly have,” said Uncle Ken. “And your dad’s here as well.” He chuckled. A few heads turned.

  “Let’s see who can get them going best then,” said Uncle Ken.

  “You’re on,” said Eddy’s dad.

  In the next few minutes, chickens crossed roads, ducks borrowed library books, sailors were washed up on desert islands, horses walked into pubs, goldfish drove tanks, and parrots gave away secrets. Drax’s hold on the people of Tidemark Bay was completely broken as giggles and chuckles and chortles bellowed and billowed around the High Street.

  The laughter would have been a lot less enthusiastic if the people had known what was going on directly above Tidemark Bay. It looked like a faint ripple that ran across half the sky through the grey clouds that cloaked the day.

  But it wasn’t a ripple. It was the Malvalian Grand Control ship, as big as a city, hidden behind its disguise shield.

  And Malvalian Grand Control was not happy.

  Drax G’varglestarg, who had taken refuge from the chaotic mouse hunt on the roof of the nearby Penguin Fish Restaurant, was trying to explain what had happened. Yes, he had lost his power over the minds of the local population. No, he could not say why, but it seemed to be connected to that weird squeaky coughing noise they had all started making. No, he didn’t know what that was, but perhaps it was a sign that they were all ill.

  And then it got really tricky for him.

  “We have visual contact,” said Grand Control. “We have a sighting of Hero Hound – repeat, Hero Hound. We believe that he is responsible for the problem. Report.”

  “That’s just a local life-form in a costume,” Drax reported. “There is no Hero Hound. He’s made up.”

  “That is not what the databank says,” Grand Control replied. “The databank says that Hero Hound has amazing superpowers and nothing can stop him. Report.”

  “The databank is wrong.”

  “That’s not what the databank says. The databank says that the databank is correct.”

  “It doesn’t matter what it says about Hero Hound,” Dra
x told Grand Control. “And it doesn’t matter that I have lost control of the population. We don’t need them any more. The reflector wall is ninety-seven per cent complete and perfectly operational.”

  Across the street, Thursday’s antennae were twitching. He swivelled them round and – “Hey! I got a signal coming through. It sounds like the Malvalian fleet has arrived. And – uh-oh! You’re not going to like what I’m hearing, kid.”

  What he was hearing was Drax’s voice:

  “ACTIVATE THE HYPER-ENERGY PULSE BEAM AND BEGIN UPLOADING WATER NOW. THE PLAN WILL STILL WORK.”

  It was that word again. Plan. Just asking for trouble.

  And round the corner trouble lumbered, tall, grey-blue and absolutely enormous in the bottom department, ready to prove that it’s not only the plans of mice and men that go wrong, but ones thought up by space aliens as well.

  The Fluffy Wuffy Cushion Bunny had got bored with squashing bushes and trees, and had left the woods in search of some variety to spice up its life. Its shambling steps had led it into Tidemark Bay, where it had been delighted to discover that cars made a lovely loud twanging noise when you sat on them, just before the wheels collapsed. Not to mention the crisp crunch they made just after the wheels collapsed. It couldn’t decide which of those two sounds it liked more, so had to make them lots of times to see if it could pick a favourite.

  As far as the Fluffy Wuffy Cushion Bunny was concerned, twangy things and crunchy things were both pretty good, but what it loved most of all were shiny things. And now in front of it was the biggest shiny thing it had ever seen in its life – a great wall of shine running right round the harbour.

  And just as Thursday picked up Malvalian Grand Control transmitting the ominous words “Priming the hyper-energy pulse beam generator”, the Fluffy Wuffy Cushion Bunny arrived at one end of the reflector wall. It turned, shimmied its massive rear, and plonked it down on a particularly fine nineteenth-century mantelpiece mirror in an elaborate golden frame. The bottom passed straight through, and slammed down on the wall’s scaffold support. The scaffold buckled. That section of the reflector wall toppled forward and splashed into the waters of the harbour. The collapse spread along the wall like a Mexican wave, taking the entire structure down. Half the shiny objects of Tidemark Bay were now actually in Tidemark Bay, and fast sinking to the bottom.