They Came From Planet Q (6 page)

Up on the screen, out of the haze, a man appeared.

Roger Rogers!

In one hand, he carried a camera. My camera, to be exact! He took pictures of all the action around him. In his other hand, he carried something that looked like a gun . . . no, a power drill . . . no, a laser machine . . . no . . .

What
was
that thing?

He aimed it at a break in the firquartz. Then he took aim and fired. There was a blinding white light and then a red, smoky cloud. Before you could say Planet Q, the last remaining firequartz got zapped.

It no longer had any power.

“How cool is that?” Damon whispered to me. “That zapper thing hits the firequartz with so much power and heat that it messes up the magnetic force.”

All at once, the movie screen went black.
Again.

“Is the movie going to come back on in a minute?” I said.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. This was a real-life blackout. The projector's backup generator had finally stopped, too, thanks to all that magnetic interference.

“This happens all the time at the Drive-O-Rama,” Damon mumbled, trying to sound like he wasn't completely scared out of his wits. “T-t-technical difficulties, that's all.”

“Um . . . is anyone else scared?” I asked.

Normally, I don't lose it in the dark, but
this
was no ordinary dark. This was “we're in a spooky castle and there's a monster army of robots coming to get us in about five minutes” dark.

We acted like we were so smart and in control. But it was the B-Monsters who were in control. Outside the castle, at that exact moment, the B-Force was strengthening again. I could only imagine what the mall looked like now!

At that moment, the
real
B-Monster from Planet Q was getting very close, digging, digging, digging . . .

Walter appeared, his face illuminated by a flashlight. He looked like a guy from the haunted house on Halloween.

“I'm so sorry, kids,” he said. “Everything's gone kerplooey again! But you already know that.”

“What are we supposed to do now?” Stella whispered.

“Is the B-Force getting stronger?” I asked.

“Stronger, yes,” Walter said.

“Thanks to the increased magnetism caused by the pending arrival of the movie bots and their retrieval of the firequartz,” Jesse said, “I bet the electricity all over Riddle has been short-circuited. That includes this castle.”

“Yo, Jess,” Damon said. “English, please.”

“A changing magnetic field creates electrical current,” Jesse said. “So if the magnetism cuts in and out, then the electricity might cut in and out, too . . .”

“Or shutdown completely?” Stella asked.

Walter nodded. “Indeed. Very well said, Jesse.”

“Magnets make electricity?” Stella said. “But I thought electrical current created magnetism.”

“It works both ways,” Jesse explained.

“So the power in the castle is short-circuiting because of all the magnetism?” I asked.

Walter nodded. “Yes, Lindsey,” he explained. “When one magnetic force gets hit with another force, like electricity, the molecules inside the object get mixed up . . .”

“And the magnetism goes away!” I said.

Walter nodded. “Exactly. Good work, Lindsey.”

“Just a little something I learned from a friend,” I said, indicating Jesse, of course.

“Aaaaah!” Damon blurted. His face had gone white. “I can't listen to this science mumbo jumbo anymore. This Monster Squad mission is just too scary for a bunch of fifth-graders. We need Leery. We need an escape route out of Riddle. We need—”

The castle's power rumbled back on and we all looked up. The overhead lights buzzed like wasps again.

“Aha!” Walter cried, clicking a beeper on his belt. “The communication system is back online! Thank goodness! Let's go get Leery! We have to go before we lose power again! We have a lot to report!”

“And even more to ask,” I added.

We raced to the round room near the castle entrance. Leery Castle looked much safer with all the lights turned on. Walter had installed a new, enormous screen monitor for the communicator. We could see Leery almost life-size, speaking to us from halfway across the globe.

When we fought the Beast with 1000 Eyes, Leery had been out of town in the arctic. Today, he was at the Great Wall of China looking for rare specimens of bamboo. I wondered if that meant our next potential B-Monster would be a plant—or distantly related to a panda bear. There was nothing predictable about the Monster Squad. Eventually we'd have to face all B-Monsters: fish, bird, animal, and plant.

Right now the B-Monster was a robot.

The picture on the communicator screen was crystal clear. We could see Leery as if he were in the room with us. The Great Wall curved for miles in the distance.

“You have come so far since your first Monster Squad mission, my friends,” Leery said to all of us.

“Fight the B-Monster! Fight the B-Monster!” Damon yelled out. Stella looked so annoyed. But it didn't bug me. Damon just didn't want to look like a chicken in front of Leery. That was understandable. I wanted to show off every time we came face-to-face with Leery, too.

Walter moved the communicator around so we could each say our own hello. He was in great spirits. He actually greeted me by name.

“Lindsey!” he said. “Walter tells me that you have something that belongs to me . . .”

And then Oswald Leery did something I've never seen him do.

He took off his dark glasses.

It was a little unnerving. After all, his eyes were full of cataracts that turned them a smoky, whitish green color, almost alienlike.

“Hold the camera closer to the screen so I can see it,” Leery said in his gravely voice. “I am so pleased that your grandfather saved that camera and that you used it to identify the B-Monster bots. It photographed the B-Force.”

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “But we still haven't actually seen any bots in the flesh. Well, up close.”

Stella pushed me over so she was front and center at the communicator, and not me. I think she was just jealous because Leery talked to me for so long.

And just as Stella stepped up to ask something, Leery's face starting to turn to static. Ha!

Walter hit the control panel and the picture came right back.

“Sometimes I wish I never created
They Came from Planet Q
,” Leery said, sighing. “I never should have imagined a world where Earth could be destroyed for good . . .”

“But it can't be! It won't be!” I cried. “We watched the movie again just a few moments ago, Dr. Leery.”

“We can get the firequartz away from the robots just like Roger Rogers did,” Damon said. “In the movie, Roger Rogers used a contraption he called the ‘zapper' to suck all the power out of the firequartz. We can do the same thing!”

“But my friends,” Leery said, slipping his glasses on once again. “Roger Rogers was a superhero and you kids are—”

“We're super, too!” Stella cried.

There was silence on the other end of the communicator. Oswald Leery cleared his throat. He faced the camera and smiled.

“You will find the firequartz in the cellar under the mall,” Leery said. “I have no record of the coordinates, but it's there. When we made the movie, we mined the entire area and removed most of the stone except for one slab that wouldn't fit in our mine vehicle. But don't be fooled by its size. It might not seem so powerful, but rest assured it is.”

As Leery faded from the screen I looked each of my fellow Squadders in the eye. I saw fear, but I also saw resolve. There was only one thing left to do: “Guys, it's time to rock and roll!”

On the limo over to the mall, Jesse starte talking science again: magnets, planets, and special forces.

“Tell me again how magnetism works,”I said to him

“The core of Earth is molten iron, which is like this huge magnet. The field of magnetism goes from the north pole to the south pole. And magnetism is the line of―”

“Blah, blah, aaaaah!”Damon groaned. “I see your mouth moving, dude, but I don't get a word of what you're saying.”

I chuckled. “He's just trying to help us understand how magnetism works. We need to know these things. We need to know our B-Monster inside and out.”

As we got closer to the mall, I kept my eyes glued to the road. We had just passed the Drive-O-Rama drive-in sign and billboard, when Walter hit the brakes—hard.

I whipped out my camera, ready to snap. “What is it? What is it?” I cried.

“Traffic jam!” Walter called back. “Right up there! At the mall entrance. I'm going to have to find another way in.”

Walter spun the steering wheel and turned onto a grassy road behind the mall instead.

What a bumpy ride! We were tossed around like popcorn kernels in a pot. One of the limo's car cushions actually flew across the backseat—and I nearly flew across with it! Then a panel in the ceiling clicked open and everything dumped out at our feet: cups, papers, boxes, CDs, rubber bands, envelopes, old magazines. Junk.

“Hey, Lindsey,” Jesse said, pointing to one of the papers. “Isn't that a map of the mall?” And sure enough, there on the floor, was a half-crumpled map of the Petroglyph Mall. It must have been left over from when Leery was devising the bot B-Monsters for
They Came from Planet Q
. What amazing timing! How lucky we were! Even from this distance, way out in the fields, I saw how Petroglyph Mall had grown overrun with people and vehicles and a crazy, swirly storm of objects in the air. The B-Force had gone crazy with blaring sirens and blazing spotlights. The sky was bearing down, too, dark like a storm, like night coming in.