War on Whimsy (6 page)

“A little harder, please,” said the princess sleepily, to the poor servant who was rubbing her feet. Apparently, the president's family lived in a specially constructed Lava Protection Bubble so she didn't have to worry about applying lava cream.

“Can the Space Brigade please assemble at Exit Door Five Hundred and prepare for drop-off,” said a polite voice over a loudspeaker.

Nicola's heart jumped like a crazy gymnast. She packed her lava screen into her satchel and stood up, wondering if her own face looked as terrified as the others. They were all adjusting their parachutes with trembling fingers.

“Shouldn't we have had some
training
before suddenly jumping out of a spaceship wearing a parachute?” said Greta to Nicola, as if Nicola had any control over the situation.

“Parachuting is
easy
!” Princess Petronella sat up so abruptly her foot-rubbing servant toppled backward onto the floor. “I once spent a delightful week parachuting on the Planet of Bliss.”

“Did you have any training?” asked Katie, helping the servant back to her feet.

“Of course! I spent a month working with my own personal parachute trainer,” said the princess. “He had me land on a specially built soft surface until I got my technique right. He said I would have broken my legs otherwise.” She laughed merrily. “Ah, good times.”

The Space Brigade looked at her with stony faces.

“Oh,” said the princess. “Well, I'm sure you'll all be fine. Just remember to bend your legs when you land.”

“Space Brigade report to Exit Door Five Hundred right NOW!” said a rather less polite voice over the loudspeaker.

“Have fun,” said the princess, lying back down and presenting her feet to the servant. “Please don't worry about me, stuck with the boring toad. I'll manage. Royals are used to making sacrifices.”

“Is she for
real
?” said Sean, as the Space Brigade ran down the corridor along the side of the spaceship.

Nicola was busy looking at the numbers on the exit doors. “Oh, no—that's only Exit Door Twenty! We're so far away!”

They all picked up the pace, their parachutes bouncing on their backs.

“Are you all deaf? Space Brigade to Exit Door Five Hundred!” said the loudspeaker voice.

“We're
coming
!” called Nicola.

The corridor seemed endless. It was like something out of a nightmare. By the time they got to Exit Door Five Hundred, they'd all be so exhausted they'd just fall out.

With her longer legs, Shimlara was the fastest. She ran ahead of them, calling out the numbers on the doors.

Finally, she shouted triumphantly, “Exit Door Five Hundred!”

The rest of the Space Brigade ran up behind her, their faces red and sweaty, their chests heaving.

Exit Door Five Hundred was wide open and the heat and noise from the erupting volcanoes below struck them like a brutal slap across the face.

Nicola peered out at the fiery landscape below.

I can't,
she thought.
I cannot jump out of this spaceship.
She could feel her own resistance as massive and immovable as a wall of concrete in front of her.

“I can't do it,” said Katie to Nicola in a quiet, terrified voice.

“Space Brigade! You are required to jump on the count of three,” said the voice over the loudspeaker. (Nicola was starting to hate that voice.)

“One . . .” boomed the voice.

Shimlara was clinging to the side of the Exit Door.

“We have to do it,” she said, except you could tell she was facing the same concrete wall of resistance as Nicola.

“Yes,” said Sean unconvincingly.

Nicola darted a look at her brother. His face was white. He was the one who
loved
doing this sort of crazy stuff! If Sean was scared, what hope did the rest of them have?

“We need training,” insisted Greta.

“Maybe there is another way we could get to Volcomania,” said Tyler.

“Two . . .” said the voice.

Nicola's mind was filled with images.

She saw Georgio performing his celebratory chicken dance the first day she'd ever met him when he'd turned up in her classroom and picked
her
as the Earthling Ambassador.

She saw Mully bending down to put her hand on Nicola's shoulder and saying, “I have complete confidence in you.”

She saw Squid, dragging his blue blanket along behind him, his thumb jammed in his mouth.

If it wasn't for Georgio and Mully, Earth would no longer exist. Nicola's planet would be a garbage dump. They
had
to help the Gorgioskios.

“
Three!
” shouted the voice over the loudspeaker.

When you're frightened of something,
Nicola's mother had once said to her,
there's only one way to make the fear go away—and that's to do the thing that's frightening you. You just have to ignore the fear and DO IT, the faster the better!

Nicola looked at the others, their faces illuminated by the fiery light of the exploding volcanoes.

She pulled her lava goggles over her eyes.

If she didn't jump, the others never would.

She didn't let her mind think anymore.

She just jumped.

F . . . r . . . i . . . z . . . z . . . l . . . e !
That was the word like a long, silent scream in Nicola's mind as she plummeted through the night sky toward the volcanoes below, hot air blasting her face, a roaring sound in her ears. She wasn't floating on her stomach in a neat star shape like the parachutists she'd seen on television. She was flailing about, her hands clawing at the air, as if she could hold on to something, or somehow climb back onto the spaceship.

Rip cord.

She needed to pull her rip cord.

She grabbed at her shoulder and felt nothing. Panic exploded in her chest. She felt again, and there it was. She pulled.

There was an enormous tugging sensation, as if a giant had grabbed her by the shoulders and wrenched her upright.

The roaring sound stopped abruptly like a switch had been turned off. She looked up. Her parachute was purple silk, rippling silently above her. She was safe. Her dress fluttered around her legs. Mmmm, her dress and parachute matched quite well. What a strange sight she must have made, parachuting above volcanoes in the middle of the night dressed for a birthday party.

Nicola could see Sean, Shimlara, and Tyler, not far behind her. Their parachutes had all opened and they were all smiling with the same blissful relief that Nicola felt.

Katie and Greta had only just jumped. The Royal Spaceship was flying off into the distance behind them.

To Nicola's chagrin, she saw that Greta looked like an absolute skydiving professional. She was floating in a star shape and, as Nicola watched, she calmly reached for her rip cord and her parachute opened.

Katie, on the other hand, looked much like Nicola had probably looked. She was tumbling crazily through the air, arms and legs in every direction.

Okay, pull your rip cord now,
thought Nicola.

Katie kept falling.

Nicola could hear a faint, eerie sound that she thought might have been Katie's scream.

Katie continued to fall like someone pushed from the side of the cliff. She flew past Nicola. Nicola saw only a flash of gaping mouth and bulging eyes.

“Katie, pull your rip cord, you silly, silly . . . !” screamed Nicola and she'd never heard her own voice sound like that: violent with terror.

She could hear the rest of the Space Brigade screaming at Katie, too, and just when she thought she was about to see her best friend die right in front of her, Katie's parachute burst open like a blossoming flower. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing Nicola had ever seen.

Nicola's eyes filled with tears. She was going to be very angry with Katie when they landed.

Landing. Right. That was the next thing to accomplish.

XYZ40 had told them that the Royal Spaceship would drop them as close as possible to a red hut with 3A on the roof that would be easy to spot from the air.

“The Volcomanians color-code everything,” she'd said. “It makes it quite convenient to get around. Of course, you'll find it's quite a different story when you get to the Planet of Whimsy.”

Nicola looked down beneath her. It didn't matter that it was the middle of the night because the constant explosions from the volcanoes lit up the landscape like daylight. Everywhere she looked she could see erupting volcanoes.

It was quite beautiful in a frightening sort of way.

Goodness! Was that a
city
perched on the side of that volcano? Nicola tried to imagine living her daily life on the side of an active volcano.

She suddenly remembered her teacher, Mrs. Zucchini, telling them about an ancient city in Italy that had been buried under ash after a volcano erupted. The city was called Pompeii, and when Mount Vesuvius erupted, the ash preserved everything—even the bodies. The city was frozen forever like a time capsule. Apparently you could still see the terrified expressions on some of the dead victims' faces.

Why wasn't the entire planet of Volcomania buried in ash? Nicola wished she'd remembered Pompeii when XYZ40 was briefing them. She could have asked her.

As her parachute sank lower, she could feel the heat radiating from the volcanoes like a million summer days. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

Was the lava screen waterproof? What if she sweated it all away? What if her skin became as red and scaly as a Volcomanian? What if . . .

“I can see the hut!”

It was Katie's voice.

Oh! Nicola had forgotten all about the hut. She'd just been letting her parachute and mind drift.

Nicola looked down and saw a small, squat, red hut with 3A clearly marked on the top.

She reached for the toggles that Tyler had told them would steer the parachute. (“How do you know this?” Greta had asked. “I don't know,” Tyler had answered. “I just do.”)

Nicola pulled the left toggle and the parachute gently floated down to the left. She pulled right and it floated down to the right. It was quite fun. Maybe she'd take up parachuting as a hobby when she got back to Earth.

She zigzagged through the air toward the hut and saw with horror that it seemed to be right next to the crater of a permanently erupting volcano. It was like a pot of milk boiling over on the stove. Except it wasn't milk—it was lava.

Couldn't XYZ40 have picked a landing spot that wasn't quite so close to a volcano crater? They would have to parachute straight through a
fountain
of lava.

“It's going to burn us!” screamed Greta.

“We're wearing lava screen!” Nicola shouted back. “We'll be fine!” She hoped. Her parachute sank lower and suddenly it was raining fire. Nicola recoiled and shut her eyes as glowing droplets fell onto her skin and dress. But there was no burning sensation. The droplets of molten lava felt as cool as raindrops and slid painlessly off her. She opened her eyes again. Thank goodness for lava screen.

“Nicola!” said Tyler. “We forgot—” His parachute floated near hers and then floated off again in a gust of wind.

“What?” Nicola called back.

She could smell something sizzling. It was like cloth burning. She looked down at her dress. No. It was fine. Tyler's parachute hovered near Nicola's again.

“We forgot the parachutes!” he cried.

What did he mean? They had their parachutes!

Nicola laughed and pointed at Tyler's parachute. “No, we didn't!”

And then suddenly she understood. Tyler's parachute was dotted with dozens of smoldering holes from the showering lava.

“We forgot to put lava screen on the parachutes!” cried Tyler.

“Nicola! We forgot to—”

Shimlara plummeted past Nicola, pointing frantically at the burning holes in her own parachute.

“Yes, I
know
,” Nicola called back. Did they really expect her to come up with a SOLUTION to this disaster?

The volcano directly below them erupted with a huge explosion that lit up the sky. Nicola gasped as she was completely drenched in lava. She wiped off her face with both hands—imagine if she'd forgotten to lava screen her face!—and looked up at her parachute.

It was burning; crackling flames were shooting up into the sky.

There was a
whoosh
sound and her parachute collapsed inward.

Someone shouted, “Nicola! We forgot to—”

But Nicola never heard the rest because suddenly she was falling much too fast toward the planet below.

Nicola spat and spat again, trying desperately to clear her throat of the most horrible taste. She seemed to have swallowed an entire bucket of . . . something disgusting. It had a burned, ashy taste.

She opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was a huge, furry, gray creature with white teeth looming over her.

Nicola screamed and backed away.

“Calm down,” said the furry creature. “It's me.”

Nicola blinked.

It was Shimlara. She was completely covered in some sort of gray, ashy material, so only her eyes and teeth were visible.

Nicola looked down at herself and realized she was covered in the same stuff. Her dress was ruined. She tugged at the charred remains of her parachute dangling uselessly behind her back.