“It isn't eating us,” he cried. “It's crushing us!”

  “SIR … I … I …”

  Through the web of branches I could just make out the shape of Gax. Six or seven tentacles had finally got hold of him and were writhing around his body like boa constrictors. They had wrestled Gax's blade to a spot in the air where it whizzed and whirred but touched nothing.

  “I … I … I …”

  “Don't worry, li'l buddy!” Spuckler cried. “I'll save ya!” But Spuckler was in no position to save anyone, himself included. By this time he was so deeply caught in the branches, we could hardly even see him.

  Finally Poog blurted out something …

  ZUTT-ZUTT-ZUTT

  … and the branches came to a full stop.

  There was a moment of quiet, during which none of us dared even breathe a sigh of relief.

  The silence continued.

  Poog closed his eyes.

  Breathed in, breathed out.

  He repeated what he'd just said, giving it a very slightly different intonation.

  The branches shuddered a bit, then began constricting again, faster than before.

  GRUH-GRUNK!

  The roof of the car nearly caved in.

  PAAAASH!

  One of the windows shattered.

  Mr. Beeba snapped. He grabbed Poog and held him between his palms.

  “Say it right, you fool!”

  Poog stared at Mr. Beeba in shock.

  Mr. Beeba swallowed so hard it sounded like he was choking. He let go of Poog and turned his hands into a knot of fingers. “Er, I mean … in view of our present circumstances … it behooves us to, erm … strive for accuracy….”

  Poog ignored him and took one more shot at saying the magic words.

  FLAP!

  FLEPP!

  FLOOP!

  The branches sucked themselves back like a dozen tape measures recoiling at once. The platform …

  FLUPP! FLOP! FLUTT! … went back …

  ZUPP! ZOOT! ZIPPLE!

  … to being a platform.

  We were all free and clear.

  Spuckler made a terrific whooping noise and threw the ship into the highest of its high gears. There was a rumble, a grumble, a deafening boom.

  A moment later the pole, the platform, and all of Shringla Rai were miles and miles away. We zoomed out into the cloudy night sky of Toog, and off to …

  … wherever it was that we were going.

  As we rocketed over the mountains, Poog turned to me with an expression of great nervousness. He hesitated, sighed. It seemed hard for him to look me straight in the eye.

  Finally he opened his mouth. He spoke quietly, slowly, pausing every so often to allow for Mr. Beeba's translations.

  “Poog says, first of all, that he wants to apologize. He knows it must have come as a great shock to have him deny us in public.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Hush, Akiko. Don't rub it in.”

  Poog continued.

  “The fact of the matter is,” Mr. Beeba said, sounding just as surprised to be saying it as I was to be hearing it, “Poog is not supposed to know us.”

  At this point Poog began to speak more quickly. It was as if he'd thrown open a latch on a long-locked cupboard, allowing its contents to come tumbling out. Mr. Beeba translated breathlessly.

  “Poog left his home planet many years ago to embark on a century-long period of meditation, a time of absolute quiet and solitude. He was to wander the very edges of the universe, lost in his thoughts, un-encumbered by the material world. He was supposed to be alone. Completely alone.”

  “But why?”

  “I'm not entirely sure why. It's something all the Toogolian elders are expected to do, part of their training. Sounds deathly dull, doesn't it?”

  Poog sighed again, then continued.

  “During the thirty-sixth year of his meditations, he found that he could take the isolation no longer. He ceased his wanderings and headed straight for the nearest populated planet.”

  “Smoo!”

  “Really, Akiko, you're absolutely ruining the dramatic effect of my translation,” said Mr. Beeba. “But yes, it was Smoo, that's right.”

  Poog seemed to relax. He'd made what was for him a terrible confession, and now he was past the worst of it.

  “He knew that he shouldn't stay long, that he should return to his meditations as quickly as possible. And yet as he made friends on the planet Smoo—”

  “Me an' Gax, ya mean,” Spuckler said.

  Mr. Beeba squinted angrily.

  “Ahem. As he made friends on the planet Smoo, he found that he grew more and more attached to the place. After several years, he realized his meditations were over, and that he would never renew them.”

  Poog's eyes, which had been glazed over with memo ries of the past, seemed to focus a bit more. His expression toughened.

  “When news came to him of the crisis on Toog, he knew he would at last be confronted by the other elders, that he'd have to tell them about his abandoned training. But when the time came to do so, he lost his nerve. He said nothing, and allowed them to believe his solitude had continued unbroken to this day.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Poog lied.”

  “No, no, Akiko. He simply neglected to tell the complete truth. There's a difference.”

  “Really?”

  Mr. Beeba hesitated and scratched his head. “There's a bit of a difference. Surely.”

  Poog looked at me expectantly. He was finished, and all that remained was my reaction.

  “Well, Poog,” I said, “I understand. Sort of. You're a Toogolian elder, and that's a big honor, and part of being a Toogolian elder is … is not being friends with us.”

  Poog nodded sadly.

  “So maybe the best thing we could do for you right now is just to … go away and stop … making things difficult for you.”

  I immediately wished I hadn't said it. It sounded so awful.

  He replied quickly, without the slightest hesitation.

  “Poog says no,” said Mr. Beeba. “He wants us to stay. Needs us to stay. He'll deal with the elders later if he has to.”

  I smiled at Poog. He tried to smile back, but there was a sadness he couldn't quite conceal.

  Spuckler turned around in the front seat to join the conversation. “Well, I don't blame ya for givin' up on yer medications, Poog.”

  “Medita tions!” said Mr. Beeba.

  “Sounds like a big ol' waste of time to me. An' jus' think of all the fun you'd have missed out on if ya hadn't met me.”

  Mr. Beeba rolled his eyes. Poog and I grinned.

  “So Poog,” I said, “maybe you'd better tell us what the big problem is here on Toog. If there's a crisis going on, we sure haven't seen any of it yet.”

  Mr. Beeba leaned forward to get a better view through the windshield.

  “I think the answer to your question is standing right there in front of us.”

  There in the distance, surrounded by snow-capped mountain ranges, stood a big …

  … a really big …

  … thing.

  What should I call it? A city with legs? A portable factory? It was larger than gigantic, bigger than humongous. It was at least two miles from one side to the other: a vast saucer-shaped structure with towers and turrets rising from its upper surface and spindly robotic arms jutting out from its sides. It was supported by ten massive columns that bent in several places, like the legs of a mammoth mechanical insect. Every last inch of it was covered in sheets of steely armor.

  “Man oh mannfred manganese!” Spuckler cried. “An F-48 core eater!”

  “ONE OF THE EARLY MODELS,” said Gax.“BEFORE THEY WERE OUTLAWED.”

  All at once the gigantic mechanized beast began to move. Its legs carried it lumberingly from where it had first stood to a spot a hundred yards or so to the right. Every step made the surrounding mountains shake and echo with the noise. When it came to a stop, a robotic arm descended and began probing the surface of the planet, making a sound that was already familiar to me, though it took a second or two for me to recognize it:

  DOO-KAAAK …

  DOO-KAAAK …

  DOO-KAAAK …

  “What in heaven's name is it?” Mr. Beeba said. “I'm afraid this sort of hardware is quite beyond my field of reference.”

  “A core eater's a kinda oil rig an' refinery all in one,” Spuckler explained, “an' this core eater is the gran'-mama of 'em all. If needs be, it can drill a hole clear through the planet. They must be after some sort of fuel here on Toog. That would explain that big ol' transport cruiser we saw when we first got here. Once they find what they're after, they'll start processin' it an' transferrin' it up an' off the planet.”

  Poog narrowed his eyes and said something in unusually slow Toogolian. It sounded like he was announcing a death sentence.

  “Never!” Mr. Beeba said. “So that's what keeps Toog from freezing over.”

  “What?” I asked. “What does?”

  “Glagma.”

  “Glagma?”

  FOOOOOOOOOM!

  A white-hot ball of fire shot by us, missing the ship by a matter of one or two feet.

  FOOOOOM! SHOOOOM! FLOOOOM!

  Another. And another. Then two more.

  “Drobe mines!” cried Spuckler. “Hunnerds of 'em!” STRRRROOOOOM!

  One of them glanced off the roof, just barely; still, it was enough to rattle us all like an earthquake.

  “Gotta vamoose!” Spuckler hammered buttons and yanked levers all over the dashboard. “Time's a-wastin'!”

  FLOOOM! STROOOOM!

  Two more near misses.

  “Get us out of here, you nincompoop!” Mr. Beeba cried. “Now! Nownownownownow …”

  FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMM!

  A direct hit. Debris everywhere. Smoke so thick it burned my eyes.

  Drobe mines whizzed by on all sides. Spuckler grabbed the steering wheel in one hand and hammered buttons with the other. Finally he got the ship turned in the right direction and …

  BRRRUUUUMMMM!

  … off we went! Spuckler sent us corkscrewing through the air, zooming off over the mountains at top speed.

  SSSSSSSSSHHHH

  As I tumbled from one side of the backseat to the other, I caught a glimpse outside through the rear window: Three drobe mines were still on our tail.

  “Dagnab the dungle-dorfer!” Spuckler drove the ship through a series of narrow gorges. Black surfaces raced by as we zoomed under bridges of ice and careened over sheer cliffs. At one point he sent us barreling right in toward a snowbank before veering off to one side.

  PLLUUUUMMM!

  A muffled explosion echoed from behind us.

  “That's one of 'em!” cried Spuckler.

  I peered out the window: Sure enough, only two drobe mines remained. They were gaining on us, though.

  Gax shuddered, and Mr. Beeba wheezed as if he were being strangled.

  Spuckler changed direction yet again. This time we started climbing up through the air …

  … up, up, up …

  … higher, higher …

  … the drobe mines in hot pursuit …

  … then:

  “Hold on to yer big bony behinds!”

  Spuckler steered the ship into a nosedive.

  “No!” Mr. Beeba cried.

  “Oh yeah!” said Spuckler.

  We were now plummeting, flying directly toward a huge slab of snow-speckled stone below.

  I should have shut my eyes, but I didn't. For some reason, when you're about to die, you want to see how it happens.

  The hard black surface of the stone rushed up to greet us. The drobe mines were still right behind us.

  Mr. Beeba said something like, “Fslewy,” before fainting again.

  Down we went, faster, faster….

  Impact was seconds away.

  Then …

  … suddenly …

  … impossibly …

  … Spuckler made the ship come out of its nosedive and level off.

  KRUTT-KRUTT-KRUTT-KRUTT

  We grazed the surface of the stone, sending sparks flying. I tried to keep my head high enough to see what was happening behind us, but …

  PLOOOOMMM! FFLOOOOM!

  … all I saw were flares of orange-yellow light bathing nearby cliffs as somewhere beyond my field of vision the two drobe mines struck the ground and exploded.

  Spuckler howled with delight as we tore off over the mountains and up into the clouds.

  I collapsed into the backseat and waited for my heart to stop thudding.

  “Somebody promise me,” I said to anyone who was still conscious, “that we're not going to see any more drobe mines from now on.”

  “That's the last of 'em, yeah,” said Spuckler. “For sure.”

  I closed my eyes and let my head roll loose on my shoulders.

  Spuckler whistled a little tune, then added:

  “Last of 'em for a while, anyway.”

  Spuckler took the ship higher and higher into the clouds until we began to pass through the upper reaches of Toog's atmosphere. I stared out the windows at the clouds. Mr. Beeba awoke with a start, and—though he grumbled a bit at first—apparently decided to skip his usual criticisms of Spuckler and go right to the heart of our current dilemma.

  “If that core eater succeeds in drilling to the center of Toog, the entire planet is doomed,” he said. “And though I admit the word doomed is one I employ rather too frequently,” he added, “in these circumstances I'm afraid it is the only term that applies.”

  “I don't get it,” I said. “How can a single core eater ruin the whole planet?”

  Mr. Beeba squinted a bit and drew in his breath. If there had been a blackboard behind him, he'd have grabbed a piece of chalk and begun pacing back and forth in front of it.

  “Akiko, you must first keep in mind that Toog is much, much farther from its sun than, say, your home planet of Earth. As a result, it should by all rights be a frozen wasteland, an expanse of ice so bitterly cold as to preclude even the hardiest bacterium from surviving here.”

  He made his fingers dance, as if trying to conjure up an image of microorganisms freezing to death by the millions.

  “And yet the surface of Toog is in many places— shringlaRai, for example—quite warm and perfectly hospitable.” He paused for effect. “How can that be?”

  I thought about this for a moment. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle began to slide together in my head.

  “It's heated …,” I said, “… from inside?”

  “Precisely!” Mr. Beeba snapped his fingers, and Gax made a few congratulatory popping noises. “At the core of Toog is a substance called glagma, a heat-producing material that is one of the universe's most perfect sources of energy. A single thimbleful can fuel an entire squadron of space cruisers for months at a time. Years, even. It is as valuable throughout the universe as gold is on your home planet.”

  Spuckler turned around from the front seat. “So that there core eater is trying to suck all the glagma out of the middle of Toog, eh? Gotta hand it to 'em, they know buried treasure when they see it.”

  “Indeed. Once they find a clear path to the core,” Mr. Beeba explained, “they'll draw out every last drop of the glagma, pump it up to that transport cruiser, and leave Toog as a frozen, uninhabitable ball of ice. The Toogolians will have to choose between abandoning the planet they hold so dear, and staying behind to join it in a slow, frozen death.”

  Total silence. From what I knew about the Toogolians, it seemed clear that the second option was the only one they'd consider.

  “Just one question,” I said, though I had many, many more. “Who is ‘they'? Who's controlling that core eater?”

  Poog spoke at length. He was more animated now. Less frightened or sad, more desperate to take action, any action.

  “Poog says the identity of the invaders is the central mystery of this whole crisis,” Mr. Beeba said. “Normally Toogolians have a sort of sixth sense about these things, but there's something emanating from that core eater—a psychic static—that prevents them from discerning any specific information about who is behind all this.”

  “Has anyone tried sneaking inside?”

  “The drobe mines present a formidable obstacle. No Toogolian dares go anywhere near that core eater. Meanwhile, the elders talk and squabble about what to do, but never settle upon a real plan of action. They seem already to have given up hope.”

  I watched Poog as he spoke. I could see that he was not going to give up. Not now, not ever.

  “SIR, WHERE EXACTLY ARE YOU TAKING US?” We were now out among the stars, and Toog was growing smaller and smaller behind us. “I DON'T SEE HOW WE'RE GOING TO SOLVE TOOG'S PROBLEMS BY LEAVING THE PLANET.”

  “We need somebody who knows more about core eaters than I do,” Spuckler said. “Somebody who knows all there is to know about drobe mines. And I know just who that somebody is.”

  I leaned forward. Something about Spuckler's upbeat tone was contagious. “You do?”

  “Course I do.”

  He turned and said nothing, clearly enjoying the attention.

  “Well, come on,” said Mr. Beeba. “Who is it?”

  “Fella by the name of Ragstubble.”

  “Ragstubble?”

  “That's right. Ragstubble. Fluggly Ragstubble.”

  The way he said it, you'd have thought he was talking about Superman and Albert Einstein rolled into one. Somehow the name alone made me think the solution to Toog's troubles might be at hand.

  “Fluggly Ragstubble,” I said. “Can't wait to meet him.”

  We sailed past the stars for an hour or two before arriving at a nearby planet larger than Toog and—judging from its sandy orange surface—a good deal warmer.

  “I ain't seen Fluggly in years,” Spuckler said as we plunged into the planet's atmosphere. “We were pals back in school.”

  Mr. Beeba gasped. “You went to school? Impossible.”

  “Sure I did. An' I gra-jee-ated with honors, too.”

  “No way,” I said, then quickly added, “I mean, wow, that's great.”

  Mr. Beeba narrowed his eyes. “What sort of school?”