“The Acme-Andromeda Academy of Carburetor Maintenance and Repair.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Beeba. “I thought you meant a real school.”

  “They don't get no realer,” Spuckler said. “Now, Fluggly, he was the smartest guy in the whole class. He once broke apart a Frazzner-Gockling D-78 Thrumple engine and put it back together in twenty-three seconds. Blindfolded and with his nose plugged.”

  (I'm not exactly sure how the nose plugging made the feat more impressive, but apparently it did.)

  By now we were shooting across the surface of the planet, past great orange hills and over cactus-covered plains. Spuckler killed the engine as we approached a big fenced-in compound. It was about the size of a school-yard, littered with huge rusting engines and half-assembled rocket ships propped up on cinder blocks. The air reeked of diesel fuel and charcoal smoke. A clanking noise echoed from a shack at the center of it all.

  “Somebody lives here?” I asked.

  “Ain't it great?” Spuckler jumped out of the ship and ran over to the gate. “Wait'll ya meet Fluggly,” he added as he threw the gate open and strolled right on in. “He's a hoot. Jus' like me.”

  Mr. Beeba and I shot each other a worried glance. Having one Spuckler on our team was a little risky. But two of them? That sounded downright dangerous.

  “Fluggs!” cried Spuckler.“It's yer ol' pal Spuck! Getcher fuzzy butt out here an' show me how big your belly is!”

  The clanking stopped. There was a brief rustling inside the shack, followed by a sudden bang as a door flew open on one side, knocking over several crates of scrap steel.

  Out came a big, hairy troll of a man, as tall as Spuckler but much more heavyset. He had one huge eyebrow, two beady little eyes, and one big horn a little too far to one side of his forehead. He was dressed in a raggedy, oil-stained mechanic's suit with pockets and pouches all over the place, and dozens of tools attached at the waist that clinked and clunked with every move he made. The oddest thing about him was that he had three arms: two on his left side and just one on his right. He immediately lunged forward and snatched Spuckler up in a bear hug that would have left me flat as a used tube of toothpaste.

  “Spuckler Boach!” he barked. “You no-good bacon-burnin' lyin' cheatin' lizard-stealin' two-bit weasel-eatin' varmint!” If he had smiled any harder, he'd have shattered his teeth.

  “Fluggly Ragstubble!” Spuckler howled. “You low-rent worm-chewin' two-timin' snotty-nosed good-fornothin' scab-pickin' belly-button-lickin' ragamuffin!”

  What followed was something like a cross between the Texas two-step and an all-out brawl. They were so happy to see each other, the only way they could get their joy across was by pounding arms, smacking backs, butting heads, and just generally seeing who could leave who more black, blue, and bruised all over. At first I was scared they'd hurt each other, but soon I was giggling like crazy. I couldn't help myself: They looked like they were having so much fun. Gax rocked happily from side to side, and even Mr. Beeba was grinning.

  But Poog …

  … Poog was not happy. He was staring at Fluggly Ragstubble with a look of real … I don't know, disgust. Like he was looking at a monster-sized cockroach. Poog floated backward, as if he wanted to flee altogether.

  And when Ragstubble laid eyes on Poog, the reaction was hardly any better.

  “Spuck,” he said, one arm frozen in mid-punch, “tell me that's not a Toogolian you got over there.” His beady eyes got even beadier.

  “Well, sure, Fluggs,” Spuckler said. “This here is Poog, from the planet Toog. He's the whole reason we're out here to see ya.”

  Ragstubble grunted and exhaled slowly.

  “I'm Akiko,” I said, jumping forward. Whatever his problem was with Poog, I figured distracting him wouldn't hurt. “I'm from the planet Earth. Um, real far away from here. Nice place, though. We've got our own, uh, moon and everything.”

  Ragstubble reached out and shook my hand gently, his eyes never leaving Poog's.

  “This here's Beeba,” Spuckler said.

  “Mr. Beeba,” said Mr. Beeba.

  “He's kind of a dork,” Spuckler whispered a little too loudly, “but a fairly decent guy, once ya get to know him.”

  Ragstubble shook Mr. Beeba's hand just as he'd shaken mine, his eyes glued to Poog's. Poog, for his part, now wore an equally hostile expression. What was the deal? Did these two already know each other?

  “And you remember Gax, don'tcha? I had him with me back at the academy.”

  Ragstubble took his eyes off Poog long enough to wink at Gax. “How you doin', little guy?” he said. He was smiling, but the sound of fun and games had vanished from his voice.

  “QUITE WELL, SIR, THANK YOU,” Gax replied.

  There was an awkward pause. Spuckler, Ragstubble, and I all started to say something, then all stopped at the same time.

  Another awkward pause.

  “Well now, Spuck,” Ragstubble said, his eyes returning to Poog. “What brings you here?”

  Spuckler began to explain about Toog, and the core eater, and the drobe mines. When he got to the part about the glagma, Ragstubble interrupted.

  “Don't waste your breath, Spuck. I know all about glagma. All about how much of it there is buried down in the core of Toog. All about how the Toogolians don't want to lose a single molecule of the stuff.”

  “Ya do?”

  “Of course I do,” Ragstubble said, planting two of his hands on his hips and rubbing his jaw with the third. “My people come from Toog.”

  Ragstubble invited all of us into his shack. By the expression on his face, I think he wanted Poog to stay outside, but he didn't say so. Then again, Poog didn't look as though he was exactly dying to join the party.

  The inside of the shack was a cross between a hardware store and a junkyard. There were engines and tailpipes and buckets full of enormous spark plugs; there were machines that looked like they'd gotten stranded somewhere between being put together and ripped apart. In the middle of it all was a cast-iron stove, its fire blazing inside, with a big black pot on top that—considering the stench it was producing—I sincerely hoped wasn't dinner.

  Ragstubble invited us to sit down on various barrels and overturned crates he dragged into a rough circle around the stove. We did as we were told. All of us but Poog, that is. He stayed right where he was near the door, as if he wanted to make sure he'd be the first one out.

  “I'm a Tri-Yarm,” said Ragstubble, sitting down and sloshing the contents of the pot with a wooden spoon. “Guess you already knew that, Spuck. But what a lot of people don't know is that we Tri-Yarms originally lived on the planet Toog. Years ago, before …” He shot a cold glance at Poog. “… before the Toogolians drove us out.”

  Ragstubble reached into the pot and pulled up something slimy, green, and alive. He popped it in his mouth and chewed. Finally he made a face, spat it out, and tossed it back into the pot.

  “A little rare.”

  I was trying to remember what Mr. Beeba had said to me back when we were being taken to see the elders. Something about the Tri-Yarms. Something about them killing Poog's great-uncle. I figured this was as good a time as any to get the facts straight, and it seemed to me that Ragstubble knew the facts pretty well.

  “Why did the Toogolians make your people leave? They must have had reasons.”

  “Reasons,” he repeated. He opened a tin and threw some black powder into the pot. “Sure. Toogolians have reasons. They always have reasons. They attacked us; we defended ourselves. I guess they didn't like that.”

  Poog, who had remained angry but silent, could control himself no longer. He opened his mouth and let loose a barrage of warbly syllables, faster and louder than I'd ever heard from him before. And then—this is the really incredible thing—Ragstubble answered him right back in Toogolian, his rough, husky voice blurting the gurgly sounds out confidently, effortlessly. Poog responded, louder than before, and Ragstubble cut him off, jumping to his feet and jabbing a finger in Poog's direction. Poog flew through the air right up to Ragstubble's face, words shooting out of his mouth, his eyes angry, defiant.

  “Hey hey hey!” I leaped between the two of them with my arms stretched out. They glared at one another as if I weren't even there. But they became quiet.

  “You two need to cool off.” Ragstubble made a little snorting noise, sat down, and turned his attention back to the bubbling pot. Poog hovered in place, angry but trying to remain calm.

  “Mr. Beeba,” I said, “let's have some translations here.”

  “Well,” Mr. Beeba said, rising to his feet, “it seems that long ago a feud developed between the Tri-Yarms and the Toogolians. The Tri-Yarms favored a scheme of drawing a limited quantity of glagma from the surface of Toog, just enough to improve their lives a bit. The Toogolians were adamant: Not a drop of glagma was to be touched. Not a drop.”

  Ragstubble reached into the pot, pulled out another wriggling, wormy thing, and sucked it into his mouth. This time he chewed—slowly, angrily—and swallowed.

  Mr. Beeba continued: “That's where Poog's great-uncle comes into the story. We saw a statue of him back on the planet Toog, remember? His name was Zeem.”

  The mere mention of the name caused Poog to assume a look of deep reverence. Ragstubble made another snorting noise.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  “Then you'll recall that when Zeem went to negotiate with the Tri-Yarms, they ambushed him and killed him.”

  Ragstubble reached out and grabbed my shoulder. “They were looking for a fight! They used Zeem's death as an excuse to wage war on us!”

  Poog countered this claim with a high-pitched volley of Toogolian, which brought Ragstubble to his feet again.

  “Enough!” I shouted. “Both of you!”

  There was silence, apart from the bubbling of the pot.

  I motioned Poog away and told Ragstubble to sit down. “Look, forget about the feud. Forget about Poog's great-uncle. This is not about the past. This is about what's going on right now, today. And I'm not going to stand here wasting time while the two of you act like children.”

  Both Poog and Ragstubble looked offended. Spuckler and Mr. Beeba looked surprised but impressed.

  I walked over to where Ragstubble sat and stood in front of him. “Now, listen. We've got problems to deal with. Big problems. And Mr. Ragstubble, you've got a choice to make. Are you going to help us save the planet Toog? Or are you going to just sit there eating those disgusting little wormy things? Because if you are, I'm leaving.”

  Ragstubble narrowed his eyes. He was still chewing.

  He looked at me, then Spuckler, then Mr. Beeba and Poog.

  He swallowed.

  He raised a single finger and shook it at me. “They're wormy,” he said. “But they are not disgusting.”

  Why did Ragstubble agree to help us? I don't know. Maybe he did it as a favor to Spuckler. Maybe he did it out of love for his old home planet. Maybe he just enjoyed a challenge. One thing's for sure, though. Once he put his mind to defeating the core eater, he was committed, one hundred percent.

  He began by passing around bowls of stew and insisting that we swallow every drop. “We've got a lot of work ahead of us,” he said. “Can't do it on an empty stomach.”

  It wasn't as gross as the worm stuff he'd been eating. It was pretty nasty, though, like a mixture of overcooked cabbage and freshly used gym socks. I must have been hungry, because I ate it. I even licked the bowl.

  When we were done, Ragstubble took us around to a place behind the shack where a dozen or so spaceships were parked, most of them with their hoods open and engines hanging out. The one he led us to was a big egg-shaped thing that was covered—and I mean completely covered—in armor. There wasn't even a wind-shield, just a little glass hole about the size of a dime.

  “This'll get us past the drobe mines,” Ragstubble said. “She can withstand more than a hundred hits and still keep going.” He opened a door and invited us in.

  It was cramped inside. Really cramped. The walls were about fifteen feet thick all the way around, which didn't leave much legroom for passengers. “Don't be afraid to rub elbows, now,” Ragstubble said. “We're all friends here, right?” He thought a bit and added in a half whisper, “Well, most of us are, anyway.”

  Moments later we were up in the air and out among the stars. Not that I could see any stars, since there weren't any windows. But Ragstubble kept us informed of our progress toward Toog, peering out the single glass eye in the front of the ship.

  “So whaddaya think, Fluggs?” said Spuckler. “How are we gonna sneak inside this baby?” He was studying a blueprint Ragstubble had given him of the inner workings of a core eater.

  “Trust me, Spuck,” Ragstubble said. “I got it all worked out.”

  Spuckler turned to me and grinned, as if to say, “See? What'd I tell ya?”

  An hour passed.

  Then another.

  Finally we arrived back on the planet Toog. Poog told Ragstubble where the core eater was. It was the first thing Poog had said to him since they'd blown up at each other back in Ragstubble's shack. His voice was cold, businesslike. I guess Poog had resigned himself to working with a Tri-Yarm, but that didn't mean he had to be happy about the idea.

  Ragstubble followed Poog's directions and got us back to the valley we'd fled not so long ago. We were soon within a mile of the core eater.

  “Ya might wanna brace yourselves,” said Ragstubble, with all the concern of someone advising you to watch your head as you went down the stairs. “Here come the drobe mines.”

  He made no adjustment to the course we were flying. His plan—as far as I could tell—was to simply plow through the mines as if they weren't even there.

  But they were there. They were definitely there.

  FLUMP! FLUMP! FLOMP! FLUMP!

  The first mines hit us with no more effect than snowballs hitting a tank. The sound was muffled, and the ship hardly vibrated at all.

  “Man!” said Spuckler. “I gotta get me one of these vee-hicles.”

  Ragstubble patted the dashboard affectionately.

  “She's a real beaut, isn't she?”

  FLA-FLUMP! FLA-FLOMP!

  FLA-FLUM-FLUM-FLUMP!

  The drobe mines started hitting with greater frequency. Some of them caused more of a vibration than others. Mr. Beeba began to hum quietly.

  “Don't worry,” said Ragstubble, looking through the glass eye. “We're almost there.”

  BUDDA-BUNK! BUDDA-BUNK!

  The interior of the ship was heating up. Gax twitched nervously, and Poog looked troubled. Ragstubble was hunched over the dashboard: tensed, pushing buttons, making calculations. “Man,” he said. “Sure are a lot of 'em.”

  BUDDA-BUNK! BUDDA-BUDDA-BUNK!

  The ship was beginning to creak under the barrage of drobe mine hits. Sweat rolled down my cheeks. Spuckler turned and gave me a wink that was probably meant to be reassuring. “Almost there, 'Kiko.” He put a hand on Ragstubble's shoulder. “Right, Fluggs?”

  Ragstubble didn't bother to answer. I'm not sure he even heard the question.

  BUDDA-BUDDA-BUNK! BUDDA-BUDDA-BUNK!

  “I never seen so many drobe mines in all my life!” Ragstubble sounded like a sea captain in the thick of a storm. “There's thousands of 'em!”

  Now the ship was rattling like crazy. Smoke was seeping out of cracks and crevices in the walls, and dials on the dashboard were spinning out of control. Mr. Beeba began to whimper uncontrollably.

  I couldn't take it anymore. “Get us out of here!” I cried. “You're going to get us all killed!”

  “It's too late for that!” Ragstubble shouted. “We're goin' down!”

  BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA

  BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA

  The drobe mines were slamming into us so regularly it was like a long, low roll of thunder. I could feel the ship falling, tailspinning, plummeting through the air.

  FLA-DUMMMPPP!

  We hit the ground hard, bounced once, flipped, and hit the ground for good. The drobe mines continued slamming into the ship: The noise rose to a deafening roar as they struck every exposed surface, creating a tooth-chattering tremor that I thought would rattle my eyeballs right out of their sockets.

  We all clung to one another and waited. And waited.

  And …

  … then …

  … gradually …

  … the noise started dying down.

  The thumps and flumps and fwams and flams began to be interrupted by brief intervals of silence. The ship stopped shaking. Before long I could count the seconds between hits. And after a minute or so …

  … the hits stopped altogether.

  Inside, everything was blue with smoke. Alarms bleated and lights flashed. Ragstubble turned from the dashboard and grinned.

  “That's it,” he said. “We outlasted 'em.”

  Mr. Beeba—who, to his credit, hadn't fainted—let out the longest, loudest sigh I'd ever heard.

  GRA-JUNK!

  Ragstubble opened a door, and we all crawled out into the snow. Or what was left of the snow, I should say. The ship was now surrounded by a field of smoking drobe mines—thousands of them—which had melted a circle in the snow about three hundred feet wide. The outside of the ship was covered with them too, making it look like a big burned beehive. But none of this was what I was staring at.

  I was looking up.

  Directly up.

  Because now we were standing in the very shadow of the core eater. There it was, its main body hundreds of feet above, its enormous legs surrounding us like a circle of gigantic mechanical trees. It was making a sort of slow chugging sound but was otherwise surprisingly quiet.

  Poog was the first to speak. He had a weird look in his eyes: half pain, half disbelief.

  “Heavens,” Mr. Beeba said. “They've already made it to the glagma.”

  I spun around and looked where Mr. Beeba was pointing. A long flexible tube—the size and length of a railway train—connected the core eater to the ground about half a mile away from us. Every minute or so the tube would swell up at the base, creating a big black muscle that rose from the ground to the core eater, not slowly, not quickly, but steadily, steadily. As soon as one bulge disappeared above, another formed below to take its place.