The death of the planet Toog had already begun.

  “C'mon,” said Spuckler as he grabbed Gax and trotted off toward one of the core eater's legs. “Let's get inside this sucker and find out who's sittin' at the controls!”

  By the time the rest of us caught up with him, he had already taken a blowtorch out of Gax's innards and was preparing to burn a hole in the surface of the core eater.

  Ragstubble snatched the torch out of Spuckler's hands. “Are you some kind of a nutcase? This thing isn't going to do anything but blow our cover!” He chucked it off into the snow, producing groans from both Spuckler and Gax.

  “Watch this,” said Ragstubble. “I'll show you how to sneak into a core eater.”

  He walked around to the other side of the core eater's leg and began to climb it.

  “He is, you know,” Mr. Beeba whispered to me.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Ragstubble asked if Spuckler was some kind of a nutcase,” Mr. Beeba said. “I just thought someone should answer his question, that's all.”

  Ragstubble was already about twenty feet above us. “What are you waiting for? Follow me!”

  We all began climbing after him, pulling ourselves higher and higher by grasping bolts, pipes, and other bits of metal jutting out from the surface. Poog floated alongside us, and Gax carried himself up using the same suction-cup legs he'd used on the Great Wall of Trudd. Before long we reached the first of the two joints that held the leg sections together, about a hundred feet above the ground. Then the second, a hundred more feet up. And finally we arrived at a ledge not far from the body of the core eater itself. Ragstubble encouraged us all to rest and prepare ourselves for what was to come.

  “See that ventilation unit over there? That's where we're headed.” He was pointing at something about a dozen yards away that jutted down from the surrounding steel like an oversized ceiling lamp. It had large square grills on its sides for bringing air into the core eater.

  “I see it, all right,” Mr. Beeba said. “But I certainly don't see how we're going to get from here to there.”

  “Ah,” said Ragstubble. “That's the fun part.”

  He removed a small rifle-like tool from his belt, aimed it, and fired.

  FWIZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

  TWUNK!

  In the blink of an eye, Ragstubble had anchored a thirty-foot cord to a spot on the underside of the core eater exactly halfway between where we were and where we wanted to be.

  “See ya,” he said as he leaped off the ledge and swung, Tarzan style, down and across to the ventilation unit. He made it look as easy as a ballerina doing a pirouette. Once he'd found a spot to plant his legs, he sent the cord swinging back to us.

  Spuckler chuckled. “I love this guy.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Now, that was cool.”

  Beeba groaned. “Akiko, we are three hundred feet above the ground, with no safety net of any kind. Cool is hardly the word. Crazy is more li—”

  “Show time, Beebs.” Spuckler grabbed the cord in one hand and Mr. Beeba's leg in the other …

  “Noooooooo!”

  … and leaped wildly into the air. Spuckler (right side up) and Mr. Beeba (upside down and wriggling spastically) cut a surprisingly graceful arc through the air before …

  THUNK!

  … Mr. Beeba smacked his head right into the bottom of the ventilation unit.

  “Yyyyoooowwwwrrrch!”

  “Keep it down, Beebs,” said Spuckler as he hoisted Mr. Beeba up to safety. “You're gonna give us away.”

  “You—”

  Spuckler slapped his hands over Mr. Beeba's mouth just in time to turn the word idiot into a muffled “ibiubb!”

  Gax was next, but he had no need for the cord. He just used his suction-cup legs to walk upside down across the surface of the core eater. Poog and I were the only ones left.

  “Get ready, 'Kiko,” Spuckler called out. “I'm gonna toss the cord over to ya!”

  “Don't bother! I don't need it!”

  Spuckler and Ragstubble looked at each other like they thought I'd flipped my lid.

  “Come on, Poog,” I said, reaching over and placing my hands on top of his head. “Let's show 'em how it's done.”

  Poog smiled as he braced himself to support my weight.

  Then …

  … slowly …

  …Poog carried me out into the air.

  We floated over to the others, sailing as smoothly and silently as a swan gliding across a pond.

  Mr. Beeba rubbed his head and sighed. “Now, why didn't I think of that?”

  “Personally,” said Ragstubble, “I think you're better off not depending too much on a Toogolian. They turn on ya when the going gets tough.”

  Poog glared at Ragstubble but said nothing. I decided to let the comment pass.

  Now we were all in position, ready to enter the core eater. The grill, minus half a dozen screws, was open on its hinges like a swinging door for a giant cat. One by one we slipped inside.

  The interior of the core eater was almost pitch-black. Ragstubble drew a small lamp from his side and lit it, while Spuckler switched on Gax's torch and turned it up as bright as it would go. This helped us see where we were going, but it didn't make the place any less spooky.

  The vent we had stepped into was like a shallow pit we had to climb out of. Just above it was a narrow passageway that twisted this way and that, forcing us to crawl over enormous pipes and duck under masses of tubes and wires that hung from the ceiling. It felt as if we had snuck into the basement of a darkened factory after hours.

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  A deep pulsing sound vibrated through the walls: pumps drawing the glagma up from Toog's core. A smoky chemical stench hung in the air, and some sort of warm liquid kept dripping from the ceiling, getting in my hair and making nasty unexpected puddles here and there on the floor.

  Ragstubble led us on and on, around corners, up steep inclines, and through gaps so narrow we had to turn Gax sideways and shove him through with all our might. “Gotta get to the control room,” said Ragstubble. “In the very center of the core eater. Spuck,” he added without turning around, “hand me that blueprint, will ya?”

  “Blueprint?”

  “Yeah. The one you were looking at. Back in the ship.”

  “I thought you had it.”

  Ragstubble gritted his teeth and made an ugly noise.

  “Isn't it wonderful,” Mr. Beeba said to me with a smile, “to see Spuckler driving someone else crazy?”

  There was a loud bang as Ragstubble kicked some thing, hard, and resumed the journey forward. “Okay. This is not a problem. I know core eaters like the back of my hand.”

  Ragstubble took us up a creaky black ladder and into a passage with a ceiling so low we had to crawl on our hands and knees. Halfway through, I felt an insect land on my leg, crawl over my back, and jump to the floor. Eeeew. It skittered in front of me and climbed over the others in pretty much the same way. When it got to Ragstubble, I saw him snatch it off his leg and pinch it between his fingers.

  “A funga-pede. My lucky day.” He popped it in his mouth and swallowed it whole.

  I wished I hadn't seen that.

  At the end of our long, low crawl we came to a small room with a grate in the floor. Peeking through, we saw another vast room below, as big as a football field.

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  It was an engine room.

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  And marching back and forth between the engines …

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  DOO-GUNK

  “Tri-Yarms!”

  Spuckler was the only one who dared to say it out loud.

  But there was no doubt about it. Every one of the workers in that room was a Tri-Yarm, just like Fluggly Ragstubble.

  So that's who's behind all this.

  “Impossible,” said Ragstubble, his brow twisted in disbelief.

  It was possible, all right. Now that I thought about it … come on, it was obvious! They were the ones who'd wanted to get at the glagma years ago. Ragstubble had never denied that.

  Poog was furious. He blurted out something in Toogolian, and Ragstubble gurgled right back at him. It took all of us to force the two of them apart.

  “All right all right all right,” I said. “So Tri-Yarms are the ones running this core eater.”

  Ragstubble looked desperate. Like he wanted it to be some kind of big optical illusion.

  “It's … disappointing,” I said. “But it doesn't mean we turn against our friends, does it?”

  Poog still looked angry, but he had calmed down a little.

  “'Kiko's right,” Spuckler said, placing a firm hand on Ragstubble's shoulder. “This don't change nothin'. We came here to get the bad guys, and the bad guys're who we're goin' after. Not you, Fluggs.”

  “Absolutely,” Mr. Beeba said. “We mustn't descend into the murky muck of finger-pointing and declarations of guilt by association.” Ragstubble smiled appreciatively. “Not that the concept of guilt by association is entirely without merit …”

  “Thanks, Mr. Beeba,” I said. “Great insight there. Let's keep going.”

  So on we went.

  But even though Spuckler claimed it didn't change anything …

  … it did.

  It made me wonder, just a little, whose side our TriYarm friend was really on.

  Ragstubble led us away from the grate and took us to another rickety ladder. This one went up and up for at least fifty feet. When we reached the top, Ragstubble pulled out some tools and began picking a lock in a portal above his head.

  “If I've done my job, this should put us in a hallway just outside the control room,” he said. “Gax, come up here for a second, will ya?”

  Gax, zup ping and zop ping on his suction-cup legs, climbed the wall and positioned himself next to Ragstubble's shoulder.

  “Stick your peep-eye up through this crack and see if the coast is clear.”

  Gax opened a compartment on his side and stretched out a spindly mechanical tube tipped with a tiny electronic eye. He made it snake this way and that until it had wormed its way through a hole in the portal.

  “TRI-YARM SENTRIES. THEY'RE WELL ARMED.” He waited a moment, then added, “IF YOU'LL EXCUSE THE PUN.”

  Everyone groaned. (Everyone, that is, except Spuckler, who apparently didn't get the joke.)

  “How many?” I asked.

  Gax twisted the mechanical tube back and forth, counting.

  “TEN. NINE COMMON SENTRIES AND ONE MASTER SENTRY.”

  There was a pause. All eyes turned to Ragstubble.

  “Well, Fluggs,” Spuckler said. “Whaddaya think? How're we gonna get past these guys?”

  I watched Ragstubble's face. This was it. If we wanted a test to see whose side he was on, we were about to get it.

  He smiled. “You guys are lucky I'm here.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because it takes a Tri-Yarm …,” he replied, slip ping a black gas mask over his nose and mouth, “to fool a Tri-Yarm.”

  Throwing the portal open wide, he crawled up and into the corridor above us, casually, noisily even. He winked at me before slamming the portal shut behind him.

  No way. Is he going to do battle with ten Tri-Yarms all by himself?

  “What the—” we heard one of the Tri-Yarm guards say.

  “Hoh boy!” Ragstubble's voice, loud and tired-sounding, echoed down to us through the portal. “When they said this place needed repairs, they weren't kiddin'!”

  Spuckler grinned. “Fluggs,” he whispered to me. “What an actor.”

  “Repairs?” It was a different Tri-Yarm voice this time.

  “What, they didn't tell ya?” Ragstubble said.

  A third Tri-Yarm voice joined the discussion, this one very authoritative. He must have been the boss of the others. “There was no mention of repairs in this morning's meeting.”

  “Obviously not,” said Ragstubble. “None of ya are wearin' gas masks.” Spuckler clamped a hand over his mouth. He'd have been howling with laughter otherwise.

  “Look, Mr., uh …,” the boss voice began.

  “Kogg-Nito,” Ragstubble said. “Of Kogg-Nito's Core Eater Service and Repair. All makes, all models. Open twenty-four hours. You nix it up, we fix it up….”

  “Mr. Kogg-Nito,” the boss voice said, “just what exactly is going on here?” He sounded suspicious, but also just a little nervous.

  “Only a gluco-cyanide leak in this whole dang corridor, that's all.” Ragstubble made a tut-tut-tut ting sound. “Jeez. They really didn't tell you, did they? That's criminal.”

  “Gluco-cyanide?” two of the guards said at once.

  “Oh yeah. The air is practically dripping with it up here. I can't believe you're all still alive.”

  “Now, hold on here,” the boss voice said. “I don't smell anything.”

  “Buddy, didn't ya ever go to grade school? Glucocyanide is odor less. You'll drop dead before you smell anything.” Spuckler slapped a second hand over his mouth and squirmed with delight.

  “Boss,” said one of the guards, “maybe we should, uh, go on break until they've finished the repairs.”

  “Now, there's an idea,” said Ragstubble. “And while you're at it, you better getcher butts down to the mess hall, where they're handin' out gas masks. With all the GC you guys've been breathin', I figure you already got a fifty-fifty chance of kickin' the bucket as it is….”

  There was a clattering of boots as several of the guards trotted away, presumably heading toward the mess hall.

  “Hey!” the boss voice bellowed. “I didn't say you could go on break!” Several more pairs of boots clattered off.

  “You'll all get docked pay for this!”

  Off went another pair or two.

  “And, and … no more bathroom privileges!”

  Soon the only voices left were those of the boss and Ragstubble. Problem was, the boss was not about to leave.

  “Now, I admire that,” Ragstubble said. “A guy who won't leave his post even if it means a slow, painful death. Not to mention the intestinal bleeding.”

  “I'm not leaving,” the boss said. “Someone has to stay behind and protect the entrance to the control room.”

  “I do admire that,” said Ragstubble. “I really do.”

  A long silence followed. Spuckler was no longer smiling.

  I figured Ragstubble would keep trying to get rid of the guy, but all he did was start whistling.

  Gax, who still had his electronic eye poking through the portal, told us what was going on.

  “MR. RAGSTUBBLE HAS TURNED HIS BACK TO THE MASTER SENTRY. HE'S INSPECTING A THERMOSTAT ON THE WALL.”

  “C'mon, Fluggs,” Spuckler whispered. “Time's awastin'.”

  The silence stretched on.

  It was the boss, not Ragstubble, who finally spoke up.

  “Uh, Mr. Kogg-Nito,” he said in a hushed voice, “I don't suppose you have an … extra gas mask on you?”

  “Oh yeah. I do, I do,” said Ragstubble. “Here, let me get it for you….”

  FWUP

  ZWIT

  SSSWOOT

  The sounds of a skirmish. Then:

  PAAAASSSHH!

  The portal rattled as something heavy landed right on top of it. Gax retracted his mechanical arm just in time.

  sssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh The sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor.

  Silence.

  Then the portal was yanked open and there in front of us was Ragstubble's face: smiling, triumphant.

  “The coast is clear.”

  Yes!

  We all climbed out and assembled in the middle of the corridor, just in front of the entrance to the control room. Ragstubble had removed a key from the guard's belt and was looking for the keyhole. It wasn't right next to the door, where you'd expect it, but was hidden somewhere nearby.

  Poog said something. Quietly, but with the tone of someone giving an order.

  “Poog says he wants it understood,” said Mr. Beeba, “that he will be the one to deal with the Tri-Yarm leader. He advises the rest of us to stand back and keep out of the way.”

  “Is he going to … brainmelt him?” I asked.

  Ragstubble flinched at the very mention of the word.

  “No,” Mr. Beeba said. “He's going to do what's known as a brain pierce. Highly effective on Tri-Yarms. It will render him docile, powerless, incapable of violence. But it won't kill him.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't know if I could handle seeing a Tri-Yarm with brains oozing out of his ears.

  “Found it, Fluggs.” Spuckler had located the keyhole inside a light fixture on the wall opposite the door. “C'mon. Let's get in there so Poog can do his brain-stabbin' thing and we can all go home.”

  K'CHAK

  Ragstubble slid the key into the keyhole.

  FSSHHZZZZzzzzz

  The control-room door rose into the ceiling, revealing a short, dimly lit passageway. At the end was a large circular room filled with monitors, switchboards, and rows and rows of buttons, lights, and levers.

  Poog led the way. He floated through the passageway and into the control room. As nervous as I was, I didn't want to miss the look on the Tri-Yarm leader's face when he saw Poog, so I made sure I was as near to the front of the group as I could get. Before I made it even halfway down the passageway, I sensed that something was wrong.

  It was Poog.

  The look on his face.

  He was shocked. Stunned. Speechless.

  I took the last few steps to the end of the passageway and poked my head around the corner.

  There, in the center of the room, smiling, fearless, reflecting everything in his big, glassy eyes …