Читать книгу The Beach Buoy - Jonny Moon - Страница 7

Jack Brady whistled happily as he worked.

Well, it was a sort of whistle.

Actually, to be totally honest, Jack had never really got the hang of whistling. He made up for it by sucking air over his teeth and humming at the same time, which was a long way short of actual whistling, but made Jack feel happy.

It was a hot August day, the sun was shining brightly and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen in the sky. The end of the school term already seemed a distant memory, but there were still weeks of summer holidays stretching out into the future, keeping the prospect of returning to school at a comfortable distance. Most children were enjoying the great weather, playing outside in back gardens and on the streets, firing super-soakers at each other, splashing in paddling pools, kicking footballs around.

Jack Brady, however, was not doing any of these things. Jack was not like most children of his age. Jack was a genius. Jack was an inventor. And right now, Jack was in one of his favourite places – the tree house he shared with his best friend Oscar – fiddling with his latest project. It was an inflatable submarine that he had been toying with for some time and, using a few beach lilos, he was finally making a working prototype. Fixing the various inflated sections together with waterproof superglue (which he had also invented) was a difficult procedure and Jack had to take great care. Very patiently, he applied a thin coating of his adhesive to a section of the sub and set the next piece in place over the sticky trail.

Suddenly there was a noise like a hailstorm as something hit the window of the tree house. Startled, Jack hurried across to the door and pulled it open. As he stepped out on to the porch area he was hit in the face by a handful of stale breadcrumbs.

“Sorry!” came a voice from below. It was Oscar, standing beneath the tree. In Oscar’s hand was a plastic bread bag.

“What are you doing?” demanded Jack as he hurried down the steps fixed to the tree trunk.

“Mum gave me some breadcrumbs to feed to the ducks,” Oscar began to explain.

“I’m not a duck!” complained Jack, reaching the ground.

“It’s OK – there’s plenty left,” said Oscar, missing the point as usual. If Jack was a genius (and he was) Oscar was special in other ways. According to Jack’s mum, Oscar was a sandwich short of a picnic, and even Jack had to admit that Oscar could be mind-bogglingly stupid at times – but he was loyal and brave and, no matter what, he was Jack’s best friend.

“Snivel,” Jack called. “Walkies.”

In response a unique-looking dog appeared at his feet. Snivel was a mess of legs and hair that defied identification as any particular breed. Some people thought he was some kind of crossbreed terrier, some people thought he had some poodle in him and others just called him a mutt.

None of those people was right. In reality, Snivel was an artificial creature. A Snot-Bot, to be precise. Built using alien technology, Snivel had been given to Jack to help him locate and capture some dangerous aliens that were at large in his area. That mission had been accomplished now, leaving Jack with nothing but a slightly odd three-eyed dog, and the memories of some great adventures.

Jack, Oscar and Snivel headed to the park. One way or another, a lot of their escapades had started here, and for a while it had become a place of excitement and mystery. Now, weeks since their last unusual adventure, it had begun to lose all those associations. Now it was just the park again, a normal place where normal things happened.

Jack looked round as they walked through the gate and sighed.

“Everything looks normal,” he muttered with a slightly heavy heart.

Oscar nodded. “Yep,” he agreed in a bored tone. “Normal kids playing normal football, normal mums pushing normal buggies, normal dogs taking their owners for normal walks …”

“And Ruby,” added Jack in the same tone, “dressed as a Brownie and collecting litter …”

His voice trailed off as he realised what he was saying. Jack and Oscar exchanged looks.

“Brownie uniform?” repeated Oscar.

“Litter?” replied Jack.

In unison they shook their heads and rubbed their eyes before taking another look. No, they had been right the first time. There was Ruby in a pristine Brownie uniform, holding a black bin liner in one hand and a grabbing stick in the other, with which she was patiently picking up litter. Jack and Oscar hurried over to join her.

As she saw them coming, Ruby turned a bright shade of pink. “Don’t say a thing,” she told them, but they couldn’t stop themselves.

“Litter?” asked Jack.

“Brownie uniform?” said Oscar at the same time.

Ruby sighed.

“It’s a long story,” she said them.

Ruby was the final member of their team. When Jack had been recruited by the mysterious Bob to be a member of GUNGE (the General Under-Committee for the Neutralisation of Gruesome Extraterrestrials), he had quickly realised that he needed more than just a three-eyed robotic dog to help him. Naturally he had turned to his best friend Oscar.

Then both he and Oscar had met Ruby.

At first, Jack and Oscar had worried about having a girl in the team. But Ruby had become an invaluable companion in all of Jack’s missions to capture the evil GUNK aliens. She shared Oscar’s love of adventure and danger, but with the dial turned up to maximum. Ruby was a complete adrenaline addict with a passion for dangerous sports and activities. The only problem was that her mother was very protective and insisted that Ruby spend her time on safer pursuits, like ballet and flower arranging. To maintain her sanity, Ruby spent a lot of her time pretending to do the things her mother wanted her to do while really following her own agenda – which meant that she was often to be seen surfing in a ballerina’s tutu, or rock climbing in jodhpurs.

“Mum wanted me to join a club,” Ruby explained, “so I suggested the Brownies.”

Oscar and Jack just shook their heads, not getting it.

“Thing is, after the Brownies, you can join the Guides or the Scouts,” Ruby continued, “and then you get to go on camps and rock climb, and abseil and paraglide, and all sorts of things …”

“So this is a long-term plan?” asked Jack, beginning to understand her thinking.

“Brilliant, isn’t it?” said Ruby. “For once I’m doing exactly what Mum wants, but eventually it’ll lead to exactly what I want. It’s a win-win scenario.”

“Except for having to wear that uniform,” pointed out Oscar.

“Well, yes, of course,” Ruby confessed.

“And collecting litter,” said Jack.

Ruby sighed again. “I have to get my community service badge before I can do anything exciting. But let’s face it, it’s not as if there’s anything else going on, is there?”

She looked both of them in the eyes, but both boys quickly looked away. Over the last few weeks there had been an unspoken agreement between them not to talk about their adventures with GUNGE. Ruby was on the verge of breaking that understanding and neither Jack nor Oscar really wanted to talk about it.

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” persisted Ruby bluntly. “I take it there’s been no word from GUNGE?”

Jack had to agree that there hadn’t been contact of any kind.

Ruby shrugged. “So there you are then – it’s over.”

Suddenly Snivel barked loudly. The three children turned to look at the robot dog. Snivel was staring up into the branches of a tree and jumping up and down – or trying to anyway. With his three eyes he tended to be pretty clumsy.

“What is it?” asked Jack. He looked up where Snivel was looking. There on a branch was a grey squirrel. The squirrel was unnaturally still, and didn’t even appear to be breathing. For a long moment the five of them looked at each other without blinking – the three children, the robot dog on the ground and the squirrel up above them – then, finally, the squirrel moved. It opened its mouth and spoke.

“Jack Brady – you’re needed … by GUNGE!”