Читать книгу The Nit Picker - Jonny Moon - Страница 6

“Right, this is it,” announced Jack Brady in an excited whisper. His hand was trembling slightly as he reached out towards the new invention sitting on the workbench. In his hand he held the final component – the tiny data chip on to which he had loaded the voice command program. Using tweezers, Jack carefully slipped the memory card into position and then he closed the cover.

“Oscar, it’s ready!” he announced.

Slipping his magnifying goggles from his face, Jack glanced over at his best friend Oscar, who was lounging on a beanbag and staring into space.

“Oscar!”

As if moving through treacle, Oscar slowly turned his head to look at Jack with half-asleep eyes. “Yeah?”

Jack peered at Oscar curiously. What was wrong with him? Jack was a thinker, a genius inventor who was always developing great new toys to play with, and Oscar, his best friend, was the man of action – Jack’s first and most loyal crash-test dummy. Usually Oscar couldn’t wait to have a go with whatever new invention Jack had come up with, but today he just didn’t seem interested. It was like he was ill or something.

“It’s a voice-recognition remote-control chopper,” said Jack. “Don’t you want to see what it can do?”

Oscar just shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. Maybe after school.”

Jack sighed and looked over at his dog, Snivel. “Can you believe this, Snivel?”

Snivel shook his head. “No, but it is nearly time for you to go to school,” he replied.

Snivel was not an ordinary dog. For a start he had three eyes.

“You need to keep that third eye of yours closed,” Jack reminded him.

Snivel nodded and his face creased up with the effort, but finally he managed to close his third eye which was in the middle of his forehead. CLUNK! He fell over – the level of concentration causing him to lose his balance. Snivel was a robot dog. In fact, he was a Snot-Bot. Powered by alien technology that used human snot as an energy source, Snivel’s function was to assist Jack in locating and capturing aliens. Jack had been given Snivel by a secret organisation called GUNGE – the General Under-Committee for the Neutralisation of Gruesome Extraterrestrials – and together they had captured five aliens over the last few months.

Jack blew his nose, then checked his tissue and tossed it over to his unusual dog. “There you go,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of a cold again so you’re in luck. Plenty of extra treats for you!”

Gratefully Snivel sucked up the snot and immediately bounced back on to his feet. Jack picked up the now totally dry tissue and put it back in his pocket. That snack would keep Snivel’s batteries powered for the rest of the day. But he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the way the little robot dog hoovered up his snot …

“You coming?” he said to Oscar as he headed for the door of their tree house. But the only reply he received was another shrug of the shoulders. He stared at Oscar who eventually let out a long, deep sigh. He rose wearily to his feet and followed Jack slowly down the ladder.

The tree house which the boys shared was actually a large garden shed that Oscar’s dad had won in a newspaper competition. The boys had houses that backed on to each other, and the large tree at the end of Oscar’s garden was the perfect place for a tree house – so Oscar’s dad had hired a crane to locate the shed safely in its branches.

Jack had been so keen to complete his latest invention that he had called Oscar over to the tree house early, before school, but now he was beginning to wonder why he had bothered. Oscar just didn’t seem himself recently. As they walked to school, in unusual silence, Jack applied his genius brain to the problem. What’s wrong with Oscar?

It didn’t take Jack long to come up with an answer. It was obvious really. Oscar was clearly missing the excitement of their work with GUNGE fighting against the GUNK Aliens.

It had all started with a bin at the local park. Except it wasn’t a bin, of course, it was really a pan-dimensional secret base from which the mysterious GUNGE agent named Bob had given instructions to Jack, Oscar and their friend Ruby. The base was bigger on the inside and able to move around to different hidden locations. The problem was that Bob had turned out to be a traitor and he had now stolen the base and moved it. The new Bob (who seemed to be a woman this time) had contacted the kids and given them a new mission. They had to locate the base – which was where the aliens they had caught were being held – before any other members of the GUNK Alien alliance could find and rescue the captured aliens. Back in the summer holidays they had successfully managed to find it once, hidden in an off-shore wind farm, but before they could secure it, Bad Bob had managed to move the base again, leaving them back at square one. Since then there had been no contact from New Bob, and no sign of any alien activity. It had all gone very quiet. No wonder Oscar was a bit fed up.

Still not really talking, the boys reached Ruby’s house. As usual Ruby was late. She had managed to get out of her front door, as she always did, but then, inevitably, she was held up by her over-protective mother.

“Have you got your vest on, darling?” Ruby’s mother was saying as Jack and Oscar arrived at her driveway.

“Yes,” hissed Ruby, who had seen her friends arriving and was now deeply embarrassed.

“And your inhaler?” asked Ruby’s mum.

“Mum, I haven’t had asthma since I was three,” complained Ruby.

“Well, that’s as may be, but you can’t take any chances with something like asthma,” insisted her mother. “Especially with the change of weather.”

Jack looked up at the sky, which was unblemished by a single cloud.

“It’s been sunny for days,” Ruby told her mum, narrowing her eyes.

Ruby’s mum didn’t miss a beat. “Exactly!” she said, thrusting her hand out and waving the asthma inhaler at Ruby. Ruby sighed, took the inhaler, dropped it into her school bag and hurried down the path to join her friends.

“And be careful when you cross that main road,” called out Ruby’s mother from her front door.

Jack couldn’t help smiling as he saw Ruby roll her eyes in horror. “How old does she think you are?” he teased.

Ruby just shot him a dark look. “Don’t!” she ordered him tersely.

Jack looked around and realised that Oscar was still standing at the end of Ruby’s drive. Ruby turned to follow his gaze.

“Come on, Oscar, we’re meant to be going to school, remember?” shouted Jack.

As if in a dream-world, Oscar turned his head towards the source of the words, a puzzled expression on his face. It was as if he had to think about each individual word that Jack had said before he could begin to answer.

Finally he seemed to be ready. “OK,” he said and began to walk slowly towards them. Ruby and Jack headed for school.

“What’s wrong with Oscar?” Ruby wondered.

Now it was Jack who was shrugging. “He’s just in this weird mood,” he confessed to Ruby. “He’s been like that for days. Doesn’t say much. Won’t play with any of my inventions. Seems half asleep most of the time.”

“He’s not the only one,” said Ruby.

“What do you mean?” said Jack.

“Other kids at school have been acting weird too. Haven’t you noticed?”

Jack had to confess that he hadn’t noticed anything of the sort.

“Well, that’s no surprise,” said Ruby laughing. “You’re always in a dream world yourself.”

“Not dreaming,” said Jack, mock-seriously. “Thinking very hard about my inventions.”

Ruby grinned. “Whatever. But the thing is, loads of kids at school have been going around in a daze lately. Just like Oscar.”

“Sort of like they’re not all there?” said Jack.

Ruby nodded. “Exactly. And I can tell you exactly when it started too.”

Jack looked at her expectantly.

“Ever since the new Nit Nurse came to school.”