He Laughed With His Other Mouths Read online

  Her heart broke with love for her son.

  She ran to him. Sure, one death ray flashed by her. But she had clasped him by that time and thrown off his shot.

  “You can zap me,” Jasper’s mother told him, “but I’ll never let you go.”

  She held him tight against her. She showed how much she loved him. He fired off shots that brought down chunks of masonry. The building rumbled with the blasts.

  “Honey,” said Mrs. Dash, “what I want to do right now is walk backward. Because I think the roof is going to cave in.”

  She dragged her son toward the door while he tried to crane his arm around to shoot her in the head.

  She struggled with her son and kneed him in the stomach. He gagged—and Katie, stepping forward, grabbed the death ray out of his hand.

  “You’re stuck,” said the Dirrillill, raising a proton rifle. “You can’t get home without getting past me. You can’t free your son from my psycho-psionic-radiophonic control. So we might as well talk about you three serving me too, ha ha. Go back to Earth and help my little minion Jasper build the bigger teleporter for me to land on. Or else . . .”

  Hunks of ceiling fell smoking around him.

  “Sir,” said Mrs. Dash. “If you are my boy’s father, you four-faced charlatan, you Cubist creep, then let me simply say: I do not find you a positive influence.” She hurled Jasper backward through the door. (Outside, Katie and Lily grabbed him.) Mrs. Dash fired her gun straight at the glowing Dirrillill. She did not stop firing. She emptied her clip.

  The bolts hit him and rebounded.

  He laughed.

  The bolts went astray and hit the ceiling.

  He laughed with his other mouths.

  The bolts bounced off him like hail. They made the room bright blue. They shot into the walls, into the roof, into the floor, and still, the Dirrillill just howled with laughter.

  Until the whole tower collapsed.

  That was Mrs. Dash’s plan.

  She was by the door. She threw herself backward. She fell outside on the dirt and saw the stone building crumble. As the broken tower folded, it gave out huge sparks of light and power, shuddering before the purple, black-streaked sky. Through the open door, she saw the last of the Dirrillillim cower—heard him shriek—saw the massive hunks of rock slam down around him, on him, pinning his force field, smashing him, smashing everything.

  Katie and Lily dragged struggling Jasper back farther toward the parked cars while stone plopped and rolled around them. Mrs. Dash stood, not because it was a good idea, but because she wanted to strike a defiant stance, with one leg slightly in front of the other. Her only regret was that in a space helmet, her hair could not be blown back from the explosion.

  The detonation built. It blared.

  Her only other regret, she realized as the whole pile collapsed, was that somewhere in there was the gateway back to planet Earth.

  * * *

  I Except for a few things he learned from the writing on the walls of ancient tombs, the murmuring of monks in mountaintop shrines, and (of course) dream-beams projected from the region of the Horsehead Nebula.

  A ONE-WAY TICKET TO DUMB WORLD

  Jasper Dash stared senselessly up at the purple sky. The glass of his helmet reflected passing clouds of dust from the shattered tower. It reflected the three faces staring down at him, concerned.

  The alien antenna had collapsed. The stone chamber was nothing, now, but a huge burial mound for the last of the ancient race of the Dirrillillim.

  Now the surface of the planet was silent beneath the hideous, eventful skies.

  Lily, Katie, and Mrs. Dash sat by Jasper. The Boy Technonaut lay motionless. With the destruction of the Dirrillill and all its equipment, he was no longer hypnotized, but his brain was still recovering from control. He lay there in psychic shock.

  Katie went and inspected the ruins. “We’re stuck here,” she said. She put her hands on her hips. “The transporter machine is under all this junk. That’s it. So much for us. No more shampoo. No more World Series. No more fried mozzarella sticks. We’re dying right on this planet, as little old ladies with gardens full of spiky plants that cough when you rake them.”

  Mrs. Dash murmured, “Don’t be so down, darling. We’ll think about that in a tick when Jasper wakes up.”

  Katie crossed her arms and kicked at the rubble.

  Mrs. Dash sifted sand through the fingers of her glove, looking into the streaked skies. She said softly to Katie and Lily, “When I was a young astronomer back in the early twentieth century, I was always some scientist’s sidekick. You’ve seen old science fiction movies, so you know how that is. Those awful men in lab coats and knit neckties are always rushing around from room to room, fiddling with test tubes or diodes while a UFO invasion goes on—and just at the last minute, they strike their big, creased, lobey foreheads, and they say, ’I’ve got it! It’s a crazy idea! Mad, completely mad! But it just—might—work!’ And then, as I recall, they waited for me to kiss them.

  “Thankfully, I quit that job when Jasper was born. And things have changed since then, both for mothers and for laboratory assistants. Katie, Lily, remember this: When you are a parent—as when you are a scientist—you cannot wait for some chump in a patched tweed jacket to come up with solutions for you. And you won’t, because you’re wonderful, smart, opinionated girls. But it isn’t easy. Parents, my dears, are always just saying, ’It’s a crazy idea—but it just might work.’ And sometimes we fail.” She said sadly, “Oh, I’ve made some terrible mistakes. Though in my day I did also stop the asteroid P-33 Omega from crashing into the Earth.”I

  Katie said, “You’re a great mom, Mrs. Dash. And I don’t just say that because you’re going to have to raise us while we live here on this planet, hunting giant stinkbugs with pointed sticks.”

  Lily, meanwhile, was surveying the horizon. She looked at the other antennas on the other hilltops. “Maybe we don’t have to stay here,” she said. “Each one of these antennas probably was used to communicate with a different planet,” she said. “Each one of them was used to send out a signal that could be made into a hypersmart being from that world who would build a teleporter and welcome the Dirrillillim. Each one of them probably has a teleporter somewhere in the ruins.”

  “Sure,” Katie grumped. “If you want to go live on Dumb World. Or Dumb World Minor.”

  “No, Katie, don’t you see? If we can just wake Jasper up, he can probably reset one of the other teleporters so it’ll send us to his booth back on Earth.”

  “He’s coming around slowly,” said Mrs. Dash. “If only we could slap him. Unfortunately, his faceplate gets in the way.”

  Katie sighed.

  Above them, the oily clouds of the Horsehead Nebula spun and devoured one another.

  * * *

  Back on Earth, in the town of Pelt, in an old concrete house of the future, five of the Garxx of Krilm knelt around Jasper Dash’s teleporter, inspecting its workings.

  One said, “If we take this crystal out, the teleporter will be broken.”

  Another said, “It will no longer teleport anyone.”

  A third said, “It will be useless.”

  “But we don’t care about the Mother of Dash and her child.”

  “And we have to take the crystal out.”

  “To understand how it works.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  The Garxx all nodded their big, finny heads.

  If they took it out, Jasper, his mother, and his friends would have no way to return to Earth.

  One of them started to undo the wires connecting the crystal to the machine. Just as he was about to break the connection, one of the Garxx said, “Wait. The captain is not here. Wait till the captain comes back from the ship.”

  “Yes. We will wait for his permission before removing the crystal.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. We will wait.”

  “He will be back in just a few minutes.”
/>   “Yes.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Yes.”

  The Garxx sat on the floor in a line, their thin arms on their thin knees. They looked like a bunch of stretched-out kids at a sleepover wearing footy pajamas.

  And when their captain got back, they were going to strand Jasper, Katie, Lily, and Mrs. Dash in a sleepover that would last forever.

  * * *

  In the region of the Horsehead Nebula, on the third planet of the star Zeblion, Jasper Dash struggled in his sleep, remembering a horrible dream where he had been frozen. . . . When was that? His eyes blinked rapidly.

  There . . . in a helmet . . . was his mother’s face looking down at him with worry.

  “Gosh,” he said. “Mother.”

  And he was awake.

  * * *

  I See Appendix A.

  REVIVED!

  Mother and child were reunited on that alien world. Two space suits hugged each other amid mountains of green glass.

  Then Jasper snapped to attention. There was no time to waste on embraces. There were things to get done. “What are we doing back out here?” he asked the others.

  “Trying to stop you, darling, from helping that awful Dirrillill conquer the Earth,” said Mrs. Dash.

  Quickly, babbling in their excitement, they all told one another their stories. Mrs. Dash explained that she had spoken to the Garxx of Krilm, and that they really were not evil creatures at all, apparently, but were attempting to help stop the Dirrillillim from their cruel plots and plans.

  Jasper repeated, “The Garxx of Krilm, hm? That name . . . it’s familiar. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere.”

  He sort of remembered everything that had happened since the Dirrillill had taken him over, but it all seemed like a bad dream. He couldn’t believe that he had actually shot rays at his own mother—his own mother! He kept on apologizing. “Mother, I am so sorry I shot at you with lasers. Really, Mother, I am ashamed of myself. I will never again shoot at you—at your head or any of the rest of you—with any kind of electrifying death beam. Mother, really, you do know I am sorry.”

  “Yes, darling. Yes. Of course, Jasper. Of course.”

  “You will forgive me, Mother?”

  “Jasper, you’re forgiven. You were under the influence of a mind-control ray.”

  “Oh!” Jasper cried in anguish. “How much evil rays do in the world! How much good they can do, yes, but how much evil, too!”

  They got back into the flying car. Katie and Lily lifted off. They swerved over the alien landscape to one of the other antenna towers. They landed and got out.

  “I hope this is good-bye to the flying car,” said Katie. “Flying cars sound like a good idea, but during explosions, they’re way too barfy.”

  The four of them slammed the car door shut and went into the chamber below the antenna.

  There was a room outfitted to welcome some alien prodigy. There were some big, blobby seats that wobbled when the kids touched them. And, of course, there was a teleporter.

  “It will just take a jiff to reset the coordinates so this booth sends us to Earth,” Jasper said, kneeling down and taking out the screwdriver in his Swiss Army knife. He started fiddling with the workings.

  “Do you know what?” Katie said to Jasper. “On top of everything else—that awful Dillillilly trying to kill us and take over the Earth—for your welcome home party, he made you a fruitcake instead of chocolate.”

  Jasper frowned as he fiddled. “We don’t even know that he was really the one who set up that party,” he said quietly. “It could have been one of the other Dirrillillim, before he destroyed them. He could have been lying.”

  “Wow,” said Katie. “What a jerk.”

  Jasper stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. “Okay, chums,” he said. “I think that should do it. As long as the teleporter back in my room is operating, we’ll be fine.”

  “What if it isn’t?” said Lily.

  Jasper hesitated. “I don’t . . . really . . . know. But it won’t be good.”

  “Let’s perform a test first, Jasper,” said Mrs. Dash. “We can send back something else to make sure it arrives.”

  Jasper slid one of the wobbly chair-blobs over to the big teleporter and dumped it in. He pushed a button.

  The chair faded away.

  Jasper looked at the controls. “Well, it says the chair’s back on old Earth. So. I guess I’ll try now.”

  “Be careful, darling,” said Mrs. Dash. “You’re sure it’s safe?”

  Jasper nodded grimly. “One of us has to take the chance.” He stood in the booth. He waved. “Katie. Lily. Mother. I shall see you in a minute.”

  He pushed a button and disappeared.

  * * *

  Across lots of space, the Garxx of Krilm were about to remove the vibrating crystal that made the teleporter work.

  “It’s time,” said one.

  “You are the captain,” said another.

  “Take out the crystal,” said a third.

  They reached into the workings of the machine. The teleporter blinked.

  “Did someone just arrive?” said one Garxx.

  “Is there someone there?” said another.

  “It’s nothing,” said a third. “Never mind. We shall remove the crystal.”

  “I do not think we should remove the crystal.”

  “Why do you think we should not remove it?”

  “I have a bad, soupy feeling.”

  “He has a bad feeling.”

  “Who wants to hear about his feeling?”

  No one said anything. No one wanted to hear about his feeling.

  The teleporter blinked again. This time, it was Jasper Dash.

  The Boy Technonaut found himself scrunched in the corner of the little teleporter booth with the blobby chair pressing him against the wall like a passenger-side airbag. He struggled to get his arms around it. He tried under it. He tried over it. He finally managed to hit the door latch.

  He and the blobby chair rolled out of the teleporter.

  He was back in his bedroom.I

  Surrounded—though he didn’t know it—by criminals from another world about to set out on a spree.

  * * *

  I After the fight over the Science-Fantasy Movie Spectacular, Busby Spence spent as much time as possible in his bedroom. He didn’t want to see his parents. His mother did what she normally did, but more sadly. His father, strangely, looked ashamed, even though it was Busby who had stolen the statue and sneaked out of the house.

  Busby just stayed in his room, studying. He didn’t want to read Jasper Dash books anymore. He didn’t buy the new issue of the comic. He didn’t listen to the radio show. He didn’t care anymore.

  At suppertime, Busby and his parents tried to ignore one another. They ate looking down at their plates. No one asked for anything to be passed. Busby got up from the table after supper and cleared up with his head bowed low. He scraped the fat off the plates with the used forks. They all walked past one another. They did not speak. They were all living alone. They stared in different directions.

  This went on for days.

  Busby thought about one time when Jasper Dash made friends with a scientist from another dimension: They both were in the same place, but they couldn’t see each other or hear each other and they could pass right through each other. They only knew the other one existed because occasionally, when the magnetic fields were right, there were signs that someone else, someone mysterious who saw another world, had been there, moved something, and faded away.

  THE VERY, VERY LAST DIRRILLILL

  Jasper looked at the Garxx of Krilm in astonishment. He fought with the blobby chair to stand up.

  The Garxx of Krilm screamed. Their screams were high-pitched and hissy.

  What they saw was a big, wobbly creature with little arms and legs flailing around and bumbling toward them.

  They didn’t know what a Dirrillill looked like, but this blob monster was clearly one.
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br />   They all cried a high, weird “EeeeEEEeeeeEEEeeeeEEEE!”

  They started firing flame rays wildly around the room.

  Jasper ducked behind the wobbling chair and kicked the teleporter door shut behind him.

  Whump! Behind him, Katie and Lily appeared in the booth.

  The Garxx saw that something else had arrived. They saw four arms and two heads.

  They made more high, whistly screams. They stumbled behind the desk and fired their beams! Jasper’s shelves collapsed! His old experiments exploded!

  Jasper yelled, “Stop, chaps! Stop!”

  But they didn’t listen. They thought they were fighting the beginning of a Dirrillillim invasion. They thought their interstellar goose was cooked.

  The flame rays shot past Jasper. The closet exploded, the walls cracked, and the wall-to-wall carpet caught on fire.

  And they shot a ray of fire straight into the blobby chair.

  SPLAT!

  It popped and coated everything in green slime.

  “Say, fellows,” said Jasper.

  WHOOSH!

  The slime caught fire. It was flammable slime.

  The Garxx of Krilm were terrified. Some jumped out the window that was open. Others jumped out the window that was closed. Glass flew everywhere.

  The Garxx of Krilm scrambled, wheezing high, fluty screams, toward the woods and their saucer. Their long arms were stretched straight out in panic.

  In a moment, they were gone. They left lots of footprints in the snow.

  Jasper wiped flaming slime off his suit. When he was no longer burning, he opened the teleporter door.

  The girls got out. They shut the door.

  “Wow,” said Katie. “What was that?”

  “I believe,” said Jasper, “I have just recalled where I have heard the name of the Garxx of Krilm. I’ve seen wanted posters with their goggly, awful helmets in every space station from here to Neptune. They’re a piratical race. They’re robbers and thieves. They probably just traced the Dirrillill’s beam here so they could find this—the teleporter. They wanted to know how to make their own teleporters so they could move more quickly around the galaxy, for their heists and getaways. They didn’t care about you or about me. They just wanted to take apart these machines and figure out what made the booths tick. They just wanted a spree.”