He Laughed With His Other Mouths Read online

  But Jasper Dash would not be home for breakfast.

  * * *

  I Gargletine™ Breakfast Drink comes in many thrilling, gob-smackin’ flavors, including Chocolate, Banana, Lemon, and new Pork Cracklin’ Delight. For many years in the late 1930s, on Jasper Dash’s radio program, a quartet of singers sang advertisements for Gargletine with jingles like,

  “Wanna wash your innards clean?

  Keep your kidneys peachy-keen?

  Daily, gulp your GARGLETINE!”

  In old advertisements, there were pictures of Jasper firing off his laser with one hand while stirring up a delicious mug of Gargletine Breakfast Drink with the other.

  Busby Spence, the boy whose name was written in your Jasper Dash books, used to drink a thick, bubbling glass of Gargletine every morning. Then, in 1941, when Busby was ten years old, America entered the Second World War. Quickly, production of Gargletine was stopped. Its ingredients were needed by the government to make bombs.

  Busby’s father went away to war.

  Busby read his Jasper Dash books under a tree, waiting for his father to come home.

  Far out at sea, planes dropped bombs on enemy ships. As the bombs fell, the pilots sang:

  “Axis powers acting mean?

  Think you see a submarine?

  Blow ’em up with GARGLETINE!”

  SOME PICNIC

  Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, woke up to find himself in the region of the Horsehead Nebula. He was on the third planet circling a star called Zeblion.

  He was in a booth that looked almost exactly like his teleporter at home, except much bigger.

  He adjusted the helmet of his space suit. He stood up slowly. Teleportation had made him kind of tired and headachy. He figured his blood must have gone the wrong way.

  He opened the door and stepped out.

  The Boy Technonaut stared in astonishment. He gasped.

  Jasper Dash stood in a big stone room. In front of him was a welcome party that someone had prepared for him many, many years before. It was now all decayed. There was a futuristic picnic table with paper plates. The plates had pictures of balloons and rockets on them. There was dead confetti on the floor. Overhead, some cardboard letters on a string, partially fallen, spelled out,

  Jasper went over to the table. There was the remains of a cake. There were streamers.

  Gently Jasper picked up a noisemaker. The top of it was gray with dust. He wiped it on his space suit and brought it up toward his face to blow through it. It clacked against his helmet. He detached his air hose and stuck the noisemaker onto the end of it.

  A lonely razz echoed through the cold stone room. The noisemaker uncurled unwillingly like the head of a geriatric turtle.

  Jasper reattached his air hose to his helmet and put the noisemaker in one of his pockets.

  He looked over the ruins of his party. His party. Someone had set up a party just for him. Many decades ago, but still: a party.

  He was furious at his mother. He couldn’t believe that she had tried to stop him from coming. He was glad he had disobeyed her for the first time in his life.

  He wondered who the other guests would have been. Who had waited for him? Who had expected him? Who had been disappointed when he didn’t come?

  He blinked back tears.

  No time for that.

  He looked around the room. Other than the defunct party and the teleporter, there was nothing in the room.

  He inspected the teleporter. Even though it was bigger than his, it looked very similar. Very, very similar.

  Jasper Dash started to wonder if he had really made up the plan for the teleporter entirely by himself. After all, he had dreamed it. He had thought of the secret of teleportation one night when he was half-asleep. Maybe (he realized) it was not his idea. Maybe it had come from space, like the beam that had created him. Maybe it was not a dream.

  Maybe it had been broadcast to him by someone else.

  Maybe by a father who wanted to meet him.

  It was time to explore.

  He walked over to the exit. It was a metal door.

  He opened it.

  And alarms went off.

  Jasper stumbled back. The walls were flashing. There was a whooping.

  Jasper grabbed his ray gun, just in case.

  Then all the noise stopped. The alarms shut down.

  Jasper wondered who the alarms had warned of his arrival.

  The door stood open.

  A quiet breeze came in from outside.

  Jasper stepped out for his first view of the Horsehead Nebula.

  * * *

  He had not known what to bring with him on his expedition. He had packed quickly at three in the morning. He had certainly not prepared for a party.

  In his backpack and his utility belt were:

  • his ray gun (already mentioned)

  • a flashlight

  • a galactic compass

  • a Swiss Army knife

  • stacks of sandwiches

  • five peanut butter and jelly

  • three turkey and cranberry sauce

  • two bologna and cheese

  • all of them liquefied for easy slurping

  • a toothpaste tube of curly fries

  • two jars of Gargletine™ Brand Breakfast Drink—“It’s Zap in a Syrup!”

  • a package of dehydrated water pills (“Just add water!”)

  • a canteen of water

  • salt for the curly fries

  Jasper, a lone figure on a weird world, stood against the violet sky.

  The building where he had landed towered above him. Most of it was a giant antenna of some kind. It looked more like a growth.

  Above it, space was filled with billows and swells and trails of scarlet gas and dust, all of it lit by the glare from birthing stars. Black streamers tiger-striped the dome of heaven.

  Jasper blinked up at the beauty of the view.

  The horizon was made up of tall, knobby mountains of dull green glass. Their peaks were steep and curved, like the mountains in old Chinese paintings. Natural bridges of stone led between them, hanging over huge chasms and gulfs.

  On different hilltops, Jasper saw other buildings with other antennas like the one behind him.

  The Boy Technonaut didn’t know which way to go. He just started walking.

  * * *

  In about two hours, he arrived at another one of the antennas. He found that the stone building beneath the antenna was collapsing. Part of the wall had fallen down.

  He went in, shining his flashlight. He stepped over huge chunks of alien rock.

  There was nothing there but crushed blobs.

  At first he was afraid they might originally have been friendly blobs. He nudged them. Then he decided they hadn’t been nice blobs at all, or mean blobs, or any kind of blob that moved around and talked. They had been something else. Maybe furniture. Like beanbag chairs, he thought.

  He saw, in the corner, another teleporter machine. It was dusty and unused.

  As he stepped back out of the fallen chamber into the purple twilight, he looked at the other antennas that were silhouetted on the horizon. He was starting to suspect that each one was a station that originally sent people to and from a different planet. He wondered who had built them.

  He hiked to the next one. It was also empty, except for some dry slime.

  He kept on going. Hours passed.

  He got to the next antenna. This one was different. There was a web of wires coming out of the building, tangled and glittering. They were fixed on broken pillars of rock.

  He wondered what the network was. He went up to it and examined it. He took one of the wires between his fingers. He figured it was copper. Just a guess. He had once had quite a bit of experience with metal scrap.I

  He squinted at the ruined building, but decided he didn’t want to go in yet. It was time for a rest. He sat on a boulder, took out a sandwich, and drank it.

  Giant space spiders, h
e thought grimly, looking at the web. It would be nice if just this once, there were no giant space spiders. He hoped that was not too much to ask. He was tired of giant space spiders, tired of being spun into a bundle and having to cut his way out and then—then!—the boring laser battle and all the chittering. He took a solemn sip of his bologna and cheese.

  He looked at the broken antennas ranged throughout the mountains beneath the weird, glaring sky. No one was here. He could feel the emptiness. He had come so many millions of miles across the galaxy, hoping for so much, and now there was nobody to greet him. No one to mess up his hair with a hand and say, “Well done, Jas! Just think of you inventing a matter transporter that instantaneously teleports anything fifteen hundred light-years through interstellar space to the planet Zeblion III in the region of the Horsehead Nebula!” No one to tell him why they had sent a highly concentrated beam of binary information to the planet Earth in the first place and inspired Jasper’s mother to glug rare chemicals. No one at all.

  The planet was dead. The civilization that had built him was dead.

  No—no! He would not give up. He could not face going back home to his house and admitting to his mom that there was no one on Zeblion III. She would coo at him and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, darling, so sorry, honeykins,” and pet him like a cat and it would be awful.

  He got angry just thinking about her. How she never talked about where he came from. How she hardly ever even talked about the highly concentrated beam of binary information projected from the region of the Horsehead Nebula.

  Jasper Dash was more determined than ever: He was going to reappear in that teleporter with his secret alien father at his side.

  The swirls in the sky burned over his head. He craned his neck and tried to admire the view. He wished there was someone there to share it. Lily and Katie, maybe. Certainly not his mom.

  But in fact, someone was there with him.

  It was someone with plans.

  Jasper heard a staticky shout. He looked up.

  A spark jolted out of the wires near Jasper’s head, zapping to the boy’s helmet, sending shocks all through his body. The Boy Technonaut leaped and juddered in pain.

  Jasper Dash lay on the green, glassy mountainside beneath the tangle of wires.

  Electrical shocks crackled up and down his space suit.

  As he passed out, his last waking thought was, Some picnic.

  * * *

  I During World War II, Jasper appeared in a series of comic strips telling kids about how they and everyone else could help the US Army by bringing in junk metal to be turned into Jeeps and tanks. There was Jasper’s shiny, smiling face and his thumbs-up next to a caption that read,

  What’s more fun, kids, than exploring dinosaur forests at the earth’s core or fighting electrical space pirates? How about searching old, abandoned houses and mine shafts for

  That’s right! Uncle Sam needs you to hunt for junk metal and other refuse! Play your part in the War Effort! Even cooking grease can be used for explosives! Remember . . .

  100 silk stockings . . . make . . . 1 parachute

  1 garden hose . . . makes . . . 1 life raft

  2 inner tubes . . . make . . . 3 gas masks

  1 family car . . . makes . . . 26 machine guns

  18 tin cans . . . make . . . 1 portable flamethrower

  So head up to your attics and down to your basements and scamper into your neighbor’s yard!

  SALVAGE for VICTORY!

  Busby Spence, one of Jasper Dash’s greatest fans, read these comics while the spring rain fell outside the screened-in porch. He and his mother loaded their neighbor’s truck up with junk.

  A few months later, when the summer came, he wondered about the junk and what the army had made out of it. Just the year before, he’d floated on the lake with those old rubber inner tubes, suspended between the blue sky and the blue water. Everything had been silent. It was strange to think that now those inner tubes were maybe worn as a gas mask on the face of some soldier crouched in a trench in the midst of howling sandstorms and shelling. Golf clubs were guns. Old bicycles were bullets. Everything had changed. He pictured his mother’s silk stockings billowing in the upper air, spreading into parachutes, and men suspended from the dainty feet, surveying the enemy’s fields below.

  He hoped his father, wherever he was, would be proud of what they’d found and saved.

  NO ONE EVER LISTENS TO THE DOG

  “Thank you girls for coming over and helping me look for Jasper,” said Mrs. Dash, when Lily and Katie got into her car. “I am absolutely frantic.”

  “No probs, Mrs. Dash,” said Katie, slamming the door shut. “Where did you say you think he’s gone?”

  Dolores Dash answered, “The region of the Horsehead Nebula,” and she hit the gas.

  Lily said quietly, “To find his dad?”

  “Oh . . .,” said Mrs. Dash, disgusted. “His dad.”

  “How do you know he went to the Horsehead Nebula?” Katie asked.

  “The coordinates on his new teleporter. And when I found out he was missing, I ran down to the garage. He took his space suit with him. He wouldn’t have had time to go get it if he’d been abducted from his room.” She put her red thumbnail between her teeth and bit it in worry. “I’m sorry, girls,” she said. “I don’t mean to startle you. We could talk about something pleasanter. How are things with you? Katie, how are your serial killer conjoined twins?”

  Katie rolled her eyes. “Fine. It turned out one twin was good and one was evil, so they’re duking it out right now at a gymnastics class. I hope the good one wins.”

  “It must be very difficult for you, over in Horror Hollow.”

  Katie shrugged. “No worse than for you and Jasper. I can’t believe him, taking off without us. He’s kind of a jerk. I mean, a jerk I totally love, but a jerk.”

  Lily said, “How are we going to find him? Do we have to follow him to the Horsehead Nebula?”

  Mrs. Dash sighed. “I don’t know, Lily. That’s the problem. I really don’t know.”

  She screeched into her garage of the future and hit a button on her dashboard. A robotic hand snaked out and pulled the garage door shut behind them.

  As she got out of the car, Mrs. Dash took off her sunglasses and head scarf. “Look,” she said sentimentally, pointing to a pegboard. “That’s where my little boy usually hangs his interplanetary pressure suit. And that’s where he plugs in his Pneumatic Air Recycler to recharge it. He even took his own air with him.” Close to tears, she wailed, “What kind of mother am I, girls? What kind of mother lets her own son go off alone to someplace where there’s not even any oxygen?”

  She shook her head, and they went upstairs.

  As they walked through the glassed-in living room, Katie looked out the window and saw a dog running over the snow toward the house.

  “Look at that cute dog out on your lawn!” said Katie. “Is it the neighbor’s?”

  Mrs. Dash squinted. “Oh, that’s Terence, the mischievous, hyperintelligent dog from next door.”

  The dog was barking viciously at nothing.

  Katie asked, “What kind of a dog is he?”

  “A poodle–cocker spaniel mix. Whatever that’s called. A cocker-doodle.”

  The dog growled at nothing, or maybe at something on the roof. Anyway, he started backing up and whining.

  Katie said, “He looks really smart. But he’s acting weird. What’s wrong with him?”

  Mrs. Dash waved her hand in the air. “Who knows? He usually only acts like that when something terrifying and alien is invading.”

  Katie exclaimed, “He’s super cute, even when he’s barking at the unknown.”

  “He’s not so cute when he leaves messes all over your lawn. I am tired of waking up at dawn every morning to a cocker-doodle doo. Come along, girls. I’ll show you the teleporter machine.”

  They continued up the stairs.

  Out on the white, snowy lawn, Terence the cocker-doodle backed away from t
he Dashes’ house of the future, growling and whimpering.

  Like I said: as if there was something alien on the roof.

  * * *

  Lily, Katie, and Mrs. Dash stood in Jasper’s dimly lit bedroom laboratory. They were inspecting the teleporter. Mrs. Dash said, “Jasper told me that it teleports you to a similar machine on another world. He just had a hunch there was a receiving station where that beam came from, in the region of the Horsehead Nebula.” She sighed. “A hunch. My little boy is fifteen hundred light-years away because of a hunch. What if there was no receiving station there? What if there was nothing? What if his molecules just . . . you know . . . scattered? He might not even exist anymore!”

  Katie took her wrist. “Mrs. Dash, Jasper wouldn’t do something stupid. He’s never been stupid in his whole life. Don’t worry.”

  Lily said, “The green light is on. So that must mean that something worked.” She examined the machine. She could see in a little window. “There’s a lever in there so you can work it from inside. It’s pushed to ’Teleport.’ ”

  “Yes, Lily,” said Mrs. Dash. “Yes, see, he must have sent himself away. And look. These dials here have the spatial coordinates for Zeblion III, a planet near the Horsehead Nebula.”

  “So why don’t we just follow him?” Katie said.

  “Oh, that would be frightfully dangerous,” said Mrs. Dash. “For one thing, he was wearing a space suit when he went. There probably isn’t even any atmosphere where he is.”

  “No probs,” said Katie enthusiastically. “He made Lily and me space suits once for a picnic on Jupiter. There sure is a lot of gravity there. The sandwiches were totally smooshed.”I

  Katie slid open one of Jasper’s closets. She rummaged through all the gadgets.

  Mrs. Dash thought hard. “Yes . . . And I have a suit left over from when I was an astronomer. . . . Somewhere . . . I remember it had a darling little skirt to it. . . . But really, we’d have to phone your parents first before we go to a nebula. Katie, your father is still cross with me from the time I took you to Santa’s Christmas Fun World and you lost your dental retainer. So I think interstellar travel would be out of the question.”