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  CHAPTER THREE

  It was half an hour before they could face being inside again. While they waited, Oscar popped home to fetch them some snacks. When he returned he was waving a hand in front of his nose.

  “It was pretty bad at home too,” he explained. “Dad’s on night shifts this week so he’s at home watching TV, and I tell you, my dad farts like a trooper.”

  “Nothing could be as bad as that smell Snivel just made,” said Jack.

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Oscar, pulling a face.

  The three children returned to the tree house to resume the briefing.

  Snivel reactivated his hologram and displayed the Burrapong again.

  “The Burrapong lives on a planet with a sulphur-heavy atmosphere and constant volcanic activity. Away from home it will always seek out bad, eggy smells like the one I demonstrated,” explained Snivel.

  “No need to repeat that bit,” said Jack quickly.

  “As with the first alien you caught this one will be in a human disguise. But wherever he is, it’ll be smelly.”

  “Great,” muttered Oscar.

  Ruby got to her feet and began examining the things on Jack’s worktable. “You got any gadgets that will help us with this one, Jack?” she asked picking up something that looked like a wooden recorder.

  “Hey, careful with that – I just finished it,” said Jack, jumping up.

  Ruby looked at the thing in her hands with some confusion.

  “It’s a recorder,” she said with some disdain. “You can’t invent a recorder, it’s already been done. I’ve got one for music class. Well, Mum thinks it’s music class, anyway. Actually it’s when I have my taekwondo lessons.”

  Oscar nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, they’ve been around at least three years – we had a recorder group when I was in Year One.”

  Jack tutted and shook his head sadly. He reached out a hand for his invention. Ruby passed it to him and Jack turned it so that the labels on each of the instrument’s holes were visible. Each label had an instruction on it – ‘play dead’, ‘sit’, ‘beg’, ‘forward’, ‘left’…

  “It’s a special dog whistle,” said Jack. “I saw some old shepherd bloke controlling his sheepdog with whistles, and it gave me an idea. With this, any dog becomes like a remote-controlled toy. You can make it go backwards, forwards, left, right, up—”

  “Yes,” interrupted Oscar. “We get the idea.”

  “But don’t you have to train the dog first, to respond to the different sounds?” asked Ruby.

  “That’s just it. The shepherd bloke does and it takes years but this works directly on the dog’s brainwaves and makes it do what you want.”

  Oscar was frowning. “Why are you always making inventions for dogs?” he asked. “You haven’t got one!”

  “Oy!” said Snivel, blinking his three eyes rapidly.

  “You don’t count,” replied Oscar. “You’ve got three eyes and sometimes you leak oil.”

  Jack slipped the recorder into his pocket. “Anyway, this isn’t going to help us find the fart-loving alien, is it?”

  “Where do we start then?” asked Oscar.

  Jack gave it some thought. “Well, if the alien likes farts, it’s going to seek out the worst farters in town.”

  Oscar grinned. “Then that’s got to be my dad. His farts are evil.”

  Oscar’s dad was lying on the sofa watching television. It was a football match he had recorded from the previous night and he didn’t want to be disturbed. Oscar led Ruby, Jack and Snivel into the kitchen from the back garden.

  “Whatever you do, don’t tell him the score,” Oscar whispered.

  “No danger of that,” said Jack. “I don’t know the score.” Football wasn’t really his thing. Actually, anything involving physical activity wasn’t really his thing.

  Ruby rolled her eyes and sighed. “England won three-nil,” she told him. “Rooney, Walcott and Heskey.”

  Oscar hushed her. “Ssh – keep it quiet. He likes to watch it without knowing what happens.”

  Suddenly, there was a loud retort from the direction of the lounge. BRAAAAP!

  “Was that…?” began Ruby.

  Oscar nodded. “I told you he could fart for England.”

  The three of them waited but no alien appeared. “Give it time,” said Oscar, “by half-time it’ll be like a swamp in there.”

  Jack was looking around at the layout of the house, searching for access points a fart-loving alien could use to get in.

  “We need to be closer to the action,” he said.

  Ruby sniffed and caught a whiff of the smell coming from the lounge. “I think that’s a job for you,” she said, pulling a face.

  Jack nodded. “Oscar, create a diversion. Snivel and I will sneak behind the sofa and wait for the alien to turn up.”

  Oscar held his breath as he walked into the room and stood close to the TV.

  “Hi, Dad,” he said, “how’s it going?” His voice went a bit squeaky towards the end, as he ran out of air. He took a breath and grimaced.

  “Still nil-nil,” said Oscar’s dad, without enthusiasm. “We’re playing like a bunch of schoolboys. No offence.”

  “None taken,” replied Oscar. “Can I get you anything?”

  Oscar’s dad just looked at him. “Have you been abducted by aliens and replaced with a robot?” he asked, astonished at Oscar’s offer.

  “I was just asking. No need to be like that,” said Oscar. Over his dad’s head he could see a small hand sticking up behind the sofa giving him a thumbs up sign. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything…” He left the room.

  Behind the sofa, Jack and Snivel settled down to wait. It didn’t take long. Oscar’s Dad shuffled his position and let off a tremendous fart. Jack pinched his nose – the smell was awful. Moments later Oscar’s dad repeated his trick and this time it was even worse. Surely any alien interested in farts would want to experience this?

  Suddenly the door pushed open and a cat sauntered into the room, purring as it jumped up onto Oscar’s dad’s lap.

  It had to be the alien!

  “Go!” ordered Jack, leaping out from behind the sofa. He made a grab for the cat but the feline had spotted Snivel and leapt up, claws extended.

  “Ow!” Jack’s arms were scratched badly by the cat’s claws as it squirmed out of his grasp and shot off, closely followed by Snivel. Disturbed by the commotion, Oscar’s dad was immediately on his feet.

  “What the—” He paused, as he processed who was standing in front of him. “Jack? What are you doing there?”

  Jack got to his feet and thought rapidly.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly, “I just wanted to see the goal.”

  “What goal? There hasn’t been a goal.”

  “The Rooney goal?” suggested Jack, hopefully. “Or the Heskey one. Or maybe the Walcott one?.”

  “Three goals?! There’s not been one yet! Thanks a lot, Jack. I didn’t want any spoilers”

  Hearing the shouting, Oscar appeared at the door.

  “He’s talking about a game we played on the computer, Dad, don’t worry about it. Come on, Jack…”

  Jack allowed himself to be pulled out of the lounge and back to the kitchen where Ruby bathed his scratches with warm water. A few moments later Snivel reappeared. Like his master he too was covered in scratches.

  “The cat,” he announced with a sigh, “is just a cat! She’s called Princess.”

  Ruby looked at Oscar, raising one eyebrow.

  “My mum chose the name, all right?” said Oscar.

  Jack looked at his friends. “We need to give this some more thought.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Back in the tree house the three friends put their heads together and tried some serious thinking. Where in town might the alien have hidden himself? Where would he get an unlimited supply of malodorous gases?

  Oscar couldn’t get away from the idea that the prime source for such noxious fumes was farts and proc
eeded to make a long list of relatives who, he claimed, could fart for Britain.

  “Are your family completely disgusting or what?” muttered Ruby.

  “Well, I’m all right, aren’t I?” asked Oscar.

  “Suppose so,” said Ruby.

  Then Oscar completely ruined the moment by blowing off in a noisy and smelly fashion.

  Oscar and Snivel found this very amusing but Ruby and Jack were more focused on the problem at hand.

  “Let’s make a list,” suggested Jack, “of all the places that might have the sulphur smell this Burrapong prefers.”

  Ruby nodded and fetched a large piece of paper and a felt-tip pen. “Right,” she said, sitting back down. “Fire away.”

  The boys looked at each other, smiling. Oscar leaned to the side, as if to let out a fart. “With your ideas,” she explained. “Keep your bottoms under control!”

  They began to brainstorm some possibilities: the sewage plant on the edge of town, the municipal dump, the hot springs, the pig farm…Finally they had a short list of the five most likely locations.

  For the rest of the day they worked their way, slowly and methodically, down the list.

  At the fart-machine factory they were chased away by a security guard for trespassing. At the dump they found piles of rubbish but no sign of any alien. The hot springs were closed – apparently the recent drought had affected the ancient site and limited the supply of sulphurous bubbling water. The pig farm was smelly but full of next week’s sausages, not alien invaders. Finally, the three heroes reached the sewage works. Surely this was a place that would be irresistible to the Burrapong?

  As they approached the works they could see large buildings, surrounded with pipes of various sizes. But there was a complete lack of any kind of bad smell.

  “Has this place gone out of business?” Jack wondered as they walked up to the main gate. A thin woman in a smart suit appeared and seemed to be delighted to see them.

  “Ah, visitors!” she announced. “Come this way. You’re the first today…”

  “I’m not surprised,” muttered Ruby to Jack. “Who comes to a sewage plant for fun?”

  The woman, who introduced herself as Kathie, had other ideas. She gave them a full tour, explaining in mind-numbing detail all the very clever (if rather boring) scientific advances that the company had recently developed to minimise odour.

  “We’re the sweetest-smelling sewage plant in the country,” Kathie told them with pride.

  “Nothing for our alien here then,” whispered Jack, despondently.

  “What was that?” asked Kathie eagerly.

  “I was just saying how amazing it all is,” he lied.

  Kathie beamed. Jack, Ruby and Oscar fixed similar grins to their faces and endured the rest of the tour.

  At the end of the day Jack was sitting with Snivel on the sofa watching TV with his mum. She was a nurse at the hospital and worked lots of night shifts, so it was a rare treat to have an evening with her in front of the television. Jack tried to maintain the illusion of being interested in the programmes his mum chose to watch, but it was difficult to concentrate. All he could think about was the Burrapong. The alien was out there somewhere – somewhere close. But where? It had to be somewhere that would replicate the smelly, sulphur-rich atmosphere of its home planet…but, after their exhaustive search had failed to locate it, where in town could it possibly be? There had to be an answer, but for the life of him Jack couldn’t think of one.

  On the television screen some meerkats were playing around in a zoo enclosure, popping out of various holes and looking like they were playing Hide and Seek. The programme was Zoo Watch Live Update, one of Mum’s favourites. It came on every summer and featured a different zoo every year.

  “Oh, I like meerkats,” Mum said. “Remember when we went to see them when you were two?”

  Jack just shot his Mum a look – how could he remember something that happened when he was two?

  “Look, that’s where you were standing when you dropped your ice-cream cone into the enclosure.”

  Jack sat up. “You mean that’s our local zoo?”

  Now it was his mum’s turn to shoot a sharp look at him. “Yes, Jack, I told you last week. This year Zoo Watch Live Update is coming from our very own zoo here in town. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Jack had to agree that it was exciting, but not as exciting as the thought he’d just had. The last time he’d gone to the zoo the one thing he remembered about it was that it had been absolutely stinking. The gorilla cages were smelly, the capybara enclosure was a nightmare but the worst, most offensive stench of all came from…

  “Elephants,” said the bubbly blonde host of Zoo Watch Live Update, a pretty girl called, for no good reason that Jack could see, Zana. “Surely everyone’s favourite zoo creatures. I know they’re mine,” said Zana as the camera pulled back to see that she was walking through the elephant enclosure. Behind her a large elephant was quietly having a wee, forming a steaming stream that was moving unstoppably towards Zana’s brand-new-looking safari boots.

  Zana had only recently started working on grown-up TV, having spent years on kids’ shows, working with an assortment of naff puppets. Until recently she had been the host of Animal Ark, and Jack remembered that she had an unfortunate habit of getting poo-ed on, bitten, scratched and generally humiliated by every different kind of creature that they featured. The episode where the grass snake disappeared down her blouse while she was interviewing the snake handler was a classic that was still spoken about in playgrounds months after its initial broadcast. Jack sat up, hoping that Zana’s luck hadn’t changed recently.

  “This here is Charlie,” said Zana, now standing next to another elephant. She stroked its trunk nervously and smiled at the camera without conviction. “Isn’t he just the most beautiful creature?” she asked rhetorically. With brilliant comic timing Charlie the elephant punctuated her sentence with an enormous fart, making a noise so loud that the camera shook. “And so gentle,” continued Zana bravely, but had to stop as the smell hit her nostrils and she began to turn green.

  “That’s rank!” came a voice from behind the camera, as the stench reached the cameraman.

  Without warning the programme cut away to some more footage of the meerkats.

  “Oh, that’s a shame,” said Jack’s mum. “I like the elephants.”

  But Jack was no longer on the sofa. He was running up the stairs to phone his friends. Elephants might well be his mum’s favourites and Zana’s too but there was someone else he was sure would love the foul-smelling fart-producing pachyderms – the alien Burrapong!

  The next day couldn’t come quickly enough. As soon as they were able, the three friends assembled at the tree house. Snivel had been able to record the previous night’s edition of Zoo Watch Live Update, and now he played back the clip using his holographic projector.

  “What do you think?” asked Jack.

  “Not as funny as that one where the snake escaped,” said Oscar, giggling at the memory.

  “It’s not her fault she’s too stupid to walk and talk at the same time,” said Ruby.

  “I’m not talking about Zana – I’m talking about that farting elephant at our local zoo!” pointed out Jack.

  “Oh,” said Oscar.

  “Right,” said Ruby.

  Both looked a bit embarrassed.

  “Well?” asked Jack.

  Ruby and Oscar looked at each other and shrugged. After the previous day’s failures they seemed to have lost their enthusiasm.

  “Come on,” said Jack, “we can’t give up. The Squillibloat was real, wasn’t it? So is the Burrapong and we’ve got to find it.”

  Jack explained his theory to his friends. He was sure the Burrapong had infiltrated the zoo and slimed the elephant keeper. Now wearing a disguise to make him look like the trapped keeper, he was probably hoovering up those big elephant farts like there was no tomorrow.

  “And remember,” Jack concluded sternly, “if t
he aliens get together and use the Blower there really will be no tomorrow.”

  Ruby and Oscar agreed that the zoo was at least worth a look, but there was just one problem.

  “I’m skint,” said Oscar.

  “Me too,” added Ruby. “All my pocket money is going on climbing lessons right now. How about you?”

  Jack had to confess that he too was lacking in funds.

  “Can’t we claim expenses from GUNGE?” he asked Snivel.

  Snivel shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Jack looked back at his friends. “So how do we get into the zoo with no money between us?”

  Ruby and Oscar looked blank.

  “Maybe we should phone Zoo Watch Live Update and cadge a visit with them,” joked Oscar.

  Jack clicked his fingers. “That’s brilliant,” he exclaimed, as if Oscar had made a serious suggestion

  Oscar grinned. “Yeah, I am, aren’t I?” Then the grin faded to be replaced with a confused frown. “Er…Why?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jack, Ruby, Oscar and Snivel walked across town to the zoo. In the car park, just as Jack had predicted back in the tree house, they found a couple of large vans marked with the logo of the TV Channel who made Zoo Watch Live Update. Parked nearby was a modest trailer home.

  “That’ll be Zana’s,” said Jack confidently. He strolled across to the trailer home and knocked on the door. “Play along,” he whispered to his friends. The door opened and Zana appeared. She seemed a little less bouncy and bubbly in the flesh but as soon as she saw that her visitors were children she switched on her TV personality.

  “Hi there,” she said, giving them a smile that showed off all the fancy dental work her father had spent so much money on. “What can I do for you guys?”

  Jack started to tell her what big fans they were of her and her new show.

  “We still miss Animal Ark, though,” said Oscar, forgetting Jack’s instructions to leave the talking to him. Ruby jabbed him in the chest with her elbow.

  “But Zoo Watch Live Update is our favourite,” Jack continued. “Although this series is making me really sad.”