Akiko on the Planet Smoo (8 page)

After we'd hung
from the masts for more than an hour, there was suddenly a big roaring sound and the Sky Pirate ship's engines came to life. The whole ship lurched forward, and after a minute or two we were moving through the air at a pretty good speed. The clouds rolled by above and below us, and a warm breeze blew across the deck. For some reason it felt good just to be moving again, even if I didn't know where we were headed.

“Where do you think they're taking us?” I asked Spuckler, who wasn't too far from me.

“Hang on, Akiko,” he said, turning to Gax. “Switch on your hypervision, Gax. Akiko wants to know where we're headed.”

There was a buzzing and clicking sound as Gax switched on the proper equipment inside his head. Though Gax was pretty beat up, he was obviously filled with all sorts of useful machinery.

“
I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT, SIR,
” Gax said, sounding as if he were straining to make out a variety of details from a very great distance. “
CLEARLY WE'RE GOING TO BE DEALING WITH SOME VERY ROUGH TERRAIN . . . THERE ARE IMMENSE CRATERS OF VARIOUS SHAPES AND SIZES . . . NO SIGN OF LIFE THAT I CAN SEE—
”

“You idiot!” Spuckler interrupted. “You're lookin' at
me
!”

Sure enough, Gax had actually been studying Spuckler's face at very close range.

“
SORRY, SIR
,” he sputtered as he tried to refocus his eyes in the right direction. By then Poog had done his job for him, though. He blurted out another string of high-speed syllables, and this time Mr. Beeba translated it for us right away.

“Poog says they're taking us to some sort of giant Sky Cove,” Mr. Beeba said, his voice suddenly filled with dread.

“The Sky Cove?” Spuckler cried, apparently thinking that this was a stroke of good luck. “Aw, this is gonna be great! When I was a kid I used to
dream
about goin' to the Sky Cove!”

“Is it a nice place?” I asked.

“No, it's a really
scary
place, Akiko,” Spuckler explained with a grin. “There ain't nothin' there but thieves and robbers and all kinds of monsters and stuff. But I've still always wanted to go there, just to see what it's like.”

Before long the Sky Cove came into view. It was made up of hundreds of buildings, like a huge dark city floating out in the middle of the sky. The whole place was black and shadowy, with streams of smoke pouring out of crooked chimneys that stretched high up above the rooftops. I could tell just by looking at the place that it was every bit as scary as Spuckler had said it would be.

Spuckler was still excited, though.

“Hey, look! They got a sports arena!” he cried, sounding like a little boy in a toy store. “I wonder what kind of games they play.”

Meanwhile Mr. Beeba and I were getting more and more nervous as the ship slowly moved in closer and closer. Soon we could actually see some of the people who lived in the Sky Cove. They were just as scary-looking as the Sky Pirates. Some of them were even scarier. There were people of all shapes and sizes, all of them dressed in dark ragged clothes and many of them carrying swords and knives. A few of them had their hair tied up and pasted into weird spidery shapes, and others had dark tattoos all over their faces and arms. One or two that I saw even had things growing out of their heads that looked like horns! As our enormous ship came floating into the city, they looked up one by one, then went back to talking to one another.

“Spuckler,” I asked, “what do all these people
do
?”

“Steal stuff, mostly,” he replied, as if it were a respectable profession. “They hardly ever kill people, 'less they really
have
to.”

It occurred to me that the reason Spuckler wasn't scared of the Sky Pirates was because he actually
liked
them for some reason. Who knows? Maybe he'd always wanted to be a pirate when he was a kid. As for me, I was hoping we'd be able to get away from these people as soon as possible. They gave me the creeps, every last one of them.

Finally the whole
ship was pulled up to a dock and secured there by ropes tied to posts. It was just like being in a harbor, except there wasn't any water: I don't know
what
was holding everything up. But I'd already given up trying to figure it out. All the stuff I'd learned about gravity in my science classes just didn't seem to apply here. None of it made much sense, and I'd go crazy if I thought about it too much.

By then I was really hoping they'd come and untie us. The ropes were starting to hurt, and Poog looked like he was getting awfully uncomfortable. Mr. Beeba looked thoroughly exhausted, and Gax had spun around so many times I think he was starting to get a little dizzy. But the Sky Pirates weren't done with us yet.

A couple of men wearing nice clean suits and enormous top hats came aboard the ship and began discussing something with the Sky Pirates. They pointed up at us one by one and hissed at each another in their weird whispery language. The Sky Pirates crossed their arms and spoke in very short sentences. The two men made elaborate gestures and wagged their fingers in front of their faces. The whole thing looked like a routine they had gone through many times before.

“Well, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba finally asked, “what do you make of all this?”

“I've seen this sort of thing happen before, Beebs, and I got a pretty good notion of what they're negotiatin',” Spuckler said, grinning. “These Sky Pirates may be a bunch of dirty rotten thieves, but they do know a thing or two about salesmanship.”

“Spuckler, you'd better not be saying what I
think
you're saying.”

“You should be proud, Beeba,” said Spuckler. “You're fetchin' a pretty good price down there.”

“Spuckler . . .”

“Not as much as me, of course . . .”

“
Spuckler!
”

“. . . But at least twice what you're really
worth
, anyway,” Spuckler concluded.

And he was right, too. The Sky Pirates were actually
selling
us, like chickens at a farmers' market. We were all untied and taken down to the deck, where a group of Sky Pirates led us off the ship and into a big caged wagon. There was enough space for all of us to sit comfortably. In any case, it felt a lot better than being tied up.

A big, brawny guy pulled the wagon down a side street that led into the center of the Sky Cove. People stared at us as we passed, pointing and hissing excitedly at one another. There was nothing we could do but stare back at them and wonder what was going to happen to us.

We were taken down winding street after winding street, past small crowds of people who were too busy to even look up. They stood in circles, sometimes laughing, sometimes shouting angrily at each other. Occasionally we could see inside the buildings, which were dimly lit and filled with similar groups of men, crowded around tables and sometimes bursting into noisy conversation.

“I may not know these Sky Pirate people as well as you, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba said, “but it's plain to see that they're up to no good.”

“Aw, a little gamblin' never did no one any harm,” Spuckler replied, smiling.

“Gambling?” I asked.

“Yeah, Akiko. That's the main reason why these people come to the Sky Cove. It's kind of like the gamblin' capital of Smoo.”

“No wonder this place is so filthy and abhorrent,” Mr. Beeba said, taking his spectacles off to give them a good cleaning. “One can practically
smell
the degeneracy.”

I didn't quite understand all Mr. Beeba's big words, but I knew what he meant. There was something about all those people huddled in circles that made the Sky Cove even scarier than it already was. I actually felt safer inside the cage. I even tested the bars to make sure they were good and strong.

Finally we arrived at a huge sports arena, the one that Spuckler had seen as we came into the Sky Cove. It was a big round building, about the size of a football stadium, only it looked like the whole thing was built out of solid stone. It was very dirty, covered with all kinds of weird curvy-lettered graffiti and surrounded by piles of rotting garbage. Still, you could tell by the sheer size of the place that this was the most important building in the whole city.

We were led to a gateway in the side of the building that was big enough for wagons much larger than our own. It was pitch-black inside, with just enough light for us to see that we were being taken down a long ramp into an area somewhere underneath the arena. Through the darkness I could see Mr. Beeba shudder a little and glance around nervously.

“Now, it's important in the Sky Cove never to let anyone see that you're scared,” Spuckler instructed. “Try your best to look tough.”

“What about Poog?” I asked, wondering just how tough Poog was able to appear.

“All right, forget tough,” Spuckler said after a long pause. “Just try to look cool.”

A minute later we were taken out of the wagon and put inside a damp little cell with no furniture of any kind. The walls and floor were built entirely out of stone. The air was very humid, and the whole place smelled of mildew and sweat. The men locked the cell door and left us there alone in the darkness.

I think all the
activity had kept us from thinking too much about the awful situation we were in. Now that we were locked in a cell with nothing else to do, we had plenty of time to reflect on how bad things had become. Spuckler frowned and tried to scrape a patch of dirt off Gax's body. Mr. Beeba sat down with his head in his hands and stared dejectedly at the floor.

I started to get really homesick all of a sudden, and I wished I was back at home, hanging around with Melissa or just lying in my bed and staring up at the ceiling. At that moment I wished I was
anywhere
else but where I was. Just when I was feeling as lousy as I could possibly feel, a slimy little lizard thing crawled across my back and I let out a yelp like you wouldn't believe.

“I
hate
this place!” I screamed. “I want to go
home
! I want to get out of here and go home!” I actually started to cry a little right then, and Mr. Beeba and Spuckler came over and sat down on either side of me.

“Hey there, little girl,” Spuckler said. “Take it easy. Everything's gonna be all right. I promise.”

“Yes, pull yourself together, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba joined in. “At least we're all essentially unharmed. I'm sure you've been in worse places than this.”

“No, I haven't,” I said to him very seriously, wiping tears away from my cheeks. “I really haven't. Every place I've ever been has been really nice and comfortable compared to this place. I mean, this place . . . this place is just
horrible
!”

“Do you mean to tell me that in all your years of rescuing people—”

“Look, I've never rescued
anyone
before,” I cried. “Haven't you figured that out yet? This whole thing is a big mistake! I'm not a rescue expert! I'm not an
anything
expert! King Froptoppit got the wrong person!”

There was a long pause as Spuckler and Mr. Beeba took this in. I was really starting to shake a little now from the cold. Spuckler and Mr. Beeba moved in a little closer to keep me warm.

“Heavens!” was all Mr. Beeba could say.

“I'll be darned,” was all Spuckler could say.

“Well, you've certainly made an impressive effort, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba said.

“Yeah,” Spuckler continued. “B'sides, Akiko, that ain't nothin' to feel sad about. We
like
you. We don't care if you ain't no rescue expert.”

“Most definitely,” Mr. Beeba agreed. “King Froptoppit has brought all sorts of people to Smoo over the years, but no one we liked nearly as much as you.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh yes, Akiko,” he continued. “You're something special.”

“I still wish I could go back home,” I said.

“I don't blame ya, 'Kiko,” Spuckler said. “But I'm sure they won't keep us in this cell for long. Why, I bet they'll be comin' down here to let us out any minute.”

I was exhausted. I closed my eyes and let my head fall over on Mr. Beeba's shoulder.

“There you are, Akiko,” said Mr. Beeba. “Take a little nap. You'd be amazed what a bit of rest can do to boost your spirits.”