The Boy With Orange Hair

by Bill Bowler

Chapter 3 and Chapter 4
appear in this issue.

Chapter 5

A small blip showed on the control panel radar screen.

“That’s him,” said the boy with orange hair. “Visual contact in 15 seconds.”

The Saturn 9 was flying at mach 5 and closing fast. When Crabby’s tri-plane came into sight directly in front of them. Gerry the groundhog sat down at the radio transmitter. “Crayfish! This is Saturn 9. Land at once. Land at once.”

“Never!!!” came the reply, and the Fokker veered off to the left with a puff of smoke from its exhaust, trying to lose them.

“Crayfish! This is Saturn 9. Don’t worry. We just want to talk to you. Land at once.”

“Never!!” came the reply again, “You’ll never take me alive!!” and they heard a crazed cackling laughter through the radio as the Fokker corkscrewed into a steep dive.

The boy with orange hair pulled open a small drawer under the right side console, took out a key and unlocked a bolt that was fastened across a large switch in the center of the control panel. The boy disengaged the bolt and flipped the switch.

A warning light began to flash. The boy turned two dials and pressed a button. They heard a loud hum that made the walls vibrate and a purple ray beamed from the nose of the rocket and enveloped the Fokker in a purple glow. Poof. The tri-plane disappeared. The boy turned the two dials back to zero, flipped the switch, and the purple beam went off.

In the rear of the Saturn 9 cockpit, a small sliding panel opened, revealing a shelf with a rack of small bottles. The boy carefully removed one little jar from the rack and held it under a magnifying glass. They all gasped. Inside the bottle, they saw what looked like a beautifully detailed miniature scale model Fokker tri-plane and next to it, a little miniature Crabby Crayfish doll about one-inch high.

“What did you do with the ice cream, Crabby?” the boy shouted into the bottle.

“I ate it!” came a squeaky teeny growly little voice from inside the bottle.

“All of it?! You ate ALL of it?!” cried Gerry.

“I was hungry!”

They looked at each other helplessly.

“And I have a stomach ache now, too! But please! Pleeeease let me out! I PROMISE I won’t cause any more trouble! I’ve learned my lesson. I’m going to be good from now on. Pleeease just open the bottle and make me big again. Pleeease.”

“Ehhh,” said General Rickrack, “I don’t trust him.”

“Neither do I,” said Gerry. “He’s trying to TRICK us.”

“We better keep him in the bottle, if you ask me,” said General Rickrack. “But now what do we do with him?”

To be continued...