Czytaj książkę: «The Elephant’s Trump»

CHAPTER ONE

It started like any other Saturday, but for Jack Brady this particular weekend was the beginning of an adventure he would never forget.

Jack Brady didn’t look particularly special, but he was.

Jack was nine years old, slightly less than average height for his age and had the usual number of facial features in the usual sort of arrangement. His friend Ruby said he had ‘very striking blue eyes’, but the optician had just called them lazy and so he wore glasses most of the time. This gave Jack a slightly geeky look, but he didn’t mind too much because he was, in his spare time, a genius.

Jack was an inventor, always busy creating new ideas and improving old ones. It was this – his inventing – that he was sure would, in time, be the making of him.

But for now he had an even more important role to perform. He was an agent of GUNGE – a dedicated but secret organisation that was engaged in vital work to protect Planet Earth from alien attack.

Jack had only recently been recruited into the fight – a struggle he had thought a joke at first. Until, that was, he’d met an alien face to face. Helped by his best friend Oscar and his new friend Ruby, Jack had defeated the deadly Squillibloat – a terrifying and frankly gross cross between an octopus and a jellyfish – and saved the day. Since then he had been on a constant state of alert, waiting for his next mission from the mysterious Bob, his contact at GUNGE.

But that had been nearly a week ago. Since then everything had been quiet. Only the presence of his new pet – Snivel – reminded him that the whole thing had been real and not a terrible dream. Snivel was a transforming robot created by GUNGE from alien technology. In his dog form, he helped Jack by giving useful information about the aliens he was supposed to capture. But he also helped out with the capturing bit – in a very direct way! When Jack spoke the words ‘Activate Snivel Trap’, Snivel could instantly transform from a dog into an alien trap, ready to suck up any hostile alien.

The only problem was that Snivel had to be directly underneath the alien when activated – something that had made catching the Squillibloat in the local swimming pool a bit of a task. Jack hadn’t thought his invention of a canine scuba suit would ever come in useful…

Actually, that wasn’t the only problem. The even bigger problem was that a mistake by GUNGE had caused Snivel to be built with three eyes in his dog form.

CLUNK!

For the forty-second time in the last hour Snivel fell sideways to the floor. He was trying to keep his third eye closed – Jack had told him it would help him blend in – but try as he might he couldn’t seem to manage it without losing his balance.

“Give it a rest, Snivel,” Jack said.

“I thought it was important?” replied the robot dog.

“It is, but if you keep banging the floor like that Mum’s going to go mad.”

TAP! TAP!

“Now what are you doing?” asked Jack.

“Me?” said Snivel in an offended tone. “Nothing.”

TAP! TAP! TAP!

“Is that your tail banging the floor?”

“No!”

TAP! TAP! TAP!

“Are you sure?”

Snivel span around, trying to catch sight of his tail. “I think so…”

TAP! TAP! TAP!

Jack held his finger up to his lips. “Ssh!” he said.

TAP! TAP! TAP!

The noise was coming from the window. Jack crossed the room and yanked it open.

“Oscar, go away,” he began but the figure climbing into the room was not that of his best friend. The legs were dressed in pink leg-warmers and the rest of the outfit included a leopard-print skirt. It was Ruby! She seemed to be dressed for some kind of dance lesson, except for two key elements of her appearance.

“Check this out.” she said enthusiastically, showing him her feet and her hands. The latter were chalky white and when she clapped them together a little cloud of dust rose into the air. Her shoes were some kind of specialist trainer, with a unique gripping sole. Both the shoes and the chalky hands were totally out of sync with the rest of the outfit.

Jack shrugged. “You’ve been working out in a circus?” he wondered.

Ruby shook her head. “No, silly. These are climber’s shoes.”

“You’ve been to climbing lessons in that gear?” He looked at her leopard-print skirt. It clashed quite badly with the pink leg-warmers – even Jack could see that, and he was a boy.

“Mum thinks I’m doing something called modern jazz dance,” explained Ruby.

That made more sense. Jack hadn’t known Ruby that long but one thing he did know about the pretty dark-skinned girl was that she loved dangerous sports but her mum would never let her do anything but safe, girly activities. So Ruby maintained a complicated scheme of little white lies: her ballet classes were really a cover for surfing lessons, and now “modern jazz dance” was obviously a disguise for…

“Climbing lessons. I’ve only been going for a couple of weeks.”

“And you just climbed up here?” Jack asked. Ruby nodded proudly.

“But this is two floors up!” said Jack.

“Yeah…” Ruby shrugged and grinned. “But you have to start small, don’t you?”

Jack rolled his eyes and then a thought occurred to him.

“Isn’t it unsafe to climb alone? Shouldn’t you have a partner with you?”

“I do…” Ruby began but she was unable to finish her sentence as there was a loud crash from outside.

Jack rushed over to the window and looked out. Sprawled on the bins below his window was Oscar. He waved a cheery hand.

Ruby joined Jack at the window. “He has a way to go,” she conceded.

“Yes,” said Jack. “Up the stairs, it looks like.”

Oscar started to get to his feet.

“I’ll get the hang of it in a minute,” he insisted.

Jack shook his head. “Wait there,” he told his friend. “Snivel needs a walk, we’ll come down to you.”

Ruby began to climb out of the window. Jack grabbed her arm. “Not that way!”

A few moments later the three of them, along with Snivel, were heading for the park. They didn’t need to discuss where they were going, as each of them knew exactly where they wanted to go – and why. They were hoping to meet Bob – the mysterious GUNGE agent who would have the details of the next mission for them.

Once inside the park they headed for the area where they had last had contact with Bob. Previously Bob had talked to them from within a rubbish bin. Exactly how a grown man had managed to fit inside a park rubbish bin they had never asked.

But now it looked as if it was too late to ask any such questions. The bin – Bob’s bin – was no longer there. Bob had disappeared!