My Sister's an Alien (6 page)

‘You mean aliens?' asked Zeke.

‘No. I mean humans in silver suits eating spacecorn and fainting while they career around the neighbourhood in space rockets,' said Moonie.

And so they sped through space, ducking and weaving around all the stars, in a sky space called Hollywood, then through bright light and into black holes, all the while laughing and giggling and fighting over who was taking up too much of the seat. And then with a sudden screech of brakes Moonie said, ‘First stop, Pluto for petrol. ‘

On Pluto, they checked the Planet
Directory but couldn't find Planet Sock anywhere, so they asked the petrol attendant who was a dribbling big-eared pup.

‘Dar,' he said in a deep slow voice. ‘Um ah I don't know. Try the next stop. Those Martians know lots of things.'

And so Moonie and Zeke rode to Mars, which is a planet made of chocolate with a caramel centre, and they asked two flubbery Martians if
they knew where Planet Sock was, but their ears were so covered with folds of fat that they couldn't even hear the question.

Next stop was Venus, the planet of love, and Zeke and Moonie hadn't even turned off the engine before a hundred long-haired girls ran up and tried to cuddle them. ‘Oh puke,' said Zeke and The Man in the Moon. ‘Let's
get out of here! Girls' germs, girls' germs,' they both screamed together and off they went scared to billyo that they might be hugged and kissed to death.

So, finally, completely covered in kiss marks and desperate for a scrub-a-dub wash, they landed on Neptune to ask if anybody knew of Planet Sock.

Well now, Planet Neptune is ruled by a giant fish with a long flowing beard and long flowing hair and an enormous fork. He's bad and mean and mighty unclean, afraid of no one except barbers and baths.

‘Oh
pong
!' said Zeke. ‘This guy smells worse than Eppie.' And on they went to ask their question.

‘Excuse me, Sir,' said The Man in the Moon pinching his nose tightly. ‘You don't habben to doe where a place called Pladed Sog bight be?'

‘Of course I do, but I'm not telling
you,' roared the King. ‘Now get out of here!'

‘Bud please, Sir, ‘continued brave Zeke while he also pinched his nose tight. ‘I deed to doe where Pladed Sog is so I cad fide by sisda.'

‘Sister?' bellowed the King. ‘She wouldn't happen to be beautiful would she?'

‘Dot in de least,' said Zeke disgustedly. ‘Eppie looks like a plasdicine chihuahua.'

‘Well I've heard on the satellite that a beautiful girl landed on Planet Sock. She arrived wearing some sort of round crown on her head and the people there made her their Queen.'

‘Oh, my gosh!' gasped Zeke in a whisper. ‘That round crown is my precious yoyo and so the girl wearing it must be Eppie. But how could anyone think that she was beautiful, when she looks like an ugly chihuahua?'

‘I heard that,' boomed the mighty mean Neptune. ‘And how dare you speak badly of my son's future wife!'

‘Wod?' said Zeke. ‘You bust be jokig.'

‘Do I look like I have a sense of humour?' grumped King Neptune.

‘Doe,' said Zeke quietly, ‘bud you loog lige you should ged wud.'

‘Get out of my sight!' thundered Neptune.

‘Doe, waid!' said Moonie, ‘We deed to find de girl.'

‘Well I'm damned if I'm going to tell you where she is,' laughed the king, ‘because we're off to get her for ourselves.'

And with that Neptune and his son Nipper slid onto their beautiful flying white horses and charged off to Planet Sock.

‘Follow those horses,' Zeke yelled to Moonie who was so impressed by the Neptunes' horsepower he was thinking he should possibly get a faster space motorbike.

‘Follow them, please!' screeched Zeke one more time.

‘Pardon,' said Moonie in a daze.

‘Oh forget it,' said Zeke as he grabbed for the space motorbike. ‘Just hop onto the back.'

Well now, I don't know if you've
ridden a space motorbike made of cheese, but it's not that easy to do. Especially if you've got a huge Man in the Moon plopped heavily on the back. Vrooooooooooooom went the engine, then they both tumbled off.

Then they clambered back on and the engine vroomed again and they kangaroo-hopped along the surface of Planet Neptune until they tipped over once again.

‘Oh for heaven's sake, let me do it,' said Moonie.

‘No,' said Zeke. ‘It's my turn.'

‘But it's my bike.'

‘Well it's my turn.'

‘My bike.'

‘My turn.'

And so they continued arguing like seagulls until the flapping wings of the flying horses could no longer be heard.

Then Zeke said, ‘Hey what's that over there?' and while Moonie turned
to look at absolutely nothing, Zeke hopped on the bike and headed off into space with Moonie hanging on the back. But unfortunately, not for long.

‘Weeeooo, weeooo' came the sound of the Planet Police sirens. ‘Weeeooo, weeeeooooo. Pull over or we'll be forced to shoot!'

So Zeke of course did pull over with a bump and a screech, and the Planet Police pulled up right beside him on their brand new glowing gold spaceboards.

‘You're both under arrest for driving dangerously and must come with us to the Police station, ‘said the two little crimson police dressed in their cool sky surfing gear.

Zeke and Moonie wanted to escape but didn't have a sultana-sized idea how. So they hopped on the back of the spaceboards and caught the waves and currents of the heavens toward the station. That is until they
were suddenly ambushed by a spaceship full of screaming girls from Venus.

‘Hi, boys. We've come to rescue you!' squealed the girlie girls. And that's exactly what they did. They swooped by on their pretty pink skycycles, plonked the boys on the handlebars, and then pedalled far away.

It was great, they had escaped, but there was still a problem because the girls had no desire to chase Neptune and Nipper all the way to Planet Sock. That's right: the girls wanted to go dancing with Zeke and Moonie, then play hide and seek and spin the bottle.

‘There is no way I'm doing any of that,' said Zeke. ‘I would rather live in a toilet.'

‘Me too,' replied The Man in the Moon. ‘We've got to jump off here before we're violently ill.'

‘Not on your life,' laughed the girls' leader, a tall strong girl with bright red hair called Vanessa Venus. ‘There's no way you're running away from us, and I'm going to make sure of it!' And with that she threw a handful of pink-magic-kissing dust at Zeke and Moonie and then began to laugh loudly. ‘This will make you want to hug and kiss us every minute
of every day for the rest of your lives.'

Well it worked on Moonie who was so completely covered by the magic dust that it even went into his ears, nose, eyes and mouth. But it didn't work at all on Zeke because he is allergic to dust and he just sneezed it all off.

‘Quick!' yelled Zeke. ‘Off we go.'

‘No, I'm very happy here,' said Moonie as he kissed and cuddled the gaggle of girls.

So Zeke jumped from the skycycle handlebars with a “yahoo” and luckily landed on the roof of a passing space taxi, which was a free service provided by the local council and looked a bit like a chocolate doughnut but moved a whole lot faster.

‘To Planet Sock please,' Zeke said to the driver who was a small slimy yellow fellow with three heads.

‘Of course, of course, of course,' the driver replied, and so off they went.

Pretty soon they caught up with Neptune and Nipper and were close enough to even overhear their secret conversation, which was about Prince Nipper not keeping his bedroom tidy enough, and therefore not being allowed to watch any TV until he'd picked everything up.

Suddenly the Neptunes spotted Zeke and drew their special silver arrows to fire at him as he passed. But the cab driver drove like a football star, ducking and weaving and spinning and turning and never once receiving even a scratch on his bumper bar. The Neptunes were furious. Who was this smarty pants? And they ordered their horses to fly faster.

Leaping over planets and galloping across galaxies, they raced at a pace through space until Zeke arrived on Planet Sock a good ten minutes before the Neptunes.

‘Thank you,' Zeke said to the cab driver as he waved him goodbye.

Thinking he was all alone, Zeke started to wander about Planet Sock and soon realised the entire planet was made out of nothing but socks. The ground was socks, the trees were socks, the cars, the houses, the pets and the people were all socks.

‘Aha,' thought Zeke. ‘I get it now! Planet Sock's the place where all those socks go when they disappear from the washing.' (Suddenly he remembered home, and the hurry he was in to rescue his sister and get his yoyo back before his snoring Mum woke up.)

‘Hello,' said a red sock.

‘Hello,' said Zeke. ‘I'm wondering if you can help me. Have you seen a silly girl called Eppie who has a yoyo stuck in her hair?'

‘What did you say?' said the red sock. ‘A silly girl called Eppie?

 

Officers! Arrest this boy!'

‘Why?' squeaked Zeke. ‘What have I done?'

‘You've spoken badly of our queen, you traitor!'

‘What?' said Zeke. ‘Stupid Eppie is your queen?'

‘Double arrest this man,' said the red sock. And with that a whole army of socks (about a drawer full) arrested Zeke (but only once, because they didn't have a clue how to double arrest anything).

Anyway, the socks took Zeke off to jail, and may I say the socks all marched very well, and when they got to the jail it was also made of socks, boys' sports socks, and they

stank!

But that's where Zeke sat, in the pongo sock jail for what seemed like
days and days and days, but was probably about fifteen minutes. Then there was a fanfare of trumpets (which actually sounded a little muffled because socks are not great trumpet players) and Zeke was escorted to the magnificent Sock Garden, that quite honestly just looked like a pile of washing.