CHAPTER SEVEN

Hold the Mushrooms

“I changed my mind, Luno,” Chooch whined. “I wanna go home—now!”

Luno patiently explained they had just two more deliveries to go and then they would be heading back to the pizzeria. He was determined to make up for not getting paid by the Infernals by being the best delivery boy ever and getting two great big tips. Then he’d give them to his dad as payment for the pizza he got stiffed on.

Geo would never have to know.

“Planet Fungi,” Luno said, pointing to a tiny tan-colored dot on the dashboard radar screen. “Our next delivery.”

Within moments, Luno was making a perfect three-point landing. The only problem was, the pod had four wheels. He still had to work on that.

“Stay put,” Luno told Clive and Chooch as he slid the large pizza with extra mushrooms out of Chooch’s oven and into a box. “I’ll be right back.”

Right on cue, Chooch threw another temper tantrum. Luno first tried to reason with him. When that didn’t work, he tried being firm, but couldn’t be heard over Chooch’s crying.

“Oh, all right,” Luno sighed. “You can come.”

Chooch immediately stopped crying as if flipping a switch. In fact Chooch actually did. It was a small red one on his lower left side.

“I would like to accompany you as well in order to gather information about this Planet Fungi,” said Clive, following them out of the hatch.

Luno just shook his head. What was the point of arguing? That would only make him later than he already was.

Luno climbed down the side of the pod and planted a foot into the moist ground. Planet Fungi was dark, damp, and kind of creepy.

They made their way through a forest of giant pale trees, but upon closer inspection, Luno discovered they weren’t trees at all. They were enormous mushrooms!

“Why would someone who lived on a planet with all these mushrooms want a mushroom pizza?” Luno asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

As they trudged on, Luno picked his head up, threw back his shoulders, and smiled, determined to be the most cheerful and courteous delivery boy in the Mezzaluna Galaxy. He was sure he was going to get that great big tip!

And then it hit him.

What if Quantum already got here first? What if …

Luno stopped himself, shook it off, and forced himself to hold the pizza box high and proud. His father, mother, Zorgoochi Intergalactic Pizza, and pretty much all of his ancestors depended on him not to mess up—again.

He marched on.

“Hey, look!” said Chooch, picking up a shredded piece of fabric.

“It reads ‘di Mension Pizza,’” said Clive. “What does that mean, Mr. Zorgoochi?”

“It’s a pizzeria from the Pimento Nebula,” Luno said, examining what looked to be part of a delivery boy’s cap. “That’s weird.”

Luno had heard of di Mension Pizza. It was another family-owned pizzeria, just like Zorgoochi.

Then Luno noticed something else—a torn piece of what appeared to be a pizza box. He held it up close and examined the microscopic circuitry running through the cardboard. He’d heard about a new kind of delivery box that had moisture control built right in so the pizza didn’t get soggy, but couldn’t remember which pizzeria had invented it.

“Uncle Cosmo’s Pizza,” read Chooch, holding up another shredded piece of fabric.

“Hey! That’s the place that invented this box,” said Luno, tossing it away. “I wonder what all this stuff is doing here.”

Before Clive could submit his theory, the ground began to rumble, shaking them so much they lost their balance and fell to the ground.

When Luno looked up and saw the giant mushrooms uprooting themselves, he knew he had to get out of there—fast!

Luno was helping Clive and Chooch to their feet when a massive white stalk wrapped around him and lifted him up to the very cap of the mushroom. Luno found himself dangling before what looked like a face.

“I am Champignon!” bellowed the mushroom. “Queen of Planet Fungi! Genuflect before me, tiny human!”

“Huh?” asked Luno.

“Bow!” shouted the queen. Her breath smelled like delicious fresh mushrooms and wet dirt.

Luno tried as best he could, but it wasn’t easy. He straightened up and spoke in a confident yet polite manner, hoping this was merely the way pizza delivery boys were greeted on Planet Fungi.

“Did you order a large Zorgoochi Pizza with extra mushrooms, ma’am?” Luno asked, holding the box up high, but then he turned to see several mushrooms emerging from the darkness waddling toward him.

“Legatus!” shouted the queen, clapping two of her stalks together. “Extract the receptacle from the human!”

“Huh?” the mushroom asked.

“Take the box!” the queen said, smacking the mushroom in the back of the cap.

“Yes, Your queen-atude!” said Legatus, who snatched the box from Luno and presented it to Queen Champignon. Then she opened it.

A loud gasp echoed throughout the forest. When the queen saw the pizza with extra mushrooms, her head drooped down and she wept. Then she looked up to the sky and bellowed, “Oh, sorrow! Oh, despair! I will avenge your demise, my fallen porcini subjects!”

The group of giant mushrooms stared woefully at the sliced mushrooms on the pizza, then put their stalks around one another and whimpered. The queen wailed and shouted about the tragedy of innocent little fungi being viciously and needlessly slaughtered.

“What’s fungi?” asked Chooch, who was now being lifted up by another of the queen’s stalks next to a dangling Luno.

“Unicellular, multicellular, or syncytial spore-producing organisms, including molds, yeast, and mushrooms,” said Clive, still on the ground, pecking away at his device, hardly noticing their dire predicament.

“Oh, now I get it!” Chooch smiled. “This is a mushroom planet! Hey, Luno! Did you know—”

“Silence!” shouted the queen.

Then the queen turned to Luno.

“Do you know what we do on Planet Fungi to rogue assassins of defenseless mushrooms who murder them and place them on pizzas?” asked the queen.

“You pay them and give them a great big tip?” Luno asked hopefully.

Gales of grim laughter erupted among the mushrooms until Queen Champignon raised a stalk, quickly silencing them.

The queen drew Luno closer and, with an evil grin, said, “Quid pro quo.”

“Huh?” Luno asked.

“What do squids have to do with it?” asked Chooch.

“Not squid! Quid!” shouted the frustrated queen. “Quid pro quo! We place them on a pizza!”

Luno gulped. Now he was positive he wasn’t getting a tip. And he wasn’t so sure if he was getting out of there alive either.

The mushrooms rubbed their horrible stalks together in anticipation of the deadly pizza party to come. The queen clapped her leaves and the group of mushrooms parted, revealing a full kitchen right there in the middle of the forest complete with a colossal wood-burning oven!

“Hey, look!” Legatus said, pointing at Clive. “Garlic!”

“We’ll only use half,” Queen Champignon said, picking him up. “Garlic gives me indigestion.”

Holding Luno, Clive, and Chooch, the queen shuffled over to the makeshift kitchen. She explained with wicked delight that she’d been ordering mushroom pizzas to lure delivery boys and then eating them as fitting revenge!

“Then aren’t you committing a similar atrocity?” asked Clive.

“Silence, garlic!” Queen Champignon bellowed. “I haven’t even ingested you yet and you’re already giving me indigestion!”

Luno, Clive, and Chooch helplessly hung there as the queen ordered the other mushrooms around.

“Can we go home now, Luno?” whined Chooch.

“I agree with Chooch, Mr. Zorgoochi,” said Clive. “I believe I have gathered enough data about Planet Fungi and I am also ready to leave.”

As Luno desperately tried to figure a way out, he watched one of the mushrooms spin a massive glob of dough in the air, much better than him, he noticed. Then the mushroom laid the dough out on a monolithic pizza stone and began to create the crust.

With an evil grin, the queen raised Luno, Clive, and Chooch into the air as the rest of the mushrooms gathered around and cheered.

“Now to exact retribution for our fallen comrades!” Queen Champignon announced to her mushroom minions.

“Huh?” the mushrooms asked.

The queen sighed and rubbed her weary eyes.

“I’m going to put them on the pizza,” she said flatly.

The mushrooms cheered!

Luno looked helplessly at Clive and Chooch as the queen carried them over to the pizza waiting for them on the massive stone.

“We’re up a creek without a poodle!” whined Chooch. “What are we gonna do?”

“Now don’t forget to spit out the bones!” the queen reminded her minions.

When he heard this, Chooch started to wail uncontrollably. “We’re gonna die!”

“Bravery” wasn’t in Chooch’s vocabulary, nor were lots of other words.

“Don’t cry, Chooch!” Luno said, even though he wanted to join him.

Chooch couldn’t stop and soon his tears were pouring over Queen Champignon.

“I order you to stop that incessant blubbering!” the queen cried.

Chooch’s tears continued to flow all over the queen as well as all of the mushrooms, and right before Luno’s very eyes, the mushrooms started to somehow get bigger! What was happening?

“I command you!” gurgled the queen. “Cease!”

Then Luno remembered a kitchen tip from Roog: Mushrooms should only be cleaned with a vegetable brush or damp cloth, but never underwater because they’re extremely absorbent!

The queen tried to shake Chooch off her stalk, but Luno told him to hang on; and soon all of the mushrooms were so bloated and squishy, they couldn’t move!

As Luno, Clive, and Chooch now easily slipped out of the stalks, the queen burbled, “Seize them!” but none of them could understand her and even if they did, they couldn’t really do anything about it.

Luno dashed to the delivery pod as fast as he could and scrambled up the ladder, then opened the hatch. He dropped to the floor and sprang into the pilot’s seat. As he furiously jabbed at the ignition button, he heard Clive climb into the pod and Chooch fall to the floor with a crash. With his crew present and accounted for, Luno slammed the pod into gear and floored the accelerator.

They bolted into the sky and soon Planet Fungi was just another dot in the rearview screen.

“Well,” said Chooch, “all’s swell that ends swell!”

Luno smiled. He had to agree, but then he realized he hadn’t gotten paid for this delivery, either. There was no way he was ever going to get a big enough tip from his third delivery, to Planet Freezorg, whatever that was, to make up for not getting paid for two whole pizzas.

What was Dad going to say?

Just as he was feeling himself falling into a spiral of fear, anxiety, and depression, the entire pod was jolted with a PANG, bringing him back to reality.

“Quantum delivery ship at six o’clock!” shouted Chooch.

But when Luno looked in the rearview screen there was nothing. Then he looked up at the windshield. It was dead ahead!

As he dodged the Quantum ship’s laser fire, Luno shouted, “What do you mean six o’clock? It’s twelve o’clock!”

“No it isn’t,” said Chooch, crawling under the control panel.

“I am afraid Chooch is correct, Mr. Zorgoochi,” Clive said, pointing at the dashboard clock. “It is six o’clock.”

Rather than explain the concept of hour location, Luno concentrated on the far more pressing matter of their rival pizzeria once again trying to take them out.

“I must say, Mr. Zorgoochi,” said Clive, calmly observing Luno perform one cunning move after the other, “the way Quantum delivery ships locate us is quite uncanny.”

“Yeah.” Chooch peeked out and agreed, “They don’t use cans!”

Luno fell into an almost trancelike state as he found himself anticipating where the Quantum ship would fire next. This went way beyond playing Asteroid Dodger and Luno knew it. The other thing that dawned on him was, unlike the last time, there were no clusters of asteroids for him to hide in.

However, up ahead was a massive yawning vortex, blacker than the blackest space swirling in the distance, sucking up everything that came near it.

“Look!” gasped Luno. “A wormhole!”

“That is impossible, Mr. Zorgoochi,” said Clive, not looking up from his device. “Wormholes are merely theoretical.”

“Is it full of giant space worms?” Chooch gasped.

“The simplest explanation would be that a wormhole is a shortcut through spacetime to another dimension, time, or area in the universe,” said Clive. “Imagine spacetime as a two-dimensional plane which is folded together, creating a bridge. Now, that bridge—”

“Not a good time for a physics lesson, Clive!” shouted Luno.

“As I said,” added Clive, “wormholes are only hypothetical.”

“Well, it looks pretty real to me!” said Luno as he continued to dodge Quantum’s fire and avoid the wormhole’s irresistible gravitational pull at the same time.

“We’re gonna die!” whimpered Chooch from under the control panel.

“The logical action to take,” said Clive, “would be to confront them directly, Mr. Zorgoochi.”

Luno knew that Clive was probably right, but was afraid that Chooch was probably right, maybe even more so. If he only had the Golden Anchovy to protect him, but like his dad said, that was for fun. This was for real.

Luno didn’t know what else to do. He stopped resisting the irresistible pull of the wormhole and just let go.

As the tiny Zorgoochi delivery pod was sucked into the vacuum, a feeling of shame washed over Luno.

He was running away.

Again.

The orange emergency lights in the cockpit flashed and the siren blared as Clive calmly tightened his seat belt and Chooch rocked back and forth under the control panel, muttering, “In the event of decompression, an oxygen mask will appear in front of you. To start the flow of oxygen, pull the mask towards you…”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Luno whispered.

Then everything went black.