“Lily! Katie!” exclaimed Jasper. “By the glittering eye of Thoth, it’s good to see you again! Look! This is the Dirrillill. He is something that is kind of like my father!”
The Dirrillill stepped heavily out of the flying car and held out many hands to shake. Too many. It was like meeting ten people at once.
As Katie and Lily shook some of the hands and introduced themselves shyly, Jasper said, “Why, isn’t this swell? Fellows, I’m fit to burst!”
The Dirrillill said, “Grand to meet you.”
Katie said to Jasper, “You just went off and left us! We’re your best friends! We felt hurt, and then we got attacked by a thing with goggle eyes!”
Jasper looked embarrassed for a second. Then confused. Then he said, “Well . . . but . . . I’ve just met . . . well, Mr. Dirrillill, is it all right with you if I call you my . . . my father-like thing?”
The Dirrillill laughed heartily. “Of course!” he said, and slapped Jasper on the back several times from several different directions.
Now that Lily had been introduced to the Dirrillill, she felt bad for thinking that he had looking angry and evil. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel good about someone who has more than two hundred teeth. Lily made a decision: She was going to like this Dirrillill for Jasper’s sake, no matter how strange he might look.
The Dirrillill bustled inside and over to the teleporter booth. “So—what do you all say we pop back to your home planet for a little bitty look-see?” He touched the controls while his mouths blabbered backward, “I really do love going to new places and meeting new people.”
“No!” said Katie. “There’s a monster there. Or at least, there was an hour ago.”
The Dirrillill swiveled. “A monster?” he said. “Do tell.”
Katie and Lily told the story about the thing that had invaded Jasper’s home and chased Jasper’s mother off into the woods.
“Mother?!?” said Jasper. “We have to go right now and save her!”
Lily opened the door to the booth.
Katie looked at the Dirrillill and said, “I’m not sure that, uh, everyone is going to fit in Jasper’s booth on the other side.” She raised her eyebrows. “I think that even if we go one at a time, everyone might not fit in alone. Everyone is a little big for booths.”
The Dirrillill said, “I take it that you are speaking of me and my magnificent plurality. Jasper Dash, will I fit in your receiving booth?”
Jasper looked uncomfortable. He shook his head.
“I see. I see.” A look of anger passed quickly over the Dirrillill’s parts of faces—like a crowd at a baseball stadium doing The Wave—but then it was gone. “That’s a disappointment. I would like to go to Earth and save your mother. I tell you what: What about let’s stop by the Final Fortress of the Dirrillillim—my own home sweet home—and I’ll show you around, pick up some more equipment I may need on Earth, and then we’ll send you back to your home planet so you can enlarge your teleporter booth and then your—ha ha!—your chubby pal the last Dirrillill can zap back over with you and see your super planet. Sound grand?”
“What about my mother?”
The mouths said: “Your mother . . .” “Yes . . .” “Your mother . . .” And finally one piped up, “Please, tell me, Lilah and Caitlin, when did you teleport through? Did you say an hour ago?”
“Lily and Katie,” said Katie. “Yeah. It was like an hour and fifteen minutes ago.”
“Well! Ah! There we are!” The many mouths smiled. “Time moves differently here. We’re on a different world. If you fled from some beastie, is that what you say? Yes, so you fled from this fiend an hour ago in the time of this planet. Well, that is only a few minutes on Earth. Maybe a few seconds! If you go back now, he’ll still be there, crouched by the booth and waiting to snap you up like a rubbidith with too many phylooges.”
Katie said, “What’s a rubbidith? What’s phylooges?”
“A local animal. Private joke. Too complicated to explain. But look, my other mouths get it.” The other mouths were grinning toothily. “Look, children, come with me. We’ll go over the mountains to the Final Fortress of the Dirrillillim, my home. We’ll get the necessary parts and equipment to enlarge the booth on Earth and we’ll get, oh deedly dee, a whole stack of weapons. Then we’ll come back, send the three of you through to polish off whatever space monster is moving in slow motion, chasing your excellent mother. Then, young Jasper Dash, you will enlarge your teleporter booth for me. Sound grand?”
“Yes! You can give Lily and Katie some electric rays too, so they can fight this monster?”
“Of course! Of course!” The many smiles smiled. They smiled very wide. They said, “Yes! It will be death rays all round!”
You and I have read other chapters in which Mrs. Dash heard about the secret evil of the Dirrillillim, so his promise to deliver death rays for everyone probably does not sound very reassuring to us. But remember, Lily, Jasper, and Katie hadn’t heard anything the Garxx of Krilm had said in their holographic moving picture show. So the three kids thought they were going to zip back to Earth shortly and stop a space monster in its tracks, saving Jasper’s mother and solving the mystery of the alien invader.
So they said things like, “Great!” and “Let’s go!” and (Lily) “Can we just set the death rays to stun?”
And they all bundled into the Dirrillill’s flying car without a fight and let him drive them farther and farther away from the interstellar gateway back home.