CHAPTER 14

ROBO-NOSE

From the screen, Robo-Nose looked like a ten-story-high, five-school-bus-wide replica of my beak, right down to the shape of my bristly nose hairs. I watched as hundreds of Apneans climbed inside the mechanical muzzle. Moments later, a thrust of snore-fueled, boogery snot exploded from the metal nostrils like a thousand rocket blasts. Robo-Nose slowly rose off the ground, hovered in midair, and then shot through the atmosphere and out of sight.

“They are coming for us,” Dr. Wackjöb said. “They have powered their nasal ship with Gríöarstór Nef’s snores.They will then fly around to different parts of the earth and cause massive earthquakes to destroy our planet.This is just as I predicted but no one would believe me!”

“How long will it take for them to get here?” Vivian asked.

Dr. Wackjöb punched some numbers into a computer program. “Apnea is four billion light-years from Earth. If my calculations are correct and Robo-Nose is traveling at the speed of snores, it should take them two solar days to reach our planet.”

“A solar day is twenty-four hours,” TJ said. “They’ll be here on Saturday.”

“That stinks!” grumbled Mumps. “I was supposed to go to fishing on Lake Winnipesaukee this Saturday with my uncle. But now it looks like I’m going to have to help save the world from an alien invasion.”

“Well, get over it!” Jimmy barked in Mumps’s face. “If Apneans take over Earth you’ll never go fishing again—because you’ll be DEAD!

“Knock it off, you two,” Vivian ordered. “We have to come up with a plan or we’re all goners.”

“Vivian is right,” I said. “It’s up to us to save the world.” I turned to Dr. Wackjöb. “And how exactly will we accomplish that?”

“We fight fire with fire,” Dr. Wackjöb said. “Or, in your case, we fight nostril with nostril. Is it true that you blew up army tanks and large trucks with just your nose?”

“Absolutely!” I announced proudly. “Well, with the help of a snoot full of cayenne pepper. Do you want to see what it can do?”

Dr. Wackjöb nodded and we walked outside. Luckily, Vivian had reminded me to bring a bottle of pepper. At the back of the compound were six massive boulders. I knew from school that retreating glaciers from ten thousand years ago had left them behind. I took a huge sniff of cayenne, aimed, and sneezed with all my snot. The boulders shot off the ground like golf balls smacked from a tee and then exploded into a million pebbles.

“Astonishing!” Dr. Wackjöb gushed. “That nose of yours is as a lethal weapon!”

“Now we know exactly why the Apneans picked Schnoz,” Jimmy said.

“Without a doubt, young man. I think we just may have a fighting chance against these invaders. Your proboscis is one of the most powerful forces on Earth.”

We filed back into the observatory and planned our next move. While Dr. Wackjöb crunched numbers into his computer, trying to determine the exact coordinates of the alien landing, Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, and I talked things over. The first thing we addressed was my nightly visits by little gray space men. The more snores they harnessed, the more power they had.

“Let’s ambush them when they materialize from that dark shadow,” Vivian suggested.

“What do you mean?” TJ asked.

“You guys have a sleepover at Schnoz’s house. When the aliens appear to do their hose-up-the-nose ritual, you grab them and tie them up as prisoners.”

“That’s stupid,” Jimmy said. “What are we supposed to do with them after we tie them up? Hold them for ransom until they agree to leave our planet alone?”

“We should just conk them over the head,” Mumps said, flailing around like a ninja ready for battle. “One quick karate chop to the skull and they’d be history.”

“Mumps, you pass out just seeing them on video,” I said. “If you saw an alien in real life, you’d probably spontaneously combust. As far as I’m concerned, Vivian’s on the right track.”

“How so?” Jimmy asked.

“You guys saw the aliens on tape.They’re about our size. Jimmy, do you think you can sew up a couple alien costumes?”

“Schnoz, that’s a brilliant idea!” Vivian beamed. “We should tie up the real aliens and then dress up like them. That way we can go on board Robo-Nose and sabotage it from the inside.”

I slapped Vivian a high-five. “Exactly right. Wrap them up in duct tape.That stuff is good for practically everything.”

“The dark shadow is some kind of passageway that transports them to our world and then back to Robo-Nose, their main booger ship,” TJ said. “We just have to enter the shadow in place of the real aliens.”

Jimmy paced around the room, thinking. “It sounds like a good plan to me, but who is going to take the trip from the shadow to Robo-Nose? This is a lot riskier than just sneaking into our school to battle ECU.”

“There’s no way I’m doing it,” Mumps said. “I’ll stay down here on solid ground and work with Dr. Wackjöb.”

Vivian looked at Jimmy and TJ. “Then it’s up to us, partners. It can’t be Schnoz because he has to battle them nostril to nostril from the outside.” She looked at her watch. “Schnoz, you better fly us home so Jimmy can stitch up some alien costumes. It looks like we’re going to have a busy night ahead of us.”

Just as we had done when we first formed our crime-fighting superhero team, we all bent over until our noses were touching.

“On the count of three,” I said. “One, two, three…”

“Gríöarstór Nef!” we all screamed.