Oh woke up. “Wait,” he said. “The Boov ships are running away. There can only be one reason.”
He looked in the rearview mirror. Sleek Gorg fighters zipped down from the sky!
“This makes no sense. I stopped the message. Gorg cannot be finding us!” Oh cried. “There must be some other reason.”
A Gorg ship pulled up behind them. A Boov ship turned to attack the Gorg ship. Tip pulled the car up over the action, but part of the Gorg ship broke off and smacked into Slushious. The containers of frozen drink cracked and the colorful liquid splattered.
“We’re losing Grape Escape! We lost Tangerine Twist!” Tip cried.
“If we lose Busta Lime, I cannot control!” Oh yelled.
Slushious lost power. It crashed down into a river below, skipped like a stone, and landed in the thick mud of a riverbank.
They heard a buzzing sound as a Gorg fighter whizzed past them. It crashed in the distance.
Tip had an idea. “Maybe you could take parts from that ship to fix the car.”
“No! Boov run away from danger. Not toward it,” Oh protested.
“Stop being such a Boov,” Tip scolded. “It’s our only chance! Come on!”
They climbed up the bank and then approached the downed Gorg fighter. To their relief, they saw that the pilot was a robot drone. Oh rooted around and came out holding a strangely shaped object.
“It is a Gorg Super-chip!” he announced very excitedly. “Slushious will fly again!”
Oh quickly fixed the car and they zoomed off to Happy Humanstown, the human settlement in Australia. When they got there, the sky was filled with fleeing Boov ships. Humans gathered outside, cheering.
Tip ran toward the houses. Oh grabbed her by the arm.
“There is no time,” he said. “Come with me to the next planet.”
“I’m not going,” Tip argued. “My mom is here.”
Oh shook his head. “You will never find her. It is one hundred percent!”
Tip shook her head. Then she turned and ran into the crowd. Oh hated to see Tip go. But he was a Boov, and Boov ran away. He jumped on the last Boov Transport ship as it took off.
In the control room, Boov were panicking.
“The Gorg Mothership will be here any minute and we are completely out of power!” Captain Smek said.
That’s when the Boov looked up and saw the Gorg Mothership through the front window. It was flying toward them and approaching fast.
As everyone ran to the back of the ship, away from the Gorg, Oh ran to the front to the main control sphere. ‹
“It is Fugitive Boov,” yelled a Boov who saw Oh. “He is running toward the danger!”
Then Oh shoved the Gorg Super-chip he had taken from Slushious into the control panel.
Vroooom! The chip superpowered the Boov Mothership. It sped away from the Gorg fighters.
The Boov cheered. Oh explained how he had taken the Super-chip from a downed Gorg fighter.
“He ran to the danger,” said a Boov named Toni. “He is like a, a Super Boov!”
“No, no, no! I am Super Boov!” protested Captain Smek. “I invented running away, I have the Shusher, and I am your captain!”
“But you are not a good captain,” Oh said. “I used to believe you. But then I met a humansperson who is brave and cares about other humanspersons in a way that we Boov do not care about each other.”
“Big deal. I have had enough!” Captain Smek yelled. “Shush!”
He started to bring the Shusher down on Oh, but Kyle used his hand to stop him.
“That is enough shushing!” Kyle said.
“How dare you shush a shushing!” Captain Smek replied, furious.
“Oh is right,” said Kyle, ignoring Captain Smek. “We need a new captain. I think it should be Oh!”
He grabbed the Shusher from Captain Smek and thrust it into Oh’s hand. The Boov all surrounded Oh. They chanted his name.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Oh had never had so many Boov like him before. He felt happy—until he looked out the window, and saw Earth below. Tip was still down there. And all the humans were in danger.
Oh knew what he had to do.
