shapes, sizes and colors. "Which one of these buttons makes it go faster?" he asked no one in particular.
Hobart rolled up, beeping and whirring. "That one makes it go fast," he said, pointing at a glowing blue button. "I can drive it for you. I am good at driving."
Felix stood up and let Hobart take his place at the controls. The robot extended his metal arms and placed his index finger on the blue button. With his left hand, Hobart grasped a small steering wheel.
"Buckle up," Hobart said, adding, "Full speed ahead" for good measure.
The ship jumped forward, and Felix fell into a chair, buckling himself in as quickly as he could. Outside the window, the stars turned into streaks. "Whoa! That's fast!" he shouted, with excitement.
"I am good at driving," Hobart said. "I like to go fast."
The little ship zigged and zagged around the other spaceships, soon leaving all of them behind. Felix was a little disappointed; the other ships weren't trying very hard to race them. But then, a sleek silver ship that looked just like the one in his Daddy's favorite Sci Fi movie started gaining on them. First, it was a little dot in the rear window. Then, it was bigger, and Felix could see it through the side window as the other ship strained to pass them.
The silver ship nosed ahead, and Hobart went into action, rapidly hitting buttons at super speeds. The little space capsule hummed loudly as the engines strained, but the capsule pulled ahead slightly. Then, the silver ship began to glimmer. Hobart made a clunking noise that reminded Felix of clicking your tongue (Or was it clucking? He'd never been sure). "He's about to go into hyper-drive," he said. This, Felix knew, meant it would go very, very fast.
"Do something," Felix commanded. "Make us go fast! Very, very fast!"
Hobart examined the controls in front of him and then grabbed the lever underneath the blue button. "Here we go," he said. "Get ready for hyper-drive."
"Hyper diaper?" Drusus asked. It was something that kids said at preschool when they were being silly.
"No, hyper drive," Felix corrected. "It means really fast."
The ship launched forward, and the stars outside the window blurred. The other ship hovered alongside for almost a minute before suddenly dropping back and disappearing from sight.
Drusus was beginning to look a little greener than usual, but Felix couldn't help enjoying the moment, which was exactly like the feeling he'd always imagined you'd get from speeding in a spaceship. "Zoom-zoom!" he said.
"Zoom-zoom," Hobart said, in a robotic monotone, which was the way he said everything.
When the capsule finally slowed down, and they found themselves alone in space, Drusus jumped up and down, shaking the little ship. "We won! We won!" he called. Then, after a pause, he asked, "What should we do now?"
Felix realized he was in the captain's chair, so he gave Hobart a command the way that space captains do. "Take us to a planet. Let's have a look around," he commanded.
Without a pause, Hobart said, "Navigating to the first inhabitable planet."
"What does that mean?" Drusus asked. "Why does it matter is the planet has hats on it?"
Felix explained. "He's finding a planet we can walk around on. Daddy told me that 'inhabitable' means a place where you can live. Like a habitat, for animals."
Drusus blinked his large eyes as if trying to clear his confusion. "So we're going to a zoo?" He bounced up and down, happily, again shaking the ship. "I like zoos!"
Felix didn't want to disappoint him, so he said, "There might be a zoo on the planet. If there is one, we'll visit it."
This quieted down the dinosaur, so Felix was able to watch the scenery out the window. They flew through deep space, and then through deep-blue space, and then deep-purple space. They passed pink, yellow and red planets, until finally a large green planet came into view. It got larger and larger as the ship entered the planet's orbit and landed on its surface.
"Do we need spacesuits?" Drusus asked, a little nervously, when they landed. "I don't know if they make them for dinosaurs."
Felix thought about it. "If the planet is inhabitable, that means you can live on it, I think." Then, just to be sure, he asked, "Hobart, is the planet safe for us to walk around without helmets?"
Hobart said, "Affirmative."
Before Drusus asked what that meant, Felix added, "That's robot for yes." Then, just because he was in a good mood, he told Hobart, "I'm promoting you to chief science officer, which means you're in charge of scientific things."
"That is logical," Hobart said. "I am a robot."
Drusus bent his massive neck down so that his mouth was next to Felix's ear. "He says that a lot," he observed. Felix nodded.
Striding like a captain towards the main door of the spaceship, Felix made a speech that sounded like a line from one of his Daddy's favorite movies. "Team, we don't know what we're going to find out there, so let's exercise caution."
In his whiney voice, Drusus said, "I don't want to exercise. I just want to play."
Felix pretended that he didn't hear him, muttering aloud, "I don't hear whiney words."
"Why not?" Drusus whined. "I'm very loud. You should have your ears checked."
Meanwhile, Hobart rolled past them, zipping down the ramp. He was playing a tinny music from his loudspeaker that sounded like adventure music. Felix yelled, "Charge!" and ran after him, and Drusus clumped loudly down the ramp, muttering that this seemed a lot like exercise to him.
Ahead of them stretched a grassy landscape, as green and inviting as Felix's favorite park, which had a large, mowed lawn surrounded by trees. But these trees grew larger than the ones from the park, and instead of brown, rough trunks, their trunks were gold and smooth. Their branches were covered with long, thin leaves in a blue-green shade that almost glowed. "These must be alien plants," he said.
Drusus said, "If they're alien plants, then where are the aliens?"
Felix told him, "That doesn't mean the plants belong to aliens. It means the plants aren't like our plants on Earth."
"Then why didn't you just say that?" Drusus said, in a bit of a huff.
Usually, when Felix started acting cranky, his Mommy told him it was naptime. "Is it naptime for dinosaurs?" Felix asked.
"No!" Drusus said, and made a big show of thumping off to see if the trees had tasty leaves.
Hobart was zipping in circles on a rocky patch he'd discovered in the middle of the grassy field. Felix skipped over to him to see what he was doing. Skipping was a good way of getting somewhere quickly without seeming as if you really cared about getting there.
"What are you doing?" Felix asked, when he got close enough to call without shouting too loudly. Then, he remembered that he was outside and could use his Outdoors Voice, so he said it again, louder.
Hobart said, "I am doing donuts." He chuckled mechanically, which sounded like someone saying, "Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha" over and over again very fast. "I am also collecting soil samples," he added.
"Why?" Felix asked.
"I am a robot."
Felix bent down and picked up a handful of soil, letting it fall between his open fingers. The soil was sandy, with flecks of gold and black that glinted in the sun. Just like the trees, it looked both alien and familiar at the same time.
Under his breath, Felix said, "I wish there was a playground here." When he looked up, he realized there was one, just a short distance away. "Race you to the playground!" he called and took off running.
The playground was made up entirely of tubes, reminding him of the blue-and-green striped vinyl tunnel his cat played with at home. As he got closer, though, he realized that the tubes were big enough to run through in some places. In other places, they got narrower, so that you had to crawl, and there were twisting stairs and slides going every which way. As he explored, the tubes shifted and changed around him. For about two minutes, Felix flew down a spiral slide which kept turning and turning. He shouted, "Wheeee!" until he got tired of shouting. Then he said, "Woo!" instead for a while, and then finally, "Yay!"
A loud voice interrupted his fun. Drusus said, "You're going to miss school."
Felix was about to ask him how the leaves had tasted when the voice repeated itself, adding, "Wake up." He opened his eyes and saw his Mommy, wearing her work clothes of a colorful blouse and gray skirt. Mommy was a part-time assistant teacher and full-time mommy, as she often said.
"Where did you go in your dreams?" she asked. "What did you see? What did you do?"
"I saw spaceships! And an alien planet," he told her, and as she helped him get ready for school, he told her all about it.