They are on the edge of a walkway that spirals around the cavern. It extends far above and far below them, with doorways giving access to it in dozens of places.
On the floor of the cavern sits a pile of trash the size of a mall. Actually, it seems to be squatting. It's alive.
Around this trash creature is a protective bubble. The creature punches the bubble furiously. The bubble stretches but does not break.
The hippies stop, eyes wide.
Space Hippie whispers, "Holy guacamole!"
The creature roars.
Alien workers in uniforms walk across the floor, unconcerned, adjusting dials and writing on clipboards busily.
Two of them stand by a doorway chatting and laughing.
Another worker comes through a door at the floor. She brings in a wheelbarrow full of trash and dumps the trash near the trash creature.
A small second bubble forms on the big bubble and engulfs the trash, pulling it into the big bubble. The trash creature eats it in one bite.
"Well," Rainbow whispers, "that explains how they get rid of their trash, but how...?"
The creature strains a little. It poops out a pile of metallic bars, followed by a pile of wooden planks.
Another small bubble forms to remove the metal and wood from the big bubble. A worker starts piling this into a wheelbarrow.
Starr squeals, "Ooh, look!"
Indeed, in an alcove in the wall across from them sits a large, green, glowing crystal. A strand of glowing, dancing light connects it to the containment field surrounding the trash creature.
"That must be how they create the containment field," Chillz tells her. "But what's on the other side?"
What at first appeared to be an alcove for the crystal is actually a hole in the wall. They can see creatures moving on the other side.
"Let's find out," says Rainbow, inching forward.
They wait till the coast is clear, then they run for the door to the opposite room. As they do so, the crystal glows brighter. It's a long run, and they're out of breath by the time they reach the door. They open it and tip-toe through, panting.
They're in another large cavern encircled by a another spiral walkway. They quickly back up and hug the wall's shadows.
As they sneak along the walkway and spiral closer to the floor, they see thousands of miserable half-sized, rice-like brown aliens slaving away in the middle of the cavern.
These slaves are skinny and they wear ragged clothes. They're operating row after row of manufacturing machinery.
One slave waits until the guards are not looking and tries to make a run for it. When she gets to the edge of the room, an arc of light from the crystal strikes her.
It melts her brown flesh away, and then her inner network of tendons until there's nothing left.
The guards laugh.
"You--" Chillz starts to shout. Starr tackles him, muffles him, and drags him behind a machine. His word echoes in the cavern. One guard looks up, but doesn't see them, so he goes back to picking his nose.
Space Hippie pulls Rainbow's shirt hem to get her attention and points to the crystal. Petrol is about ten feet away from them, flattened against the floor, inching up on the crystal.
Rainbow waves her hands at Chillz and points. Chillz readies his flamethrower.
He jumps out dramatically at Petrol and pulls the trigger, roaring, "Waah!"
Click. Little happens. Just a weak flame that sputters out. Petrol stops for a second. Chillz tries the trigger a few more times; looks confused, then disappointed, then terrified.
This time, the guard locates where the yell came from. "Hey! Get away from there!"
As the guard runs after Chillz and Rainbow, Space Hippie sneaks over and tries to grab Petrol. Her hand just rakes right through the black goop.
Another guard notices her and yells, "Hey!"
Petrol is inches from the crystal now.
"I'll shoot!" he says, pointing his gun first at Space Hippie, then at Petrol.
Petrol oozes up around the crystal. The guard shoots. The laser beam goes right through Petrol and hits the crystal, shattering it into shards.
With the crystal destroyed, the containment fields are down.
The guard's face falls. "Uh-oh," he mutters.
The slaves stop working and begin whispering and pointing. A couple of them take a few steps forward; then, all at once, they run for the doors, clogging the exits. Some of them run right over the guard.
From the other room comes a big rumble. The floor begins to shake.
"Oh, bean sprouts!" exclaims Chillz.
Petrol gathers himself into a more spherical shape and begins to fly toward the exit closest to the ceiling.
Rainbow notices and starts waving frantically at her team. "He's getting away!"
The hippies run up the walkway, but Starr slips on Petrol grease and some shards of the crystal.
Her face lights up with an idea.
She picks up a shard and throws it as hard as she can. It hits Petrol, but it goes right through. He flies onward. She throws another. Again, it goes right through. He's almost to the exit. He's so far away... But she tries once more, with a particularly large shard of the crystal. She gives a mighty heave- he's right at the exit- the shard hits him- and it sticks. It must be in his brain. He falls to the floor far below with a splat. Greasy goop covers half the floor with a splerching sound.
The hippies hear the trash monster trying to beat its way out of the room next door.
The slaves' room shakes as the wall between the room begins to collapse.
"Run!" orders Rainbow.
They run up the walkway, slipping in more Petrol goop. As they run, the trash creature pounds the wall, shaking the room and the walkway.
They get about halfway up, slipping and sliding on the rubble from the crumbling wall, when the creature finally knocks a hole in the wall. They crawl under his fist and through the door.
The walkway begins to collapse behind them as they run. The whole room shakes and the ceiling begins to collapse.
"Oh, kumquats!" sputters Starr.
They get to the top of the walkway just as the entire thing collapses and they throw themselves through another door, watching the cavern collapse on the enraged creature.
They can hear slaves ahead of them, and they follow their chatter.
Starr whips out another light.
They all start to wheeze, out of breath.
The tunnels shake as they run through them. Loose rocks begin to fall.
They see slaves ahead of them crawling out the door into the light.
The tunnel continues to rumble and crumble as they climb out the doorway. They sprint toward the camper.
Hundreds of slaves pour into the city's streets as the hippies climb into the van.
The hill collapses and the ground caves in as the Luv Shuttle begins to hover.
The protective bubble around the city is gone. Inconveniently, the volcano near the city erupts again.
Rainbow leads the hippies, running for the van. "Oh, snickerdoodles!" she swears. "That crystal must have powered the shield over the city, too!"
This time, there's nothing to ward off the embers and ash.
Embers rain down; smoke and soot fill the van and they frantically roll up the windows.
As they zoom up into the sky, they see the trash creature climbing out of the ground.
Space Hippie watches the devastation through the back window and says, "One down..."
Chillz joins her at the back of the bus. "Two to go," he finishes for her.
They zoom away as the lava oozes over the city.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Something Weird
LUV SHUTTLE - OUTER SPACE
Black soot covers the Luv Shuttle inside and out.
Herb's driving. Everyone else is wiping the soot off using rags and slime.
Starr unfolds her rag and checks it. "I need some
more slime, please."
Chillz snaps his rag against the window with a splat. "Me, too."
Space Hippie concentrates. A small pile of slime grows larger, branching off in two directions- one towards Starr, one towards Chillz.
They continue to wipe off soot.
"Any word on Mystery Character?" Space Hippie tries to ask casually.
Rainbow shakes her head. "None."
Chillz is drawing clean spots on the window with his rag. He draws a peace sign. "I hope we're not too late."
Starr erases some of Chillz' drawings. "If Petrol already got him, we'd be dead, remember?"
"Oh, yah. So where we headed now?"
Rainbow glances at a screen with two blinking depictions of Petrol on it. "Well, one's closer to us. So I figured we'd grab him first, then head over to-"
Chillz interrupts her with, "You make him sound like a veggie burger."
Space Hippie laughs a little too quickly at Chillz's joke. He smiles and makes eye contact with her.
"Yah, no big deal," she giggles. "Let's just go slay this 40 foot monster zombie for lunch."
"Can I have some bean sprouts on that?" he laughs.
Rainbow shakes her head. "Just wipe."
Later...
The remainders of their lunch sit on the table. Four cups of tea and two half-eaten veggie burgers topped with bean sprouts remain. Starr sits on a giant beanbag on the floor with Space Hippie, sipping her tea and bouncing a little.
Rainbow looks up from her holographic computer monitor. "This is weird."
"Something weird?" remarks Chillz. "How refreshing."
Space Hippie and Starr giggle. The caffeine seems to have gotten to their brains.
"Go ahead, oh Great and Merciless Leader." Starr bows toward Rainbow.
More giggles.
"Thank you," says Rainbow in a dignified voice. "Petrol's headed toward the Denial System."
Herb and Chillz exchange glances. Starr gasps and drops her tea. It slops all over her tie-dye skirt.
Space Hippie rolls her eyes. "As usual, I'm the only one who doesn't know what you're talking about."
"Sorry-" begins Rainbow.
"Let me guess," says Space Hippie dryly. "Petrol has an ex-lover in that system. She has a restraining order against him."
"The Denialians are the most dangerous creatures in this half of the Universe," Starr tells her earnestly.
Chillz nods emphatically. "You'd have to have a death wish to go there."
Space Hippie's unimpressed. "Petrol's already dead, so why should he care?"
Rainbow frowns, concerned. "You don't understand. They're dangerous to everyone, but they're particularly vicious to both hippies and environmentalists for some reason."
Space Hippie begins to understand. "And we're..."
"Both."
"Of course."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Domination
DENIAL SYSTEM
This system consists of four planets circling one star. The star is milky white with a large dark spot and resembles a big, blind eyeball covered with cataracts.
One planet is sparkling like it's covered in gold glitter.
In the Luv Shuttle, Space Hippie points at it. "That one's pretty! How come it's sparkling so much?"
Rainbow spares a moment away from her monitor to glance out the window. "Oh, that's Status-Quo. It's not actually covered in gold. It's an illusion. I think it's a gimmick- you know, to draw attention. You'll see when we get nearer, it's actually an ordinary grey color."
"Whoa!" shouts Chillz, pointing out another window. "Look at the size of that one!"
Rainbow reads her monitor for a second. "Oh, yep. That one's called Lamb-At-Altar. It's so big it almost became a star itself. It's bigger than our Jupiter. Its plants are enormous, too. Hundreds of miles tall. It used to be covered in them. But they've cut a bunch down. You know. For farms and mines and stuff." As they round the planet, they can see that only half of it looks green.
Chillz says angrily, "I heard they have a concentration camp for hippies hidden down there in the jungle."
Starr nods sadly, looking up from her own monitor. "I heard that, too. I think it's called-"
"We have to find Petrol!" Rainbow snaps. "Where's he at?"
Starr looks abashed, but searches her screen. "He disappeared onto that huge planet a while ago. Still down there, I guess."
"You think he knows about us?" asks Chillz, still looking annoyed.
"Doubtful. We're cloaked," Starr points out (Herb moans), "and we've been staying pretty far back."
"We weren't staying back," Rainbow corrects her, "he was going too fast."
Starr sits up straighter, looking alertly at her screen. "Wait! I see something."
Rainbow checks her own screen. "That's not Petrol, it's- HOLY TOFU! Back off! Hide!"
Two primitive looking, oddly flat spaceships scoot by just as Herb hides the Luv Shuttle behind the largest planet. One has "S.S. Big Bro" painted on the side. It's shaped like a fist. The other, "S.S. Neighborhood Watch," looks like a nose. It sniffs around.
The spaceships putter away, leaving puffs of smoke behind them.
Space Hippie skeptically watches the other hippies, who are all hunched down a little. She raises an eyeballebrow. "Everyone's afraid of that? Really?"
"You don't want to mess with them. Trust me," Chillz answers seriously.
Starr points out the window and jumps up. "Here he comes! What's he got?"
This version of Petrol, now 40 feet high, comes off the planet clutching a net bag underneath him filled with seeds. Each seed is at least as tall as he is.
"Are those... Seeds?" Chillz asks, confused. Herb nods knowingly.
"He's headed toward that planet over there!" Space Hippie points to an orange planet crisscrossed with huge trenches.
Starr checks her monitor again. "I think that one's called 3-Plus-Kids. Wow. These planets have some stupid names." Everybody nods in agreement.
Another spaceship, crowded full of what look like homeless people, zips off from Planet 3-Plus-Kids and heads toward a small, smog-covered planet.
Space Hippie squeaks, "Oh, b-beans! There's another one!"
"It's okay," says Starr, "that one's just from the temp agency. It's marked, see?"
"Arm the phasers!" interrupts Rainbow. "Go, Herb, go!"
Chillz grabs the phaser controller as Petrol disappears into the orange planet's clouds. The Luv Shuttle follows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Trash
PLANET 3-Plus-Kids
The Luv Shuttle cuts through some clouds over the rusty-looking surface of 3-Plus-Kids.
They emerge from the clouds into blue sky, but only for a moment, and then they're surrounded by murky grey.
All the hippies can see out the windows is smoke.
Herb shouts, "I can't see!" He slows down and presses close to the windshield.
Space Hippie falls forward and Chillz catches her by her arm.
"What is it?" he asks.
"Trash fire, I think," replies Rainbow.
The surface looms large and Herb pulls up the nose of the shuttle at the last minute.
Thunk!
They run over somebody.
Space Hippie squeals, "Oh God! Oh God!"
Rainbow laughs unexpectedly. Space Hippie balks and wonders if she's gone mad.
Rainbow tucks her smile away. "No, it's okay. Watch."
Still flying, they pile back to look through the rear window, and they see the pieces of the girl they hit reassemble themselves. She gets up and shakes her fist at them, obviously cursing at them though they can't hear her.
"Oh... Zombies?" asks Space Hippie, relieved but still shaken.
Rainbow nods. "Not ordinary ones. These people are lucky."
The surface is littered with garbage. RV's, mobile homes, trash fires, and shanties are everywhere.
; Impoverished aliens scatter and run for cover. Space Hippie's incredulous. "Lucky?" she asks doubtfully.
"Ordinary zombies only live once. These can come back over and over."
"But how?"
"The core of the planet holds a special crystal-"
"The Regeneration Crystal," Starr butts in.
"Yep," continues Rainbow. "It allows the people to come back to life many times and grow incredibly fast. It also keeps them able to reproduce. Many have huge families."
"That's why there are so many of them?"
"Yep. And that's why they're so poor. They ran out of natural resources ages ago."
They continue to gaze out the window at the destitute people and piles of rubbish.
Shaking her head, Space Hippie wonders aloud, "But what could he possibly want from this planet?"
Chillz' excited voice makes Space Hippie jump. "There he goes! I see him!"
Petrol heads toward a trench.
"After him!" demands Rainbow.
They speed after him. As they get closer, he flies over the trench. While they chase him, he drops the seeds into the trench one at a time a few miles apart, kicking a boulder over each one to create an avalanche.
At the end of the trench stands a dam...
Space Hippie snaps her fingers. "Oh! I get it!" she says excitedly.
"Wadoodles!" joins in Chillz. "He MUST have a brain to be able to figure out something like that!"
"Are you guys done admiring his plan?" Rainbow asks testily.
"Sorry," Space Hippie tells her. She twists her hair nervously. "I just-"
Rainbow talks over her, "We've got to get to him before he-"
But outside, Petrol is busy. He drips a bit of himself into a trash fire beside the dam, and drips more along a line leading up to an enormous covered pile of rotting trash at the base of the dam.
The flames follow his trail.
A sign at the top of the pile reads:
"DANGER. METHANE. EXPLOSIVE."
Kaboom!
The methane explodes. Trash goes flying.
The dam breaks and water fills the trench.
The ground starts to rumble.
As enormous bamboo plants grow hundreds of miles up into the sky, the ground begins to split open further...
And further...
The water rushes in. The planet is splitting in half.
Herb exclaims "Whoa-hoo-hoo!" from the front of the bus. He ogles admiringly out the windows at the gigantic bamboo while swerving skillfully to avoid a collision.
The planet continues to split in half. They can see a beautiful, sparkling light emanating from the center.