Water Planet Rescue

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  Dedicated to our giant cat, Bubba,

  the inspiration for Pockets.

  He’s not as smart as Pockets, though.

  And the only thing he can hide in his fur is more fur.

  Chapter One:

  Cats Don’t Swim

  I know everyone thinks their family is strange, but seriously, mine has them all beat. First of all, my dad drives a taxi in OUTER SPACE! Second of all, I’m somehow able to read the space map that helps him get from planet to planet. And third, since my little sister, Penny, only eats things that start with the letter P, I had to eat a persimmon for dessert last night. A persimmon is kind of like a cross between a mango and a tomato, only not as good as either a mango or a tomato. I asked Mom why we couldn’t have popcorn (also starts with a P) instead, but she said if she has to pop one more batch of popcorn, she’s going to run screaming through the neighborhood in her nightgown.

  See? I told you. Weird family!

  But I haven’t even gotten to the weirdest part yet. A few days ago we got a talking cat from another planet. Pockets helps protect the universe as an Intergalactic Security Force officer. We call him Pockets because he can fit almost anything into pockets hidden behind patches of fur on his belly. And also his real name is way too long to remember.

  Pockets made Dad and me deputies of the Intergalactic Security Force (called the ISF for short) because we helped him catch a criminal and sort of save the universe at the same time.

  The ISF needs Dad to be available whenever Pockets has a mission for us, so his regular space taxi job is on hold awhile. I had expected Dad to grumble about this because he loves driving his taxi, but nope. He’s totally into being home all the time. Two days ago he fixed that crack in the wall in our kitchen (but made a new one on the floor by dropping a brick). Then he painted the family room green (and dripped paint all over Mom’s favorite chair), and tried to put up a shelf but only made two really big holes in the wall, which Mom had to cover with an old, broken clock.

  Yesterday he took us to the zoo, where Penny got scared by the butterfly exhibit and cried until we got kicked out for upsetting the other kids. Today we’re going swimming. Hopefully nothing will go wrong at the pool, but the odds are against it.

  Truthfully? I’m itching to get back to outer space, and I know Mom is ready for Dad to get back to work.

  “Got your suit on, Archie?” Dad calls out from the hall. “The pool opens in half an hour.”

  “Coming!” I grab my ISF badge and my space map and tuck them into my pool bag. ISF deputy Archie Morningstar is ALWAYS ready for duty. Mom said she’ll only let me do this job if I promise to look before I leap and always listen to Dad and Pockets. She says I don’t “think things through,” because of one trip (okay, four trips) to the principal’s office last year due to a series of science projects that didn’t work out as expected. The janitor was able to get the scorch marks off the ceiling after only a few weeks of scrubbing, so really, I don’t see what all the fuss was about.

  When I get to the living room I spot Pockets asleep in his favorite sunny spot on the window ledge. That cat sure sleeps a lot. And he sheds a TON. Our apartment is covered in clumps of white fur. It sticks to the carpet and hangs from the walls (still wet from the paint) and lampshades and furniture. I don’t know how one cat can shed so much. Mom’s vacuum cleaner is lying on the floor, broken. Clearly, it was no match for all this fur.

  You wouldn’t know it from all the shedding, but Pockets likes things to be neat and orderly. He cleans up my room every time I leave it. I haven’t told Mom yet that it’s not my doing. She’ll figure it out soon enough.

  “This is NOT what I signed up for,” a voice growls from behind me. I turn around to see Pockets frowning up at me, his paws on his hips. He’s wearing a pair of my old yellow swim trunks and Penny’s purple goggles. I turn back to look at the window ledge, where I can swear I’m looking at Pockets asleep, then back again to the cat behind me. I rub my eyes to make sure I’m fully awake.

  “If you’re here,” I ask him as my dad walks into the room, “then who’s that sleeping by the window? Do you have a twin? Can you clone yourself?” Do I now have TWO talking pet cats?

  Dad strides across the room and pokes at the sleeping cat on the ledge. His finger goes right through! It’s not a cloned space cat after all. It’s a Pockets-shaped ball of fur! I admit I’m a little disappointed.

  Dad lifts up the huge pile of fur. “This,” he announces, “is the sign of a cat who needs a good grooming.”

  “How do we know that’s mine?” Pockets asks, crossing his paws in front of him.

  Dad and I raise our eyebrows at him.

  “All right, all right,” Pockets says, walking toward Dad. “I can’t help it. Something in the air on your planet makes my fur grow very quickly.” He waves the dangling fluff ball away, and white fur flies in all directions. I sneeze as a few pieces fly up my nose. I consider reminding him that he shed a lot before he even got to Earth, but he looks like he’s in kind of a dark mood.

  “Can we focus on the larger problem here?” Pockets demands. He points to his swim shorts with one front paw and to his goggles with the other.

  Dad turns to me. “I don’t see a problem with the way Pockets looks,” he says. “Do you, Archie?”

  I try hard not to giggle. “He looks like a cat who’s ready to go swimming.”

  Dad nods. “My thoughts exactly, son.”

  Pockets tries to pull off his goggles, but they just snap back in his face. “I am a highly respected Intergalactic Security Force officer,” he says, puffing out his chest. “I have won medals for bravery on more missions than I can count. But one thing I do NOT do is swim.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Cats don’t swim,” he replies.

  “But why not?” I ask.

  “They just don’t,” he snaps.

  Dad puts his arm around Pockets. “We’re only fooling with you. Of course you don’t have to come. In fact, the pool doesn’t allow pets. You were a very good sport to let Penny dress you up this way.”

  Pockets seems calmed by Dad’s words. He shrugs. “No harm, I suppose. The worst part was having to keep my mouth shut.”

  “I know it’s hard pretending to be a regular cat around Penny,” Dad says, “but we’ve been over this. She’s too young to keep your secret identity as a crime-fighting cat from outer space. What if she told her friends at preschool? They’d tell their parents, and your cover would be blown.”

  Personally, I don’t think we have to worry about this, because Penny only says, like, three words. And never in a row.

  “I understand,” Pockets says. “I am a trained professional. I can pretend to be a house pet, easy. See?” He begins to purr and rubs up against Dad’s leg like a regular cat. With a swish of his tail, he walks away, leaving a thick coating of white fur behind.

  Dad looks down at his fur-covered legs. “Guess we’re making a stop on the way to the pool. That cat’s getting a haircut!”

  Chapter Two:

  What’s Better Than a Bath?

  Pockets’s goggles won’t come off. They are tangled in his fur. We can’t even use scissors without worrying about poking him. I’m sure he has s
ome kind of alien gadget hidden in one of his pockets that would fix it, but since Penny’s with us, he just has to wait for the groomer to deal with it.

  He basically pouts and growls the whole way there in Dad’s taxi until Penny leans out of her car seat and starts to pet him. Then he starts to purr. She kisses him on the head and he rubs against her hand. Mom says Penny could charm the rattles off a snake.

  Dad parks around the corner from the groomer’s. I unstrap Pockets and half drag, half carry him out of the car. Penny waves good-bye. “Have a nice bath!” Mom calls out her window. As soon as we’re out of sight of the car, Pockets springs from my arms. He grabs something the size of a pen from one of his pockets.

  “Oomph!” Dad says, banging his face on what looks like thin air. He backs up, then reaches out with his hand to feel in front of him. I reach out, too. My hand hits what feels like a solid wall!

  “What’s going on here?” Dad asks, knocking on the invisible surface.

  I shake my head at Pockets as he casually slips his pen-like device back into a pocket. “Did you put up an invisible force field?”

  Pockets doesn’t bother to deny it. “I certainly did! You never said anything about a bath. You know how I feel about water.”

  Dad rubs his nose. “You’re making too big a deal about this. It’ll be over before you know it.”

  “I do not need a bath!” Pockets insists. “I can clean myself just fine.” He proceeds to lick his arm repeatedly. Then he stops, coughs, and hacks up a slimy hairball. It plops onto the sidewalk at our feet.

  We stare at it. Pockets’s cheeks turn red.

  I rest my hand on his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure you don’t want to do that in front of the next criminal you try to arrest.”

  Pockets sighs. “Fine. I shall submit to the bath.” He begins emptying his pockets. One by one, he thrusts gadgets and gizmos of all sizes and shapes into our arms. Some things I recognize, like rope and a notebook and a compass. But most of it I don’t. I glance around to make sure no one on the street can see us.

  “Aren’t your pockets waterproof?” Dad asks as our arms fill up.

  “I don’t want to take any chances with your Earth water,” Pockets explains. “Who knows what’s in it. No offense, of course.” Finally, he pulls out two big black bags, and we stuff everything inside.

  “The groomer will be very careful while giving you the bath,” Dad promises, hefting the bags over his shoulders. “They do this all day.”

  “What?” Pockets asks, his eyes almost popping out of his face. “Someone GIVES ME THE BATH?”

  “Of course,” Dad says. “That’s part of the groomer’s job.”

  Pockets throws up his paws. “That’s it! I’m asking my father for a raise the next time I see him!”

  He lets me pick him up without further complaint. This time there’s no force field keeping us from entering the groomer’s, but Dad walks with his hands out in front of us just to make sure.

  “That’s one fluffy cat you have,” the groomer says as I plop Pockets on the counter. “Pockets Morningstar, right?”

  “That’s right,” Dad replies. “He’s very excited to be here.”

  Pockets flexes one paw, revealing five dagger-sharp claws.

  The woman’s eyes widen. “We’ll be taking care of those, don’t you worry. We have special scissors for cutting nails.”

  Pockets looks at me, his eyes pleading. He needs those claws to be the best police cat he can be.

  “Um, maybe you shouldn’t clip his claws,” I tell the groomer. “He needs those to, you know, climb stuff.”

  The woman frowns. “He doesn’t go outside in the city, does he? That’s very dangerous for a cat.”

  I shake my head. “No, but he likes to, um, climb the curtains in our living room.”

  This is actually true.

  She raises her eyebrows. “And you want him to continue doing that?”

  Dad steps in now. “Oh, yes. We think it’s very good exercise. As you can see, he could stand to lose a few pounds.”

  Pockets shoots Dad a look, and I allow myself a giggle.

  “Suit yourself,” she says, and slides some forms across the counter for Dad to sign. “He’ll be ready in an hour. But you can pick him up anytime before five.” Then she scoops up Pockets and they disappear behind a curtain. A trail of white fur is all that’s left of him.

  I don’t talk much on the way to the community center, where the indoor pool is located. I can’t help feeling kind of bad leaving him there while the rest of us are going to have fun swimming.

  Only a few other families are at the pool. Dad tosses colorful plastic hoops into the deep end and I swim down and get them. I wish I could dive in, but I’ve never been able to do it without landing on my belly. Mom and Penny are splashing around in the shallow end. Penny loves putting her hand up to the water jets and laughs as the force of the water pushes her hand away. That girl may not talk, but she sure can laugh.

  I join them for a few minutes, and Penny and I play a game to see who can keep their hand in front of the jet the longest. She always wins.

  I swim back to the deep end. I can’t stop thinking about Pockets and how sad he looked. “Think he’s okay at the groomer’s?” I ask Dad as I hand a red hoop up to him.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Dad says. “You heard him. He’s had adventures all across the universe. He can handle getting a haircut.”

  I’m about to swim under for the next ring when a blur running alongside the pool catches my eye.

  The blur skids to a stop. Water and bubbles fly everywhere.

  It’s Pockets! He’s still wearing Penny’s purple goggles. Soap bubbles cling to his fur in wet clumps. Dad grabs for the watch that he placed on the side of the pool, before Pockets can knock it into the water.

  “I can’t believe it,” Dad says. “You broke out of the groomer’s?”

  “How did you find us?” I ask, kind of impressed. I’m pretty sure no one told him the address of the pool.

  Pockets does this head-to-tail shimmying thing. Soapy water flies out in all directions. His fur doesn’t look any shorter. “No time to explain, my good deputies. We’ve got a mission!”

  Chapter Three:

  Akbar’s Floating Rest Stop

  One of the perks of being a taxi driver (even a space taxi driver) is that you can always get a ride when you need one. It only takes a few minutes before one of Dad’s friends arrives to take Mom and Penny home.

  Dad hooks up Penny’s car seat in the back while Mom fusses over me. I know she’s not too happy with my new job, but being a copilot is a Morningstar family tradition. You can’t argue with tradition.

  “Promise you’ll be careful up there,” she says, hugging me tight. “Do what Dad and Pockets tell you.”

  I hug her back until Dad honks for me.

  I’m so excited that my legs won’t stop bouncing in my seat. Or maybe I’m just cold because I’m in a wet bathing suit. Nah, I’m excited! Our first official mission!

  “All right, Pockets,” Dad says once we’re headed toward the airfield. “What’s this all about? Start from when we dropped you at the groomer’s.”

  I twist around in my seat and wait for Pockets to answer. He’s refilling his pockets with all his gadgets. “It is pretty simple, really,” he says. “In the middle of my so-called bath, the tiny interlink hidden inside my ear started beeping. It was my father calling from ISF headquarters. He said that the planet Nautilus in the Triangulum Galaxy is experiencing a very strange weather situation. We are the nearest officers, so we’re being sent to check it out and file a report.”

  “You’re not making this up just to get out of the bath, are you?” Dad asks. He narrows his eyes at Pockets.

  “Of course not,” Pockets says. “I’m as disappointed as you are about the bath being cut short.” His lips quiver and I know he’s trying to hide a smile.

  “I’m sure,” Dad says.

  “How did you find us?” I ask.
“I bet it was some supercool locator device that lets you track people down anywhere on the planet with a press of a button, right?”

  “Nope,” Pockets says, tapping his nose. “Cats have an excellent sense of smell, you know. You should probably bathe more often. No offense.”

  It’s hard not to be offended when someone basically says you stink so bad they could track your scent across town. “Well, you don’t like baths, either,” I remind him.

  “I told you,” he says. “Cats are self-cleaning.”

  I glance at his matted, tangled fur. “Is that a leaf stuck to your tail?”

  He turns around in circles in his seat, trying to catch his tail, but he can’t. I start to laugh, then reach over to pull the leaf off for him.

  “Thanks,” he grumbles.

  “Boys,” Dad says. “You can argue about who needs a bath more when we get home. Right now we have to prepare for the mission.”

  The com line crackles with a call from Home Base. “Morningstar!” the female mouse squeaks. She comes from a planet where mice can talk, and it’s her job to keep track of all the space taxis. Dad told me her name is Minerva. He warned me not to call her Minnie for short, though. One of the newer space taxi drivers made the mistake of calling her Minnie the Mouse—or Minnie Mouse for short. She didn’t like being compared to a cartoon character, so she sent the poor guy to pick up a fare on an ice planet where the temperature was two hundred degrees below zero. It took him a week to thaw out.

  I can’t wait to meet her.

  “We have received your information from the ISF,” she continues. At the sound of Minerva’s squeaky voice, Pockets’s ears stand at alert and his nose twitches. “We have cleared the airfield and made arrangements for you to stop at Akbar’s Floating Rest Stop on the way to the planet Nautilus. You will get some special mods for your visit there.”

  “Roger that,” Dad says.

  The voice continues. “We miss you at Home Base. Some of your usual fares aren’t happy about your… ahem, vacation.”