The Beach Buoy. Jonny Moon

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      A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a bunch of slimy aliens discovered the secret to clean, renewable energy …

      … snot!

      (Well, OK, clean-ish.)

      There was just one problem. The best snot came from only one kind of creature.

      Humans.

      And humans were very rare. Within a few years, the aliens had used up all the best snot in their solar system.

      That was when the Galactic Union of Nasty Killer Aliens (GUNK) was born. Its mission: to find human life and drain its snot. Rockets were sent to the four corners of the universe, each carrying representatives from the major alien races. Three of those rockets were never heard from again. But one of them landed on a planet quite simply full of humans.

      Jack Brady whistled happily as he worked.

      Well, it was a sort of whistle.

      Actually, to be totally honest, Jack had never really got the hang of whistling. He made up for it by sucking air over his teeth and humming at the same time, which was a long way short of actual whistling, but made Jack feel happy.

      It was a hot August day, the sun was shining brightly and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen in the sky. The end of the school term already seemed a distant memory, but there were still weeks of summer holidays stretching out into the future, keeping the prospect of returning to school at a comfortable distance. Most children were enjoying the great weather, playing outside in back gardens and on the streets, firing super-soakers at each other, splashing in paddling pools, kicking footballs around.

      Jack Brady, however, was not doing any of these things. Jack was not like most children of his age. Jack was a genius. Jack was an inventor. And right now, Jack was in one of his favourite places – the tree house he shared with his best friend Oscar – fiddling with his latest project. It was an inflatable submarine that he had been toying with for some time and, using a few beach lilos, he was finally making a working prototype. Fixing the various inflated sections together with waterproof superglue (which he had also invented) was a difficult procedure and Jack had to take great care. Very patiently, he applied a thin coating of his adhesive to a section of the sub and set the next piece in place over the sticky trail.

      Suddenly there was a noise like a hailstorm as something hit the window of the tree house. Startled, Jack hurried across to the door and pulled it open. As he stepped out on to the porch area he was hit in the face by a handful of stale breadcrumbs.