Casper Candlewacks in Attack of the Brainiacs!. Ivan Brett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Simian’s demanded a white shirt, black blazer, stiff grey trousers that creased like cardboard and shiny black shoes, all topped off with a mustard-yellow tie. Casper’s mum had forgotten about the shoes until last night so she’d dipped his trainers into a tin of black paint. They felt crispy. Casper had had a go at taming his bushy mess of blond hair, but after losing two combs and a metal fork he decided to leave it as it was.

      To Casper, Lamp Flannigan’s garage felt just like home. He’d spent the whole summer here, building ‘Bubbel Buggies’ and ‘Bluff Boilers’ and getting progressively oilier day by day. But a newcomer to the garage would struggle to believe this magical junkyard kingdom was even real. Piles of metal, batteries and raw pasta littered the floor next to boxes filled with wires and bleeping circuit boards. Mad contraptions the shape of armadillos or saxophones (or both) whirred, clicked and honked from every worktop. A pot of smoking silver stuff bubbled away on the edge of a wooden shelf, while a robot with three wheels and a tennis racket for a head trundled in wobbly loops across the floor after a squealing self-bouncing tennis ball. Under a shelf full of wrenches sat a large chicken hutch with a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the front.

      Two things had changed since yesterday. First, there was a new heap of scrap metal in Junk Corner, which was the place Lamp liked to keep his stuff when Bric-a-Brac Basket was full. Along with the usual old tat was a huge blue canister with a nozzle at the top and Helium printed on the front. But the second new thing really captured Casper’s attention. A pulsing, wheezing contraption took up most of the space on the workbench, replacing the gearbox filled with jam that had sat there yesterday, but now sat on the floor, gathering ants. Casper didn’t mind; this new machine was miles more exciting than Lamp’s jammy gearbox. A set of red bagpipes floated in the air like a tartan zeppelin, tethered in place by several lengths of string reaching up from a heavy iron rack. Strapped tightly round the bagpipes’ belly was a bleeping calculator fastened on to a leather belt; the mouthpiece had been extended up into a big yellow bowl that waggled in polite circles above the rest of the machine. The instrument had three wooden pipes, two of which were connected to each other with a length of rubber tube, while the third was taped to the long black neck of a vacuum cleaner that swung about close to the floor like a clumsy tail.

      “It cooks omlits,” said Lamp. “D’you want one?”

      Casper jumped. “Crikey! How did you get down here?”

      A short podgy boy with a scrub of soot-black hair and a pear-shaped dongle of a nose stood in the far corner of the garage. In his left hand was a huge red helium balloon; in the other was an anchor on a string. He wore a blazer just like Casper’s (except the arms went down to his knees), his trousers were three sizes too small and his tie was made of yellow sofa fabric, looped twice round his neck and knotted in the middle. “I built a lift!” grinned Lamp.

      “Ah…” Above Lamp’s head there was a hole in the ceiling, just the right size for a large red helium balloon, a boy and an anchor to fit through. “Ahh.”

      “Look.” Lamp let go of the anchor and the balloon lifted him into the air.

      Casper giggled. “Come back down here!”

      Lamp disappeared through the hole in the ceiling. “Hang on,” he called. “I need another anchor.” There was some clunking, and a moment later down he floated with a second anchor on a string. “It’s for when the stairs are broken,” said Lamp, tethering his balloon to a handy knob he’d glued to the wall. “I get through a lot of anchors, though.”

      “Can’t you reuse them?”

      Lamp chuckled. “Don’t be silly.”

      “Anyway, what did you say this thing was?” Casper turned back to the captive bagpipes.

      “It’s my Omlit Gun,” smiled Lamp. “It makes lovely omlits and shoots them out here.” He waggled the head of the vacuum-cleaner neck in Casper’s direction.

      Casper ducked, just in case. “Omelettes? I should’ve guessed.” He was used to Lamp’s eggy inventions by now. Two months ago Lamp had found Mavis and Bessie, the two egg-laying hens, sitting on his doorstep with a note saying they were his distant cousins. He took them in and gave them a coop, and in return the girls always made sure he had a surplus of eggs to invent stuff with.

      The bagpipes let out a weary wheeze.

      “So? Does it work?” asked Casper, slightly fearing the answer.

      “Dunno,” shrugged Lamp. “Let’s give it a try. Ladies?”

      Mavis and Bessie, Lamp’s two prize egg-laying hens and long-distant cousins on his mum’s side, popped their rubbery heads out of the coop and clucked sleepily. Mavis, the darker one, flipped over the Do Not Disturb sign with her beak. The other side said The Hens Are In. Please Knock.

      Lamp lifted the lid of the hens’ coop to pick out two speckly brown eggs. “Watch this!” He did a little trot on the spot, galumphed over to the Omelette Gun and cracked both eggs into the yellow bowl.

      The machine wobbled into motion, a nauseous groan from the belly of the bagpipes tightening into a tuneless wheeze. The strings grew taut, the bag puffed fuller and the eggs slipped down the mouthpiece and out of view. Then the pipes began to whistle a screeching, tuneless tune, a melody of such demonic ugliness that even when Casper blocked his ears, he could smell how bad it sounded.

      Lamp did a highland jig around the garage.

      The screech rose louder, the bag pumped fuller, the strings stretched and frayed to hold it still, and then when Casper was sure the thing was about to explode, there was a tremendous rattle as something shot down the vacuum-cleaner neck and spat across the garage, splurging against the far wall and sticking fast.

      Casper dared to unblock his ears. “Wow.”

      Lamp grinned. “Wait for it…”

      CHOO!

      With a final sneeze, the vacuum cleaner belched a cloud of herbs after the omelette, which filled the air like edible confetti.

      Casper could do nothing else but clap. “Amazing!” he cheered. “Encore!”

      Lamp bowed deeply. “I thank you,” he said. “Want one? There’s plenty more eggs.”

      Before Casper could answer, Lamp was already back at the coop, rooting around in the straw. His face crumpled into a frown. “Strange…”

      “What’s up?”

      “I can’t find any more eggs. What with the two I’ve already got this morning that means today they’ve only laid…” Lamp pulled his arm from the coop and counted up on his fingers, “…six. I mean ten.”

      “Two,” said Casper.

      “Exactly. Three. That’s the lowest yet.”

      Apart from the counting part, Lamp was absolutely right. Until СКАЧАТЬ