The Gas Giant Read online

  A couple of nanobots buzzed over to the valve.

  ‘Look!’ said Finbar, excited.

  They flew closer to the balloon. Kip watched as one of the nanobots put its tiny mouth over the valve. There was a soft hiss. The nanobot seemed to be filling the balloon with gas!

  ‘This must be part of their job as maintenance bots,’ Finbar said.

  Kip’s brain began to whirr. Could it be that the nanobots held the answer to the secret gas?

  The Vapod aliens took Kip and Finbar back to their igloo-shaped home. Kip was silent, his mind still racing.

  Back on Earth, inflating a balloon was simple. You just breathed in oxygen and huffed it back into the balloon as carbon dioxide.

  So the nanobots must be taking whatever gas is in Vapod’s atmosphere and breathing it into the balloons, Kip figured.

  But then Kip remembered something. He turned to Finbar. ‘Didn’t Jett mention heaters inside the nanobots?’

  Finbar nodded.

  ‘So maybe whatever they breathe out is heated,’ Kip said.

  Finbar looked mystified.

  Kip remembered a Teacherbot at school explaining the properties of gas. ‘Heating gas makes it lighter,’ Kip told Finbar triumphantly.

  Maybe Jett was right, he thought happily. CO2 does stand for carbon dioxide. It’s just that WorldCorp’s scientists never tried heating it!

  Kip’s whole body tingled. He felt sure his theory was right. Somehow, he had to prove it.

  ‘Kip!’ Finbar suddenly yelped, giving Kip a funny, worried look.

  ‘What’s up?’ Kip asked.

  ‘Your helmet,’ Finbar answered. ‘There’s a crack in it!’

  Kip remembered how he’d crashed at the start of the mission. His helmet must have cracked way back then. And that meant his helmet was no longer perfectly sealed.

  I’ve been breathing in Vapod gas this whole time! Kip thought, with a stab of fear.

  He paused. I’m not dead, though, he thought. That means Vapod’s atmosphere must be a lot like Earth’s. There’s some oxygen, definitely. But maybe there are high levels of carbon dioxide too.

  It was a guess, but the evidence seemed to fit. The gas inside the balloons was almost certainly heated carbon dioxide.

  ‘What would happen if I’d been breathing in too much carbon dioxide?’ Kip asked Finbar.

  ‘You’d probably be bloated,’ his 2iC said. ‘Like you’d been drinking Supernova non-stop all mission.’

  Kip’s eyes lit up. ‘My tummy pains!’ he said, grabbing the arm of Finbar’s spacesuit excitedly. ‘They’re more proof the gas is carbon dioxide.’

  Then Kip thought of something else. ‘And I know a quick way of getting rid of the pain too.’

  Kip opened the one-way release valve on his helmet. He took a deep breath.

  Then…

  Kip unleashed the Universe’s loudest, longest and most gaseous burp.

  Wish Jett could’ve heard that! Kip thought, patting his tummy. He’d never felt so relieved. His tummy shrank back to its original size.

  ‘What was THAT?’ Kip’s Vapod asked.

  Kip grinned. ‘My party trick. A mega burp!’

  Both Vapods looked blank. Kip and Finbar exchanged glances. Was it possible? Surely not…

  ‘Don’t you guys know how to burp?’ exclaimed Kip.

  The Vapod aliens shook their heads.

  ‘It’s easy,’ Kip told them. ‘You just push all the gas inside you back out again.’

  The alien nearest Kip concentrated. Then she pushed as hard as she could.

  There was a soft hiss, like someone taking the valve out of an airbed. Then…

  Her burp wasn’t as loud as Kip’s. But it was much, much longer.

  ‘A year of gas build-up,’ Finbar said. ‘Look how she’s deflating.’

  In front of their eyes, the puffy alien seemed to have shrunk a little.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Kip asked.

  She grinned. ‘Brilliant! Fantastic! Amazing! My headache is totally gone.’

  Kip and Finbar exchanged a puzzled glance. As far as they knew, a burp couldn’t cure a headache.

  The alien caught sight of their expressions. ‘We’ve got four tummies,’ she explained. ‘Three in the body and one in the head.’

  Suddenly, Kip understood. ‘Releasing the gas from your head-tummy made your headaches better.’

  It made perfect sense, in a freaky alien sort of way.

  ‘A few more burps like that and you should be back to normal,’ said Kip, grinning. It was the coolest cure he’d ever heard of!

  All up, Kip felt pretty proud of himself. He knew the secret of the floating city. He’d kept his promise and cured the Vapods’ headaches. There was only one thing left to do. Head back to Earth and tell WorldCorp what he’d found!

  Before leaving, Kip needed to gather some samples and information for WorldCorp’s scientists. He couldn’t risk getting any detail about the floating city wrong.

  First, Kip traced the plans of the floating city with his DuoPen. When you traced writing or a picture, this simple robotic pen stored every movement. Then it automatically redrew the picture when placed on a piece of paper. While Kip traced, Finbar patched his helmet for him. It would hold long enough to get him back onboard MoNa.

  After that, they headed outside. Quickly but carefully, Kip captured samples of Vapod’s gassy atmosphere in test tubes. Jett already had all the information he needed to create a replica nanobot.

  At last, Kip had the facts he needed. It was time to leave.

  ‘It’s been, er, a gas,’ Kip said to the Vapod aliens.

  They chortled. Kip suspected they were just being polite. Still, laughing at such a lame joke showed how much their moods had improved now their headaches were gone. They were both looking much slimmer now, too.

  ‘We’ll drop you back at your starship,’ the first alien offered.

  Kip put his helmet back on and he and Finbar stepped into their AirSki harnesses for the last time. The Vapod aliens put on spacesuits with jetpacks at the back. When they reached deep space, they’d need the jetpacks to move.

  They all shot into the orange sky. They hurtled through the cloud layer and popped out the other side, into deep space.

  MoNa hovered there, waiting. Her paintwork was changing from aqua to pink to electric yellow. As soon as she saw Kip and Finbar, she turned black and stayed that way.

  Guess MoNa took Finbar seriously when he said no Ninja tricks! Kip grinned to himself. He was looking forward to a quiet ride home for a change.

  The Vapod aliens dropped Kip and Finbar at MoNa’s landing-bay door. They waved goodbye to Kip and Finbar with their wings.

  As soon as the door was closed, Kip and Finbar raced to the Bridge. Kip made a beeline for his captain’s chair.

  It was time to file his mission report, the most urgent and exciting one of his career.

  Kip attached the plans that he’d traced with his DuoPen, and with a satisfied sigh, he hit ‘Send’. His task had been massive. But he’d done it!

  Not long afterwards, Kip’s screen flashed.

  Kip couldn’t help punching the air in victory. He was the youngest of the 50 Space Scouts, but that didn’t matter — it looked like he’d saved humanity!

  Kip turned to Finbar. ‘We did it, Fin!’ he said, hugging his 2iC.

  Normally on his flights home from missions, Kip tried out MoNa’s latest games and gadgets. But this mission had left him too excited and too exhausted to do anything.

  He flopped into his captain’s chair. On the holographic console was a blank screen that could be used for doodling. Without really thinking about it, Kip found himself sketching a floating city suspended underneath a balloon.

  When his sketch of the city was finished, Kip wrote ‘Kirbyville’ along the side.

  ‘I hope WorldCorp names a city after me,’ he said, turning to Finbar. Then he paused and turned back to the screen. He clicked ‘undo’ and the name disappeared. He wrote �
�Kipbar’ along the side in its place.

  ‘I mean, names it after both of us!’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Fin.’

  Finbar gave him a big wolfy grin.

  ‘Ahem…’ MoNa coughed.

  Kip grinned. ‘OK, MoNa, you might have helped a bit,’ he said. ‘I promise we’ll name something in Kipbar after you too.’

  He and Finbar looked out the window as they steered back through the wormhole. On the other side, the Milky Way stretched out as far as they could see. In the distance they could see the bright green-and-blue ball of Earth, and further on, the red giant Jupiter.

  They were nearly home!