FOUR

Tralfamosaur Hunt Part 2:
Chase and Capture

The Tralfamosaur could smell the licorice now, and it made a wild bite at the car as we accelerated away. We felt the jerk as a tooth caught in the bodywork, then the metal split, releasing us. I glanced into the rearview mirror as we took off the way we had come, and could see the Tralfamosaur glowing red in the taillights as it chased us with a heavy, lumbering gait. A Volkswagen is speedier than a Tralfamosaur, and we maintained a safe distance.

We took a left at Mordford, then a right over the River Wye, where the Tralfamosaur stopped to sniff at the ironically named Tasty Drinker Inn. It was so distracted by the smell of citizens hiding inside that we had to reverse almost to within reach of it before the creature changed its mind. Overcome by the sheer succulence of the licorice, it came after us, knocking over two parked cars and demolishing both bridge parapets as it lumbered across.

“Wow!” said Perkins, hanging out the window to watch the spectacle. “I think I’ve seen everything now.”

“I sincerely wish that were the case,” I said, “but I doubt it. We’re new to the magic industry. Pretty soon, stuff like this will be routine.”

After another ten minutes I took a tight left turn into a field. I had left the gate open and hung an oil lamp on the gatepost so I wouldn’t miss it. I had to slow down to take the corner, however, and the Tralfamosaur caught up and closed its teeth around the rear bumper.

The car was lifted high in the air, held there . . . and then, with a tearing noise, the bumper ripped off. The car fell back onto the grassy slope with a crash and bounced back into the air. The Quarkbeast was catapulted off the rear seat and stuck fast when its scales became embedded in the roof.

Undeterred, I put my foot down and aimed the car toward a second oil lamp, positioned where we had removed a length of fencing between the field and the railroad.

“Stand by for SpellGo One!” I yelled as we drove up the stone ballast and onto the railroad track, the tires bumping noisily. Perkins’s hand hovered over the first of the two spell activation buttons.

“Now!” I shouted, and Perkins thumped the one marked Bogeys. With a bright flash and a buzzing sensation, the Volkswagen’s wheels were transformed into rail bogeys—that is, train wheels. They slotted onto the rails, and the ride smoothed out. We were now, technically, a train. Now that I didn’t need to steer, I let go of the wheel, pressed the accelerator, and looked out the window behind us.

The Tralfamosaur was close—and even angrier. It was snapping at us wildly, driven on by the overpowering smell of licorice.

And that was pretty much when we entered the Kidley Hill railroad tunnel. The engine sound and the Tralfamosaur’s bellows bounced off the tunnel walls to create a noise that I would be happy to never hear again.

“Right!” I yelled. “Timing is everything for this one! I’m on the SpellGo button, you’re on the grenade launcher!”

“Right-o,” replied Perkins, and shouldered the weapon. He stood up through the sunroof and faced not the beast, but the other direction—toward the far tunnel opening.

I accelerated to give us some distance from the creature, then came to a halt alongside a single green lamp I had left earlier. I switched off the engine and flashed my headlights. In the distance a light flashed back at us, then stayed steady. Perkins took aim at the light with the grenade launcher and flicked off the safety. Citizens of the Kingdom of Snodd are expected to fight and perhaps die gloriously and pointlessly in a Troll War or two at some point, so all receive military training from an early age.

I placed my hand over the SpellGo button marked Float and stared out the broken rear window. I could hear the footfalls of the Tralfamosaur and its panting, but could not see it, and after a few moments everything went quiet.

“Now?” asked Perkins, finger hovering on the trigger.

“When I say.”

“How about now?”

“When I say.”

“Has it gone?”

“It’s moved back to stealth mode,” I whispered. “It’s there all right, somewhere in the darkness.”

I peered into the inky blackness but could still see nothing, then had an idea and stamped on the brake pedal. The brake lights popped on, bringing extra luminance to the brick-lined tunnel. It was good I did. The creature was less than ten feet from the rear bumper, and in the warm glow I could see its small black eyes staring at us hungrily.

“Now.”

There was an explosive detonation as Perkins pulled the trigger, and the licorice rocket flew down the tunnel, illuminating the sides as it went. There was a metallic thang as the rocket hit something.

I thumped the SpellGo button marked Float. There was another buzzing noise, and the car lurched up into one of three ventilation shafts that connected the railroad tunnel to the world outside. The Volkswagen bumped against the walls as it rose, eventually pitching nose-down. The headlights illuminated a confused-looking Tralfamosaur below us on the shiny tracks. It pondered us for a moment, then followed the licorice scent left by the grenade launcher. As soon as the creature vanished, we looked at each other and smiled. We were, for the moment, safe.

The car bumped and scraped up the ventilation shaft to emerge into the early morning light. Moobin was waiting for us as planned, and a dozen men deputized from the nearest town placed hooks onto the now lighter-than-air Volkswagen. The men heaved on the ropes as the car swung around in the breeze, and after a lot of grunting, the floating car was tied to two heavy tractors.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It had been an exciting and dangerous night. As we sat there, the Quarkbeast fell from the roof of the car onto the back seat with a thump.

“Umm—are all our dates going to be like that?” said Perkins.

“I hope not,” I replied with a grin, “but it was fun, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s not like we were killed or eaten or anything, right?”

“If your idea of a good date is not to be killed and eaten, you’re unlikely to ever be disappointed.”

And he leaned toward me. I think I may even have leaned toward him, but then a voice rang out from below.

“Are you coming down from there?” It was Moobin.

A ladder was placed against the car, and we climbed down to join him; he congratulated us before we walked down the hill to find Mawgon and Boo waiting at the mouth of the tunnel. Before our chase, a shipping container had been reversed up to the portal; the Tralfamosaur, urged on by the licorice grenade fired into the back of its new prison, had swiftly been contained. We could hear contented chewing through the thick steel wall; we had left several slabs of bacon in there, as well as half a bison.

The dawn was well established as the last part of the plan was completed: the floating Beetle was hauled down the hill and anchored to the shipping container with self-tying string. The Tralfamosaur was soon snoring, pretty much worn out after the night’s excitement, which could be said for most of us.

“A fine job,” said Once Magnificent Boo in a rare moment of congratulations, although you wouldn’t know it from looking at her—her mood seemed as dark as usual. She climbed the ladder to the Volkswagen, gauged the speed of the wind, slammed the door, and ordered the ladder away.

“Ahoy, Moobin and Lady Mawgon!” she called out the window. “I need Jenny’s car to be twelve tons lighter.”

The two sorcerers complied, and with a straining of wires, the Volkswagen lifted the container into the air. Within a few seconds the breeze had caught the strange flying machine and it was drifting away over the treetops in an easterly direction.

“She’s a bit high for just going to the zoo,” I said.

Moobin and Lady Mawgon said nothing, and I figured out what was happening.

“She’s not going back to the zoo, is she?”

“No,” said Moobin quietly. “She’s carrying the Tralfamosaur across the border to the Cambrian Empire. They have wild Tralfamosaurs there, and it can do . . . whatever it is Tralfamosaurs do.”

“I’m not sure the king will be pleased,” said Perkins. “The Tralfamosaur was a valuable tourist attraction for the kingdom and one of his personal favorites, even after the queen insisted he stop feeding his enemies to it.”

“The queen was very wise to do that,” Moobin replied, “but I don’t believe Once Magnificent Boo gives two buttons what the king thinks.”

And with the dawn sky lightening, we watched the Volkswagen with the shipping container slung below drift off into the early morning. Soon it was high enough to catch the sun, and my car was suddenly a blaze of orange.

“I’m going to miss the Volkswagen,” I said.

“Don’t be so sentimental,” said Lady Mawgon. “It’s only a car.”

But it wasn’t just a car. It was my parents’ car. The one I had been abandoned in. It was part of me, and it was hard to see it go.

Wizard Moobin turned to Perkins and me and smiled at us each in turn. “Good work, you two. Come on. Breakfast is on me.”