War on Whimsy (Space Brigade 3)

There was silence as the Space Brigade digested this distressing new information.

"I don't want to leave my family in a prison camp for that long!" said Shimlara.

"Is there no quicker way to get there?" asked Nicola desperately. The thought of running like that every day was enough to make her long to be back on Earth, sitting comfortably in the passenger seat of her mother's car, watching joggers run by.

&n

bsp; "But how else could we get there?" asked Henry. "If only we were birds, we could flap our wings and soar, but alas, we are not!"

"What if we had a canoe?" said Tyler. "We could just canoe straight down the river."

"Canoe?" said Henry, in a way that showed the word was unfamiliar to him.

"They obviously don't have canoes on this planet," said Greta.

Tyler looked around him for inspiration.

He ran to a nearby tree and snapped off a branch. "We could make a raft!"

"Roft?" said Henry. "What is a roft?"

"Could we make one that wouldn't sink?" asked Sean.

"And how would we bind the branches together?"

"With this," said Greta, and she bent down and picked up a length of green curly vine from the shore of the river. She tugged on both ends to demonstrate its strength. "Perfect."

"But we don't know how to make a raft," said Katie. "Do we?"

"Greta and I will work it out," said Tyler. Greta was in Girl Scouts and Tyler was good at woodwork.

Greta beamed. "You guys just relax," she said. "And we'll take care of it."

CHARTER 24

"I don't think it's natural," said Henry.

"You're just nervous," said Nicola. "It's perfectly safe."

She and the rest of the Space Brigade were sitting together on the raft that Tyler and Greta had constructed. It was made of varying lengths of branch and tied together firmly with vine. Although it was a bit rough-looking, it did the job perfectly and was bobbing around merrily on the river. Nicola thought Tyler and Greta had done an amazing job (and judging by the pride on both their faces, so did they). The only problem was that Henry was refusing to climb aboard.

"I expect your roft will sink the moment I get on," he said. "I know I appear skinny but I have very heavy bones!"

"It's a raft, not a roft, and it won't sink," said Greta unsympathetically. "Just hurry up and get on!"

But Henry seemed frozen on the spot, just like Nicola had been before she went scuba diving.

He needed a reason to move.

Nicola said loudly to Katie, "Look at the way the moonlight creates a pathway over there! Wouldn't that make a lovely painting!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Nicola saw Henry craning his head to see the moonlit pathway.

Katie caught on right away. "Oh, yes, and the contrast between the grainy texture of the raft against the water is so . . . um, visually interesting."

Henry didn't hesitate. He waded purposefully through the water toward the raft. "I must see that contrast!"

"On you hop, then." Sean dragged him up onto the raft.