Read Online There's a Spaceship in My Tree! by Robert West - Free Book Online

himself.
    â€œWhat did you say?” Ghoulie asked, turning toward him.
    â€œThis ship . . . It had a bad landing.”
    His hands began moving rapidly over the controls, pushing buttons, pulling down levers.
    Suddenly beeps, pings, and other audio signals began to be heard all over the ship.
    â€œReverse thrusters!” Beamer yelled. The hum of engines filled the tree ship. Lighted dials, flashing panels, graphic displays were everywhere, reflecting off the ceiling, the kids’ faces. . . . “Activate the anti-gravity array . . . now!” Beamer cried again.
    Ghoulie and Scilla looked at him like he’d lost a few screws. “Who does he think he is, Captain Kirk?” Ghoulie whispered to Scilla.
    Suddenly the ship lurched, throwing them to the floor. They pulled themselves back up and wondered if they had suffered brain damage. For there was Beamer, (though not the Beamer they knew) standing before them in a red, yellow, and blue uniform with brass buttons.
    â€œOfficer Ives!” he barked. “Snap to it! We are on a collision course!”
    Ghoulie looked out the window and, sure enough, there was a blue and white globe below them, growing steadily bigger before their eyes. What was going on? Were they in some kind of daydream?
    Then, like the last pieces in a puzzle, Ghoulie and Scilla suddenly popped into full-uniform and snapped into the story. Their hands flashed across instrument panels as if they’d been born to it.
    â€œâ€™Aye, Captain!” Ghoulie shouted. “Thrusters are in full reverse, but energy levels are down seventy percent. Lieutenant Bruzelski!” he called, turning to Scilla. “The anti-gravity array!”
    â€œUh, right,” she said, as an instrument panel spit out a plume of smoke. “Sorry, Commander,” she said weakly, “the anti-gravity array is . . . a goner.”
    â€œTry the gluon particle zapper!” Beamer ordered, “Or was that the stickyon matter gummerupper? Whatever . . . do it!”
    Ghoulie read the data on his holographic computer display, then looked up through the cockpit window. Shandar Three, or Earth, or Terra, or whatever it was called, depending upon which native tribe you asked, was coming up fast.
    â€œWe’re entering the atmosphere!” Ghoulie announced.
    â€œShe’s starting to buck!” Scilla warned. Immediately her body began jerking about as if she were riding a roller coaster.
    â€œBruzelski!” Beamer shouted. “See if you can ice down the heat shield. At the rate we’re dropping, things are going to get french fried around here real soon.”
    â€œâ€™Aye, Captain!” She ran to an instrument panel in the back wall and ripped off the facing. Sparks flickered and flared like the Fourth of July.
    Beamer jammed a lever hard to the right, then looked up to the window again. The ship’s nose glowed a pale red. “We’re cooking!”
    Ghoulie and Scilla saw sparks zipping past the side windows. They could hear a whine growing louder. Ghoulie wiped sweat from his brow with one hand while the other danced across the dials. “I think I’m getting something, Captain. She’s pulling up . . . or over . . . or something!”
    â€œGot to have more!” Beamer shouted. “Bruzelski, what’s happening back there?”
    â€œThey’re frozen, sir . . . the controls,” she grunted as she leaned on a lever with all of her seventy-five pounds. “Wait! It’s moving!”
    But the ship was already too low. It was coming down like a meteor in a blaze of fire. The crystal-Albumidium magnetronic outer coating had already melted. The sillidium shell went next, followed by the megabidium, then the jillibidium, and all the other idium layers.
    â€œCaptain!” Ghoulie shouted. “We’re being peeled like an onion. Another ten seconds and we’ll be fireworks!”
    Then Beamer saw it — something rising from