FOURTEEN
"Come over here, I'd think you'd want to see this," Alf called over to the Tanners from the window inside Spaceball 2's Olympic-size swimming pool.
"What is it?" Willie asked as he and the others pulled themselves out of the pool they'd been so thoroughly enjoying.
"To your left out there is the Altair Heights exit," Alf pointed, "Just to the right of that next to the blue planet is where Melmac used to be."
There was an uneasy silence as his adopted family looked upon what had once been their houseguests' home planet. "It must feel strange, Alf, "Lynn commented, "Coming home again to find home's not there."
"It is a but disturbing, yes," Alf admitted, "To think how many of the people I knew were just minding their business when all of a sudden Melmac split into millions of little Melmacs, some of which are still circling within several parsecs. I never thought I'd be back this way again, that's for sure."
"Well Alf, at least you still have some survivors to talk to on this ship, I guess that's a positive," Kate surmised.
"And that's something we need to discuss," Alf said, "Skip offered me that place on the new Melmac again. Seeing how everything I seem to do down on Earth backfires and gets you all mad, such as adding onto your house to protect myself for psychotic invaders, I might just take up that offer this time."
"No Alf, we don't want you to go!" Brian threw his arms around his friend, "We're happy with you, we won't get mad! Will we, Mom?"
Before Kate could answer to this,the door to the pool room swung open. "Am I disturbing anything? "Barf called in.
"No, things we just starting to get too serious, that's all, thank you," Alf called to him across the expansive room.
"Well you're all needed in the IMAX theater; Captain Lone Starr needs to make his big speech concerning his attack on Exodosus tomorrow," Barf said.
"Why does he need us?" Willie asked, "Neither I nor my family is getting involved in any more intergalactic grudge matches."
"He wants everyone there, including you," Barf explained. As he turned to leave, he couldn't resist saying, "Nice bathing suit, Mrs. T.; one piece?"
Kate pulled her robe shut. "Has no one in this galaxy a shred of decency?" she shouted to no one in particular.
"Probably, but we wouldn't have time to find them," Alf dried himself off, "Here, get dressed; we've got a meeting to go to."
Meanwhile, Barf sauntered his way up into what had to be the biggest IMAX Theater EVER created—so big, in fact, that the other wall wasn't even visible from the door. Many of their makeshift crew were already seated and mulling among themselves in various languages. "You OK there, boss?" he asked his comrade.
"I just know we botched the end of the last chapter," Lone Starr was muttering under his breath, "We could have made it a good an in-depth look at how torn I am between Vespa and Tripley, but we cut it off too soon."
"Don't worry about the last chapter, boss," Barf told him, "It's over, it's in the past. Right now, let's just give the big speech and get to the big climax."
"Right," Lone Starr tapped on his podium to get everyone's attention. "Can I have you're attention please?" he asked them all, "Now then, tomorrow evening, you will all be…" he had little choice but to stop as Alf and his adopted family abruptly joined him on stage. "Sorry, couldn't find a seat," the Melmacian said. Lone Starr glanced down the theater. There were still loads of open seats as far as he could see, but he saw no point in arguing.
"As I was saying," he went on, "Tomorrow night we'll be taking part in the biggest offensive in this part of the universe since the Drone Wars ended. Our enemy is tough, but wee have something they don't: the burning desire for revenge for wrongs committed. I wish I could say that I could do everything in my power to bring you all back safely, but I'm afraid that in these types of stories, somebody always has to die, so to those of you without a character name, I can only say sorry, but that's just the way it's usually written."
"That's not exactly going to boost their morale," Willie whispered in Lone Starr's ear.
"Well I'm sorry, but this isn't some sitcom where the most complicated of problems can be neatly wrapped up in a half hour," Lone Starr whispered back. Turning back to his audience, he said, "I know what you're all thinking, this is pure suicide to try and stop Helmet. Well, if we don't stop him now,then once he destroys Druidia, my adopted home sweet home, he'll probably come after your planets, and he won't stop until he's blown up all of them. I don't know about you, but that's a serious enough threat to make me want to go down there and personally fight them alongside you—which I am going to do, because that's what good guys do. And should we succeed in this quest, then tomorrow will forever be known as the day that we, the inhabitants of the Frankfurt Galaxy, rose up and told the Barcelona Dragon of oppression that we will not go quietly into the night! That we will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Tomorrow, we celebrate our Independence Day!"
His makeshift crew rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. "Great speech, boss," Barf congratulated him, "Very nicely put."
"Sure," a strangely befuddled Lone Starr said, "So tell me then why I've got the strangest feeling that I said it before?"
"Ah who cares, let's just get on with it?" Barf shrugged.
"Works for me," Lone Starr said. "Now," he went on, "Here's the basic plan for our attack. Trip, if you please."
Up in the projection room, Tripley turned on the projector—which immediately exploded for no particular reason at all. On stage, Lone Starr sighed. "On second thought, let's break for a half hour and have lunch," he suggested, "We'll lay it out on the blackboard later."
A mass exodus toward the exits and the cafeteria answered his proposition. "Sounds good," Alf hopped off the stage, "Finally, I'll get to eat a cat in a good long while."
"Let's just hope they have earth food," Kate said in a tone that suggested she doubted they did.
"If they don't, I'll be happy to split the tail with all of you," Alf proposed.
"Forget the tail," Willie looked nauseated at this thought, "Don't bring up the tail or we won't be able to eat anything at all."
"You sure you don't even want the whiskers?"
"NO!"
"Just asking, Willie."
Skroob's taxi finally pulled up next to the control mountain on Exodosus. "That'll be 3,788,223 spacebucks," the cabbie remarked.
"You said it was on the house in the last chapter!" Helmet pointed his Schwartz at him.
"All right, all right, it's on the house!" the cabbie cringed. The four occupants of the car entered the mountain through the obligatory secret entrance. Skroob pressed the first radio screen he could find. "Zircon, what's Spaceball 2's current coordinates?" he asked the main center.
"Stuck in traffic near the second Altair exit," Zircon informed him, "Welcome to Exodosus, Mr. President. We can give you the guided tour of our facilities at half price if…"
"Forget the guided tour!" Skroob shouted, "We need to get the planet tractor beam shield up and running pronto if we don't want to get strafed by our own ship!"
"Yes Mr. President, we're doing that as you speak," Zircon said, "We'll see you in the control room."
"You do realize, sir, that if we raise the planetary shield, our T.A.R.G.E.T.s can't get out," Sandurz pointed out as they entered the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.
"Well, we'll take it down briefly when we launch them," Skroob proposed, "What are the odds they'll hit us when they'll be concentrating on taking out our W.M.D.s? And besides, we got the Widowmaker model here that they can't stop even with Spaceball 2's advanced firepower."
Helmet raised his visor. "Boy is he a terrible strategian," he confided in Sandurz.
"What?" Skroob gave his top aide a piercing look.
"Oh nothing," Helmet said with a big fake smile.
The elevator opened into the main control room. "President Skroob sal—" Zircon started to order.
"Forget the salute, forget the salute!" Skroob waved her off as he ran up to her, "We've done the salute enough in this story! Anyway, how's the progress coming with the T.A.R.G.E.T.s?"
"You'll be pleased to note, Mr. President, that we have just finished arming all the T.A.R.G.E.T.s," Zircon informed him, "We're all set to go once General Mills comes over tomorrow morning with your droid armies."
"Good, good," Skroob looked out the window in the mountain. The trench with the T.A.R.G.E.T.s in them was directly below, the deadly vehicles inside it being attended to be numerous technicians. Zoom the window in," he ordered. Much like a computer screen, the window magically zoomed in through the cosmos until it was focuses right on Druidia…or at least its moon, which was obstructing the planet's view. "It's all perfect," Skroob announced out loud, "Tomorrow night, Druidia will be in perfect alignment with Exodosus, and we'll blow it clean into oblivion, and take all it's air in the process. Nothing will stop our T.A.R.G.E.T.s!"
"And if they do, we'll get along fine on smuggled Perri-Air," Cuckoo chimed in. Helmet whacked his apprentice over the head. "We're not going to fail, you moron!" he shouted, "Not when we've come so far and worked so hard!"
"Right, Master," Cuckoo said quickly rubbing his head, "Not even Lone Starr can stop us with Spaceball 2! It's goodbye time for Druidia!"
He broke into an evil laugh. Slowly everyone else joined in until they were all laughing hard like any good villain would—laughing evilly forever and ever, as if they expected the chapter to never have to come to an end, which, abruptly, it did.
