QUIBILS AND QUIRKS©
(the original text as serialized in The Cariboo Observer)

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

LAST EPISODE/CHAPTER 48: Booger almost became a human snowball again, but a tree stump stopped him, and gave him a headache.

CHAPTER 49: “[QUIBILS] MAKE SKUNKS
SMELL LIKE PERFUME”

            “I rolled down the hill and died?” Booger said. “Yer a strange one, Yooper. And being orange...in that contraption...out of nowhere.”
            Hooper, trying to ignore the pile of dirty clothes, told Booger about his day. But Booger paid attention to only the part about the Quirks and quibils being friends.
            “I’m the only one anywhere that’s friends with any quibil. Nobody else alive can stand the smell. Not—ohhh!—anybody.” His head throbbed.
            “Why don’t quibils stink to you?” Hooper asked.
            “A secret,” Booger said.
            “But they, fffup, don’t stink to me either.”
            “Do you like the tea?” Booger asked, changing the subject.
            “Quibils don’t stink, do they?” Hooper said. “People just think they do.”
            “They—ohhh!—make skunks smell like perfume.”
            “That’s as stupid as Professor Hamburger’s Encyclopaedia,” Hooper said.
            Somebody knocked on the door.
            In walked a quibil. His hair on top, parted down the middle, looked trim and stylish.
            “Quabbit, look at what the cat dragged in,” Booger said. He started to laugh, but he stopped because laughing made his head ache more.
            Quabbit pointed behind himself: “What is that?”
            Hooper saw, through the open doorway, four quibils playing in the time machine.
            Then bangs shot off!
            Hooper spit out strawberry tea, and cried, “Nooooo!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 50: Quabbit throws a tantrum.

CHAPTER 50: “YOU’RE ORANGE AND
YOU HAVE UGLY EARS”

            Booger, Hooper, and Quabbit dashed outside.
            “What!” Quabbit said, his parted hair leaping up.
            “Jumping cabbages!” Booger said, searching for the time machine and the four quibils that had been inside it.
            “This is terrible!” Hooper said as he ran, dodging firewood strewn on the snow.
            Booger Jimm tripped. Down the hill he rolled—again. A boot shot up like a rocket. Towards Porksville he sailed.
            Down, down, down.
            Quabbit stomped his feet. He yanked his hair. Eventually, a blast echoed through Beaver Valley. “You’ve killed Booger and stolen my friends!”
            Angry Hooper tried to speak calmly: “I’m lost...I hate school...I came back to save Booger Jimm.”
            “Well,” Quabbit said, “you certainly did a lousy job. And besides, you aren’t normal. You’re orange and you have ugly ears. Booger Jimm was the only human who liked quibils. So you shouldn’t be here. Why are you?”
            “My best friend is a quibil,” Hooper said.
            “What?” Quabbit said.
            “His name is Mooch,” Hooper said.
            “Nonsense. No mother and father in their right minds would call anybody Mooch.”
            “It’s true!” Hooper said.
            “Ha! I suppose your name is Hooper.”
            “It is! How did you know my name?”
            “Oh, brother,” Quabbit said. “Now I’ve heard everything.”
            “I’m not lying!” Hooper said.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 51: The four quibils in the time machine meet a BIG lizard.

CHAPTER 51: MEET THE GIGANTIC LIZARD

            Let’s go back to when one of the four quibils in the time machine, feeling impish, had just pressed the random button:
            Bursts of dazzling rainbow colours. Squealing. Quibils blindly grabbing each other. Bangs that hurt eardrums.
            Then they landed. No noise or rainbow. But many flashing lights: blue, yellow, and red.
            On one side of the time machine towered trees with leaves the size of boxcars. On the other side towered—a tyrannosaurus rex! Knives of teeth lined its jaws. It roared like a racing car.
            Off the time machine leapt the quibils. Into the forest they raced, past several plumes of steam that shot up from the earth. Although they’d never moved with such speed before, gigantic trees and ferns seemed to pass by so slowly.
            The bellowing tyrannosaurus followed. Air thundered with each step. The ground shook. One quibil lost his balance, falling into a muddy pool.
            The lizard snarled, pushing aside a tree that crashed to the ground like Babylon.
            “Heeeelp!” cried the quibil sinking into the ooze.
            The other three tried to save him. One grabbed a handful of slimy hair on his head. Two grabbed an arm. They kneeled on the boggy shore and yanked.
            “RRRaroarrrr!”
            “Pull harder!”
            “I’m drowning!”
            “We’re all doomed!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 52: Life for the four quibils goes from bad to worse.

CHAPTER 52: “NAKED AS TOMATOES”

            The next “Heeeelp!” was cut short as mud covered the quibil’s mouth. He sputtered. His nose sank beneath the mucky soup.
            Frantically, they pulled. He popped out with a “Yop!”
            Down bent the tyrannosaurus. Its hot breath smelled like rotting fish. It opened its jaws wide. But a river of fire shot up from the muck. Instantly, steam mushroomed. Fire surrounded the monster’s head. It screamed. In vain it tried to push the fire away with its clawed forearms. Then it ran away, its tail retreating like a colossal snake.
            The quibils smelled something awful. Sulphur. They looked at each other, and shrieked. Three were almost bald. Only the odd tuft of hair had remained. But the mucky quibil looked like a giant gravy-dunked meatball.
            The quibils returned to the time machine. They stood in the cockpit, panicking:
            “It was this button that got us here!”
            “Don’t push that one! Push this one!”
            “Look at my hair!”
            “What hair?”
            “We’re naked as tomatoes!”
            “Push that one!”
            “RRRRRaroarrrr!”
            From behind a wall of rusty crags stepped the tyrannosaurus. Burns mottled its ugly face. It screeched like a barn-sized barn owl, and then it dashed forward.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 53: Find out if the quibils escape, and find out what happens to stranded Hooper.

CHAPTER 53: “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!”

            The slimy quibil pushed the blue auto reverse button. The bangs and rainbow returned. The foul-breathed tyrannosaurus bent down, ready to pluck out dinner.
            “I can’t stand its breath! I’m going to faint!”
            “We’re doomed!”
            “Let’s get out of here!”
            “Ahhhhhhhh!”
            Because the slimy quibil had pushed the auto reverse button, the time machine returned.
            But as it stood on Booger Hill, banging and wavering, Booger, Hooper, and Quabbit dashed outside.
            “What!” Quabbit said, his parted hair leaping straight up.
            “Jumping cabbages!” Booger said, searching for the time machine in the blur ahead.
            He almost tripped. But the time machine, which had been banging, and wavering like a mirage, became silent, and solid, surprising him, somehow helping him regain his balance. He even forgot about his headache.
            Inside the time machine, the quibils cried out:
            “We’re back!”
            “We’re back!”
            “We’re back!”
            “We ARE back!”
            “Let’s get out of here!”
            The three nearly bald quibils jumped out of the time machine and ran, howling, all the way home. The fourth, heavy with muck, trailed (and howled, too), and left a trail of ooze.
            “Hooray!” Hooper yelled, glad to see the time machine hadn’t been lost after all.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 54: Hooper tries to figure out how to use the time machine to go home.

CHAPTER 54: “I WANT TO GO HOME!”

            Booger ran his stubby fingers through his pine needle-hair. “I’ve seen furry men and short hosshoppers, but I ain’t never seen bald quibils.”
            “This is your fault,” Quabbit told Hooper. “The king is going to have your head.”
            But Hooper felt so excited, because the time machine wasn’t gone, that he didn’t hear Quabbit.
            “How did they get back?” Hooper said. “Where did they go? What button did they push?”
            “Did you see that slime ball?” Booger asked, with both surprise and glee in his voice.
            “Wait until the king finds out what your machine did,” Quabbit warned Hooper. “He’s going to lop off your head and mount it in the Royal Cave.”
            Hooper climbed into the time machine.
            “This really is a spaceship, ain’t it?” Booger said.
            Hooper wondered, “What button do I push?” He noticed one had a dirty fingerprint.
            “Can you read?” he asked Booger and Quabbit.
            “Read?” Quabbit said. “Read what?”
            “Get down, Yooper. Don’t take off yet. Tell us what happened to them quibils.”
            “I can’t run this time machine unless I know how to read,” Hooper said. “For crying out loud, I want to go home!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 55: A hosshopper named Goopy helps Hooper figure out how to get home.

CHAPTER 55: “YERZE, ORANGE, MATE”

            Boing. Boing. Boing.
            A hosshopper bounced up the hillside: “Howdy, mates.”
            “Goopy,” Booger said.
            “G’day.” He had one tall, straight ear, whereas the other one flopped over halfway up.
            “Goopy?” Hooper said.
            “Yerze orange, mate,” Goopy said.
            “Can you read?” Hooper asked.
            “Can a platypus pat a puss?”
            Booger, still holding his toque full of snow, laughed.
            “What does that button say?” Hooper said, wiping off the muck.
            “Why’z ya orange, mate?” Goopy asked, peering inside the time machine. Then he gazed at Hooper. “Cat got your tongue?”
            “Wait until the king finds out what your machine did to those quibils!” Quabbit said.
            “Goopy, what do you make of this buggy?” Booger asked.
            “What does this button say?” Hooper blurted.
            “Auto reverse, mate,” Goopy said. “Must be for backing up this queer boat.”
            “Stand back!” Hooper exclaimed. He pushed the auto reverse button, and then he was off again.                                                           ***

            As the time machine traveled, Hooper grew tired. What a day! He pictured himself in bed. His duck-feather quilt and foam-rubber pillow kept him cozy. His mother kissed his cheek. “Good night, Muffin,” she said.
            “Yuck!” he thought.
            The banging—like a Gatling gun firing—stopped. The rainbow disappeared. Dials and buttons reappeared at the control panel before Hooper, and lights flashed around him.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 56: Hooper jumps around in time and space like a grasshopper.

CHAPTER 56: HOOPER RETURNS TO THE WAR

            The time machine landed, and the rainbow dissolved. The control panel, now visible again, looked wonderfully familiar to Hooper. So did the lights that blinked around him.
            On Booger Hill (it was now Tuesday) he scanned the gully for the death path of the giant snowball, hoping not to find it. But it was just as Booger had made it! Or—must have made it after all! The tarpapered shack stood like a wart on the hill—just as Booger had left it!
            Hooper pushed the auto reverse button again, and soon he heard gasps and screams in Porksville as quibils, brandishing swords and spears, chased people.
            But he also heard the sword-waving “Ninja”-quibil:
            “Come back! Come back, I say! We’ve been looking for you, Hooper!”
            “Will he attack?” Hooper thought. “Is he trying to trick me? Will he chop off my head? Is the whole world nuts?”
            He was about to again engage the auto reverse when Miss Snapdragon appeared. From Main Street she raced into the clearing between the bakery and grocery store, speeding along like an airplane with no rudder.
            She ploughed into the “Ninja”-quibil.
            He shot into the air, bounced off a birch tree, and crashed against the brick wall of the bakery. Down he slid, while his sword soared upwards.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 57: Where does the sword land? Does Hooper escape? Does he lose his head? Does Miss Snapdragon lose hers?

CHAPTER 57: THE AUTO REVERSE BREAKS?

            The “Ninja”-quibil lay unconscious on crunchy leaves, with his legs cocked straight up. Swissshhh!—down came his sword, sticking six inches into the ground, lopping off a lock of hair on the crown of his head.
            Then Miss Snapdragon, running about like a headless chicken, bashed into the time machine, tumbling into the cockpit. But Hooper had already pushed AUTO REVERSE.
            Both vanished.
            Now, if the auto reverse broke...Hooper wouldn’t return to Booger Hill or to Professor Hamburger...
            Consider Professor Hamburger, watching the time machine LEAVE. Do you remember how this whole time machine mess began? There was Hooper, taking off!
            “Noooo!” The professor grabbed two handfuls of hair, and pulled. “Ohhhh! My head! Noooo! Come back!”
            He booted a lump of moss. It sprayed in the moonlight, and vanished. “The time machine is gone!” His head ached from smacking it on the fuse box earlier. “The time machine is GONE! That rotten kid has no business stealing my time machine!”
            A hungry bear then burst through a clump of ferns. He stood up on his hind legs. “Who are you?” he asked in a deep voice.
            The professor, who’d begun to sweat, became as wobbly as a jelly fish, and after answering the question, he fainted.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 58: The hungry bear kidnaps the professor.

CHAPTER 58: HAMBURGER FOR SUPPER

            The bear packed the professor over one shoulder, lumbered up Booger Hill, and said, “Yum, yum.”
            “Let me down!” The professor’s upside-down head ached. His arms dangled as topsy-turvy ferns, rocks, and tree trunks jerked by. “Let me down! Ow! You beast! Let me down!”
            “Mum’s going to make you into stew.” On a log, the bear stopped to whack the professor on the rear. “Keep still. I don’t want to fall and hurt myself.”
            “Let me down,” the professor said, “or—or I’ll bite you.”
            “Now just you be quiet,” the bear said. “You’re going to be stew, and that’s all there is to it. So relax.”
            But the professor had to stop a war! He needed his time machine. He had to see Booger Jimm, to get an antidote for quibil stink. “Quibils and people need to be friends!” he thought. But the time machine was gone, and so was that orange boy!
            The bear entered a hole in the hill. A candle lit the way to a kitchen and to a she bear who wore a red apron and blue bonnet. She threw a log into the stove. Flames shot out of the open door of the firebox.
            Horace excitedly said, “Mum, supper!”
            “Ahhhh!” she cried.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 59: The professor is in big trouble.

CHAPTER 59: “HUNTERS SHOT FATHER”

            “Mummmm! Supper!”
            “Horace!” She slammed shut the firebox door of the stove. “Why don’t you warn me when you’re coming in?”
            “I’m sorry,” Horace said, shaking the still-upside-down, groaning professor. “But it’s stew-time.”
            “Horace, all you ever think about is food.”
            “I have to look after the both of us,” Horace said bitterly. “Ever since the hunters shot Father, for his gall bladder, I’m the breadwinner.”
            His mother looked distant.
            Professor Hamburger, with his beard falling about his face, tried explaining about the war that would take place tomorrow.
            But Horace told him to shut up.

            The professor, tied with yards of twine to a chair, couldn’t speak because Horace had shoved a potato in his mouth.
            “We need some salt,” his mother said. “Borrow some from the quibils.”
            Horace took a bowl to the Royal Cave. A group of quibils blocked the cave’s entrance.
            “Out of my way,” Horace said. “I need some salt...Oh, hi, Mr. and Mrs. Quirk.”
            “I’m sending the Quirks to the dungeon!” the king said.
            “Oh?” Horace said. “Well, Mum and I are going to make some fellow called Professor Hamburger into a stew. But we’ve run out of salt.”
            “Professor Hamburger is dead,” Mrs. Quirk said, rolling her eyes.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 60: Horace returns with the salt, and his mum prepares to cook the professor.

CHAPTER 60: “‘PROFESSOR HAMBURGER IS DEAD’”

            Horace, carrying a bowl of salt, entered the den. “I’m home, Mum.”
            “Horace!” his mother said. “You startled me!” At the kitchen sink, she’d been washing mushrooms. “Are you trying to kill me off?”
            “Mummmm.”
            “You’re just like your father,” she said.
            “Don’t talk about Father,” Horace said.
            “Don’t you think I miss him?” she said. “Those stupid hunters shot him for that green thing. It’s supposed to be full of vitamins.” She glared at the pile of clean mushrooms, and then she ate one.
            “It’s called a gall bladder,” he reminded her.
            “Horace, bring me that salt. And you had better get used to the death of your father. The world is full of madmen.” Tears sparkled in her black eyes. She ate another mushroom. “Bring me that salt. I want to hurry up and cook this professor fellow. I’m tired.”
            Horace brought her the salt. But he wasn’t going to get used to the death of his father. He decided to speak about his visit to the Royal Cave. That would make him feel better. He began by repeating what Mrs. Quirk had said:
            “‘Professor Hamburger is dead.’” He laughed. “Isn’t that funny, Mum? He doesn’t look dead to me.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 61: Professor Hamburger spits out a mouthful of potato, loosening several teeth.

CHAPTER 61: POTATO ROCKETS

            “They were playing a search-and-rescue game,” Horace told his mum, “and they were going to search for Hooper.”
            “That orange boy with funny ears?”
            Horace took a mushroom. “‘Funny ears’?”
            His mother slapped his paw. “Thief!”
            “Well,” Horace said, munching happily, “Mr. and Mrs. Quirk looked terribly upset. The king called them spies. It was great fun. He said they’d have to go to the dungeon. Then Mrs. Quirk started to cry. She told the king that if he didn’t smarten up that she was going to boil him in oil.”
            “That seems odd,” she said.
            “They were playing a game,” Horace explained. “If you hadn’t have wanted me to return so soon with the salt, I would have stayed and played along.” Horace got very excited and rubbed his front paws together. “Tomorrow, I’m going to go back. Maybe I can help them play it all over again.”
            His mother smiled and patted his furry head. “You’re a big fellow, aren’t you, Horace? But you’re still a cub at heart.”
            Professor Hamburger, still tied up, loosened several teeth by spitting most of his potato cork across the room. He jumped up and down in his chair, which hopped and clamoured. “That’s the boy who got in my time machine!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 62: Horace wants to eat the professor, but his mother has other plans.

CHAPTER 62: “I’VE GOT TO...STOP A WAR...IF I CAN!”

            The professor, like a wind up toy for a giant, bounced around the kitchen. “Let me go! You’ve got to take me to Hooper’s parents!”
            Horace and his mother looked puzzled.
            “Fools!” The professor grew winded. “I must explain to those people that their son boarded my time machine. Now he’s gone. Do you understand?” The professor wondered why quibil stink hadn’t driven the Quirks mad. “If I’m lucky, perhaps I can make a homing device. Is my house still in Porksville? They didn’t tear it down, did they?” He spit out more potato. “I’ve got to make a homing device to bring the time machine back...and stop a war...if I can!”
            The bears studied the professor. They gazed at each other.
            “Horace, untie him. Take him to the Royal Cave.”
            “Mummmm! I’m hungry!”
            “Horace.”
            “But he’s supposed to be dead. Mrs. Quirk said so.”
            “Does he look dead to you, Horace?”
            “Mummmm!”
            “Horace, it wouldn’t hurt to show a little kindness.”
            “No!” Horace stormed off. But later, when he returned, his pouting meant that he’d do what he was told, even if he didn’t want to.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 63: Horace leads the professor to quibil land.

CHAPTER 63: PINE CONE RAIN

            Reluctantly, Horace led the professor across Booger Hill, and then to a mossy ledge about one hundred metres uphill from the Royal Cave.
            “You’re skinny, but you would have made a good stew,” Horace said.
            “How would you like it if I ate your mother?” the professor asked, noting three quibils speaking outside the Royal Cave.
            Horace roared. Pine cones rained from a lone pine tree, and many bounced off the professor’s head.
            “You can’t go around eating people,” the professor said. “It upsets them.”
            “Is that a fact?” Horace’s eyes looked cold. “Maybe I should rip out your gall bladder.”
            “Look”—the professor gazed at huge Horace—”what those hunters did to your father was wrong. But eating me is wrong too.”
            “Do you know what I think?” Horace said. “I think you should shut up.” Then he left.
            The professor, alone now, watched the three quibils down the slope wander into the dark forest. “A search party for Hooper?” he wondered.
            He cleared his nose, snorting hard, smelling only the bassy fragrance of pine, spruce, and fir. “Why can’t I smell the quibils?”
            He dropped that question. He had to tell Mr. and Mrs. Quirk about Hooper and convince the king to stop the war plans.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 64: The professor is captured.

CHAPTER 64: ALL TIED UP

            “What will I say?” he thought. “And how will I speak to the king without gagging to death from the stink?”
            Minutes passed. He scratched his head. “Ow!” That lump from the time machine still hurt.
            Then three quibils jumped out from behind a rock pile.
            “A spy!” one shouted.
            “Grab him!” another said.
            The third—the Royal Attendant—added, “Don’t let him escape!”
            Professor Hamburger jumped off the boulder, bounded over a stump, and ran headfirst into a tree.
            He bounced off. Like a prophet, he gazed upwards, and said, “French fries.” Then down he fell.
            “He’s out cold.”
            “Tie him up.”
            “Don’t let him get away.”
            The Royal Attendant, his gold tooth sparkling, held up a rope. But—? Tie the hands together first? Start on the legs? Tie the hands and feet together?
            Hm, they thought.
            They tied the professor into a ball. When he woke up, however, he jiggled, and that started him rolling down the hill.
            “Heeeeeelp!” he cried as the world of forest and moonbeams twirled helter-skelter.
            Down the slope he accelerated, flying through bushes, bouncing over rocks, and whizzing, miraculously, between trees, all the way to the Royal Cave.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 65: The professor meets Mr. and Mrs. Quirk—at the bottom of the dungeon.

CHAPTER 65: TEETH AS BLACK AS CHARCOAL

            Into the Royal Cave he whirled. Quibils dived for safety. He flew past the king, who was munching liquorice root, and spun through the tunnel that led to the dungeon— 
            Where he dropped, like a great golf ball, landing on Hooper’s parents and Mooch.

                                                                  ***
            The breathless Royal Attendant stood before the king. “My lord!” he said. “You’re all right!”
            “What in heaven’s name rolled past?” the king asked, his mouth half full of chewed liquorice root.
            “A spy,” the attendant said. “We found him up the south hillside. We tied him up and he rolled away.”
            “He tried to kill me!” The king was furious. “They’re attacking us from all sides now!”
            “Actually,” the Royal Attendant said, “he was knocked out and tied up.”
            “Nonsense!” The king swallowed. His teeth looked as black as charcoal. “Get me more liquorice root. Fools!” His eyes danced from side to side. “I’m sick and tired of the way I’m treated around here!” He scoffed at the quibils near the cave’s entrance, recalling how they’d dived out of the way as the spy had charged in. “Can’t anyone protect me from these lunatic humans? Get me a bat.” He pounded his Royal Rod on the ground. “I’m hungry!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 66: The professor finally speaks to Mr. and Mrs. Quirk.

CHAPTER 66: “QUIBILS...ARE SUPPOSED TO STINK”

            The professor had landed on Hooper’s parents and on Mooch. But there weren’t any broken bones, cracked skulls, or squashed organs.
            “I can’t seeeeee!” Professor Hamburger cried. “I’m blind!”
            “Oh, shut up,” Mrs. Quirk said. “How can we untie you if you won’t calm down?”
***
“Who are you?” he asked, now able to stand—although he felt dizzy.
            “Mrs. Quirk.”
            “You’re Mrs. Quirk!” he said.
            “What are you?” Mrs. Quirk said. “A nitwit? Didn’t I just tell you who I am?”
            The professor, once his arms were free, felt Mooch in the darkness. “Oops. You’re hairy.”
            “Of course I’m hairy,” Mooch said. “I’m a quibil.”
            “Tell us who you are,” Mr. Quirk said.
            “It’s dark, isn’t it?” the professor said. “I’m not blind, am I?”
            “You must be a moron,” Mrs. Quirk said.
            The professor relaxed. Then he sniffed. “I’m Professor Hamburger, and quibils, um, are supposed to stink.”
            “Professor Hamburger is dead,” Mrs. Quirk said.
            “Why did you say quibils stink?” Mooch asked. “Have you spoken to the mayor?”
            “I must be in a nut house or a nightmare,” Mrs. Quirk said. “I might as well ask you if you’ve seen our son, Hooper. No one else has.”
            “Hooper!” the professor said. “That’s who I’ve come to talk to you about.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 67: Mrs. Quirk attacks the professor.

CHAPTER 67: MRS. QUIRK LOSES CONTROL

            The professor spoke so quickly that words got jumbled.
            “Calm down. You sound as if you’ve lost your marbles,” Mrs. Quirk said.
            “You, in a time machine, found a war, in Porksville?” Mr. Quirk asked.
            “That’s impossible,” Mooch said. “The war’s tomorrow.”
            “You’re a considerate beast,” Mrs. Quirk said. “The whole town thinks you died years ago.”
            The professor wished he could see.
            “Hurry up and tell us about Hooper,” Mrs. Quirk said.
            “Patience,” Mr. Quirk said. “The professor seems rattled.”
            “Patience?” Mrs. Quirk said. “Hooper is missing! And it’s all your fault!”
            “Yes,” Professor Hamburger said, rubbing his cold hands together. “I know where Hooper is.”
            “Where?” Mrs. Quirk snapped.
            “Well, it’s sort of hard to explain,” the professor said.
            “What are you talking about?” Mrs. Quirk retorted. “Sort of hard to explain? You’ve got a voice, mister. Use it.”
            The professor explained that Hooper had climbed aboard his time machine, pushed a button, and ended up “who knows where.”
            Mrs. Quirk didn’t like this story. “Those idiots in Porksville are going to lose their heads? Well, Professor Hamburger, so are you! I’ll see to that!” She tried to punch him, but she punched the rock wall. “Owwww!” She tried to kick him, but she kicked the rock wall. “Owwww!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 68: Mrs. Quirk gets really steamed!

CHAPTER 68: MRS. QUIRK, THE NOSE SQUASHER

            “Oh dear!” Mr. Quirk said.
            “Oh my goodness,” Mooch said. “All this because Miss Snapdragon was mean to Hooper.”
            “My baby!” Mrs. Quirk said. She clutched Hooper’s toy UFO, and yelled, “I’ll have your head!—you, you scientist!”
            “I had no idea,” the professor said. “I had no idea my time machine would—that your boy would—he had no business climbing aboard!”
            A light shone above and swayed from side to side. The brightness made their eyes sore.
            “Hey, you down there!” the Royal Attendant called. “You don’t need to stay in the dark. I’ll hang this torch up here.”
            The attendant left. The four, shading their eyes, grew used to the glare.
            Professor Hamburger looked a mess. His beard was tangled with moss and twigs.
            “Murderer!” Mrs. Quirk said, and now that she could see, she prepared to sock the professor in the nose.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 69: A great change in the sequence of time takes place. Do you remember how the professor met Horace, got kidnapped, and ended up rolling like a giant golf ball into the Royal Cave? Well, in the next episode, that is going to change.

CHAPTER 69: BACK TO BOOGER HILL?

            But the auto reverse worked fine:
            Hooper, on his way back to Booger Hill, landed again in Porksville during the war. Remember? Then along came screaming, out-of-control Miss Snapdragon. She smashed into the “Ninja”-quibil, knocking him cold. But that didn’t stop her frenzy.
            “Oh, my lord!” she cried, after crashing and falling into the time machine, just before it took off.
            The flying time machine banged. Groping Miss Snapdragon stood, and then toppled into the pilot’s chair. That squashed Hooper against an armrest. But he couldn’t see her; the rainbow acted like a kaleidoscope blindfold.
            She began to hiccup. Each hiccup made her bounce on the springy seat, almost launching Hooper.
            He clutched his armrest, asking himself, “If I fly out of the time machine, where will I end up?”
            “Hiccuuuuuuuup! Hiccuuuuuuuup!”
            “My word!” Hooper said. “Swallow ten times, and then you’ll stop.”
            The time machine landed. Miss Snapdragon jumped up, saying, “You’re that orange—” But, like the professor had, she banged her head on the fuse box, knocking herself out.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 70: Out cold Miss Snapdragon falls on the professor, knocking him flat. Then along comes Horace, the hungry bear.

CHAPTER 70: HOOPER RETURNS!

            The time machine had landed. A shocked Miss Snapdragon had jumped up, banging her head on the fuse box, knocking herself out.
            Backwards she fell. Her eyes rolled up like blinds.
            The professor had been saying, “Noooo! Ohhhh! My head! Noooo! Come back!” But now the time machine was back. And how his head hurt! He too had smacked it on the fuse box!
            Miss Snapdragon, in a white dress with red roses, dropped like a monster-bud, landing on the professor. Both crashed to the ground.
            “Help!” Professor Hamburger said. “Help me! Get her off me!”
            He wriggled free.
            Then Horace, the bear, appeared. He roared.
            “Who are you?” Horace said, standing upright, looking ferocious and hungry. But he didn’t ask Hooper who he was. They’d met before.
            Next to unconscious Miss Snapdragon, Professor Hamburger sat frozen on the dirt. He studied the bear’s big teeth, thinking, “Now what?”
                                                                  ***
            Ecstatic Hooper tried to tell Horace about his bizarre travels aboard Professor Hamburger’s time machine.
            “You brat.” The professor held his aching head. “What right—ohhhh!—what  right did you have to steal my time machine?”
            “Time machine?” a dizzy Miss Snapdragon said, standing up.
            “You can’t call Hooper a brat,” Horace said. “My Mum should make you into stew.”