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8-16 Doohickey and the robot
Written
by
Jonathan
and
illustrated
by
Stephen
Lewis
Chapter one
Doohickey had
just moved to a new town when he spotted a notice.
It was stuck outside a big house at the end of his
street.
‘That’s
the job for me,’ said Doohickey. ‘I need some more
pocket
-
money.’
He pushed the
doorbell. Then he jumped.
Weeeeyow-weeeeyow-weeeeyow!
Kaaabooooom!
A
loud alarm sounded inside the house, followed by a
terrific explosion.
A window flew open at the top of the
house. A cloud of thick smoke billowed out.
‘What do you
want?’ coughed a voice from inside the cloud.
‘Can’t you see that I’m busy?’
The smoke
cleared. The professor’s face peered down at
Doohickey.
‘Excuse me,’ said Doohickey. ‘My name’s
Doohickey. I’ve come about the job.’
‘What job?’
snapped the professor.
‘As assistant,’ said
Doohickey. ‘The notice says you need
one.’
‘Oh, absolutely!’ said the professor,
beginning to grin.
The notice had been up for
over a year, but Doohickey was the first person to
ask about it.
‘Come on up!’ said the professor. His
head disappeared.
A moment later, the front
door sprang half-open.
Doohickey peered
inside. A huge mountain of post had stopped the
door from opening properly. But there was no one
there.
Doohickey felt sure that the door had
opened for him, so he squeezed through into the
hallway.
A
buzzer sounded in Doohickey’s ear. He was
surprised to see a little air
-ship
bobbing in the hallway beside him.
Tiny propellers spun the ship around.
Doohickey saw the word
s, ‘FOLLOW ME’
written in big red letters on its side.
Chapter two
He followed the ship up a tall, winding
staircase. He passed room after room stuffed full
of strange-looking machines.
Were they
the professor’s inventions?
Doohickey knew that he was
s
upposed to go straight up the stairs,
but he couldn’t help himself. He popped into one
of
the rooms to take a closer look.
The
first
thing
Doohickey
came
across
was
a
computer
screen
fixed
to
a
huge
metal
cage.
The
cage
seemed
to
be
stuffed
full of straw.
Doohickey pushed his hand into it.
‘Ouch!’ he
squealed, pulling it out again. A tiny needle was
sticking out of his thumb.
There was a label fixed to
the computer screen.
‘Well, it didn’t find this
one,’ said Doohickey crossly, as he stuck the
n
eedle back into the straw.
The next machine had lots
of electric fans fixed beneath a large metal
funnel. There was sand all over the floor. The
label said:
1
‘This looks like fun,’ thought
Doohickey. He switched it on.
Sand began
trickling out of the funnel and the fans started
spinning. Then the strangest thing happened.
The sand didn’t
fall on to the floor. It hung in the air. And
slowly, it shaped itself into a floating
castle.
Doohickey walked slowly around the
machine. He couldn’t believe wha
t he
was seeing.
Then all of a sudden, he bumped into
someone else. When he saw who it was, he nearly
jumped out of his skin.
The other person was him!
It was like looking in a
mirror, except that there was no glass.
Doohickey
reached out his hand and the other Doohickey did
the same. Their fingers met in mid-air and he felt
the
warmth of his own hand pressing
back. It was too creepy.
‘Ughhh!’ shivered Doohickey. He stepped
backwards straight into the floating
sand
-castle.
The castle exploded and Doohickey found
himself in the middle of a sandstorm. Sand blew
everywhere, into his eyes
and up his
nose.
Coughing
and sneezing, he groped his way back to the switch
and turned it off.
The sandstorm disappeared. And so had
the other Doohickey!
Then Doohickey noticed a large metal
plate on the floor. There was another label on it.
‘Of course!’
sighed Doohickey.
The
metal
plate
was
another
of
the
professor’s
inventions.
It
had
made
the
other
Doohickey
appear
when
he
had
stepped on to it.
I won't try that
again,
he thought.
It’
s a bit too
spooky.
A buzzer sounded. Doohickey saw the
air-ship bobbing up and down in the doorway. It
had come back to find him.
‘I got lost,’ said Doohickey. He
couldn’t think of a better excuse.
The ship buzzed
again crossly and glided back towards the stairs.
‘Coming,’ said
Doohickey.
Chapter Three
They reached
the top of the house.
The air-ship led Doohickey into a smoky
attic. It was stuffed full of books, test tubes
and lumps of tangled wiring.
A small shaggy dog peered
out at him from beneath a workbench. A cat lay
sunning itself on the window sill.
‘What kept you?’ asked the
professor. He was hunched over a heap of metal in
one corner.
‘I was admiring some of your
inventions,’ said Doohickey.
‘Oh,
those
old
things,’
said
the
professor.
‘This,’
he
said,
pointing
to
the
twisted
heap
of
metal,
‘is
my
latest
and
greatest
invention.’
‘What is it?’ asked Doohickey. It
didn’t look very exciting. He expected that it was
a machine for getting blood from
a
stone. Or for making omelettes without
breaking eggs.
‘ It’s the RoBoffin 2000
Multi
-
Purpose Robot,’ said
the professor, proudly.
‘What does it do?’ asked
Doohickey.
‘Absolutely anything!’ said the
professor. ‘Let me show you.’
The professor
scri
bbled some words on to a scrap of
paper. He fed the paper through the slot in the
robot’s chest.
Then he pressed a big button and
stepped back.
2
The robot hummed and
whirred for a bit. Then it climbed slowly to its
feet. It was enormous. Its head almost scraped
the attic ceiling.
The lights on the robot’s
face flickered on and off. It looked as if it was
thinking about something.
And then… it painted a
picture of the professor’s dog.
It played a
piece of music on the test tubes.
And it discovered three new
ways of splitting the atom.
‘Pretty good, eh?’ said the
professor, when the robot had finished.
‘Cool!’
said
Doohickey.
He
was
really
amazed.
The
huge,
heavy
robot
had
whizzed
around
the
attic,
and
it
hadn’t
disturbed so much as a paper clip.
‘It can do
anything I asked it to,’ said the
professor.
‘Anything?’ asked the
Doohickey.
‘Absolutely!’ said the
professor.
‘Can
I
have
a
go?’
asked
Doohickey.
He
wanted
to
ask
the
robot
to
build
a
space
rocket
or
tell
him
next
week’s
winning lottery numbers.
‘Absolutely not,’ said the
professor, ‘it’s far too complicated. Besides,
I’ve got better things for you to do.’
‘Such as?’ said
Doohickey. He was disappointed.
‘Such as
there,’ said the professor, writing out a list.
‘What month is it, by the way?’
‘August,’ said
Doohickey.
‘Summer! Already?’ said the professor.
He looked surprised. ‘I must go out and pay my
bills.’
He handed Doohickey the list of jobs.
‘I’ll be gone
for the rest of the day,’ he said, rushing out of
the door. ‘So
these jobs should be
finished by the time I get
back. If you
can’t find anything, ask Newton.’
‘Who's Newton?’
shouted Doohickey, as the professor swept down the
stairs.
‘I am!’ said the dog.
‘You can talk!’
said Doohickey, staring at the dog.
‘How clever of
you to notice,’ said Newton.
‘And the cat?’
asked Doohickey, looking at the other animal. ‘Can
the cat talk too?’
‘Of course not,’ scoffed
Newton, ‘it’s only a cat!’
Doohickey didn't know what
to say to this. So he looked at the list of jobs
the professor had given him.
‘These jobs are all
boring,’ said Doohickey. ‘The notice said I’d be
helping with “exciting experiments and interesting
inventions.”’
‘Of course it did,’ said
Newton, ‘otherwise, you wouldn't have wanted the
job.’
‘Well, I don’t want the job,’ said
Doohickey. ‘I don’t want to cook and clean all
day.’
He tore up the list and threw it into a
bin.
‘I’m off!’
he said.
‘Suit yourself,’ said
Newton.
Chapter Four
Doohickey went
back down the winding staircase, past the rooms
full of inventions.
Look at all these silly machines, he
thought. Why doesn’t the professor invent
something useful; something that could
do the housework?
3
Then he had a brain-
wave.
‘Of course!’ he said. He set off upstairs
again.
‘Back so soon?’ said Newton. ‘I though
you didn’t want the job.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Doohickey,
‘but I’ve had a
brain
-
wave.’
‘Oh, we get
lots of them around here,’ said the dog,
yawning.
Doohickey picked the list out of the
bin. He stuck it back together with some sticky
tape.
‘How does
that look?’ he asked, showing it to
Newton.
Newton studied the list. ‘It looks OK
to me,’ he said.
‘Now for the clever bit,’
said Doohickey.
He climbed on top of a stool and fed
the stuck-together list through the slot in
th
e robot’s chest.
‘Oh dear,’ said
Newton, shaking his head, ‘the professor isn’t
going to like this.
‘The professor isn't going
to find out!’ said Doohickey. He hit the big
button.
The robot hummed, whirred and then
straightened itself up.
‘It’ll all end in tears,’ sighed
Newton.
The lights on the robot’s face
flickered on and off for a few minutes and then it
stomped out of the attic.
‘Piece of cake!’ said
Doohickey, grinning. ‘Now, where can I take a
nap?’
The robot stomped down the stairs
an
d into the professor’s
bathroom.
It grabbed a great armful of dirty
clothes. Then it carried them down to the kitchen.
But instead of putting them into the
washing machine it stuffed them into
the oven.
Next,
it took some meat and vegetables out of the
fridge. It chopped and sliced them to make a
delicious stew. Then it
emptied the
whole lot into the washing machine!
After that, it brought the
lawnmower into the house and ran it over the hall
carpet.
And it
took the Hoover outside and sucked the leaves off
the lawn.
Chapter Five
The professor’s neighbours
were used to strange things going on at his house.
But they had never seen anything quite
like the robot.
‘What do you think it's up to?’ asked
one of them. The robot had just fetched a hammer
a
nd nails. It was now nailing
up the front door.
‘Perhaps the professor’s
gone away,’ suggested another, ‘and he’s afraid
that someone will try and break in.’
The
robot didn't seem to mind that everyone was
looking at it. It propped a ladder up against the
side of the house.
Then it climbed to the top and began to
brush bright green paint all over the roof.
Newton was half
asleep when the robot stomped into the attic
carrying a watering can.
‘The pot plants are in the living
room,’ said the dog, h
elpfully.
The huge
machine lumbered towards him.
‘I should have known
something would go wrong!’ he sighed, as the robot
emptied the watering can over his head.
Doohickey was
still fast asleep on the professor’s
bed.
‘Wake up! Wake up!’ braked Newton,
shaking his wet fur in the boy’s face.
‘What’s wrong?’
yawned Doohickey, rubbing his eyes.
‘Oh, just about
everything!” said Newton.
‘What’s happened?’ asked
Doohickey.
‘The
robot’s gone mad,’ said Newton. ‘Last time I saw
it, it was pulling up
the pot plants. I
told you it would all end in
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