They were sitting at the morning briefing (breakfast)…. Kowalski was telling them about some kind of machine he was just inventing, but nobody really listened to him… Skipper began talking without paying any attention on Kowalski as he interrupted him.
“So… everybody’s present… any denunciar on the night? Anything happening?”
“Nothing I had noticed” said Kowalski, still insulted.
“Fine.” Skipper took another peixe from the mesa, tabela and swallowed it. Then he noticed Private hadn’t even touched his peixe yet. He hadn’t even sound off yet. His head had fallen down and his beak had dropped on his chest – he was sleeping. But it was 10 am in the morning! Skipper knew what to do.
“Private! Nap-time’s over!!!”
Private jumped apalled awake .
„Now stop sleeping and eat your peixe before Rico does!” Rico’s eyes were actually already banned on Private’s food.
“Sorry, Skipper”, apologized Private and ripped his eyes. “I…” He stopped for a moment “I didn’t sleep well last night…” He took a fish. Rico dropped disappointed his head.
Later Kowalski went into his lab and the others searched for other activities. On Mondays, there was never really going on much at the zoo. So Skipper asked for a round of Jack As and they agreed, although Private wasn’t right present during the game and lost right away. But he didn’t care - actually, all he wanted was some sleep. But Skipper had already noticed and Private couldn’t risk getting mais attention of him.
The one round spinned out to mais rounds of Jack As and they kept playing and Private kept loosing… Until the lab’s door blamed open. “It’s gone!” Kowalski stood in the doorway and the others turned around to him. He looked desperate.
“What is gone?” asked Skipper without big interest and looked down at his carts as he sorted them.
“My neutralized Berulium 364!” said Kowalski desperately.
Skipper looked up with a “What are you talking about now again?”-face.
Kowalski interpreted the look right. He sighed.
„It’s a chemical I need for my Newchromatic Destabilizer. It was in my lab yesterday and now it’s gone!”
“What?!” Now he had Skipper’s attention.
“I searched the whole lab! It’s not there anymore!”
“Then we should-“
“Oh-oh!” came Private’s voice from the other end of the room. He was looking out through the periscope. “People!”
“Topside!” shouted Skipper. The four penguins suddenly appeared on the concrete island and started entertaining the crowd that stopped immediately worrying about the missing of their little “friends”…
In some case it’s funny how things have changed now, Private thought, Skipper had never expected me to do something like this… and I hope, he never will.
Private was a person who was from the bottom of his coração sincere. He hated lying and he hated steeling. But mais over, he hated steeling from his own friends. And on topo, início of that, steeling from Kowalski’s lab… Normally, this room was in some case a forbidden zone, especially when he was inventing something new…
Private stepped over the thin red-glowing laser beam they had installed together in the lab’s doorway in the evening. Skipper had lent his paranoia a free ride and concluded that there had somebody broken in the night before to rub parts of Kowalski’s invention… surely for evil plans… This trap would set an alarm signal when the beam was broken…
Well, ‘evil plans’ isn’t that wrong, Private thought sadly…
“What do you mean, something’s missing again?”
“Skipper, I’m telling you: I had that devise already installed in the inner part of the Destabilizer - it has been reinstalled and taken away!”
“No doubt?”
“Affirmative!”
“Mhm…” Skipper started walking up and down in the lab, thinking.
“Then he must have known it… or… we got us a spy!”
“But who?”
“Mhm… well, as long as we don’t have any further indications, everyone’s a suspect! Till we find him, we have to watch anyone who could come into question!”
“’him’?” asked Private, “why does it have to be a ‘he’? It could also be a woman…”
“Marlene!!!”
“No, that’s not what I-“
“Roll out, man!”
“Oh, dear…”
Marlene’s interrogation didn’t bring any further results, just the one, that she was probably not the culprit. Skipper decided tough to keep here categorized as suspect…
In the early hours, Kowalski suddenly awoke. Something didn’t seem right…
As he looked out his bunk, he realized that Private’s cama was empty. The labs door was closed as it had been in the evening… Should he wake up Skipper? Well, calculating, it was his duty as Second-in-Command to inform the skipper when a member of the squad was missing… otherwise… what should Private do that was bad? Anyone else – okay. But Private – pff! … Kowalski rolled around and fell asleep soon…
Maybe, if Kowalski’s brain had been mais awaken, he would have thought of the circumstance of Private’s disappearing in the middle of the night compared with the repeated break-in into his lab could be from some sense… but he wasn’t awake and he also didn’t notice when Private entered the peixe bowl with the first sun strays of the dawn and dropped himself in his bed, audible moaning…
When they were sitting at breakfast the seguinte morning, Kowalski suddenly looked at Private, tilted his head and asked with a worried tone: “Private, are you alright?”
Everyone looked at him. Private, who had snapped up from his nap as he heard his name, seemed to feel uncomfortable.
“I’m fine. Why you ask?”
“Well… I think, Kowalski’s got a point” Skipper joined the conversation “You don’t look so good, Private.” In his tone resinated worry.
Private’s eyes were red from the lack of sleep.
“I don’t know what you mean” Private lied “I’m feeling great!”
“Are those scratches on your haunch?”
Private looked down his body and covered the red stripes with his right flipper. “No! … I mean, yes! I mean…. I- I felt down from my bunk this morning.”
“I didn’t notice you fall” Skipper said.
“It was when you were topside.”
“We didn’t hear you fall.”
“I fell silent.”
“I’m pretty sure, such a fall wouldn’t leave such damage” said Kowalski, walked around the mesa, tabela and studied Private’s injury. “It looks like it’d bleed!”
Private pushed off Kowalski’s flipper.
“Well, if he wanna take his pain like a real man, we shouldn’t indulge him” said Skipper and looked proudly at Private. Private tried a smile – it didn’t work out as he had wished it…
The seguinte two days, the others noticed how Private changed. The dark rings below his eyes went deeper and his eyes reder. Er reagierte ungewöhnlich gereizt auf Fragen die sein Wohlbefinden betrafen. Also, on Friday, when they were exercising combat training – Private suddenly stumbled backwards and screamed in pain. Rico, who was his fight partner, tilt his head to the side and Skipper and Kowalski came over.
“Private, what’s wrong?” Skipper wanted to know.
Private was just trying to stand up, but his left leg trembled and he sank moaning back in a sitting position.
“Private, are you hurt?” asked Kowalski.
“I’m fine” retorted Private, but his voice sounded pressed.
“Just let me take a look at it” Kowalski tried again.
Private let it happen that Kowalski inspected his foot without looking anyone in the eyes. But when Kowalski touched it, Private flinched back.
“It’s okay” Kowalski reassured him. “I won’t do anything. I just wanna take a look at it, okay?”
Very carefully, he lifted Private’s leg a view inches with his flippers. The leg was swollen and had bruises that were already changing their colour into purple. A thin red stripe of dried blood circled the food.
Kowalski took a sharp breath.
„That doesn’t look quite good, Private! You should take this to the doctor.”
In the evening, Private wore a white bandage among his injured leg and was questioned por Skipper.
“Now, how did you get that?”
Skipper got the feeling that Private’s respostas weren’t conforming the truth…
When Kowalski entered his lab the seguinte dia he let out a sharp sream and the others slide seguinte to him – except for Private. He was still sleeping – and Skipper had made an exception because of his leg and let him rest.
The three stared at the chaos that dominated Kowalski’s lab. His invention had been build apart and everywhere lay it’s parts. Pieces of broken glass from test tubes were mixed under them and leaf sheets from notes were covered over everything.
As Kowalski could loose himself from his rigidity he tapped around in the room and inspected that mess. With a bit bleating voice he said “My machine… it was nearly ready… and now this! What person is doing something like this?”
“A person that searched something” said Skipper and looked into a broken bottle.
Kowalski looked at him for a moment then his eyes widened. “You don’t suppose…”
Hastily he started now ransacking the chaos.
Then he jumped up. “It’s gone!”
“What is now missing?” asked Skipper annoyed.
“My Berulium 700!”
“Ha?” made Rico.
“Didn’t you already loose some Berulium?” asked Skipper.
“That was Number 364! Number 700 is the old one but improved! I treated the 364 so that it becomes better! It was a breakthrough in science! Of course, nobody noticed…”
Skipper went right over that wink. “And what’s that new super Berulium doing?”
“Well, it was supposed to work for my Distabilizer as fuel. One test tube with this Berulium Number 700 is as effective as 10,5467 litres of usual gasoline!”
“So…. you could run a big car with that?”
“Not just a car! Any form of machine that needs fuel. This Berulium 700 is usable with any other kind of motor.”
“What about weapons?”
“Those two!”
“Sweet government’s war-camp!” shouted Skipper “who knows what our enemies could do with that!”
“Remaining the pergunta who our enemies are”, Kowalski said. He wasn't even sure why, but his eyes wandered over to the beds and stopped on Private.
Skipper followed his look.
“What?” he asked.
“Skipper,” Kowalski said quietly “I think there’s something I gotta tell you…”
