“It’s perfect,” Griffin decided. “We’ll meet tomorrow at midnight, and by the time we sail to Rutherford Point, Mr. Nasty will be gone and Klaus will be asleep.”

“We hope,” added Ben.

“We know,” Griffin amended. “A good plan leaves nothing to chance. If it happens at All Aboard Animals, we see it on these screens.”

The words had barely passed his lips when a menacing shape appeared before the interior-view webcam. It grew larger and larger until it completely filled the monitor. For an instant, there wa a wild, frenzied action, and sharp claws slashed at the camera. Then the screen went dark.

Ben was wide-eyed. “What was that?”

Melissa was at the keyboard, typing at light-speed. “The video feed has stopped. The camera is offline.”

“What do mean, offline?” Griffin asked.

“Either the camera failed or the transmitter did,” she explained. “Maybe the battery died early.”

“Or,” Ben added uneasily, “our webcam just got eaten by that — that thing!”

“There’s no thing,” Griffin said, a little less certain that he would have liked.”

“So what was it, then?”

“How about this: Klaus finds the mini-camera. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s stuck in a wad of gum, so he chucks it in the trash.”

Ben was not convinced. “That didn’t lookk human to me.”

Melissa had a theory. “It might have been a ghost image generated by the webcam as it lost power.”

“See?” Griffin was triumphant. “Mystery solved.”

“I said it might have been,” she amended. “We can’t be sure.”

“Well, we definitely have to find out before we get on the boat with it—“ Ben regarded his friend with alarm. “Don’t we?”

From Zoobreak. Copyright © 2009 by Gordon Korman. All rights reserved.