Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: Chapters 5–10

Mr. Wonka turned the paper over. On the other side it said: THE KITCHENS OF THIS HOTEL ARE LOADED WITH LUSCIOUS FOOD, LOBSTERS, STEAKS, ICE CREAM.

Mr. and Mrs. Bucket, both petrified, were once again in each other’s arms.

Mr. Wonka stood very still, and although his face looked calm, you can be quite sure his clever inventive brain was spinning like a dynamo.

WE SHALL THEN PRESS THE EMERGENCY FREEZER SWITCH AND THE TEMPERATURE IN THE SPACE HOTEL WILL DROP TO MINUS ONE HUNDRED DEGREES CENTIGRADE. ALL OF YOU WILL BE INSTANTLY DEEP-FROZEN.

He spun round on his toes, skipped a few paces across the floor and then, in a frenzied unearthly sort of scream, he cried, “FIMBO ZEEZI!”

He spun round on his toes, skipped a few paces across the floor and then, in a frenzied unearthly sort of scream, he cried, “FIMBO ZEEZI!”

In the Control Room in Houston, in the White House in Washington, in palaces and city buildings and mountain shacks from America to China to Peru, the five hundred million people who heard that wild and fearsome voice yelling out these strange and mystic words all shivered with fear before their television sets.

“You have come a long way,” the President continued, “so why don’t you come just a tiny bit farther and pay us a visit down here on our humble little earth?"

And Mr. Wonka, who had swung quickly around to look when the first scream came, was as dumbfounded as the rest.

The red pupils were resting on Mr. Wonka. But now they began traveling slowly across to Charlie and Grandpa Joe and the others by the bed, settling upon them and gazing at them with a cold malevolent stare.

Then the three remaining creatures began stretching themselves all at the same time, each one elongating itself slowly upward, growing taller and taller, thinner and thinner, curving and twisting, stretching and stretching, curling and bending, balancing either on the tail or the head or both, and turned sideways now, so that only one eye was visible.

If you’d had even the faintest idea of what horrors you were up against, the marrow would have run out of your bones! You’d have been fossilized with fear and glued to the ground!

"They’d have made necklaces from your knucklebones and bracelets from your teeth! Because those creature, my dear ignorant boy, are the most brutal, vindictive, venomous, murderous beasts in the entire universe!”

"They’d have made necklaces from your knucklebones and bracelets from your teeth! Because those creature, my dear ignorant boy, are the most brutal, vindictive, venomous, murderous beasts in the entire universe!”

“What rubbish,” said Grandma Georgina.

Before he even looked, Charlie knew exactly what he was going to see. So did the others. They could tell by the high hysterical note in the old lady’s voice.

And there it was, cruising effortlessly alongside them, a simply colossal Vermicious Knid, as thick as a whale, as long as a truck, with the most brutal vermicious look in its eye.

“We’ll soon get rid of that,” he said and he pressed six buttons all at once and six booster rockets went off simultaneously under the Elevator.

“Oh, you Knid, you are vile and vermicious!” cried Mr. Wonka.
“You are slimy and soggy and squishous!
But what do we care
’Cause you can’t get in here,
So hop it and don’t get ambitious!”

“Oh, you Knid, you are vile and vermicious!” cried Mr. Wonka.
“You are slimy and soggy and squishous!
But what do we care
’Cause you can’t get in here,
So hop it and don’t get ambitious!”

Cried the Knid, ‘What on earth am I going to do
With this painful preposterous lump?'

‘Nanny’ he cried, ‘Oh Nanny, what
A super proposition!’

And now that I am eighty-nine,
It’s too late to repent.
The fault was mine the little swine
Became the President.

“Mr. President, sir, this is Walter Wall. What a sumptuous hotel this is! The decorations are superb!”

Suddenly the loudspeaker in the President’s study gave out a series of the most ghastly screams and yells.

Mr. Wonka should have known this and saved his rocket power, but he kept right on going and giant Knid kept right on cruising effortlessly alongside, glaring into the Elevator with its wicked red eye.

The huge green egg-shape Knids were grouping themselves into squadrons with about twenty Knids to a squadron.

Then each squadron formed itself into a line abreast, with one yard between Knids. Then, one after another, the squadrons began attacking the Commuter Capsule.

“That’s impossible!” cried Showler. “They’ve busted our rockets! They’ve smashed them to smithereens!”

“Don’t you worry about a little thing like that!” cried Mr. Wonka. “My Great Glass Elevator is ready for anything! In we go! Into the breach, dear friends, into the breach!”