8 The Vermicious Knids
'Oh, my goodness me!' gasped¹ Mr Wonka. 'Oh, my saintedpants! Oh, my painted ants! Oh, my crawling cats! I hopenever to see anything like that again!' He floated over to thewhite button and pressed it. The booster-rockets fired. TheElevator shot forward at such a speed that soon the SpaceHotel was out of sight far behind.
'But who were those awful creatures?' Charlie asked.
'You mean you didn't know?' cried Mr Wonka. 'Well, it's agood thing you didn't! If you'd had even the faintest idea ofwhat horrors you were up against, the marrow³ would haverun out of your bones! You'd have been fossilized with fearand glued to the ground! Then they'd have got you! You'dhave been a cooked cucumber! You'd have been rasped into athousand tiny bits, grated like cheese and flocculated alive!
They'd have made necklaces from your knucklebones andbracelets from your teeth! Because those creatures, my dearignorant boy, are the most brutal⁴, vindictive⁵, venomous,murderous beasts in the entire universe!' Here Mr Wonkapaused and ran the tip of a pink tongue all the way aroundhis lips. 'VERMICIOUS KNIDS!' he cried. 'That's what theywere!' He sounded the K … K'NIDS, like that.
'I thought they were grobes,' Charlie said. 'Those oozy-woozygrobes you were telling the President about.'
'Oh, no, I just made those up to scare the White House,' MrWonka answered. 'But there is nothing made up aboutVermicious Knids, believe you me. They live, as everybodyknows, on the planet Vermes, which is eighteen thousand fourhundred and twenty-seven million miles away and they arevery, very clever brutes⁶ indeed. The Vermicious Knid can turnitself into any shape it wants. It has no bones. Its body isreally one huge muscle, enormously strong, but very stretchyand squishy, like a mixture of rubber and putty with steelwires inside. Normally it is egg-shaped, but it can just as easilygive itself two legs like a human or four legs like a horse. Itcan become as round as a ball or as long as a kite-string.
From fifty yards away, a fully⁷ grown Vermicious Knid couldstretch out its neck and bite your head off without even gettingup!'

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