by Elise Allen
She reached up to her shoulder and grabbed him, then hugged him to her cheek.
“Aw, come on!” he complained. “You’re squishing my Pop-Tart.”
He was right. He held a large corner of toaster pastry in his hand, but most of it was crumbling away. He took another bite anyway. “It’s good, but I like the ones with frosting better.”
“How did you get that?” Gabby asked. “Were you in my bag? How did you get in my bag? Where are Sharli and Sneakers? What—”
Her next question was cut off when a wide circle of orange hit the ground next to them. Instantly, the red dirt disappeared, replaced by bubbling tar. Gabby screamed, pinwheeled her arms, and dove forward, arms outstretched, holding Petey so they wouldn’t fall in.
“What just happened?!” Gabby wailed.
“So cool,” Petey said, taking another bite of Pop-Tart. “Weapons on Mars do everything. We should probably take cover, though.”
“You think?!”
Gabby scrambled to her feet and ran from the bubbling tar pit, then looked around. The nearest place to hide was a group of boulders: five or six giant, bulbous stones stuck together like a tower of chewed-up gum. She dove behind them, just as a loud hum filled the air, and the ground where she’d just been standing collapsed in on itself. She climbed the rock closest to her and looked down at the wreckage. The ground had become a bottomless pit.
“Mega-low-frequency implosion!” Petey cheered. “Awesome!”
“No!” Gabby shot back. “Not awesome. This place is horrible. Are Sneakers and Sharli here?”
“Not here-here, but yeah, on Mars. They’re with the Martians,” Petey replied. “The other kinds of Martians. The real ones—the ones who gave the Earth-Mars its name.”
“I don’t care which Martians,” Gabby said. “They’re the Martians who have Sneakers and Sharli, on a planet that’s a war zone!”
“Okay, time out,” Petey said. “Mars is not a war zone. It’s, like, the most advanced planet ever. They make the most cutting-edge weapons in the universe. It’s awesome!”
Another explosion sounded and the ground shook.
Petey pumped his fist. “Yes!”
Gabby couldn’t believe it. She put him on an outcropping of the rock so she could look him in the eye.
“Petey, this isn’t awesome,” she said gently. “I guarantee these explosions are hurting a lot of Martians.”
Petey made a buzzing noise like she’d gotten an answer wrong on a quiz show. “Martians aren’t getting hurt,” he said. “I told you, this is a testing area. No one’s supposed to be here, so no one’s getting hurt.”
“If no one’s supposed to be here, how come there was a Holographic Acclimation Booth?!”
“A Mobile Holographic Acclimation Booth. The mobile ones pop up wherever they’re needed. And it’s like the Martian said—you rode the tail end of the purple portal wave, so your aim was off. You ended up here, so a mobile booth showed up to catch you. Now the stationary booths are different—”
Petey’s voice cut off as the rock formation he stood on glowed bright yellow, then vanished. Petey plummeted. Gabby dropped to her knees and caught him a second before he hit the ground.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He grinned. “Disintegrator Ray! Mega awesome!”
“Not mega awesome!” Gabby insisted. “We have to get out of here or we will get seriously hurt!”
Petey looked up at her, and for the first time it seemed to sink in that they weren’t just checking out a testing area, they were actually in the line of fire.
“Oh yeah,” he said, nowhere near as bothered as Gabby thought he should be. “We should go, then.” He hopped onto her jacket and shimmied up until he was back on her shoulder. “Run that way. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
Gabby didn’t stop to question. She ran. Then she asked between panting breaths, “How do you know the way out?”
“Coolest school field trip ever,” he said. “Plus, I have the Mars VR Tour. My friends from home and I use it to hang out on Mars all the time. I’ll show it to you when we get back.”
Gabby didn’t even want to think about going back until she had Sharli and Sneakers. Once she did, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t want to go anywhere near Mars again—either Mars—even in virtual reality.
“To the left,” Petey said. “That shimmery spot on the big rock—the one that looks like a plarquoot.”
Gabby had no idea what a plarquoot was, but given that the rock was at least forty feet tall and looked like a hulking beast with spikes all over its body, Gabby hoped she never met one in real life. The only part of the rock that wasn’t terrifying was the shimmering area on what Gabby imagined would be the plarquoot’s leg. It was a smaller area than the shimmering portal she walked through to get out of the Mobile Holographic Acclimation Booth—it only came up to her knees—but it still looked the same. Gabby felt certain Petey was right and it would lead them out of this place.
“Whooo!” Petey crowed. “Faster, Gabby!”
Gabby was running as fast as she could, but she managed to find one last gear. The hot air rasped in her throat and her legs ached.
She was almost there. Just a little farther.
Then a high whine rang through the air and the ground under Gabby turned to ice. She slammed down and slid on her stomach.
She couldn’t feel Petey on her shoulder anymore. “Petey?!” she cried. “Are you there?”
Gabby felt tugging on her curls as Petey settled onto the back of her neck. “Freeze-O-Later ray! Aweeeeessssooooome!”
He was still whooping when Gabby slid into the shimmery spot on the plarquoot-shaped rock. She squeezed her eyes closed, afraid of what she might find on the other side.
abby kept sliding. Was there ice on the other side of the portal, too?
She opened her eyes and saw she was belly-down on burgundy-colored marble tiles. Then she lifted her head and came face-to-face with what she could only describe as a giant cockroach. Gabby shuddered, and the cockroach gave her the stink eye before it harrumphed and walked away.
That’s when Gabby noticed it was wearing a business suit.
“So what do we do now?” Petey said. He had slid off the back of Gabby’s neck and now stood in front of her face. He reached out for one of her curls, pulled it, and let it go. “Boi-oi-oi-oi-oing!”
Gabby quickly sat up and shrugged off her knapsack. She opened it and nodded inside. “You should get in and hide,” she said softly.
Petey laughed out loud. “Why? Look around.”
Gabby looked.
It seemed like she was in a very tall, very posh lobby. Couches, plush chairs, and other oddly shaped upholstered items lined the walls, but not only on the f loor. The seating stretched up as high as Gabby could see, with all kinds of winged or otherwise airborne creatures zipping around before resting on them. Petey was right; he was far from unusual here. Gabby had been an alien babysitter for almost a year now; she’d thought she’d seen a lot, but the breadth of species in front of her was impossible to fully take in. Sure, she saw large slug-creatures, and blobs of ooze…those were normal to her by now. But she also saw an almost-featureless stone slab the size of a glacier munching on what looked like an alien hamburger, a bat-like creature with a zombie head and a spiked tail, and then something she thought was a neon-yellow fuzzy beanbag sprouted two large furry hands and used them to walk out of the room. Even the humanoid creatures had different numbers of limbs, heads, and facial features from what Gabby was used to, and in configurations she’d never imagined outside a post-horror-movie-marathon fever dream.
“We really are on another planet, aren’t we?” Gabby said. She watched a headless man whose six-eyed face was on his chest play some kind of card game with what looked like a sentient sweater. “Are they all Martians?”
“Here?” Petey said. “None of ’em. This is a visitor center. Tourists hang out here if they just want a break or if they’re waiting for a guide or somet
hing. Like there—look!”
Petey pointed, and Gabby saw a sleek silver metallic humanoid with black pin-striping stride into the area. Much like the robot Gabby met in the Mobile Holographic Acclimation Pod, this one looked like steel but moved with f lowing grace. Unlike the one from the Mobile Holographic Acclimation Pod, this one didn’t have a metallic skull head. Its metallic head was shaped like a blooming f lower. “Tour group from Glarbellia Five, this way!” she said.
At least, Gabby thought the female voice came from the robot—its f lowery visage didn’t move in the slightest.
As a group of giant furry squid-creatures scurried toward the f lower-faced woman, Gabby turned back to Petey. “Are all Martians robots?”
Petey squinched his face like she’d just emanated a nasty odor. “They’re not robots. They have wearable tech suits. Totally customized, with climate control, water filtration systems, Multi-Meganet access…and you can trick ’em out with anything, like ultra-speed, or blaster repellent, or a jet pack and wings. I totally asked Micro Claus to give me one last year, but I only got their VR sales kit, and a note in my stocking that said the cheapest one cost the same as the combined GDP of all the planets in the Thraxion Solar System. But I also got an RC drone, so that was cool.”
Gabby had questions, but she didn’t ask them because suddenly everything around her disappeared. Instead she saw a building—a tall, thin tower that looked like it was made of red mercury. Its metal seemed to move and slide around, even though the tower never changed shape. It rose high into the sky in one skinny line, except for three bulbous donuts, each one a darker shade of red than the one beneath it. At the top of the tower sat the biggest donut of all—a huge, bright red umbrella-saucer, far wider than anything beneath it.
As quickly as it came, the image disappeared.
Gabby snatched Petey up in her hands. “I know where Sneakers is! He showed me!”
She described exactly what she’d seen, and Petey nodded. “Sure, I know where that is. It’s in Plenopsis. It’s on the other side of the planet.”
Gabby’s jaw dropped. “The other side of the planet? Please tell me Mars is really, really small compared to Earth.”
“I’ll tell you that if you want, but it’s not true.” Then he grinned. “Wanna know how big Mars is?”
“How big?”
“Four times the size of Earth.” Petey grinned wider. “That’s the same size as Uranus.”
Petey managed to keep a straight face for exactly two seconds after that. Then he laughed so hard he fell on the f loor. Despite their situation, watching him was so funny that Gabby had to bite her cheeks to keep from joining in.
“Petey—”
“Get it?!”
“I get it,” Gabby assured him, “but if Mars is that big, how do we get to Plenopsis? Won’t it take days?”
Petey was still laughing, though it started to subside. “You mean because the planet’s as big as—”
“I get it!” Gabby said. “But seriously, how do we get to Sneakers and Sharli?”
Petey sat up and caught his breath. “Easy,” he said. “Aeroway system. We’ll be there in no time. Come on.”
He walked out like he owned the planet. Gabby quickly got up, shrugged on her purple knapsack, and followed him. He wasn’t the only tiny being in the Visitor Center, and Gabby had to watch her feet to make sure she didn’t step on or bump into anyone else, like the group of guinea pig creatures who stood on their back legs and all wore matching shirts as if they might have been a school group. Gabby got so distracted watching them that she smacked right into someone who resembled a walking pine tree. The tree was exactly Gabby’s height, and it took them so long to do that dance where they kept stepping into each other’s path that she almost lost sight of Petey. She found him just as he was leaving the Visitor Center, and she ran out after him.
Gabby blinked and shielded her eyes. It was bright out, and when she gazed up, she understood why. The sun took up most of the sky. Yet while this sun was much bigger and brighter than Earth’s, it seemed cooler. Her face tingled in the chill, and she was glad she had her purple puffer jacket.
The Visitor Center had emptied onto a city street, and while it was very different from any city street Gabby had ever experienced, it was just familiar enough for her to recognize. Buildings rose on either side, pedestrians clogged the walkways, and countless video billboards hawked all kinds of products.
There were still differences, though. Unlike on Earth, the giant video billboards weren’t mounted on anything; they f loated in midair. Also unlike on Earth, everything in this city was built not only for those who traveled on foot—or paw, or wheel, or oozy pseudopod—but also those who f lew, or f loated, or otherwise got around through the air. Buildings had what looked like main entrances with awnings and fancy doorways on several levels, and while she and Petey walked, scores of creatures f lew above them. It seemed like they traveled in well-organized tiers, even though Gabby couldn’t tell what separated one row from another.
While those in the air had the benefit of f light, it also looked like they had less space in which to maneuver. They stayed reasonably close to the buildings, as if they were on sidewalks, to avoid a constant stream of what had to be vehicles—blurs that whizzed through the air so quickly that Gabby saw them only as a wild skein of contrail streaks in red, blue, or orange. Unlike planes or cars on Earth, these made no sound at all. If Gabby didn’t see them, she wouldn’t even know they were there. They zipped through without ever stopping for cross-traffic; f lyers who wanted to cross the air-street went to a higher altitude. Gabby could see them against the sky like a layer of tiny gnats.
Since all the vehicles zipped through the sky, the actual street was wide open and probably would have been pleasant to walk around if it wasn’t so crammed with bodies. Petey was tiny and could zip between other creatures’ legs. Gabby had to dodge and dart to keep up, which wasn’t easy when she had to keep her eyes locked on Petey so she wouldn’t lose him. That was probably for the best; it stopped her from getting distracted by the wide variety of aliens in her path.
What remained distracting were the mini-drones—little screens the size of a hand-held tablet computer that whizzed through the air and kept pace with different pedestrians, showing them commercials. Thanks to the universal translator the Martian had painted on the back of her neck, Gabby understood the drone nearest to her and could tell the ads were directed specifically toward her. “Earthling” came up frequently, as did “visiting” and the phrase “not that Mars.” Something was definitely lost in translation, though, since she was fairly sure “pimple trampoline stew” was nothing she’d ever want.
Petey slipped into another school group—this one consisting of fire hydrant–sized walking balls of ragmop-fur, the tallest one carrying a sign that read FOLLOW ME—but he never came out the other side. Gabby’s heart sped up and her skin prickled. Had she lost him? She spun around but saw only the wild, unfamiliar sights of this new planet. It was dizzying. She unzipped her jacket and grabbed her dad’s dog tags through her shirt. She needed the pressure of their hard edges pushing into her skin to keep her from passing out.
For the first time ever in her life, she felt completely lost and alone.
Is this what it was like for the aliens she babysat on Earth?
“Hah!” Petey cried as he landed on top of Gabby’s mini-drone. “You are slow!”
“Petey!” Gabby almost sobbed with relief. “I thought I’d lost you. Please stay close, okay? Don’t run off.”
Petey leaped off the mini-drone and onto Gabby’s sleeve. He shimmied back up to her shoulder. “Why would I run off? We’re here. We’re in the Aeroway loading dock. Look down.”
Gabby did and saw she was standing just inside the edge of a thick red rectangle painted on the ground. The rectangle was about the size of a small moving van, and crowded with other humanoids, walking carpets, and other extras from the Star Wars cantina scene. Above them, f lying creatures
hovered at different levels in the same rectangular area.
Then a long shadow slid into the sky above them all. As Gabby stared at it, curious, a rectangle about the size of the one on which Gabby was standing glowed bright red, and the red beam extended down, covering first the f lying creatures, and then everyone in the rectangle on the ground in that same glow. The light felt hot on her skin, and the heat quickly intensified until she was sure she might burst into f lames…
…and the next thing she knew she was sitting on an orange molded plastic bench, facing another bench just like it. All the creatures who had been with her in the rectangle of light sat on the benches as well, and they all seemed perfectly comfortable, lost in their own thoughts as they gazed into space, pulled out an electronic device, or—in the case of a six-legged mauve ogre-like creature—clipped their nails. She even saw one decidedly human-looking passenger pull out a New York Times.
Gabby heard something squeak and looked up. Petey must have climbed onto her head and jumped, because he was now sitting in one of the many hand straps that hung from a metal pole running around the perimeter of the moving vehicle. He pumped his legs and moved the hand strap like a swing.
“Are we in a subway?” Gabby asked.
“Aeroway,” Petey said, nodding to the opposite window, through which Gabby could indeed see they were up in the air, “but yeah, same idea. Except we’re moving fast enough to go all the way around the planet in an hour.”
Across the car, the human with the newspaper suddenly glowed bright red and disappeared. Gabby jumped and yelped out loud. Several passengers gave her dirty looks before they settled back into what they were doing. Petey took a f lying leap off the swing and landed on her head, then grabbed a curl and dove forward, dangling upside down in front of her face.
“Wow, freak out much?” he asked.
“Ow!” Gabby said, wincing. “Okay, you really need to stop that. And I’m not freaking out for no reason. That guy just disappeared!”
Yet even as she said it, four other creatures from around the car also glowed bright red and disappeared, while a whole cluster of new creatures popped into the car in a similar burst of color. Gabby realized what must be happening before Petey even explained it.