by Elise Allen
“Gabby!” Petey whispered excitedly in her ear. “Do you see that? That’s a rack of Metall-O-Bands. A whole rack!”
Gabby didn’t know what he was talking about. She did see something right next to the desk that looked like a spinning display unit she’d expect to see holding sunglasses at a drugstore. This one held what looked like watchband-sized strips in all different colors and designs.
“You mean the f lat things? What are they?”
“F lat things?” Petey echoed incredulously. “Those are the armor suits! The ones I told you about. A gajillion different armor suits!”
He leaped onto Gabby’s face, hugging his arms and legs around her cheeks.
“Think he’d miss one?”
Gabby grabbed the back of his shirt and peeled him off her face, but before she could ask him what the little f lat strips had to do with high-tech robotic suits, the same booming voice she’d heard from the hallway echoed across the room.
“SO?”
It was coming from somewhere far into the room and off to the right, but Gabby couldn’t see the speaker from where she was hidden. She set Petey down and scooted over several feet to the other side of the statue’s platform. She peeked over its edge.
Now she saw the other side of the room. It dropped down two steps to an open space with a few scattered chairs, but the most prominent feature was the entire side wall covered with screens. Gabby couldn’t count how many there were—they were all different sizes and stretched the entire length and width of the wall. She did notice that most of them showed battle scenes. Gabby glimpsed creatures fighting on the ground in exotic worlds with colored rays like the kind she’d seen in the weapons testing area, and she also saw wide views of outer space, with f leets of ships blasting one another and exploding as they raced among the stars.
She barely had time to take those in, because something else gripped her attention right away. In the very center of the wall sat the largest screen of all. It was as tall as Gabby herself, and so long it would have taken up the entire length of Gabby’s kitchen.
On that monitor was Blinzarra, and in a corner of the monitor Gabby saw exactly what Blinzarra was seeing—exactly what Gabby herself could see when she adjusted her position behind the statue platform.
Sharli and Sneakers.
Little three-year-old Sharli was blindfolded. Gabby assumed that was so she wouldn’t use her power to move objects with her mind. Sneakers was on a short leash tied down to a hook on the f loor. A thick leather muzzle was strapped tightly over his snout.
Standing right behind them was what looked to Gabby like a giant bright pink squid, with at least twenty writhing tentacles. Between his long, oblate head and the tentacles he used as legs, he stood about eight feet tall. Two of his tentacles rested firmly on Sneakers and Sharli, while others undulated in the air. Gabby noticed the angry red suckers on their undersides.
Gabby’s blood boiled. She wanted to run and grab Sneakers and Sharli and race out of the room and into the elevator—or better yet into one of the pods to get them off the planet. She wanted to grab something and hurl it at the squid, knocking it out so they’d have time to get away.
But the giant squid wasn’t alone.
In a wide arc around him, outside the range of what the squid was showing Blinzarra on the screen, were three Martians. They all wore thickly armored suits, had face masks covered in tiny nozzles, and while they weren’t holding any weapons Gabby could see, she felt confident that both the armor and the tubes were ready to shoot out any number of lasers, gases, or other brutal projectiles.
On the large screen, Blinzarra looked ashen. Gabby wasn’t surprised. She herself was only Sharli’s babysitter, and the sight of the little girl blindfolded, lip quivering as she tried not to cry while she was held captive by a hideous creature, nearly tore her apart. Yet despite Blinzarra’s terror, her eyes blazed with fury. When she spoke, her voice was firm.
“You won’t get what you want,” she said tightly, “but you will get war.”
“No, no, no!” came a gruff, offscreen voice. Then the camera angle widened to reveal one end of what looked like a very large conference table, with several different alien species seated around it. The one who had spoken, and who presumably panned the camera wider, was another squid-creature. It looked similar to the one in the room with Gabby, except its skin was slightly redder, and it had a bushy mustache in the middle of its face. It stared right into the lens and raged. “You do not represent the planet Esquagon!” Then he spun to Blinzarra, who was seated right next to him. “He does not represent Esquagon.”
Blinzarra stared daggers at the mustached squid. The tendons stood out on her neck. “You say that, but he has my daughter! He took my daughter!”
“And my son!”
A tiny man who looked almost exactly like Petey, except with a goatee, leaped into the shot. He stood on the conference table and moved closer to the camera so he took up the entire frame. “What have you done with Petey, you Esquagonian monster? Where is he? We’ll tear up the universe to find him!”
“Awww,” Petey said. “You hear that? My dad’s gonna tear up the universe to find me.”
“We have your son in a separate location,” the squid-
beast sneered. “He’s safe now, but if you don’t give me back to Blinzarra, I can’t guarantee it will remain the case.”
“He’s lying,” Petey said to Gabby. “He doesn’t have me anywhere. I should tell my dad.”
Petey jumped down from the statue, but Gabby picked him up again before he could run to the screens. “If you do, then the squid-monster will have you,” she whispered gently.
On the screen, Blinzarra seemed to be speaking similarly to Petey’s dad in a similarly soothing manner. She leaned close to the small man, her head larger than his whole body. “Please, Lester,” she said. “I’ll get Petey back along with Sharli and Sneakers. I promise.”
Petey’s dad, Lester, looked at Blinzarra with fury in his eyes. His lips were pursed and his hands balled into fists…but he nodded stoically and walked down the conference table, out of the shot. Blinzarra sat back down, and the squid-creature with the mustache spoke to her urgently.
“Blinzarra, this Esquagonian is acting as a rogue agent,” he said. “Our planetary government did not sanction this kidnapping.”
“You didn’t need to,” Blinzarra said, her voice thrumming with fury. “You knew someone on Esquagon would step up and do it for you. Of course they would—you’ve made sure every Esquagonian hates all Miravlads. So when a ‘rogue agent’ took my baby, you could act innocent, like you came here in good faith, but you did not. I should press this button right now!”
Blinzarra raised her hand over what Gabby now noticed was a large red button near the end of the table, but another creature raced into view and pointed at Blinzarra’s wrist. Blinzarra’s arm stopped short as if it were suddenly made of stone. The creature was vaguely human-shaped but covered in bright orange fur and had a duck beak, big googly eyes, and bunny ears. It looked more like a sports team mascot than any kind of leader, but when it locked eyes with Blinzarra, it was clear that this creature was not to be trif led with.
“I won’t keep you like this against your will, but let’s take a moment to talk before you make any decision you can’t take back.”
Gabby recognized that voice. It was the same young, female, resonant voice she’d heard in her dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream. It was the judge…or someone who sounded exactly like her.
Blinzarra nodded. The orange creature must have released her arm because Blinzarra lowered it, tucking it under the table and away from the button.
“I’ll talk,” she said, “but I guarantee there won’t be peace in the universe as long as these…these…scaphadrills are part of it!”
“Scaphadrills?!” the mustached squid screamed, then he and Blinzarra both stood and shouted at each other. Petey’s dad quickly joined the fray, then more aliens crowded into the shot and screamed across
the table, taking sides and talking on top of one another until nothing Gabby heard made any sense at all.
“Wow,” Petey said. He had climbed up onto the statue to get a better view.
“Petey, what are they talking about?” Gabby asked. “What’s going on over there?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Petey said with a wide grin. “Blinzarra said the S-word! She’s gonna be so mad when she finds out I know. And do you see my dad? He’s hard-core kragphemous! Look at him, swinging off that Esquagonian’s mustache. You tell him, Dad!”
Despite the circumstances, Gabby had to smile. Petey’s dad had leaped onto the squid-alien’s mustache and swung up to the top of his head, where he was now jumping up and down and screaming at the creature. Clearly, Petey had gotten his acrobatics and fearlessness from his father.
“He is pretty kragphemous,” Gabby agreed, “but I meant what’s going on there, with all the aliens on the screen? I thought your dad and Blinzarra were at a P.T.A. meeting.”
“They are,” Petey said. “The Planetary Treaty Association. P.T.A.”
It took a second for that to sink in. When it did, she almost forgot to whisper. “Ohhhhhh! That’s the P.T.A.! That’s why the meeting was so important. But who’s the pink squid? And why did this pink squid bring Sharli and Sneakers to Mars?”
“I dunno why Mars, but the squid probably took Sharli and Sneakers ’cause he’s an Esquagonian. And it’s like Blinzarra said: Esquagonians hate Miravlads. They have for eons. It started when they both discovered the same planet—Blartnok 939—at the same time. They both put settlements there, and they both said it was theirs. They’ve been fighting ever since. You wanna know the big reason Mars has to keep making more and more kragphemous weapons? ’Cause Esquagon and Miravlad keep asking for bigger and cooler things to use against each other.”
Gabby pulled a curl around and tucked it into her mouth, sucking on it as she thought. “Okay…but if this is a Planetary Treaty Association meeting, does that mean they’re going to stop fighting?”
“Uh-huh. It’s a big deal ’cause Esquagon and Miravlad are a couple galaxies away from each other, so when they fight, all these other planets get caught up in it, too. So all these ambassadors from planets around the universe, like my dad, stepped in to help them figure things out, and it worked. They called a cease-fire—all the battles on these other screens have to be from the way Outer Reaches—and said they’d meet on Earth to finish working it all out and sign this huge treaty. But if either Blinzarra or the Esquagonian ambassador presses the big red button, that’s the signal the peace is over. They’ll fight even harder, and more galaxies’ll be drawn in. It’ll spread through the whole universe, but the galaxy that’ll be in the biggest trouble right away is the Milky Way.”
“The Milky Way?” Gabby asked. “That’s my galaxy. Earth’s galaxy.”
“Ex-galaxy,” Petey said. “If the peace doesn’t work out. That’s another reason the P.T.A. meeting’s on Earth. My dad says it’s supposed to help everyone see some of what’s at stake.”
Gabby looked back at the giant screen, where all the ambassadors were shouting and fighting, and her stomach went hollow. She knew it wasn’t right—that war and devastation for any creatures should upset her—but knowing Earth was at stake still made it a million times worse.
Gabby looked at Petey. “Are you sure?”
Petey rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? My mom and dad talk about this alllllll the time.” Then he grinned. “You really think he’s gonna tear up the universe for me?”
“I bet he definitely would,” Gabby said. “But maybe we can get you, Sharli, and Sneakers home safe so he doesn’t have to.”
Petey nodded and went back to watching the fracas on the screen. Gabby watched it, too, but she was scanning the crowd for Edwina. Was she there at the P.T.A. meeting? And if everyone knew Petey, Sneakers, and Sharli were gone, did they know Gabby was gone, too? Maybe the ambassadors wouldn’t know, but Edwina would, right? She always seemed to know where Gabby was and what she was doing. Plus Edwina knew Sharli was in danger—she had warned Gabby about it—so if Edwina saw the video of the Esquagonian with Sharli and Sneakers, that would be a good thing. She’d know her suspicions were right, and she’d know where to come save her.
Gabby frowned as she realized that wasn’t true. The Martians weren’t visible on the video feed. If Edwina saw it, she wouldn’t think the Martians were involved at all, just the Esquagonians. If she were arranging some kind of rescue, she’d arrange it on Esquagon, the wrong planet.
But why were the Martians involved? It didn’t make sense. Gabby twirled a curl around her finger as she thought about it.
“You said the Martians gave weapons to Esquagon and Miravlad,” Gabby whispered to Petey. “So why are they helping an Esquagonian hold Sharli and Sneakers? And why are they keeping it a secret from the P.T.A.?”
Petey shrugged. “Beats me.”
Just then, Sharli and Sneakers’s giant squid-creature kidnapper growled into the camera. “Looks like you have a lot to discuss,” he told the P.T.A. “We’ll leave you to it. Keep this channel open, Blinzarra, but remember, my demands are clear. The Miravlads must vacate Blartnok 939 immediately, and sign a treaty giving all rights to the planet, now and forever, to Esquagon. Do that, or you’ll never see your daughter, or your dog, again.”
Gabby saw Blinzarra turn back to the camera, her face desperate as she cried, “No!” She said more, but Gabby couldn’t hear it. The squid-creature had muted her feed. He’d also turned off his own. Gabby could see the image in the corner—what Blinzarra was seeing on her side—had gone black. Blinzarra kept shouting into the camera for a bit—at least it looked like she was shouting. Petey’s dad was shouting at the camera, too, even as he continued to jump up and down on the Esquagonian ambassador’s head. Then Blinzarra turned back to the Esquagonian ambassador, channeling all her fury toward him. He looked just as livid.
It was not looking good for peace in the universe…or for the future of Earth.
he squid-creature in the room with Gabby turned to the Martians around him. “We’ll let them stew for a while,” he said. “Take the girl and the dog.”
In unison, the three Martians clicked their heels and f lapped their bent arms. Gabby supposed it was a salute, but it looked more like the Chicken Dance. Then one of the Martians unhooked Sneakers’s leash, while another picked up Sharli. Sharli whimpered and struggled until the Martian gave her a rough shake, and Gabby had to force herself not to run out and tackle the metallic beast herself. Sneakers clearly felt the same way. He snarled and bared his teeth through the muzzle. The Martians ignored him, but Sharli quickly quieted, and the Martians moved toward the door. Gabby crouched lower and curled herself farther behind the statue platform so none of them would see her as they left the room.
“C’mon, Petey,” she whispered, patting her shoulder so he’d hop aboard. “Let’s follow them.”
Gabby didn’t feel his weight hopping on her shoulder. In fact, he didn’t respond at all.
“Petey?”
Trying to remain silent, Gabby looked frantically around. She even took off her knapsack and unzipped it slowly, so it wouldn’t make a noise. Petey wasn’t inside. Where was he?
She peeked over the statue platform and scanned the room. What she saw made her heart thunder.
Petey was near the desk. He was climbing on the revolving display case that held the f lat bands—the ones Petey said were the Martian’s robotic suits.
Gabby couldn’t call out. She gestured wildly for him to come back, but he wasn’t looking her way. Probably on purpose.
Then she heard a low, grumbling sigh and saw the giant pink squid-creature lumbering up the two steps into the upper office. His constantly undulating tentacles made sucking and popping sounds as he moved.
If he turned the slightest bit to his right, he’d see Petey.
Petey seemed to realize it, too. He scurried to the back side of the rotating
display case. Gabby couldn’t see him, but she imagined him clinging there, hidden from view. She mentally willed him not to move.
The squid-creature reached the room’s large, curved executive desk. He leaned heavily on it with one tentacle. With another, he reached for the back of his neck…and started peeling away his skin. Gabby’s stomach lurched as a thin, circular f lap of f lesh lifted off his body, bit by bit.
When the circle peeled all the way off, the squid-creature was gone.
Instead, a tiny, sickly, pale green alien stood on the desk. It its right hand was the pink circle, which now looked much more like an acne wipe than actual skin.
Even if Gabby weren’t on another planet, “alien” would be the word she’d automatically use to describe the little creature. In all her time working with A.L.I.E.N., this was the first alien she’d seen that looked like the Earth stereotype. Not only did he have the pale green coloring, but he was also hairless, with enormous black eyes, snake-slits for a nose, and a teeny tiny mouth.
The only difference was that unlike the typical long, thin alien, this one was oddly adorable. It was only a head taller than Petey, with a chubby body, chubby arms and legs that rounded off at the ends with no discernible hands or feet. Its head was perfectly round.
He looked like an alien Pillsbury Doughboy rendered in super-cute Japanese kawaii style.
The alien set the patch on the desk, then rolled out his neck. He yawned, and it was so cute Gabby had to smack a hand over her mouth to stop herself from saying Awwwww out loud.
Then the little guy bounce-walked to the far edge of the table and reached out for the spinning display case.
Petey was on that case. If the alien spun it…
The doughy alien placed one rounded hand to his lips as he ran the other one along the lines of bands. “Hmmm.”
Even the little alien’s voice was adorably sweet and high-pitched. Despite her fears, Gabby had to fight the urge to run out and hug him.