by Wendy Mass
“No one?” Pockets replies.
“Just you,” Agent Zell confirms.
I pull on Dad’s sleeve and whisper, “Does that mean Bubble Girl ran away after all?” I feel a little bad for referring to her out loud as Bubble Girl. I mean, I’m sure she has a name.
“I suppose it does,” Dad agreed. “Which means she could be anywhere.”
“Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Agent Zell asks Pockets as he eyes him up and down.
“One more question for you,” Pockets says. “I heard your leader, Sebastian, has escaped capture. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”
I lean forward, awaiting Zell’s reply. I’d like to see Sebastian again. Meeting someone who looks just like you is very strange.
But Zell only laughs. “The leader of B.U.R.P. is very secretive. I am certainly not privy to his whereabouts. Now, let’s get down to business, shall we? Do you have any special skills that would help you thrive in the B.U.R.P. organization? Lock picking, perhaps? Or the ability to divide yourself in half and be in two places at once?”
Instead of answering, Pockets says, “Aren’t you afraid that handing out flyers to strangers might be dangerous? How do you know you won’t run into an ISF agent?”
Zell snorts. “All the way out here on Earth? They couldn’t be bothered to make the trip.”
Pockets whips out his badge and a pair of handcuffs. “That’s what I thought about you. Guess we were both wrong.”
Before Agent Zell can move, Pockets springs forward and lands behind him. He’s about to snap on the handcuffs when Zell suddenly swells up to twice his size! Maybe he’s the same species as the aliens on the bus whose heads kept changing size. His own head now grazes the ceiling!
Fortunately, Pockets is no stranger to last-minute surprises. He reaches into a pocket and pulls out what looks like a wad of chewed gum. Then he climbs right up Zell’s body like it’s a tree! Zell yelps and flails around to dislodge Pockets but only succeeds in knocking dirt off the ceiling and getting it in his eyes.
Pockets slaps the gum right on the back of Zell’s neck. Within seconds, Zell is back to normal size, the handcuffs are on Zell’s wrists, and Pockets is leading him to the stairs.
Zell glares when he finally notices the rest of us, then sneers at Pockets. “You’re making a big mistake. No Earth jail will hold me.” He wiggles his fingers. “I already erased my fingerprints, so you’ll never pin any crimes on me. The neutralizer in that chewing gum will last only ten minutes, and you can’t get me off the planet in that time.”
“Maybe I can’t,” Pockets agrees. “But I know someone who can.”
“He does?” I whisper to Dad as we climb back up after them. Well, Pockets is climbing. Zell is being pulled.
“I think he’s bluffing,” Dad whispers back. “Trying to psych him out.”
“No, I’m not,” Pockets says.
I always forget that super hearing of his!
“That’s right, he’s not,” another voice echoes from above.
We step out into the bright sun. “Feemus!” I shout, throwing my arms around the president of Pockets’ fan club. “What are you doing here?”
“How’d you land in the middle of a solar storm?” Dad asks.
The little red alien shrugs. “For Pockets I’ll risk frying my electrical system.”
“And?”
“Yeah, it’s fried,” Feemus says. He looks at Pockets adoringly. “But it was worth it. And I have a backup.”
Pockets rolls his eyes and pushes Zell toward Feemus. “You know the drill.”
Feemus nods. “I do indeed, oh fearless leader, oh wondrous example of amaze-i-tude.”
“I don’t think that word is real,” Toe sings, “but I know just how you feel. The Morningstars, too, have been brave and true.”
Feemus grunts and barely glances at us. I’m used to that from him. Never was there a more loyal president of anyone’s fan club than Feemus. Pockets is a lucky cat. Even though he’ll rarely give Feemus any credit. Having a fan club just embarrasses him too much.
Feemus freezes Agent Zell and tosses him into his little round spaceship, which he’s hidden behind a bush. “His memory will be wiped,” Feemus assures us. “Can’t have a B.U.R.P. agent knowing where the greatest ISF agent who ever traveled the universe lives!”
Pockets opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it and gives a curt nod. That’s as close to a thank-you as Feemus is likely to get. Pockets fishes the plastic cup out of his pocket, slips it into a plastic bag, and tosses it to Feemus. “Give this to the lab at ISF headquarters. They can analyze his prints and track down his previous crimes.”
I shake my head in awe of Pockets’ quick thinking in keeping that cup. If Agent Zell weren’t frozen right now, I bet he’d be fuming.
Feemus salutes Pockets, and zips back into space.
We quickly continue checking the neighborhood for the girl. “Pockets, why can Feemus still freeze people and wipe their memories if no alien gadgets are supposed to work?”
“We all have inner gifts that nothing—not B.U.R.P. or a solar storm or time or distance from our loved ones—can take away,” Pockets explains. “Like your dad’s skill at flying space taxis, or yours at navigating, or how you help solve cases by seeing things that no one else sees.”
I feel my cheeks redden under his praise. Pockets usually never says stuff like that. He definitely hasn’t been himself these last few days. “Penny has gifts, too,” I say. “Everyone likes her because she’s so kind and friendly. I bet aliens other than you and Toe would like her, too, if she ever gets to meet them. But I know we’re taking that slow.”
“No need to take it slow,” Toe sings, stepping between us. “The truth she does already know.”
Dad stops when he hears that. “What do you mean?”
Toe points to a small playground across the street. Sitting on opposite ends of a seesaw are Penny and one large blue bubble with an alien girl inside.
Chapter Nine:
Hello and Good-bye
“How?” Pockets asks Mom when we reach them. “When?”
“Penny had a lot of questions about Pockets,” Mom says, “so I tried to find you. You didn’t answer the walkie-talkie.”
“We were underground,” Dad explains. “It was very cool. I’ll have to take you sometime now that it’s free of B.U.R.P. agents.”
Mom raises an eyebrow, likely wondering how being underground could be cool (although it was ten degrees cooler down there!). “Anyway, we stopped to swing for a few minutes, until Penny jumped off and said, ‘Someone else is here.’ I didn’t see anyone, but sure enough, from up in the tree house came a kind of ripping sound. We went to check it out and found the missing alien. Unless there’s another alien in a pink T-shirt inside a blue bubble.”
“Nope, she’s the only one,” Pockets confirms.
“I asked the girl about the meeting and she didn’t know what I was talking about. She wasn’t able to read that flyer.”
Pockets’ ears twitch. “Then why did she leave Simon’s house?”
Mom smiles proudly at Penny. “I think she just needed a friend.”
“What was the ripping sound you heard earlier?” Dad asks.
Pockets points to an empty roll of duct tape on the ground, and then up to the bubble. Now that we’re so close, I can see a silver X shape on the inside of the bubble. She DID spring a leak! Duct tape really CAN fix anything!
Pockets runs over. “Are you all right?” he asks.
The girl finally notices us and bounces right off the seesaw. She says something to him and Pockets nods. “I promise you won’t be stuck here much longer,” he assures her. I’m not sure how he can say that with any confidence.
She nods gratefully, and then she and Penny go running off to the slide. (Well, Penny runs. Bubble Girl rolls.) Pockets turns back to us. “She cracked her bubble on her way out of Simon’s. Earth’s air is slowly causing her some, er, troublin
g side effects.”
“Oh, no!” I cry out. “Is she going to be okay?”
“Apparently the moisture in the air is making her hair frizzy,” he says with a noticeable roll of his eyes. “So yes, I think she’ll live.”
We watch Penny and Bubble Girl as they laugh and slide and Bubble Girl gives Penny a ride on top of her bubble. Pockets checks his watch, then looks behind me and frowns.
We turn around and watch, mouths open, as Feemus climbs back out of his tiny spaceship!
I look from Pockets to Feemus to the spaceship and back again. “But how did he…? When did he…?” Now I sound like Pockets when he was on the phone this morning! I collect myself enough to ask Feemus, “Where’s Agent Zell?”
“I delivered him to ISF headquarters, dropped off the cup as instructed, retrofitted my ship so the nav won’t be dependent on the satellites anymore, and returned.” Feemus shrugs like it’s no big deal that he only left ten minutes ago.
Dad is still clearly confused, too. “I don’t get it.”
“Remember Feemus can play around with time and memory,” Pockets says, a little exasperated. “It only feels like ten minutes. And now he will escort the girl back to her planet.”
I guess he knew Bubble Girl would leave soon after all. I can’t help peeking into the ship to make sure that the B.U.R.P. agent is really gone. Yup, he’s gone. But in his place are Pockets’ suitcase and boxes, piled up in the middle of the ship! I whirl back around, suddenly fearing that Bubble Girl isn’t the only one leaving the planet. “Why does Feemus have those?”
Pockets closes his eyes for a long minute. I almost think he’s fallen asleep! When he opens them, they’re red. I start to get nervous.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he begins, and my pulse quickens even more. “Since the capture of the Galactic, crime in the universe has been at an all-time low. Father has called me back to Friskopolus. He feels my time is not well spent here on Earth in between the now-rare missions, and I could be useful in studying the Galactic and searching for Sebastian.”
So that’s why he’s been acting so secretive and sad. I want to argue. I want to point out that we DO need him here, that he just captured a B.U.R.P. agent, so clearly crime is not totally gone. The head of B.U.R.P. is probably very good at hiding. It could take Pockets months to find him. Or years! I want to tell Pockets that he is my best friend, and what about Penny? She’ll be crushed if he leaves, especially now that she knows he can talk.
But how can I make him feel bad? He has an important job to do. We knew we wouldn’t get to keep him here with us forever. So instead of saying anything, I just run up and hug him and don’t let go.
As though sensing the mood has changed, Penny stops sliding and runs over. She takes one look at the luggage and me hugging Pockets and bursts into tears. Instead of running to Pockets, though, she runs to Mom, who picks her up and holds her.
“You and your father are still ISF deputies,” Pockets says, patting my back awkwardly with his paws. “We shall meet again.”
I reluctantly let go and he turns to Penny. He opens one paw to reveal the plastic four-leaf clover she gave him for luck on our last mission. “I will treasure this forever,” he tells her, tucking it into a chest pocket and patting it lovingly. Penny and I cry harder.
Finally Penny gives Bubble Girl a hug good-bye, which looks funny because of the bubble between them, but I’m not feeling much like laughing. Then Bubble Girl rolls into the spaceship, followed by Feemus and then Pockets.
Me and Mom and Penny and Dad watch as the tiny spaceship lifts off the ground and zips back into the sky. In the blink of an eye, Pockets is gone.
The solar storm lasts two more days. With the flying ban lifted, we can finally get back to work, and that means getting Toe back home. Having him around has made Pockets’ absence a little easier to bear. Just a little. Penny couldn’t sleep without Pockets at the foot of her bed, so I slept there instead.
Dad, Toe, and I climb into the taxi. Penny stands on her tiptoes and leans in through the window. She drops three brown-bag lunches in my lap and says, “Don’t forget to eat.”
Mom has to stifle a laugh. Penny has taken over her job!
It’s my first time back in the taxi since Pockets left, and I keep glancing in the backseat for him. Even though he didn’t always come along on Dad’s day jobs, I still always felt him nearby. But now even the clumps of fur he left behind everywhere are gone from the seats. All the taxis were cleaned and vacuumed during the grounding, since the space taxi repairmen didn’t have anything else to do.
As I root around on the floor for the tube with my space map in it, my hand closes on a tiny disc, not much bigger than a button. I lift it up and look closely at it. The words PRESS HERE are etched across the center. Unsure what to make of it, I press as instructed. At first only static comes through a tiny speaker in the center of the disc, and I figure whatever it is, it’s broken. But then the static clears up.
“Hello, Archie,” a boy’s voice says. “I believe I know why we look so much alike. Meet me if you dare. Bring the cat.”
At any other time, hearing the leader of B.U.R.P.’s voice in our taxi would make me jump out of my seat. But I’m too excited to be scared. I turn to Dad and beam. “Sebastian wants me to bring the cat!”
Dad grins back. “Looks like the crime-fighting team of Morningstar, Morningstar, and Pockets the cat will soon be back together!”
We high-five and strap ourselves in. “Maybe Penny can come along.”
“Not sure how your mom would feel about that,” Dad replies, revving the engine. “Ready for takeoff?”
I open my map. “Always.”
We begin our climb into the wide, blue sky. And in the backseat, Toe begins to hum.
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Three Science Facts to Impress Your Friends and Teachers
1. Solar activity. In this adventure, a massive solar flare disables almost all electronic and communication devices. Solar flares are explosions of energy on the sun that launch gases, plasma, and radiation like gamma rays and X-rays into the sun’s atmosphere that can reach far into space toward Earth. The one in this story is an extreme example of an X-class flare, the biggest class of solar flare. These solar flares have been known to shut down communications around the world and are followed by intense solar storms.
2. The higher in orbit a satellite is stationed, the more likely it is to be damaged by a solar flare. A satellite is anything that orbits a planet or star, like our moon is a satellite of Earth. Humans have put hundreds of man-made satellites into Earth’s orbit for different reasons. These satellites are used to study the Earth and outer space, provide information on weather, enable navigation systems that help us reach our destinations, and allow us to communicate over vast distances.
3. Elements in our atmosphere. When life on Earth was first developing, tiny creatures in the water and then plants gave off oxygen that filled the air. Humans need oxygen to survive, but on Bubble Girl’s planet, inhabitants are allergic to it. When scientists look for planets that may have life, they use instruments that tell us about the atmosphere there. If we find that the atmosphere has oxygen, then there might be plant life. And where there’s plant life… maybe there are people! Or as we would refer to them on Earth, aliens!
WENDY MASS has written lots of books for kids, including the New York Times bestselling Candymakers series, Every Soul a Star, and Pi in the Sky. MICHAEL BRAWER is a teacher who drives space taxis on the side. They live in New Jersey with their two kids, two cats, and one puppy, none of whom have left the solar system.
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Wendy Mass, Space Taxi--Aliens on Earth