“You don’t have to take your entire wardrobe,” her mother called. “Mr. Blimpton says it will only be for a few days.”
“Give me a break, Mom!” she yelled back. “I’ve never been to Washington before. I’ve got to plan things out.”
Karen felt a flush of guilt. She didn’t like lying to her parents, but with that NASA guy standing there, what could she do? Grabbing up a piece of Princess of Light notepaper, she scribbled, “Dear Mom and Dad, Stinker returned the shuttle but came here because he needs our help for a few days. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Stinker’s a friend. Love, Karen.”
Placing the note on her pillow, she slipped out her bedroom door, but instead of going down the stairs she slung on her pack and crept along the hall to the narrow back stairs leading down to the kitchen. No one was about, and she could hear muffled voices coming from the front porch. She had her hand on the knob of the back door when she stopped, tiptoed to a cupboard, and grabbed a bag of peanut butter cookies and a jar of chunky peanut butter. Stuffing these into her pack, she crept outside.
The screen door had just shut behind her when she heard her mother’s voice from the front of the house.
“Sancho, no! Come here, Sancho! Good boy!” Her voice lowered. “Did you see that stupid dog? Playing with a skunk! The poor thing thinks every skunk is . . . that one he made friends with.”
As Karen quietly headed away from the house, she heard Mr. Blimpton. “A skunk? Maybe it’s the skunk. That alien thing!”
She was too far away to hear words, but Karen caught the tone of her father’s reply, his let’s-not-let-our-imaginations-run-away-with-us tone. Giggling, she ran full speed for the woods, only slowing once she reached the sycamore grove. Around her, tall, white tree trunks glimmered palely in the light of the half-moon.
Jonathan had turned down his parents’ offer to help him pack, and had rushed upstairs to his room. There he dumped several pocket video games out of a canvas bag and threw in a change of clothes. Now what? He knew his parents would be waiting with hugs and advice near the foot of the stairs. And there wasn’t another way down. But what about the emergency escape route he’d planned in case of fire?
He hurried down the hall to the bathroom and threw open the window. Pulling some crumpled paper and a pencil stub from his pocket, he scribbled a note to his parents and stuck it onto the mirror with toothpaste. Then he stood on the toilet and pushed his bag through the window to the short, sloping roof outside. Taking a deep breath, he hoisted himself up and started wriggling out.
The drainpipe, now that he was actually clutching it, felt a lot flimsier than he’d imagined. And the ground looked a lot farther away.
Pretend there’s a raging fire behind you, he told himself. Looping the bag handles over one arm, he pushed his glasses firmly back, then gripped the pipe and swung his feet free of the window. The metal creaked alarmingly. The pipe shuddered but held.
Awkwardly, he began climbing down, sure he was making enough noise to alert everyone. His feet clunked against the pipe, and the metal bands holding it to the house screeched in protest. He tried swinging around to the other side. Suddenly, one of the bands popped loose, then another. He scrambled faster, but the top of the pipe buckled outward. There was another screeching pop, and the whole pipe peeled away from the wall. In seeming slow motion it lowered him toward the ground. He tried to keep his grip but his feet flailed loose. Suddenly his hands slipped. He was falling.
5
Not Your Average Trip
With a jarring crash, Jonathan landed on the card table where his mother had set out baby tomato plants. He heard surprised voices from inside but didn’t stay to listen. Scrambling up from the litter of dirt, pots, and little green vines, he straightened his glasses, then charged toward the wood. The sound of his feet pounding over the ground made it hard to be sure if someone was calling his name. But someone was yelling something. Too bad he didn’t have time to stop and find out what.
Bursting at last into the moonlit grove, Jonathan stumbled to a halt. There it was, the real thing. He could hardly believe it. A real spaceship.
The milky light filtering through the branches washed over the sleek silvery oval crouching on the grass. The only sound in the grove was the steady chirping of insects.
Scarcely daring to breathe in case it vanished, Jonathan stepped forward. His eager glance took in the slanting fin stretching down the back, and the two narrow wings tapering out from the sides. The nose was blunt like the head of a snake. The whole thing was hardly bigger than a large car.
“Shake a leg, Jonathan,” Stinker’s voice said in his head. “I don’t think we made a very clean getaway.”
Jonathan shook himself. Over the wind-rustling leaves he could hear voices. He darted toward the dark patch in the ship’s side and scrambled up a short ramp into the cabin. No sooner was he inside than the door closed after him and a soft light came on in the small, excitingly alien space.
Karen was already there, looking as thrilled as he felt. Grinning, she said to Stinker, “So where are we going?”
Stinker sat in a small bucket seat by a bank of controls. “Time enough for that later,” he answered. “Right now we’d better just go.”
He began working the controls. First, the front end of the cabin shimmered and became as clear as glass. Next, a faint ripple of sound and motion swept through the ship. For a second, they could see the trees and bushes of the familiar woods. Then the branches and leaves seemed to come at them, slide past them, and suddenly there was nothing but dark sky and stars.
“We’ve taken off!” Jonathan gasped. “Just like that!”
“Look!” Karen said, pointing toward the clear wall of the ship as it banked into a wide curve. Below, they could see farm fields, trees, and the lights of two houses separated by a gray strip of road. They could see tiny figures standing on the asphalt, five people and a dog.
“I bet they’re looking up at us,” Karen whispered. Then she giggled. “A real UFO.”
Stinker set the ship to hover, then swiveled around in his seat. “All right, to business. We’re on our way, but the question is, where?”
“You expect us to know?” Jonathan asked.
“You’re the natives. Think. Where can I find a large number of unusual Earth things in one place? I don’t have time to go traipsing all over the planet.”
“Sounds like you need a museum,” Karen suggested. “But there are trillions of museums here. Every country has bunches of them.”
“So where’s the biggest and best one?”
“There’s a big museum in London,” Karen offered. “My grandparents went there once. And what’s that one in Paris where they keep all those famous paintings? The Louvre.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Hey, no, what we want is the Smithsonian. That’s really a bunch of museums all near each other. They’ve got space stuff, and natural history, and everything. We have a subscription to their magazine.”
“Sounds good,” Stinker said, “but where is it?”
“In Washington, D.C.,” Jonathan answered.
“Hey, is that a good idea?” Karen asked. “That’s where those NASA guys want us to go.”
“Then that’s the last place they’ll expect to find you.” Stinker chuckled, spinning back to the controls. “Let’s go!”
Abruptly, the farm scene dropped away. The moonlit countryside slid silently beneath them.
Once they could tear their eyes away from the view, the two humans looked around the little cabin. There were several other bucket seats like Stinker’s but without the controls. The ceiling couldn’t have been much over six feet high, and along the back wall were various instruments and gauges. Jonathan put his hand on the smooth portions of wall and felt it trembling slightly.
“Is the engine in the back?” he asked, thinking of all the spaceship models he’d drawn or built over the years.
“Yes. It’s a lot more compact than the one in that cheap ship I had last time. This is a top-of-the-
line Sylon scout ship. We make all sizes to fit whatever bodies our people might be using. But usually we don’t choose bodies much smaller than this one,” he said, patting his plump black tummy. “When you’re in a body this size, a lot of big lumbering species give you a hard time.”
“Well, I’m glad you stuck with it,” Karen said. “It suits you.” After another moment, watching the dark landscape sweeping beneath them, she said, “Stinker, I hope you have some idea where we’re going, because all I know is that Washington is somewhere in the East.”
“Hey, remember I read that whole encyclopedia of yours? It had a bunch of maps in it. But I’ve got to admit they were kind of general. We can find the city all right, but I’m not sure where to go once we’re there.”
“No sweat,” Jonathan said, while watching the rise and fall of some mysterious dials. “We’ll just stop off at a corner gas station and buy a map.”
“Oh, right!” Karen groaned. Then, rummaging in her backpack, she pulled out the bag of peanut butter cookies and offered them around. Stinker happily took more than his share. Soon his black-and-white fur was well dusted with crumbs.
Not many minutes later, a glow began smudging the sky ahead. The dark land that had been dotted here and there with clustered lights began to be crossed with ribbons of light like a huge glittering spiderweb.
“Big city coming up,” Stinker said. “Washington, D.C.—I hope. Now let’s look for that corner gas station.”
“Hey, I was kidding!” Jonathan squeaked as they suddenly dropped lower.
“Still need a street map, though,” Stinker said. With dizzying speed, they sank down until they were only a few hundred feet above a busy street. “Tell me when you see a likely spot.”
Karen and Jonathan both stared out but couldn’t focus on anything before it swept by. “Slow down, will you?” Karen said. Instantly, the blur of light became a leisurely passing view of motels, used-car lots, and fast-food places. “There!” she and Jonathan said together, pointing at a familiar gas station sign.
They dropped like a stone onto a motel parking lot beside the station. The door of their ship slid open. “Okay,” the skunk said, digging into the nearly empty cookie bag. “One of you go get a good map. Oh, wait, is this one of those places where you need money for things?”
“No problem. I’ve got some,” Jonathan said. Still a little shaken from the suddenness of the landing, he stumbled out, expecting to see a crowd gathered around and pointing at them. But there was only the quiet parking lot and the flashing motel sign. Maybe the whole thing had been so fast nobody had noticed or believed what they saw.
Trying to act as if he arrived in spaceships every day, Jonathan straightened his shoulders, pushed back his glasses, and strode toward the gas station. Minutes later he was walking out clutching a tourist brochure and two maps, one of greater Washington and one of the downtown. An elderly couple was standing beside their ship, gawking.
“This is some car,” the man said as Jonathan walked up.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Jonathan answered awkwardly.
“Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like it,” the man added, stroking his chin. “What’s the make?”
“Oh, yes, the make. Well, it’s really an experimental model. Not any make exactly. Not yet, I mean.”
The woman ran a hand over the glass-smooth surface. “It’s very nice and shiny. But isn’t it a little large for city driving, for city parking anyway? Goodness, if I had to parallel park this thing, I’d never pass the driver’s test.”
“Well, it’s not really for every day,” Jonathan said, praying they’d leave soon, “being an experimental model and all. In fact, we’re just taking it to an experimental-car show.”
“Well, dear, you’re sure to win,” the woman said, taking her husband’s elbow and trying to steer him away. “It looks just like something out of those space movies our grandsons like, doesn’t it, Elmo?”
“Not at all,” the man replied as he walked away. “Your problem, Mildred, is that you don’t keep up with these things. All the top companies are showing this sort of design.”
Jonathan watched until the two disappeared into their motel room. Then he tapped on the spot where he thought the door should be. It slid open a few feet to his left, and he scrambled in.
“That was wild,” Jonathan said as they spread the maps over the floor of the cabin. “An old couple thought this was a regular car.”
The little ship smelled of peanuts. Stinker had opened the peanut butter jar and had been sampling. His thoughts came through although his mouth was nearly stuck shut. “Hmm. I wonder if that isn’t a good idea?”
“If what isn’t a good idea?” Karen asked, taking a crumpled tissue from a pocket and trying to wipe the smudges from peanut buttery skunk paws off the map.
“Acting like this is a car. Street maps are easiest to follow if you’re using streets. Even without external lights, someone is bound to notice if we keep flying along several hundred feet above the streets.”
“That’s right,” Karen said, thinking about the UFO-sighting headlines that would get into those grocery store newspapers.
“No way!” Stinker said in response to her thought. “I want to keep this visit low profile. No point in stirring things up on this planet any more than we have. So give me a few minutes to figure out the best route, and in the meantime why don’t one of you pop over there and pick us up some more provisions?”
Figuring it was her turn, Karen followed the direction his little nose was pointing and saw a fast-food place with a lit-up sign reading GIANT PEANUT BUTTER MILK SHAKE, 99¢.
“Wouldn’t you know!” Jonathan mumbled. “Don’t you ever stop eating?”
Stinker sniffed. “I can’t help it if this body I borrowed is always hungry. You have to go with the flow, as they say.”
Karen shrugged. “I’ll go get something. We could probably all use it.” After taking everyone’s order, she slipped from the ship, checked to see there was no one about, and headed across the dark parking lot to the brightly lit restaurant. Should have used the drive-up window, she thought. Except there was no way to roll down the driver’s window on their spaceship.
The closer she got to the restaurant, the more nervous Karen became. Its parking lot seemed to be a hangout for local teens, and kind of tough-looking teens, too.
She felt safer once inside the brightly lit restaurant, with its mixed smells of fried food and disinfectant. Karen placed the order, turned over the money, and received a bucket of chicken nuggets, three bags of fries, and three milk shakes: one chocolate, one strawberry, and one Giant Peanut Butter Special.
Clutching two large sacks, one of hot things and one of cold, she pushed her way out the door. Trying not to see all the older kids lounging around the cars, Karen lowered her head, hurried around the corner, and ran smack into two teenage boys.
“Hey, watch it, kid!” one snapped.
The other broke into a lopsided grin. “Lighten up, Jack. Don’t you see this little sweetie is just hurrying to bring us our midnight snack?”
“Why, Bill, how right you are,” Jack said, grabbing for one of the bags.
Shrinking back, Karen said, “Sorry, someone else ordered these.” She stepped aside, only to find Bill standing in her way.
“Maybe so, but we’re the ones who are going to eat them.” He reached forward, but Karen ducked away, scared but too angry to give up. She heard Jack and Bill loping along behind her.
A hand gripped her shoulder and spun her around. “Miss, haven’t you forgotten our order?”
“Leave me alone!”
“Or you’ll do what?” Bill smirked.
“Or I’ll . . . I’ll call my friends.” Looking desperately across the parking lot, her eyes widened in surprise. Jonathan and Stinker were already running toward her.
Catching her expression, Bill looked behind him, then turned back with a sneer. “Those are the friends who’re supposed to make us tremble? A little
nerd and his lapdog? Give us a break—and the grub while you’re at it.”
His friend suddenly gripped his shoulder. “That ain’t no lapdog, Bill. I’m out of here!”
“Well, it ain’t no Doberman, either,” the other jeered. He looked again at the approaching pair. Stinker was walking in a fierce, stiff-legged way with his black-and-white tail held high like a flag.
“Right!” Bill streaked after his friend.
“Thought I picked up a touch of distress,” Stinker said into Karen’s mind. “Want me to keep after them?”
“No way!” Karen said. “They probably have their whole gang here.”
“Besides,” Jonathan said, taking one of the sacks from Karen, “if you spray them it will stink up our food.”
“Whatever,” Stinker said, turning after them and following the delicious-smelling sacks.
Once in the ship, they settled into their seats, divided up the fries and shakes, and plunked the chicken nuggets down between them. Clutching his giant shake with his paws, Stinker took a deep, contented sip. “Ah, peanut butter!” He sighed mentally.
For several minutes the little spaceship was filled with the sounds of munching and slurping. Then Stinker wiped his greasy paws on his fur and, turning back to the instruments, eased the ship out of the parking lot. Hovering a few feet off the ground, it slipped into the sparse late-night traffic.
Dredging one last chicken nugget through the sweet and sour sauce, Jonathan leaned back in his seat and watched the nation’s capital flash by. “You know,” he said with tired contentment, “this trip isn’t half bad.”
Giving one last gurgling slurp to her strawberry shake, Karen nodded her head sleepily. “Majorly awesome.” Curling up in her seat, she watched the lights slide past them. Neon lights, white streetlights, red and green traffic lights. Red traffic lights? Abruptly, she sat up.
“Stinker, do you know you’re supposed to stop at red lights?”
“No. Why?”
“Because there are laws about it!”
Now Jonathan, too, was sitting up, staring out the wraparound window. “Yeah, and there are speed laws, too!”
Stinker's Return Page 3