by Peter Nelson
“Goin’ down!” LO-PEZ suddenly exclaimed, slamming a button with his tentacle. Alex thought the button somehow controlled his stomach, because it immediately tried to leap out of his throat. The AirCar dropped, and in a split-second those tiny spots a thousand feet below him were suddenly huge G’Daliens, right outside his door.
Alex and Herbert pretended to follow Chicago, his father, and LO-PEZ as they waded through the crowd gathered before the museum steps. “We’d better stay back, just in case things get ugly,” Herbert said. They hid behind the squad car.
“Look at all these G’Daliens,” Alex noted. “How could it get any uglier?” He and Herbert climbed on top of the SquadCar and stayed low. Still, they could see over the heads of the crowd a mean, somewhat upset-looking G’Dalien on the museum steps, standing beside a bucket and a mop. It was GOR-DON.
“For fifty years I’ve worked in this museum,” GOR-DON said to the gathered crowd. “Day in and day out, cleaning, dusting, and mopping every inch of a wretched building dedicated to the wretched history of a wretched species—humans.”
A massive gasp rose from the G’Dalien crowd. “Oh, please!” GOR-DON snapped. “You all know as well as I do that humans are an inferior species—It’s why we had to come here, remember?!”
GOR-DON’s left eye twitched as he stared out at the blank faces in the crowd.
“Can anyone tell me why we help humans, anyway? They’re an untrustworthy, self-centered, fickle bunch who don’t deserve us! We give them everything, and they just take and take and take, and then they have the nerve to tell us we’re ‘emotionally unavailable’? Well, here’s a news flash. I’m not human, okay? Maybe my ‘emotions’ are available, but you just don’t know how to read them, because they’re so much more advanced than yours will ever be! Did you ever think of that, Marion?!”
GOR-DON suddenly stopped his rant and looked out at the crowd. They stared back at him with puzzled looks on their faces. “Well, I for one am tired of dumbing myself down just to make humans more comfortable. We are the advanced race! We shouldn’t be helping them, we should be enslaving them! It is time for all G’Daliens to rise up and show their true faces!”
GOR-DON suddenly reached up and pulled his toupee off. Then he yanked the furry fake mustache from his upper lip. The crowd gasped and went silent. GOR-DON held his facial hair high above his suddenly nubby, bald head. His beady black eyes welled up with tears. His lip trembled. He shrieked in pain. “Owwweeee!!!”
Alex and Herbert watched from the roof of the SquadCar behind the crowd, kind of enjoying the show.
“Bad idea,” Herbert said.
Alex frowned. “I dunno. It kinda makes him look younger.”
GOR-DON frantically tried to blow air from his nose holes onto his raw upper lip. The crowd burst out laughing at him.
“You got serious issues, mate!” a G’Dalien in the crowd yelled out. “Humans wouldn’t harm a Bhorarmian dust mite!”
“Yeah!” his buddy yelled, “And why would we listen to a janitor, anyway? Especially one without a mustache!” The mob laughed louder. Even Chicago, Mr. Illinois, and LO-PEZ shared a chuckle in the middle of the crowd. GOR-DON seethed as he looked out at them all. He reached a tentacle into his bucket and held high in the air something that immediately shut everyone up—a human head.
“That G’Dalien has beheaded a human!” Mr. Illinois exclaimed. “LO-PEZ! Call for backup! I’m going in!” In an instant, Mr. Illinois broke through the crowd and dive-tackled GOR-DON.
“Ghaaaak!” the G’Dalien yelled, tossing the head into the air. He and Mr. Illinois rolled down the steps in a tangle of arms, legs, and tentacles, stopping at the foot of the mob.
Mr. Illinois sat up on top of GOR-DON and shoved a shiny badge in his face. “Department of Human/G’Dalien Harmony Enforcement!” he hollered. “You’re under arrest, Freakshow! For—uh, unauthorized and highly inharmonious removal of a person’s head!” The tossed head plopped onto the pavement in front of the crowd and split open, revealing itself for what it was—the fake, hollow caveman head from the museum. Mr. Illinois snapped on rubber gloves. He picked it up and studied it like a true detective. Then he looked up at the crowd. “Sorry, folks. My mistake. Nothing to see here.”
“Get off me, you idiot!” GOR-DON yelled. He pushed Mr. Illinois to the side and staggered to his feet. “You see?!” he yelled to the crowd, “Humans are a stupid, inferior, violent species! This morning two of them destroyed this exhibit! And they’re not alone! They’re soldiers in some sort of—of secret army, sent here to kill our kind! And they’re organized—they wear identical silver battle uniforms!”
Hearing this, Mr. Illinois and LO-PEZ glanced at each other. Chicago looked back. The crowd turned around, too, and cleared a path all the way back to the SquadCar…where Herbert and Alex were standing on the roof.
CHAPTER 17
Herbert started to stuff his N.E.D. suit up his shirt and was doing a terrible job of blocking Alex from the crowd’s view. “Hey, what’s everybody looking at?” he said.
Alex finished stuffing his N.E.D. suit down his pants and stepped out. “Yeah,” he said.
The crowd gasped. Herbert glanced at Alex, and his face dropped. Alex looked down. In giant block letters, his T-shirt read, I SLAYING ALIENS.
A short G’Dalien stepped forward with a camera. SNAP! He took their picture and slid back into the silent crowd.
“Seize them!” GOR-DON shrieked.
Alex and Herbert dived back inside the SquadCar and slammed shut the batwing doors. Alex frantically stabbed buttons and pulled levers. Herbert grabbed Alex’s suit from out of his pants and started messing around with its wires and sensors. “Head for the museum!” he yelled.
The SquadCar suddenly lurched straight up, fifty feet into the air. As Alex stabbed at its controls, it jerked back and forth. It dived straight for the bottom of the steps. GOR-DON screamed as he waddled out of the way. His big, blobby belly hit the plaza just as the AirCar swooped, missing his shiny, newly bald head by an inch. Alex skidded the car up the museum steps and smashed through the giant entrance doors. They crashed to a halt in the lobby.
Chicago ran to the SquadCar and opened the door. Alex and Herbert were a bit dazed, but unharmed. “That was awesome!” Chicago said as they stumbled out of the car. He jumped behind the wheel. “Go!” he said. “I’ll slow down the crowd!” He smiled at them. “And I thought this town was boring!”
Alex and Herbert watched as Chicago spun the SquadCar around and rammed it out the giant doorway. The SquadCar scraped back down the stairs and sent the approaching G’Dalien mob diving for cover again. Alex laughed, until his suit hit him in the head. He looked over at Herbert. “Let’s go,” said Herbert.
They ran toward the Hall of Human History.
The mob of G’Daliens surrounded the SquadCar. “We just want to talk!” one of them yelled, knocking politely on the window. “I’m sure this is all a big misunderstanding!” hollered another.
“Out of my way, you simps!” GOR-DON snarled as he pushed the polite mob out of his way. Mr. Illinois followed behind him and opened the batwing door. Chicago smiled up at them. GOR-DON grabbed Chicago by his shirt and yanked him out of the squad car.
Mr. Illinois stepped up and stared sternly into GOR-DON’s beady black eyes. “You take your suction cups off my son or I’ll turn you into space-sushi, you read me?”
GOR-DON looked as if he might tear the detective’s head off. Then he noticed the crowd, who were all staring at him. GOR-DON suddenly hugged Chicago, and gently set him down. “I’m so relieved,” the lying G’Dalien blubbered. “Those two alien slayers haven’t brainwashed you—yet.”
“Dad,” Chicago said. “They’re not alien slayers. They’re my friends.”
Mr. Illinois looked at the crowd, then back at Chicago. “Sorry, son,” he said. “This is my job. Which way did your friends go?”
Alex and Herbert rounded the corner and bounced off something warm and slimy.
“G’day, boys!” CA-ROL smiled as Alex and Herbert scrambled to their feet. “My apologies for the inconvenience, but this exhibit is temporarily closed!”
Herbert thought fast. “How about the gift shop, CA-ROL?”
The helpful G’Dalien beamed. “Terrif!” she said, “I’ll escort you myself!” She began leading them toward the lobby, pointing her tentacles at various items of interest. Alex and Herbert took one step, stopped as she turned the corner, and ran the other way.
They sped along the long Hallway of Human History, back toward the caveman diorama, frantically trying to put on and zip up their silver suits as they ran. The second time Alex tripped and fell on his face, Herbert signaled for him to stay down.
“Someone’s coming!”
GOR-DON’s shrieking voice echoed off the massive museum walls. “There’s nowhere to hide!” Herbert helped Alex to his feet. The sound of tentacles slapping against the smooth floor grew louder. If they continued down the hall, they’d be seen.
Alex glanced around and got an idea.
“Herbert, we have a solution,” he said.
CHAPTER 18
GOR-DON oozed into the center of the Hallway of Human History. “There’s no way out of this hallway, except through me,” he sneered.
Chicago and his father were following him. “We’re getting close,” said Mr. Illinois.
Mr. Illinois glanced at Chicago and approached GOR-DON. “Look, I think you might be overreacting. I know these boys—”
“Silence, Human!” GOR-DON spat back, snorting through his fleshy nose holes. “They’re close. I can smell their fear.” Chicago nervously glanced around, stopping at the diorama in front of them:
Chicago looked up at the four astronaut mannequins standing on the fake lunar surface. This was strange, because he’d learned in SchoolBooth that there’d been only two. Also odd was the fact that the two short astronaut mannequins wore helmets far too big for their heads. They looked more like spaceman bobblehead dolls. And one of the bobblehead spacemen was having a very hard time standing still. “Oh, no,” Chicago whispered to himself. Thinking quickly, he pointed down the hall in the other direction and hollered, “Hey! There they go!”
Chicago ran off, away from the bobblehead astronauts. He didn’t look back, but hoped that his father and GOR-DON would follow him.
It almost worked. Mr. Illinois ran after his son, but GOR-DON had oozed only a few feet down the hallway when he heard a CLUNK! He spun around to see Alex toss his oversized space helmet over his shoulder alongside Herbert’s as they both ran the other way.
“One small step for a man!” Herbert yelled back at GOR-DON.
“One giant leap away from you!” Alex added.
GOR-DON let out an angry growl and chased after them. He watched them as they jumped the railing of the very first diorama, near the beginning of the hallway. He laughed. “Nowhere to hide in there,” he hissed.
Alex and Herbert leaped over the toppled cavemen. They hit their belt buckles as they approached the fake cave. Herbert’s N.E.D. suit lit up. Alex’s didn’t.
Herbert, about to dive into the shimmering wormhole entrance, turned back and looked at Alex. “This is for your own good,” he said.
He kicked Alex square in the belt buckle. Alex doubled over, but his suit whirred to life. The two of them frantically dived into the shimmering matter and disappeared into the painted-on cave entrance.
GOR-DON squeaked to a slimy stop in front of the prehistoric diorama—just as the wormhole closed, leaving only a wisp of blue smoke rising from the rock. His shiny black eyes scanned the scene but found only a pile of mannequin cavemen and a very relaxed-looking woolly mammoth staring at him. He entered the diorama and began overturning rocks, tossing cavemen, and pushing over trees. “Come out now, and I promise to kill you quickly,” he said, brushing aside a fake rock with a swat of his tentacle. “Then I’ll hold up your heads, this time in front of City Hall, as examples of what a dangerous species humans are. I’ll have control of this planet, and your kind as my slaves, by the end of the week!”
He knocked the mammoth into another tree, growing more angry by the minute. “Now where are you?!” He kicked the headless caveman into the fire and looked around at the diorama. It was completely trashed—and the humans were nowhere in sight. He grabbed a nearby caveman and tore its head off. Hurling it into the hallway, he screeched in frustration.
CHAPTER 19
Meanwhile…
CHAPTER 20
Alex and Herbert flew out of the tunnel-slide and hit the soft grass of Alex’s backyard. They looked at each other a moment and burst into wide grins. “Totally awesome!” Alex said.
“Absolutely unprecedented!” Herbert agreed.
Sammi Clementine stood there, looking down. “It’s a slide. What could be so fun?” She waited for an answer, then marched over to the ladder. “Fine. Don’t answer me. I’ll see for myself.”
Alex and Herbert jumped up.
“Do not do that,” Herbert ordered.
“He’s right,” Alex said, “It’s way too dangerous for you.”
She looked down at them from the ladder. “Why? Because I’m a girl? Please. I’m a black belt in karate, a level four bungee jumper, and have a shaman’s degree in snake-handling. I think I can survive your jungle gym.” She pushed off, disappearing into the gaping mouth of the slide.
In an instant, Alex was at the top of the ladder, peering into the dark tube. “She did it!” he said. “Who knows what that slimy freak will do to her! I’m going back. I’ve got to save her.”
“Uh, Alex,” Herbert said.
“Don’t try to stop me!” Alex yelled. “I’ll face whatever that thing throws at me to get her back.”
“Alex—”
“And I swear, if that six-legged alien-janitor from the planet Lysol lays one tentacle on her perfect head, I’ll—”
“Alex!” He turned and looked down.
Sammi stood at the bottom of the slide, staring up at him. “You guys are so weird,” she said, then ran to the fence, scaled it, and disappeared into her yard.
Herbert unzipped his silver N.E.D. suit. “Well, that was…informative,” he said. “By which I mean, she saved us the trouble and risk of testing the slide, proving conclusively that wormhole-passage is impossible without my N.E.D. suits.”
“She’s not a guinea pig,” Alex said.
“I know that,” Herbert said. “A guinea pig’s comparative biomass would be completely inadequate. That girl made the perfect test dummy.”
Alex’s suit hit Herbert in the head. “Y’know something? You can be a real jerk sometimes.”
“Me?!” Herbert shot back. “You’re the one who’s made it too dangerous for us to return to the future!”
“What are you talking about?” Alex said. “We’re returning tomorrow! We promised Chicago we’d play in his game. And a promise is a—” Alex stopped himself.
“Are you insane?” Herbert said. “Forget the game! An entire population of advanced extraterrestrial beings thinks we’re alien slayers, all thanks to you and your stupid T-shirt—which I assume you got from one of your stupid video games!”
Alex stared at him and stepped forward slowly. “Don’t you use your fancy-pants sciencey words on me. What’s a video game?”
“Never mind,” Herbert said. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough.”
“I’ll go without you,” Alex said. “It’s my jungle gym.”
“Great! Just be sure to wear your favorite I TRAVELING THROUGH TIME T-shirt,” Herbert shot back, “because you won’t be wearing my Negative Energy Density suit!”
Alex watched Herbert storm toward his house with the N.E.D. suits. Then he plopped down on the grass and stared up at the blue tube. He knew Herbert was right. Without those suits, it was just a stupid slide.
“Y’know, I only wanted to see what you guys were playing.”
Alex looked up. Sammi was leaning over the top of her fence.
Alex got up and approached the fence. A weird feeling crept through his belly as he heard himself ask, “What are you doing tomorrow?”
She thought for a moment. “Tomorrow’s Friday. I’ve got Crouching Ladybug Kung Fu in the morning, then hang-gliding lessons from eleven to one. Fifteen minutes for lunch, then extreme soapmaking.”
“Jeez,” Alex said. “Don’t you get sick of having every minute of your summer planned out and scheduled for you?”
Sammi shrugged, then offered, “I’m on a waiting list for a Mommy & Me class on unstructured fun.”
Alex stared at her. She looked down. He swallowed and said, “You want some unstructured fun? Meet me here, at the jungle gym, first thing tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER 21
The morning sunlight crept through Herbert’s bedroom window, followed by a pink ninja and a kid wearing red pajamas and a Mexican wrestling mask. Sammi didn’t know why she was helping her strange neighbor sneak into a strange bedroom to steal a pair of silver suits, but already she knew that this was the most fun she’d had all summer. What Alex knew was that this already seemed too easy. He was sure that Herbert—who was snoring loudly with a thick book called A Genius’s Guide to Black Holes and Time Warps lying across his face—would’ve hidden the N.E.D. suits before he went to sleep. But there they were, carelessly tossed on top of his laundry basket at the foot of his bed. He didn’t even throw a dirty towel over them or think to get rid of the four red balloons tied to the basket, which made them ridiculously easy to find in his cluttered bedroom.