by Jeff Norton
SMASH!
Sonya collapsed to the ground, wrist-cymbals crashing and clattering.
One massive intake of breath from the congregation seemed to suck the air out of the cathedral, although Sonya’s sisters desperately kept dancing, gaping up at NED with their eyes wide in fear.
“CEASE THE BALLEROPERA!” he yelled, hurling his goblet at the dancers, who scattered to dodge the steaming lava spattering across the stage. “Her misstep has insulted the ritual and I order their punishment!”
The crowd chattered with excitement and my heart lurched as I realized it wasn’t the Pairing the NEDs were here to see, it was the chance to catch a lynching.
Sonya hugged her two younger sisters protectively. They looked so frightened and defenseless in front of a million bloodthirsty NEDs.
I had to do something. Without thinking, I ran onto the stage, putting myself between the pink lizards and the red-hot congregation. “Not going to happen, NED!”
The stadium fell silent. All eyes were on me.
“Sherman!” Juliet gasped from above. “What are you doing here?”
“Who dares interrupt this Pairing?” NED’s dad bellowed, scowling.
“Sher-man,” seethed NED.
“Get out of here,” I whispered to Sonya and her sisters. “While you can.”
Sonya pulled her sisters backstage as NED shouted, “Seize them!”
But Juliet held up a blue hand to silence her partner- to-be. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
I pulled the popcorn from my backpack. “Popcorn!” I announced, holding a half-empty box above my head. Half-empty? I turned to Octo accusingly.
I was hungry, he mouthed from backstage.
“Popcorn!” I repeated to Juliet. “The most potent symbol of love on my planet. Did my heart love ’til now?”
The congregation gasped.
“What pathetic and desperate plea is this?” mocked NED.
“Do not tempt a desperate man!” I said.
Weirdly, despite a zillion gods watching, I felt none of the fear that had consumed me on Earth when trying to ask Juliet to the movie, and then to the Prom. Here, with certain death looming, and Earth’s existence hanging in the balance, I was channeling Romeo – my way of telling her how I really felt, even though (spoiler alert!), Romeo dies at the end.
“Juliet, I’ve been hiding my real feelings for you behind a plan, and yes, I want to save the Earth, but what good is saving it if I can’t be with you? I think you’re wonderful, sweet, funny, curious and beautiful, and I should have just told you that from the start instead of waiting for NEDageddon. But I’m telling you now and I think if you Pair with NED, you’ll be really unhappy. He only wants you to get himself a seat at the galactic cool table. Yes, I did hope you could stop my planet from being destroyed, but the more I got to know you, the more I fell for you. Yes, I think humanity is worth saving, but I think you and I are worth saving too.”
“You’re a very good actor,” said Juliet.
“I’m not acting. I never was. Do you know why I was suddenly so good at something I used to be so bad at? Because onstage, with you, I wasn’t acting. I was just being myself – well, myself in really complicated iambic pentameter and surprisingly comfortable tights, but yes, myself. A star-crossed Sherman who’s totally in love with you, my bright angel. Juliet, will you come back to Earth with me as my Prom date? Yes, it’s true, I’d hoped that while we’re there, you’d be able to stop the NED tanker – but that’s not the real reason I’m so into you.”
There. I’d said it. I’d put my heart on my sleeve. Now all I could do was wait for Juliet to say yes, float down into my arms, and for us to zoom back to Earth to save the world and dance the night away.
But Juliet had other ideas.
“No, Sherman,” she said. “I’m not your trophy, and I’m not your bodyguard.”
What? Shakespeare hadn’t prepared me for this.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Escape Plan
I was standing, frozen, when Octo slithered onto stage and put a supportive tentacle around me.
“Give us a hug, bro,” he said. “I’m really sorry, ’bout everything.”
Houston and Jess joined in for moral support. If this was the end, I was glad I was with friends, and though I’d never freely admit it, my sister.
But I wasn’t going down without a fight.
“Juliet, you can’t Pair with NED!” I said, urging her to see the light. “He’s such a … NED!”
“You’re right, Sherman,” she said. She stood on her floating throne and addressed the entire cathedral. “I will not be Paired today! Not to NED, not to anyone!”
The congregation gasped again, sucking so much air out of the chamber that I was worried I might faint. The spectators were in an uproar over this breach in decorum.
“Icons have never respected us …” I heard someone gossip.
“ … who does she think she is?”
“ … does that mean he’s on the market again?”
But the pandemonium in the cheap seats was nothing compared to the ferocity on the faces of the Pairing party. I couldn’t tell who looked angrier, NED’s plump parents or Juliet’s furious folks. They started yelling at each other as NED fumed in his throne. He reached out for Juliet’s hand but she jumped off her floating chair and drifted down in front of me.
“Thank you, Sherman,” she whispered.
“Um, for what? Ruining your Pairing day?”
“No,” she said, “for showing me how to be brave enough to break the rules.”
Juliet’s mother called down to her. “Get back up here, young lady,” she commanded, “and complete your journey to Icon.”
“I’m sorry, Mother, but I just don’t love NED.”
“Do you think I love your father?!” her mom shot back.
Octo leaned into me. “Ooh, awkward,” he said.
Juliet’s father’s stern eyes hardened as he looked at her.
“Offspring, you are embarrassing me,” he said. “Just say ‘I do’ and get on with it. It’s your path in the universe.”
“No, Dad,” Juliet said. “He’s not for me.” She pointed a glowing blue finger at me. “He is.”
Juliet’s father reached out his hands to his daughter. I thought he was going to lovingly embrace her and tell her that he’d fully support her decision. But he was way worse than my dad. He pulled at the air and suddenly Juliet’s glorious blue glow was ripped away, leaving her in mortal, teenage-girl form. She was just as beautiful as before, but now, I realized, just as vulnerable as I was.
“Then you are disowned for this treachery,” he said, “and stripped of your immortality!”
Juliet shuddered, looking shocked, but only for a moment. Instead of crying, she smiled. She relaxed her shoulders and her frown disappeared.
“SEEEEEIZE THEM!” yelled NED.
Twenty thuggish-looking NEDs suddenly flew – yep, flew – straight at us from the cathedral floor.
“Please tell me you came with an escape plan?” Juliet asked me, grabbing my hand.
Her hand felt warm, human. I gently squeezed it, checking that she was really there. “I actually hadn’t thought beyond the part where I confess my love for you and you jump into my arms.”
“Run!” called Jess.
“She’s smart, your sister,” said Juliet.
“Don’t you start,” I said.
With both sets of parents yelling at each other, NED throwing a tantrum and the whole congregation in a deafening uproar, the five of us made a break for it.
We dashed backstage and retraced our steps through the outer corridor, but Jessica, Juliet and I struggled to keep up with the gyroscoping ventitent and sprinting robot.
A jagged, crackling bolt of lightning-style energy flashed from behind us. It missed frying us, striking the marble floor instead. But more bolts of lightning shot out, and bits of the roof plummeted and smashed into a million razor-sharp shards. I didn’t dare loo
k back. We somehow made it back through the entrance arch and were suddenly bathed in daylight, skidding on megamarble, dodging lightning blasts until we reached the racer. We desperately clambered in. I hoped Carol was strong enough to hold up against the lightning.
Juliet had paused on the ground, looking back at the mega-cathedral, at the life she was forgoing. I couldn’t fathom everything she was giving up.
“You could go back and say you’re sorry,” I said from the cockpit.
“I’m not sorry,” she said.
“Good,” I said. “Then climb aboard and close that back hatch!”
I fired up the racer’s fusion reactors, just as the first NED-thug – green eyes glaring, cape and white hair rippling in the wind – burst from the arch.
Followed by another.
And another.
And another.
All of them aiming silver, pistol-style ray guns at us.
I checked everyone was strapped in, then slammed the accelerator and soared skyward. But the thugs flew straight after us, fast as fighter jets.
“Okay, buddy,” Octo called. “Just shake off these maniacs and follow Houston’s outlined trajectory back to the wormhole.”
I glanced down at the dome, and saw the last of the NED-thugs burst out the entrance and join the swarm, shooting their lightning bolts like they were raging thunderstorms meant just for us; chasing us from their sky.
I could retreat, but to where? Earth was bound to be on the verge of destruction as soon as we made it back through the wormhole highway.
Wormhole.
It suddenly hit me.
A wormhole takes something from one place and instantly transports it to another. It was a cosmic sleight of hand, and if it could transport a spaceship, then why not something much, much bigger? I realized I didn’t need an omnipotent bodyguard to save the Earth. I just needed my brain and my friends.
The NED tanker straw was going to suck the magma out of the Earth’s core, but if I could slip the straw into a wormhole conduit, I could instantly shift it somewhere else. Somewhere else like right here. I could trick that straw into sucking the magma out of Planet NED!
“Change of plan, Houston,” I announced. “Can you find us a spot on this planet to open a wormhole large enough to insert a magma-sucking straw? And Octo, give me your phone, I’m going to call my dad.”
The entire racer suddenly shook as tendrils of electricity writhed around the steering column and between my fingers.
“Are we hit?” I yelled. “Guys, are we hit?!”
I wrenched myself round and faced a scowling Jessica. Smoke wisped from the cuffs of her prom dress, and her hair stood perfectly on end.
“What do you think, genius?” she groaned.
“We won’t survive another blast like that,” said Houston.
“No choice, Romeo,” Octo yelled. “You gotta try and lose them in the city. We’ll get shot to shrapnel up here, and we ain’t reaching orbit anytime soon.”
I zipped Carol back towards the maze of malls and, for a few precious moments, thousands of NEDs just watched us fly by with dopey, confused expressions on their faces. Then the whole crowd pulled themselves together and turned after us like a swarm of designer wasps.
“They’re back on our tail, space cadets,” Octo growled. “Who knew they could fly here?”
“Octo,” I yelled. “I have to call my dad!”
“Not on my phone, you won’t,” he snapped.
“Why not?”
“Two words: roaming and charges. Hank and Urta make me pay my own bill.”
“If we live through this,” I said, “and we, y’know, save the world and everything, I’m pretty sure NATO will cover our expenses.”
With the NED swarm still desperately trying to zap us from between megamarble malls, billboards and water towers, Octo reluctantly passed over his phone and I called my dad.
“Please hang up and try your call again,” said the calm, pre-recorded voice of doom.
“You gotta put in the planet code first, Sherman,” Octo explained.
“What is it?” shouted Houston and Jessica in stereo.
“Forty-two!”
I punched it in and dialled again.
“Please hang up and try your call again,” the voice parroted.
Octo sighed. “You don’t do a lot of interplanetary dialling, do you? It’s zero-zero-four-two, then wait for the dial tone, then punch in the number,” he explained in a sing-song voice, as if I should know it already. I punched in the numbers carefully, hoping that the third time was the charm.
Ring-ring-ring.
“General— I mean, Stationery Officer Capote here.”
“Dad, it’s me. I really need your help.”
“Sherman, where are you? Where’s your sister?” Dad asked. I put him on speakerphone so I could keep two hands on the wheel as I swerved and bobbed to avoid death by alien-induced lightning. Safety first.
“Dad, she’s with me, and we’re on another planet – the NED world. Listen, I don’t have time to explain, but the attack I was trying to warn you about is happening now—”
“I should have believed you, son. That ship is drilling a huge hole in the Earth right by the base, and lowering a massive tube towards it. We’ve tried to attack the spacecraft, but it’s impenetrable by our weapons.”
“Of course you should have believed me,” I said, “but that tube is actually a straw, a giant straw to suck out the magma from the Earth’s core.”
“Oh, Sherman, what—”
“Dad, I have a plan, but I need you with me. I need you to help me save the world.”
“I’m with you, Sherman. All the way.”
“Get back to my jail cell and grab the wormhole conduit.”
“The what?”
“The purple bracelet that Octo gave me. You know, the weird guy-to-guy present, and—”
“Whoa,” said Octo. “You humans don’t have friendship bracelets?”
“Take it to that hole in the Earth,” I continued, “and stretch it around the opening before that tube goes in. It will create a vortex – a wormhole that’ll instantly send the tube here.”
“Top-gun, son. I’m on it. I’ll keep the line open to—”
“Um, Mr Capote,” interrupted Octo. “That’ll be really expensive.”
“I’ll pay you back!” Dad said.
I weaved and darted through the labyrinth of shopping plazas. The NED swarm followed us, though I was doing my best to shake them. Unsuccessfully. I broke free of the city limits and soared over a white sand desert, gunning for speed. Then we came to a rocky terrain of cliffs and canyons, like the Grand Canyon back home. I was thankful I’d practiced steering the racer through such tight crevices.
The NEDs tried to keep pace, but I was at last able to put some distance between us as I zigged, zagged and zoomed through the maze of canyons and gorges. It took nearly twenty minutes of intense flying, with more than a few complaints from the cabin, but I finally managed to lose the swarm in the rugged outback.
“Up ahead, Sherman,” said Houston. “There’s a large open area, big enough to stretch the wormhole conduit.”
“Dad, are you ready on your side?”
“Standing by, Sherman! We’re opening the bracelet around the hole now.”
I knew we needed to quickly stretch our bracelet to be big enough to capture the full diameter of the straw.
“Octo,” I called. “If we hold onto one side of the bracelet from the racer, can you jump out and hold it steady on the other?”
“I’m your man!”
He teased open the rubber bracelet wide enough to give Jess, Houston and Juliet a good hold of it. “Don’t let go, you kids,” he said.
Then Octo opened the back hatch, ready to hop out with the bracelet, just as I cleared the warren of canyons and jagged mini-mountains and emerged into the open space that Houston had identified. But there was a reason it was a wide-open space.
“Um, is that a lake, buc
karoo?”
CHAPTER FORTY
Sacrifice
We emerged above a large blue lake nestled inside a rocky ridge. It was almost a perfect circle, and I remembered learning in Planetology that circular lakes were usually meteor-made. But whatever the origin of the lake, it was still filled with water – a potentially lethal allergen to my best friend.
“Octo,” I said. “You can’t go in there, it could kill you!”
But the ventitent was on a mission, even if it was a suicide one. “Gonna have to take that risk,” he said, pointing a few tentacles to the rocky hills on the horizon. A swarm of NEDs crested the ridge.
They’d found us.
“I’ll go,” offered Juliet.
Octo shook his head. “Adios, dudes,” he bellowed, holding his end of the warp conduit between two tentacles as he dived out. “It was nice knowing yaaaaaaa.”
“Octo, no,” I cried. “It’ll—”
But it was too late.
He splashed down into the water, all twenty tentacles flailing as steam rose from his flailing body. He screamed and shouted a variety of swear words, adding to my GalLang cursing vocabulary, but to his credit, he never once let go of the ever-expanding bracelet.
And neither did the team on the racer. “If he survives,” Jess announced, “I am so going to be his girlfriend.”
I skimmed over the water, stretching open the red conduit until it covered the entire lake, and hovered over the opposite shore.
“That should be big enough,” I said. “Let go!”
Our edge of the massive rubber ring fell from the back hatch and settled into shape: a gigantic circle resting on the lake that opened a vortex through time and space.
“Dad, we’re in position!”
“Top-gun, Sherman! We’ve created the vortex on our side, right over the hole the ship made. They’re none the wiser and are lowering that giant straw straight down into it!”
Suddenly, the NED world shook and rumbled. The rocky outposts overlooking the lake shuddered, cracked and fell.
The swarming NEDs started to fall out of the sky. They fell into the water, doggy paddling to stay afloat while the vortex beneath them robbed their planet of its magma.