by Elise Allen
“That’s how you get on and off the Aeroway,” he said. “Catch!”
He somersaulted off her curls, and Gabby caught him in her cupped hands.
“Grab me a Pop-Tart?” he asked. “We’ve got a little while before our stop.”
“Sure.” Gabby pulled off her knapsack and rummaged around. She opened the wrong napkin first and found the fish sticks, then closed that up and found the other napkin, with the Pop-Tarts inside. She pulled them out, and her stomach roared so loudly, a bunch of aliens gave her the stink-eye. She offered an apologetic smile, then broke a Pop-Tart and gave half to Petey. He had to spread his arms wide to grab it, then balance the bottom on Gabby’s jeans while he stood to nibble at it.
Gabby munched on her own half. She pretended to give it her full attention so it wouldn’t be obvious she was checking out the other Aeroway riders as they blinked in and out of view. There were a near-endless variety of aliens, including several Martians in their sleek robotic suits. The more of these she saw, the more Gabby realized that Petey was right, the suits were indeed customized. They all looked fairly humanoid, but not only did each one have its own unique head shape, but also its own body shape. Some were long and sleek, others looked stockier, with streamlined lumps and bumps that Gabby imagined held some of the plussed-out options Petey had mentioned.
She thought she was being very subtle in her Martian inspection. Then a nearby Martian holding a grip-strap frowned and pointed a finger at her. Gabby blushed and was about to apologize, but before she could, the Martian’s fingertip glowed ice blue and Gabby’s Pop-Tart vaporized.
“You prob’ly don’t want to make the Martians mad,” Petey said. Then he took an exaggeratedly huge bite of his own Pop-Tart half. “Mmmm! This is so good ! Bummer you don’t have one anymore.”
With a f lick of her finger, Gabby snapped the rest of his Pop-Tart out of his hands, then caught it and took her own huge bite.
“Aw, come on!” he complained.
“I’ll get you another, but first you have to tell me…” Gabby lowered her voice in case anyone was listening in. “When did you get into my knapsack? How did you get away when Sneakers and Sharli were taken?”
“Easy,” he said. “I was in Sneakers’s vest pocket, and I jumped into the grass when they activated their portal. Then I jumped on you when I saw you going in.”
Gabby was impressed. “’Cause you wanted to help me save them. That’s pretty admirable, Petey.”
Petey blushed, then he rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Nah. I just didn’t wanna miss out if they were going someplace cool. And see? Turns out they were!”
Gabby hid her smile. She knew she had it right the first time. She reached into her knapsack and pulled out the last Pop-Tart, which she happily handed to Petey. He balanced it on her lap and grinned—the full Pop-Tart was even taller than him.
“If this was frosted, this would be the happiest day of my life.”
He dug in, while Gabby kept her eyes pointedly focused on nothing so she wouldn’t anger any more laser-beam-happy Martians.
That’s when reality hit her and she broke out in goose bumps.
She was on another planet.
She was on Mars—and not that Mars. She was who-knew-where but at least a gajillion miles from home, with no idea how she’d ever get back. How had the little purple circle even gotten her here? How was she even breathing? And what about all those sci-fi movies where an astronaut goes way out into deep space, but then time moves differently super-far away, and when the astronaut comes back after what seemed like a day, a hundred Earth years have passed? Would that happen to her? Would she go home and find out everyone she had ever known was super-old or dead? Would she come back younger than her great-great-granddaughter?
Then she gasped as she thought of the most pressing question of all.
“Petey,” she asked, “that translation stripe the Martian painted on my neck—will that stay on forever? ’Cause an A in French would be awesome.”
Petey didn’t answer. Gabby looked down at him. He had dropped the Pop-Tart and was staring straight ahead, frozen.
He looked scared.
“Petey?”
Petey gestured for her to lean closer. Gabby bent down low so her ear was near his head.
“I might have forgotten that Plenopolis is a restricted area,” he said. “Martians only. I don’t think anyone likes that we’re here.”
Gabby had been trying to avoid looking at the other passengers, but now she picked up her head and gazed around. Every other kind of alien had disappeared from the Aeroway car. Only metal-clad Martians remained—seven of them—and none of these had fanciful, f lowered faces. All their heads were combinations of sharp edges, laser eyes, and serrated protuberances…all of which were pointed directly at Gabby and Petey.
“State your business,” came a female voice.
Gabby had no idea which Martian was speaking, but she didn’t sound happy.
“Stall them,” Petey whispered. Then he grabbed one of her curls and swung over her shoulder, out of sight. The hair-swinging hurt, but Gabby didn’t even wince. She had to trust that Petey knew what he was doing. Instead she smiled at the Martians.
“Hi! Hey!” she said brightly. Then she spoke to the silver Martian directly in front of her. “Wow, you are really shiny. I can totally see my ref lection in you! Do you use a special polish or something? Because my bike could seriously use a shine like this.”
A large needle unfolded from the robot’s torso and pointed at Gabby’s eyes.
“Your business,” it said in a deep male voice. “Who gave you permission to access Plenopolis?”
Gabby’s brain tap-danced, and she hoped the Martians couldn’t hear her heart thudding. “Okay, well, um, those are really two different questions. My business is babysitting, and I’m pretty good at it, I have to say. I mean, not so much today, I guess, but usually I’m really—”
There was a loud whirr as the other six robots unfolded sharp, pointy objects from their torsos.
“We need the name of the Martian who gave you permission to enter Plenopolis,” the female voice said. “You have five seconds. Five…Four…”
Gabby’s stomach twisted. Should she make up a name? What would they do if she got it wrong?
“Three…Two…”
“Petey?” Gabby squeaked.
She didn’t mean it as an answer; she was hoping he’d tell her what to do. But lights f lashed on the face of the Martian in front of her.
“‘Petey’ is not a legitimate source for access. Now.”
All seven sharp objects shot out of the robots’ torsos. At the same instant, Gabby’s body sizzled all over and her legs glowed bright red. She had exactly enough time to grab her knapsack before she disappeared…and all seven knives, bayonets, and needles impaled themselves into the molded orange bench.
et down!” Petey shouted in Gabby’s ear.
Gabby didn’t even realize she was standing. Her heart was still racing triple-time, and she had no idea where she was or what she was doing.
She instantly dropped to the ground and felt the itchy softness of tall red grass all around her. The blades rose higher than Petey, and he had to stomp and make wide sweeping gestures with his arms to move them out of his way so he could stand in front of her.
“What happened?” Gabby asked.
“I pressed the button for an emergency Aeroway stop,” Petey said. “It just took me a while ’cause I didn’t want the Martians to see and stop me.”
“They didn’t seem happy that we were here,” Gabby said. “You said it’s a restricted area?”
“Yeah, but we should be okay now,” Petey said. “The only bad thing would be if the Martians on the Aeroway got in touch with the ones down here. Then it’d be bad.”
Just then, a loud whooping siren filled the air, and Gabby heard the thrum of countless metal footsteps.
“Okay, it’s bad,” Petey said.
Gabby peeked over the tall
grass. She and Petey were at the top of a large hill that looked down on what appeared to be a sprawling park dotted with fountains and statues and crisscrossed by red-pebbled paths. It would have looked beautiful, except the far end of the park was clogged with a sea of metal-suited Martians, weapons bared, marching double-time onto the paths and spreading out in twos and threes.
Gabby ducked back down into the grass. “Please tell me they’re not here for us.”
“I can,” Petey said, “but my mom and dad probably wouldn’t be psyched about me lying to the babysitter. There’s good news, too, though.”
“The Martians’ weapons are fake and won’t actually hurt us?” Gabby suggested.
“Nah, they’d obliterate us on contact. But look—is that the tower Sneakers showed you?”
Gabby peeked up again. This time she looked beyond the Martian soldiers to what was across from the park. There rose an endless array of identical towers, each of which was tall and thin, made of red metal that seemed to move like mercury. Every tower had three bulbous donuts blooming out of it, each one redder and wider than the one beneath it, and a huge, bright red umbrella-saucer at the very top.
“Yes,” Gabby said uneasily. “They all look like Sneakers’s tower. How will we know which one’s right? And how will we get there with all the Martians in the park?”
“I’m the kid, remember? You’re supposed to be the one in charge.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never been to Mars—any Mars,” Gabby countered. “You had that field trip and your virtual reality game.”
“Virtual reality tour. There wasn’t a game level where I had to escape from Martians out to kill me.” Then he smiled, nodding. “But when we get back, I’m totally sending an email to the company, ’cause that’s a seriously cool idea.”
Gabby rested her elbows on the ground and gripped her curls with her hands. “There has to be a way through this. There has to be.”
She peeked back up through the grass. The park was big, and all the Martians coming after them had split into small groups, but they were everywhere. Was there any path she and Petey could follow that would keep them out of the Martians’ way? It didn’t seem like it. Pairs and trios of Martians marched by every scraggly shrub, every statue, every large rock…
Gabby stopped scanning and stared at one of the large rocks in the distance. It was red, a darker shade than the grass, and it caught her eye as three Martians in black-and-gray metallic suits tromped past it. Maybe it was the dark metal that made the rock’s anomaly jump out to Gabby, but now that she’d noticed it, she couldn’t take her eyes off it.
The rock had a blotch of radiant, Day-Glo pink along its bottom left side.
“Do you see that glowy thing?” Gabby whispered to Petey.
“What glowy thing?” he asked.
Gabby was about to answer, when another glint of hot pink caught her eye. She gazed more broadly over the park and realized there were several blotches—small splashes of shocking-pink glow spread out across the vista and standing out against the red grass, red rocks, and red statues.
“There’s a bunch of glowing splotches,” Gabby mused. “What do you think they are?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look,” Gabby said. “There’s one right at the bottom of the hill.”
She took Petey in her hands and held him in front of her face, aiming him so he could peek through the same patch of grass as her and see the same thing she did: a large red rock, right at the nexus of two footpaths at the bottom of the hill. It had been splashed with the bright pink liquid, and the watery blotch radiated a shocking neon glow.
“That glowy thing,” Gabby whispered. “You see it, right?”
“What, the dog pee?” Petey asked, incredulous.
“No,” Gabby said. “I mean the glowing stuff.”
“Yeah,” Petey said, and the “duh” was clearly implied. “The dog pee.”
“No,” Gabby insisted. “How many dogs pee neon hot pink?”
Then she gasped and got chills from head to toe because she was sure she knew the answer.
“Up the hill!” A female voice barked the order. Gabby crawled to her right and peered through the grass to see three Martians start tromping toward her and Petey. The hill was steep, but it didn’t seem to slow them down. They sped upward, weapons jutting from their armor and ready to strike.
“Grab the back of my jacket and hold on tight,” Gabby whispered. “Hurry!”
She lay f lat on her stomach. The second she felt the tug of Petey grasping her jacket collar, she commando-crawled down the hill as fast as she could, moving her arms and legs like a gecko to speed her through the tall grass. The rustling grass thundered in her ears. She hoped it wasn’t as loud to the Martians, but she didn’t stop to listen. She kept going until she was at the large rock, her nose pressed close to the bright pink splotch.
Gabby sniffed in deep.
“Ew, gross!” Petey wailed. “What are you doing?”
“Shhhh!”
“You hear something?”
The voice was male, and it came from somewhere up ahead of them. Gabby willed herself to lie f latter, and she felt Petey slide between the collar of her jacket and her shirt.
She lay there for an eternity, listening to the swish of tall grass as the Martians walked through it, their footsteps getting dangerously close. Pressed up against the pink blotch on the rock, Gabby’s nose filled with an ammonia scent so strong her head spun.
“Nothing here,” the male voice finally said. “This way!”
Gabby heard the heavy metallic footsteps stomp off. She let her breath out in a whoosh, but when she breathed in deep to refill her lungs, she had to bury her face in her jacket to stif le a coughing fit.
“The pink stuff is definitely pee,” Gabby whisper-choked.
“I know,” Petey whispered back. “I told you. And it’s gross. You think it smells bad for you? For me that’s like a giant wall of pee, and we’re right up in it. Ew.”
“It’s Sneakers’s pee, though, right? Sneakers pees neon pink!”
“Yes! Sneakers is a dog! That’s how dogs pee!”
Gabby didn’t bother to explain that while alien dogs like Sneakers might pee neon pink, it was hardly a universal trait. “Petey, Sneakers didn’t pee at all when I was with him on Earth, but up on the hill I saw pee splotches all over the park. That can’t be a coincidence. Sneakers left us a trail of glowing pink pee. That’s how we’ll find him and Sharli! The trail will lead us to the right tower!”
Martian footsteps crunched nearby. They had to keep moving. Gabby crawled away from the rock, into deeper grass, then peeked up just enough to see the next closest patch of glowing pink. It was on a scraggly red bush. She waited until all the Martian footsteps faded, then crawled her way there. This time it was Petey who looked for the next splotch. He crawled deep into the scraggly bush and climbed to the top, where he had the best view.
“Patch of grass,” he whispered when he made his way back to Gabby’s ear. “Diagonally to your right.”
They made it a system. Being small, Petey usually had the best cover to look for each new splotch. He’d locate it and memorize where it was, then climb onto the back of Gabby’s neck and guide her there. They even worked it out so they didn’t have to speak. Petey steered Gabby like a jockey, pulling on different strands of her hair to change her direction and get her to just the right spot each time. Gabby hated that it was taking them so long. She kept thinking about Sneakers and Sharli, and what might be happening to them while she and Petey snaked their way through the large park. But caution was the only way they’d avoid getting caught, and Sneakers and Sharli would be in even worse shape if she and Petey were blasted to smithereens.
One of the pee-splotches was at the base of a statue—one of the red metal hulks that dotted the park. It was surrounded by a round, red-pebbled clearing that offered no cover, so Gabby stayed in the thick grass while Petey looked for the next trail ma
rker. Left alone, Gabby stared at the statue. It was strange. It looked like a giant, opened jack-in-the-box, but with a massive U-shaped magnet on the spring instead of a clown. There was a large inscription on its pedestal, and thanks to the translator painted on her neck, she could read it clearly.
GRAVITATIONAL PULL DESTABILIZER. SUCCESSFULLY USED TO PULL FERROS OUT OF ORBIT AND PLUNGE IT INTO AN ICE AGE.
As she let the words sink in, Petey hopped onto her neck. He tugged a curl on her right side, but Gabby heard Martian footsteps in exactly that direction, so she didn’t want to move just yet. Instead she reached back, pulled Petey off her neck, and brought him next to her head. “That statue,” she whispered. “Is it a statue of a weapon?”
Petey checked it out, and his eyes danced excitedly. “Yeah!” he whispered back. “I told you Mars makes the coolest weapons ever! And this one’s super awesome. Mars sold the Gravi-Pull—that’s what people who really know about this stuff call it—to some other planet that was at war with Ferros, right? So that other planet put the Gravi-Pull on an outer moon of another planet in Ferros’s solar system, and when no one was expecting it…”
Petey mimed turning a crank like the one on the jack-in-the-box, then leaped up, arms wide, and whispered, “BLAM! Out comes the Magnetorizor, and BZZZZ, pulls the whole planet out of orbit! The whole thing! How kragphemous is that?!”
“Kragphemous?” Gabby asked.
“You know, cool,” Petey said. “Tough. Hard-core. Kragphemous.”
“Uh-huh,” Gabby said.
She heard Martian voices getting closer, so she put her finger over her lips and waited for them to pass. Then she whispered, “But there were living things on Ferros, right? And if the Gravi-Pull caused an ice age, didn’t a lot of the living things die?”
Petey scrunched his eyebrows and tilted his head. He opened his mouth, but then he closed it again, like he didn’t know what to say. “I’m not sure,” he finally whispered. “I mean…I guess.”
