by Elise Allen
Then he spun the rack.
Gabby took a deep breath, ready to scream and distract the little alien…but Petey wasn’t on the back side of the rack. He must have hopped down just in time.
“Ah, that’s the one,” the little alien cooed. Bending his rounded hand, he removed one of the bands from the rack and slapped it against his pudgy arm. The band curved on impact, wrapping securely around his limb. Then he leaped off the desk, and in midair he touched a spot on the band.
Instantly, layers of metal unfolded from the band, snapping and growing and sliding all around the tiny alien until his feet thumped to the ground. He was no longer an adorable doughy creature at all, but instead a behemoth of metal—a ten-foot-tall gray-green tank of a creature with a faceless iron skull and thick plates of armor from his head to his toes. He had a jet pack on his back and weapons mounted to his shoulders and legs, and both his arms ended in sharp dagger-claws. The band he’d pulled from the rack was still on his arm, but now it was an armlet above his armored elbow, stretched ten times its size to accommodate the metal giant’s girth.
He took a deep breath in, and the sound alone turned Gabby’s insides to water.
“MUCH BETTER,” he said, shaking the room with his low, brutal voice.
Gabby’s heart raced as the pieces snapped into place. The Esquagonian wasn’t an Esquagonian at all. He was a Martian, and the pink patch had let him change his shape—the same way patches must have let Martians take Gabby’s, Zee’s, and Satchel’s shapes back on Earth. Now this Martian was letting the P.T.A. believe Esquagon was responsible for taking Sharli and Sneakers…but why?
The hulking Martian turned and looked at the screen where Blinzarra and the Esquagonian ambassador were still silently fighting. “THAT’S RIGHT,” he said with a mirthless chuckle. “KEEP FIGHTING EACH OTHER. GO BACK TO YOUR WAR AND MAKE MARS GREAT AND PROFITABLE AGAIN.”
Gabby’s eyes widened. She remembered what Petey had said. You wanna know the big reason Mars has to keep making more and more kragphemous weapons? ’Cause Esquagon and Miravlad keep asking for bigger and cooler things to use against each other.
Mars wanted the peace talks to fail so they could keep selling weapons. They kidnapped Blinzarra’s daughter and framed Esquagon so the two planets would keep fighting! It was the only thing that made sense…but there was no one she could tell.
She peered at the giant curved screen on the wall of monitors. She couldn’t hear the P.T.A. meeting, but she could see things hadn’t gotten better. Everyone was still screaming at one another, and Blinzarra and the Esquagonian with the mustache both kept reaching for the red button. If one of them actually pressed it, the war would be back on. The whole universe would be in danger, with her own planet in the cross fire.
If only there was a way she could turn on the feed and show the P.T.A. the truth…But how would she sneak past the beast-tank of a Martian?
With heavy thuds, the Martian stomped to the wall of screens. Now she definitely couldn’t get to them. Gabby didn’t see the Martian touch anything, but he must have done something, because the screen images shifted. Blinzarra and the P.T.A. moved to one of the smaller screens, while the hulking Martian aired one battle scene after another on the bigger one. The carnage seemed to relax him. “YES…VERY NICE…” he intoned in a low growl.
It was like he was purring.
“I’ve seen that before,” Petey said in her ear.
Gabby gasped. She hadn’t even felt him land, but he was on her shoulder. “Petey!”
He continued as if he’d been there all along. “It’s from the War of the Yabukerants in the Nubrellian Era. He’s not watching stuff from the Outer Reaches at all; he’s watching old battles.”
“We need to go,” Gabby said. “Come on.”
Gabby had an idea, but they needed to move quickly and get out of the office while the hulking Martian was still engrossed in his screens. She slid out from behind the statue’s pedestal and peered through the doorway. Three Martians—they looked like the same three who’d just taken Sneakers and Sharli—entered the circular walkway from the hall containing the prison cells, then went into one of the other rooms. Gabby gave them a moment to walk out of earshot, then slipped into the corridor herself and edged along the wall, away from the now-giant Martian’s office. She took Petey off her shoulder so she could look at him while she spoke.
“The transport pods,” she whispered. “You said you had a VR thing that let you go in and program them. Think you could program the real thing?”
“Uh, yeah,” Petey said immediately. “The R in VR is ‘reality.’ If I can do it in VR, I can do it in real life.”
“Okay,” Gabby said. “Then the plan is we get Sneakers and Sharli, we go to the pods, and you get us back to Earth. Then we can tell the P.T.A. that the Martians took Sneakers and Sharli, not the Esquagonians. We’ll save the peace talks, save Earth, and save the universe.”
“Cool,” Petey said, sounding much less impressed than Gabby thought he might, given the epic adventure she’d just laid out. “Aren’t you gonna ask me where I was?”
“In the office? I know where you were. I saw you. You were trying to get a Metall-O-Band.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t, ’cause mini-Martian came over before I could. I mean after that. Aren’t you gonna ask me?”
Gabby scrunched her brows. She was pretty sure he came over to her and jumped on her shoulder after that. “Okay…where were you?”
“I came over to you and jumped on your shoulder,” he said.
He could clearly tell he was getting Gabby exasperated, because he finished his thought quickly. “But on the way I grabbed this.”
He held up the pink acne pad—the one the Martian had peeled off the back of his neck.
Gabby gasped. “What are you doing with that?!”
“Well, I wanted to get something. And this is cool. Look!”
He wriggled out of Gabby’s hands, ran up her arm, then slid down her jacket and landed on the f loor. Standing in front of her, he slapped the pink patch on the back of his neck, and instantly morphed into the same eight-foot-tall pink squid-creature with all the writhing tentacles that they’d just seen in the office.
“Ta-da!” Petey cried in the squid-creature’s grumbling voice.
“Are you crazy?!” Gabby snapped. She reached up and snatched the pink patch off the back of his neck, turning Petey immediately back to himself. “Are you trying to get us caught? He’s going to want this when he talks to Blinzarra again! What do you think he’ll do when he sees it’s gone?”
Petey bit his lip, abashed. “Wonder if someone took it?”
“Yes! Wonder if someone took it! And then he’ll look for who took it, and bad things will happen!”
“Right,” Petey said. Then he brightened. “What if I put it back where I found it?”
Gabby shook her head. “Too dangerous. If he decides he wants it while you’re still there, you could get caught. Let’s just hurry and get Sneakers and Sharli, then go to the pod. I’ll hold on to this.”
She slipped one arm out of its knapsack strap and swung the bag around so she could put the patch in a front pouch. Then she put her hand out and Petey hopped into it. After she listened closely to make sure no one was coming, Gabby darted to the prison area’s archway. She didn’t know for sure Sneakers and Sharli were there, but it seemed like their best bet. It was a prison, after all, and they’d seen the other Martians coming out of it.
Gabby tried not to dwell on the fact that if she was wrong, she and Petey wouldn’t be the only ones in trouble. The whole universe would pay the price.
he only light inside the prison hall came from the laser mesh blocking each cell, which bathed everything in an eerie red glow. Gabby had no idea how many cells snaked through the halls, or how many held prisoners. She had no idea if it was an actual prison for Martians who broke the law, or a place where the Martians only brought outsiders, like Sharli and Sneakers.
What she did know was t
hat she didn’t have time to check every cell, which meant she needed Sneakers’s help. She moved deep enough into the main hallway that no one in the outside corridor could see her, then pressed herself against a wall between two cells, blending into the shadows. She closed her eyes and concentrated.
Where are you, Sneakers? She thought it with all her might. Where are you?
She expected Sneakers to show her another vision.
Instead the dog whined, which made Gabby realize Sneakers was much smarter than her. The halls all looked exactly the same—red lasers and cells. A vision would have done her no good at all.
Sneakers kept whining—not constantly, but just often enough that Gabby could follow the sound. It led her down a labyrinth of halls, through which she moved painfully slowly. She desperately wanted to run, but she couldn’t risk anyone hearing her pounding feet, so she tiptoed, and neither she nor Petey said a word. As she searched, she stretched out with her ears, listening for metallic footsteps, but none came. She did hear low growls coming from several cells, but they never got louder as Gabby walked by. That was good, but it didn’t put her at ease. Every nerve in Gabby’s body was at full attention; the strain made her sweat like she was running a marathon.
Finally, Sneakers’s cries were just ahead. Gabby stopped before she reached his cell, then edged in front of it.
In the dim light from the laser beam lattice, she saw them: Sneakers and Sharli. They were on a tall metal podium in the middle of a square room otherwise devoid of furniture. Sharli sat, while Sneakers lay curled around her. The top of the podium was so small there was barely any extra space around him. Sneakers was still muzzled, but the Martians had taken off Sharli’s blindfold. She sucked her thumb and curled the fingers of her other hand through Sneakers’s fur. She looked so sad it broke Gabby’s heart.
More low growls came from either side of the podium. Two snarling beasts stood guard over Sharli and Sneakers, and Gabby realized similar beasts must be in every cell with prisoners; that’s why the growling haunted the halls. The beasts were unlike any animals Gabby had ever seen. They had the bodies of lions, but lions who hit the gym every day. Their eyes glowed red, with no pupils at all. Their heavy brows extended beyond their faces, curving up into thick, sharp horns. Their mouths dripped with foam, through which Gabby could see their razor-sharp teeth and upper and lower fangs. Their paws ended in nails so thick and pointed, Gabby imagined they could puncture sheets of steel as if they were tissue paper.
The animals stared at Sharli and Sneakers, never taking their eyes off the prisoners for a second, their bodies tensed and ready to pounce.
“What do we do, Gabby?” Petey whispered.
Gabby’s skin prickled, but the clearly well-trained beasts didn’t respond to the sound of his voice. Sharli, however, looked up.
“Pe-ey!” she called around the thumb in her mouth. “Ga-ee!”
She stood and reached out her arms, and the movement triggered the guard beasts. They barked and snarled, spittle f lying, and the echoes of their roars bounced off the cell walls. Sharli squealed, terrified, and sat back down, where Sneakers curled even more tightly around her.
Once she was seated, the beasts quieted. They went back to their positions: tense, watching, and constantly on alert.
“Soooo, the savage bodybuilder lion dogs,” Petey said after a long moment. “They’re a problem.”
Gabby almost laughed. They had a whole bunch of problems right now. The rapacious monster dogs might not even make the top of the list. “They’re two of our problems, yeah,” Gabby said, “but they won’t matter if we can’t get past the lasers.”
“That’s easy. We did it before. I put on the springs, bounce up, use the mirror, and stop the laser.” He thought a second, then added, “Got any Minisculean-sized gloves in your bag? I don’t wanna get burned.”
“I don’t, but it doesn’t matter,” Gabby said. “That won’t work this time.”
She knew because she had been thinking the same thing and had already pulled the lip gloss compact out of her jacket pocket. She showed it to Petey. The mirror was hopelessly cracked from its fall after Petey dropped it outside the tower. Several chunks were missing.
“Okay, so we won’t use that,” Petey said. “Got any other mirrors?”
Gabby didn’t, but even if she did, it wouldn’t help. She’d been staring at the cell, and she now saw the source of the laser gate. Unlike the one outside the tower, there was no telescoping ledge on which Petey could stand and hold the mirror. The cell’s arched opening was lined in sheer metal, and the laser eye projector was built into it, f lush with that metal. There was no good way Petey could get up to it and block it—nothing for him to hold on to. And while Gabby was sure Zee could think of a million different ways to do it—like shooting some kind of rope up to the ceiling and having Petey swing to the laser eye—it wouldn’t be even remotely safe, and Gabby wouldn’t risk Petey getting vaporized for a one-in-a-million chance of success.
She explained the situation to Petey, but he was undeterred. “Okay, but I can still get in there,” he said. “It’s the same lasers as outside. I can fit through the holes and get Sneakers and Sharli out.”
“Get them out how?” Gabby asked. “They can’t fit through like you. We still need to shut down the lasers. We just need another way.”
Gabby racked her brain, but she couldn’t think of anything. Then Sneakers raised his head and looked her straight in the eye.
The next thing Gabby knew, she was looking at the latticed laser wall from inside the cell. Three Martians approached, then Gabby’s vision moved to the monster dogs, who perked up as if they’d heard something. Gabby realized she was seeing them from up high, as if she were on the podium looking down at them—like Sneakers. The ravening brutes looked toward the Martians on the other side of the lasers and panted and wagged their tails, for this one moment looking more like dogs than beasts. The Sneakers-vision followed them as they trotted toward a small black circle along a side wall. One of the lion-dog-beasts reared back on its hind legs, put its paws on the wall, and ran its tongue over the circle.
Right away, the vision panned back to the entrance of the cell.
The laser mesh was gone, and the three Martian guards walked in.
“…so once we find a Shrink-O-Zapper and steal it…” Petey said. He sounded like he’d been talking awhile—maybe even the whole time—but Gabby hadn’t heard a word of it.
“Petey, stop,” she said. “Sneakers showed me something—something he saw before.” She squinted her eyes and peered into the cell. The small black circle was there on the side wall, exactly where it had been in Sneakers’s vision.
“Okay,” Petey said. “What did he show you?”
“How to turn the lasers off. They’re controlled by a lickpad.”
“A lickpad ?” Petey echoed. “That’s not even a thing.”
“It is here. When the guards come, they signal to the dog beasts, and they lick that pad to turn off the lasers.”
“That’s gross.”
“How is that gross?” Gabby asked. “They’re animals. Animals lick.”
“Okay, then it’s just weird.”
“It’s not,” Gabby said, thinking about it out loud, “not if the Martians are afraid of people like us helping prisoners from outside the cell. The guard dogs are trained; they only open the door for the right signal.”
“Cool. Then give ’em the signal.”
Gabby shook her head. “Sneakers couldn’t tell me the signal. It’s a sound. I only saw what Sneakers saw; I couldn’t hear what he heard.”
“Okay…” Petey said, thinking it through, “but animals lick, right? Like you said. So Sneakers can lick the door open!”
Sneakers perked his head up, like he’d heard exactly what Petey had said. He gave the boy a knowing gaze. Then, keeping himself curled around Sharli, he stretched one paw off the edge of the podium.
The guard beasts roared to life, leaping up toward the podi
um as they snarled and barked, spittle f lying everywhere. Sneakers quickly withdrew his paw and the monster-dogs settled back into their stiff-bodied watch.
“Or not,” Petey said.
“We need another way to get the guard monsters to lick the pad,” Gabby said, “but it has to be something that’ll keep them busy long enough for Sneakers and Sharli to get out.”
“It’s too bad the lickpad isn’t a bone,” Petey said. “When Sneakers has a bone, he spends all day with it. And he licks it, too. Licks it, chews it, carries it around with him till it gets all gross and wet and slobbery…”
Sneakers thumped his tail against the podium. Even the word “bone” made him happy. Unfortunately, Gabby had no way to turn the lickpad into a bone. She also didn’t carry dog bones with her unless she knew ahead of time she was babysitting for a kid with a dog.
She did carry Satchel’s pizza-dough breadsticks. Would the guard beasts like those?
Gabby slid off her knapsack and knelt down to unzip it.
The second it was open, the creatures’ wide nostrils began to twitch. The beasts remained on alert, muscles tensed and bodies pointed at the top of the podium…but their eyes kept darting toward Gabby. And the sniffing got louder.
Could they smell the breadsticks? It seemed unlikely; the breadsticks were in their sealed plastic container. Gabby couldn’t smell them at all. The only thing she could smell was…
“The fish sticks!” she cried.
She yanked the napkin-wrapped parcel out of her knapsack, and the guard dogs went crazy. They broke away from their stations on either side of the podium and ran at the lattice gate. They stopped just short of it and barked ferociously, lunging and snapping and spraying spittle that sizzled into oblivion on the lasers.
Gabby felt Petey scramble to take refuge on top of her head. “They really want those fish sticks, Gabby! I think you should let them have ’em!”
“Not yet,” Gabby said. “We need to use the fish sticks to get Sharli and Sneakers out!”
