by Elise Allen
“But they could lick the pad to get rid of the gate right now! Then they’ll eat us and the fish sticks!”
Gabby shook her head. Gently, so she didn’t dislodge Petey. The dogs’ gnashing, rapacious teeth scared her, too, but she stayed calm for Petey’s sake and told him what she hoped was the truth. “I don’t think they’re smart enough,” she said. “If they were, they’d have opened it already. They only lick the pad when they get the signal. But I bet they’d lick it for these.”
Gabby opened the napkin to reveal six fish sticks, and the dog beasts went even wilder. More foam, more snapping, those horns that could rip her apart with a single stroke. Gabby was glad an array of lasers separated her and Petey from them. She couldn’t believe she was about to purposely take it away.
She had to move quickly. She now understood it was normal for the cell beasts to bark and roar whenever prisoners moved, but if these two kept going, any Martians in the section might hear them and get suspicious.
“What are you gonna do?” Petey asked, his voice growing higher as the frantic beasts jumped and yelped. “Throw the fish sticks at the lickpad? They won’t stick!”
“That’s why I won’t throw them,” Gabby said. Then she called, “Wanna play a game, Sharli? We can be puppies on a mission, like your show this morning.”
Despite the barking and frothing, Sharli looked intrigued. Her braids clacked as she tilted her head, curious. “Pa-pee?”
Gabby nodded and forced her voice not to quaver. “Uh-huh.” She held out her cupped hands, full of the fish sticks. “All we need are these fish sticks on that little black circle. But don’t let them touch the red lines in front of me, okay? And don’t let the mean dogs eat them until the fish sticks are on the circle.”
Sharli furrowed her brow, taking it very seriously. “No red. No eat.” Then she called out, trying to sound like the show, “Pa-pee Gard—go!”
She stared at the fish sticks, and they soared out of Gabby’s hands and threaded themselves through different holes high in the laser mesh.
The guard beasts stopped barking. They leaped and snapped, desperate to catch the treats. They had amazing vertical power, jumping halfway to the ceiling to try to grab their snack, but Sharli kept whooshing the fish sticks just out of their reach. Then she dive-bombed the fish sticks onto the lickpad, where she mushed them all around.
Instantly, the beasts were on them, and the very first lick made the laser mesh disappear. In a moment of sheer terror, Gabby worried that the licking would turn on the lasers, too, but deep down she knew better—Sneakers wouldn’t have shown her the image if she’d only succeed in strobing the deadly lasers on and off.
Keeping one eye on the dog beasts, who had scarfed down the fish sticks in an instant but kept snuff ling around and licking up the last remnants of grease, Gabby raced into the cell and grabbed Sharli. The instant Gabby had her, Sneakers jumped off the podium, ran out of the cell, and down the hall. Gabby didn’t need him to look back to know he wanted her to follow.
Gabby felt to make sure Petey was still on her head. “Hold on, Petey!”
She ran after Sneakers as fast as she could while holding Sharli. The little girl’s braids bounced and smacked Gabby in the face as they went, but Gabby was happy to take the abuse if it meant getting out of the prison hall quickly.
On her own, Gabby would have gotten hopelessly lost, but Sneakers knew every twist and turn through the maze of red laser-lit halls. He wound through them fast enough to push Gabby to her limits but never so fast that she lost sight of his swishing brown-and-white tail. This time Gabby didn’t worry about her feet pounding on the f loor. Now that she had Sharli and Sneakers, all she wanted to do was get to a transport pod and get back home as fast as possible.
It wasn’t until Gabby finally saw the stark-white light of the circular corridor up ahead that she heard snarling, foamy, slobbery roars and the pounding of heavy feet and claws behind them.
The guard beasts had come after them.
abby’s heart jumped into her throat.
From the bellowing and howling, she knew the creatures were angry. Luckily, they were also still far away. Gabby had to move fast; if the beasts got close enough, they’d rip her, Sneakers, Sharli, and Petey to shreds.
“Wait for me at the door!” Gabby called to Sneakers between panting breaths. “I know where we’re going!”
Sneakers did as he was told. The dog waited just inside the doorway and looked back at Gabby, wagging his tail anxiously. Gabby poured on speed and burst out of the doorway and into the circular hall. She had so much momentum she had to hold Sharli out of the way as her side slammed hard into the elevator, which complained with a loud metallic BONG.
“WHAT WAS THAT?!”
The low, horrible roar froze Gabby in place. She knew the voice. It was the Martian from the executive office, the one who had disguised himself as an Esquagonian.
A moment later he called out again, but this cry was far worse, and so loud it shook the entire hallway. “WHERE IS MY MO-EMULATOR PATCH??!!”
Gabby hadn’t heard the term before, but she knew what he was after. He’d just realized the pink patch that turned him into an Esquagonian was gone. And the thundering footsteps that echoed into the hall meant he was coming to look for it.
“The transport pods!” Gabby whisper-hissed to Sneakers.
Sneakers understood and slipped inside the pod room’s arched entryway. Holding Sharli close, and with Petey grasping her shoulder, Gabby darted after him.
She almost made it.
BLAM! Gabby screamed and jumped back as an orange beam zapped across her path. The beam hit the door jamb and turned it into dripping tar.
“YOU!”
The Martian’s booming voice was far too close. He had come out of his office and now stood just around the circular hall from Gabby. He still wore the massive armored tank of a suit, and though his metallic-slab head had no facial features, Gabby could feel his baleful glare. One of his shoulder weapons still steamed from its tar-laser blast. The other one pivoted, aiming right at Gabby’s face. She jumped back just as the weapon zapped to life.
It turned the edge of the elevator shaft to ice.
“YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY?!” the Martian roared.
His voice turned Gabby to jelly, but she couldn’t give in to her fear. She edged herself farther around the circular hallway until the elevator shaft blocked him entirely. If she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her. And he couldn’t blast her either.
From the room with the prison cells, Gabby heard the guard-creatures snarling and growling. Voices and footsteps echoed from the other rooms. Any second now the hall would teem with Martians and ravenous beasts, and Gabby would have no hope of getting to the transport pods.
Gabby heard a high-pitched electric whine as the entire top of the elevator shaft glowed bright yellow, then vanished. With her cover disintegrated, Gabby was now face-to-face with the Martian. One of his leg blasters steamed, and both shoulder blasters pointed right at her. He had no mouth, but his voice smiled unctuously.
“PEEK-A-BOO.”
Gabby devoted exactly one millisecond to wondering if he’d gotten the term from Earth visits or if peek-a-boo was really that universal, then Petey dove into her hair while Sharli whimpered and hid her head against Gabby’s pounding chest. Gabby pulled her in and tried to turn her away from the laser blast that was sure to come.
“WHHHOOOOOAAAA!!!!”
The giant, hulking Martian hollered out loud as he tumbled forward, toppling into the remains of the elevator shaft.
Stunned, Gabby watched him fall, then looked up and saw Sneakers. He was standing where the Martian had just been, wagging his tail proudly.
“You pushed him!” Petey called from atop Gabby’s head. “Good dog!”
“Strong dog,” Gabby said. “That suit is heavy.”
WHOOSH!
Gabby looked down the elevator shaft, to the source of the sound. The falling Martian had stopped falling, and wa
s now rocketing back up toward them.
“His jet pack!” Petey cried.
The footsteps and dog snarls were louder now, too. Their enemies were closing in from every direction.
Confident that Sneakers would follow, Gabby dove into the transport pod room and immediately ducked into one directly to the left—the same one she and Petey had hidden behind earlier. Sneakers zipped in beside her as Gabby put Sharli down, grabbed the door handle, and heaved her body backward to slide the heavy metal panel shut. She heard a satisfying click and hoped that meant it was locked.
“Petey,” Gabby panted, “can you get us to Earth?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. He had already jumped away from Gabby and was climbing around on a wall full of cogs, gears, levers, buttons, and monitors. Gabby couldn’t make sense out of any of it, but Petey raced up and down the wall using all his limbs at once. He f lipped switches with his elbows, ran on dials to turn them, then bounced down to type on a keyboard filled with characters Gabby’s translator stripe couldn’t even decipher. “Easiest way is to go right back to the portal we came through to get here.”
The machine started to hum. The sound was low, and above it she could still hear footsteps. They clacked all around the transport pod now, like raindrops in a driving storm.
Gabby knelt down and tried to take off Sneakers’s muzzle, but she couldn’t. Her whole body was shaking. Her fingers kept slipping off the buckles.
“Hurry, Petey,” she urged.
The door of the transport pod started to rattle.
“Almost ready,” Petey said. He stretched to reach something with his left arm.
“What are you trying to get?” Gabby asked. “I can—”
SWOOSH!
The pod door f lew open and the executive office Martian squeezed inside the pod. His hulking metal body filled the entryway, but through the few cracks of light around him Gabby could see an army of smaller Martians, as well as the snarling, frothing guard dogs.
There was a whirr as the Martian’s tank-like armor shifted and opened out to reveal countless weapons, every one of which spun to face Gabby.
As more and more weapons unfolded, Gabby’s ears throbbed with the rush of her blood roaring in her veins.
This was it. This was how she was going to die—disintegrated by an adorable alien marshmallow puff in a big metal suit.
An adorable alien marshmallow puff…
Gabby broke out in goose bumps. How had she not thought about this until now?
“Sharli,” Gabby whispered. “The band on his right arm, above his elbow. Now!”
Gabby saw the f lash as every weapon on the Martian’s body fired at her…but each laser beam and blaster bolt fizzled in midair as the band snapped off the Martian’s arm and his entire monster-tank of a suit instantly disappeared, leaving only the rounded pillow of pudgy white-green alien cuteness standing on the f loor.
Outside the transport pod’s open door, the crowd of Martians looked down and gasped. Even the dog beasts stopped snarling and stared.
“Great and Powerful Eminence,” a stunned Martian in charcoal armor said. “You’re tiny!”
The chubby little Martian’s huge eyes got even huger as he looked down at himself, his sweet little mouth a perfect O.
“No-no-no-no-no!” he squeaked. Then he ran to Gabby and hid behind her leg. “Close the door! Close it!”
Gabby didn’t hesitate. While the army of Martians outside were still gaping, she lunged to the handle and heaved the door shut. The click of the lock seemed to jolt the crowd, and the door immediately started to rattle. Gabby knew the Martians would pull it back open any second.
“Petey?” Gabby called.
“Almost!” Petey cried back as he jumped across a keypad. He landed with his legs straddled, pressing two buttons at once, then leaned back to reach for another control.
“How dare you do this to me in front of my subjects!” a tiny voice screamed.
Gabby wheeled around just in time to see a white-green blur, as the Marshmallow Peep of a Martian sprang up and grabbed Gabby’s face. He clung to the sides of her head with his legs, pummeling her forehead with his pillowy fists.
It’s like getting attacked by an angry cotton ball, Gabby thought.
It was the last thing to cross her mind before the door latch opened…then everything disappeared.
PLOOSH!
The next thing Gabby knew, she was lying on her back in a pool of sticky goo, and everything smelled like pizza.
She turned her head, and her cheek smushed down into more goo.
It didn’t just smell like pizza, it was pizza.
“Gabby?”
The incredulous voice belonged to Alice. Gabby lifted her head and saw her mom across a sea of cheese and pepperoni. Her eyes were wide, and her hands were on her face. Arlington was right next to her, frozen in open-mouthed shock. As Gabby looked around, she saw nothing but people, standing in a wide circle, all gaping at her…while she was surrounded by pizza.
Gabby’s blood chilled as she realized where she was: smack in the middle of the world’s largest pizza, with hundreds of people gathered around her.
But was she alone?
She spun onto her knees, ignoring the sauce and cheese that seeped through her jeans. “Sharli? Sneakers? Petey?”
She frantically sloshed in a circle until she saw them. They were all there, sprawled out in different spots on the giant pizza. Sharli sat cross-legged, splashing down her hands, then giggling as she raised them up again, stretching lengths of gooey cheese; Sneakers rolled around on his back in the toppings, coating his fur in goo. Petey whooped as he leaped from pepperoni to pepperoni, as if the meat slices were stepping stones.
Gabby was so relieved, she didn’t even realize the ramifications of what was happening—that she had literally just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a giant pizza with a dog, a toddler, and a human being the size of a box of crayons.
Then she heard the scream.
“ALIEN!!!!”
It was Madison Murray. She stood right next to Dina Parker, the reporter, and Dina’s cameraman, who looked like he was filming. It didn’t surprise Gabby that Madison had tracked down Dina and planted herself by her side. What did surprise her was the subject of Madison’s scream. It wasn’t Sneakers, Petey, or Sharli…it was the Martian. The adorably chubby white-green creature with huge black pupil-less eyes and slits for a nose bounded across the pizza. His mouth and brow were furrowed in a sneer, but the fierce gaze somehow only made him look cuter. Sauce splashed in his wake as he ran toward Gabby.
With a sweetly high-pitched samurai scream, he leaped into the air and latched on to Gabby’s sauce-stained purple puffer jacket. He pummeled her chest with his fists, which felt like getting beaten with cotton candy. In other words, she couldn’t feel a thing.
She couldn’t feel a thing…but she could see and hear everything.
The shock that had silenced the crowd had worn off. What sounded like a million voices were shouting, and what looked like a zillion cell phones were pointed at her and the most alien-looking alien Gabby had ever seen.
“This is Dina Parker, coming to you live from the fair, where we are currently witnessing a genuine alien invasion. Get a close-up, Charlie.”
“Yes!” cried Madison. She jumped onto the pizza so she could stand right in front of the cameraman. “And get a close-up of me, Madison Murray, whose very best friend, Gabby Duran, is in the pizza with the alien. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, Dina.”
Gabby’s head spun. She hadn’t just broken A.L.I.E.N.’s number one rule, she’d demolished it. Proof of alien life was right now being blasted to people’s TVs. It didn’t matter that Dina was only local news—something like this would be picked up nationally. Internationally. It would go viral. Everyone would see it, including G.E.T.O.U.T. and all the other enemies of aliens here on Earth. Every family Gabby had met, every kid she’d ever babysat, they’d be in horrible danger now, and it was all
her fault.
Gabby tried to fix it. She whipped off her knapsack and pulled out her fake remote control. She feverishly pressed its buttons and wrangled its joystick. “Look at me!” she said loudly, right into the camera. “I’m remote-controlling these alien toys!”
Looking at the camera might not have been the best idea. It took her eyes off the small Martian, who yanked the remote out of her hands and hurled it behind him. Then he hopped onto Gabby’s head and furiously jumped up and down. It felt like a light drizzle.
The remote thwocked into Zee’s stomach as she and Satchel ran across the pizza toward Gabby. Zee oofed as it hit her but quickly recovered and picked up where Gabby left off.
“Oooh!” she shouted in the most stilted voice Gabby had ever heard. “Thanks, Gabs, for getting your toy to throw this to me! Now I’m totally controlling this wild, seemingly alien craziness!”
She lowered her voice as she and Satchel reached Gabby. They crouched over her, speaking over each other in soft, urgent tones.
“We’re so sorry,” Zee said. “We were gonna leave the rock where it was.”
“But we didn’t want anyone else to take it,” Satchel said. “And my aunt Toni found us.”
“They put that app on Satchel’s phone,” Zee added, “the one that always tells them where he is.”
“It’s for work!” Satchel said defensively. “For pizza deliveries. And I left it on today ’cause I didn’t know we’d be with you and the you-know-whats.”
Zee rolled her eyes. “Whatever. She found us and she made us help with the pizza.”
“You know Aunt Toni,” Satchel said. “You can’t say no to her.”
“So I put the rock in my pocket,” Zee said. “Just to keep it safe.”
“And we were gonna take it back where we found it, I swear—”
“But it got super hot—like it was burning my overalls. So I took it out, but I had to bobble it around ’cause it burned—”
“But it was blinking purple, and I didn’t want anyone to see, so I grabbed it!” Satchel snapped his fist around an imaginary rock to illustrate. Then he winced and looked down, abashed. Zee furrowed her brow sympathetically and put a hand on his arm.
