Aliens on Vacation

by Clete Barrett Smith

  I swallowed, and nodded. “Every time I try to call, Tate answers. He hangs up when I ask to talk to her. The phone book has an address for their house, but I don’t dare go over there.”

  Grandma nodded. “There’s another reason I’ve stayed open all of this time, but it’s silly, I suppose. And gets sillier every year.” She picked up a forgotten teacup from the floor and stared into it for a while before continuing. “When I first opened the inn I had just graduated from the Evergreen State College. I was so young, just a foolish girl. Then I met a Tourist who helped me—”

  “How did you meet your first Tourist?” I asked. I had been so busy dealing with present-day aliens all this time that it had never occurred to me to ask how it all started.

  “That’s a very long story, and one for another time,” Grandma said. “But this Tourist opened my eyes to the worlds beyond Earth, and he helped me set this place up. It was his idea, actually, to hide out in the open with all of the space-themed accoutrements. He had a marvelous sense of humor.” Grandma was quiet for a moment, and this time the smile briefly touched her eyes.

  “We became quite close, very dear friends. He was forced to leave about a year after we opened this place. The truth is, part of me hopes that someday he’ll come walking out of one of those transporters. Yes, I admit it, that’s part of the reason I’ve kept at this so long.”

  Grandma got a faraway look in her eyes after that. Whatever she was thinking about was somehow making her face look younger.

  And then I clued in to what she might have been thinking about, and I shuddered all over. I had to get up and walk around the backyard to get the willies out.

  There was only one thing worse than thinking about your own grandmother…in that way …with any guy in the world. And that was thinking about your grandmother with an alien.

  We continued to work on the house, and I pulled double shifts on Forest Grove cleanup duty to finish up my community-service hours. The back-to-school sales hit the newspaper ads and TV commercials, a sign that my time at Grandma’s place was nearing an end.

  One Sunday evening, Grandma, Mr. Harnox, and I sat in the living room, playing dominoes. It was hard for me to concentrate.

  “Are you feeling okay, David? It’s your turn,” Grandma said.

  I shifted my gaze from the game and looked up at her. “I’ve been thinking about your story, Grandma. About waiting and waiting for your friend to come through that transporter?” She nodded. I stood up. “I’m sorry to run, but there’s something I just have to do. Even if it doesn’t work.”

  Grandma smiled and reached over to pat my hand. “Do what you feel is right.”

  I crossed to the front door; I didn’t care what Tate would do to me. I had to see Amy, even if it was just for one more time. I went out the door and was about to run down the steps when I heard the front gate bang. And there was Amy, breathless and clutching some kind of binder.

  I hurried down the steps to meet her. “Hey. I was just on my way to see you and—”

  She held up her hand for me to stop. “I only have a minute or two.” She forced the words out while trying to catch her breath. She scanned the block, then turned to me. Everything I wanted to say to her over the last few weeks got jumbled up in my head, and I didn’t know where to begin. “I came to tell you we’re leaving town,” she said.

  “Leaving? Why? You’ve lived here your whole life.”

  “My dad lost his job.”

  We were quiet after that. She stared at her sandals. Part of me just couldn’t believe that I would never see her again.

  I forced myself to say something. I couldn’t just stand here until she turned around to leave for good. “Where are you going?”

  “We’re moving to Bothell, outside of Seattle. Dad got a job at this mall as a night security guard. It was the only…the only job that…” Tears brimmed in Amy’s eyes. Without thinking I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close. The floodgates opened. She shook and sobbed.

  “Oh, you should see him…hasn’t left the house…sits around in his bathrobe…still listens to the police scanner all night…being sheriff only thing…ever wanted…even worse…than when Mom left.”

  She buried her wet face in my T-shirt and I held her. I whispered that it was going to be okay, even though I didn’t believe it.

  Her sobs softened after a while, and she was able to catch a few shaky breaths. She stepped back, wiped at her eyes, and brushed her hair out of her face. “I ran down here while he was packing up the truck. He could be here any second.” We looked at each other. Fresh tears shone on her cheeks in the moonlight. “I just wanted to say good-bye. I’m really going to miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too,” I said, trying to control my shaky voice.

  “But I also wanted you to have this.” She put the binder in my hands. “I know you did what you had to do. And I don’t blame you. But I wanted you to have this…so you’d know.” It was a photo album, an old thing with duct tape holding the spine together. The opening pages had three photos glued in: the sign in front of the bed-and-breakfast; rocking chairs on the front porch; windows on the top floor. The edges of each picture showed blurry leaves, evidence that the photographer had been hiding in some bushes.

  Not understanding, I looked at Amy. She nodded. “Go on.”

  I flipped to the next page, a shot of Grandma on the back porch talking to two of her guests. One of them had pointy ears and a rainbow-colored face. The other was only two feet tall, but he was eye-to-eye with Grandma, since he was floating three feet in the air. The next picture showed two creatures, their bodies covered in wisps of long green hair. They were eating a rocking chair. The next picture was a guest climbing a tree. His four muscular arms were tailor-made for climbing, and he was trying not to bump the branches with the stegosauruslike spikes running down his back. I flipped through the rest of the photo album—all shots of Tourists.

  “You knew?” It came out in a whisper.

  She nodded.

  “But—but—but—you knew? Everything? Coming over for breakfast…and Mr. Harnox…and the night in the woods. You knew it all? The whole time?”

  She nodded again. “I figured it out a couple of years ago. I used to come over here every day after school and just hide in the bushes and watch.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t know anything about what was really going on for a long time. But the place was so fascinating anyway. Your grandma’s the most interesting person in this little town. And she’s so brave. She just does whatever she wants and doesn’t care what anybody thinks of her. I admire her so much—it’s the main reason that I told you about my dad’s plan to rush the bed-and-breakfast that night. I couldn’t let that happen to her.”

  My mind was almost as numb as when I learned about the aliens for the first time. But Amy looked back down the street, and I knew time was running out. I forced myself to focus. “Why didn’t you tell your dad?”

  “Oh, I knew how he’d react. He wasn’t ready. I’ve been hoping he’d be ready someday…but after that whole mob scene…” Amy swiped at a tear.

  Suddenly a dark pickup truck sped down the street, with a jumble of suitcases and furniture bungee-corded in the back. Tires screeched as the truck came to a sudden stop in front of the house. Amy whispered fiercely into my ear, “Don’t worry, Scrub. Your grandma’s secret is safe with me. I’ll never tell him. I’ll never tell anyone.” The truck door opened. Heavy footsteps fell on the sidewalk. “Living close to your grandma’s place has been the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s helped me to see that anything is possible,” Amy said quickly. She wiped back some more tears and hugged me again. “I don’t want to go.”

  I hardly recognized the man who walked through the gate. He wore an old baseball cap. His face was covered with a week’s growth of whiskers. Clearly, he had not slept much. He stared at me.

  I expected yelling. Swear words. Threats. But all Tate said was, “Time to go.”

/>   Amy nodded to her father. She looked back at me and tapped the photo album. “Keep it.”

  I wanted to say thanks, but I didn’t think I’d be able to force the words around the lump in my throat, so I hugged her.

  “Will you take your hands off my daughter?” Tate stepped forward, reaching for me.

  The front door flew open. “Don’t you lay a hand on my grandson!” Grandma said, hurrying down the steps. Grandma and the sheriff glared at each other for a long moment, before Tate dropped his gaze and looked at his daughter.

  “Come on, Amy,” Tate said.

  I couldn’t believe this was really happening. Amy let go of me.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  “Bye.” I choked on the word.

  Watching Amy walk away, I felt a shiver, like the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. Suddenly great clouds of fog started rolling in. Even though there was no wind, the fog dropped down quickly, sinking below the tops of the trees until it nearly touched the ground. The road into town disappeared, and soon all I could see was the bottom floor of Grandma’s place; the upper windows were just faint, blurry lights.

  And what was that humming noise? It started so low I had to strain to hear it, but it got stronger, its intensity pulsing rhythmically. I couldn’t decide if I was hearing it with my ears or feeling it with my body, or both. After a minute it was definitely throbbing in my chest, like standing next to a huge speaker with the bass pounding.

  The hairs on my arms stood straight up. Amy’s ponytail slowly rose until it was floating in the air. Tate tugged at his mustache in confusion. The ground trembled, sending tremors up through my legs that threw me off balance. I realized the entire house was shaking behind us, the shutters rattling in the window frames. A bright yellow light flashed in the sky, muted by the fog but still visible, blinking and fading in time with the throbbing, humming noise. The light turned purple, then red, then green, then some colors I didn’t recognize, a kaleidoscope of colors.

  Tate put his arm around Amy, backing toward the gate and clutching at his belt for the gun he no longer possessed. The fog-distorted colors played eerily across his face.

  The pulsing hum sped up—I could feel it in my teeth now—and the ground shaking increased. My heart was pounding.

  Then, all at once it stopped. The colors, the humming, everything. Amy’s ponytail settled. I exhaled. Tate glared at me.

  Mr. Harnox walked out onto the porch and looked up at the sky. We all followed his gaze. An enormous object was lowering toward us through the thick clouds. It dropped down, down, landing behind the house.

  “Finally,” Mr. Harnox said. A huge smile stretched across his face.

  All of us raced to the backyard. The field behind the house was totally obscured by a massive space-ship. The body of the ship looked like an enormous metallic blimp supported by two oversize pontoons. The part we could see, anyway. The top of the ship was totally lost in the soupy fog, so who knows how big it really was.

  Still, it was too big for my field of vision. Thousands of round portals lined the blimp in horizontal columns. The ship was jet black and sleek.

  A massive tube stuck out the side, blowing fog into the air. The shroud of clouds it had created all around Grandma’s place would conceal it from anyone in town.

  A last few traces of kaleidoscope colors zipped around the pontoons, fading in intensity until they finally switched off. The tip of one of the pontoons had landed on a storage shed, crumpling its roof, and some of the outbuildings were smashed completely.

  “I knew it!” Tate said, his voice finding some of that self-assured gruffness again. “I’ve got you this time. You’re not going to be able to dress up like that thing, boy.” He grabbed a walkie-talkie from inside his jacket and started to make a call.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Grandma said, marching over to him and grabbing the device.

  Tate clutched the walkie-talkie in a white-knuckled grip as he loomed above Grandma. She held on with both hands, locked in a tug-of-war. They might have pulled forever, but just then a tube dropped down from the underside of the craft and deposited two figures on the lawn. My heart hammered. These aliens were definitely not here for a vacation.

  Tate positioned himself between the two aliens and Amy, grabbing her shoulders and moving her behind his broad back. Amy immediately poked her head out from behind his elbow in order to get a clear view.

  One of the aliens stepped up to us. In the back porch lights we could see that he was short and slim with bright red skin. He wore a black uniform with geometric patterns outlined in white across the chest. He bent his body in what might have been a bow, then, with a sweeping gesture of his arm, indicated the alien coming up behind him. This one’s head looked like a rectangular chunk of lime-green granite dropped directly on top of his massive, square shoulders. His block of a belly strained the fabric of his black uniform.

  The little red alien spoke. “Presenting Commander Rezzlurr of the Intergalactic Police Force.”

  The huge green alien crossed his arms over his chest and stared at us. I swallowed dryly. Tate puffed himself up a little, straightened out his posture, almost like he was standing at attention. Maybe the ex-lawman in him recognized the presence of a superior officer.

  “Received a distress call from your planet,” the big alien rumbled. His little red underling fished a small device out of his pocket and pushed a button. A hologram of a spinning, blue-green globe appeared in the air, next to a column of scrolling words. Commander Rezzlurr glanced over at the hologram. “From your ‘Earth.’ Apparently you have an emergency.”

  It was Grandma, of course, who found her voice first. “We had an emergency, but it’s over.” She stepped forward to confront them, while the rest of us watched.

  “We apologize for any inconvenience, ma’am,” said the red alien.

  Commander Rezzlurr shrugged. “It’s a big galaxy.”

  “Well, now that you’re finally here, at least you can turn my transporters back on. I have been unavailable for interstellar business the entire time we’ve been waiting.”

  The huge green alien shook his head, which must have been difficult with no neck. “Before we can do that we need to speak with your head of security,” he said.

  “Official protocol, ma’am,” said the red alien.

  “Head of security? But I don’t have a head of security. I don’t have any security.”

  Commander Rezzlurr nodded to the red alien, who punched numbers on his hologram device. The globe was replaced by a holographic image of Grandma’s place. Rezzlurr looked at unrecognizable words scrolling by. “Says here you’ve been in business over forty years. You’ve gone all this time without hiring a head of security? I’ll have to file that in my report.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The red alien hit another button and quoted from the fresh column of scrolling words. “‘According to the law set down by the Interplanetary Collective, all transporter reception facilities are required to have at least one head of security who is either working or locally on-call twenty-four hours a day. Failure to comply may result in suspension or permanent loss of the facility’s Interstellar Hotelier License.’”

  “You can stop with the threats, if you don’t mind. No one ever bothered to tell me about that rule,” Grandma said.

  “Terribly sorry, ma’am. Protocol.” The red alien removed a stylus from his pocket and used it to write on his hologram machine; an image of a form filled the air in front of him, the words appearing as he scribbled on his machine. Commander Rezzlurr stood with his arms crossed, looking completely uninterested in the proceedings. “I’ll need to get some information for the report,” the red alien said.

  “When can you open up the transporters again?” Grandma said.

  “When we return to headquarters I will file the report. After that, a committee of authorities will review the facts and make their recommendation on reinstatement of the transporter system. If they decid
e on reinstatement, a representative will visit you the next time a service ship is in the area. There is a period of time where you may appeal any decision that—”

  “If they decide on reinstatement? It’ll be years before all of that happens!”

  “If you had hired a proper head of security, perhaps the emergency could have been avoided,” he said crisply. “Now, I need some information.” He started with us males. “Name?” He looked at the tall gray alien.

  “Harnox.”

  “Home planet and galaxy?”

  “Shuunuu. Andromeda.”

  “Thank you.” The stylus bobbed up and down in the red alien’s fingers and the words scrawled out along the holographic form. He looked at me next. “Name?”

  “Scrub—I mean David, David Elliott. Earth. Milky Way.”

  “Thank you. Name?”

  Amy’s father’s hand moved to his head, and I think he was starting to salute, but then he dropped it. “Tate. Robert Tate.”

  The huge green alien got a strange look in his eye, staring into the distance and scratching his head. It looked like he was trying to remember something.

  “You have to tell them your planet and galaxy, Dad,” Amy said.

  He paused a moment. “Right. This is Earth, and it’s in the—”

  “Wait a minute,” Commander Rezzlurr rumbled. “Did you say Tate? Robert Tate?”

  Tate nodded, eyebrows crinkled in confusion.

  Rezzlurr snatched the hologram device away from the red alien and jabbed at the console. The spinning globe reappeared, along with more writing. The green alien scanned through the words. “Did you post an official sighting with the National UFO Reporting Center in…let’s see, here…Earth year 1977?”

  Tate looked at the rest of us sheepishly, then studied his shoes.

  “And did you describe the ship as…Where is it?…Oh, yes, here it is. ‘A triangular body of wings encasing a large orb, flying in a zigzag pattern across the north sky?’ Was that you?”

  Tate coughed and quickly glanced at us again. “Sounds vaguely familiar.”