by Pam Harvey
‘There was a…a…’ Once again Byron’s voice failed him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘This is too much.’
‘You should go to the hospital,’ Sean said.
‘Hospital?’ Byron gazed over the heads of his audience, a vacant look on his face. ‘Hospital?’ he said softly. ‘Yes. I should go.’
Ling moved forwards so that she stood next to Byron. ‘This is amazing,’ she said, giving him a wide-eyed look. ‘It’s a wonder you survived. You must be very healthy otherwise. You’ll probably get over this horrible pox.’
‘Yes, I am very strong,’ said Byron, smiling at her, ‘though you wouldn’t know it at the moment.’
Ling gave a pretend shiver. ‘This is so awful. What did they look like again?’
‘Well, they were blue—’
‘No,’ said Ling. ‘Maybe you could show us what they looked like? By drawing them.’
‘Oh,’ said Byron, looking doubtful.
‘Yeah,’ said Sean, pushing the front of the small knot of people. ‘You drew them for us yesterday. Then we could see whether they were the same.’
Byron hesitated then took a blue notepad out of his bag. He flipped it open at a blank page and rummaged around for a pencil. Ling reached her hand out and touched him on the arm. ‘That’s a nice notepad,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s the one you had yesterday.’
‘So?’ said Byron.
Ling kept holding his arm. ‘I’ve seen one like that before. Can I see the front?’
Byron looked at her then slowly closed the book. The front was covered with swirly doodles.
‘Was it cold in the dug-out, Byron?’ Ling asked innocently.
Byron pulled away from her sharply. As he did so, his arm brushed against his face, leaving a smudge of purple right across his cheek. He slammed the notepad into his bag, turned and ran. As he went, he pushed past the cameraman, who stumbled backwards.
‘And away he goes,’ muttered E.D.
‘The fraud,’ said Hannah. ‘I could tell—’
Gabby screamed. Hannah was almost used to Gabby doing that but when Angus let out a similar noise—more like a bloodcurdling shriek—she jumped in fright.
From behind a house on the other side of the road loomed a shiny saucer-shaped object, glowing white and blinking with red and yellow lights.
‘The extraterrestrial pox!’ yelled Sean. ‘It’s coming to get us as well!’
CHAPTER 15
‘Inside, everyone!’ a stern voice yelled. The small crowd that had gathered at the community centre to listen to Byron’s official press conference surged into the building.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Hannah gasped, not sure which way to turn. She glanced about, looking for her friends. She could pick out the backs of Gabby, Sean and Ling as they followed everyone inside. ‘Angus? E.D.?’ she called. There was no answer.
Hannah looked up. The object appeared smaller than she’d first thought. Perhaps it was further away. It wobbled slightly, as if some invisible force had just knocked it off balance. The coloured lights flashed randomly around its outer edge.
It’s big, Hannah said to herself as the disc descended below the roof line. But its not as big as I thought a spaceship would be.
The sound of footsteps interrupted her concentration. ‘Hannah, you’ve got to come inside!’ Angus shouted, pulling her by the arm.
‘Wait on, Angus,’ she said, shaking him off and keeping her eyes firmly on the UFO. ‘There’s something weird about this.’
‘Hannah, of course there’s something weird about it. It’s a UFO!’ called E.D. from somewhere nearby, a note of panic in his voice. A siren wailed away to their left.
‘It is pretty small for a spaceship,’ Angus said, pausing and looking upwards.
‘That’s what I was thinking.’ Hannah shielded her eyes from the glare as the craft rose again, then hovered fifteen or twenty metres above the street outside the hall. She had the feeling that people in other parts of Teasdale wouldn’t be able to see it.
A police car swung into the street and screeched to a halt. Hannah watched as two officers jumped out of the car. E.D. and Angus started to head back inside.
‘Hannah?’
She turned to see Gabby peering around the door. ‘Please be careful.’
A loud crackling noise suddenly filled the air. Confused, Hannah swung around, uncertain as to where the noise was coming from. It didn’t appear to be emanating from the spacecraft.
‘Hello, everyone,’ a male voice called.
‘Can you hear us?’ This time it was a female voice.
‘Hey, I’ve heard those voices before,’ E.D. said, coming back outside. ‘It’s Punch and Judy!’ A few others, including Gabby and Ling, followed him onto the path.
‘Please stay back from the craft,’ the voice crackled as the spaceship descended.
E.D. could see a black speaker that had been attached to a tree to the left of the entrance to the community centre. There was another one on a lamp pole on the opposite side of the road. He hadn’t noticed them earlier and obviously no one else had either.
The crowd of about fifty people edged closer, forming a circle around the craft as it spun slowly towards the ground.
‘The UFOSITE model you see above the road here is a remote-controlled device created on Earth.’ More people emerged from the centre and others appeared from behind bushes and trees in the parkland outside.
‘Cool,’ Sean whispered, staring at the gleaming object.
‘I knew it all along,’ E.D. muttered, giving Angus a nudge. The crowd watched as the craft descended further, its movement getting slower and slower. The lights flicked off as the saucer gently touched down on the path outside the community centre.
‘Look!’ Sean elbowed Angus. The UFOSITE van trundled into view from the nearby park.
‘What did I tell you?’ E.D. said smugly as the van came to a halt.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Gabby, looking from the van to the remote-controlled device sitting quietly on the road.
‘It’s the Punch and Judy show, Gab,’ E.D. chuckled. ‘Those two whackers have set this whole thing up themselves.’
By now, the small crowd had built to almost a hundred people, including a crew of reporters from the local paper. Rod and Judy approached the gathering.
‘Thank you for not approaching the craft,’ Rod said. People stood aside to let Rod and Judy inside the circle. Rod was carrying a black and silver controlling device and wore a set of headphones with a small mouthpiece that hovered near his face.
‘I can’t see Byron,’ Hannah whispered to Ling.
‘I thought I saw him heading out of town,’ Ling replied. ‘He looked a bit freaked out.’
‘My name is Rod Langan and this is my colleague, Judy Spokes. We work for an organisation called UFOSITE. For those of you who don’t know of us, we travel the country investigating sightings that people report. We also track satellites. Occasionally, a satellite breaks up as it falls back through the Earth’s atmosphere. We were lucky that a particularly important part of a satellite that landed close to here was picked up and returned to us.’
Judy took over the speech. ‘There has been a lot of talk in this community recently about UFO sightings and extraterrestrials landing in the area so we thought we’d run a little scenario here to demonstrate that there is usually a perfectly rational explanation for most things that we see in our skies.’
‘So those lights that people saw a few days ago were you guys playing with your remote-controlled spaceship?’ the reporter asked. There was a hard edge to his voice.
‘No, no,’ Rod said, removing his headset. ‘Those people who saw the lights were actually seeing fragments of a satellite that had broken up.’
As the reporter continued his questions, the children in the group stepped closer to the remote-controlled spaceship. Other people started wandering away. Soon there was only a handful of people left.
‘Well, I think it’s probably time fo
r us to move on,’ Rod said. ‘Would one of you like to help me get the spaceship onto the trailer?’
‘You mean lift it?’ Sean asked.
Rod signalled to Sean to join him. ‘No, we’re going to fly it over. Stand back please.’
‘Neat,’ Sean said.
‘Flick that switch there then slowly pull this black lever towards you,’ Rod said. Everyone stepped back as the spacecraft lifted off the ground, wobbling slightly as it rose into the air. ‘Okay, you keep a hold on the elevation stick and I’ll guide it over.’
‘No worries,’ Sean said, staring in rapt attention at the ship as it drifted slowly towards the UFOSITE van.
‘Hold it nice and steady,’ Rod said, manoeuvring the craft to a position just above the trailer. The others followed Rod and Sean. ‘And ease it down now.’ As carefully as he could, Sean eased the lever back until the space ship was resting on a large green sheet of canvas. ‘Very nicely done,’ Rod said. ‘You’ll make an excellent pilot one day.’
Rod and Judy quickly covered the craft, tying it down with long orange ropes.
‘Excuse me,’ said Hannah, suddenly stepping forwards. ‘Can I show you something?’ She turned to Sean and whispered in his ear. Rod and Judy exchanged glances.
‘We really should be heading off,’ Judy said. Sean reached into his pocket and pulled out his drawing.
‘I might have known that it would be you lot who would be last to leave,’ Rod smiled, looking around at the faces of Gabby, Ling, Angus, E.D. and Hannah. ‘Quite the investigating team.’ He looked at the piece of paper Sean was holding out to him. ‘What have you got there, son?’ A look of sudden surprise crossed his face.
Judy glanced over his shoulder and Hannah heard her quick intake of breath. ‘Who drew this?’ she asked.
‘I did!’ Sean said, proudly. ‘You see—’
‘It’s okay,’ Hannah said, quickly snatching the paper back. She’d seen enough. As she’d predicted, Sean’s drawing had been accurate enough for Rod and Judy to recognise the footage contained in the canister.
‘That’s quite an interesting drawing,’ Rod said, eyeing Hannah keenly. ‘But, of course, those figures could be anything. And I’ll tell you another thing.’ Rod paused, letting his gaze fall on each of the children’s faces. ‘People will go to extraordinary lengths to create illusions that appear un-Earthly—alien, if you like.’
‘It’s probably best that you forget this entire episode,’ Judy said, nodding in agreement with her partner. They waved goodbye quickly, hopped into the UFOSITE van and drove off.
‘So that’s that,’ E.D. said in a low voice as they watched the van turn the corner.
‘What I don’t get is where Byron is in all of this,’ Angus said. ‘You’d think he would have been the first to want to know about all this alien stuff.’
‘I think he was a bit frightened when he first saw the spaceship and went off and hid,’ Ling said, suppressing a smile.
‘Hey, he wasn’t the only one,’ Gabby said.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have got Sean to show them the picture,’ Hannah said, catching up to her friends.
‘Why did you?’ asked Gabby
‘I guess I just wanted to see how they’d react. Maybe they already knew I’d activated that machine that showed the footage.’
‘Well, they were thrown, that’s for sure,’ said Angus.
‘So did you really see aliens then, Han?’ Sean asked, stopping to look at his sister. Hannah thought for a moment.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘If I believe my own eyes, then I definitely saw something a bit weird and unusual. Something…’ She paused, searching for the right word.
‘Alien?’ Ling suggested.
‘Yeah,’ Hannah nodded. ‘Something alien. But then again, like Rod said, it could have been one big hoax set up by someone.’
‘I guess we’ll never know,’ E.D. said after a moment.
CHAPTER 16
Hannah leaned her bike against the battered fence post and walked up Byron’s driveway. Someone was mowing the overgrown grass and another man was cutting up wood with a chain saw. A neat stack of sawn-off bits was piled up against the inside wall of the carport.
Byron answered the front door.
‘Hi, Byron, can I come in for a moment?’ Hannah was amused but not surprised to see that the weird colouring and spots on his skin had completely disappeared. Byron stood aside and let Hannah in. ‘I see you’ve made a complete recovery from your alien encounter.’
Byron pursed his lips and looked at Hannah sheepishly. ‘Well, actually…’ He paused, looking down suddenly ‘I haven’t told anyone yet.’
‘Told anyone what?’ Hannah knew exactly what Byron hadn’t told but she wanted to hear it from his own lips.
‘About my alien abduction.’
‘What is it that you need to tell people?’ Hannah sat down in the chair opposite Byron. She cast her eyes about the room, noticing how clean it looked. Byron followed her gaze.
‘My mum’s been down and helped me tidy the place up a bit. She hired some blokes to clean up the outside.’
‘That’s great, Byron.’ Hannah waited patiently. ‘And the abduction…?’
‘I guess I just got a bit carried away, what with those satellite pieces breaking up over town and everyone suddenly talking about lights in the sky and unexplained sightings. People were listening to me, Hannah. All of a sudden I was the one with the knowledge. It was great. I know so much about UFOs and sightings.’
‘I know you do, Byron, but why did you fake an alien abduction?’
‘I guess I just wanted the attention. I wanted to experience what it would be like to actually live through an abduction. Setting it up, especially while the whole town was primed and on edge, was almost as good as the real thing.’ A small smile spread slowly across his face. ‘I guess I went a bit far with the skin and spots.’
‘I guess you did.’ Hannah stared out the window. In the distance she could see the rifle range. ‘We found something out there,’ she said, her gaze still fixed on the scene outside the window.
‘Yeah?’ Byron didn’t sound too interested.
‘Yeah. Sean found a piece of the satellite that contained this blurry footage.’
‘Footage? You mean film? Like video or something?’ Byron was suddenly leaning forwards in his seat. Hannah nodded.
‘It was inconclusive,’ she said.
‘So what was on it?’
Hannah explained what she’d seen. Byron’s eyes narrowed as she described the floating, ghost-like figures moving dreamily down the dingy laneway.
‘You’re kidding me,’ he said finally. Hannah smiled.
‘I’m not, Byron. I believe what I see, and that’s what I saw. What I don’t know is who it was who created that scene.’
Byron shook his head, as if he wanted to clear it of the image that Hannah had suddenly planted there. ‘I can’t help you. I’m going to leave town for a while. Until things settle down a bit.’
‘That’s probably a good idea, Byron. Where are you heading?’
‘Central Australia,’ Byron said, nodding.
‘Wow, that’s fantastic. Uluru and Alice Springs and the desert?’
‘Crop circles.’ Byron grinned. ‘There have been a few reports coming through of some crop circles appearing on this guy’s wheat and cattle station. Me and a mate are going up to check it out. It’s a totally new field of exploration. There’s definitely something in it.’
‘Definitely?’ Hannah asked, trying to hide a smile.
Byron nodded enthusiastically. ‘Definitely. You can see them; they’re there.’
‘Well, good luck, Byron.’ Hannah stood up. Someone outside was shouting her name. She raced to the door but Byron called her back.
‘Here, Hannah. I want you to have this. Look after it for me, okay?’
‘Byron, are you sure?’ Hannah took the scrapbook of alien news clippings and reports from Byron’s outstretched hands.
&
nbsp; ‘Of course. I know you’ll look after it.’
‘Okay, sure. Thanks, Byron.’
‘Hannah, hurry!’ It was Sean.
‘See you later, Byron.’ Hannah shut the door behind her and rushed over to Sean.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Gabby and Ling are leaving!’
‘What are you talking about?’ Hannah’s face went white.
‘Gabby’s been trying to get hold of you. Her dad has to start his new job earlier than he thought so they have to go now.’
‘And Ling?’
‘She can’t stay now that Gabby’s family’s leaving.’
Hannah shook her head. It was too much to think about. She clipped the scrapbook onto the rack at the rear of her bike, jammed her helmet on and followed Sean down the road.
Maybe it’s better this way, Hannah thought as she pedalled along. The next few weeks would have been hard to take. She had been dreading the day that Gabby would be leaving—wondering what she’d say to Ling and Gabby; wondering about how Angus and E.D. would react; wondering if she should spend every moment of every day with Gabby in case she never saw her again. The thought nearly made her sob.
‘How soon?’ she called.
‘What?’ Sean cried.
‘How soon are they going?’
Sean eased up, allowing Hannah to draw up alongside him. ‘Not sure,’ he panted. ‘Gabby phoned about half an hour ago. She said that she tried your phone but it didn’t work. You haven’t charged it, have you? Typical. They could be gone already.’
‘WHAT?’ Hannah stood up in her seat, pumping the pedals furiously. Sean did likewise but struggled to keep up with her. Finally they turned into the Hunters’ long driveway. Relief swept through Hannah as she passed the Hunters’ family car. Its rear doors were open and bags and cases littered the driveway. Hannah also noticed Angus’ father’s new truck, parked on the far side of the drive.
How long has everyone been here without me? she wondered, dropping her bike on the grass and mopping her brow.
‘Hannah!’ Gabby called from the top of the steps. Hannah looked up and waved. ‘I’m so glad you made it. There’s been a change of plans. We’re leaving now.’
