Space Invaders

by Nate Ball

  “That is a lot of cheese,” Olivia whispered.

  I shook my head. “Wait. What?” I said. “My skull just filled with brain soup!”

  Amp grunted. “Time is just one dimension of the cheese, the length of the slice,” he said, slapping his hands together, which I guess represented the cheese. “But,” he said dramatically, moving his hands as far away from each other as he could, “this cheese is not sliced thin—it’s very, very, very thick. Thicker than your mind can even imagine.”

  “I’m lost,” I said. “And you’re making my stomach growl.”

  “Are you saying you travel through the holes in that Swiss cheese?” Olivia’s grandfather said suddenly.

  We all turned in surprise.

  “That is perfectly correct, Mr. Gary!” Amp exclaimed.

  “It’s Mr. Larry, Amp,” Olivia corrected, poking Amp in the stomach with a finger.

  “Like a wormhole,” Mr. Larry said quietly, “through space and time.”

  “Finally, a man of science and learning!” Amp exclaimed, clapping. “Very good, Mr. Harry.”

  “Oh my gosh, it’s Mr. Larry!” Olivia corrected again. “C’mon, it’s not a hard name!”

  “Isn’t that what I said?” Amp said, looking around, confused.

  I sighed. “Guys, we’ve got bigger fish to fry,” I said.

  “What is it with you and your stomach?” Amp said. “We do not have time to catch and prepare fish right now.”

  Olivia put her face in front of Amp. “No, that’s just an expression. ‘We have bigger fish to fry’ means we have more important things to do than to discuss Swiss cheese. Now, let’s—”

  Suddenly we all froze as the thunder of a low-flying helicopter filled the air, its whooping blades vibrating everything around us. We could see its powerful beam of light explode through tiny cracks in the roof of the ranger hut. The entire wooden structure seemed to shiver in fear. Dust filled the air. The helicopter did not fly on. Its engine roared above us again. It was circling!

  “Oh dear!” Amp shouted, staring up at the ceiling.

  “They’ve found us!” Olivia’s grandpa shouted above the noise. “We’ve got to go before we’re surrounded.”

  “GO WHERE?!” Olivia and I screamed.

  “Follow me!” he commanded, and started climbing out the window, Amp’s ship tucked under his arm.

  “A man of action! Lead the way, Mr.—” Amp began, but I snatched him up before he could finish, and stuffed him into a giant pocket of my man-size vest. I zipped the pocket before he could poke his head out.

  We had talked enough.

  Now it was time for action . . . before we ran out of Swiss cheese.

  End of the Line

  I had lost a boot.

  And it wasn’t even mine!

  It was now somewhere back in the woods, sucked off my foot as I ran through a patch of squishy mud.

  The soldiers behind me had probably already plucked it out.

  Now I ran lopsided through the woods, trying to keep up with Olivia and her grandfather.

  The vest I was wearing didn’t provide much protection. My bare arms and legs where getting lashed by branches, twigs, and rough tree bark. Even worse, my bare foot felt like it had been jabbed with a thousand darts.

  Add on top of all this the fact that I was colder than a Popsicle, and you get an idea of how our escape was going.

  The trees around us were providing cover from the helicopters above, but the dozen or so soldiers following me had arrived incredibly quickly. And they wore boots that fit. They weren’t far behind us, and they were clearly gaining ground fast. I could hear the distant snap of twigs behind me and see the occasional flash of a far-off flashlight.

  My big gasps of breath were instantly turned into puffy clouds.

  “Boy, you are out of shape,” Amp said inside my head.

  I had almost forgotten about the passenger in my pocket. “Oh, shut up,” I replied without speaking.

  I’d learned pretty quickly after he’d crash-landed in my room that Amp could communicate with his mind, and I could communicate back. But there was something odd about having that little voice inside my head coming from somebody else. It was uncomfortable, not unlike wearing another man’s boots.

  I burst through some scratchy bushes and almost fell into Bennett Lake.

  I crouched at the edge of the water as tiny, freezing waves lapped at my bare foot. A full moon hung low over the trees on the opposite side of the lake and lit the water like a giant mirror.

  “Hey, why did we stop?!” Amp shouted in my head. “GO, GO, GO!”

  “Please, stay outta my head,” I replied with my mind, looking over my shoulder for any sign of the soldiers in hot pursuit.

  “Are you surrounded? Did you break your leg? I’ve been hearing a lot of things snapping out there. What do you see? Can you unzip this pocket, please?”

  “Zip it, Amp. I can’t hear myself think.” I gasped out loud.

  “Zip it? No, I said unzip it! I can’t see anything. And it’s so stuffy in here.”

  “Would you shush up?” I looked to the right and couldn’t see anybody.

  “Do you have a cramp? Quick—hold your arms above your head!”

  I looked left and could see Olivia about fifty yards away, running on the edge of the water. I followed clumsily along the pebbly shore, my foot happy at least to be out of the splintery forest.

  It looked like Olivia and her grandfather were heading for an empty wooden dock. I could see Olivia’s grandfather running down it in the moonlight.

  That seemed like a spectacularly bad idea to me. If they found us, we’d be trapped!

  “No!” I tried to shout, but I was breathing too hard to be heard. Plus, I didn’t want to give away our location to the troops on our tail.

  “STOP! DO NOT TAKE ANOTHER STEP!” a man’s voice ordered from behind me. “THEY’RE OVER HERE! BY THE LAKE!” he hollered to the other soldiers.

  I could hear him splashing his boots along the shore as he came after me. The woods to my left exploded with voices. I could see flashlights through the trees. This was impossible!

  Olivia and her grandfather were almost to the end of the dock by the time I had just hit its first rough boards.

  I instantly got a nasty splinter in my heel. “Brimples!” I yelped in pain and frustration, but I kept going. What other choice did I have?

  I looked back and was nearly blinded by flashlight beams. We were indeed backed into a corner. The first of the National Guard soldiers to arrive had bunched down where the dock began. They were preparing for their final assault.

  When I turned back around, Olivia and her grandfather were gone.

  Gone?

  “Wha . . . ?” I gasped.

  Were we swimming across this giant lake?! I was a terrible swimmer. And it was freezing. We would all drown. We would all die. This was a terrible idea. I stopped, squeezed both sides of my head, and blew clouds of my breath into the chilly air.

  GONE?

  I was somehow alone. My mind spun.

  I turned and faced the soldiers as they started down the dock toward me.

  “We are at the end of the line, my friend,” I said loud enough for Amp to hear me.

  Showdown

  But then, out the corner of my eye, I saw a large shape moving in the water.

  “Zack, jump!” Olivia’s voice came out of the dark.

  She was slowly moving away from the dock in a tiny rowboat. Her grandfather was next to her, looking back over his shoulder as he steered a tiny outboard engine that made no noise.

  I hesitated.

  I froze just long enough that I knew I would never make the boat if I jumped, even with a running start. The boat was already silently sliding out into the inky black water.

  “ZACK!” Olivia screamed.

  I took a step toward the boat but stopped myself. I’d never make it. And honestly, I was more of a sinker than a swimmer.

  I shot a look at th
e approaching soldiers who were now inching forward, each with their hands raised in a don’t-panic-kid-everything-will-be-just-fine gesture.

  I knew what I had to do.

  I unzipped the side pocket on my vest and pulled out Amp.

  “Holy hot dogs! It’s about time!” he screeched in his squeaky voice, sucking in air in his overly dramatic style.

  The soldiers in front of me gasped. Many had not seen Amp firsthand, and the shock of seeing him stopped them in their tracks.

  Of course Amp barely even noticed them. He was too busy complaining to me: “Are you trying to kill me? Now I have a crick in my neck. And I’ve got a headache! I may be an alien, but I need air as much as—” He stopped when he noticed the crowd of a dozen soldiers huffing and puffing just ten feet away. “Oh dear,” he said quietly.

  “Swim!” Olivia yelled desperately from the dark. The shape of the small white boat was already fading into the misty darkness. “Swim for it, Zack!”

  I shook my head. I had a better idea.

  “DON’T MOVE!” I screamed at the soldiers, raising Amp in my fist and shaking him around in the air above my head. “Or I will squeeze this alien until he pops like a water balloon!”

  “How rude!” Amp screeched, wriggling around in my fist.

  “C’mon, kid, give us all a break and hand the creature over,” the soldier who was out front growled. “We need to bring it back alive.”

  “Creature? Really?” Amp shrieked angrily. “How dare you. I am from an advanced civilization, sir!”

  I decided to speak with my mind so the soldiers wouldn’t know what I was up to. “Amp,” I said with my brain, “act like I’m squeezing you to death.”

  “That won’t be hard,” he said, gasping.

  I took a step toward the solders and shook Amp in my fist. “I’ll do it!” I threatened. “Back up! All of you! Or I’ll squeeze the life out of this alien!”

  “I can’t breathe!” Amp screamed as if on cue. “Hey, you soldiers! This kid is crazy! Look in his eyes. He’s nutso. I don’t want to pop and squirt all over this dock like a jelly doughnut! Please back up before my eyes explode out of my face! I think one of my toes just fell off!”

  Amp was enjoying himself a little too much. I think he loved playing the role of a hostage.

  “My brains might start leaking out of my antennas!”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy,” I said with my mind. “Jeepers.”

  My idea had worked well enough. The soldiers had moved back a good ten feet. Plenty of room for what I needed to do next.

  “Hey, it’s working,” Amp said inside my head. “Brilliant. But now what?”

  Without answering, I spun back around toward the lake, took two quick skips and one giant leap, and threw Amp as hard as I could.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo ooooo!” Amp’s scream faded as he disappeared into the mist that hung above the lake.

  As soon as I threw him, I instinctively knew he’d land in the boat.

  It was the same feeling I got when I threw a baseball to pick off a player trying to steal second base on me.

  A good catcher knows as soon as the baseball leaves his hand if he’s put enough heat on it. My coach loved my throws to second. He said they were the best he’d ever seen from someone my age. And with the throw I’d just made, the runner would be out by a mile—so Amp would be just fine.

  I let out the breath I had been holding in and turned slowly around to face the very unhappy soldiers who were now glaring at me like I had just sat on their birthday cakes.

  “Does anyone have tweezers?” I said simply. “I’ve got a splinter that’s killing me.”

  “You should not have thrown the creature, kid,” the lead soldier said in a spooky voice, his hands closing into angry fists.

  Punch It

  “Why did you throw the alien, kid?”

  “Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

  “Who sent you? Who do you work for?”

  “Where the heck are your pants?”

  “Can that alien even swim?”

  “Where did you hide the spaceship?”

  “Who are those two people in the boat?”

  “Why are you wearing only one boot?”

  The questions from the soldiers surrounding me came fast and furious. Too fast for me to really answer any of them. They all seemed upset that I hadn’t followed their orders.

  I hadn’t really planned what I’d do after I threw Amp onto the boat. Now I was worried they’d toss me into the lake out of sheer frustration.

  I looked around at all of them. “What alien?” I said with a fake smile.

  This wasn’t what they wanted to hear. The soldiers seemed to tense up as a group.

  “What do we do, Sarge?” one of the soldiers asked the man out front, who appeared to be the leader.

  Sarge just shook his head and squinted at me. “Maybe this kid’s on the side of the enemy. Maybe he’s a traitor. Maybe he’s friends with the invader.”

  “Who? Amp? Oh, he’s my friend all right,” I said. “He’s my best friend, in fact.” My teeth started to clack together as my whole body began to shiver from the cold.

  That was when somebody—out of nowhere—punched me right in the stomach.

  I buckled and flew out over the edge of the dock. I was sure I was going into the water—whether I wanted to or not.

  With my eyes squeezed shut, I waited for the shock of the ice-cold water.

  But it never came.

  Man, I must have been punched hard because I was still flying backward.

  Something wasn’t right.

  That was when I realized I hadn’t been hit in the stomach by a fist—it was Amp’s spaceship! I was clutching it as it pressed into my guts.

  “Hold on tight,” Amp said inside my head.

  For the third time that night, I was taken on a wobbly air-bound trip on Amp’s ship.

  The flat, moonlit water skimmed past below me, just inches from my feet. I noticed the millions of stars reflected on the surface of the lake. I wondered how deep the water was. I thought of sharks. My mind must have drifted because my foot with the heavy boot on it hit the water and was pulled off.

  The impact of the boot snagging on the water sent the spaceship spinning. My body helicoptered over the lake.

  I hated flying this way.

  I was too scared to throw up. I groaned in the dark.

  And then, without warning, I was deposited into the boat, which had appeared out of the darkness. The back of my head must have hit Olivia’s knee because I cried out in pain, and so did she.

  I was dizzy. The world spun around me. But I was safe.

  “Look what the catfish dragged in,” Olivia’s grandfather said calmly. “Welcome back, Zack.”

  “You almost broke my kneecap,” Olivia said, wheezing.

  “Hey, I wasn’t driving,” I said, and gasped. The stars in the sky swirled above me as my brain tried to stop turning inside my skull.

  “Sorry, Mr. Larry, but I lost both of your boots,” I said as I sat on one of the wooden planks that served as the boat’s seats.

  “At least we’re safe from those goons,” Olivia’s grandfather said.

  Amp’s spaceship lowered onto the one open plank of wood. The door of the spaceship clicked open, and Amp popped his head out.

  “Gosh, Amp, were you purposely trying to make me seasick?” I said. “If I wasn’t so hungry, I would have puked all over the lake.”

  “Flying is easy; levitating not so much,” Amp said.

  “What’s the difference?” Olivia asked. “Isn’t levitating magic?”

  “Oh no,” I groaned. “It’s another teachable moment.”

  “Let’s talk about hovering and levitation,” Amp said. “It’s quite fascinating.”

  “Do we have to?” I mumbled.

  Amp began speaking into the tiny wrist recorder he wore:

  “Note to Erdian Council . . .”

  “I told you this would ha
ppen,” I said, shaking my head at Olivia.

  “Children are fascinated by the concept of hovering, as our spaceships appear to do. They seem unaware, however, of the science behind hovering and levitation. Of course, both involve providing enough upward force to counteract the downward force of gravity. Hovering in a stationary position requires mechanical means and considerable energy, as seen on this planet with hummingbirds, bees, dragonflies, and helicopters.”

  “Oh, I love how hummingbirds can just hang out in the air in front of a flower,” Olivia said.

  Amp didn’t acknowledge Olivia’s comment. He was on a roll.

  “Must explain that levitation is different because it provides sufficient upward force without mechanical means, for example through electrostatic or aerodynamic means—or, as in the case of the Dingle, through magnetic fields. And while generating sufficient magnetic force to resist the effects of gravity is complex, the stability of this system took us several hundred years to figure out and perfect. Perhaps a lesson in Erdian scientific history is needed.”

  “Oh, please, not now,” I said, groaning. “The world is still spinning around me.”

  Several bright, white dots appeared on the side of Amp’s ship.

  I sat up. “What do those white lights mean, Amp?”

  “Oh . . . ,” he said, his arm slowly dropping. His face grew grim with concern. “That means they’re coming.”

  “Who’s coming?” Olivia asked in an unsteady voice, scanning the lake around us. “The soldiers? Those secret agents? Who?”

  That was when I noticed the stars in the sky weren’t swirling because I was dizzy; the stars themselves were moving. The thousands of stars I was looking at were actually Erdian spaceships. They were all swirling in perfect formation, like a tornado of bright little dots.

  They were coming. It had started. Everything we had worked for hadn’t worked at all. This was it.

  My stomach clenched up even tighter.

  The Erdian invasion was upon us. Literally.