by Mark Lawson
“Why are you so good at catching lizards? I haven’t caught a single one and that was the fifth one that you’ve caught in half an hour,” complained Sam, as he turned to confront his friend.
“Look, there’s one running out from under the rock in front of you,” interrupted Nate.
Sam swung back to face the rock that he had been so closely guarding. He stared at the rock.
“What are you talking about Nate?”
Suddenly Sam’s eyes caught sight of a small, silvery skink darting out from under the grey ledge. Sam’s hand came down hard on the rocky platform upon which he was perched. He moved into a more comfortable position, shifting his weight between his legs and his supporting arm as he slowly lifted his cupped hand.
“I caught its tail!” Sam declared triumphantly, as he held up the wriggling appendage to show to his best friend. “I hope the lizard’s alright.”
“It’s alright. It’s a defence mechanism you know,” explained Nate. “They drop their tails to make the birds think that the tail is really the lizard. That way they can get away.”
“Yeah, yeah. What are you an encyclopedia or something?” teased Sam.
“Something like that,” confirmed Nate proudly with a grin from ear to ear.
Nate soon gave up on lizard catching and began collecting small, rounded stones from the bank of the stream.
“Five lizards to me and one tail to you: I win again!” Nate announced the result with the most official sounding voice that he could manage. Sam looked quite unimpressed.
Nonetheless, the strange, green creature sitting in the branches of a nearby tree seemed to be very impressed as he peered out at Nate through the leaves. It lifted a webbed hand and stroked its chin as if deep in thought.
Sam jumped to his feet and dashed up the path. Nate hurriedly pushed his prized stones into his pocket and charged after his friend, pushing and jostling with him all the way back to the Street.
“See you tomorrow Nate.”
“See you Sam,” Nate shouted back, and with that the best friends parted ways and headed to their own homes.
Nate flung open his front door and bounded into the house. He knew that his Dad would be home soon, he was always home early on a Friday. “Jupiter has sixteen moons. That’s impressive. Ganymede is the largest of Jupiter’s moons, and the largest moon in our solar system.” Nate muttered to himself. He was bursting to impart this new knowledge to his father, information that Nate was sure he would certainly find helpful in his day-to-day duties as a bank manager.
Nate’s elder sister, Victoria, was usually in when he arrived home from school. He opened the door expecting her loud music to hit him in the face. Instead there was silence. Without Victoria’s music echoing around the house, the place seemed eerily quiet.
“Why hasn’t Georgiana run to the door to meet me?” he thought, as he walked along the hall towards the kitchen. She was always excited to see Nate after school. She waited for him, counting down the minutes, until she heard him at the front door. If there was one thing that Nate could depend upon, it was seeing his little sister bouncing up and down in the hall at the end of the school day.
Something was seriously wrong in the Armstrong house.
“I hope Georgi is alright?” Nate shuddered as he ran through all of the things that could have kept her from meeting him at the door. “Maybe she’s sick, or worse,” he thought, as his over-active imagination conjured up a wicked wizard holding his little sister captive in a dank castle somewhere in the fog covered moors of central Europe. He could almost hear the distant howl of hungry wolves as he wrestled his thoughts back to his own, silent house.
Nate walked through the dark, timbered hall. Something was most certainly wrong. The house was as quiet as a graveyard. A loose floorboard creaked underfoot as he tried to sneak towards the kitchen.
Nate wrapped his hand around the door knob at the end of the hall. Slowly he twisted it, careful not to make any noise. He inched the door open and peered into the empty kitchen. “W, w, w… what’s for afternoon tea Mum?” he whispered instinctively around the solid timber door. There was no reply.
Nate slid his bag off his shoulder and dropped it beside the doorway where he always left it at the end of the day.
After taking a few tentative steps into the kitchen Nate stopped in his tracks, his head cocked to the left. Even Oscar, his pet bird, was silent, and that had never happened before.
“Where’s my family?” muttered Nate to himself. “What’s going on?”
Nate stopped listening for the usual sounds that greeted his return from school and started looking around the room.
He saw his mother at the kitchen bench, standing motionless over a half prepared sandwich. To her left, Victoria was standing at the refrigerator, with the door open, staring in at its contents.
Nate turned to the far corner of the room, where his bird’s cage stood near the kitchen window. There he saw his sister, Georgiana, suspended in mid-air. She appeared to be frozen, with her arms outstretched and a broad grin on her face. She hung suspended about 30 or 40 centimetres above the kitchen floor. Oscar stood on his perch with his wings outstretched at the edge of the cage nearest to Georgiana. It looked to Nate as though he had been joining in the game that Georgiana had been playing before she froze in mid air. Oscar too was frozen.
“What?” thought Nate. “What’s happening? This is weird.” He stood staring at the strange scene for a few moments, not knowing what to make of it all, or what to do. Nate glanced out of the window. A flock of birds flew by the house. The dull roar of the occasional car driving along his street drifted into the kitchen. The outside world was behaving as it always had. What was happening inside the Armstrong home?
Nate’s first thought was to run from the house and go for help. He probably would have acted on this impulse but for what happened next.
Without warning, and for reasons that Nate could not then explain, the lights in the house began to flicker on and off. The radio suddenly turned itself on, and began to scan up and down through all the frequencies. The television in the living room switched itself on and every electrical appliance in the kitchen began to bake, boil or toast (depending upon its design), whether it was plugged into a power point or not. To the world outside, the house must have appeared as though it had sprung to life.
All life inside the Armstrong house remained in an eerie state of suspension. Nate nervously scanned the room. His family remained as motionless as statues in some strange wax museum. The din from the Armstrongs’ collection of household appliances continued to belt out a lively, but completely incomprehensible, piece of music like some out of tune, electric orchestra.
A tight knot formed in Nate’s stomach and tears welled in the corner of his eyes. What on Earth was happening? Just as Nate was about to turn and run for the front door, a bright, blue flash of light caught his eye. The appliances fell silent.
“Nathaniel Armstrong? Nathaniel Armstrong. You can understand me, can’t you?”
Nate turned around slowly and found himself looking straight into the eyes of a bright green creature standing in the kitchen doorway. The creature was about four feet tall. It had a disproportionately large and rounded head, atop of which sat two large, yellow eyes. It looked to Nate like a giant, green frog: a frog wearing a suit made entirely of metal. The suit was as fascinating as the animal that stood in the doorway. It covered the strange creature from the neck to foot. As the creature moved towards Nate, the suit moved too, constantly re-adjusting itself, flowing over itself like thick, molten metal, to accommodate the movements that the creature was making.
“I can understand you,” Nate replied at last. “Y… you … you can speak English?” he stammered in surprise.
“No, not a word,” answered Nate’s strange visitor. The significance of the creature’s answer was lost on Nate as he pondered the larger issues that were facing him at that particular moment.
“What’s happening here? What�
��s happened to my family?”
Nate wanted to run, but his feet stayed anchored to the spot.
“You don’t have to worry about your family. They will be fine. I just needed to talk with you,” began the creature. “We need your help. Earth is in danger and so are a number of other planets, including my own planet, Aquarro 5.”
“What?” thought Nate. “Aquarro 5 isn’t a real planet. I just made it up this afternoon when I was writing my story in class.”
The creature continued, “Aquarro 5 is a real planet. It’s located on another spiral arm of the Milky Way. It’s my home planet and it’s in great danger. The whole of the Universe is in danger.”
“Weird,” thought Nate, “it’s as though it can read my thoughts.” Nate shivered; the strange creature was more than a little frightening. He was, however, speaking with a real live alien, and that was the one thing that Nate had dreamed about day and night for as long as he could remember.
“It only seems weird now,” responded the creature. “But it soon won’t. My name is Farden, I am a member of the Confederation of Planets’ Security Force. We are like an interplanetary police force.”
“The Confederation of Planetary Security Force,” repeated Nate. “Why not just call yourself C.O.P.S.? Get it? You’re a police officer from C.O.P.S.? …. That’s kind of funny …. right?” Nate’s sense of humour had a habit of bursting out at even the most inappropriate times.
A slight smile flittered briefly along the creature’s thin lips. “We need your help Nathaniel Armstrong. Plans for a terrible weapon have been stolen from our secure facility. We understand that the thief is building the weapon as we speak. If he finishes it he will be unstoppable. The weapon can destroy a planet in seconds. You don’t know it yet, but you are a very gifted and unusual human. As you grow into your gifts you will become more and more powerful, you may even become great one day. We need your help. If you will help us, then we must leave immediately. Will you come with me?”
Of course, no-one had ever spoken to Nate like this before. He was rather excited about being described as gifted, and he liked the idea of becoming powerful. His thoughts drifted off to an arid, alien landscape littered with the remains of a defeated, evil robot army. In his mind’s eye Nate stood with his foot on a robot’s head as the last blue glimmer of life faded from its eyes.
“My family,” gasped Nate, as his thoughts fell back to Earth with a thud. “They’re still frozen. Will they stay that way forever? What did you do?”
“They will be alright,” explained Farden. “I only stopped time around them. I will start it again when we leave. When we go they will be as normal as ever, they won’t even remember what happened to them. If you come with me I’ll have you home in less than five Earth minutes. They won’t even realise that you’ve gone. Will you come with me and save the Universe?” repeated Farden.
Nate stood motionless, deep in thought. On the one hand there was nothing he wanted more than to visit alien worlds. But at the same time, who knew what it was like out there? Maybe he was better off staying at home where it was certainly safe.
“It’s pretty scary out there, right?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” answered Farden honestly.
Nate began to chew at the corner of his lip. He always did that when he was deep in thought.
“Will I come?” he finally blurted out. “Of course I’ll come.” It was his dream to travel among the stars and meet with aliens, and now one had come to his house and offered him the chance to make his dream a reality.
“Good,” said Farden, “Let’s depart.”
The Armstrongs’ household appliances again sprung to life.
“Sorry about this,” shouted Farden above the racket. “The transport beam interferes with the electrical circuits in your home. It creates a strong, but very localised, magnetic field that has this effect upon electrically powered gadgets.”
Almost as Farden spoke these words, a thin sheet of blue light fell from the ceiling into Nate’s hall. It was coming from above the house, passing right through the roof and falling onto the floor behind the creature. Farden moved towards the beam and beckoned for Nate to do the same.
Nate thrust his right arm into the light. To his surprise his arm seemed to burst into millions of tiny particles, each the size of a speck of dust. He instinctively withdrew his arm.
“What the? … Hey, it doesn’t hurt at all.” Nate looked at his arm and wriggled his fingers. He opened and closed his fist a few times just to make sure that it still worked properly.
“It’s just a transport beam,” laughed Farden. “Of course it won’t hurt you.”
Nate was warming to his new companion. Farden had seemed so cold and precise when he was explaining the purpose of his visit, but to hear him laugh opened up to Nate a new dimension to this strange creature’s personality.
“I’m beginning to like this creature”, thought Nate. “Perhaps this will be fun as well as exciting and strange.”
Nate thrust his arm into the beam. As he did so he thought he heard the garage door opening above the din in the house. Once again, his arm burst into millions of tiny particles, like dust. He held his breath and stepped purposefully into the middle of the blue light.
Chapter 3: Big Sister
Nate felt like he was on a roller coaster ride: a very long and a very fast roller coaster ride. His heart leapt into his mouth and his stomach felt as though it was being pressed into his shoes. Bright colours flashed past: it even seemed to Nate like they passed right through him. He was vaguely aware of the Earth receding to a small dot behind him, although he dared not turn around for fear of falling.
Try as he might however, Nate could not get a sense of his own physical body. He tried to lift his hands to his eyes, but all he could see were the bright colours that rushed past what he assumed was his face.
Nate finally plucked up enough courage to turn and look behind him. To his surprise he could see along the narrow, blue beam and right into his own house as if it were only a few metres below him. It was obvious to Nate that he was now deep in space: the bright blue and green Earth and the silvery Moon were now far below him. Nevertheless, as though he were looking through the lens of a large, invisible telescope, he could clearly see his mother as she placed the final slice of bread on the top of the sandwich that she had been preparing for afternoon tea. She glanced at her watch, wondering when Nate would be home from school. Victoria took a piece of fruit from the fridge and Georgiana and Oscar continued their noisy game in the corner of the kitchen. In contrast, Nate’s father, who had just that minute arrived home, stood at the edge of the kitchen looking rather pale and puzzled.
Just as quickly as the journey through space on the bright, blue light had begun, it ended. Anxiously, Nate raised his hands to his face and turned them around to make sure that all of his fingers were where they should be. He quickly tapped himself down to ensure that he was still in one piece. Once he had satisfied himself that all of his body parts were where they should be Nate turned his attention to the room in which he now stood.
He found himself standing in the centre of a large, octagonal platform on board what he later learned was an alien space-craft. The platform pulsed with a deep blue light that seemed to come from deep within. Thick, white fibres, like blood vessels, ran along the floor and out towards the edge of the room.
Behind him, the same thin, blue sheet of light that had burst into his home stretched from the floor to the ceiling, some five or six metres above his head.
As Nate studied the beam a burst of green dust shot out from within the bright, blue light. The dust hovered in the air beside Nate and formed into a solid object. In a matter of seconds Farden, still smiling from Nate’s reaction to the transport beam, stood beside him on the pulsing platform.
“Follow me,” said Farden, “I’ll introduce you to the ship.”
Nate yawned. He suddenly felt quite tired.
Nate and Farden walked along a series
of narrow corridors. As Nate followed his new companion he took the opportunity to observe the strange place to which he had been mysteriously transported. The walls of the corridor were similar in appearance to Farden’s suit – they shone with a metallic hue and appeared to be constantly moving, slowly, almost imperceptibly, shifting and flowing over themselves. There were no lights that Nate could see. The passage was lit by a bright light that seemed to come from deep within the walls, the floor and the ceiling themselves.
As he walked along passageway after passageway, struggling to keep up with Farden, Nate took a closer look at the walls. They were interlaced with the same fine, white fibres that he had seen when he first appeared on board.
Nate reached out his hand to touch the wall. As he cautiously edged his hand towards the metallic surface, the wall bent out to meet it. Instinctively, Nate snatched his hand away. He studied the wall as closely as he dared before reaching out a few, trembling fingers. Again, the wall reached out towards Nate’s fingers. He swallowed hard and touched the metal surface. It was warm to touch: inviting, and almost friendly. “Not the first weird thing I’ve seen today,” Nate thought to himself.
“And it probably won’t be the last,” volunteered Farden, as he swung to the left and continued his march through another narrow passageway.
As Nate struggled to keep up with Farden the walls pulsed, slowly and rhythmically, like some great organism inhaling and exhaling. The light continued to guide them along the twisting corridors, dimming as they passed through each section as they no longer had a need for its illumination.
Farden walked for some five or ten minutes with Nate in tow until they came to a dead end. As Nate and Farden approached, a hole appeared in centre of the far wall and spread out to form an opening.
“Again, pretty weird!” thought Nate. Farden shot him a reassuring smile. Together they stepped trough the doorway.
