by R. McGeddon
You’ll never guess what she’d been replaced by. An alien! You weren’t expecting that, were you?
Oh. You were. Fair enough, then.
Arty flapped the neck of his T-shirt back and forth, and squelched as he shifted in his seat. “It’s so hot,” he panted. “I wish they’d turn those pods down a bit.”
The weird alien pods he was referring to had been positioned all over town within hours of the mayor being vaporized. They were about the size of phone booths and gave off huge amounts of heat. What with the really big dome trapping all the air inside, Sitting Duck had become very warm, very quickly.
“Silence, human,” barked one of the aliens who patrolled the class. He wore a brightly colored badge that said “Teaching Assistant,” but the children had never seen a teaching assistant with a blaster before.
Arty mimed zipping his mouth closed. The alien nodded its little square head, then continued its patrol around the desks.
At the head of the class, another of the aliens stood on Dribbler’s old desk. He clicked the translator button on the side of his helmet and his high-pitched tones squeaked out from behind the dome of glass.
“Today we will continue to fill your minds with all the glory of the Baad-Vaart,” he proclaimed in a voice that sounded like he’d been at the Helium. “Witness firsthand the wonder of our home planet, Sulphurius 374.”
A hologram beamed from the alien teacher’s space suit and suddenly a little alien planet was floating in the middle of the classroom. Gloopy red clouds oozed across its surface, as if its atmosphere was a bit on the jammy side.
The planet became smaller and more worlds came into view, then a sun, then stars, until the image had zoomed out to show off an entire galaxy.
“Sulphurius 374 is located in the Parallax system in the galaxy you know as Andromeda,” the alien said. “Using your technology, it would take one-point-seven-million years to reach our world. It took us forty-five minutes to reach yours. This is because we are superior to you in every way.”
“Except when it comes to height,” Emmie whispered, although she made sure the heavily armed teaching assistant was well out of earshot first.
* * *
A Guide to Sulphurius 374
Located in the Parallax Star System (left at the Sun and just keep going), Sulphurius 374 is almost entirely inhospitable to humans, aside from a three-square-mile area near the planet’s north pole, which is quite nice this time of year.
Prior to being invaded and colonized by the Baad-Vaart, Sulphurius 374 was known as Lushblue Alpha, and its rolling hills, vast crystal-blue seas, and lovely homemade toffee drew tourists from far and wide across the cosmos.
All that changed when the Baad-Vaart moved in and started mucking the place up, just as they had done with the previous 373 planets they had conquered, after they accidentally left the iron on and burned their original home-world to the ground.
Nowadays it is a forbidding place filled with choking smoke, billowing gas, and not a toffee in sight. Tourism is down by 80 percent, and while this does increase your chances of finding a quiet spot at the beach, stepping onto the sand will incinerate you immediately, which is not what you’re after on vacation, really, is it?
* * *
“Any questions?” asked the teacher.
“Can we turn the heat down?” asked Arty.
“Negative.”
“Is it really hot on your planet, then?” asked Sam. “Is that why all the clouds were red?”
“The temperature on Sulphurius 374 is not hot. It is a perfect five-hundred-and-seventy degrees,” said the ET teacher. “It is this planet that is too cold.”
Arty gasped. “Five-hundred-and-seventy degrees! That’ll cook us alive.”
“Affirmative,” said the alien. “Your inferior Earth physiology will not permit you to survive in such conditions.”
“So why are you keeping us alive, if you’re just going to cook us?” Emmie snapped.
“You will serve us until you expire. You will help us make Sitting Duck our main base of operations, from which we shall conquer the entire world,” the alien said. Then he shrugged. “Besides, it’s how you Earthlings say, a ‘laugh’?”
“Oh yeah, hilarious!” Emmie scowled, standing up and slamming her hands down on the desk. Sam grabbed her by the sleeve and tried to pull her back into her seat.
“Calm down,” he urged as the pitter-patter of tiny feet told him the teaching assistant was on his way.
“You’re going to get into trouble,” whimpered Arty.
“Trouble?” Emmie snorted. “We’re going to be roasted alive by tiny aliens. How much more trouble can we be in?”
“Silence!” chittered the teaching assistant, skidding around Emmie’s desk with his gun raised. His silver boots tangled in the strap of her schoolbag and he tumbled like a tiny acrobat through the air until—
Ker-ack!
He crunched headfirst onto the floor, cracking the glass of his space helmet. The alien’s eyes crossed as they tried to focus on the line running all the way across the fishbowl-like dome. There was silence in the classroom, broken eventually by the sound of the extraterrestrial teaching assistant swallowing nervously.
“Oh,” he said, at last. “Not good. I’m, uh … just running to the nurse’s office.”
He ran, screaming his little lungs out, zigzagging through the door and into the corridor. A loud hissing sound followed him from the room, and his silver space suit seemed to swell as he vanished around the doorframe and out of sight.
“Nothing to see,” said the teacher, trying to draw the students’ attention back to the front of the class. “Everything’s normal. Everything’s fine.”
There was a loud pop from the corridor, as if someone had just kissed good-bye to the world’s largest balloon. It sounded like something gooey had splattered across the wall; a weird noxious gas drifted into the classroom.
“Nothing to see,” the teacher repeated. “Everything’s absolutely normal.”
“Oh no!” wailed a voice from the corridor. “Klaag’s just exploded!”
“Everything’s fine,” the teacher continued, although even he was starting to sound like he didn’t believe it.
As the alien continued its attempt to convince the class that nothing had happened, Sam, Arty, and Emmie leaned closer together.
“Did you see that?” Sam whispered. “One tiny crack and bang.”
“But why?” Emmie asked. “Why did he explode?”
“I’m not sure,” Sam admitted. “But I think it’s time we found out.”
* * *
Backpack Supplies for an Alien Invasion
Good:
• Cloaking technology
• A family-sized pack of tortilla chips
• Anti-ray-gun thermo shielding
• Spaceship security overrides
• Interstellar communication device
• UFO-tracking missile launcher
• Jet-fired rocket boots
Bad:
• A roller skate with one wonky wheel
• Half-set concrete
• Human-tracking missile launcher
• A wind-up monkey
• A pound of colored-pencil shavings
* * *
Chapter nine
When the end-of-day bell rang, Sam and the others filed out with the rest of the students, but as soon as the alien teachers weren’t looking they ducked behind a stack of chairs and waited for the aliens to leave.
“I think the coast’s clear,” said Arty as the front door swung closed. He started to stand, but Sam and Emmie dragged him back down just as two more of the little aliens turned the corner.
All three of them held their breath as the ETs trotted by less than a yard from where they were hiding.
“I’m fed up with this helmet,” one of them complained. “It looks stupid. One of the Earth children pretended I was a crystal ball earlier and said he could use me to see the future.”
/> “What did you do?”
“Vaporized him. He didn’t see that one coming.”
“We must be more careful,” the second alien said. “After what happened to Klaag today, we cannot afford to take any chances. Not until the atmosphere has been completely converted. Only then will Quarg send the signal from the mother ship to deactivate the helmets.”
Behind the stack of chairs, a trickle of sweat tickled down the length of Arty’s nose. He twitched. He sniffed. The tickling got worse. There was no way he could stop it. He was going to sneeze!
“Aaah…” he began. Sam’s and Emmie’s eyes widened in horror. The aliens had moved past their hiding place now, but they were still just right there, not yet at the door. One snot explosion from Arty and the game was up.
“Aaah…”
Sam and Emmie frantically shook their heads.
“No!” mouthed Emmie.
“Don’t!” mouthed Sam.
“Aaah…”
There was nothing else for it. Sam clamped a hand over Arty’s nose and mouth just as the sneeze began to erupt. The effect was like a bomb going off inside Arty’s head. His eyes bulged. His cheeks expanded. And Sam was sure he saw a little bit of snot come flying out of his friend’s ear.
Along the corridor, the door clattered closed as the last two aliens headed out of school. Sam and Emmie breathed sighs of relief.
“Wow,” said Sam. “That was close.”
“AAATCHOOOO!”
“Oh, you just had to, didn’t you?” Emmie sighed. The door at the end of the corridor was thrown open once again. “You couldn’t have waited five more seconds!”
“Run!” yelped Sam as a blast of energy turned the chairs to dust.
Ducking and dodging, the three friends dashed along the corridor away from the aliens. They barreled around a corner, pushed through a fire exit, and ran out into a crowd of students all waiting for the school bus to take them home.
Keeping their heads down, Sam and the others mingled with the line. The two aliens appeared in the doorway behind them, their guns raised. They studied the waiting children for a moment, their fingers hovering over the triggers of their weapons.
Then, with a shrug of their stubby shoulders, they lowered the guns and turned away, pulling the emergency exit closed behind them.
“Well, that was fun,” said Sam. “But we should get out of here in case they come looking for us again.”
Arty nodded. “Yeah, suppose we should go home.”
“We should,” agreed Sam. “But we aren’t.”
* * *
* * *
Alien Anatomy
1. Brain is located in toes, allowing them to think on their feet.
2. A heart of stone, so they can take over a planet completely guilt-free.
3. Leathery skin offers protection from unexpected Grazzle-fly bites.
4. Lungs are tiny and shriveled after constant exposure to sulfur gases.
5. I have no idea what that does.
6. If you squint your eyes, this bit sort of looks like a penguin.
7. Two spleens for doing whatever it is spleens do, only twice as well.
8. Your guess is as good as mine.
* * *
The wooden floorboards of the tree house creaked nervously as Sam, Emmie, and Arty hunkered down inside. Out through the window, up above the houses, they could see the giant alien spaceship in the center of town. A stem of purple light sprouted from the top, before spreading out to form the dome that kept Sitting Duck trapped.
It was still possible to see through the flickering surface of the dome, and for the first few days the whole thing had been surrounded by the world’s media. Over the rest of the week the reporters had started to get a bit fed up, and by the end there was only one journalist left. He wasn’t even a proper journalist—he’d just found a notebook in a bin—but he was doing his best and that’s what counts.
“Well, that was a good day,” said Sam.
Arty stared at him. “Good? We nearly got blasted to bits!”
“And whose fault was that?” Emmie tutted. “But he’s right, getting shot at does not make for a particularly good day.”
“Ah, but now we know something we didn’t know yesterday,” Sam said. “We know the aliens have a weakness. We know they don’t like our atmosphere. And more important, we know our atmosphere doesn’t like them!”
Arty smiled. “And Tribbler the Dribbler said you never paid attention in class!”
“I know! Who knew science lessons might actually be useful?” said Sam. “Now we just have to figure out how to expose them to our atmosphere, and our old friend oxygen should take care of the rest.”
“The spaceship,” Emmie said. “At the school, those aliens said the ship would send a signal to open the helmets. The ship destroyed the Town Hall.”
“It’s also creating the force field,” Arty added. “It could be the source of all their power.”
“You might be right,” said Sam, all thoughtful like. “You know what this means, though.”
“That we’re all going to go home, have a nice cup of tea, and not get into any trouble whatsoever,” said Arty hopefully.
“Sort of,” said Sam. “Only the exact opposite. No one can get in here to rescue us. The mayor’s gone, not that he was much use to begin with. Everyone else is too scared of being blasted to bits to leave their homes.”
“Oh, I wonder why,” Arty said.
“We’re on our own,” Sam said. “Help isn’t coming. If we want to stop the aliens before they cook us alive, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. Who’s with me?”
“I am,” said Emmie.
“I’m not,” said Arty. He caught the looks from the other two, then gave a sweaty, squelchy sigh. “Fine, I’ll come,” he said. “But if I get zapped, cooked, or probed anywhere, you two are never coming to one of my birthday parties ever again.”
Emmie smirked. “Promise?”
* * *
That night darkness fell across Sitting Duck, just like it did every other night, because that’s the whole point of nighttime, isn’t it?
As the aliens patrolled the streets, enforcing the evening curfew, three familiar figures crept down the trunk of an old oak tree and tiptoed through the gloom. The purple glow of the dome cast strange scratchy shadows across the ground as Sam, Arty, and Emmie crept like a gang of sneaks through the town.
Making their way through the streets took ages. Aliens marched down every road, pointing their guns at shadows and peering in windows to make sure everyone was tucked up inside where they were supposed to be. Or, at least, they tried to peer in windows, but with them being so small it involved quite a lot of climbing and they only managed about one window in five.
Sam and the others emerged from the alleyway between the pie shop and the hat museum. A blast of heat drove them back. One of the pods lay directly ahead of them, glowing red as it pumped out choking clouds of crimson smoke, just like the atmosphere on Sulphurius 374.
The sulfurous smog swirled into their lungs, making them hack and splutter and cough. Covering their mouths with their sleeves, they backtracked until the air became cleaner. It wouldn’t be long before they couldn’t breathe at all.
“Well, the good news is I don’t think we’re going to be cooked alive,” wheezed Arty. “We’ll all be suffocated long before then.”
“Oh, well, that is a relief,” said Emmie.
Steering clear of any more of the pods, the three friends finally found their way to the back of the building formerly known as the Town Hall and crouched behind the rubble.
They peered across the road to where a long silver ladder led up to a hatch at the base of the giant mother ship.
“It must be using too much energy to maintain the force field,” Arty whispered. “So it doesn’t have enough left to beam the aliens up and down.”
“So their power isn’t limitless after all,” Sam said, then he let out a sudden gasp of shock as he spotted three
aliens standing one on top of the other just a short distance away from the ladder.
It wasn’t the sight of the aliens that had shocked Sam, though. It was the sight of whom they were talking to.
“Is that…?”
“Stella,” yelped Arty, and Emmie had to clamp a hand over his mouth to stop him from giving them away. “What’s she doing here?” he whispered, when Emmie eventually released her grip.
“It looks like she’s talking to them,” Sam said.
“It all looks very friendly,” Emmie said. “What if she’s working with them?”
“She wouldn’t,” said Arty. “Would she?”
A moment later, Stella answered that question herself. With a high-pitched girly giggle, she took hold of the topmost alien’s hand and gave it a shake. Then, at a gesture from the ETs, Stella took hold of the bottom rung of the ladder and began to climb.
Chapter ten
Emmie paced back and forth, angrier than a wasp with road rage. “The traitor,” she said. “I can’t believe she’s sold out her own species to a load of alien invaders.”
“She always said she’d like to make contact with beings from outer space,” said Arty.
“Make contact, yeah, not make best buddies,” Emmie said. “Just wait until I get my hands on her. She’ll have the biggest black eyes anyone has ever seen!”
“We need to get inside,” Sam pointed out. One of the aliens had clambered up the ladder after Stella, but two still hung about like a bad smell, poking anything that moved.
“How do we get past them?” Emmie asked.
Arty pondered. He was good at pondering. If they ever have an Olympics for pondering, Arty will be up there in the medals. “With a neuro-synaptic transmitter I could temporarily disable their visual cortex, allowing us to sneak past.”
“Brilliant!” said Sam. “Do it.”
