Herbert's Wormhole

by Peter Nelson

  Alex felt dizzy. He sat down at the end of the bench. Sammi sat down beside him. “Hey, did I tell you how, last summer, at CowKids Rodeo Camp, I won the age seven-to-nine Bull-riding Finals?”

  “Wow. That’s awesome for you,” Alex said, frozen in terror.

  “It was actually pretty scary. I had to compete in front of a huge crowd of whoopin’, hollerin’, real-live cowboys—not to mention my parents. Wanna know how I did it?” Alex looked at her. She grinned and jumped up. “Glad you asked!” She picked up an A.G. T-ball helmet and shoved it onto his head. It pushed his poofy hairdo out the sides, and the rim almost covered his eyes. “Ow!” he said. “What’d you do, annoy the bulls into letting you ride them?”

  “Shut up and look,” she said. “Out there.”

  Alex looked. With the helmet pulled tight, he couldn’t see the giant MonitOrb or the crowd jammed into the stands above him. With the hair jutting out over his ears, he couldn’t see the crowd on either side, and their loud cheers were muffled. All he saw was what was directly in front of him—a T-ball field. He slowly stood up.

  It was a baseball diamond, with three oversized bases and a little plastic tee standing waist-high at home plate. Balanced on top of the tee was a ball, just sitting there, waiting to be hit.

  “Did I mention I broke the bull-riding camp record?” Sammi said. “Broke my collarbone, too, but it was totally worth it.”

  Alex stared out at the field. He felt better immediately. “You’re right.” He laughed. “It’s just T-ball! My little sister Ellie could play this!”

  WHUMP! A big pile of equipment hit the bench.

  “Better get suited up,” Chicago said. “Almost game time.” Alex looked down at the thick pads. Sammi picked up the glove and followed Chicago.

  “Are you guys still short a player?”

  Chicago nodded. Sammi smiled and held a glove to her hip.

  “Oh, right. Funny.” He turned away.

  The thick baseball glove tagged him in the back of the head, and he spun back around.

  “Strike one,” Sammi said, glaring at him and holding a helmet threateningly.

  “I didn’t make the No Girls Allowed rule! Go throw stuff at the A.G. T-Ball Commission!”

  Sammi scoffed. “What’s ‘A.G’ stand for, All Guys?”

  Chicago gave her a look. Finally he said, “You should probably sit down—and buckle up.” Sammi looked down at the bench. There were seat belts bolted to it.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HUMANS AND G’DALIENS!” The faces of two announcers—one from each species—looked down from the MonitOrb. Their voices boomed throughout the stadium. “TIME TO LOCK AND LOAD!”

  Sammi looked at the crowd. Padded shoulder-bars extended from each seat, securing each fan in his or her seat. The fans grew more excited, and they chimed in with the announcers: “LET’S PLAAAY ANTI-GRAVI-TEEEE-BALLLLL!!”

  A stage drifted out onto center field, carrying a giant light switch and a group of girls in matching hats and uniforms, waving to the crowd. “HERE TO FLIP THE CEREMONIAL GRAVITY KILL-SWITCH IS LOCAL STARSCOUT TROOP 76! READY GIRLS? THREE…TWO…ONE…FLIP IT!!” The StarScout Girls displayed impressive teamwork as they attacked the giant switch and pulled it to the OFF position.

  The stadium jolted.

  It began to hum. The crowd, secured by their shoulder-bars, rose an inch off their seats.

  The StarScout Girls, strapped to the float, drifted above the field and dangled like a bunch of Scout-shaped party balloons. Similarly, the three oversized bases were released and drifted straight up, over the infield. Tethered to the ground by twenty-five-foot chains, the hovering bases strained to break free.

  Sammi looked down. She was two feet off the ground, and rising. “I told you to buckle up!” Chicago said, tossing her a thick chest pad. The heavy gear brought her back down. She looked over and saw the rest of the team bouncing and bobbing comfortably and in control, weighted down by their heavy equipment. She looked for Alex, but didn’t see him.

  “Hey! Up here!” Alex was six feet above the bench, dangling in the air with only one pad half strapped on. Sammi scrambled over and pulled him back down.

  “C’mon, Alexville!” Chicago moon-bounced over to the two of them. “Quit goofing around—you’re up first!”

  CHAPTER 29

  Herbert was crammed beside GOR-DON in the back of the SquadCar as they zipped toward the Meteor-Dome. He flattened himself as far as he could against his door in an attempt to create some distance between his body and GOR-DON’s. The conniving alien had taken his N.E.D. suit, which meant that in the gym shorts and button-down short-sleeved shirt he had on underneath, Herbert’s bare arms and legs were sticking to GOR-DON’s gooey flesh. It felt like a giant rubber glove filled with warmed-up snot.

  “Psst.” The creature leaned in closer. “Just wanted to thank you for helping me take over the world,” he whispered. “Soon I will convince every G’Dalien in that stadium, then in this city, and finally on this planet—that the human race is a species to be feared and exterminated, rather than trusted and helped. The moronic masses will honor and venerate me so greatly that they will make me their leader—and Marion will see me rule this pathetic lump you once called Earth.”

  “Who’s Marion?” Herbert asked.

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘Marion.’”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “You did. You said, ‘Marion will see me rule this pathetic lump, etcetera, etceter—’”

  “I did not say ‘Marion’!”

  Herbert shrugged and turned to look out the window. He couldn’t fear too much for either his life or the Earth’s future because each time he spotted a MonitOrb zoom past with his and Alex’s giant faces below the words HAVE YOU SEEN US?, he could only feel anger.

  This was all because of Alex. Specifically, because of Alex’s idiotic love of those idiotic video games. That’s the common variable to this whole mess, Herbert thought. First, Alex’s dumb T-shirt. Then, Alex’s incriminating memory of playing AlienSlayer 2. And finally, his total obsession with AlienSlayer: 3-D!, which made Herbert think to hide it on the roof of Andretti’s for a hundred years, just so he could come to the future, find Alex, and smash it in front of him.

  Herbert smiled a little at this last notion. That would have been very satisfying, he thought. Alex would’ve felt what it was like to see something he loved get taken away. His cherished game would’ve been destroyed, along with its stupid built-in holographic projection unit making the game look, feel, and sound like the invading aliens were real and in the room with you—

  Herbert stopped. The thoughts racing through his brain suddenly slammed into the sights flashing past his eyeballs. At that moment, he happened to look down and spot the unmistakably twenty-first-century-style roof of Andretti’s Pizzeria. This triggered an ingenious idea. Again. In a split second, Herbert realized how to save Alex and Sammi, get the N.E.D. suits back, stop GOR-DON’s evil plan to take over the world, and fix everything.

  But first he had to get LO-PEZ to stop for lunch.

  “Hey, you guys,” he suddenly blurted out. “Who’s hungry?”

  GOR-DON glared at him.

  Mr. Illinois didn’t respond. But LO-PEZ, who hadn’t had anything to eat for fifteen minutes, turned his head ever so slightly, which was all Herbert needed.

  “Man,” Herbert continued, staring at LO-PEZ. “I could sure go for a nice, thick, cheesy, topping-filled slice of Andretti’s pizz—”

  Suddenly, Herbert’s entire face was wrapped in warm, snot-like alien flesh. But he didn’t mind. In fact, somewhere under the rolls of blobby flab, Herbert smiled. Because the fact that GOR-DON had suddenly been thrown on top of him was the direct result of LO-PEZ pulling a sudden midair U-turn. And that meant that step one of Herbert’s ingenious plan was underway.

  CHAPTER 30

  The G’Dalien announcer’s voice boomed from the massive MonitOrb, echoing off the walls of the Meteor-Dome. The crowd burst into a
loud roar as the Thrashers bounded out onto the field. They were big, mean-looking, and clearly used to playing without gravity. Alex stared in awe as they flipped and leaped, bouncing off the walls, the floating bases, even each other.

  “BATTING FIRST FOR THE METEORS, NUMBER THIRTEEN, ALEXVILLE!” Alex woke from his daze, grabbed a bat, and awkwardly float-stepped onto the field, trying his best not to drift sideways. His pads kept him grounded, but just barely. He knew that with one wrong step—if he tripped or pushed too hard with his legs—he’d go spinning off into the stands. As he reached the plate, he saw his giant face projected on the MonitOrb. No one in the stadium seemed to recognize him as the horrible, wanted alien slayer, although for just a second he secretly hoped someone would. He pulled his helmet down tight over his bushy hairdo and focused on the ball that sat on the little tee directly in front of him. This is easy, he told himself. Just swing the bat and hit the ba—

  The tee suddenly blasted the ball straight up into the air. The crowd erupted, and the Thrashers pushed off the ground and began to leap toward him. Alex panicked. Chicago and the others were yelling for him to do something. He couldn’t hear them over the crowd. They pointed up at the ball, fifty feet above his head. Sammi stretched her arms over her head, like Superman. Alex suddenly realized what they were all trying to tell him, and his stomach sank.

  They want me to fly? he said to himself. Alex swallowed hard, crouched down, and shot himself straight up into the air. Right past the ball.

  CLUNK—“Oof!” Alex slammed into the bottom of the floating MonitOrb.

  His helmet popped off and he floated up, up, and away. He looked down. “Oh, no!” The Thrashers bounced toward the gently floating T-ball. And while this was clearly not his little sister’s game, Alex was pretty sure that as the batter, he was supposed to get to the ball before the other team. He pushed off the MonitOrb and launched himself downward. As he approached the ball, he closed his eyes and swung.

  CRACK! The crowd roared as the ball flew toward the outfield. “Woooohoooo!” Alex yelled—right up until he hit the ground. He flattened the tee at home plate, but immediately jumped to his feet. Full of adrenaline, Alex began to run toward first base, or where first base would be if it weren’t floating twenty-five feet above the ground. He took an over-enthusiastic step, however, and it sent him spinning up in the air. “Aaaaahhhh!” Alex yelled as he floated, upside down, above the first-base line.

  Alex could only watch as his ball, helped along by zero gravity, zoomed high above the centerfielder’s head, bounced off the ground, hit the back wall, and spun straight up into the air. The Thrashers’ outfielder launched himself, twenty, thirty, forty feet into the air and snatched the ball. In one skillful move, he pivoted and threw it to the Thrashers’ first baseman—a beefy kid named Brockton, who was as big as he was mean.

  “Haw haw!” Brockton laughed as he pushed off the ground to catch the ball, careful not to tag Alex out at first. Since Alex was still stuck spinning his legs above the first-base line like a spider trapped in a toilet bowl, this would’ve been easy. “Too easy!” the thuggish Thrasher yelled out. Instead, Brockton swung himself off the stiff anchor-chain beneath the base and zoomed straight for Alex, cleats-first. He slammed Alex, sending him tumbling into the dirt in front of the Meteors’ dugout. It was cruel, unnecessary, and completely within the rules of A.G. T-Ball.

  “Booooo!” yelled the angry crowd. Brockton bounded across the field and into the arms of his laughing teammates as the human announcer’s voice boomed, “Chain slam! Heeee’s out!”

  Dallas removed Alex’s pads and effortlessly floated him over to the Meteors’ dugout, where Sammi glared out at the high-fiving Thrashers. “C’mon, Alex,” she said as she unbuckled herself. “I’ve got you.” She turned and gave Brockton one more dose of stink eye as she floated Alex toward the locker room.

  CHAPTER 31

  “LO-PEZ!” Mr. Illinois barked. “We are in hot pursuit of a suspect or suspects—stopping for pizza is not proper protocol!” LO-PEZ opened his door and oozed out of the SquadCar, onto the roof of Andretti’s Pizzeria.

  The overweight alien looked at his boss. He counted with his tentacles: “One, we know who they are. Two, we know where they are. Three, they don’t know we know who or where they are. Four, they aren’t going anywhere. And most importantly, five—I haven’t eaten in twenty minutes.”

  In the backseat, GOR-DON’s head-veins were throbbing again. “You fat idiot!” he yelled.

  “Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me, mate.” LO-PEZ said. He held up his last tentacle. “Six—” His last tentacle shot into the backseat and around GOR-DON’s neck. “I really don’t like you!” Mr. Illinois spun around and pulled LO-PEZ’s tentacle off GOR-DON’s bulging gullet.

  GOR-DON made overdramatic choking noises as he caught his breath. “Are you going to let him get away with that?”

  Mr. Illinois glanced at LO-PEZ, then turned back to the gasping G’Dalien in his backseat. “Hey—Nobody talks to my partner that way but me, you got that, Gorgon?”

  “It’s GOR-DON.”

  LO-PEZ shared a nod with Mr. Illinois, then turned toward the rooftop stairs. Herbert suddenly hopped out of the SquadCar and followed him. “Hey!” GOR-DON yelled, “The suspect is trying to escape! Kill him!” Mr. Illinois spun around again and faced the janitor alien. “My partner’s escorting the suspect. Now I suggest you stick a mop in it, Google, before you start getting on my nerves.”

  “It’s GOR-DON!!!”

  LO-PEZ and Herbert approached the rooftop stairwell of Andretti’s. Herbert immediately spotted the air-conditioning vent. He knelt down in front of it. “Sorry,” he said. “Leg fell asleep from being crammed in the backseat next to that slimeball.”

  LO-PEZ nodded. “Wanna know somethin’?” he said. “There’s something shonky about that guy. I don’t care what proof he’s got, I ain’t buying it. If you kids are alien-slaying bushrangers, I’m a vegetarian. And I’m not.”

  Herbert grinned. “Then you can help me!” He reached into the vent, felt around with his hands, and pulled out the plastic suitcase. It was stained and covered with cobwebs, but right where he’d left it a hundred years ago. Herbert immediately noticed something odd. He read the combination on the suitcase. His combination.

  “Three…Fourteen…Eighteen…Seventy-nine…” Herbert lifted the latch. The suitcase had been opened—and emptied. The AlienSlayer:3-D! game was gone. “Impossible!” he said.

  “Fair dinkums,” LO-PEZ said. “An old, moldy, empty suitcase, crammed into a vent. That is impossible. Well, pretty darned unlikely, anyway. Okay, time to eat.” LO-PEZ turned and began to ooze down the stairs.

  “But no one knew that combination but me!” Herbert dropped the suitcase and slumped behind LO-PEZ toward the wafting smell of cheese and tomato sauce. The AS:3-D! game had vanished, and so had his ingenious plan.

  There were no customers. The G’Dalien waiter was watching the A.G. T-Ball game on a small MonitOrb floating above the empty bumper-car tables. He looked up as Herbert and LO-PEZ approached. “Hey! Why aren’t you guys at the game? You shoulda seen it! This new player for the Meteors stinks! Got chain-slammed on the very first play their first time up, and now the Thrashers are up!”

  Herbert slumped a little more. He didn’t know what a “chain-slam” was, but he was pretty sure he knew the stinky player who got one.

  CHAPTER 32

  With Alex out of the game and recovering in the locker room, the Meteors were now short two players. EL-ROY had to cover the entire outfield. He wasn’t a very fast runner, but he could wear six baseball gloves at the same time, which helped. Dallas was at third base, and Sausalito was covering first. That left Chicago in the middle of the infield, playing both second base and shortstop. This was the best they could do. They had no chance at stopping the Thrashers.

  The floating, chain-tethered bases were loaded. Three Thrashers stood balancing atop first, second, and third, high above the field. And up next was
their best hitter—Brockton. The crowd booed as the MonitOrb replayed in super-slow-motion the chain-slam he’d given Alex last inning.

  From second base, Chicago watched with dread as Brockton approached the plate. He knew what was coming. Brockton soaked in the hatred of the crowd, smiling and waving to the booing mob. Looking past home plate, Chicago noticed a player step out of the Meteors’ dugout. He called a time-out and bounced across the infield, then burst into a wide grin when he saw the number 13 on the player’s jersey. “Alexville!” He floated down to him and hugged him. “Alexville! You sure you’re all right to play?” Number 13 wore a tint-masked helmet, but nodded. “Great!” Chicago said.

  He pointed toward home plate. Brockton stood there, looking impatient. “That’s the ape who chain-slammed you. He’s a real longball-hitter, so I want you and EL-ROY to split the outfield. Get out there, Alexville, and let’s see what you got!” The helmet nodded again, and Number 13 bounced off, reaching right field in just a few leaping bounds.

  The ball shot out of the tee and flew straight up into the air. Brockton launched himself upward, soaring toward it. He swung—CRACK! The ball went screaming into deep right field, straight for Number 13. Chicago watched it sail overhead and yelled, “Your ball, Alexville!”

  Instead of going for the ball, Number 13 leaped away from it and landed in front of EL-ROY. “Hey!” EL-ROY squealed as he was picked up like a sack of potatoes and thrown into the air. Realizing he was headed straight for the ball, he yelled, “Awright! Goodonya, Alexville!” The tiny G’Dalien grabbed it in midair as it ricocheted off the back wall, then fired it toward the Thrasher running from third base to home.