Go back to book page
Unlock the full book for $4.99
Chapter 1
Ant Carmichael crept through the dark, silent lobby into the guest wing. This was where things always got tricky. He peered down the hall, looking for a sliver of light under the third of six doorways on the left-hand side. Seeing nothing, he tiptoed as fast as he dared.
He passed the first and second doors and willed himself to float past the third. Since that was impossible, he held his breath, gritted his teeth, and took long, stiff paces as though he were a ballet dancer. He suddenly realized why he’d been suffering mysterious aches and pains in his toes lately. Not the early onset of arthritis after all, just his crazy way of sneaking out of the house.
Please come back, Barton, he thought.
His old chauffeur had given notice a few weeks ago and vanished with his son, Caleb. It was for the best. The eight-year-old boy, with his astonishing magical powers, was a danger to all. Barton had a responsibility to keep him and everyone else safe, and driving a limousine just wasn’t important anymore.
The trouble was, his replacement was a stone-cold, nosy, heartless witch. Where Barton had turned a blind eye to Ant’s midnight excursions, the new chauffeur was way too inquisitive, a woman whose ears pricked up at the slightest distant scuffle, and whose pale eyes pierced the darkness like a cat’s. Instead of driving him to ‘event’ locations at all hours with no questions asked, she would more than likely grab him by the ear and go wake his parents.
Ant made it past her quarters and picked up the pace. When he reached the end of the hall, he unlatched the door, slipped outside, closed it softly behind him, and locked it again. He tucked the key into his pocket and headed off to fetch his bicycle.
“Going somewhere?” a voice murmured from the shadows.
His heart jumped, then sank. He saw his chauffeur’s distinctive silhouette peeling out of the blackness under an archway. Her footsteps crunched on the gravel, and suddenly she was bathed in a glow as an overhead light sensed her movement and came on. Lilith Malvolia halted before him and stood there with her bony hands on her skinny hips.
Ant swallowed and tried to calm his nerves. It wasn’t that she scared him, just that she held power over him. One word to his parents about slipping out of the house at midnight, and he’d be grounded. “Can’t sleep,” he said. “Going for a walk.”
He was pretty sure her eyes glowed from under her shadowed brow. Her straight black hair was tied up in a severe bun. This was her off-duty look. While driving him around in the daytime and sometimes evenings, she wore a chauffeur’s cap and let her hair hang to her shoulders. The woman was thin, like a collection of sticks.
“Do you usually lock the door behind you when you go for a walk?” she demanded.
“Of course I do!” Ant said, feigning shock. “You never know who might wander in otherwise.” He narrowed his eyes. “What about you? Do you usually lock the door behind you when you lurk in the shadows at midnight?”
She stared at him in silence. Then: “Return to your bed, Master Carmichael. You know you’re not allowed out at this hour.”
“We own sixty acres all around,” Ant said, growing angry. “I think it’s okay to take a walk. You can stand here and watch, if you like. I won’t leave your sight. I’ll just walk down the driveway and back. Look, I have a flashlight. You can see me in the darkness.” He scowled. “You can’t stop me, you know.”
She gave a curt nod. “Fine. Off you go. I’ll be watching. Do not try to exit the grounds.”
“How can I? The gate is like fifty feet high.”
It wasn’t really, but it might as well have been. He couldn’t climb it if he tried, nor the fence.
A little surprised that she’d allowed him his walk, he headed off under the archway and around the corner, feeling her steely glare on his back. He had no choice but to ignore the bicycle shed and keep up the pretense of a brisk midnight stroll.
But that was okay. He had a backup plan.
The long, sweeping driveway led down the hill, and neatly cropped shrubs lined both sides, all barely visible in the wan moonlight. He figured he would soon be well out of sight behind those shrubs, and there’d be a good few minutes where his bobbing flashlight would be no more than a faint flicker. Then he’d dart off to the side, across the grass to the woods. Even if she jumped into the limo and came speeding down the hill, he’d be long gone.
He glanced back and was rather gratified to see her meandering toward the bicycle shed. He grinned to himself. Yeah, keep a good watch on my wheels. You think you have me all figured out. You think that even if I escaped this fortress, there’s no way I’d run off anywhere without a means of transport. Right?
Wrong.
This was the first time he’d put the backup plan into action. It went beyond sneaking out. It was an act of open defiance, and he guessed she would march straight up to his parents’ room and wake them. Or maybe not. She might just wait until morning and report him then. He wasn’t sure what she’d do when he vanished into the night, but there was an old saying he swore by: It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
When he was halfway down the long, long driveway, he glanced back toward the house. Now was as good a time as any. He put down his flashlight, then dashed off the driveway into the shrubs. Running at full speed across the grass, he knew for sure he was like a ghost to her, completely invisible in the darkness. She’d be focused on his unmoving flashlight for a while, wondering why he’d stopped and what he was so intent on looking at in the middle of the driveway . . .
She’d catch on eventually.
He felt a thrill as he tore across the field towards the trees. Having a plan made all the difference. He dug his phone out of his pocket and thumbed his way to the settings. When the brow of the hill behind him blocked the pinpricks of light from the mansion, he switched on his phone’s flashlight and weaved through the trees.
He made it to the fence in record time, spurred on by the thought that Lilith might be mounting a massive search party. He doubted it—but then again, she detested being made a fool of. Slipping away like this could send her into a rage.
The fence was indeed way too high to climb. But it wasn’t like the groundsmen patrolled the sixty acres looking for weaknesses in the perimeter. Ant and his friends had spent an afternoon digging a modest hole under the iron railings just out of sight of the nearest road.
He slipped through, brushed himself off, and whistled a happy tune as he pulled back a camouflaged sheet and unchained his emergency bicycle. Yeah, Lilith, I have two sets of wheels. Have you seen how rich my parents are? You seriously think I can’t afford to buy another with a bit of pocket change?
For him, money was the easy part. He knew most twelve-year-olds were lucky to get ten dollars a week if they did all their chores. Ant’s parents seemed to throw money at him—wads of twenties for school excursions, a hundred or so on his birthday . . . It would be embarrassing if anyone found out, so he stashed it away for emergencies. But getting to the stores and buying things without Barton chauffeuring him about was more of a challenge. Not insurmountable, just awkward. It took cunning—and a lot of pedaling.
He wondered what Lilith was doing right now. It didn’t matter, though. As long as he kept to the forest paths and narrow lanes, he could find his way across town to the secret meeting place about four and a half miles away. He’d never been there before, and nor had his friends, but if Madison said to meet in the middle of Rowhill Copse at 1:02 AM to witness an alien visitation, then who was he to question her?
It was 12:34 AM. The event would start in just under thirty minutes. Plenty of time.
* * *
Worry gnawed at him. He should have been there by now, but Google Maps kept announcing he’d lost signal and was busy “Re-routing . . .”
He could see the stupid patch of woods on his screen. It clearly said Rowhill Copse. But he couldn’t determine his own location. Staying off the main roads had been his downfall. A lot of these cross-country paths and fields looked the same.
He sought out the nearest street sign, well aware that it was already 12:49 AM. He had a sinking feeling he was going to be late.
“Arbor Lane,” he said to his phone as though Google were smart enough to understand him. Actually, it would have been if he’d had it on “Listen” mode. Instead, he typed it in and waited. Still no signal, so he spent a moment studying the street names on the map hoping to spot Arbor Lane.
He sucked in a breath when he found it, then cursed his useless navigation skills. He took off down the street and around the bend, looking for the first right. Thanks to Google’s lack of GPS signal, he’d been a block out of his way and cycled straight past Rowhill Copse, and now he had to double back.
It was 12:55 AM when he found the nearest trail into the woods. His bicycle lamp lit the way, but he couldn’t help feeling a little jittery at being so far from home and so alone, and at such a late hour. At least Liam and Madison had each other for company.
“I’m gonna miss it,” he moaned as he rattled along the trail. “I don’t even know exactly where I’m supposed to go. How about a little more specificity, Madison?”
Talking to himself didn’t help.
Occasionally, he glimpsed a starry sky through the trees. But he saw nothing else, not even a pinprick of light within the blackness of the woods. He pedaled slowly. He was beginning to think this was a bad idea. Then again, he thought the same thing every time he left the house at night and met his friends at some random place in the middle of nowhere, and he was always left breathless at the spectacle of visiting aliens.
Ant stopped and switched off his bicycle lamp. Checking his phone, he was surprised to see he had good cell service again, and Google Maps pinpointed him over halfway through the woods. But it was 1:03 AM. The event would have started already, and he was missing it.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and took a breath to yell as loudly as he could—but he froze at the sight of a glow off to his left.
His heart leapt. Whatever that glow was, it had to be Madison’s predicted event. It had started a minute ago, and the aliens were probably here already.
Ant crept through the dark, silent woods, pointing his phone’s flashlight downward and feeling that at any moment a hideous alien would see the beam and leap out at him. He disabled it for a moment and stood still in the darkness, then switched the light back on and resumed his stealthy advance toward the mysterious glow.
Most of Madison’s events involved a wormhole to another point in space. The wormhole was usually circular, hovering a few feet off the ground and looking rather like a rippling pool of water turned sideways. The center of the wormhole always swirled away into the distance, a weird tunnel stretching for many light years through outer space. The glow he saw ahead had to be the wormhole. They always gave off an ethereal illumination.
Twigs cracked underfoot as he threaded his way through the woods. It struck him how complete the silence was; no crickets, no bullfrogs, not even the scampering of small furry rodents in the undergrowth. The wildlife probably sensed something was up, felt the presence of an alien in their midst. Animals and bugs had heightened senses when it came to stuff like that.
So his ears pricked up when he heard a distant chittering sound. Ant stopped again, listening hard. It came from almost directly ahead, perhaps a little to his right. He stared into the woods, seeing nothing but the weird glow beyond a tangle of prickly bushes.
Ant tiptoed on, wishing he was as light as a feather so twigs wouldn’t keep cracking underfoot.
As he drew closer to a softly illuminated clearing, Ant held his breath and switched off his flashlight. In near darkness, he placed one foot in front of the other with the greatest of care, his gaze fixed on the white haze just through the trees ahead. The chittering sound came again, much louder this time—and then another, this one slightly lower in pitch.
Alien voices.
Ant was certain his hammering heart could be heard throughout the woods, as well as the deafening crunch of dry leaves, twigs, and pine cones underfoot. The white glow was no more than twenty feet away now, just past a clump of silhouetted bushes. He’d never seen such a bright wormhole before. It had to be huge. Ant circled the bushes, trying to find an opening. At least the mysterious light made it a little easier to see where he was putting his feet. He found a gap in the thicket and ducked low to avoid getting tangled up in thorns. On hands and knees, he crawled through and poked his head out into the clearing, dimly aware of a strong smell of sulfur.
Barely able to believe his eyes, he stared in astonishment.
It wasn’t a wormhole at all. A silver-colored circular spacecraft had parked neatly in the middle of the woods. It was smaller than a house but bigger than a two-car garage, shaped like a cereal bowl upside down on top of another. A wide rim jutted out where the bowls joined, and the ground immediately below was bathed in a dazzling white light. The brightly illuminated metallic hull of the craft was seamless and smooth, with a dull sheen that reflected little of its surroundings.
An alien UFO, he thought in amazement and awe. A genuine flying saucer.
Chapter 2
Ant knew that the perfectly circular glade, with the woods pressing in so closely all around, hadn’t formed naturally. The aliens must have cleared their own parking space on their descent. A dry, powder-like dust covered the entire area and gleamed white in the glare. Around the perimeter were several scorched shrubs and tree stumps. Even where Ant hid was blackened and charred. That explained the strong smell of sulfur, as if someone had lit a whole truckload of matches in one go.
So the UFO had come straight down and burned a path to the ground. Where had all the trees gone, exactly? It seemed impossible that so much foliage—all those thick tree trunks and branches, all those leaves and bushes—could have been incinerated so easily and quickly to the point where nothing was left but a fine layer of ash.
Ant heard a chittering sound from the far side of the craft. The aliens must be there somewhere, he thought with a sudden thrill. The chittering sounded impatient and irritable, at least to his untrained ear. A lower-pitched, quieter voice responded, and Ant imagined this one as bored, perhaps tired. Not that he would know, of course. They were aliens from another planet. It was impossible to tell what kind of mood they were in just from the sound of their unusual, totally alien voices.
If only they would come into view, perhaps step around to this side of the ship so he could see them.
He wondered where Liam and Madison were. They could be hiding anywhere, but Ant didn’t feel it would be sensible to shout their names.
Text them, he thought.
He winced at the brightness of his phone’s screen and immediately dimmed it. Pulling up his texting app, he wrote I’m here to Liam.
Liam texted back within seconds. So are we.
Pinpointing his friends would be difficult. It wasn’t easy to describe an exact location in the woods. Ant squinted from left to right across the nearest side of the clearing. The light from the saucer lit up the bushes well, but he couldn’t see anybody lurking there.
Ant suddenly realized the craft was not physically touching the ground. It hovered in the air, the lowest point of the bowl-like hull a few inches above the ash.
Movement caught his attention. A pair of feet momentarily came into view toward the right-hand side of the craft where the upward-curving hull was knee high. Childlike silver boots, matching silver pants . . . Ant stared, holding his breath.
But the feet shuffled out of sight again. Whatever these aliens were doing to the craft, they were doing it on the exact opposite side where Ant couldn’t hope to see anything. If only the craft hovered two or three feet higher in the air instead of mere inches . . .
Just then, his cell phone rang.
It was loud and startling, hammering out the first few bars of his favorite song at full volume. He almost threw it away in a panic before swiping wildly at the green phone icon to make it stop. Liam’s face grinned at him from the screen. Of all the stupid—!
Ant glanced up, breathing hard, as alien feet came into view on the other side of the craft’s hull—not one pair but two, moving rapidly, kicking up a fine cloud of ash as they came around the ship to investigate the noise.
His nerve broke, and he scooted backwards on hands and knees, panting like an animal. He staggered to his feet, turned, and ran—and promptly tripped on something unseen, a dead branch or a clump of roots. He sprawled on the ground, got back on his feet, darted blindly off to the side, crashed through what felt like ferns, and tripped once more.
Flashlight! he thought wildly, remembering his cell phone. I need my flashlight!
But the voice of reason stopped him. Don’t be stupid—they’ll see you. Just lie still. Maybe they’ll pass you by.
He froze, immediately liking the idea. He held his breath.
His cell phone screen was lit up, and he clutched it to his chest to smother the light. He was still connected to Liam’s incoming call, but this wasn’t a good time to chat.
The chittering sound came again, this time low and murmuring. They know I’m here, Ant thought miserably. They’d find him easily. They probably had heat sensor gadgets that could detect his body heat—or they could sniff him out with super-sensitive noses, or just feel his presence with their enormous brains. Aliens could do stuff like that. He closed his eyes and waited, barely allowing himself to breath. Something was poking painfully into his back, a twig or something.
He listened to the sounds of prowlers creeping about nearby—leaves rustling and twigs snapping, and occasional soft chittering. Ant could imagine the visitors peering this way and that, wondering where the Earthling had gone. Were they angry? Afraid? Maybe they were just curious. But Ant was not about to jump up and say hello to find out.
The aliens moved on past him, just shadowy figures in the darkness. It seemed they had no futuristic heat-sensing devices in their pockets after all, otherwise they’d have jumped on him by now. About a minute or two later, the aliens returned with a faint chittering and headed back to their ship, moving quickly and noisily, clearly believing the intruder to be long gone.
It was a while before Ant felt he could breathe again. He slowly sat up and remained in almost complete darkness, buried somewhere within a clump of bushes just a few yards from the clearing. He relaxed his shaky grip on the cell phone and stared at it. Liam’s face still stared back at him.
“You idiot,” Ant hissed into it. “Are you trying to get me killed?”
“Why didn’t you mute the volume, doofus?” Liam whispered back. “That’s the first rule of spying on aliens—turn the ringer off.”
That was sensible advice, though Ant couldn’t bring himself to admit it. “Where are you?”
“Put your phone on the ground and walk around to the far side of the ship.”
“The far side of the—Wait, what? Put my phone on the ground?”
“Put your phone on the ground,” Liam repeated in a low voice, “and walk around to the far side of the ship. I’ll look out for you.”
“Is Madison with you?”
“Do it,” Liam said. “Hurry!”
With that, the call disconnected.
Ant stared at the screen for a moment, confused. Put my phone on the ground? What the heck for? Then, reluctantly, he leaned it carefully against the protruding root of a small tree and studied his faintly illuminated surroundings so he could find the same spot again later. Of course, it would be pitch-black once the flying saucer had flown away . . .
He walked slow and steady through the undergrowth, circling the spacecraft, giving the clearing a wide berth. Despite the bright light emanating from the underside of the hull, the woods were still too dark to traverse without a flashlight. He shuffled his feet along the ground so his toes nudged up against obstacles and warned him of things he might trip on. It seemed to take forever to reach the far side of the clearing.
A sharp whisper came from his right. “Here.”
Ant followed the hushed voice and spotted two pale faces hidden in the shadows behind an enormous tree right at the edge of the clearing. The trunk had a hollowed-out recess and was a good hiding place if the aliens came near. Liam and Madison were crammed in together.
Ant ducked down with them. A chittering sound warned him the aliens were very close. He peered around the thick trunk and spotted two small figures working on something at the side of the ship. They’d opened a panel of some kind and pulled a bunch of wires out, and they seemed intent on repairing some delicate piece of circuitry. The aliens were childlike in stature with very thin arms and legs. They wore silver suits with matching boots and gloves. Their heads were completely masked by enormous helmets made from some kind of dark-tinted glass, rather like upturned goldfish bowls.
“Shame we can’t see their faces,” Ant murmured.
“I doubt they can breathe in our atmosphere,” Liam replied, his voice low. “See the little backpacks they’re wearing? Those are probably air tanks.”
Ant glanced at Liam in the darkness. His friend had a habit of wearing the wrong kind of clothing for nighttime prowling, this time a pale blue t-shirt with a picture of a Dalek in the center and the words “OMG it’s R2D2, I loved him in Star Trek” written across it. What was wrong with something black and long-sleeved, more suitable for shadowy spy work?
Madison, on the other hand, wore pretty much entirely black most of the time. Even her hair was black. She looked as cool and fetching as ever, and Ant felt a pang of envy that Liam lived next door to her. Not that it mattered; she was fifteen, three years older than the boys and way out of their league. She hung around with them only because they were nerds and willing to accompany her on these freaky alien hunts.
She gave Ant a nod. “Why are you late?”
“Traffic,” Ant muttered.
“See the open doorway?” Liam said, pointing.
Ant and Madison turned their attention to the spacecraft. Beyond the alien figures, a doorway stood open, a rectangular opening in the curved hull of the ship. A metal ramp led down from the opening.
“Just like in the movies,” Ant said, shaking his head.
Liam’s voice shook with excitement as he spoke. “Did you see the saucer land? It kept dropping down low and disappearing behind the treetops, then shooting back up with a bright white glow—and then it came down fast, and the white glow turned red. It must have burnt its way through the treetops, literally incinerating everything on the way down.”
“It’s a good thing we weren’t under it at the time,” Madison whispered. She dug into a pocket and fished out a sheet of notepaper. Ant had already seen the message she’d written to herself in her sleep the night before, but he peered at it again.
1:02 AM. Rowhill Copse.
“Kind of vague, isn’t it?” Ant said. “We could have missed the event.”
Madison shook her head. “We’d have seen the spaceship wherever we were.”
“But we still might have ended up standing right under it when it landed,” Ant complained. “Seriously, we could be dead right now.”
Liam shook his head. “No chance of that. Stop complaining, rich boy. We’re fine.”
Ant didn’t mind the ‘rich boy’ slur from Liam; they often dished out class-related insults to one another. But he always found it odd when Liam made statements like ‘No chance of that’ as if he knew with absolute certainty what could and couldn’t happen next. Perhaps he did know. He’d glimpsed the future, after all. He’d used a device known as an echo wand to ghost himself into the past and future for a look-see. Maybe he knew more than he was letting on.
The aliens were putting things back. After the last few wires and components were stuffed roughly into the small opening, a hatch slid across from the inside and popped outwards, closing the gap and forming a seamless joint. The aliens collected their small tools and headed for the ramp.
Liam pulled out his cell phone. Shielding the screen’s giveaway glow, he flipped to his speed dial screen and paused his thumb over Ant’s red-haired, constantly worried face.
“What are you—” Ant started.
Liam jabbed the call button and grinned. “Can’t believe you didn’t turn off your ringer while you were spying on aliens.”
Once again, the sound of Ant’s phone pierced the night air—muffled and distant, yet perfectly distinct in the stillness of the woods. He grabbed Liam’s arm. “What are you doing? They’ll hear!”
Sure enough, the aliens froze in front of the ramp and looked at one another. Then they scurried around the ship to stare into the woods. Somewhere in the darkness, Ant’s cell phone lay on the ground among the bushes, merrily beating out a tune over and over.
“I want them to hear,” Liam said to Ant with a smile. “It’s a distraction. How else are we going to get inside for a look?”
Chapter 3
As Ant’s ringtone echoed through the woods, the silver-suited visitors edged toward the source, pointing with long fingers in slightly different directions, clearly trying to pinpoint a precise location.
“Liam, what are you doing?” Madison whispered fiercely. “Are you trying to get us discovered?”
The three of them watched as the childlike aliens suddenly scampered into the woods together.
But, almost immediately, the phone stopped ringing. The aliens halted, too.
“It’s switched over to voicemail,” Ant said thankfully.
“Well, that’s no good,” said Liam with a hint of mischievousness in his voice. “Better dial it again.”
Ant stared as his reckless friend put another call through. The music played again from the bushes, and the aliens once more headed off into the woods to investigate.
“Now, let’s move,” Liam said, standing up. “We’ll have a look inside the ship while they’re off searching for your phone.”
“Liam, no—” Madison started.
Boldly, or perhaps recklessly, he jumped into the clearing and made a beeline for the open hatchway, from which a dull green light emanated.
Ant watched in horror. “Is he out of his mind?”
“He’s officially lost his last marble,” Madison hissed.
Liam put a foot on the bottom of the alien ramp and turned to wait. “Come on,” he mouthed silently, motioning wildly.
Ant decided his classmate was stark raving mad. Go inside the ship?
It was one of those do-or-don’t moments. Ant tensed, willing himself to leap forward and take a chance. The three of them had seen inside a spaceship before—a gigantic Ark orbiting the Earth—but somehow this was different. This was a flying saucer, familiar across the entire world, almost as mythical as dragons and unicorns.
At that moment, Ant’s distant cell phone stopped ringing once more, and he imagined he could see the aliens pausing in their search somewhere among the bushes.
Liam fumbled with his own phone again. Ant’s started ringing a third time, and he imagined the aliens foraging around for the source of the noise. If he was going to dart across the clearing to where Liam waited, now was the time.
“Now or never,” he murmured, and stood up.
Madison reached for him, but he escaped her grasping fingers and dashed across the clearing. He was up the steps in no time, joining Liam in the low doorway.
“Come on, Maddy!” Liam half-whispered, gesturing again.
A second or two later, Madison came running.
As she clattered up the metallic ramp, Liam turned and led the way inside. Ant pressed close behind, and he felt Madison at his back, her breath on his neck.
The first thing Ant noticed was a wave of warmth as he stepped into the ship. That and an overpowering smell of honey. The domed ceiling glowed green, bathing his friends in the same color.
“You look like the Incredible Hulk,” Liam murmured, his eyes shining. “Isn’t this cool?”
Ant was too jumpy to appreciate it properly.
“One minute only,” Madison insisted, her jaw tight. “If they catch us in here . . .”
The room they stood in was walled off left and right, leaving a roughly square control center with its domed green ceiling. Straight ahead stood a mass of complex panels filled with buttons and switches and dials, and in front of these panels three odd-looking chairs, curved and slender, hanging from impossibly thin poles attached to the ceiling. Great lengths of wiring and flexible cables hung from the walls and draped across the room, causing Liam to duck as he advanced. The depths of the ship were visible through the metal grid flooring. Great black machinery hulked down there in the darkness, humming and vibrating and sending steam up through the floor by way of vent-like openings.
The smoky atmosphere tickled Ant’s throat. Worse, the sweet-smelling air, that overpowering scent of honey, made him feel queasy. It was like walking into the perfume section of a department store.
“We should get out of here,” he said nervously. “If they come back—”
“Man, you two worry a lot,” Liam said. “I’ll ring your number again to keep them busy.” He frowned. “Hmm. No signal from in here. I guess we’d better hurry, then.”
Rather than head for the steps, he stood there looking around, wonderstruck.
Madison let out an exasperated sigh and grabbed his arm. “Let’s go,” she said through gritted teeth.
“All right, all right.”
The three of them turned to leave—and froze. From outside came the familiar chittering sound. The aliens had returned.
Even Liam’s eyes grew wide. “That was quick,” he muttered.
Rooted to the spot, with the machinery below the floor humming incessantly, Madison and the boys gripped one another’s arms and shoulders.
The aliens appeared at the foot of the ramp, still chittering. The first one started up the ramp, but the other pointed at the tools they’d discarded on the ground before going off to investigate Ant’s ringing phone. Together, they bent to collect them up.
Ant suddenly darted for the doorway. There was no way any of them would make it down the ramp and outside without being caught, so he did the next best thing and slapped at a large yellow-lit pad on the wall beside the open doorway.
A loud hissing sound filled the air, and the ramp lifted off the ground, retracting quickly into an unseen recess below the deck. As the two alien figures swung around, their dark-tinted helmets undoubtedly hiding startled expressions, a door slid across and clanged into place, shutting them out.
Ant stared at the door. Would it stay closed?
Madison came running over. She pressed both hands on the door as though it might fall inward, then gave Ant a hard look. He couldn’t tell if her expression was one of gratitude or fury.
Liam stared hard at the yellow-lit pad. “They can open this,” he said breathlessly. “From the outside. They probably go off and leave the ship unattended all the time. They must be able to open and close the door from the outside.”
“What are we going to do?” Ant shouted, suddenly furious with Liam for getting them into this mess. “We can’t let them in! They’ll . . . they’ll kill us!”
As he spoke, the door hissed open in a rush, revealing the two silver-suited visitors. The ramp began its swift descent.
With a yell, Liam slammed his hand on the large yellow button. The ramp faltered, wobbled, and retracted again. As the door began to hiss shut, one of the aliens held up a small handheld device like a remote control and jabbed a long finger on it. The door stopped halfway across and hissed back open, and the ramp once more unfolded . . . until Liam hit the button again.
Ant and Madison could only stand back and watch in horror. How long was this going to continue? The aliens couldn’t even begin to enter the ship until the ramp was almost fully extended, so the boys had a slight advantage there. All they had to do was keep closing the door, which automatically retracted the ramp again. But they couldn’t stand around opening and closing doors all night. Something had to be done.
If only they could somehow jam the door shut. But how? Maybe try breaking the lock mechanism? Then they could close the door one last time and—
And be stuck inside forever.
Liam was yelling for somebody to do something. As the door opened and shut over and over, Ant looked around in desperation. Outside, glimpsed through the briefly open doorway, one of the aliens was digging furiously through the pile of tools on the ground. As the door shut, the alien found what it was looking for and scampered off out of sight.
“Do something!” Liam yelled again, slapping his hand once more on the button. “They’re going to disable the door! We need to do something now!”
Ant rushed over to the control panels with their hundreds of buttons and dials and lights, swimming before him in a sea of complexity.
A crazy idea came to him.
Leaning over the center suspended pilot seat, he scanned the array of controls and started pressing buttons, flipping switches, pulling on small levers. Something would beep or buzz occasionally, and machinery grumbled deep under the floor when he wrenched a handle back.
He glanced back over his shoulder. Madison was in a half-crouch lofting what looked like a long wrench as though preparing to bat the aliens across their heads if they dared enter. Liam was still there by the door, slapping at the large yellow pad by the doorframe and causing the door to groan in protest. It slid shut again, cutting off the ceaseless chittering from outside.
Liam wiped his forehead. The door hissed open, and the chittering blasted through with renewed volume. One of the aliens now had its helmet pressed close to the opening. It seemed to be trying to climb over the ramp before it was anywhere near extended, hoping to get in before the door could close again. Where was the second alien? Out of sight, perhaps trying to disable the door?
“Ant!” Liam shouted over his shoulder, eyes wide. “You gotta do something, man! Help me out here!”
Ant turned his attention back to the control panels. He slid into the center seat and stared around him. It all looked meaningless. “Come on, come,” he murmured. “How difficult can this be?”
He shook his head as sweat dribbled in his eyes. Beads flung off in all directions. Then his gaze fell on a modest screen in the center of the panel, one he’d somehow avoided paying attention to. No bigger than a laptop display, it showed a scene of the woods outside.
In front of it, a small joystick stuck up close to where his right hand rested—a jutting handle encircled by a glass ring and mounted on a Y-shaped base vaguely reminiscent of a catapult. The setup reminded him of a gaming console. His hand fit inside the ring quite comfortably, his sweaty fingers gripping the handle while his wrist rested on the catapult base. He pulled on the stick, hardly expecting anything to happen . . .
Instantly, he felt his stomach sink into his boots as a horrible feeling of heaviness set in, making him dizzy. The machinery below the floor throbbed with power, and the constant low hum raised in pitch, becoming more urgent.
Ant extracted his hand from the joystick as if he’d been stung, and instantly the strange, heavy feeling passed. He glanced over his shoulder at Liam.
Suddenly, everything was still.
Liam stood by the entrance, his hand poised over the yellow pad on the doorframe, fingers twitching, waiting for the door to slide open so he could close it again. But nothing happened. All was quiet, and the door remained closed.
“L-Liam?” Ant stammered.
His friend slowly lowered his hand but remained staring at the door. “I think they’ve stopped trying to get in. What did you do? Lock the door? Shock the aliens with an electrical charge or something?”
Ant swallowed. “I, er . . . I’m not sure. I think we took off.”
Liam swung around. “Say what?”
Madison dropped the wrench with an almighty clatter. “We did what?” she gasped.
Ant shrugged. “We took off. I think we’re in the sky. But at least the aliens can’t get us now, right?”
Unlock the full book for $4.99