The Fellowship for Alien Detection (33 page)

Dodger glanced behind them. The sun had crested the horizon, a brilliant pale ball of yellow. Their silver pursuer reflected the light. Another blue shot burst from it.

Target lock!
announced the interface.

Take evasive action!
Dodger shouted.

The ship bowed into a nearly vertical climb up, then flipped left, somersaulting upside down and back into a dive straight toward the earth as the shot sliced just above them.

The craft flattened out. Dodger thought he might barf.

Juliette location reached
, the interface informed him.

Dodger saw a wide, flat plateau beneath them, the ground all reddish dirt and rocks.
Like Mars
, he thought. There were grass hills around the perimeter. A snowcapped peak rose in the distance, sparkling in the dawn sun.

“We've reached Juliette!” he shouted.

“No town yet!” Haley replied, looking around.

Dodger wondered what to do. Should they stay in the area and just try to keep avoiding the fire from their pursuer? Should they take off and try to shake the other ship?

“Dodger, another shot!” Haley shouted.

Dodger spotted the next blue energy burst headed toward them. He ducked back into the interface.
Take
—he started to say—

But then there was a blast and a wicked shimmy of vibration. Dodger was thrown clear of the crystal. Giant orange sparks jumped around the ship. The exterior flashed in and out, the transparent mode malfunctioning. There was a whining sound that steadily lowered in pitch.

And the ship started to fall from the sky.

Dodger clambered back to his feet and slapped his hands on the crystal.
Pull up!
he shouted to it.

Primary antigravity thrusters have been damaged
.

Dodger pulled back as the ship slowed, still rocking from side to side, and fell toward the barren desert.

He found Haley's wide eyes. “We're going down.”

Juliette

Juliette, AZ, April 25, 6:55 a.m.

Suza Raines was getting suspicious. Why wasn't her alarm clock working? She rolled over and smacked it, but no radio played. The time appeared as a series of incomplete digital bars. She leaned down out of her bed and fished through her jeans for her broken-band watch, but then remembered she didn't have one.

“Ah well,” she said out loud, “just a normal day.”

Up and dressed, Suza found the kitchen empty. This was a lucky break. It was probably early enough to go down to the One Horse and see AJ . . .

“Nah,” she announced to the quiet kitchen. “I'll just have a muffin.”

After wolfing down the dry item, she said 'bye to her dad, grabbed her backpack, threw on her denim jacket, and headed outside. She looked down at her bike. Everything was in place, exactly where it should be. Suza raced to school, arriving just in time.

Juliette, AZ, April 25, 12:43 p.m.

“Pass it!” Suza shouted, racing across the outfield as cheers sounded behind her. In front of her, poor Wilson Daly was struggling to pull the kickball out from beneath a row of bushes. Behind her, Stacey Evans was rounding second, her pigtails flopping. Now Wilson emerged from the bushes and threw the pink ball wildly, way over Suza's head.

She chased after it. The ball bounced up against an orange plastic fence at the back corner of the school field. Suza bent to pick up the ball. When she stood, she found a small man in a yellow hard hat, orange jumpsuit, and goggles looking at her out of a round hole in the grass, just on the other side of the fence.

“Hi!” Suza said brightly.

The little man seemed to gaze quizzically at her.

Suza grabbed the ball and sprinted off.

Juliette, AZ, April 25, 3:16 p.m.

Suza slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed down the hall along with the rest of her seventh grade class. As they reached the double doors, they passed Principal Howard looming in the middle of the hall. He smiled at them all, his arms folded over his gray suit. When he saw Suza, he smiled even wider.

“Well, Suza, you had a nice day,” he said.

“Yup.”

“Good. I'm so pleased.”

“Me too.”

“Excellent. Have a normal evening.”

Suza smiled and walked out into the sunny afternoon.

Juliette, AZ, April 25, 7:43 p.m.

Suza stuffed her cleats into her backpack and picked up her bike. The sun had dropped behind Mount Randall for the day, and Juliette had become an evening world of blues and grays. Nearby, the radio blared from an open car window.

“—is asking everyone to be inside and off the roads before these snow squalls arrive.”

Suza hopped on her bike and pedaled hard through the dusk, through the neighborhoods full of kids at play and the lingering aroma of charcoal and burgers. The orange streetlights were beginning to flick on. Suza started winding up the hill toward home. She was just passing a brown sign that read “Foster Observatory and Museum—”

When she veered left.
Go
! she thought to herself.
Go now!
She leaned over her handlebars and pedaled as hard as she could up the steep winding road toward the white tower.

SUZA! S
TOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING
NOW! Y
OU
—

“Shut up!” she hissed at the voice in her head.

A horrible burning sensation ignited behind her left ear. Suza wobbled on her bike, almost spilling onto the pavement, but gritted her teeth and hung on.
Next time I take it! Shut up shut up shut up!

“Suza!” The front door of a nearby house flew open. A man she'd never seen before sprinted out of the house, barefoot, holding a remote control. “Suza, wait!”

“Suza!” A woman careened out, running straight toward Suza, a casserole dish still balanced in one hand, pointing a spatula at her with the other. “Stop, young lady!”

“No!” Suza shouted. She pedaled as hard as she could, felt a brush of fingers on her jacket, but sped past them.

Car engines roared to life. Headlights stabbing out of driveways. “Suza!” More doors were opening, men and women running out, some in socks, bathrobes, and all after her.

SUZA! Y
OU WILL GO BACK TO YOUR HOME
!

“No I won't!” Suza shouted.

She reached the observatory parking lot, her legs burning and her lungs about to explode, and jumped her bike onto the sidewalk. She sped straight for the observatory dome, which was beside a flat, stone building. The top of the observatory was slowly rotating with a low hum.

Tires squealed as cars raced into the parking lot.

The spot behind Suza's ear burned once more, sending pain shooting through the back of her head and down her shoulder. She veered and toppled off her bike, rolling across the pine needles.

I
T'S OVER
, S
UZA
! S
TOP THIS NOW AND RETURN
—

She heard car doors opening, the shouts of approaching voices, feet slapping the pavement.
Keep going
, she thought over the pain, and lunged to her feet.
You can't let up now
. It had been such a long day of hiding her thoughts, from that moment when she'd woken up to find that all the hidden thoughts in her brain finally seemed to have assembled correctly, like they'd almost done so many times before:
This time you take it, to the observatory, but wait until night, until right before the curfew, when they least expect it
.

“Suza, stop!” someone called from behind. And this time Suza almost did. She glanced over her shoulder to see her dad among the men and women chasing her. She saw Angie, even Principal Howard. But their eyes were cold, their faces blank, like they didn't even know her.

“Suze!” A door had opened at the observatory's base. AJ stood there, waving to her. Suza threw herself inside like a sprinter at the finish line. AJ slammed the door. Suza turned to watch him lower a thick wooden crossbar over it.

“I can't believe you made it,” AJ said. “I just sent a transmission out on that radio frequency. I don't know if anyone will hear it. It was so hard to hide my thoughts all day today!”

“Me too!” said Suza, feeling a great relief to have finally made it up here after . . . how many tries? She couldn't remember.

“Suza!” a muffled voice screamed from outside.

“That sounds like your dad,” AJ said, glancing worriedly at the door.

Suza took a step back. “He's not my dad.” Yet even though Suza knew this, it was hard to hear his voice furious like that. Slapping at the throbbing area behind her ear, she almost started for the door. . . .

But AJ pulled her toward the center of the room, where the giant telescope pointed out its open slice of roof. “We're all under some control,” AJ was saying, “repeating the same day. But there's a way to stop it.”

“With this,” Suza panted, holding up the metal piece that Mr. Davis had left on her bike that morning.

Relief flooded AJ's face. “Yes, that's it! These are the same symbols . . . check this out.” He turned to one of his computer screens and pointed to streams of white characters passing horizontally across a blue background. “The telescope picks this up. It's some kind of electrical energy. I don't know how long it's taken me to isolate this. I've only had so little time each night before they catch and reset me.”

“What is it?” Suza asked.

AJ tapped at his keyboard. “Code. The code for the program, I think, that's doing this to us. And so, watch what happens when I do . . . this.”

AJ tapped a few commands and the screen changed. The scrolling symbols moved to the top of the screen and a message appeared:

T
EMPORAL LOOP PARAMETERS ACCESSED
.

C
URRENT STATUS OF LOOP: ENGAGED
.

E
NTER CODE TO DISENGAGE
.

Below this message, a set of five short lines appeared. The first line blinked, like a cursor was on it. “How many symbols are on that key?” AJ asked.

“Five,” said Suza.

“Yes. The password for the program. Davis said he had access to some kind of interface. . . .”

There were clangs on the outside of the observatory dome now. It sounded like feet. Climbing.

“Let's try it,” said AJ. Suza held out the piece for him to see. “If we drag the right symbols into the right spots . . .” He watched the stream of symbols passing by. “There.” He clicked on the symbol and dragged the mouse, moving into the first blank line. Once all five were in place, he said, “Okay, here goes. . . .”

He hit Enter.

A high-pitched whine shrieked all around them, and then a deep hum seemed to come from everywhere: the walls, the floors. The ground shook, and for a moment, brilliant daylight flooded down through the open observatory top.

“Whoa!” Suza looked up and saw that it was no longer night, but instead there was blue sky, high clouds, and dawn sunshine. She heard confused shouting from outside.

“Did we do it?” asked Suza.

“I think we did!” said AJ. “Ooh, and look.”

A message had appeared beneath the five symbols:

P
ROJECT
B
LISS
C
ONTROL
S
TATUS
: E
NGAGED
.

E
NTER CODE TO
D
ISENGAGE
.

Below that, a single line blinked.

Just then, there was another earsplitting whine, and the daylight began to fade out, turning back to darkness.

“They must have overridden my command!” said AJ.

“Is there another symbol on that key?” he asked, looking at the screen. “We just need one more.”

Suza flipped it over in her fingers. The back side was blank. “No.”

“Well,” said AJ, “I guess we can try each different symbol . . . but there are so many. . . .”

There was a huge crash above them. A vacant-eyed townsperson had dropped down onto the metal catwalk that encircled the telescope. Another was hauling herself over the edge of the observatory dome.

Behind them, the door began to splinter.

Suza looked desperately back at the screen. “I don't know which one!”

“Um . . .” AJ grabbed a symbol and dragged it down, but when he hit Enter, the single space just went blank again. He went to get another.

The first townsperson crashed on top of him. “Ah!” AJ shouted.

“AJ!” Suza leaped back. She saw the next woman preparing to jump and realized it was Ms. Fells, her math teacher. And three more townspeople were crawling over the observatory rim.

AJ wrestled himself free of the man and jumped to his feet.