Attack of the Spider Bots (11 page)

The balloon was shaped like a football, and the gondola looked like a trolley car. That, of course, gave away the source of the message. “It has to be from Sol,” Ghoulie exclaimed. A tiny trumpet sounded, and a message popped out of the trumpet. Ghoulie read the message out loud: “Ensign Solomon Parker requests permission to come aboard.”

They peered through the branches. “Sol . . . uh, Mr. Parker, are you down there?” they yelled on top of each other.

“Hello children!” a familiar breathy, rasping voice called.

“Mr. Parker!” they yelled when they saw a tall, white-haired man leaning on a cane, looking up at them. He was smiling — the first real smile they'd seen on his face.

“Where's your wheelchair?” Scilla called down to him.

“Oh, for some reason, after your visit, I didn't feel like just sitting around any longer. Mrs. Drummond has been giving me fits over the change, so I still sit in it when she's around.”

A figure stood next to him wrapped in a white cloak. “Who's your friend?” Ghoulie asked a moment before he glimpsed the gleaming eyes of one of Mr. Parker's spidery robots beneath the white hood.

What do ya know?
thought Beamer.
Looks like those long spidery
legs can telescope down to man size. Not bad at all for 1940s
technology.

“Don't worry about him,” said the old man. “Mrs. Drummond won't let me go anywhere . . . alone.”

Climbing the tree was definitely beyond Mr. Parker at his age, but Scilla quickly got their transporter/elevator all tuned up and lowered it down to pick him up. Ghoulie rode down to make sure Sol had a safe ride up.

Leaving the bodyguard at the foot of the tree, Ghoulie helped the elderly man into the transporter. He made sure that Sol had a firm grip on the railing and then called up, “Take her up easy.”

Scilla hauled them up a lot more smoothly than her usual lurch-bang-lurch, much to Ghoulie's relief, since he didn't know CPR.

“How did you like my little . . . uh . . . flying messenger?” Mr. Parker asked Ghoulie as they traveled up the tree.

“That was . . . uh . . . very cool,” said Ghoulie, his attention divided between his answer and the slight swing of the transporter in the frigid wind. “How did you control the navigation?”

“Oh, a little sonar mixed in with a little . . . programming,” the elderly engineer answered. “Primitive by modern standards, I'll grant you. My ‘chip' took up the whole gondola.”

Beamer was waiting for them at the top as Scilla secured the platform. “Welcome aboard,” he said to their friend. “Uh . . . I mean . . . uh . . . permission to come aboard,” he added with something close to military precision.

“I told Mrs. Drummond that I was coming here to see my sister and turn off the train set,” he said as Scilla helped the old fellow through the door into the tree ship. “That was the only way I could get her to let me out of the house.”

“We're sorry,” Scilla said. “We would have called you, but Mrs. Drummond wouldn't give us your phone number.”

“I suspected something like that might have happened. Funny thing, you'd think she'd be glad that I'm getting back out into the world, but she's not — keeps talking about my heart and high blood pressure and the like.”

He coughed and suddenly seemed to teeter backward like a freshly cut tree. All three of them quickly propped him up, giving each other worried looks.

“Well, that was interesting,” he said as he took out a handkerchief and wiped a few beads of sweat off his face. “I don't know. Maybe she's right,” he said. After a long moment in which their scale of worry went off the chart, he suddenly laughed. “But then, maybe she's not. I'm feeling better than I've felt for forty years,” he said, standing up straight and gripping his cane forcefully. “Come on, give me the grand tour.”

It was just a tree with a plywood tree house, but Sol looked like he was about to enter Disneyland. They'd been wondering how he'd react to the tree ship. After all, plywood control panels with painted-on dials weren't exactly at the top of the high-tech charts. Of course, that would all change when the ship made one of its “jumps.” Actually, they were all hoping that, with such a feeble old man onboard, the ship would stay firmly nestled in the tree branches. Much to their surprise, Sol seemed as happy about the ship in its ramshackle condition as if it were the starship Enterprise. He ran his hands over the ship's hull and the tree branches that held it up as if they were the marble pillars of an ancient temple.

“Oh, I've waited so long to be here,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. “You don't know how many years I have resented my sister for depriving me of this adventure. When my trolley company collapsed and I couldn't get a decent position with a railroad, I blamed that failure on my lost opportunity to be one of the Star-Fighters.”

Beamer, Scilla, and Ghoulie gave each other a questioning look.

“I know that sounds strange — that a tree house could have such an effect on a person's life, but I'd heard stories about the Star-Fighters — what became of them. Rebecca thought I was just being silly and tried to get it torn down. Billy Stoller's family still owned the property, though, and wouldn't let anyone to touch it.” He stood quietly for a moment and then said, “I haven't spoken to Rebecca since . . . until today.”

He seemed to listen to the creaking of the ship as the tree swayed gently in the wind. “It is, indeed, a magical place. I can feel it. There's more here than I can see.” Suddenly Sol laughed. “I'm sure you think me a crazy old man, but I don't care — not anymore,” he said as he moved about the ship examining all the gadgets — real and otherwise.

“Well, actually,” Beamer said, “most people think we're crazy too.”

“I'm not surprised,” he said as he looked over the control panels. “You've done some very interesting things here. This monitoring system looks first rate.”

“Yep,” Ghoulie said proudly. “All the cameras are set up to rotate enough directions so that no part of the yard is hidden.”

Sol had some ideas of his own that he shared with them — like how to automate the transporter. He then took out a pad of paper and began figuring out a way to organize the takeoff and landing of multiple spaceships from a single port, until the Star-Fighters reminded him that they only had one spaceship.

“Oh, yes,” he said with a chuckle, “I forgot. Spent too many years organizing trolley schedules, I suppose.”

He cocked one eye up in puzzlement when he got to the box that was marked Universal Translator. “Uh, does it work?” he asked.

Ghoulie shrugged and said, “If you bang on it now and then.” Just for show, he did just that — banged it.

14

Alien Skyjacking

Suddenly the tree ship lurched, and the light outside the windows became streaks of color.

Sol fell back through the cockpit door into the rear compartment, grabbing tables, chairs — anything he could find to slow his fall. But fall he did. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes.

The compartment seemed to be stretching like it was made out of rubber.

Sol blinked his eyes again, as if trying to awaken from one of the weirdest dreams in his life. He felt his stomach tumble and roll. He felt dizzy and told himself to calm down. This hallucination couldn't last long. He swallowed hard and looked out the window.

A star field had replaced the streaks of light. Several large chunks of ice swept past the window.

Maybe I'm having a stroke! Mrs. Drummond was right
after all. It had been a mistake to come here.
Sol slowly picked himself off the floor and looked around.

One of the ice chunks came very close to the window and was suddenly pulverized in an explosion of white. The ship again lurched and, once more, he began to fall backward. But somehow he spun around and leaped to grab hold of a high ladder.

How did I do that?
he thought as he dangled from the ladder.
I'm too old to move like that.
Then he looked at his hands. The wrinkles and the age spots were gone.

The ship jerked again, and he lost his grip on the ladder. He slid across the floor and banged into a wall of lockers. One of the narrow doors sprung open. A mirror on the inside of the door displayed the face of a young man. It was a face he hadn't seen in over sixty years, but it was definitely his.
This is impossible!

“Secure the ship!” suddenly blared from a hidden speaker. “Secure the ship!” the voice said again.

Is that one of the children? It sounded like the tallest one — Beamer,
wasn't it?
With the ship still knocking about, Sol pulled himself from locker to locker, to window to wall, panel to table, toward the front of the ship. Finally, he opened a door and stared forward in amazement.

There they were — the three kids — Beamer and . . . uh . . . Scilla — yes — and Ghoulie — that's right, Ghoulie — such a strange name, Ghoulie. Or was it them? They looked somehow older, like they'd been wearing those uniforms for a long time. Yet this wasn't the tree ship. These kids were manning sections of a very high-tech ship's bridge. “What is happening? Where are we?” he asked.

He saw a viewing screen wrapped around the front of the bridge. It showed a star field with what looked like a large plume of gas straight ahead.

“Stop playing games, Ensign Parker,” said the captain who looked like the boy he had known as Beamer. “We haven't identified our exact position yet, but I believe we are somewhere near the Orion Nebula.”

“A starship; we're on a starship? But that can't be!” answered Sol.

“Ensign, return to your station,” ordered Captain MacIntyre. “We are in the tail of a comet and have no more time for guessing games.”

Ensign? He called me Ensign.
Sol looked down. Yes, he was in uniform — more white than theirs, but certainly not the same clothes he'd worn when he entered the tree house.

That's right,
he said, remembering.
I was in the tree house — the
magical one.

All of a sudden, his bewilderment ended. As if he'd just made the last twist of a Rubik's Cube, Ensign Parker, a junior officer just out of the academy, suddenly knew who he was and what he had to do. He immediately walked over to the weapons station and began monitoring the sensors.

Again the ship lurched as a spray of ice crystals filled the front screen. Another large ice crystal skittered off the top of the ship.

“Commander Ives!” shouted the captain. “What is that contraption connected to the comet? It looks like some kind of pod swinging on a long cable.”

“Well, I may be seeing things,” Ives said with a disbelieving grin, “but if I didn't know better, I'd say someone is trying to surf the tail of that comet!”

“Hard to port!” the captain ordered.

Let's see, thought the boy within Commander Ives,
port
means . . . uh, left and — what's right? — oh, yeah, starboard.

The commander blinked and fired the thrusters that would propel the ship to the left. Even so, an ice chunk sheered off the ship's starboard side and hit the place where the pod's cable was attached to the comet. The pod spun off into space and was caught in the magnetic field of their ship.

“Ensign,” Lieutenant Bruzelski called, “see if you can get whatever is riding that pod in through the aft air lock.”

“Aye, aye,” Ensign Parker said and charged out the door.

Being a Navy man, he knew what
aft
meant. It was funny. In the memory of his Navy days he seemed older than he was now.
How can you be older in a memory?

Minutes later the ensign was in the very rear of the ship and wearing a space suit. From inside the air lock, he worked one of the ship's robotic arms to pull in the object.

The front of the pod was transparent. The creature inside looked basically human, except that it was covered in fur. It also looked unconscious.

Several minutes later, the door to the bridge opened, and Ensign Parker brought in the creature. Actually, it was the other way around. The alien, holding some kind of weapon, pushed the ensign through the door. The alien could have been a cat, except that it stood upright and had round ears and eyes.

“He panicked when he saw me,” said Ensign Parker, “and started screeching and hissing like an alley cat. Believe me, though, he's no kitty cat,” he huffed as he massaged his arms. “It was lucky I was wearing that bulky space suit. It took me a half hour to pull him down from the ceiling.” Then he shrugged and added, “I didn't see the weapon hidden in his suit until it was too late.”

The man who was Sol Parker suddenly rolled back into consciousness. That doesn't sound like me talking. I didn't even talk that way when I was younger.
Maybe it's how I
would talk if I were their age right now. But when was now?