The Summer Experiment (16 page)

The female turned to look at the large black screen. The shutters worked again in her enormous eyes, and then the screen filled with all kinds of facts and figures. I felt my mouth drop open.

“Someone is showing off,” I whispered to Marilee. “And this time it's not me.”

“Where did you get all these facts?” Marilee asked.

The alien turned to look at her. The shutters shimmered again as the eyes opened and closed.

“
Wikipedia.
”

Marilee and I sighed together in our disappointment.

“We need facts that other earthlings still don't know,” I explained. “We want to be
the
first
to discover something.”

And then an odd thing happened. I saw one of the other females stop the work she was doing at the instrument panel. She stood behind the female next to her and pushed a finger against her back. A door popped open. I saw all kinds of intricate stuff. She was pushing buttons on a panel inside, like programming a computer. And that's when I got it.

“Marilee,” I said, “they're not real. They're machines.”

“Are you sure?” Marilee asked. “The eyes look amazing. Why would they be robots?”

“Because, think about it,” I said. It made total sense to me. I remembered seeing a TV program about it. “Life on that planet is so intelligent they would have created machines to do the travel for them. Top-of-the-line hardware. Artificial intelligence. Our scientists are trying to create it on Earth even now. But we're hundreds of years away from doing it like this.”

That explained the camera action in the eyes. And then I realized that there was no male and no female! They were just intelligent machines with specific jobs to perform. On their planet, the idea of an old-fashioned spongy brain doing all the thinking had probably been out of date for a ca-zillion years.

Then the machine standing in front of us tilted its head forward. The shutters in its eyes moved rapidly, as if it was receiving information from somewhere. I watched as the shimmering eyes expanded and contracted, like the pupil in a human eye. I reached out and touched the surface. It was hard, made of something like glass or plastic. Marilee touched the face.

“It's a kind of material,” she said. “You're right. This is a machine.”

“It's being controlled, probably by life-forms back on planet g,” I said.

“I wonder if they look like this,” said Marilee.

“I think they made them like this so that we earthlings won't die ten thousand deaths when we see one.”

“So we just die
one
death?” Marilee asked. “It has no mouth or nose, Robbie!”

“There are a hundred billion galaxies out there, Marilee,” I said. “So there are that many different ways the aliens on planet g might look.”

The machine was now done receiving information. Its head tilted back, and the egg-shaped eyes looked right at
me
.

“
Please
give
me
the
apparatus.
”

“Excuse me?”

“
Please
give
me
the
apparatus.
” The right arm lifted up and the hand spun around to show a flat palm. The hand was waiting for me.

“What does it want from you?” Marilee asked.

Okay, it was true that I still had Mom's iPhone in my jacket pocket. I had hoped no one would notice. It was my last chance to snap a photo of the inside of the spaceship.

“
Please
give
me
the
apparatus.
”

“You are such a spoilsport,” I said. But I took the phone out of my pocket and plunked it down on the upturned hand. It immediately pulled back and spun around and flicked on the iPhone. Wow, it happened so fast. As I watched, the head tilted forward so that the eyes could focus on the phone. The shutters were working fast inside. I saw the phone's camera screen flash brightly. Then I was handed back the “apparatus.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Now, about that picture I'd like to take…”

But before I could finish, the alien machine reached out and touched a finger against my forehead, right between my eyes. I felt a kind of
zap
!

“That was weird,” I said. It felt like an ice cube was held against my skin.

“Please let us take a picture,” Marilee begged. “How else can we win even a regional science fair?”

“Have you ever abducted Henry Helmsby?” I asked. “If you had, you'd know why this is so important to us.” If they didn't help, this UFO-chasing had been a lot of work for nothing. I could have learned yoga. Helped Mom paint the garage. Started an ant farm.

“
You
must
trust
yourself.
”

Okay, suddenly this machine was Oprah? But before I could protest anymore, I heard a clicking. Even before I looked up, I knew what it was. The blue light. The one that would make us forget. I remembered it from that night on Peterson's Mountain. It was also the light that would send us home. Well, I guess that's better than becoming a human slave on planet g. Then the light hit us and I could see Marilee's face in a bluish glow. In an instant, we were in the room we first came to, the one filled with gray mist that reminded me of early fog on the Allagash River.

“Wow,” Marilee said. “How did that happen?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “But I guess they would know how to teleport.” It made sense that they could send matter from one place to another without having to drive it there in Dad's pickup truck. We were way behind on Earth.

“What's that?” Marilee asked, and I saw a second blue light beaming overhead. I knew why. Just before I couldn't remember anything, I felt a deep pride that it would take
two
blue lights to make Roberta Angela McKinnon forget.

“
Trust
yourself.
”

And then everything went blank.

The Return

“
We
do
not
think
in
terms
of
time, as you earthlings do. For us, time does not exist.
”

Watch out for the big rock,” Marilee said before I could warn her of the same thing. It had been at the edge of the meadow for as long as I could remember. We were on our way back from Peterson's Cave, having failed at contacting aliens. We both veered our bikes around the rock. When we hit the meadow path, it was just safe, flat field ahead of us. Stars twinkled like fireflies over our heads. Marilee pulled up alongside of me and we pedaled in unison, side by side.

“I had the strangest dream tonight, Marilee,” I told her.

“Yes, you dreamed that you were petting Max when you were petting a skunk,” she said and laughed at the idea.

“No, I dreamed another one after that,” I said. “It must have been the second time I fell asleep. I just can't seem to remember much of it.” It was true. I had bits and pieces of memory. Flashes, like fireflies. I remembered eyes, so big and round and blue. And didn't we talk to creatures with funny-looking fingers? “I think in the dream we were abducted by aliens from the planet g.”

“Well, no wonder,” said Marilee. “It's all we've been talking about for weeks!”

“I guess you're right,” I said.

“Don't be disappointed that your plan didn't work,” Marilee said. “It was still fun.”

“Maybe we should try again tomorrow,” I suggested. “Maybe the aliens were just too busy tonight to abduct us.” It was possible. Maybe it was movie night on the spacecraft.

“Don't worry,” Marilee said. “I'm sure you'll come up with another crazy plan for the science fair. Something better than the hollydock.”

I had already thought about this. We had several options, as I saw it. If those didn't work, I was destined to lose to Henry Helmsby again. But at least this year I had a partner. That meant it would hurt half as much.

“I have five ideas in mind,” I said.

“Five?” Even knowing me as she does, Marilee was surprised.

“First off, there's Allagash Lake,” I said. “The Indian tribes who were here first told stories of a creature that lives in the murky waters at the bottom. You know, like the Loch Ness monster over in Scotland. Grandma grew up on the lake and she saw it once. She said it looked like a fifty-foot inchworm.”

I heard Marilee's bike chain creak, as if maybe she was pedaling a bit faster.

“If I had a choice in the matter, and I rarely do,” she said, “I'd pass on that one.”

“Then, look at where we live, Marilee,” I said. “Those two hunters who claim they saw Bigfoot at the abandoned logging camps were pretty believable. One is a doctor and one is a professor. Uncle Horace said if they'd been a lawyer and a politician he wouldn't believe a word of it. But he knows Dr. Blanchard personally. If Uncle Horace believes it, it's worth considering.”

“I'm not exactly dying to meet Bigfoot,” said Marilee, and her pedaling picked up the pace again.

“Well, there are gold coins from the Revolutionary War buried somewhere in Peterson's Cave,” I said. “Folks around here claim that Old Man Peterson said so with his dying words a hundred years ago. The coins belonged to his great-grandfather. Everyone looked, and then everyone gave up. I bet Calley's ghost knows where the coins are. I bet she'd tell us if we held a séance up there. Is gold safe enough for you, O Gutless Girl?”

When Marilee didn't answer, I smiled. I knew I was making her very nervous. I'm good at doing that. It's just a talent I have. We rolled past the sleeping buttercups and nodding clover, and were almost to Frog Pond when Marilee said, “Maybe we should learn to shop until we drop, like some of the girls in our class. It would be a lot less scary.”

I couldn't see us at the mall, trying on hats and smelling perfume samples. You want to see scary? It's Marilee and me in designer dresses with matching purses.

“And then, everyone knows that the old Baker mansion is haunted,” I continued. “We can install Ghost Radar on Mom's iPhone. I could even download the application tomorrow. Are you ready to interview a ghost?”

“Not really.”

“Then what about what Mr. Finley says? That a werewolf runs with a pack of wild timber wolves across the river in Quebec. The French call it the
loup-garou
.”

“Please,” said Marilee. “Werewolves don't scare me. They look like shaggy dogs with bad teeth.”

“We have five adventures to choose from,” I said. “As Grandpa always said, the world is our oyster.”

“What does that
mean
?” asked Marilee.

“I have no idea,” I said. “There's no seafood in northern Maine.”

And that's when something seemed weird. The path in front of us was suddenly lit up with bright light.

“
Help!
” I shouted to Marilee. “We're being abducted!” So much for my dazzling courage.

Marilee braked and I did the same. That's when I saw that the lights came from behind us, two yellow headlights, like buttercup eyes in the night. It was a car and not a spaceship! Sheriff Mallory stopped his patrol car and got out.

“I knew I saw bikers riding down the mountainside,” he said. “But I never dreamed it was you two girls. Do you realize it's two o'clock in the morning?” The sound of his door closing echoed back from Frog Pond. “Do your parents know where you are?”

I straddled my bike and waited until he was standing next to me.

“Do you want me to lie or tell the truth?” I asked. “I'm prepared to do either.”

Sheriff Mallory smiled. As I said, he thinks I'm a little adult. A real cut-up, is what he told my dad.

“Never mind then,” he said. “Just get yourselves home before anything wild happens. I'll be glad when the full moon is over.”

“Did you find Joey Wallace?” Marilee asked.

“He found himself,” said the sheriff. “He turned up at his mother's door, all bug-eyed and hungry. He says he ran out of gas, so he pulled his jeep off to the side of the road and called his girlfriend to come get him.”

“Wow,” I said. “I never knew Joey could go that long without his favorite fishing hat.”

“He didn't even know he'd dropped it,” Sheriff Mallory continued. “He said he intended to buy a few gallons of gas and come back for the jeep. But then his girlfriend reminded him that World Wrestling Entertainment was having a marathon weekend on TV. Joey didn't want to miss a single headlock, hammerlock, kick, or punch. So he went home with her to Caribou and forgot all about his jeep.”

“You mean he pulled a joke this time without even meaning to?” asked Marilee.

“Yup,” said Sheriff Mallory, nodding. “His mother is some kind of angry about it too.”

“The boy who cried werewolf,” I said, “even when he didn't mean to.”

“What were you doing on Peterson's Mountain this time of night?” asked Sheriff Mallory.

“We were trying to contact a UFO,” I admitted. “Like the one you saw.”

“You
did
see a UFO, didn't you?” Marilee asked.

“Well, girls, I suppose I did,” said the sheriff. “But one thing is for sure. If there are aliens out there, they'll contact us when
they
think the time is right. Not when
we
think it is. I've learned something these past weeks. There are times when we just have to live without logical explanations.”

“I guess so,” I said. An image flashed just then in my mind. I saw a big computer screen filled with all kinds of stars and strange writing. Did I dream about a spaceship and an alien with large egg-shaped eyes? My brain was working hard to remember.

“You girls be careful riding home now,” Sheriff Mallory said.

We told him thanks a lot for remembering what it's like to be a kid. Then we watched his headlights disappear across the meadow.

“Wait a second, Marilee,” I said. “What time did the sheriff say it was? Did I hear correctly?”

“You're right,” said Marilee. “He said it was two a.m. But that's not possible. It wasn't even one o'clock yet when we left the cave.”

I held my wrist in front of the headlight on my bike and saw Marilee do the same to hers.

“It's two o'clock,” Marilee said. “But how can that be, Robbie?”

I shook my head. I didn't know. It was really weird.

“The only thing I can figure out,” I said, “is that I was wrong when I checked my watch. We must have slept longer than we thought.”

We set off again on our bikes, and that's when it happened. I felt a cold round spot right in the middle of my forehead. It was like someone was holding an ice cube there.

“
Stop!
” I shouted to Marilee. We both braked and sat on our bikes.

“What's wrong, Robbie?”

“I don't know,” I said. “This funny feeling just came over me.” I reached into my pocket, for no logical reason, and pulled out Mom's iPhone. I mean, there's no reception in Allagash, so why was I doing that? I turned it on and then, with Marilee watching, I pushed the record button for the phone's camera. It seemed like a voice in my head told me to point the screen toward the constellation Libra, which was still quite high in the sky. Voice or no voice, it's natural I'd pick Libra since that's the sign I was born under, on October 15. But why was I trying to record a constellation so late at night from Earth? I don't know. I guess it's the wild gene.

“What are you doing?” Marilee asked. She got off her bike and put the kickstand down.

“I'm not sure,” I said. The cold spot between my eyes was tingling now. I hoped I wasn't coming down with the flu or something worse. I'd like to go my whole life without knowing what it's like to get chicken pox. And that's when a small, round light appeared on the phone's screen and just stayed there. I held the phone steady in my hand, still pointing at the stars in Libra. Almost four minutes passed before the light finally disappeared. I felt my breath catch in my throat.

“Marilee,” I said. “Start thinking International Science Fair again.”

“What do you mean?” Marilee was staring up into the sky. “I don't see anything unusual.”

“Not with the naked eye you don't,” I said. “But the phone's LCD screen just picked up a flash from Libra. It can detect infrared light, even if our eyes can't. Do you know what this means?”

“I think so,” said Marilee. “But it's too awesome to even imagine.”

“If you think it's awesome, then you're thinking right,” I said. “That infrared flash is the shock wave that a star sends out before it collapses.” I paused, almost too excited to hear the words I planned to say next. “Marilee, there's a star in Libra that's about to go supernova. And we're probably the only human beings on earth who know it.”

As soon as I said those words, the cold spot on my forehead disappeared. Far off on the horizon, I saw a round white light, too big and bright to be a star or a planet.

“Look!” Marilee said, and pointed. As we watched, the bright light zoomed across the sky in a nanosecond. It stopped directly overhead, a shiny round pearl. That piece of memory jumped back into my mind just then. Big, blue egg-shaped eyes. Then, before we could even blink, the ball of light simply disappeared.

“That's a spaceship,” I said to Marilee. “It's not a UFO. It's a spaceship from the planet g.” I had no idea what made me say that. But I felt it was true, somehow.

“It's your dream again,” said Marilee. “But girlfriend, who cares about UFOs when we're about to
predict
a supernova? That's only happened one time before. Four Hs hasn't got a chance with his stupid hollydock.” She was totally right. So I forgot about the ball of light and my bits of memory and the cold spot on my forehead.

“When I get up tomorrow,” I told her, “I'll call the Southern Maine Astronomers group down in Portland. I'll tell them to monitor Libra because there's gonna be a supernova there soon. And I'll mention how McKinnon-Evans isn't a bad name to give it.”

We sat on the grass of the field and stared up into the sky. Without speaking, we were trying to imagine how amazing this night had turned out to be after all. Maybe we didn't contact aliens, except in the dream I had. At least, I think it was a dream. But we would soon be two of only three people on earth to
predict
a supernova. We knew we weren't the youngest girls to
discover
one. We had been envious—okay, we were really jealous—of a Canadian girl named Kathryn Aurora Gray, who lived just down the river from us in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She was only ten years old when she discovered her first supernova. But she had computer images to guide her and help from her dad. We had Mom's iPhone and the wild gene.

“This is the most awesome night of my life,” Marilee whispered.

“Mine too,” I said.

“But we've peaked at age eleven, Robbie. How can it get any more exciting than this?”

“It can if we take a werewolf to the dentist,” I said.

I heard Marilee giggle.

“You know I'm game, don't you?” she said.

Of course, I knew. That's why, sometimes, I wished that we could stay eleven years old forever. Before the year ended, we'd both be twelve. And then we'd have only one year left to
really
be kids. A lot of things start to change when you turn thirteen.

“You know what predicting a supernova means, don't you?” I asked, and Marilee nodded.

“We'll be way beyond famous,” she said.

“Overnight,” I added.

We sat for a time thinking about that. I'm not sure how Marilee saw us becoming famous. But I imagined long black limousines pulling up to my house and having a hard time finding a place to turn around in our driveway. Maybe they would knock down our backyard fireplace in the process or run over Tina's Little Tykes Push & Ride Racer. I saw bottles of nonalcoholic champagnes and wines being poured around the clock. Shirley Temples for everyone. They might even want us to wear designer clothes, just so Vera Wang or Donna Karan could say they dressed us. I mean, the second people ever in the whole history of the world to predict a supernova were two kids from northern Maine? And one of them is a natural blond? This is
big
. We would have to put in a guest bedroom for Anderson Cooper. In a week's time, we'd be sick of Oprah calling us. “It's
her
again,” my mom would say, sighing a big sigh as she handed me the phone. Mom always said that kids like Michael Jackson and Britney Spears had their childhoods stolen. Children should stay children for as long as they can, according to Mom, because childhood happens only once.