Space Taxi--Aliens on Earth Read online

  “No one?” Pockets replies.

  “Just you,” Agent Zell confirms.

  I pull on Dad’s sleeve and whisper, “Does that mean Bubble Girl ran away after all?” I feel a little bad for referring to her out loud as Bubble Girl. I mean, I’m sure she has a name.

  “I suppose it does,” Dad agreed. “Which means she could be anywhere.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Agent Zell asks Pockets as he eyes him up and down.

  “One more question for you,” Pockets says. “I heard your leader, Sebastian, has escaped capture. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”

  I lean forward, awaiting Zell’s reply. I’d like to see Sebastian again. Meeting someone who looks just like you is very strange.

  But Zell only laughs. “The leader of B.U.R.P. is very secretive. I am certainly not privy to his whereabouts. Now, let’s get down to business, shall we? Do you have any special skills that would help you thrive in the B.U.R.P. organization? Lock picking, perhaps? Or the ability to divide yourself in half and be in two places at once?”

  Instead of answering, Pockets says, “Aren’t you afraid that handing out flyers to strangers might be dangerous? How do you know you won’t run into an ISF agent?”

  Zell snorts. “All the way out here on Earth? They couldn’t be bothered to make the trip.”

  Pockets whips out his badge and a pair of handcuffs. “That’s what I thought about you. Guess we were both wrong.”

  Before Agent Zell can move, Pockets springs forward and lands behind him. He’s about to snap on the handcuffs when Zell suddenly swells up to twice his size! Maybe he’s the same species as the aliens on the bus whose heads kept changing size. His own head now grazes the ceiling!

  Fortunately, Pockets is no stranger to last-minute surprises. He reaches into a pocket and pulls out what looks like a wad of chewed gum. Then he climbs right up Zell’s body like it’s a tree! Zell yelps and flails around to dislodge Pockets but only succeeds in knocking dirt off the ceiling and getting it in his eyes.

  Pockets slaps the gum right on the back of Zell’s neck. Within seconds, Zell is back to normal size, the handcuffs are on Zell’s wrists, and Pockets is leading him to the stairs.

  Zell glares when he finally notices the rest of us, then sneers at Pockets. “You’re making a big mistake. No Earth jail will hold me.” He wiggles his fingers. “I already erased my fingerprints, so you’ll never pin any crimes on me. The neutralizer in that chewing gum will last only ten minutes, and you can’t get me off the planet in that time.”

  “Maybe I can’t,” Pockets agrees. “But I know someone who can.”

  “He does?” I whisper to Dad as we climb back up after them. Well, Pockets is climbing. Zell is being pulled.

  “I think he’s bluffing,” Dad whispers back. “Trying to psych him out.”

  “No, I’m not,” Pockets says.

  I always forget that super hearing of his!

  “That’s right, he’s not,” another voice echoes from above.

  We step out into the bright sun. “Feemus!” I shout, throwing my arms around the president of Pockets’ fan club. “What are you doing here?”

  “How’d you land in the middle of a solar storm?” Dad asks.

  The little red alien shrugs. “For Pockets I’ll risk frying my electrical system.”

  “And?”

  “Yeah, it’s fried,” Feemus says. He looks at Pockets adoringly. “But it was worth it. And I have a backup.”

  Pockets rolls his eyes and pushes Zell toward Feemus. “You know the drill.”

  Feemus nods. “I do indeed, oh fearless leader, oh wondrous example of amaze-i-tude.”

  “I don’t think that word is real,” Toe sings, “but I know just how you feel. The Morningstars, too, have been brave and true.”

  Feemus grunts and barely glances at us. I’m used to that from him. Never was there a more loyal president of anyone’s fan club than Feemus. Pockets is a lucky cat. Even though he’ll rarely give Feemus any credit. Having a fan club just embarrasses him too much.

  Feemus freezes Agent Zell and tosses him into his little round spaceship, which he’s hidden behind a bush. “His memory will be wiped,” Feemus assures us. “Can’t have a B.U.R.P. agent knowing where the greatest ISF agent who ever traveled the universe lives!”

  Pockets opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it and gives a curt nod. That’s as close to a thank-you as Feemus is likely to get. Pockets fishes the plastic cup out of his pocket, slips it into a plastic bag, and tosses it to Feemus. “Give this to the lab at ISF headquarters. They can analyze his prints and track down his previous crimes.”

  I shake my head in awe of Pockets’ quick thinking in keeping that cup. If Agent Zell weren’t frozen right now, I bet he’d be fuming.

  Feemus salutes Pockets, and zips back into space.

  We quickly continue checking the neighborhood for the girl. “Pockets, why can Feemus still freeze people and wipe their memories if no alien gadgets are supposed to work?”

  “We all have inner gifts that nothing—not B.U.R.P. or a solar storm or time or distance from our loved ones—can take away,” Pockets explains. “Like your dad’s skill at flying space taxis, or yours at navigating, or how you help solve cases by seeing things that no one else sees.”

  I feel my cheeks redden under his praise. Pockets usually never says stuff like that. He definitely hasn’t been himself these last few days. “Penny has gifts, too,” I say. “Everyone likes her because she’s so kind and friendly. I bet aliens other than you and Toe would like her, too, if she ever gets to meet them. But I know we’re taking that slow.”

  “No need to take it slow,” Toe sings, stepping between us. “The truth she does already know.”

  Dad stops when he hears that. “What do you mean?”

  Toe points to a small playground across the street. Sitting on opposite ends of a seesaw are Penny and one large blue bubble with an alien girl inside.

  Chapter Nine:

  Hello and Good-bye

  “How?” Pockets asks Mom when we reach them. “When?”

  “Penny had a lot of questions about Pockets,” Mom says, “so I tried to find you. You didn’t answer the walkie-talkie.”

  “We were underground,” Dad explains. “It was very cool. I’ll have to take you sometime now that it’s free of B.U.R.P. agents.”

  Mom raises an eyebrow, likely wondering how being underground could be cool (although it was ten degrees cooler down there!). “Anyway, we stopped to swing for a few minutes, until Penny jumped off and said, ‘Someone else is here.’ I didn’t see anyone, but sure enough, from up in the tree house came a kind of ripping sound. We went to check it out and found the missing alien. Unless there’s another alien in a pink T-shirt inside a blue bubble.”

  “Nope, she’s the only one,” Pockets confirms.

  “I asked the girl about the meeting and she didn’t know what I was talking about. She wasn’t able to read that flyer.”

  Pockets’ ears twitch. “Then why did she leave Simon’s house?”

  Mom smiles proudly at Penny. “I think she just needed a friend.”

  “What was the ripping sound you heard earlier?” Dad asks.

  Pockets points to an empty roll of duct tape on the ground, and then up to the bubble. Now that we’re so close, I can see a silver X shape on the inside of the bubble. She DID spring a leak! Duct tape really CAN fix anything!

  Pockets runs over. “Are you all right?” he asks.

  The girl finally notices us and bounces right off the seesaw. She says something to him and Pockets nods. “I promise you won’t be stuck here much longer,” he assures her. I’m not sure how he can say that with any confidence.

  She nods gratefully, and then she and Penny go running off to the slide. (Well, Penny runs. Bubble Girl rolls.) Pockets turns back to us. “She cracked her bubble on her way out of Simon’s. Earth’s air is slowly causing her some, er, troublin