Chapter 1: In which a deception is uncovered.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY AL!" That was the banner that hung along the living room wall, brightly colored words surrounded by sparkling stars and what Harold assumed was supposed to be confetti. On the other hand, who could really tell with aliens? According to the note he'd received with the banner, all the kids in Sabri's class had "helped" with it. Harold was still waiting for an explanation for why none of them had been present for the actual party. He'd simply expected them to be there, and had been looking forward to seeing all his young friends at once for the first time since Christmas, and had never thought to confirm with Al that they were coming. When the banner arrived with a short note ("Hi- Sorry we can't be there, hope you have a stupendous day"), Harold had been baffled. Tina, his partner in crime for party setup, merely frowned, then changed the subject. She'd also, Harold remembered, kicked him under the table when he'd tried to ask Al about it later on.

But that had been hours ago. Now the house was quiet again, although remnants of the loud and boisterous party were still strewn around the living room and kitchen. And the backyard, Harold reminded himself silently. And the front yard, and the bathroom, and the basement... Oh well. Trudy's "gift" to Al had been organizing a clean-up crew to come in and deal with the mess. Harold had been skeptical at first -- how messy were a bunch of adults going to get? -- but after the water gun fight, he'd been as grateful as Al. The crew would arrive tomorrow, and until them, Bob the kitten was certainly enjoying all the ribbon and wrapping paper. Even Mama Tibbles was curled up inside one of the gift bags, looking surprisingly dignified for a cat that was inside a bag covered with neon balloons.

Suddenly Al cleared his throat. Harold opened his eyes, but didn't move from his position on the couch. Al was watching Bob, dangling a piece of holographic ribbon for him to bat at. Harold personally thought that Al looked ridiculous in his new propeller hat, but Al seemed taken by it. Maybe it was some inside alien joke. Maybe propeller hats were all the rage on Al's planet; maybe everyone had one, like baseball hats on Earth.

"So." Al was still looking at the cat, but Harold was pretty sure he was the one being addressed. "You might have noticed that the kids haven't been around lately."

He looked worried. Harold thought back. "Well, they did have that big project this year, for school. It sounded like that was taking a lot of their time." Harold rubbed his ankle where Tina had kicked him, and decided not to mention anything about the party yet.

Now Al looked exasperated. "Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Until I got a message from Sabri's mom asking when our project was going to be finished. Those kids have been giving us the runaround for months. Something weird is going on."

"Huh?" Harold tried to figure out what Al was telling him.

"The kids weren't working on a school project -- there is no big project this term. They just told us that so we wouldn't think it was strange when they didn't visit. Then they told their parents that we were the ones who were really busy, and didn't have time to watch them for a while." Al frowned. "What I can't figure out is why. At first I thought it was just us, but they haven't been visiting anyone, except each other. The twins haven't left the grounds in over six weeks."

The "grounds," Harold knew, were immense, since the twins parents' were pretty much in charge of the whole planet, but it was unusual for them to spend so much time there. Normally they were eager to get out and act like regular kids. "What about the others?" Harold asked.

Al sighed. "They're just as bad! From what I hear, the whole group is spending practically every waking moment together. And they've started acting all ... responsible. I guess it's spooky as heck to see it."

"You don't think it's the prank, do you?" Harold felt a sudden unease as the idea occurred to him. It was tradition at Sabri's school that each class organized a massive prank sometime during their years together; usually it happened when the students were much older, but Harold wouldn't put anything past this group.

"They swear it's not. According to Sabri's moms, all she'll say is that 'they're fine,' and they've 'decided it's time to grow up'." Harold could practically see the quote marks as Al spoke. "But she wakes up with nightmares, and now they're all refusing to leave the planet."

"Maybe they're scared," suggested Harold.

"Of what?" Al exclaimed. "They're the most protected kids on the planet!"

This was true, Harold knew. Sabri, Damaris, and PJ were all children of top-level advisors to the Cal twins' parents. Meshkalla's family were some sort of ambassadors for her clan, and Zahar... Actually, he didn't really know who Zahar was. Huh. Harold thought about asking, but decided it didn't exactly fit into the current topic. Instead, he said, "Who knows what they're scared of! They're 10 years old -- maybe they're just winding each other up. Maybe they overheard some conversation, and now they think someone's in danger. Maybe --"

Al broke in. He was starting to look optimistic again. "Hold that thought -- let me get a couple people on the phone." Al gave Bob's fur one last ruffle and headed for the kitchen. Harold figured he was going for the "special" phone; new and improved by Al to be able to make interplanetary calls. When he'd first met Al, Harold had wondered why he'd chosen to make his home on Earth as a gate keeper, far away from his family and friends. Now he was pretty sure it had something to do with Al's habit of "tinkering" with Earth technology. It was just so much easier to tinker when you had a steady supply of the stuff, and no pesky regulations officers around looking over your shoulder. The phone was one of Al's latest projects. Harold entered the kitchen just as Al said, "Okay, so everyone can hear me? Excellent. Harold's just given me an idea about the kids..."

"So let me get this straight." Harold wanted to confirm a few facts about the plan that had been hatched over the phone. Al kept calling it "Harold's idea," even though it bore no resemblence to any idea Harold ever had as far as he could tell. He felt certain that this plan would come back to bite them in the butt, and was a bit nervous about having his name so blatantly connected to it. "We've decided that someone in Sabri's class is the ringleader for their odd behavior, which everyone agrees is unreasonable and out of character for this particular group of 10 year olds."

"It was your idea, Harold," Al interrupted, and Harold glared at him.

"We decided that it would do them good to have some time apart, away from their normal environment. And somehow, PJ's parents are going to convince them of this." Harold looked questioningly at Al. "How, again?"

"Oh, that's the easy part." Al grinned. "We'll just use their newfound 'responsibility' against them. BT and the other guards will sit them down, very seriously, and tell them about some new threat that's been discovered, one that requires them to be far away from harm's reach for a while -- say, the summer."

"Won't it seem a little strange if their own parents don't give them the big news?" Harold was still confused about this part.

Al seemed to consider it. "Well, maybe. But it's got to be the guards -- they've got the best poker faces. And they're considered part of the family, anyway." He paused. "You really think that's going to be a problem?"

Harold had no idea what to think. Luckily, Al didn't seem to require a response. He continued on while Harold was still trying to think of something supportive, yet neutral to say.

"No, I'm sure they can do it. By this time next week everyone will be off on their little vacation."

Both men were silent as they contemplated this. Meshkalla would be traveling with her clan; something like a pilgrimage, or maybe a party -- Harold wasn't clear on the details. Sabri's moms were taking her to a girls-only family reunion, and PJ was headed out on something that sounded like a safari. Harold had been most surprised by Zahar and Damaris, who would be spending the summer together. They'd always struck him as very solitary, even within the tight-knit group of friends, but their parents seemed positive that they would be happy to accompany Damaris' brother on his annual hike through the mountains.

And then there were the twins. Being so recognizable, it was decided that they should go somewhere off-planet. Somehow, Harold and Al had been volunteered. Now they had fewer than seven days to prepare to take on Nadeka and Lishendri Cal.

"I bet you can't!" Eliza taunted her brother, then laughed when he threw a streamer in her direction. Both Eliza and Charlotte had showed up as part of Trudy's clean-up crew, then stayed for lunch. Harold and Al told them all about the plan, and asked for suggestions of things to do with ten year old identical twins on Earth for the summer.

"But Gabe, you don't even like camping!" This was Charlotte, ever the voice of reason in the family. It was Al who had suggested a two-week-long camping trip.

"Not hiking," he'd said, "just camping, by a lake or something. We could use all that gear you've got in the basement. We could swim, and roast marshmallows, and all that stuff. I'm sure it would be fun!"

Harold had been ambivalent about the idea -- Charlotte was right, he'd always been the one who wanted to stay home when the family went camping. But when Eliza made that bet...

"I bet we can!" he said heatedly.

"Yeah, right," Eliza replied. "You'll be headed for civilization in less than a week." A speculative gleam entered her eyes. "How about this: if you make it the fourteen days, Charlotte and I will host Thanksgiving dinner this year."

Charlotte looked like she was about to object, but Harold beat her to it. "And Christmas," he said.

"Fine by me," said Eliza. "But if you lose, you're hosting this year. With Al."

Now it was Al's turn to look alarmed. "What? How did I get involved in this?"

"Well," Harold said, "it was your idea." He smiled. Payback was sweet.

So far, the trip was going great. Or at least, fairly well, Harold amended. In the privacy of his own mind, he was willing to admit the potential for the trip ending in disaster, but out loud he was all set to take on the wilds. Just as soon as they managed to find them. Staring out the window at the third tiny gas station they'd pulled into to ask for directions, Harold sighed. At least the kids were having fun.

Al's birthday party had been on a Saturday, and the already-infamous camping bet had been placed the next day. By mid-morning on Monday, everyone on the aliens and allies phone tree knew about it, and Tina had visited Harold in his office with all the paperwork he'd need to take the time off from work. Sometimes it was really convenient to have the company owned and run by aliens. Lishendri and Nadeka had arrived on Thursday, just after breakfast. They'd tried to act normally, but even Harold could tell something was off. They seemed nervous, almost jumpy, and had absolutely refused to leave their transporter watches behind when Al asked them to.

"No way," the twins said in unison, and then Nadeka added, "If something happens, you'll need all of us to have one to be able to take Harold." To be honest, neither Al nor Harold really expected the kids to be willing to give up the watches, but their reasoning had been surprising.

"Are you expecting something to happen?" Al probed, but the twins clammed up, and the subject had been changed to how they were going to fit all the bags they'd brought into the already-stuffed Armada.

But that had been hours ago, and once they were on the road, everyone seemed to relax. They had food, they had drinks, they had camping gear stuffed to the gills, and the lake was just a few hours away -- practically a straight shot down a major highway. Until they'd hit the first construction zone, and the first off-highway detour. And then the detour in the detour, which led them on an series of increasingly rough back roads where they became hopelessly lost. Oddly, this cheered Lishendri and Nadeka right up, and now they were bounding out of the SUV right next to Al each time they pulled in somewhere.

Harold's job was to "stay with the truck." He wasn't sure if that was so no one would steal it, in which case he should probably be offended on behalf of the people of Earth, or just to keep Harold's total lack of directional ability far away from the driver (Al), in which case Harold wanted to be offended on his own behalf. Idly, Harold wondered how much alien technology was stashed away behind the tinted windows of their looming black vehicle. He was pretty sure the twins had their backpacks full of not-quite-Earthlike toys and gadgets. Knowing Al, there were probably plenty under the hood, too. Driving a big gas-guzzling Armada as stocked to the brim as theirs was should have had them stopping to fill up at least once by now. Instead, the gauge showed that less than a quarter of a tank had been used. Harold sighed. Maybe it was smart to have someone stay with the truck, after all.

"We made it!"

"Where's the bathroom?"

"Can we park anywhere?"

"Is that the lake?"

"Which one is our campsite?"

"Can we go swimming now?"

"I'm hot!"

"I'm hungry!"

"I'm thirsty!"

"I'm tired!"

This last one came from Al, and Harold glared at him. He hated having to be the responsible one -- that had always been Charlotte's job. Having two younger sisters, however, had at least prepared him for one of the questions the twins had fired at him. "Okay," Harold said, "Bathrooms are in that building over there. Stick together, don't forget to wash your hands, and we'll have cold drinks and snacks waiting when you get back."

The twins dashed off, and Al gave Harold a disbelieving look. "You remember that from when you were little?"

"Are you kidding? They just added those last summer. That was the first thing I checked when I booked our site online. Believe me, it's no fun camping with someone who won't use the bathroom because there's spiders in there." Harold swung down from the passenger side seat and walked around behind the truck, grabbing the keys out of the air when Al tossed them to him.

"Thanks," Harold said, as he opened up the back door and pulled out a cooler. "Here, have a Gatorade."

They stood in silence for a minute or two, leaning against the truck and taking in the atmosphere. Then Harold offered, "At least they're acting like kids again."

"Yeah," Al replied. "Be careful what you wish for, I guess. On the way home, you drive, and I'll stay with the truck when it's time to ask for directions."

Harold's reply was cut off by the twins' return. As they both grabbed drinks, he and Al exchanged grins. Nadeka and Lishendri might be identical twins, who looked alike, and dressed alike, and sounded alike, but they didn't share the same taste in Gatorade flavors. Nadeka would drink anything red, while Lishendri was hooked on the "Rain" line. At least for a few minutes, it would be easy to tell them apart.

Al passed around his latest batch of cookies, and Harold ripped open a bag of chips. He was glad that his sisters weren't there to observe their snack choices, but hey, it was camping. It was supposed to be fun, not healthy. Plus, they'd all need lots of energy to set up camp. Harold was about to dive into the "how shall we cart everything to our site" conversation when he heard crashing in the underbrush. Four sets of eyes turned to look as a childish voice called out, "See, Momma! I told you this was the path!" Seconds later, a little boy no more than five years old burst from the forest, covered with leaves and twigs. He was followed by a flustered-looking woman, who blushed when she saw Harold, Al, and the twins all staring at her.

"Hi," she said. She looked around. "Um, you haven't by any chance seen a green Honda hatchback, have you?"

"We're lost!" exclaimed the little boy. "We came to see the lake, but now we can't find the car!"

"I thought you were looking for the lake," said Lishendri. Harold couldn't tell if she was joking or not, but the boy laughed.

"We found that," he said. "It's right back there." He pointed into the shrub, and Harold assumed that somewhere along the nonexistent path lay the lake. "Momma says I'm good at finding things." Then he frowned. "Except the car. I'm tired. Can I have a cookie?"

"Raphael!" The woman that Harold assumed was Raphael's mother made a grab for his hand, but Nadeka was already holding out the plastic container of cookies, and Al said, "Sure! There's plenty for everyone!" And suddenly everyone was shifting over, and passing drinks, and soon little Raphael and his mom had been welcomed into their group.

"My name's Lindy," the woman said, looking overwhelmed. "We just came for a day trip, but then we started out on one of the walking paths, and now I can't find the way back to the day lot."

Harold raised his eyebrows and looked at Al. They'd passed the day lot on their way in; even as the crow flew, it was miles away. "That's a .... long walk you've had," Harold said, as tactfully as he could manage. After all, he'd been lost more than once that day himself.

"We'd offer you a lift," Al added, "but I'm afraid it would be a little crowded at the moment."

Lindy blushed again. "Oh, we couldn't impose!"

"They could help us unload," suggested Lishendri. "Then we could all fit." And an extra adult would make unloading go a lot faster, as well as making Lindy feel she "earned" the ride. A win-win for everyone, as far as Harold was concerned. Lishendri was going to make a great politician someday.

They set it up so that Al was coordinating the truck end, and Harold was supervising the actual campsite, with everyone else travelling back and forth in between. On an actual path, Harold noted with some relief. He also noticed that Al was being very careful about who carried what. In the last run, Nadeka and Lishendri had dropped off their personal duffels, Lindy carried one of the lounge chairs, and Raphael delivered a package of clothespins. Harold guessed that Al had opened up one of the supplies bags, and was letting the youngest member of their "team" carry it one item at a time. He thought it was kind of cute.

It was raining. That was the first thing that Harold noticed when he woke up. His sleepy brain followed up with more stunning observations: it was hot, it was dark, and he could feel a mosquito bite on his knee. And someone was crying. Just as his brain registered the sound, Harold also heard Al's soothing voice. He lay still, not wanting his squeaky cot to interrupt a delicate moment.

"We -- we didn't mean to drop them!" Whichever twin was speaking sounded much younger than ten all of a sudden.

"But it was dark! And then the flashlight was dying, and we didn't know if we could make it back to the tent!"

Must be the other twin, Harold thought. He was getting a very bad feeling about this.

"I know," said Al, still keeping his voice quiet. "It's okay. We'll find them in the morning. Don't worry about it. Do you think you can go back to sleep now?"

The sobs were getting softer, and Harold heard a muffled "yes," and then a "yes sir." Now he was fully awake, and getting ready to shift into panic mode. The twins would only be calling Al "sir" if they'd done something really bad. Obviously they'd snuck out of the tent (in the rain? Harold thought, why?), and then dropped something, which they then couldn't find again. But what? Where would they be going? He couldn't even ask Al, whose cot was on the other side of the tent. It came to him just as he was falling back asleep. Oh no, he thought. The keys...

By morning, it was still raining. Harold had learned that cots weren't nearly as comfortable as he remembered, and his suspicions about the truck keys had been proved correct. Nadeka and Lishendri had decided a midnight snack was just what they needed, and had gone to the truck looking for cookies. Before they'd gotten there, something had startled them ("It was a noise!" stated Lishendri firmly. "It was loud!" added Nadeka, and Harold managed not to roll his eyes. Everything sounded louder at night. He wondered if it had been the bullfrogs, which he remembered Eliza had been convinced were huge monsters the first time she'd heard them on a camping trip). At any rate, they'd dropped the keys, and then the flashlight batteries had started to die before they could find them again. The twins had then returned to the tent, cookie-less and key-less, in tears, and woken Al to confess.

Breakfast-less, too, Harold thought. At least until we find the keys. They'd left all the food in the truck to keep any critters from getting into it. With this distinctly un-cheery thought, he pulled on his raincoat and joined the search.

Ten minutes later, the twins looked as miserable as they had sounded the night before. "I swear this is the same path we were on last night! It was right here that we dropped them!" Lishendri was starting to move from miserable to desperate, and Harold was right behind her. He was hungry.

As if reading Harold's mind, Al said, "Well, they're obviously not here now, and I'm sure we're all hungry. Let's head back to the tent and regroup. I've got some PowerBars in my backpack, so at least we won't starve. Anyone else?"

Nadeka and Lishendri both had apples stashed away, left over from the "healthy lunch" their parents had packed them the day before. And Harold belatedly remembered that he had a whole bag of Tootsie Rolls he'd tossed into his backpack on a whim. "It's a three-course meal!" he joked.

Once everyone started eating, the atmosphere lightened considerably. The kids jumped on his joke, and started using their best "public manners."

"Perhaps I could interest you in some of this delicious fruit course, Mr. Cal?" Lishendri made an elaborate hand gesture, indicating the cut-up apple.

"Oh, thank you ever so much, Ms. Cal. Would you care to try the main course?" Nadeka held up his PowerBar. "It's the specialty here, you know."

Now Lishendri clasped her hands together. "Why of course, Mr. Cal. Really, you're too kind. Do sample some of this fine dessert."

Harold and Al couldn't hold back their laughter. "Oh, Harold," Al mimicked. "You must taste this fine delicacy!" Their was a gleam in his eye, and he threw a Tootsie Roll at Harold, who caught it out of the air and exclaimed in mock-delight.

"A Tootsie Roll! Oh, the legends I've heard about this tasty treat! I couldn't possibly keep it all to myself!" With an exaggerated wink to the twins, he aimed the candy back at Al. Soon Tootsie Rolls were flying through the air on all sides, and laughter filled the tent.

"Okay, here's the situation," said Al. After several fruitless hours searching for the keys, they had all regrouped in the tent. Harold silently passed out another round of Tootsie Rolls. "On the positive side, the rain has pretty much stopped, and it looks like the afternoon's going to be beautiful. On the negative side, we can't get into the Armada, which is currently holding about three-quarters of our gear. Ideas? Thoughts? Comments?"

"Spare keys?" asked Harold. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of it before.

But Al looked sheepish. "Actually, the ones we were using are the spare keys. Ilia's got the other set." Harold nodded. It made sense -- the car actually belonged to Ilia Cal, the twins' mother, but she kept it on Earth and had volunteered it for this trip.

"Al, can't you open the truck without keys?" This was from one of the twins; Harold thought it was Nadeka, but they both looked equally wet and bedraggled, so he couldn't be sure. Obviously he wasn't the only one to have noticed Al's considerable talents with Earth technology.

"Well, no, I'm afraid not" Al replied. "Whatever stories you may have heard, it's not something I've had a lot of practice with." And he gave both twins a stern look. Harold looked down to disguise his smile. He'd heard a lot of those stories from Al in the years since they'd met. Even if only half of them were true, Al did indeed have a lot of "practice" with this sort of thing. But if he said he couldn't break into the Armada, he must have a good reason for it.

"Can you guys transport to the house from here?" Harold asked.

"We can't leave!" cried one of the twins.

"Yeah, then you'd lose the bet!" added the other.

This time it was Al's turn to smile, and he didn't bother to hide it. Harold didn't know how the kids had learned about the bet he and his sisters had made, but they clearly weren't willing to throw in the towel just yet.

"How about I just transport back and grab us some food from the kitchen?" suggested Al. "That way we're technically still camping; I'll just be making a ... supply run."

The twins giggled, but everyone agreed that it was a good idea. After a brief consultation about when Eliza was supposed to be dropping by the house to feed the cats, Al disappeared from the tent, and Harold took Nadeka and Lishendri outside to see if the picnic table was dry enough to use. It wasn't, but by the time Al returned with bread, peanut butter, and three different kinds of jam, plus knives, plates, and napkins, the sun was shining, and everyone changed into their bathing suits and sat at it anyway.

Al took Lishendri back with him to help wash the dishes, while Harold and Nadeka took inventory of everything they did have, and what they would likely need to "borrow" from the house over the next few days. That afternoon, as Harold and Al watched the kids swim and splash in the lake, Al said smugly, "See? Two week camping trip. No problem," and they both laughed.

"Can we have waffles for dinner tonight?" Lishendri was wearing the Cal Tech baseball cap she'd gotten the first time Harold met her, and sitting cross-legged in one of the lawn chairs they'd brought with them. She was drinking tap water from the house, since all their Gatorade was still locked in the car, but Harold had grown fairly confident in his ability to tell the twins apart over the last eight days.

He grinned. "You really want waffles again?" It was all they'd eaten for the last couple days; the twins had gone on a total waffle jag, and seeemed content to eat them in just about every possible way. They'd eaten waffles with honey, waffles with jam, waffle peanut butter sandwiches...they'd even toasted waffles over the campfire and had waffle s'mores. Luckily, the house refrigerator was stocked with boxes of the things, although Harold was definitely getting sick of them.

"I am not eating waffles for dinner tonight!" Al's voice was muffled, probably because he was lying mostly underneath the Armada. Ostensibly, Harold and the kids were "helping" Al "fix" the vehicle. Harold wasn't sure in what world "fixing" meant the same thing as "breaking into," but he figured it was probably the same one in which "helping" really meant "watching" (or in Nadeka's case, napping). It also seemed to be the world where "camping" meant popping home whenever you felt like it -- to take a shower, use the bathroom, grab a snack, pat the cat, do some laundry...

"I think there's still a package of hot dogs in the refrigerator," Harold offered.

"Not anymore," Al said, still under the truck. "I think Eliza's been eating them when she checks on the cats; Charlotte must be on one of her health food kicks again."

"What about a pizza? She hasn't been eating those too, has she?" Harold had only gone home a few times; it took all three of the aliens working together to transport him, and they didn't like to leave the campsite unattended.

Al pulled himself out from underneath the truck, and Harold spared a moment to wonder what exactly he was doing under there. "Pizza sounds good," Al agreed. "We'll have to actually cook it, though, and we don't want to run into your sister. Maybe a late dinner?"

"Works for me," said Harold. "After all, if we get hungry --"

"There's always waffles!" All three chorused the words that had become the catchphrase for their trip. Over the past week, they'd fallen into a comfortable routine. Sleep late, eat breakfast, walk to the lake to swim or rent a boat, then lunch, followed by a quiet afternoon. They napped, or read, or watched Al try to get into the Armada without setting off all its alarms. Usually they ate dinner early, then burned off any extra energy with Frisbee or tag.

Nadeka and Lishendri still seemed somewhat -- not tense, but alert, or watchful. Harold couldn't tell how much was just part of who they were, a natural habit from years of being in the public eye on their planet, and how much was new, but he caught Al watching them a lot. Sometimes they seemed totally relaxed, as silly as any ten year-olds; then they'd clam up and look worried again. It was exasperating not to be able to talk to Al about it, but Harold would be willing to bet that whoever the "instigator" was in whatever the kids were worked up about, it wasn't Nadeka or Lishendri.

Uh oh, thought Harold. Busted. And things had been going so well, too.

That morning, Al had woken him up early, and they'd had a long talk outside the tent. Actually, Harold had mostly listened, while Al talked.

"Haven't you thought it's been a little odd that we haven't ever found the keys?" Al asked. Actually, Harold had found this strange, but he was so used to that now that it hadn't really registered. Plus, he'd always had his suspicions about beavers. But he was still too sleepy to formulate a quick response, and Al had continued on without one.

"I think we haven't been able to find them because they're not really lost," Al said. "I think the twins have them."

"But--" Harold was thoroughly confused at this point. It wasn't the beavers?

"Think about it -- the further we got from home, the more relaxed they got. As we've gotten closer to the end of the trip, they've started getting more tense again. Yesterday Lishendri asked me if we could stay camping for another week."

"What did you tell her?" Harold asked, his tone only mildly horrified. The trip had been way more fun than he'd expected, but still -- he was looking forward to it being over.

Al looked away. "I, uh, told her we'd talk about it this morning. But I don't think we'll need to stay -- if we could just find out why they don't want to go home..."

An idea was slowly forming in Harold's mind. "But that's our home, not theirs," he said. "Their home, they almost refused to leave. Al --" He paused, thinking. "When you went back and forth, did you ever go down to the basement?"

"No, I don't think so." Al was clearly not following.

But Harold was on a roll. "And the doorway -- it's been totally shut down for the past two weeks, right? Your vacation time?" Al nodded slowly. "But when we go home, you'll turn it back on?"

"No way -- you really think --?" Al sounded disbelieving. "It's not the house, is it? It's the doorway."

They were both silent for a minute. Harold shivered in the early morning fog. In a nearby tree, a squirrel chittered, and shook its tail at them.

"Well, that certainly adds a new dimension to our situation," Al said finally. "Let's go wake the twins up. I think it's time we had that talk." Harold agreed. If he had to be awake worrying, he might as well know what he was worrying about.

It turned out that there wasn't much the twins could (or would) tell them. Al and Harold had re-entered the tent, only to find both Nadeka and Lishendri awake and dressed, sitting cross-legged on their cots. The keys were in Nadeka's lap.

"We didn't want you to break Mom's car," he explained.

"Yeah, she'd be mad," agreed Lishendri.

Al and Harold exchanged glances. "Okay," said Harold. "That explains why you're giving the keys back. Let's start at the beginning -- why did you take them in the first place?"

"Actually, let's go back further than that," said Al. "How about you just explain what's been going on back home?"

The twins' story was disjointed and disappointingly vague, but the upshot seemed to be that Damaris was convinced "something weird" was happening, or was going to happen, that involved the doorways. He'd managed to convince all the other kids, leading to their reluctance to use the doorway system to go anywhere over the past few months.

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Al had asked at one point.

"And say what?" Lishendri replied. "Damaris is having bad dreams and doesn't want to be near any of the doorways?" The adults agreed that this sounded a little far-fetched, and wasn't much to base a planets-wide alert on. "Besides, we figured someone else had noticed, and that was why we were all sent away for the summer."

Now Nadeka joined in. "Yeah, except we ended up with you guys -- no offense -- right on top of a doorway!"

"Not very smart planning," said Lishendri, taking up the story again. "The camping trip was good, but we didn't think two weeks was going to be long enough. That's why we told you we lost the keys."

"Actually, --" Al started to speak, but was cut off by Harold.

"Whatever he says," he told the twins, "this was not my idea." He knew Al was about to return honesty for honesty and tell the twins that the "threat" they'd used to get the kids off-world was really just a ruse.

Al glared at him. "Actually," he said again, "I'm sorry to say that the only thing we noticed was that all of you were acting strange. That's why you're all on 'vacation' right now."

The twins groaned. "What -- Well, I guess it does explain a few things, but come on! That's why we're here? You lied to us!"

"You lied to us, too!" shot back Al.

"Whoa," said Harold, "Everybody's being honest now; no need to get all cranky with each other. Let's just decide what to do next. Because honestly --" he emphasized the word, and Al gave a little smile, "I'm not staying here for the rest of the summer."

The twins looked glum. "We know," said Nadeka. "That's why we took the keys; to make it so we'd have to stay longer."

"We didn't count on Al being so good at fixing stuff." Lishendri still sounded irritated.

Al spoke up again. "Wait a minute -- you guys were at the house almost every day; how does that fit in?" Harold had been wondering the same thing, and was glad he wasn't the only one.

A split second later, Al answered his own question. "But the doorway was shut down; totally disconnected. That was okay?" The twins nodded.

Now Al looked positively cheerful, and Harold was lost again. "There we go, then! Problem solved! We'll just leave the doorway turned off, send a message through one of the others saying we've got some technical difficulties, and we'll be all set! We'll have the whole summer to figure out what Damaris' 'something weird' is!"

It had seemed so simple. Everyone had been in high spirits as they packed up and drove home. They hadn't even gotten lost. But when Al pulled the Armada into the driveway, Harold's good cheer disappeared. Sitting on the front steps were Charlotte and Eliza. His sisters didn't look happy to see them. And sitting in between them, looking more bedraggled than he'd ever seen her, was Sabri.

Confusion reigned. Greetings and questions flew in all directions as Charlotte tried to hustle everyone inside. Eliza grabbed Harold's arm and said, "You really should check your voicemail, you know."

Harold tried to look apologetic and innocent at the same time. He really didn't want to tell his baby sister that the reason he hadn't gotten any of her messages was because his phone had been locked in the truck for the past two weeks. "Sorry about that," he said, and quickly changed the subject. "We're back now, so you can fill us in face to face."

Eliza opened her mouth to respond, but the sound of the door slamming shut made everyone turn. Charlotte stood with her hand on the knob, glowering. "Everybody listen up," she said. "I need to know what's going on, now. For two weeks, I've had strangers coming up to me on the street, I've taken 19 different reports of strange noises coming from this house, you haven't been answering your phone --" she glared at Harold, "-- you apparently didn't even take your phone --" now she glared at Al. "And this morning, she shows up --" gesturing at Sabri, "not that you're not always welcome of course," she added in a softer tone. Sabri just nodded, her eyes wide, and Charlotte turned back towards Harold. "-- with your cats!"

Al put a reassuring hand on Sabri's shoulder. "Who's been coming up to you on the street?" he asked Charlotte, just as Harold turned to him.

"You didn't bring your phone?"

"You had yours," Al said simply. Then he shrugged. "So to speak." The twins giggled, and Charlotte turned to look at them.

"So," Harold broke in, giving the kids a warning glance. "What about these strangers, again?"

"It's weird!" exclaimed Eliza. "They've been asking everyone about you and Al. At first I thought maybe they were friends of yours, from off-planet, but everyone on the phone tree knew you were camping, and it's not like you have a lot of non-alien friends that you hang out with all the time."

Aha, thought Harold. Now he knew who'd spilled the beans about the bet. A bet he still intended to win, as long as they could get through this conversation without giving anything away. "Did you ask Trudy about these people?" he asked.

Trudy Baxter wasn't an alien, but somehow she'd ended up in charge of the information network that Al's people depended on while they were on Earth. Harold had never asked for that story; staying on Trudy's good side was worth a little mystery. After the whole monkey fiasco and evacuation a couple years back, Harold's whole family had ended up on her phone tree, and Harold was used to her having the answers in pretty much any situation.

"I tried," said Eliza, "but she said she's in the dark about this one."

"You know those rumors, though?" Charlotte looked amused for the first time. "The ones about you working with the government, and stuff?" Harold nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Al lean down to talk to Sabri and the twins. "Well, they've got your neighbors spooked. As far as I can tell, no one's told these strangers a thing. Even down at the station, I had a couple of guys ask if you two were okay. Unofficially, of course."

Then her expression turned serious again. "We've been keeping a close eye on the house, too." Uh-oh, thought Harold. "Something strange is definitely going on. We've had reports of strange noises, lights going on and off late at night, that sort of thing. I know you just got home, but I don't think it's a good idea for you to stay here right now."

Harold almost groaned. All he wanted to do was sleep in his own bed, and it was slipping away because of that stupid bet! Wait, though... "Did you say lights were going on late at night?" He looked at Al, who looked as surprised as he felt. Al shook his head, indicating that as far as he knew, none of them had been in the house at any time that could be considered "late at night."

"Yeah," Charlotte said. "According to your neighbors, at least. Why?"

Harold was at a loss. Luckily, Al stepped in. "Do you think it's safe for us to be here now?" The kids looked alarmed. Charlotte just looked thoughtful.

"I suppose, although it's hard to say when we don't know what's going on. No one's reported anything happening during the day, and it's not like you're going to be subtle anywhere you go, with that vehicle."

"In that case, let's move into the living room." Al's suggestion made Harold realize that so far they'd only made it to the front entrance. "We've been driving since this morning, and we could use a break."

"Bathroom break!" called Lishendri.

"Snack break!" echoed her twin.

"Water break!" This was from Sabri, who suddenly found all eyes on her. "What? I'm thirsty," she said.

"Living room," Al said firmly. "Then you can explain where you fit into all this."

Fifteen minutes later, everyone was settled in the living room. Harold turned his attention to Sabri, who looked perfectly content now that she had a cup of ice water in one hand and a bowl of popcorn in the other.

"See, it's like this," she said. "We were at the reunion, right? And it was kind of neat, but all grown-ups!" Nadeka and Lishendri nodded; Harold figured they probably had lots of experience with events like that. "And then my moms all got called bck to work, only they wouldn't tell me why, but there was no way I was staying there without them. So they sent me here, thinking you guys would be the easiest to get in touch with, only you weren't, but by then it was too late, and I really wanted to come, and we couldn't use your doorway, 'cause it was off, and then I had to travel forever to get here -- but you weren't here, so Bob and Mama Tibbles took me to their house --"

Harold thought his eyes might be crossing from trying to keep up with Sabri's rapid-fire explanation. Her use of pronouns instead of names, aided only by hand gestures (and these were limited by the nearly full cup she was still holding), was baffling. Eliza seemed to have no trouble keeping up, or else she had heard the story already, because she jumped right in.

"But once she got there, it was almost time for you to be getting back, so we turned right around to wait for you here!" Eliza sounded triumphant, and Harold glanced at Al to see if he was the only one still confused. Al looked dazed.

"Of course, we had planned on waiting inside," said Charlotte.

"Yeah, what happened to the key you keep under the mat?" asked Eliza.

"I thought you told me not to leave it there -- haven't you been telling me what a stupid place that is to leave my spare key ever since I moved in here?" Harold had thought Charlotte was over-reacting about the whole key issue; after all, it wasn't like he lived in a high-crime neighborhood, but now he was enjoying repeating her own argument back to her.

"Well, yes," Charlotte answered. "But it was convenient, and if you're going to move it, you really should tell your sisters -- obviously, you never know when we might need to get into your house unexpectedly! So where is it?"

"Oh -- I have it, actually." Al spoke up; but he appeared to be deep in thought.

"Like you need it," Eliza said. "Don't you all have those teleport watch thingies?"

"I'm just trying to be a good neighbor!" Al sounded indignant. "You're the ones who said people pay attention to what happens at this house. It wouldn't be very subtle if I never used the front door, would it?"

Harold sighed. Al had really gotten involved in their local Neighborhood for the Neighbors association; he attended every meeting, and even brought his special homemade cookies. The ladies loved him, but it did mean that he had become a fairly high-profile figure in their small community. "Look," he said. "I gave Al the key. Just like I gave both of you keys. And I've told you before, you're welcome to make your own spare and hide it wherever you want. Although that might not be the best idea right now, with something weird going on." He thought for a moment. "Of course, if you waited until nothing weird was going on, it might never get done." Everyone laughed.

It seemed like it should be Al's turn to talk next, but he was still thinking. Eliza and Charlotte sighed. There was silence for a moment.

Then Eliza, never one for extended patience, spoke up again. "Well, we'll head back to the house and see if Trudy's gotten in touch. Why don't you guys meet us there once you've unloaded?" She bounded to her feet, and Harold marvelled at her energy. As well as her talent for evading work. Not that he really wanted his sisters' help with unloading, since it would be pretty obvious that a lot of their gear had never even left the truck. Given that...

"Sounds like a great idea!" he said. "Give us an hour or so, and we'll meet you there. Say hi to the cats for us." He stood up to usher them out the door, hoping it wouldn't seem too suspicious. Charlotte did give him a curious look, but then she shrugged, and his two sisters set off down the street arm in arm. Harold gave a sigh of relief.

"You know, I still can't believe your sisters really thought it would take us an hour to get everything unloaded," Al said, putting his feet up on the sofa. In reality, it had only taken about ten minutes to get everything out of the Armada and get the large vehicle parked back in the garage. Another ten minutes to get things separated out: a laundry pile, a kitchen pile, a back to storage pile, and a stuff we need / want to take with us to wherever we're going next pile were enough to take care of everything. Then five minutes to get the shades pulled down and double check that yes, everything was still turned off that was supposed to be off, plus an extra minute when Harold realized that he might as well bring his laptop, as long as he didn't let the kids touch it. They still hadn't gotten control of the "anti-electronics" aura that all Al's people seemed to possess. After that, there were still a lot of minutes left to kick back and relax.

Harold pushed Al's feet out of the way and sat down. "Oh, they didn't," he replied. "I'm sure they only agreed to give us that much time because it fit in with some nefarious girl plan they've come up with." He turned to Sabri and the twins, and added in a mock-serious tone, "Let that be a lesson to you. Never assume the enemy has fallen into your trap, without first checking to see if you've fallen into theirs."

"What's 'nefarious' mean?" asked Lishendri.

Sabri chimed in right after, with "What was our trap?", at the same time Nadeka asked, "What was their trap?"

Al laughed. "You're on your own with this one," he said. Harold took a deep breath. The phone rang.

"Saved by the bell," he muttered.

Al was closest, so he picked up. "Hello? ... Hi Charlotte -- is everything okay?" With his free hand, he gestured to the kids to start packing up their game. "What's happening over there? ... Who is it?" Now Harold was starting to get nervous, but Al waved a calming gesture in his direction. "Sure, we can come right over. ...Yeah, give us two minutes ... Okay, --" Al made a face and held the phone away from his ear. "She hung up on me!"

"What's going on?" asked Harold.

"I'm not sure, exactly," Al said slowly. "That was Charlotte. She said we should come over as soon as possible; that there's someone there we should talk to."

"Who?" Now Harold felt like they were just repeating the conversation Al had just had, only this time he was Al, and Al was Charlotte.

"I don't know; she wouldn't tell me. She sounded ... weird."

"Weird good? Weird bad? Weird like she was playing a practical joke on us, or weird like there's some crazy alien space monster in their living room?" Harold knew that Charlotte didn't deal well with weird. Last time they dealt with alien-related weirdness, back with the monkeys, she'd thought Harold had been sucked into some kind of cult.

"I don't know," said Al. "Just weird. Not like she was freaking out, though."

"At least the cats are over there," said Nadeka, zipping his backpack, and everyone nodded. Harold thought to himself: My life is so bizarre.

But then everyone was checking pockets and grabbing bags, and Harold found himself in the center of the group, surrounded by Al and the kids. "We've got Sabri this time," Al said, "so we should be able to take Harold plus all our backpacks and duffels. Hold tight!" Harold sighed. He really didn't like the whole "ride-along" transport concept, and he knew Al had thrown in that "should be able to" just to rattle him. Harold was contemplating payback when he disappeared.

And reappeared in Charlotte and Eliza's comfortable, familiar kitchen. It was the house Harold and his sisters had grown up in. It was the scene of many a fond childhood memory. It was -- slightly more crowded than he'd expected.

"Hi Harold!" A little girl with blond curls sat at the kitchen counter. In between licks of her popsicle, she called out each person's name in turn. "Hi Al! Hi Sabri! Hi Lishendri! Hi Nadeka!"

"PJ!" Sabri nearly shrieked in delight and ran over to her friend. Once the twins joined them, Harold knew they'd be lost for hours. They'd only been apart for two weeks!

Harold winced at a particularly loud exclamation, and gave a small wave. "Um, hi PJ," he offered. Only then did he notice the other not-quite stranger in the room. He looked like a college student, and he looked vaguely familiar. Harold looked at Al, and then at his sisters for some kind of clue. Whoever the guy was, he didn't look too surprised to see five people appear out of thin air, so he might be an alien. But then again, college student age, so...

"Steve?" Al sounded disbelieving. Harold wracked his brains for a Steve. The only Steve he could think of was that guy at at the hot dog stand on campus. Actually, they did look kind of similar.

"Steve?" he said. "Steve? Of Nick's Hotdogs, Better Than Nuking hot dog stand?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah, that's me. Nice entrance, by the way."

"Well, we assumed you'd be in the living room." Harold glared at his sisters. "A little warning would have been nice." Al really didn't like transporting in front of complete strangers, even if they were college students.

"Well, we assumed you'd just drive over," Eliza sassed right back. "Charlotte did say it wasn't an emergency."

"Yeah, but Al said she sounded..." Harold hesitated. Calling his sister weird when they were all joking around was one thing, but there was a stranger present. And kids. "...worried," he finally finished.

"So you're Al, huh?" Steve was looking at Al with more interest now. "I've heard a lot about you. Where's Harold? I thought you two were practically inseparable."

"Um, I'm right here," said Harold, waving his hand. He shot a puzzled look at his sisters, who shrugged.

Steve looked confused as well. "I thought this was your brother," he said to Eliza.

"Oh, he is," she answered. Harold thought she was enjoying the whole situation. At least there weren't any monkeys around this time, he thought, then quickly looked around for some wood that he could discreetly knock on.

"But you said your brother's name was Gabe, right?"

"Yup!" Now Eliza sounded positively gleeful, and Harold decided to take pity on the poor man.

"It's a whole first name, middle name thing," he said. "I'll pretty much answer to either."

"Okay," said Steve, in a tone that said 'I really don't know what you're talking about, but let's humor the crazy people.'

Which, as far as Harold was concerned, brought them full circle back to where they'd started. "So what are you doing here, anyway?"

Steve looked a little uncomfortable at being the center of attention. "Well, actually, do you guys mind if I call Nick first? We should probably both be here, and it won't take long for him to close up the stand."

The adults looked at each other.

"Sure."

"Fine by me."

"We usually get better reception out back, on the porch."

Steve gestured his thanks and turned to go in the direction that Charlotte had indicated. A second later he poked his head back around the corner. "Um, cats .. can they go in and out whenever?"

Charlotte and Eliza laughed. Al just looked puzzled. "Of course," he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And it probably was, Harold thought, on Al's world.

"It's fine," he told Steve. "They can pretty much do whatever they want. Believe me, there's no point in trying to stop them." Steve nodded and disappeared around the corner again.

Charlotte, Eliza, Harold, and Al stood around looking at each other. "Shouldn't we, like, follow him?" Eliza asked.

"But he's just going to the back porch," Charlotte replied. "I don't think he's going to get lost."

"No," Eliza said with some exasperation, "so we can listen. What if he's planning something?"

"Like what?" said Charlotte. "A hotdog attack? The man runs a snack food stand, for crying out loud."

Harold thought Charlotte was being unusually trusting, especially for a police officer. But then she added, "Plus, the university has us run extensive background checks on all the vendors. He's harmless." Harold decided not to mention Trudy and her computer skills; she was treading in some pretty grey areas, and he didn't want to push Charlotte into "police mode." Anyway, if Trudy was involved with Steve's records, then he would have ended up on the phone tree, no question.

Al had seemed to be lost in thought for the whole conversation, but then he shook his head and looked up. "I don't know," he said, "there is something familiar about him, that I can't quite place. Something other than the hotdog stand thing."

"Maybe we could ask PJ?" Harold suggested. He checked the group of kids. PJ had a notebook out in front of her, but it was Sabri who held the pen, with everyone making suggestions as she scribbled furiously on the page. They appeared totally engrossed in ... whatever they were doing. "Or we could just wait for Steve to get back, and Nick to arrive, and that might be easier," he said. No way was he going to try to get a coherent story out of those four. Harold decided to go for a simpler goal. "So, any more of those popsicles left?"

It turned out that the reason Steve hadn't been phased by seeing Harold and co. appear out of thin air was because he coud do the same thing. Or at least Nick could, because when Steve returned from his back porch phone call, Nick was walking next t o him. In his hand was a purple leash, attached to a medium-size dog that Harold assumed was the one he often saw at the hotdog stand. "I couldn't just leave him behind," Nick was saying in a low voice. "You know how lonely he gets."

"They have cats," said Steve, sounding aggrieved. "Can you at least tell him to behave himself?"

"Relax," Nick replied. "Bruno loves cats!" In a louder voice, he addressed the whole group: "Really, Bruno's great with cats. Nothing to worry about."

Al stepped up as the de facto leader of their group. "We're not worried," he said mildly. Harold heard Eliza mutter to Charlotte, "Not about the cats, anyway."

Nick smiled genially. "In that case, let's get to the story. I can't tell you the beginning --"

"Ooh, that's me!" said PJ excitedly. Harold wasn't sure how she knew; he hadn't thought the kids were paying any attention to what the adults were doing. Maybe it was the dog. "See, my dads got called back to work, so we had to leave our tour, but they let us explore the caves anyway. Then I was supposed to come here, but the trip didn't work quite right, and I got lost, but I figured it out and I was almost here when he asked me if I needed any help." She pointed at Steve. "And I didn't, really, but he's a nice person, and I didn't want him to feel bad, so I had him bring me to the Jones house." PJ looked like she was thinking for a second, then she declared, "That's pretty much it!"

Harold thought that PJ's "pretty much" left a lot of ground left to cover. On first glance, the cute blond curls and innocent expression gave the impression of childlike disengenuousness. But he'd met her dads. They led security for planetary leaders, and they'd been training PJ practically since birth.

It was hard to say exactly what she meant when she said her trip -- he assumed through the doorway -- didn't work "quite right," although Al was looking alarmed. But he believed her when she said she didn't need any help getting anywhere she wanted to go, and he was willing to trust her "nice person" judgement much more than Charlotte's background check. Idly, Harold wondered where she'd expected Steve to bring her when she said "Jones house" -- had she been expecting Harold's house, or was she trying to reach Charlotte and Eliza first for some reason? Maybe she'd overheard someone asking about him and Al, and decided it would be safer to go somewhere else until she knew what was going on. Or maybe, he thought wryly, she was just a ten-year old girl, and he was reading way too much into her hastily-told story.

Steve looked as if he was about to say something, but Al beat him to it. "PJ, can you tell me exactly what happened when you went through the doorway? It's important." He sounded very serious; and PJ apparently recognized his tone. She paused, and glanced at Nick and Steve. They were both sitting at the kitchen table, with Bruno flopped out on the floor between their chairs. Harold thought they were making a concerted effort to look harmless.

"Don't worry about them," Al told her distractedly. "They're from home. I'm surprised you don't recognize them, actually, although I guess you were a bit young back then." Nick and Steve looked shocked, and Harold was sure he didn't look much better. "Now, about the doorway." He looked expectantly at PJ.

"Whoa, hold on a sec," said Charlotte. "They're from where?"

"Hah!" Eliza laughed delightedly. "Guess those background checks don't cover everything, do they? There's no questions about planet of origin!"

"Background checks?" This was Steve, looking slightly alarmed. Suddenly everyone began talking at once.

"I'm the same age as PJ! Should I recognize them too?"

"I don't remember any hot dog stands!"

"Maybe they're spies!"

"Are you on the run from evil government forces?"

"Hey!"

"Oh, sorry Nadeka. No offense."

A loud bang silenced everyone in the room. "Excuse me!" Al said loudly. "Could we get back to the fact that a doorway malfunctioned?" Their was a large textbook on the floor by his feet. "Don't you see?" He addressed the kids. "I think this is what you were worried about. The start of it, anyway."

Nadeka and Lishendri nodded, eyes wide. Sabri and PJ moved closer together. Harold looked around the room. Charlotte looked confused, as did Nick and Steve. Eliza wore an expression he could only describe as "mutinous," but whether it was because Al was depriving her of a chance to ask alien questions, or because it was her textbook that he had dumped on the floor to get everyone's attention, Harold couldn't be sure. Why did she even have a textbook in the kitchen, anyway? It was summer!

Al rolled his eyes. "Okay, look," he said. "Nick, Steve; I'm Al, and this is Harold, as we've already established. These two lovely ladies are Charlotte and Eliza. They're Harold's sisters, but they call him Gabe, and they live here. Over there are Sabri, Lishendri, Nadeka, and of course PJ --" he paused as each kid raised their hand and waved when their names were called, "-- yes, thank you, very helpful."

"Everyone else; meet Nick and Steve, originally from our planet, where they became very famous for a variety of reasons, then disappeared, presumably to come here and actually get a little peace and quiet in their lives. Not so much right now, obviously, but a very ingenious plan, for the most part" he added. "Although I do know some people who'd love to talk with you again, if you're ever interested."

Al looked around the room. "Now can we get back to talking about the doorway?"

From there, the conversation had become increasingly technical and, at least to Harold, incomprehensible. Finally, Al seemed satisfied. PJ had been a trooper throughout, but even her energy was runningout. She looked exhausted, and Harold wondered just how "lost" she'd ended up when the doorway spit her out.

Al was clearly worried, and wanted to talk about the situation openly without freaking out any of the kids. "Why don't you all go play in the backyard and relax for a while?" he'd asked. The look Sabri had given him was priceless. It was Lishendri who had spoken for all of them. "No way," she'd said. "This is important to us too. Plus, we knew something was going on way before you did. And -- you'll have to tell us what you decide eventually anyway, so why can't we just stay?" So they stayed.

Then Al told Nick and Steve that they didn't have to stay, and he would understand if they had things to do. They just looked at him in disbelief. "We're staying," they'd said. So all ten of them moved to the living room. "Here's the situation," Al began. "Something's interfering with the doorway system, causing it to malfunction in potentially dangerous ways, and someone or some group of people is looking for Harold and me, and we don't know why."

Harold waited for him to continue, but it looked like he was done. "Okay," he said. "What do we do now?"

"Come on," Eliza said. "It's obvious. You have to go into hiding."

Harold wondered how his sister had reached this supposedly "obvious" solution. But Charlotte was nodding her head in agreement, and he'd learned early not to mess with the two of them when they agreed on something. Al looked skeptical, though. "How do you figure that?" he asked.

"Well, you can't stay at your house," Eliza explained, "because the doorway's there; it's too dangerous if something bad happens."

"And you can't stay here," Charlotte added, "because it's the first place anyone would look for you if you weren't at home."

Harold swiveled his head back towards Eliza as she picked up the conversational thread. "And you can't stay at a hotel or anything in town, because everyone would know."

"And the first thing they'd ask --" back to Charlotte again, "is why weren't you at your house or our house. So..."

"Hiding!" Eliza finished triumphantly. "Like I said -- obvious!"

"But we don't know that the people looking for us are bad!" countered Al.

"Yeah, they might not have nefarious intent," added Lishendri. Harold grinned at her. Obviously she'd figured out what the word meant somehow. Most likely she had some kind of translator / dictionary stashed away in her backpack somewhere.

"Sure, they might not," said Charlotte, directly to Al. "Are you willing to take that chance with these four around?"

Harold hadn't even thought of that. They were the de facto caretakers for two -- now four -- of Al's planet's most high-profile children. Nadeka and Lishendri's parents ran the world, pretty much literally, and Sabri and PJ's parents were all top-level advisors. Last time their families had visited Earth in a sticky situation, they'd been accompanied by no less than six security guards. Harold really hoped he wouldn't be wishing for those guards before their current adventure was over.

For once, the kids were silent, but Al said, "Good point. So what we need is someplace out of the way, where all six of us can stay for a while without attracting a lot of attention."

"Better make that seven," came a voice from the hall, and in walked Trudy, trailed by a subdued Meshkalla.

"So I've been hearing stuff on and off for a couple months now; just the odd instance of something 'unexpected' happening with one of the doorways." Trudy was ensconced in the living room's most comfortable recliner -- a place of honor for the person who seemed to have the most information about what was going on. Meshkalla had been offered food and drinks, but after a quick snack, she'd fallen asleep on the floor, her head pillowed on Sabri's lap. Of course, she'd already heard Trudy's story, unlike the rest of them, who eagerly awaited each word.

"But this morning, things just went crazy. Chatter all over the place about people ending up in the wrong places, or not being able to get through at all. I left messages on all your phones -- don't any of you ever check your voicemail?" Al looked abashed, but Trudy just kept right on talking. "So Ilia issues this big announcement, right? About everyone staying put, and only using the doorways if it's an absolute emergency. But Meshkalla's folks have already figured out there's something weird going down, and sent her through to Earth." She shrugged. "Apparently Harold's this big hero guy in their clan now and they figured she'd be safe her. 'Course, they didn't know about all the other kids you were already watching."

"Anyway, so of course she doesn't end up quite in the right spot, but unlike some people--" here she looked pointedly at Sabri and PJ, who blushed, "-- she called me right away, and I brought her here. But get this -- on the way over I'm listening in, right?" Harold glanced at Charlotte, but she seemed undisturbed by this admission of dubiously-legal activities. "And people are freaking out, 'cause there's doorways just randomly shutting down everywhere. Everywhere, like the whole network, one at a time." Trudy paused, looking unsure. For the first time in the conversation, she actually looked her age. "They're all just -- off."

There was silence. Then a small voice spoke up. "Does this mean we can't go home?" Sabri looked close to tears. Meshkalla was still asleep. The twins shifted closer to each other but said nothing.

"No!" said PJ stubbornly. "Al will fix it and everything will be fine, and then we can all go home and Damaris won't have bad dreams anymore, and they won't try to send us away again." She glared around the room, as if by the sheer force of her will she could make her words come true. Harold felt bad.

Obviously she had discovered the adults' big "plan" for figuring out what was bothering the kids, and wasn't too pleased with it. At this point, he wasn't too keen on it either, really, and he certainly didn't blame the kids for being upset. It was one thing to spend the day on a fun visit to Earth, and quite another to be trapped there, cut off from your family. It was just by luck that so many of them had ended up on the same planet for this crisis -- he wasn't sure yet whether it was good luck, or bad.

However, PJ's words seemed to penetrate the shock that the adults were feeling. Al shook his head like he was coming out of a daze. "Okay," he said. "First, Trudy -- was anything else affected when the system shut down? Any reports of power outages, sparks, ..." he shot a look at the kids, "explosions, that kind of thing?"

"Um, no, nothing like that. Hey, isn't that kind of weird? I mean, aren't the doorways tied into the power grid?"

"It's good, very good," said Al. "I think it's good, at least. It certainly is probably a good sign."

"That didn't make any sense," Eliza complained. "Can you fix it, or not?"

"I don't know!" Al snapped. Harold stepped forward as Eliza took a startled step back. Meshkalla was awake, and all five kids looked back at him with wide, frightened eyes. Harold put a hand on Al's shoulder, and Al closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.

"Look, I'm sorry," he said. "I'll try. Truly, PJ -- I'm going to do my best to figure out what's happening and how to fix it. And you know your parents are going to be doing exactly the same thing on their end." He walked over and knelt down next to her. "We'll figure this out," he said softly. "I promise." He reached out his arms and gathered PJ into a hug. Within seconds, the other four had joined in. Harold met Al's eyes over their heads and saw the weight of their expectations in his face.

"Charlotte, Eliza, we're going to need to find that out of the way place pretty quickly." Harold spoke quietly so he wouldn't disturb the group hug. "Can you fill Trudy in on what we're looking for?" He looked at Trudy. "You might have some ideas that we wouldn't think of."

"Actually, we might be able to help with that." Harold was startled to hear Nick's voice. The duo had stayed quiet since they'd insisted on staying, and he'd almost forgotten they were there. He saw Trudy glance their way, then do a double take, but she said nothing. "We have a house on the other side of town; it's not huge, but it's big enough. No close neighbors, and you can't see the house from the road. We were looking for something off the beaten path."

"It would at least give you somewhere to rest for now," added Steve. "We're not there much during the day, so you'd have it pretty much to yourselves except for nighttime."

Al was still sitting on the floor, surrounded by children. He and Harold exchanged glances, and Al shrugged. Trudy jumped in. "Well, that's decided, then. Everyone already has their stuff packed and everything. You could go right now!" Harold wasn't sure why she was suddenly so enthusiastic. Maybe she just didn't want to give Nick and Steve a chance to change their minds. Or maybe she'd recognized them, and wanted a chance to grill Charlotte and Eliza about what had happened before she arrived. Yup, that was more likely.

By the time the last backpack and duffel bag had arrived, Harold was exhausted. He couldn't believe that just that morning, they'd still been camping. It felt like several days had passed since then. In reality, however, it was only late afternoon. Nick and Steve were busily moving their stuff from the loft to the downstairs bedroom. "Really, we're happy to," they'd said. "It's what makes the most sense, anyway. We'll take the room down here, and then you guys can spread out in the loft -- it's even got it's own bathroom and everything." Harold meant to protest, or at least help, but he was so tired. He sat down at the table and laid his head on his arms, planning to just rest his eyes for a minute.

When he opened them again, there was a cat staring at him. It was Bob. Okay, he thought to himself. No need to worry about the cats, I guess. "Hi Bob," Harold whispered, reaching out to run his fingers through the cat's soft fur. Bob arched his back and leapt down from the table. Harold stood up, wincing at the pain in his neck and back. How long had he been asleep, anyway? He noticed a piece of paper with his name on it on the table -- Bob had been sitting on it.

Harold -

Harold laughed. Al was telling him not to worry. Surely it should be the other way around. He walked to the kitchen, noticing that it was dark outside. He wasn't really hungry, but there was a light on, and he knew he should probably eat something.

As an unexpected bonus, Al was there, communing with Mama Tibbles. "Hey," said Harold, not wanting to interrupt, but knowing they couldn't miss his presence in the room. Man and cat both turned to look at him.

"Hey," Al returned. "How are you feeling?"

Harold grimaced. "Stiff. But better. How about you?"

Al looked away. "Fine," he said. Mama Tibbles reached out a paw and swatted his knee. "Ow!" he cried indignantly. "That hurt!" Then he sighed. "All right, I get it." He looked back at Harold. "I'm scared," he admitted. "What if I can't fix it? I don't even know what's wrong! What if it's part of some bigger plot; and we're stuck here all alone?"

Harold didn't know what to say. He had seen Al pull off some pretty amazing things with technology, but he didn't want to burden his friend with another set of sky-high expectations. He finally settled on addressing the one part of Al's fears that he could actually do something about. "Look," he said. "No matter what happens, you are not alone. I'm not going anywhere, and we'll take this thing on together, whatever it is."

"As long as you don't sleep through it, you mean." His expression was serious, but he couldn't hold onto it, and they both laughed. It had become a running joke between them that Harold could pretty much sleep through anything, and was always asking Al what he had missed. Then Al turned serious for real. "Thanks," he said. "That -- means lot. That you'll be there. That you're here now."

Harold nodded. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be," he said. Mama Tibbles meowed loudly. Of course, Harold thought: no heart to heart conversation was complete without a cat in the middle of it.

Al laughed. "I'm not sure if she's showing her support, or if she's just hungry."

"Probably both," replied Harold. "I guess Nick and Steve probably don't have any Fancy Feast, huh?" It was Mama Tibbles' favorite cat food.

"There's a shopping list on the refrigerator," Al offered. "They said we could add anything we wanted, and they'd pick it up tomorrow." Looking at Mama Tibbles, he told her, "Tonight you'll just have to make do with people food. What a hardship for you, really." Mama Tibbles just purred.

At first, Harold was disappointed to realize that Nick and Steve liked to cook. Instead of having food in their refrigerator and cupboards, then had ingredients. Two kinds of flour! Sprigs of ... something! Harold had always preferred the instant meal kind of foods, like EasyMac, and he couldn't believe that two people who sold hot dogs for a living didn't seem to have any in their kitchen.

It was Al who discovered the gold mine -- it turned out that Nick and Steve really liked to cook, and always ended up making too much. Harold and Al feasted on leftover lasagna and bowls of some kind of noodle soup. Then they couldn't figure out how to add those things to the shopping list. "We should put down the ingredients," Al said. "What do you think was in that soup?"

"No one in my family's ever made soup from scratch," Harold insisted. "I just follow the directions on the can!" They both looked guiltily at the now-empty casserole that had held the soup. Finally, they just stuck a post-it note on the fridge, next to the shopping list, explaining the situation. It said, "We finished the soup and some of the lasagna." Then they headed upstairs for some well-deserved rest.

On the first full day at Nick and Steve's house (or "The Hideout," as the kids had taken to calling it), they did laundry. Al, Harold, and the twins had been camping for two weeks, and nearly all the clothes they'd packed were dirty. Sabri, PJ, and Meshkalla were in much the same situation, since they'd also been on vacation. Harold was just glad that they all had extra clothes with them; it made the situation marginally easier to deal with. It was weird to think that he was only about half an hour from his house, but he couldn't go home.

When he told Al that, however, Al said, "Why not? There's really no reason why you can't go back. The doorway's shut down; it's as safe as it's going to get at this point." (And didn't that just sound so reassuring.) "We can't stay there, because your neighbors are obviously paying pretty close attention to what goes on, and it would be pretty hard to hide all seven of us. But it's not like we're totally cut off."

Harold was relieved, but he didn't really feel any better. He didn't want to go back to the house just to grab extra pillows or a clean pair of pants. He wanted to go home. Al must have seen something in his expression, because he added, "We'll figure this out, Harold. We can get through this." Then Al grinned, trying to lighten the mood. "Just think of it as a vacation home!"

"A timeshare," Harold said, getting into the spirit.

"Yeah, that we're 'sharing' at the same time!"

"And in my own home town, too! It's both convenient and practical!"

They were still laughing when Sabri came to find them. "I was wondering if there was any soy milk," she said. "I couldn't find any in the refrigerator." Al and Harold exchanged glances. How would they know? It wasn't like Nick and Steve had showed them a secret extra kitchen somewhere after the kids had gone to bed. The refrigerator wasn't that big, either. If Sabri couldn't find it, it probably wasn't there. Harold had encouraged the kids to sleep in, hoping to avoid this particular issue. Steve had gone shopping early while Nick manned the hot dog stand, but he wasn't back yet.

"Since when do you drink soy milk?" asked Al, stalling for time. Last time Sabri had visited, she'd had regular cow milk, and Al hadn't heard anything about this new habit from any of her other parents.

"Oh, I don't," Sabri replied. "I was just wondering." Then she turned around and walked away.

Al and Harold watched her turn the corner, and listened to her footsteps as she returned to the loft. The washer and dryer were tucked under the stairs behind a decorative screen. Harold had already discovered that when neither machine was running, it was a perfect place to be unobserved and still hear nearly everything that was happening in the house. When giggles drifted back down the stairs, he looked at Al. "Dare?" he asked.

Al nodded. "Definitely a dare." There was a crash from above them, and a voice called out, "Don't worry! We're fine!" At the same moment, Harold heard the front door open -- Steve was back with the groceries. "I'll help with groceries if you'll deal with the kids," he offered.

"It's a deal," said Al, and they went their separate ways. Thirty minutes later, ust as the last of the groceries was put away, Al came back down the stairs. He was followed by all five kids -- and they all looked washed, dressed, and cheerful. Harold was impressed. When Eliza was ten, she went through a phase when she wouldn't wear anything but pajamas, then a phase when she wouldn't brush her hair, then a phase when she refused to wear shoes or eat anything yellow. Harold decided that either Al was a miracle worker, or Eliza had been an exceptionally difficult child.

Steve offered to cook something, and Harold declined as politely as possible. "You'll see," he said. "Just stand back." In mostly-controlled chaos, the kids descended on the kitchen.

"Ooh, Frosted Flakes!"

"Where's the bread?"

"Does anyone else want something toasted?"

"Is that the crunchy peanut butter?"

"Hey, I found the silverware!"

"You didn't put the jelly knife in the jam, did you?"

"Where'd you get that plum?"

"Oops!"

"Was this one the blue cover, or the red cover?"

"Hey, I was still using that!"

"You took my plate!"

"No, this is my plate. Your plate's still over there!"

"This is really good!"

"No, don't eat that! It's got cranberry in it."

"What kind of juice is this?"

"Does anyone have a napkin?"

Finally, they settled down to actual eating. Sabri had two pieces of toast; one with honey, one with jam. PJ was eating Frosted Flakes with no milk, and Meshkalla was wrapping a banana with slices of cheese. Nadeka had a peanut butter sandwich (no jam), plus a bowl of fruit slices he was sharing with his twin. Lishendri hadn't even made an effort to conform to typical breakfast fare, and was eating leftover lasagna.

"Wow." Steve looked dazed. There was a pause. Then he asked, "Why are they sitting on the floor? We do have a table." This was true. There was a perfectly good table sitting not ten feet away. Granted, it was mostly hidden by newspapers and junk mail and all the stuff that tends to accumulate on any flat surface, but the stuff was mostly pushed towards the middle, and there was enough space around it for all five kids to have sat comfortably.

Al smirked. "There's not much room in Harold's house," he explained. Harold noticed it had become "his" house for this story, and covered his eyes. He knew what was coming. "When we met, he didn't exactly have much furniture, either. And then he ended up with all these guys, plus two more, stuck overnight in the middle of a power outage, and there's no way there's going to be enough chairs for everyone, even if there was a table big enough. So he told them that it was a common human custom to eat meals sitting on the floor, --"

"It is!" protested Harold.

"Yeah, in Japan!" Al retorted. "Anyway, it stuck. Now they're just used to doing it that way whenever they're on Earth. Don't worry, they'll clean everything up when they're done." He waited a beat, then added, "Harold's not big on dishwashing, either."

"Hey, I didn't see you volunteering to wash and dry either! Besides, it builds character and develops a sense of personal responsibility. At least, that's what my parents always told us."

"Mm hmm. Sure. And what about when you tried to convince them that it was also an Earth custom for the children to wash the grown-up's dishes too?"

"Me!? That was you!"

Steve laughed, and Al joined in. Harold leaned back against the counter. He could get used to this, he thought. Good company, good food, and the comforting hum of the washer and dryer in the background. Vacation home, he thought, and then, I can do this. Life was good.

On their second full day at the Hideout (Harold had given in to the nickname early; it was just too much of a mouthful to keep saying "Nick and Steve's house"), Al spent the day popping back and forth to the doorway. He was doing ... something ... that seemed to require lots of tools and materials, and he didn't want to talk about it, or so Harold surmised by the way he just mumbled and waved his hand at anyone who asked.

Harold watched the kids. Actually, mostly they watched him. "Let's be spies" was one of their favorite new games. They spent a lot of time hiding as part of this game. Harold spent a lot of time trying to look nonchalant and not paranoid. "Let's be spies" got them through lunchtime (which took hours, since each player tried to sneak their food without being detected by anyone else).

After lunch, the game shifted to something Harold privately thought of as the "Shrieking Game." He was pretty sure that wasn't what the kids called it, though. It was a variation of the spies game, but with more action. Instead of trying to avoid each other, the kids were seeking each other out. The goal, as far as Harold could tell, was to sneak to within sight distance of another player, then transport right behind them and tackle them. As another startled shriek echoed through the house, Harold gave thanks that Nick and Steve were both at work, and he vowed to never listen to Lishendri again. She'd called it a "skill-building drill" when she asked for permission to play it -- Harold was sure she must have learned the trick of presenting things in the most positive light from her parents.

Al didn't seem bothered by the noise, although he'd made half the loft off-limits except for bathroom use. About an hour before Nick and Steve were planning to get home, Harold called a group huddle of all the kids. "We've got a situation here," he said. "It's time for a new mission. This is the Hideout, right?" Nods all around. "And what do we know about hiding out with trusted allies?"

Sabri spoke first. "It's good, because you can send them to get groceries!"

PJ giggled, but added, "Don't make them mad at you?"

"Don't make it obvious that you're there?" Meshkalla made a face at the stack of dishes in the sink. Spies didn't have much time for washing dishes.

"You got it," said Harold. "So here's the deal: we work as a team, and we've got thirty minutes to erase our tracks from everywhere except the loft." He set the timer on the microwave. "Starting...now. If anyone needs help figuring out what to do, come ask me." The kids raced through the house, collecting abandoned sweatshirts and sneakers and straightening the sofa cushions. They washed the dishes and wiped down the countertops; they even folded up the last load of laundry. Meshkalla noticed the kid-height fingerprints all over the sliding glass doors to the deck, and PJ remembered she'd left one of her cds in the downstairs stereo. By the time the timer beeped, they were all upstairs, sorting out whose stuff was whose, and Harold gave them a standing ovation. Al looked up and said, "What? What's going on?" and everyone laughed.

It was on the third day that Harold finally learned what Al was working on. The adults (except for Al, who refused to be pulled away from his project) had held a conference the night before to talk about the kids. There was no way of knowing how long they'd be on Earth, and Harold really didn't want them to be stuck at the Hideout the whole time. Charlotte and Eliza said they hadn't heard anyone asking about children in any way -- boys, girls, twins, or anyone with an odd-sounding name. Nick and Steve agreed, although they suggested that the kids split up. "Five kids in a single group always attracts attention," they'd said, and Harold agreed. He remembered how many second glances they'd gotten when he and Al took Sabri's whole class on a field trip into town; the group hadn't been suspicious in any way, but they were certainly memorable.

Eventually it was decided that, if the kids agreed, they could pick which adult to go with each day Monday through Friday. Weekends would be spent at the Hideout, or, if they felt it was safe, doing group activities. Harold hadn't been sure about how the kids would react -- they'd been pretty upset about being separated before, after all -- but they seemed universally excited about the idea. Sabri called dibs on Eliza, and Meshkalla wanted to know if they could choose code names. Harold knew that most of Al's people who spent a lot of time on Earth picked a name that helped them blend in to whatever region they were living in, so he agreed. He wished he could have talked to Al about it; after all, there could be some weird alien protocol about the whole thing that he didn't know about, but he knew it would be useless to try to ask Al anything in his current state.

The kids went to bed that night still discussing names, and when Harold woke them up the next morning, he was introduced to Mia, Lisa, and Cal. PJ said her name was fine the way it was, and Sabri said she was "still thinking." Harold refused to think about what kind of trouble she could get into hanging out with Eliza all day. Sure, Eliza would take her to class with her, but only for two hours. That still left a lot of hours in the day.

Breakfast went more quickly when the kids had a deadline, especially since Harold insisted that they were still responsible for cleaning their own dishes. There was a whirlwind of activity as everyone ran up and down the stairs, looking for sweatshirts, shoes, backpacks, water bottles, snacks... PJ was the first to leave, joining Charlotte in her squad car. Nadeka / Cal couldn't find any socks, so he ended up wearing a pair of his sister's, and then they were off with Nick and Steve and Bruno the dog, arguing over who would get to walk Bruno first. Meshkalla / Mia and Sabri / ? were last, transporting to Charlotte and Eliza's house to meet up with Eliza for her morning class. Harold didn't even know what she was taking this summer; he hoped it was appropriate for ten year olds.

The house was so quiet once everyone was gone; Harold almost forgot Al was upstairs. He considered heading up to the loft himself, and possibly catching a few more hours of sleep. Unlike his first adventure with alien houseguests, he had a very comfortable bed to sleep in. The kids were using air mattresses, but all the adults got a real bed. Sometimes it was good to be a grown-up, Harold thought to himself. He got as far as the first stair when he heard angry muttering coming from Al's work area. Harold turned around and headed for the porch. Al had been working when Harold went to bed the night before, and he'd been working when Harold got up that morning. It was possible that he caught a few hours somewhere in between those two events, but Harold wouldn't bet on it, and he certainly wasn't going to flaunt his own ability to sleep right where Al could see it. Plus, he'd never be able to fall asleep with all that noise.

Instead, Harold grabbed a throw pillow off one of the sofas and went out the back doors. Nick and Steve had a wraparound porch that literally wrapped around one end of their house, and Harold planned on enjoying it as much as possible. He also had a severe case of porch envy, since his own house only had a tiny front porch, and even calling it a porch sort of glorified its true nature. Harold gave a sigh of contentment as he settled into one of the deck chairs and wedged the pillow behind his head. He put his feet up on a nearby table, and laid a magazine open in his lap. That way, if anyone came looking for him, he had a cover story.

"Harold! ... Harold!" Harold was dreaming about a drum circle. It was his turn to go, but he couldn't find his drumsticks, which was kind of weird, because nobody else was even using drumsticks...

"Harold?"

It was funny, the drum circle leader sounded a lot like ...

"Harold, are you asleep?"

It was Al. Harold jerked his eyes open. "What? No! I was just ... thinking about this article," he said quickly.

Al looked pointedly at the magazine in Harold's lap. "'Gardening with the Stars'?" he asked pointedly. "Yeah, I can really see where that would really require a lot of deep thought."

Oops. Maybe he should have checked the magazine more carefully. Time to change the subject. "So, what's up?" Harold asked, striving for a casual tone.

Luckily, Al was willing to be diverted from his mocking. "I'm done!" he said excitedly. "You have to come see -- it's perfect!"

Harold had no idea what Al was talking about. But he didn't want to admit that, so he followed Al back through the living room, past the huge chimney and the dining table, and up the stairs to the loft. Al led him to a small room they'd determined on the first day was a closet, and gestured at the door. "Look!" he said.

Now Harold was starting to suspect that Al was playing a practical joke on him, or possibly had gone insane from lack of sleep. It looked like a closet door.

"It looks like a closet door," he said carefully.

"Oh yeah?" Al smirked. "Walk through it." No way, thought Harold. He remembered this game from when he was a kid. He'd spent almost an hour trapped the coat closet after Charlotte and Eliza had ganged up on him when he was supposed to be "babysitting" them.

"You first," he said.

"Sure," Al replied. Another smirk. Insanity was still definitely a possibility in Harold's mind. Al stepped through the closet door. And disappeared.

Harold blinked. Nope, Al was still not there, where he had clearly been just a second before. Maybe it was Harold who was going insane. Maybe he was still dreaming. He shrugged and walked into the closet.

Or not, he thought, looking around at Charlotte and Eliza's downstairs coat closet. In fact, it was the same one he'd spent that hour in as a kid. It still smelled like dirt and musty coats, and it still had that touch-light by the door that his parents had added after the "closet incident." This time, however, the door wasn't jammed shut with a chair, or so he hoped. Also, Al still wasn't there. "Al?" Harold called softly, just in case. No answer.

Harold pushed open the door, but Al wasn't in the hallway, either. Huh. Harold looked around the apparently empty house, then he was struck by a sudden idea. It was either really clever, or really stupid. The closet had two doors. Harold turned around and pushed coats and boots and -- was that a blender? -- out of the way so he could open the door on the opposite side.

And stepped out in his own bathroom. That was really weird. Al was leaning against the sink, eating jam. With a spoon. Straight from the jar. "Hey Harold," Al greeted him, as if the situation was perfectly normal.

Maybe Harold was still dreaming. He decided to play along. "Hey Al. What's up?"

"Not much." Al shrugged. "I was a little hungry; thought I might grab a snack. I've really missed this raspberry stuff the last couple days."

"We could probably put it on the shopping list," Harold offered.

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Might as well bring this jar back and finish it up first, I guess. Did Steve get any peanut butter when he went out yesterday?" Al was still acting completely nonchalant, as if he often worked for more than 48 hours straight and then ate jam in the bathroom.

"Yeah, both kinds," Harold answered in a distracted tone. Finally he couldn't stand the surrealness any longer. "Al -- what are we doing in my bathroom?" Then, realizing that in Al's current mood, he'd probably say something like, "Well, I was just eating this snack, and then you came in, and we've been talking," Harold elaborated. "I mean, why are we here? We were at Nick and Steve's house, and then we were at my sisters' house, and now we're here. Does this have to do with what you've been working on?"

"This is what I've been working on," Al replied. He sat down on the edge of the tub and set the jam jar next to him so he could gesture with his hands. "Actually, it's something I've been thinking about for a while now. And with all the uncertainty about what's going on right now, I thought it might be good for everyone to have some escape routes set up."

Harold couldn't tell if he just wasn't understanding, or if Al really wasn't making any sense. "Escape routes?" he repeated back, hoping for more clarification.

Finally Al seemed to realize that Harold hadn't been following his explanation. "It's like the watches," he said, holding up his wrist. "You know how we can use them to jump from place to place within a certain radius. Terrific way to get out of a sticky situation. But if you were born on Earth, you can't use one; you've got to go places the long way, or wait for a bunch of us to get together and transport with you in the middle. Not very convenient, especially if there's an emergency."

Al paused and gave him a questioning look. Harold nodded "I'm with you so far," he said.

Al continued. "Okay, so basically, this is just a stationary transport system, connecting this house with your sisters' house and Nick and Steve's place -- what is it you've been calling it? The Hideout?"

"Hey, it was your daughter who thought it up," Harold told him. "So how does this 'stationary transport' thing work, anyway? Just the basics," he added quickly.

"It's pretty simple, actually," Al said. "I used actual door frames to ground the system, and each one only has one destination. This one --" he pointed at the bathroom door, "-- and the one at 'the Hideout' are single-direction, as well." Harold raised his eyebrows, and Al elaborated. "In other words, you can walk out that door, and you'll be in your house. But if you walk in the door, you'll be at Charlotte and Eliza's."

"In the closet," Harold guessed.

"Yes," agreed Al. "And if you walk into the loft closet at Nick and Steve's, you wind up in the same spot -- the coat closet at your sisters'. That's where it gets a little complicated."

Harold thought to himself -- a little complicated? But he didn't say anything, just nodded. It looked like Al was running low on whatever energy reserves had gotten him through the last few days. Harold was pretty sure that he was going to crash any minute now, and he wanted to get the explanation first.

"See, I had to set it up so you could get to any of the three houses from that one closet, and there's only two doors. But -- there's four door sides. So on the hall side, going in gets you to Nick and Steve's, and going out you stay in Charlotte and Eliza's. On the opposite side, going in gets you the closet, and going out gets you here. It's not elegant, but it works. You might want to tell your sisters." And with that, Al closed his eyes and leaned sideways against the wall. Harold could tell he was seconds away from being asleep. Why couldn't they have had this conversation in the living room?

Eventually, Harold managed to coax Al into the nearest bedroom, and he took a minute to be grateful that they had thought to close all the shades before leaving. Al could sleep himself out. Harold spent a few minutes watching him, wondering how impressed he should be at Al's latest creation. He'd seen Al be stymied by a broken GPS device, but he'd also seen him hotwire an interplanetary doorway into Earth technology while it was still activated. When alien technology was involved, it was impossible to get a sense of difficulty level. It all looked impossible to Harold.

The truth was, watching someone sleep was really very boring. Harold ended up wandering into the kitchen. He'd been planning to return the jam to its usual spot, but then he decided he was hungry, and the jam was already open and everything. There was no bread in the house (too perishable), but there was a jar of peanut butter, so he grabbed another spoon and ate them both straight from the jars.

After lunch, Harold experimented with the -- what had Al called it? Anyway, once he made it back to Eliza and Charlotte's house, he stole a pad of post-it notes and began labeling doors. Not very subtle for an escape route, but he figured if he could learn it, his sisters wouldn't have any trouble with it, and they could dispense with the post-its after a day or two. Then a thought occurred to him. Al had said, "You might want to tell your sisters." This could be a perfect opportunity for a little "closet incident" revenge.

Harold went back through the system, removing all the brightly colored squares. He left a note for Al that read, "Sleep well. We're all getting together for pizza at the Hideout for dinner. And I am asking the kids just how impossible this thing you did is. - Harold" Then he left a note for his sisters: "Hope you had good days. Dinner at Nick and Steve's at 6:30. PS: Don't go in the coat closet. - Gabe" They rarely used the closet for anything but storage, and this way Harold figured he guaranteed at least one curiousity-induced accidental trip. Grinning, he stepped into the closet from the hallway side.

When Harold stepped out into the loft at the Hideout, he saw Lishendri and Nadeka sound asleep on a couple of the air mattresses. Between the three sets of adults, they'd been able to come up with four mattresses, and the kids had just pushed them all next to each other and tossed their blankets on top, ending up with one big sleeping platform that was plenty big enough for all five of them. Bruno was was also sleeping on the the air mattresses; he raised his head when Harold entered the room, but didn't seem alarmed.

Harold raised a finger to his lips and breathed, "Shh," to the "boxer cross," as Nick and Steve called him. Bruno put his head back down on a pillow Harold was pretty sure belonged to PJ -- he hoped none of the kids was allergic to dogs. Harold made his way through the maze of tools and backpacks and shoes and just plain stuff that accumulated when you made seven people keep all their things in one confined area, and headed down the stairs. In the living room, he caught up with Nick.

"The kids were worn out," Nick said. "I think they must have walked Bruno twenty times this morning! But they wouldn't admit they were tired, so we told them Bruno needed a nap, and they came back with me. I was surprised you and Al weren't here, actually." Nick's tone made the last sentence into a question.

"Yeah, Al was showing me what he's been working on the last couple days," Harold told him. "It's pretty cool -- he called it a 'stationary...' something. Basically it's like a mini-doorway between your house and Charlotte and Eliza's house, and from their house to my house. That's where he is right now -- he was totally wiped out and practically fell asleep as he was explaining it."

"A stationary ... transport system? And anyone can use it?" Nick asked, and Harold nodded. Sometimes he forgot that Nick and Steve were originally from Al's planet.

"That's what it was," Harold agreed. "Are they fairly common, then? I can see where they'd be really great for the allies you guys have who can't use the transporter watches."

"They're certainly well known," Nick said slowly. "Well known for being impossible -- it's like cold fusion here on Earth; loads of people have tried to make it work, but no one's ever succeeded." He looked excited. "Can I see it?"

"Well, there's not much to see," Harold admitted. "And the twins are sleeping up there --"

"Believe me," Nick interrupted, "they'll want to see this." Harold shrugged. If Nick wanted to go look at a couple closets and a bathroom, it was fine by him. Although he was now wishing he did a better job keeping his bathroom clean, if it was going to be getting all this traffic.

Nick was right; the twins did want to try the 'STS.' However, Harold was also right; they got bored of it pretty quickly, and he took them to the living room to watch a movie while Nick went to tell Steve the big news.

When PJ, Meshkalla, and Sabri were dropped off (Eliza had rendezvoused with Charlotte to send her crew back mid-afternoon), the whole process repeated. Harold quickly ushered Charlotte back to her car and sent her on her way -- although not before demanding an explanation for why Meshkalla and Sabri were covered in blue paint (apparently they'd been working on scenery in Eliza's class; Harold thought they were blue enough to be scenery, but he didn't want to ask).

The kids all oohed and aahed over the STS again, and Harold told them about the joke he'd planned for his sisters. They wanted to see it right away, and spent several minutes planning ever more convoluted ways to get Charlotte and / or Eliza back to their house and into the coat closet. Harold suggested that they just watch the movie instead.

Of course, they had to start it back at the beginning again, which necessitated a "no spoilers" rule. Harold was just glad he'd seen the movie before and had a vague recollection of the plot, which involved pirates, because all the kids kept asking him questions about it. Why did that guy just do that? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? What's that ship doing? Harold wanted to tell them to just be patient and watch, but he knew he'd been the same way as a kid, so he felt it was kind of like cosmic justice.

It was just after 5:00 when Harold heard the sweet sounds of payback coming from the loft. First Eliza: "What that --? Gabe?" Then Charlotte: "Eliza! Where --? Whoa..." Then, unexpectedly, Al: a thud, followed by a sleepy, "Sorry about that. Oh, hey Charlotte. Hey Eliza. Good to see you made it. Oh, yes, sorry Bruno. Good to see you too -- does PJ know you've been sleeping on her pillow?"

Harold could just imagine the looks that must be on his sisters' faces as Al rambled on. It was a good day. "Well," he said brightly. "Looks like everyone's here for dinner!"

Nadeka mentioned it first. Probably because he'd been on the camping trip, and heard Harold talk about getting time off. He asked the question with a sort of idle curiosity; like it was something he'd learned about in school and wanted to confirm was really true.

It was on the morning of day four, during breakfast. "So, is it common for people on Earth to get so much vacation time? 'Cause our teacher told us most people only get two weeks, unless they're really famous, or they work for the Congress."

Harold froze with his apple inches away from his mouth. In truth, he had forgotten about his job. He'd gotten so caught up in camping out, and then essentially camping in, that he'd just gotten used to not going in to work every day. He'd cleared two weeks off with his boss, but now was definitely into week three. Harold's mind raced frantically, and Nadeka was still waiting for an answer. Actually, thanks to his long pause, everyone was waiting for an answer. Harold now had the complete attention of all the current residents of the Hideout except for Al, who had left early to "study the doorway."

"Um..." This was awkward. He didn't want to lie to the kids, but he also didn't want to admit that he had actually forgotten about his job. "These are sort of ... special circumstances," Harold said finally. "And I have a really understanding boss." I hope, he added silently. In a stroke of genius, he asked, "What are jobs like on your planet?"

This sufficiently distracted the kids until it was time to go. Harold should have known that anyone as close to the ruling body of a planet as these kids were would have picked up a lot of information, even if they were only ten. He hadn't been listening very closely, since he was thinking about what to tell his boss, but it sounded like there was some kind of renaissance on their planet around the time that the Cals came into power, and it had caused a big shift in jobs and work and "stuff like that," as Lishendri put it.

Once the kids were all off for another day -- the new plan was to let each of the five pick an adult to go with for the morning, then they'd eat lunch out and return to the Hideout for the afternoon -- Harold took a deep breath and headed for his phone. He was surprised to see he had zero messages. That seemed a little suspicious, so the first call he made wasn't to the office.

"Trudy? Hi, this is Harold." He introduced himself, even though he was sure she had already seen his name on caller ID.

"Harold!" Trudy said excitedly. "It's great to hear from you! How's everything going? I wasn't sure how secret you were keeping everything, so I haven't told anyone anything -- which has been tough, because the phones have been ringing off the hook about you guys! Figuratively speaking, of course, since it's mostly wireless over here -- no hooks involved."

Harold interrupted, since it seemed like Trudy was willing to keep talking without any pauses. "'You guys?'" he asked. Had the kids been found out? Were people asking about them?

"Mostly just you and Al," Trudy explained. "Since the kids started hanging out around town, there've been a few calls -- they're not exactly inconspicuous, you know, especially since you've got them all using their own backpacks -- but I put the word out, kind of hinted that there might be a few 'special guests' on-planet, but that it was all very hush-hush and not something to make a big deal about. Don't worry, we're great at keeping secrets."

Harold rolled his eyes at that statement, grateful that Trudy couldn't see him. When he and Al first met up, it had seemed like their every move was broadcast to the phone tree, a massive network of all the aliens and allies in the area. The idea of anything staying a secret for long seemed ludicrous, but if Trudy said she was handling it, Harold would just have to trust her. A sudden thought occurred to him. "But they're still calling about me and Al? Why haven't you made an announcement about us?"

Trudy sounded impatient when she answered. This was actually the longest phone conversation Harold had ever had with her, and if her tone was anything to go by, she'd expected him to be much quicker on the uptake than he was currently capable of. "I told you -- I wasn't sure how secret you were keeping everything. Loads of people think you're both off-planet -- don't ask me how, they've got all sorts of crazy theories -- and a couple people think you're dead. Let's see, there's the 'you're on secret government mission' theory, the 'you're trapped in some trans-dimensional vortex' theory -- I think your sister may have started that one, actually. People have asked me if you guys are fugitives and on the run; oh, and my personal favorite -- there's a small but growing group that thinks you've been abducted by aliens."

"What?" Harold was baffled. "-- wait, a secret mission for Al's government or ours?"

"It's about 50-50," said Trudy. "Lot's of us have noticed that there's people looking for you, but they really don't seem too sinister -- I think that's what's got people guessing in so many directions. Anyway, I've been blocking all calls to you and Al's phones just to preserve the mystery."

Harold still felt dazed. "Yeah, okay," he said. "Thanks."

"Oh -- and I asked Tina to cover for you at work. I figured you might be a little distracted with everything. I expected you to call a little sooner than this, though; I'm afraid some of the speculation has gotten a little wild. On the positive side, no one's even close to the truth, and I haven't heard a single mention of Nick and Steve." There was admiration in her voice as she added, "Whoever covered their tracks did an incredible job. I wonder if it would be rude to ask them about it..."

Harold decided it was time to steer the conversation back his job. "So, Tina doesn't know where I am? What did you tell her?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Harold's raised his eyebrows. Then Trudy said, "Well... I kind of asked her to fill in as a personal favor to me. I may have laid it on a bit thick, and ... I guess you'll find out when you talk to her. I'm pretty sure she thinks you're dead."

"What?!" Harold exclaimed. "No, never mind. Why am I talking to Tina?"

"So you can tell her she doesn't need to go in for you any more," Trudy said. The exasperation was back, and Harold wasn't sure where he'd lost track of what was happening in the conversation. "You want me to forward your work calls to your cell, right? So you can just work from where you are? You've got your computer, right?"

She could do that? "Um, sure, that would be great," Harold said. "Shouldn't I call my boss, too?"

"Nah, I'll just retroactively submit an application for the new summer telecommuting work-from-home program. No problems there."

She could do that? Harold wasn't sure he should ask; he was definitely getting the 'we're done now' vibe from Trudy, and there was something to be said for plausible deniability. So he just said, "Okay, I'll call Tina right now. Um, thanks -- you know, for everything."

"Hey, it's what I do," Trudy replied. "Give my best to everyone, okay? Bye!"

Harold sat looking at the phone for a couple minutes after he'd hung up, trying to digest what he'd just learned. If even the phone tree didn't know where they were... he suddenly felt more isolated and alone than he had since meeting Al. On the other hand, calling Tina sounded like it would definitely get him a story to share at dinner. He was smiling again as he dialed the number.

"Good morning," a cheery voice answered. "This is Tina speaking, how may I help you?"

"Hi Tina," Harold said. "This is Harold."

"Harold? Harold!? You're alive? I thought you were dead! I was so sure that was how it happened. The courageous attempt, the potential for triumphant success leading to tragic consequences..."

Harold thought Tina had been spending too much time in Eliza's theater classes. "Exactly what did you think had happened?" he asked.

"Well I knew you were camping with Nadeka and Lishendri," Tina said. "Everyone knew that. It was the day you were scheduled to get back that the doorways started going wacky, and there you were with the royal twins. Of course you would have tried to get them back home. So I figured you and Al tried to start up his doorway quickly, but something went wrong, and you were both vaporized instantly, leaving Nadeka and Lishendri stranded here on Earth!"

There was a pause. Harold wondered if vaporization was generally considered to be a possible danger around doorways. Then Tina said, "So that's not how it really happened, huh?" She sounded remarkably nonchalant for someone who had recently been talking about his tragic death. "Is it the secret government mission?"

"I can't tell you what's going on," Harold said, trying to sound somber and serious, when he really wanted to burst into laughter. "It's vitally important that you keep even this conversation a secret. Your help up to this point has been greatly appreciated, but it's no longer necessary." He added some random pauses into his sentences, since people in spy movies always seemed to have odd cadences to their speech.

"So you don't want me to come in to work for you any more?" Tina had lowered her voice, obviously getting into the moment.

Harold made his voice quieter too, and aimed for a mysterious tone. "It's been taken care of," he said. "I have to go now." He added, "Be careful," just for good measure.

"I will," Tina said. "Good luck."

Harold hung up the phone and sat back, laughing.

Eating dinner with ten other people was always exciting, whether they were friends, family, or strangers. Harold figured they had all three in their group. Nick and Steve weren't totally strangers, but it wasn't like buying a lot of hot dogs from someone really helped you form a lasting relationship. There was the whole living-in-the-same-house thing to consider, but Harold still felt like he knew Bruno better than the two men who'd opened their home. They acted like they were from Earth, except when they didn't, and Al still hadn't explained why they were so famous. It couldn't be the hot dogs, could it?

They were trying to settle into a sort of schedule for each day, so the kids could have some structure, and the adults could at least strive for sanity. Mornings were for getting out of the house and doing stuff with Nick, Steve, Charlotte, and Eliza. Al worked on 'the doorway problem,' and Harold did -- well, so far pretty much just napping and talking on the phone, but supposedly he was getting stuff done. The kids all got dropped off back at the house after lunch, and Harold supervised afternoon activities. Then all eleven of them -- five kids, six adults; or three people from Earth; eight people from elsewhere -- came together for dinner.

The best word to describe it was 'noisy.' Harold had gotten the kids to wait until diinner to share all their stories about what they did that day, but now they all wanted to share at once.

"I got to ride in a police car! In the back!"

"I wanted to go first!"

"We saw real criminals!"

"We saw real artists!"

"And we got to be scenery!"

"I ate four hot dogs!"

"I want to be a student when I grow up!"

"-- and then I was bleeding all over the place --"

"-- but I got lost, and --"

"--so I got to be the sun, because --"

"Whoa!" Al said loudly. "Eyes up here everybody!" Harold was impressed. Even Charlotte turned to look when Al used that voice. "Let's take turns, okay? I'm thinking of a snack food." He pointed to Sabri, at his left. "Starting with you; go."

"Chips," she said quickly.

"Twinkies," chimed in PJ.

Eliza was next at the table, but she looked confused. "Popcorn?" was her hesitant response.

Nick, who sat with Steve on one end of the table, said "Hot dogs!" with confidence, and Steve followed up with "Pretzels." Then he looked at Nick -- in his best kid voice, Steve complained, "You took mine!" and everyone laughed.

Charlotte looked as lost as Eliza, but she said, "Skittles."

Nadeka, Lishendri, and Meshkalla spoke one right after the other, no hesitation. They'd either done this before, Harold thought to himself, or they'd used the wait to prepare.

"Barbecue chips."

"Chocolate."

"Caramel apples."

Then it was Harold's turn. He wished he'd been preparing too. He was the last to go. "Um ... cookies," he said finally. Then everyone's eyes turned back to Al, and Harold gave a sigh of relief. It was ridiculous to get so worked up about snack foods, but Harold couldn't deny that he'd been feeling the pressure when everyone had been watching him.

"Okay," said Al. It looked like he'd been taking notes on his napkin. "Here's the order: Pretzels, barbecue chips, chips, cookies, caramel apples, chocolate, hot dogs, skittles, twinkies, popcorn. So, that would mean we're starting with ... Steve."

Steve looked surprised. "What am I doing?" he asked.

"The kids want to share their days," Al explained. "I thought it would be nice to get the grown-up perspective, too." Al gave a little smile, and Harold couldn't quite identify the emotion behind it. Nostalgia? "Tell us a story, Steve."

"He's really good at telling stories," said Sabri, and Al nodded.

Steve took a deep breath. "All right," he said. "Here's my story. Once upon a time..."

"It's supposed to be a story about today," said Sabri.

"Well, today is a time, right?" Steve asked her.

Sabri looked like she was thinking about it. "I guess. Okay, you can start that way."

"Thank you," said Steve. "So, once upon a time, there were two men named Nick and Steve. They ran a hot-dog stand on the campus of a state university. One day, they ran out of hot dog buns, because -- well, that's someone else's story." Sabri blushed. "Anyway, they told all their customers that they were running a special that day and offering an 'alternative bun.' College students like alternative things, usually," Steve confided. "Then they just poured potato chips into the cardboard holder with the hotdog and sold it with a fork. Huge success. Actually, I've heard that those two men might consider putting it on the menu permanently." There was a pause.

"You have to say 'the end,'" Sabri stage-whispered down the table.

"Oh, sorry," said Steve. He looked a little puzzled, but willing to play along. "The end. And could you please pass the salt?"

"My turn!" called Nadeka. "I saw a real criminal today! And I got to help ap... appr..." He looked at Charlotte questioningly.

"Apprehend?" she asked.

"Yeah, apprehend. I helped apprehend him, sort of."

"Nuh uh," said Lishendri, in the classic way of all siblings.

"Uh huh!" answered Nadeka. "I did! It was when you were in the bathroom! There was a police officer, and he was looking for a person who throws things away in the wrong places, and I told him that I saw someone put a plastic soda bottle in the regular trash instead of the recycling bin, and he told me I was good at noticing things and that was really important in apprehending criminals!" He looked defiantly at his sister, and added, "The end," quickly, as if to prevent her from questioning his story again.

"Wow!" said Sabri. "My story's about a police officer too! I was walking Bruno, and we went a long way -- miles and miles, I think. But I wasn't paying attention to where we were going, because dogs are really good at finding things, and they're good at smelling things, and I figured Bruno could just smell where the hot dogs were and lead us back. But I think his nose was broken today, because when I told him we needed to go back, he got lost. So I told him to find a police officer instead, and he did! Maybe his nose was feeling better then. And I told the police officer where I was supposed to be, but he didn't believe me, so I told him to call Charlotte on his police radio, and she said I was supposed to be where I told him. She talked to him for a while, and some of it was really loud talking. Then he told me he was sorry, and he gave me a lollipop! I think that's what everyone gets when they get lost, but not dogs, 'cause they get dog biscuits instead. The end."

Harold wasn't sure if Sabri had taken even a single breath during her story. He didn't have long to think about it, though, because his turn was next. He and Al had come up with this form of "sharing" for times when they had lots of kids visiting -- it really cut down on shouting and hurt feelings; plus it was a quick way to hear about what everyone had been doing. The rules were simple: everyone got to tell a story, one at a time. No interrupting, and once you were done you said "The End" and that was it. If it wasn't your turn, you got to practice what Al called "being a good audience."

"Today..." Harold paused for emphasis, looking around the table. "Today, I came back from the dead. I'm serious! Remember how you were asking about my job this morning? Well, turns out Trudy asked Tina to fill in for me, but she didn't say anything about what's going on. So Tina thought I was dead! I'm not really sure why, but she assured me it was a tragic and heroic death. So I told her I wasn't dead, and she was really glad to hear that Al and I were still alive. Now she thinks we might be on a secret mission for the government. The end."

"My turn?" asked Meshkalla, and Al nodded. "I got to be the sun! Me and PJ got to go to Eliza's class, and they were making all these different things for their play -- all the scenery and props and stuff. And then they wanted to try some of it out, to see how it would work. There was a person who wasn't there, though. That was the person who was supposed to be the sun. At first they were just going to leave it out. Then Eliza asked if I wanted to do it, and I did. It was easy, except the sun is pretty big. Mostly it was just going up or going down. Or shining. I liked it. We did a play in school, but I didn't get to be anything neat like the sun. I had to be a tree. The end."

Harold wasn't sure how being a tree was all that different from being a sun. But Meshkalla had said "The End," so any questions would have to wait. Sometimes it was a pain, but it was also the key to the whole system. Without it, one person's story could take hours. If the question was really important, Harold figured, he'd still remember it when dinner was over.

"I spent the morning with Charlotte," started Lishendri. "We got to ride in the police car, and then Charlotte talked on the phone a lot and did paperwork. I thought being a police officer was exciting, but it didn't seem that way to me. My story is about lunch. I ate a bagel that was toasted and buttered and sprinkled with lots of cinnamon and brown suger, and a green Rain Gatorade. They're my favorite. I like bagels a lot and I decided that will be my project for school next year -- I'm going to be a bagel chef. The end." She sounded very satisfied. Harold felt bad for his sister -- it sounded like she'd had a very busy day. He also felt a little worried about what might happen when the kids' parents found out about all the "adventures" they'd been having.

"Hot dogs go next, right?" asked Nick. "My story is about a journey -- a quest, you could call it. See, this morning I went to work with Steve, plus a dog and a young guest. But the guest and the dog went for a walk and I was worried, so I went on a quest to find them. I walked and walked and walked some more. I saw a juggler, and a book sale, and a picnic. I saw a lot of people, and a lot of dogs, but not the ones I was looking for, so I kept walking. I saw a seagull, and I saw someone practicing skateboard tricks. I walked so far that I ended up back where I started, and you know what? That's where I found what I was looking for! And you know what I said? I said, 'I'm just glad it's not raining.' The end."

That certainly answered the question of why Steve hadn't just sent Nick to get more rolls from their storage. Nick certainly was a good storyteller; Harold was surprised when he thought back over the story and realized that it was just about walking around campus. It had seemed so interesting when Nick had been telling it, and the way Nick lowered his voice to impart that last bit of wisdom was great. There was silence as everyone digested Nick's story, and Harold tried very hard not to look at Sabri. Instead, he focused on Charlotte, who was next in the rotation.

"Let's see, today I went in to work with two twins, who between them had four names. This was very confusing for all of my co-workers, and very entertaining for the twins and myself. I think the lesson we all learned today was that when picking code names, it's important to pick one that your identical twin won't get mixed up about and think is theirs. The end."

Short, to-the-point, yet hinting at large helping of chaos -- yup, that was Charlotte, all right.

"My turn next, right?" PJ sounded like she could hardly wait. "I met artists today! Lots of them! There was a painter, and he let me paint some flowers. Mine were pink. Then I met a paper-mache-ist, and she didn't want me to get all dirty, but I told her it was okay and she let me dip the newspaper in that gooey stuff. And there was a draw-er, and I'm not very good at drawing things, but they said I had a lot of potential." She beamed, and Harold sighed as he got a mental picture of Sabri drawing pink flowers while surrounded by her rough, tough, security guard dads. "I got to help a lot today, and I want to be an artist when I grow up!" Harold sighed again. They were going to be in so much trouble when Al got that doorway working again. "The end."

"And that leaves me," said Eliza. "My story's about driving in the car." Harold noticed that PJ lost some of her enthusiasm at that statement. Next to him, Meshkalla looked a little worried as well. "I have a great car, but it's kind of small, and there's a lot of stuff in it. Not a lot of room for guests, so to speak. And I think there may have been one or two memos that I didn't get about alien powers." Uh-oh, Harold thought. He was pretty sure he knew where this story was going. "Now, I drive the same route pretty much all year long, but today was definitely story-worthy. It was so cool! There was a little ... issue with the speedometer, and the odometer, and the gas gauge, but that's not really what this story was about. No, this story is about the radio. I can get all the good stations now! Even the Wolf -- 'howlin' out the hits!', and I haven't been able to get that for years, ever since they moved their broadcast location! Best day ever! The end."

"Well, I think that's everybody," said Al. Harold saw Nick lean over to speak quietly to Eliza, presumably offering to work the alien mojo out of her car -- the kids were getting much better at controlling it, but they still slipped a little when they got really excited.

"Wait, what about you?" Nadeka looked at Al questioningly, and Harold held his breath. He hadn't dared to ask Al about his day earlier.

But before Al had a chance to say anything, they heard a thump from the loft, and then an outraged yowl. The cats had found the transport system. And it wasn't until Harold was falling asleep later that night that he realized Al had never answered the question.

In the beginning, there had been rules. Harold was sure of it. Rules about not answering other people's phones or using other people's computers, especially during the hours they were supposed to be telecommuting. Those rules, however, had lasted approximately a day, give or take 24 hours.

At least all the kids had good phone manners. They had taken to confiscating his cell phone as soon as they got home after lunch as soon as they found out it had games on it. Harold assumed it was the lure of the forbidden, since there was really nothing that exciting about cell phone blackjack or bubble smile. He knew this because he'd once spent three hours at the garage waiting for his car to be fixed, with nothing to do except play them, and after a while even staring at the wall in front of him was more fun than making rows of identical bubbles. Contrary to the game's title, the bubbles weren't even smiling.

On the plus side, Harold no longer had to hunt for his phone each time it rang. Instead of trying to remember where he last had it and get there before the call went to voice mail, all callers were greeted by a cheery, "Good afternoon! You've reached Harold's phone! Please hold!" Then whoever had the phone would run to bring it to him. The kids were much better at finding him than he'd ever been at finding the phone, so it worked out pretty well.

The computer, however, was a different story. Harold's first thought had been to plug it in somewhere in the spacious downstairs of Nick and Steve's house. Plenty of outlets, plenty of space, plenty of light; it was perfect. Except for the fact that on their first night in the house, Harold had told the kids that they were supposed to keep all their stuff contained in the loft. At the time, it had been more an attempt to keep the house clean than to actually hide their presence, but the kids had stuck to it and demanded that he do so as well.

That meant that his computer was in the loft; which was never designed to accommodate the outlet needs of seven people, even when five of them were children from another planet. Actually, that made it harder, because the electronics they did have required these funky-looking adaptors that tended to obscure at least one outlet when they were plugged into a power strip. Mostly those were Al's, though.

After some quick thinking, Harold had decided that the bed was the most practical location for his "at-home work station." That right there should have signalled a warning. But he even found an outlet close enough for the cord to reach, although he'd had to unplug a light to use it. One of their battery-powered camping lanterns was now doing night-light duty in its place.

The real problem wasn't that he felt silly sitting on the bed, barefoot, while he talked to callers. It wasn't even that the kids had made a game of trying to make him laugh while he was on the phone. It was that Bob the kitten (now a fairly large cat), had decided that his laptop made a perfect spot for a nap. Harold left it on standby whenever he wasn't using it, so the cover was down, but it still gave off a fair amount of warmth. It seemed like whenever he went to the loft, Bob was sound asleep on his computer, and Harold had to stall whoever was on the phone while he convinced the cat to move. Harold wished Damaris was there; Bob always listened to him.

"Do you have any... fours?"

"Go fish!"

Harold smiled at the sound of the kids playing an Earth card game. Evenings were his favorite time of day; when everyone came together to relax. The living room was the only room in Nick and Steve's house that could accommodate all eleven of them comfortably. They managed all right in the dining area, once a couple extra chairs had been scrounged from Charlotte and Eliza's house, and once or twice they'd even all squeezed into the kitchen, but the living room was where eveyone could spread out. Harold privately thought of it as the "Goldilocks room," ever since PJ had declared it to be "just right."

It was hot outside, and had been getting steadily hotter for days. At least in the evening, they could open all the windows and the sliding doors and get a cross-breeze through the room. And once the sun set, it always felt cooler, although the thermometer never seemed to drop much. Maybe it was just psychological.

One of the side effects of it being so hot out was that no one had much energy in the evenings. Really, the adults had never had much energy, after a day of looking out for the kids, or in Al's case, doing ... whatever he was doing. But the heat was enough to make even the kids willing to sit still for hours at a time. Once dinner and the accompanying clean up was done, everyone moved to the living room.

Charlotte always brought Harold the newspaper, and Eliza always brought her homework. Al usually spent the time engrossed with the spiral-bound notebook he'd taken to carrying everywhere. Nick and Steve were big on reading, and Harold was sure they were reading several books at once. Either that or they were the fastest readers he'd ever seen. The kids played cards, or drew pictures with the art sets Eliza had given them. Harold had learned to read the comics first, before the kids could get to them and "improve" them. He'd never been a big newspaper fan, but since he was essentially under voluntary house arrest, it had become a cherished link to the outside world.

"Would anyone mind some music?"

Nick's soft voice broke into Harold's musings. He looked up briefly to shake his head and saw everyone else do the same. Harold returned to the paper, caught up in an article about construction plans for the university.

A few minutes later, Harold looked up again, this time in surprise, as he heard a guitar being tuned. Actually, two guitars. He had assumed Nick was planning to put in a cd! Catching Charlotte's attention, Harold gave her a questioning look, but she just rolled her eyes at him. Of course; she'd probably been watching them the whole time, or just using her police training to be aware of what everyone in the room was doing. Harold just shrugged back at her; he'd never been good at multi-tasking.

The kids struggled to stay focused on cards, and once Nick and Steve switched from tuning to playing little snatches of tune, they abandoned the game completely and moved to sit next to the two men. Harold was surprised to see that even Al had stopped writing in his notebook and was watching with interest.

"Do you know any songs?" asked PJ. Harold tried to hide his wince at her innocently-intentioned, but still slightly rude question. Nick and Steve just smiled.

"We could make one up," said Steve. "Do you want to help us?"

There was enthusiastic agreement from all the kids.

"All right, what should our song be about?"

"Swimming!" Because of the heat, the kids had spent the afternoon at the local pool with Eliza. Her story at dinner made it sound like quite the experience.

"Bruno!"

"Pizza!"

"Bugs!" Sabri made a face as she said it. She seemed to be particularly "tasty" to the local mosquitoes, and had spent the last week trying not to itch her many bites.

"I think we should sing a song about cool weather," said Lishendri. "I'm hot."

"Okay," said Nick. "Swimming, Bruno, pizza, bugs, and cool weather. Got it. This will be our 'Come on Cool Weather' song, by Nick, Steve, PJ, Nadeka, Meshkalla, Sabri, and Lishendri."

Steve strummed what Harold assumed was a chord, and Nick joined in. "Once there was a dog," Nick started. "And his name was Bruno..."

Then Steve took up the narrative. They weren't so much singing as ... speaking tunefully. Harold liked it. Steve said, "It was hot outside, but Bruno knew what to do; he'd go on a quest, and he wouldn't stop till he found what he sought..."

Back to Nick. "While Bruno was looking he called out a song; he said 'Come on, Cool Weather;' 'Come on, Cool Weather, Come on; I'm going to find you, and I'm going to bring you home...'"

"Bruno didn't know where Cool Weather lived; But he wasn't worried, he'd just ask all his friends..."

Steve looked at Nick, who obligingly chimed in with, "The first place he went was out back to a tree..."

Steve laughed, but continued. "Bruno said, 'Hey, Mr. Tree!; my name is Bruno, and I'm on a quest; to find Cool Weather and bring it home; can you help me?'" Steve looked at PJ. "And do you know what he said?" She shook her head and Steve picked up the tune again. "'I've heard, if you want to get cool, the best place to go is the pool;' that's what that tree said, and off Bruno went..."

Nick sang the "Come on Cool Weather" chorus verse again. Harold was impressed. Not only were they making the song up on the fly, they were totally in synch as they did it. Harold looked at Al, who appeared mesmerized by the impromptu concert. Charlotte was also watching Al. She had a tiny frown on her face, like she was concentrating on solving a particularly tricky puzzle.

"Bruno said, 'Hey, Mr. Swimming Pool!; my name is Bruno and I'm on a quest, to find Cool Weather and bring it home; can you help me?'" Steve was singing again, and this time he looked at Nadeka. "'I've heard, if you want to be cool, the best thing to do is eat pizza, that's what the cool kids do;' That's what the swimming pool said, and off Bruno went ..."

Now they were really getting into the chorus, and Nick and Steve sang it together, adding in more complicated-sounding guitar playing as well. "While Bruno was looking he called out a song; he said 'Come on, Cool Weather;' 'Come on, Cool Weather, Come on; I'm going to find you, and I'm going to bring you home...'"

Harold wondered how they were going to work bugs into this song. Did pizzas think bugs were cool?

Nick took the bugs verse, singing, "Bruno said, 'Hey, Mr. Pizza!; my name is Bruno and I'm on a quest, to find Cool Weather and bring it home; can you help me?'" He looked at Sabri, and asked, "What do you think?"

"Bugs?" she asked, disbelieving.

"That's right," Nick answered. "That pizza said, 'I've seen some things flying outside; I think they're called bugs, and they always look cool;' and off Bruno went..."

One more chorus, and then an extended guitar section. Harold couldn't decide if they were done or not; he thought they might be somehow deciding who was going to do the bug verse.

They did it together, switching off after each line, and Harold would never have believed it was possible if he hadn't seen people on an improv show on one of the cable channels do the same thing.

"Bruno looked on the ground, but he didn't see any bugs;"

"He looked up in the sky, and all he saw was clouds;"

"He saw a raindrop, and it fell on him;"

"Rain fell on his nose, and rain fell on his toes;"

"And wherever the rain fell, Bruno felt all cool;"

"So Bruno ran home and the rain followed him;"

"He'd finished his quest;"

"He'd found the Cool Weather;"

"And he brought it home!"

Everyone applauded. Even Charlotte, although Harold noticed she was still looking thoughtful. The Meshkalla frowned. "Why weren't there any girls in your song?"

Nick and Steve looked at each other. Harold hoped this wasn't leading up to an argument about whether pizza was masculine or feminine. It had been a long week, and he just wasn't up for it. Nick side-stepped the question, asking Meshkalla, "Do you think we should sing another song, and have girls in it?"

She agreed, and one song led into more. There was a song about penguins, and a song about going into the future and meeting the president of the galaxy. Harold finally bought a clue when the twins yawned in unison, during a song Nick had dubbed "One Eye Open." As Nick and Steve started into the chorus, Harold handed out throw pillows from the sofa, and told the kids they could "act out" the song.

Five minutes later, all the kids had both eyes shut, and Harold suppressed a yawn of his own. Nick and Steve shifted the volume of their playing a little quieter, and didn't ask for any input on their next song. Ten minutes after that, Harold was reasonably certain that the kids were asleep. Glancing at Al and his sisters, he noticed they all looked like they were doing exactly what he was doing -- trying to appear focused on a task, so that Nick and Steve wouldn't feel uncomfortably like the center of attention and want to stop playing.

They didn't need to worry, apparently, because the music continued. Sometimes with words, sometimes without. Harold knew practically nothing about music, except what he remembered from playing the trumpet in the school band -- he'd been terrible, because every time he tried to practice at home the noise made Eliza cry, and his parents had decided that family harmony was more important than nurturing their son's musical potential. But he was pretty sure that Nick and Steve were good at it; he heard a couple snatches of song that sounded like things he'd heard on the radio, and other things that sounded -- well, as alien as music can sound when it's played on an Earth guitar.

It was getting late when Al finally broke the silence among the four listeners. He caught Nick's eye, and asked softly, "I know you're trying to get away from it all, but --could you --? For old time's sake? Please? You don't have to."

Nick and Steve just grinned, and Harold blinked in shock. He'd been half-dozing, but now was fully awake. What was going on?

This time the music was a little louder. It sounded ... bouncy, like it had a really catchy beat you'd get stuck in your head for days and days. Harold saw Eliza's eyes snap open at the first words, and she stared and the two men like she'd never seen them before. Harold was annoyed. First Charlotte, then Eliza -- why was he always the last one to figure things out?

It wasn't a long song, and the words didn't seem terribly significant to Harold. Shining lights, and journeys, and meaningful relationships -- pretty much standard song fare. Nick and Steve seemed a little embarassed when Al started a quiet applause at the end, especially when the other three joined in, and then everyone was looking at the time and hustling off towards bed. Lishendri woke up briefly as Eliza was carrying her up to the loft, right behind Harold and Nadeka. "I heard music," she said softly. "It was so pretty."

"I know," Eliza told her just as softly. "It was, wasn't it? Maybe you'll hear it again someday."

They'd been talking about it on the Weather Channel for days; first as a tropical depression, then a tropical storm, then as Hurricane Penelope, taking a rare track up the coastline and headed straight for them. Predictions ranged from just rain, to heavy rain and wind, to days of flooding and the end of the world. Actually, that last one had been one of those guys that handed out leaflets in front of the grocery store, and he always said it was the end of the world, so maybe that one didn't count.

Al spent the days leading up to the storm disconnecting the doorway from as many power supplies as possible. "It's not doing anything now," he'd said, "But who knows what a massive power surge could do." Of course, this just made Harold more curious about what exactly Al was doing to the doorway. How many power supplies was it hooked up to? What did Al think might happen to it? But Harold didn't ask any of his questions, because he was spending his time hurricane-proofing not one, not two, but three houses. He wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up with that job; but it had gone something like this:

Harold: "Gee, we should get ready for the storm. You know, batteries, and water and stuff."

Steve: "We need to do something to our hot dog cart. It's hard, and involves lots of driving back and forth."

Nick: "Yes, I need to help with the cart. The house, though, definitely -- you're right about needing to prepare."

Charlotte: "I have very important police things to do. Do you think you could get some stuff for our house too?"

Eliza: "I'll watch the kids! Oh, and I made this list for you. Thanks!"

So Harold thought he would just be checking over his own house, making sure stuff was unplugged, and making sure he had plenty of cat food, but he ended up becoming responsible for all three houses. He had managed to ask Al about the stationary transport system, but apparently that had nothing to do with electricity and "shouldn't be affected." Harold didn't find this completely reassuring, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Note to self, he thought, don't use the STS during the storm. Or at least let someone else go first.

Luckily, Harold was still a wanted man, so to speak. He reminded Eliza that he wasn't supposed to go shopping, and gave her list back. "I added a couple things," he told her, with his most innocent big brother smile. "Thanks, Eliza!" Even better, he'd told her that the kids were really looking forward to getting to spend more time with her (the truth, even!), and wouldn't it be helpful to have more hands to push carts and load the car?

"Just how many things did you add to this list?" Eliza had asked suspiciously. Harold just smiled again. As compensation, he did give her the keys to the Armada -- there was no way she could fit six people into her car, let alone six people and lots of stuff. Even with the big SUV, it would probably take more than one trip.

Harold started at his house, skipping the basement, since he could hear Al crashing around down there. The house felt hot and stale, and he had to fight the urge to open all the windows. His house was the one least likely to be used during the storm, and was mostly going to be used for backup storage. Harold unplugged the tv, and the stereo, and the toaster -- pretty much all the major electronics and appliances except the refrigerator. If the power did go out, he'd just as soon not have a surge fry all their circuits. On the other hand, if the power didn't go out, no need to have the freezer stuff defrosting and dripping all over everything.

He felt sort of silly filling up water bottles and thermoses. His house was on town water, and even without electricity, there shouldn't be a problem with water. But when he was a kid, the town hadn't run water out this far, and filling water jugs and even the bathtub had been a family storm tradition. Now it was just habit. Harold also gathered up flashlights and spare batteries -- he left one big light by the front door, and the rest he put in the bathroom -- right where you'd want them if you were crazy, or happened to have a magical gateway that opened right into that room. Of course, he'd actually had to go to Charlotte and Eliza's house, then back to the bathroom, since that was how the system worked, but the end result was the same.

In Charlotte and Eliza's house, Harold left the unplugging to them, since they were planning to be there when the storm arrived. He did check the basement to make sure the sump pump was still working, and then the gutters, to make sure no small animals had taken up residence there during the long dry spell. Then he did another flashlight and battery search, coming up surprisingly low. Of course, he'd only looked in the logical places -- kitchen junk drawer, basement stairs, coat closet (after some brief confusion, when he'd used the wrong door and ended up back in his own bathroom). It was entirely possible that Charlotte and Eliza had loads of flashlights, and just kept them somewhere incomprehensible to anyone but them. Also, he'd been banned from their bedrooms when he was five, and he wasn't going to risk going in now for anything but a dire emergency. Luckily, he'd put both flashlights and batteries on the shopping list.

Harold hung the battery-powered lantern he'd found on a hook next to the touch-light in the coat closet, and moved on to Nick and Steve's house. They'd done their own flashlight search, saving him a lot of unease about poking around someone else's house. Harold put one next to every doorway, interior and exterior, plus the top and bottom of the stairs. Nick had showed Harold how to put oil in their oil lamps, which were scattered around the house, and Steve had pulled out three huge water resevoirs that he said they used for camping. The house was far enough out of town that it used well water instead of town water, so Harold filled the resevoirs -- even if they could use the STS to jump to a house with running water, it would be really annoying to have to do it every time you got thirsty.

Maybe sending Eliza and the kids to do the shopping had been a mistake. This thought occurred to Harold as he helped unload a seemingly endless stream of bags from the back of the Armada. It looked like Eliza had gotten her revenge by taking the kids to a superstore, and every time they'd said something looked like it could be useful, she'd thrown it in the cart. One of the carts, Harold corrected himself. There was no way all of the stuff they'd brought home could have fit in just one cart.

There was enough food to feed all eleven of them for a year, even if they all invited friends to stay over for several months of it. There were raincoats and umbrellas and boots for all the kids, most of whom had come to Earth with just fair-weather gear. Harold tried to remember if it had ever rained before when they were visiting, and couldn't remember.

Eliza had bought a whole bag full of just batteries, some of which Harold didn't think fit anything they owned, until he saw some of the other bags. There were walkie-talkies, and battery-powered cell phone chargers, and even a couple of those cool hand crank emergency radios that Harold had been meaning to get for himself. Then there were the flashlights. They ranged in size, but there was a common theme running through them all.

"Muppets?" he asked Eliza, trying to hold back a laugh.

She looked defensive. "Hey, it was crazy in that store! People are really going overboard with this storm thing --" Harold gave a pointed look to the bags covering practically the entire floor of Nick and Steve's kitchen and dining area. Eliza blushed.

"Well, it looks like a lot now," she said, "but this is nothing compared to some people. One woman was loading up a u-haul, I swear!" The kids nodded vigorously. "Anyway, the flashlights were pretty shopped out by the time we got there. We checked camping, and household, and automotive -- nothing. Then Sabri suggested we check the kids section, and voila! Flashlights!"

Sabri looked like she was about to burst, she was so proud, so Harold said, "Good thinking, Sabri! I've always liked the Muppets."

"We picked this one out for you!" she said, holding out a lime green flashlight with a picture of Gonzo on the side. "Eliza said he was your favorite!"

"Oh, wow," Harold replied. "I don't know what to say." In fact, he had been inexplicably terrified of Gonzo as a child, and his sisters had never let him forget it. "Thanks!" Maybe he could swap with Al later. Time for a quick subject change. "Hey, why don't you show me what else you got at the store?"

It turned out that the kids had picked out specific flashlights for everyone. Harold couldn't wait to see Nick's reaction when they told they'd picked out a pink Prairie Dawn flashlight for him because "You're both good at singing." How did they even know so much about the Muppets? It had to be Eliza's influence.

It was the wind that started first. Harold had been aware of it off and on when he was checking the houses, but by afternoon, it was an undeniable force. Al had returned home shortly after all the unloading and putting away was done, and was presented with his Kermit the frog flashlight. Harold's hopes for trading away his Gonzo-light diminished -- who would want to trade Kermit?

Nick and Steve arrived back just after Al, and had to strongly discourage everyone from helping unload their car. Apparently the hot dog cart could be disassembled enough to be fairly portable when needed, but it was a tricky process, and there was a complex system for storing each part so it would be easy to find again. Harold thought they were very diplomatic about the whole thing -- he wouldn't have wanted him helping either, but it seemed like offering was the polite thing to do.

Charlotte was still off doing "police things," so Eliza took the Armada back to Harold's and picked up her own car, while the kids helped Harold and Al shuttle all the shopping bags that were headed to Charlotte and Eliza's house through the STS. Then Harold entertained them with games from his laptop -- they loved to "help" him play solitaire -- until it was time for dinner.

Over the course of the meal, it got darker and darker, as the clouds rolled in. When the rain started, it happened all at once -- no build-up sprinkles for this storm. It was like the sky just opened up, and all of a sudden it was pouring. Harold jumped in surprise at the noise, and they all stared out the windows. "Think it'll rain?" Al asked wryly, and everyone laughed.

The power flickered a few times, but stayed on. Each time, the kids would ooh and aah as the lights went out, and the adults would sigh with relief when they came back on. Nick and Steve taught everyone how to reset their clocks, and then the group settled in the living room to watch the news. It was weird to see your own town on the national weather report. Not wanting to push their luck with the electricity and running water, everyone went to bed early. Harold fell asleep to the sound of the kids whispering, watching their flashlight beams chase each other across the ceiling.

When Harold woke up, it was still dark. He peered at the clock that usually displayed a multicolored readout from the shelf next to the bed. Nothing. Well, the clock was still there, it just wasn't displaying anything. He checked his watch; it was six in the morning. Harold tried to go back to sleep -- Nick and Steve obviously weren't going to work in the storm, and Al probably wasn't either, so the smart thing to do seemed to be to sleep in as long as possible. But then he heard someone call his name. More of a whisper, really, but it was probably what had woken him up in the first place.

"Harold?" It was Lishendri.

"Yeah?" Harold whispered back. Both twins had learned that he wasn't really a morning person while they were camping, so he was a little worried about what had her waking him up when, if her whisper was anything to go by, everyone else was still asleep.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Lishendri told him, and Harold groaned inside. Of course. No power, no water -- no toilets. He sat up.

"Where's Al?" he asked. Al was a morning person. He liked mornings. He -- Lishendri's answer interrupted Harold's rambling train of thought.

"He's gone." What? Harold thought. "Meshkalla had to go to the bathroom too, so he took her through the STS, but they're not back yet," Lishendri added.

Great, Harold thought. He realized he should have been more specific in his plan about the transport system -- there should have been something about not using it until someone else had been through it and come back. Too late now.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go." They both padded over to the closet door, trying to be quiet. Harold had a sneaking suspicion that Lishendri was better at it then him. Someone had put up one of those dry-erase message boards on the closet door a few days after the STS was unveiled. It made it much easier to keep track of which house everyone was in at any given moment. Harold could just make out the single message on it in the dim morning light.

M and A at E&C's, bathroom trip, back soon.

There was no time written with the message, so Harold had no idea whether he should be worried that they weren't back yet, or if it was still too soon to be "soon." He wrote his own message.

6 am: H and L at E&C's to use the bathroom and find A and M.

Then he took a deep breath and stepped through the closet door. Lishendri was right behind him, and Harold quickly learned that it was really crowded in the coat closet with two people in it. The touch-light was already on, so at least it wasn't dark. And as they walked through the door that led into Charlotte and Eliza's house, Harold smelled a delicious smell, a wonderful smell, a smell that seemed to make life worth living.

Lishendri wrinkled her nose. "Is that coffee?"

"I hope so," said Harold. The kids had been in and out of Charlotte and Eliza's house ever since the STS was initialized, so he had no worries about Lishendri's ability to find the downstairs bathroom. Harold headed for the kitchen to find the coffee.

Once he got there, Harold was delighted to see that as a super-special bonus prize, he'd also found Al and Meshkalla. "Al!" he said delightedly. "There you are!"

Al looked puzzled. "We did leave a note, right?" he asked Meshkalla. She nodded.

"But that was before," Harold explained. Part of his brain recognized that it was possible he wasn't making any sense. "I was worried you might have gotten eaten by the STS." That little part of his brain also recognized that admitting he'd doubted Al's word about the safety of one of his inventions might not be the best thing to do, especially since Al was standing right next to the coffee.

But Al seemed willing to accept his worries as just natural morning confusion, not as a slight to his technological abilities. "Nope!" he replied. "We came through about fifteen minutes ago, to use the bathroom, and then Meshkalla wanted a snack, and I wanted some coffee, and I remembered that your sisters have both a gas stove and instant coffee, so we stuck around."

Wow, Harold thought. Was that weird, that Al knew that about his sisters? Harold decided not to worry about it right then. When Al handed him a steaming mug, Harold decided not to worry about it ever. Then Lishendri came back from the bathroom, and Meshkalla gave her half of her muffin, and Harold and Al settled into a comfortable silence as they leaned on the counter and stared out at the rain.

It really wasn't a bad way to start the day, all things considered. All four of them left together, before Charlotte and Eliza even woke up, and when they got back to Nick and Steve's the rest of the kids were just starting to get restless. Harold got doorway duty shuttling kids back and forth to the bathroom, while Al helped Steve make breakfast. It turned out Nick and Steve also had a gas stove, so they could use the burners even when the power was out. Breakfast was eggs -- "We might as well use them up before they go bad," Steve had said -- of all varieties. Scrambled, fried, omelet-ized, sunny side up, even poached.

The kids loved it. They used picnic plates and silverware, so they wouldn't have to wash the dishes, and Al told stories about when Harold had just moved into his house and couldn't find any of his dishes. Harold retaliated by introducing the kids to the Earth tradition of eating ketchup with scrambled eggs, which Al thought was disgusting, but everyone else liked. Conversation at breakfast went something like this:

Kids: "What are we going to do today?"

Adults: "I don't know."

Kids: "Is it going to rain all day?"

Adults: "I don't know."

Kids: "When is the power going to come back?"

Adults: "I don't know."

It was Eliza who saved the day. She showed up just as the kids were getting restless, bounding down the stairs from the loft with a shopping bag in her hand.

"Good storming, everyone!" she called out cheerily.

"Good morn-- what?" asked Nick.

"Good storming," explained Eliza. "I just thought of it today. It's all cloudy and gloomy outside, right? So you can't really tell whether it's morning or afternoon. Plus with the electricity out, everything's kind of on hold anyway -- it doesn't really matter what time it is. So you just say, 'Good storming!'"

Harold just rolled his eyes. Eliza was always coming up with stuff like that, but she usually forgot about it almost as fast as she made it up. He was willing to bet she'd be back to 'good morning' before the storm was over. "Where's Charlotte?" he asked, trying to avoid the whole greeting issue.

"Oh, she's on call today, dealing with storm related stuff -- branches in the road, that kind of thing. She just got called out because someone's dog won't come in out of the rain, and the owner's got a bad hip or something, so she can't get down the steps when they're all wet. Charlotte wasn't too happy about the whole thing. Hey, are those eggs?"

So everyone shifted plates and cups and chairs so that Eliza could sit down, and she entertained them all by finishing off not just the scrambled eggs, but also the last of the poached eggs, and liberally adding both ketchup and maple syrup. And as she ate, she talked.

"...and they're called Storm Journals, see, because you write in them every time there's a storm." Harold had been watching the rain flow down a nearby window, and only caught the very end of his sister's explanation.

"I want one!" said Sabri. Obviously she had been listening the whole time, Harold thought. One what?

"Me too!" agreed PJ, and the other kids nodded in agreement.

"Well..." Eliza looked around the table, drawing out the anticipation. Harold glanced at Al, hoping to figure out what he was supposed to be anticipating. But Al was watching Eliza. At least he was smiling, which was probably a good sign. Eliza continued, as she pushed her now-empty plate a few inches away. "It just so happens ... that I have some right here!" She brandished the shopping bag, and started handing out spiral-bound notebooks to all the kids.

Oh, Harold thought to himself. Storm journals. Of course; that was actually a really good idea. Especially since Eliza had also thoughtfully provided lots of markers and stickers for "decorating" the journals.

"What about you?" asked Sabri. "And Al, and Harold? Do they get to have journals too?"

"And Nick and Steve," added Meshkalla. "It wouldn't be fair if only we got them."

Eliza grinned. "Actually, I did get a few extras." Harold noticed that the "grown-up" notebooks were blue, which was at least better than yellow. Knowing the kids were watching, Harold took the notebook with a dutiful "Thank you, Eliza."

"Clean-up first," Al said firmly, when Eliza tried to hand him one of the "journals." "Why don't we all put our journals in our chairs so you can remember which one is yours, and we'll take care of all the breakfast dishes." Of course, most of the dishes could just be thrown away, but the ones they'd cooked with were collected in a giant pot -- why would anyone need a pot that big, Harold wondered -- to be transported to Charlotte and Eliza's house for cleaning.

Afterwards, everyone gathered in the living room. Not only was it the biggest room, but it was also the coolest, temperature-wise. So far, the storm had brought rain, but not much cool air. And the wind-driven rain meant that almost all the windows in the house were closed. Almost all -- because the living room was bordered outside by a wide covered porch, and a few drops blowing in now and then on a particularly strong gust of wind was a small price to pay for cool fresh air. Unfortunately, that same porch, combined with heavy cloud cover, made the room fairly dark. Nick and Steve lit their oil lamps: there was one on either side of the fireplace, and two on end tables on the opposite side of the room. Harold was impressed by how much light they cast, despite its flickery quality.

"All right!" said Eliza, dumping decorating supplies on the floor in the center of the room. "We've got regular markers, and those cool stamper markers, and stickers, lots of stickers, some stencils, more stickers, some crayons, a couple glitter pens, more stickers..." She peered into the bag. "Okay, that's it. Let's do it!"

There actually was something soothing about everyone working on their own creative project, Harold decided. The adults had broken up a few arguments, like when Nadeka decided that he needed all the star stickers (Steve convinced him that smiley faces would work equally well). There was also a brief scuffle over the fuschia marker, which Harold defused by offering a bright pink marker in its place. He couldn't really see the difference himself, but he timed their usage and swap with as much seriousness as he could manage.

"Can you pass the turquoise?"

"Marker or crayon?"

"Marker, please!"

"How do you spell 'hurricane'?"

"H-U-R-R-I-C-A-N-E, I think."

"How do you spell 'Penelope'?"

"Um..."

"P-E-N-E-L-O-P-E."

"Are there any stickers with cats on them?"

"Yeah, I think I saw some earlier."

"Who has the silver glitter pen?"

"Oh, that's me. I'm almost done."

"Okay, that's cool. No rush."

Harold himself was using whatever supplies were most convenient to hand to recreate a design of his initials that he'd come up with in grade school. A huge block-letter H filled the cover of his journal, with a G above the cross-bar, and a J below it. Not only did this clearly identify who the notebook belonged to, it also prevented Harold from having to use much artistic talent. He filled in the block letters with marker, crayon, stickers -- anything that passed by. His drawing skills never moved much past stick figures and being excited about being able to draw a cube, so he used the gold glitter pen to add in some cylinders and cubes and some squiggles that didn't really look like anything at all. When PJ asked, Harold told her they were streamer confetti, a kind of very short streamer that could easily be mistaken for very long confetti. He thought he was just making it up, but her easy acceptance made him wonder if there really was such a thing.

Eventually, Harold decided nothing more could be added. "I'm done," he said.

"Me too," said Al. Actually, Al had been done for a while. For all his technological skills, he wasn't great at two-dimensional representations. His journal cover was just a grid, with each square a different color. It looked cool, but Al had been one of the first to finish, and had passed the time till everyone else was done by actually writing in the journal. Harold hoped he wouldn't have to do that.

He didn't. As the kids were finishing up, he had the chance to look around and see what everyone else had created. Nick and Steve had worked together, turning one notebook around and putting it right next to the other one, so they had a single combined "canvas" to work with. It looked like a map, although Harold couldn't tell if the places it named were real or imaginary. Eliza had used all glitter pens, and was putting the finishing touches on what looked like a picture of them, all sitting in a circle just like they were right then. It was amazing. All at once Harold was glad for the storm, and the power outage, and even glad for the journals, just to see his sister so happy and in her element.

Nadeka had covered his notebook -- front and back -- with constellations Harold didn't recognize. He wasn't sure if that was because they were from an alien sky, or if he was just being thrown off by the fact that about a third of the stars were being represented by smiley faces. Lishendri's journal was covered with words, and in more than one language; the English, at least, appeared to be all different kinds of weather and storms. PJ had simply written the words "Storm Journal" in the center of her book in block letters, then filled in the rest with weather pictures -- clouds, raindrops, lightning, even a sun.

Sabri held her journal up for everyone to see. She'd written her name diagonally across the front, then drawn what Harold suspected was a fiendishly difficult maze in the remaining spaces. He almost laughed when he saw it -- it seemed maze-drawing was one of those activities that transcended planets, and was truly a universal activity for ten-year olds. Meshkalla's notebook looked like an abstract mix of shapes and colors to Harold, but she was the last to finish, so he figured it must represent something important. Maybe it was some secret code of her people, or maybe she was just really slow at coloring.

"Hey, you know how Eliza said it didn't really matter what time it was today?" Nadeka asked suddenly. "Could we maybe make it lunch time now? I'm hungry."

They had sandwiches for lunch. Charlotte stopped by, and everyone pestered her for information about what was going on in the outside world. "Well, you definitely don't want to be driving," she told them. "There's cars off the road all over town -- high wind, low visibility...there's no reason for them to be driving at all!" She scowled, and Harold considered mentioning that she herself had been driving most of the morning. He decided not to, even though a few bites of her sandwich seemed to have a calming effect.

"Let's see," said Charlotte. "They were going to make the student union building into an emergency shelter, but there's not enough parking, so they changed it to the high school. Oh, and the big news is that the police station is flooding. Nobody can decide where to go, though."

"Why not use the campus police building?" Harold asked.

Charlotte grimaced. "Their building flooded first; all the university police are at our station now."

Just then, Charlotte's radio gave a burst of static, and she was called away again. Harold could barely hear her car over the noise of the storm, and he shivered, grateful all over again that he was riding out the storm indoors. Most hurricanes never made it far enough up the coast to give them anything except rain, but Hurricane Penelope was certainly proving to be an exception. Thunderstorms were predicted for the afternoon, leading up to a break as the eye passed over sometime in the evening.

Eliza went home after lunch, to check on the house. She even agreed to check on Harold's, which he thought was only fair after the whole journal thing. He didn't think there would be any problems with the house, but he was a little concerned about the cats. Bob and Mama Tibbles were smart, and he knew they must be holed up somewhere safe and comfortable. Still, he'd feel better if he knew where they were.

Nick and Steve decided they'd spend some time going over some business-related stuff. They headed for the office, which was currently doing double duty as a bedroom with all the extra people in the house. Al announced that he was going to take advantage of Nick and Steve's comfortable sofas for an afternoon siesta, which the kids thought was cool until they found out it was a nap. Harold took them to the loft to play cards.

It was an exciting game. The storm felt much closer in the loft, with windows on all four sides. There was thunder rumbling off in the distance, and Bruno was cowering under the bed. Apparently the rough, tough, pitbull-boxer cross was scared of thunder. Harold wasn't sure why the dog didn't just go downstairs, where he could be with Nick and Steve, but it seemed that at least for the moment, a familiar hiding place was winning out over familiar people. In some ways Harold was glad Bruno was there, because the kids reacted to his cowering by (conversely) acting brave. Or maybe they just weren't afraid of thunderstorms. After all, Harold didn't know what the weather was like on their planet -- maybe they had storms that made a little thunder and lightning look like nothing.

Nadeka had brought a deck of cards from home for the camping trip, but Harold had mostly stayed out of the games during those weeks. Earth cards had four suits, with ten number cards and three face cards in each suit. Nadeka's cards all had pictures on them, with backgrounds in a whole range of colors. And there were a lot more than 52 cards. The kids tried to explain the sorting system -- something about color families, he thought. Harold also thought that there must be easier ways to learn than by having five ten-year-olds teach you. Finally, he told them that he'd just figure out the rest on the fly.

Harold found himself looking at ten cards. Five of them had pictures on them that he didn't recognize. He arranged them in rainbow order, very glad that he'd insisted on team play. Hopefully that would keep the twins (his teammates) from telling him to make stupid moves just for the humor value. Nadeka and Meshkalla drew cards to see which team would go first. Apparently a green cat trumped a blue spiral galaxy, because Meshkalla gave a triumphant shout.

As they played, Harold couldn't shake the feeling that they were playing some odd alien version of Crazy 8s. He had just put down a lemon yellow flower-like thing on top of a fire-engine red sun when he felt the telltale pressure change of the STS activating. Usually you could hear a low popping sound too, but the storm must have drowned it out. Harold had just enough time to think, "Oh, Eliza's back," when the closet door opened and someone who was definitely not Eliza stepped out.

It was a little girl. It was an indication of how odd Harold's life had become that his first thought was, "Oh no! Al's transport system just de-aged my sister!" But he was sure Eliza had always had sort of brownish-colored hair, and this girl's hair was definitely black. And while Harold's brain was apparently willing to accept the possibility that the STS was capable of adjusting people's ages, it drew the line at changing their hair color. The girl looked very young, maybe only three or four, and her eyes went very wide when she saw everyone looking at her. Nobody moved.

It couldn't have been more than ten seconds later when two more strangers --adults this time -- arrived. Not through the STS; they just appeared, like they were using transporter watches. Except not, because their wrists were bare. And they looked very angry as they took up what Harold's brain labeled defensive positions on either side of the girl. Okay, Harold thought. He was suddenly very aware of the alien cards spread out on their platform of air mattresses, and the alien gadgets scattered throughout the loft, and the absolute lack of planning they had ever done for a situation like this.

His cell phone rang. It was the Canadian national anthem, which meant it was Eliza's cell. He wasn't sure where she'd gotten it, or how she'd managed to program it into his phone, but he was glad at that moment to get instant confirmation of who was calling. "Nobody move," Harold said, trying for a tone that was both strong and non-aggressive. Oh, this is great, he thought to himself. Unknown situation, three strangers appearing in our "hideout," and I'm answering the phone? Still, the timing of Eliza's call seemed suspicious, and his phone was right in his pocket, since he'd wanted it handy in case Charlotte called.

"Eliza?" he said, keeping his eyes on the little girl. So far she hadn't moved, and neither had her ... parents? He hoped she didn't cry.

"Gabe!" Eliza's voice sounded relieved. "We may have a bit of a situation here. See, there were these people, and Charlotte picked them up, but they've closed the station, and the high school's so far away, so they just stopped off here to use the bathroom, but now they've --" She had been talking fast, and when she paused, Harold jumped in.

"Disappeared?" he asked. "Two grown-ups and a little girl? Yeah, they're here."

"-- ah." Eliza said. It sounded like she was at something of a loss for words. "Do you want us to come through?"

"No, I don't think so." Harold was pretty sure the last thing they needed was more people in the house. "Stay on the line, okay?" He pulled the phone away from his ear and stood up slowly. What he really wanted to do was yell for Al, but that probably wasn't the best plan. Also, with all the storm noise, Al might not even hear him.

"PJ, take everyone downstairs for me, okay?" She nodded solemnly. Harold hoped that Charlotte's decision to bring these people home meant that she'd gotten a good vibe from them, but he didn't want to take any chances. He looked at Sabri. "Can you get your dad and send him up here? Then I want all of you to go in the office, okay?" He spoke quietly -- he wanted them serious, but not scared. Harold hoped they got the unspoken messages as well: it might not be a good idea to say Al's name, and let's not tell them about Nick and Steve.

The kids hustled, and Harold noticed that they all walked behind him to get to the stairs, and then went down single file: PJ in the lead, followed by Lishendri, Sabri, Meshkalla, and Nadeka, who kept looking back over his shoulder. Harold realized they probably had practiced for things like this, and wondered if he should have let them be in charge. He also wondered what he was supposed to do while he waited for Al to arrive.

Just then, Bruno stuck his nose out from under the bed and whined. "Doggie!" the little girl exclaimed. She ran over to pat him. Harold tensed, looking to see what her guardians' reactions would be, but after an initial failed attempt to catch her before she left, they appeared to relax. Harold eased out of the direct line of sight between them and the girl, holding the phone up again.

"Eliza?"

"What's happening?" she asked.

"We're fine here," he said. "Bruno's playing welcoming committee. We're just waiting for Sabri's dad before we dive into explanations." Or any talking, he added silently. "Wait, here he is now."

Al climbed the stairs into the loft slowly, holding his hands out to the sides. He stopped at the top, shooting Harold a look that clearly said, "You're on the phone? With who?"

"It's Eliza," Harold explained quietly. "She and Charlotte just 'lost' a couple of visitors."

"--ah," said Al, unconsciously echoing Eliza's earlier comment.

Then, louder, he addressed everyone. "Let's sit."

They sat. All except the little girl, who said plaintively, "I still have to go to the bathroom!"

Harold looked at the people he assumed were her parents. "There's one behind you," he offered. "The door without the memo board."

The girl headed back across the loft. When she reached the pair of presumed-to-be-parents, Harold heard the woman ask, "Do you want me to come with you this time?" He suddenly had a much clearer picture of how she had ended up at Nick and Steve's house.

"No, I can do it!" the girl insisted, and marched into the bathroom. After the door closed, Harold half-expected the adults to continue staring at each other in silence, but they didn't get the chance. Apparently the little girl was one of those kids who liked to sing in the bathroom.

The woman blushed, and the man looked up at the ceiling as though asking for patience. "We've tried to convince her that just because the door is closed doesn't mean no one can hear her," he muttered, "but does she believe us? No, of course not."

Harold grinned. "My sister did the same thing when she was little," he said.

When the door opened again, the girl climbed into the woman's lap. "Did you flush the toilet?" the woman asked. "Did you wash your hands?" The girl nodded.

Harold suddenly felt a lot better about the whole situation. Even his brain couldn't conceive of a plan so devious that asking a three-year-old if they'd washed their hands was actually a code for "Are you ready to attack? Let's go on three."

"Okay," Al said cheerily. "Question time! You're the 'visiting team,' so to speak, so you get to go first." The girl looked delighted, but the people Harold was guessing were her parents didn't look convinced. Harold wasn't completely convinced either. He was feeling less wary about the strangers, true, but Al's overt cheeriness made him a little nervous. It made him feel like he'd missed something important in whatever conversations had taken place downstairs while he'd been panicking in the loft.

"What's the dog's name?" the girl asked excitedly, taking the first question while the grown-ups were still staring at Al. She looked at Harold when she asked. He thought maybe that was because he was sitting closer to the dog, or maybe he'd just gotten a higher reading on the "softie-meter" that all kids seemed to have.

Harold glanced at Al, who nodded. "Bruno," Harold told the girl. "The dog's name is Bruno." He decided to toss back an easy question; a sort of compensation question, since he felt like asking the dog's name didn't really count. "What's yours?"

"I'm Kim," the girl stated proudly. "What --?" Her probably-parents stepped in before she could finish the question.

"Remember how we talked before about taking turns?" the man said. "You just had a turn to ask something, so that means it's our turn now, right?"

"But I want to ask about Bruno!" The girl's tone was one that Harold recognized from having two younger sisters. It was a "pre-whine;" not quite a whine, but not quite anything else, either.

"I know, sweetie. And it wouldn't be fair if we didn't let you ask any questions, would it?" The girl shook her head emphatically. Whoops, Harold thought. Now we've moved on to the "pre-pout." But the man continued. "So it also wouldn't be fair if you didn't let us ask anything, would it?" This got a reluctant nod. Harold was impressed.

The man looked at Al. "How did she get here -- is this a trap?" Harold thought that was sort of cheating; only a grammatical technicality saved it from being two questions.

Al looked as amused as Harold felt. Did it look like a trap? And if it was, would they tell them? "She got herself here," Al said, "presumably by going right when she should have gone left, if she was looking for the bathroom." He didn't address the whole trap issue. Instead, he asked, "How did you get here?"

"Automatic tracking device," the woman answered. "It alerts us whenever Kim's more than a certain distance away, and can take us to her instantaneously." Harold got the impression she was offering the information as a sort of warning; obviously she wasn't convinced by the non-trap-like environment. She gestured to the closet. "So that door is some kind of ... stationary transport system? That's impossible!"

"We call it the STS," said Al. "And so's yours! Did you build it yourself?"

"No," the man said shortly. Okay, yes, thought Harold. "Who --"

"Daddy!" The girl tugged on his arm. "It's my turn!" She turned back to Harold. "What kind of dog is Bruno?" she asked.

"He's a boxer cross," Harold answered. "He's a mix of several different kinds of dogs." Kim looked very unsatisfied with this answer, so Harold tried again. "He's really friendly, and he likes to play outside, and he's scared of thunderstorms."

This was apparently more what Kim had been looking for, because she smiled, and said, "Me too!" Harold wasn't sure which part she was agreeing with, since she didn't seem at all scared of the thunderstorm that continued to bluster outside. She did seem friendly, though.

Harold looked at Al, offering him the next question. "I think it's your turn," Al said with a smile.

Harold hadn't been expecting that. What was he supposed to ask? "Um... Do you have a dog?"

"No," Kim said. "My parents won't let me." Oops, Harold thought. Maybe that wasn't a good question. At least he now knew that the people with her were in fact her parents.

Kim's dad had been waiting with not very much patience for his chance to ask another question. "Who are you?" He was looking at Al when he said it, but Harold had the feeling he meant the question in a broader sense, more like "tell me your name and background, plus the names and backgrounds of everyone in this house, and a list of everyone you've ever met."

Al decided to stick with the basics. "I'm Al," he said, and gestured at Harold.

"Harold," Harold said, giving a little wave. By the way Kim's parents' eyes lit up at the names, Harold realized that their simple, basic answer might turn out to not be so simple after all.

"You're Al and Harold?" Kim's dad sounded disbelieving.

Harold was still deciding whether or not he should be insulted when Al said, "Yup! Who are you?"

"I'm Betty," the woman answered. "This is Matthew, and our daughter, Kim." Matthew still looked like he was in shock, but Kim said, "We've been looking for you!" That was what Harold had been afraid of. All that work to find a hiding place and stay out of sight, all their careful planning -- okay, maybe there hadn't been a lot of careful planning, but still -- all undone by a little girl looking for the bathroom?

Betty looked back and forth between Harold and Al. Then she narrowed her eyes and stared directly at Harold. "Why couldn't we find you before?"

Hey! He wasn't supposed to get the hard questions! He was supposed to be the good cop, forming a bond of friendship with the little girl, not getting grilled by her mom. On the other hand, maybe Al had it right; simple was best. "Because we were hiding. Why were you looking for us?"

"We heard you were good at fixing things. Actually, we heard Al was good at fixing things, and you were good at finding Al." Betty was still staring at him, and it was starting to freak Harold out.

"Are you?" Kim piped up. Harold had forgotten it was her turn to ask something.

"Good at finding Al? I guess, maybe." Was that something he wasn't supposed to reveal?

Kim turned her gaze to Al, who answered as well. "Some things I can fix," he said. "But not everything. Do you have something that's broken?"

"Yeah," she said, looking sad. "We can't go home, because the door's broken."

Then it was Al's turn to narrow his eyes and look suspicious. But it wasn't his turn to ask, and he stuck by their unwritten rules. Matthew said, "We sort of use the doorway system you work with, but it's not working right now, and we're stuck. Can you fix it?"

"'Sort of'?" Harold asked, at the same time Al said, "I don't know." Then Al added, "Yeah, what does that mean, 'sort of?'"

What followed was an explanation that Harold followed very little of. He gathered that Kim and her family weren't from Al's planet, but one of the others that Al's people had built doorways on. And they didn't use the doorways in the traditional sense that Harold had pretty much grown used to; it sounded like they ... hitched a ride, somehow. Like they could use the energy generated by the doorways when they were activated to travel wherever they wanted. They'd apparently been doing it for years, with no ill effects. Until now, of course.

Harold wasn't sure whose turn it was to ask a question, but when there was a pause in the narrative, he jumped in with, "What are you doing on Earth?"

"Why, we're here for the conference, of course." Matthew said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Harold had no idea what he was talking about. "What are you doing on Earth?"

Okay, this mirroring questions thing was getting a little ridiculous. "I live here," Harold said.

"I work here," volunteered Al. "And live here. What conference?"

"The Galactic Travel, Commerce, and Government Conference and Supershow," Matthew answered. "Betty's company sends her every year, and we tag along to make a vacation out of it. It's usually held on one of the more --" he paused to glance at Harold, "-- advanced planets, technologically speaking; this is the first time we've ever been to Earth. It's very nice, though," he said, as if to assure Harold that he meant no offense.

"I'm hungry," said Kim.

Everyone looked at each other. "Shall we go downstairs, then, and find something to eat?" Al offered. He led the way, and Bruno, who'd perked up at the mention of food, bounded after him. This convinced Kim, who followed Bruno, and her parents trailed protectively behind her.

Harold brought up the rear. He paused before descending the stairs, belatedly remembering that he was still holding his cell phone, and presumably, Eliza was still on the line. "Hey Eliza," he said. "Did you get any of that?"

"Yeah, some of it. Good thinking, with the speakerphone thing. Sounds like everything's okay now?"

"Pretty sure. I think we're good. Thanks for listening in. Hey, do you know where the kids are?" There was no way they could have stayed quiet for that long, so Harold knew they must have taken off somewhere.

"Al sent them to Trudy's. Nick stopped in here briefly just to let us know the situation, but they're all set for a while. I guess Trudy's demanding a full explanation, though."

Harold grimaced. Trudy hated to be in the dark about anything, which was great when she was giving you information, but not as fun when she was getting information from you. "Okay," he said. "Will do. Thanks again. You and Charlotte stay safe, okay?"

Eliza hung up with a cheery, "You know us!" and Harold headed down the stairs to join the rest of the group.

Al talked with Betty and Matthew for several hours, while Harold mostly watched Kim play with Bruno. He listened in on the "grown-ups" when he could, and paid closer attention after Kim fell asleep curled up next to her new best friend. A lot of the technical stuff he didn't understand, but he still wound up with some startling (and some not so startling) conclusions:

Betty, Matthew, and Kim were not their guests' real names. Harold was willing to concede that these were probably the real names they were using on Earth, but not their real real names.

Betty and Matthew were not being entirely truthful. Harold couldn't tell which parts of their story were merely embellished, and which were straight out lies, but they were definitely hiding something. He was hoping it was something harmless, like how he and Al were hiding the fact that they were temporary guardians for five very important children, and not something sinister, that would make him regret letting Kim have the last slice of leftover pizza.

He was fairly sure they weren't dangerous.

He was also fairly sure they could be dangerous, but the one part of their story that rang absolutely true to Harold was that they were looking for Al because they were hoping he could fix the doorway system.

Speaking of the doorway system, "hitching a ride" was a much nicer phrase than "illegal use of property," wasn't it? The more Harold listened to what Betty did and didn't say, the more he thought that perhaps their attendance at the "conference" wasn't entirely legitimate.

Eventually, it was agreed that no work could be done on the doorway until after the storm was gone. Polite handshakes and thank-yous were exchanged, as well as solemn promises to get in touch post-hurricane. Then Betty and Matthew each took one of Kim's hands, and the three of them disappeared.

Al burst out laughing. He laughed and laughed. Harold tried to wait patiently, but finally -- "What?" Harold asked. "What is it?"

Al struggled to get his breathing under control. "I think they're pirates!" he said.

"Pirates?" Harold asked. His brain created an instant mental image: little Kim with a parrot on her shoulder, while Captain Betty stood at the bow of a ship flying the jolly roger with a spyglass, and Matthew climbing the rigging with a peg leg. Was that even possible?

Al seemed to read his mind. "Not 'yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum' pirates, technology pirates. Hackers! You know: see the technology, steal the technology, use the technology to do things it was never designed to do."

"Hmm, who does that sound like?" Harold asked, only half joking.

"Hey! I'm government sanctioned!" Al retorted. "Besides, it's not like this planet has a lot of effective rules about that sort of thing."

Harold held back a comment on Al's insertion of the word "effective" in his last statement. He'd decided early on to take a sort of "don't ask, won't be able to tell if anyone asks me" approach to the legalities of Al's actions. "If it helps," Harold said, "I think of you as an ambassador; you know -- diplomatic immunity and all that."

"Really?" Al sounded delighted. "I think that's the nicest way anyone's ever described what I do here. I'm going to have to remember that one."

Harold cleared his throat. "So, about these pirates: good news? Bad news? Should we be calling the galactic police or something?"

Al just grinned. "Don't be silly; we don't have any evidence that they've committed any crimes. Besides, they offered to help with the whole doorway issue."

"You really think they can help?" Harold felt a flash of guilt that he wasn't able to offer any help.

"Well, I hope so," Al replied, "since it's probably their fault it broke in the first place. The network was never meant to handle 'passengers' like that."

Harold didn't feel so bad after that. He might not be able to help fix the doorways, but at least he hadn't been responsible for breaking them. "So, uh, where did they go?" It seemed like a very long time ago, but Harold was fairly certain that the whole situation had started because Charlotte had picked up three people in need of transport to an emergency shelter. If they had just reappeared at his sisters' house, with no warning, he was going to be in big trouble.

"Actually, it's sort of a funny story," Al said. "See, they actually have a hotel room in town because of the conference, but they were out driving on a supply run, and their car broke down. No big deal, right? They could just transport straight to their room and go back for the car later. But just as they were about to transport, Charlotte shows up, and they were stuck. I'm not sure why they didn't tell her about the hotel room, unless they thought she might escort them to the door, and they've got stuff lying around that's hard to explain."

That, Harold could understand. When they'd showed up in the loft, his first fear had been that they'd be suspicious of all the non-Earth gear lying around up there. "Works for me," he said. "I guess we should call everyone back in and let them know what's going on."

He and Al just looked at each other. The house was quiet for the first time in what felt like weeks. No kids, no obligations, and it wasn't like anyone would know what time they'd gotten finished. "Or," Harold suggested, "we could just take a few minutes to ..."

"Collect our thoughts? Rest our eyes?" Al caught on quickly.

"I've always found the living room to be very conducive to thought collecting," Harold said.

"I would have to agree," said Al. "Lead the way!"

Harold and Al "rested their eyes" until it was time for dinner. Neither of them wanted to actually make dinner, so they decided it was a perfect time to let everyone know it was safe to come home. That way, Harold and Al could tell their story while everyone else handled food preparation. It was a beautiful plan, and well executed. Harold felt like things were really looking up.

Until after dinner, when Lishendri asked, "When's it going to stop raining?"

"Yeah," Nadeka said, "I'm tired of rain."

That got everyone started. "I'm bored," complained Sabri.

"Me too," said Meshkalla. "I want to go outside."

Harold knew PJ must be next, and sure enough, she came through with a biggie. "I want to go home," she said. And then the classic kid complaint. "It's not fair!"

Harold didn't think she even knew exactly what she was complaining about -- that it wouldn't stop raining? That they were stuck on Earth? That she hadn't gotten to complete the planned safari-like thing with her parents? Whatever it was, everyone else was more than willing to join in.

"Yeah, it's not fair!"

"I wanna go home too!"

Harold figured it was a matter of moments before someone started crying. At least they weren't fighting with each other.

"Like you have anything to complain about!"

"It wasn't my plan that made everyone suspicious and got us sent away!"

Harold was still debating between the "be stern" plan and the "be sympathetic" plan when Steve looked at his watch. "Oh, look at that," he said loudly. "Time for bed. I'm going to my room."

Nick looked confused for a second, then a look of understanding came over his face. "Yes," he said. "Me too. Harold, weren't you saying you wanted to make it an early night tonight?"

"Um, yes? Yes," Harold said, trying to play along with whatever plan Nick and Steve had going.

"Because this is the night we were going to let the kids camp out in the living room, right?" No, it wasn't, because they never planned any such night, but Steve's question finally clued Harold in to what was happening.

"Is it that night already?" he asked. "I guess they probably will want some extra time on their own down here, in that case -- to get all their stuff set up and everything."

The kids went from whining and griping to ecstatic. They dragged all their air mattresses and sleeping bags and backpacks and clothes down the stairs and into the living room with no help from the grown-ups. Harold figured they probably wouldn't get much sleep, but it didn't really matter. Bruno would bark if they tried to leave the house, and Al would wake up if they tried to use the STS. Nick had blown out the oil lamps and all the kids were smart enough not to play with matches. And the power was out, so they couldn't even watch anything questionable on tv. But it felt like freedom, and for kids who'd had very little control over their lives for the last month or so, it was enough.

Harold awoke to silence. Real silence, he realized -- even the rain had stopped. It must be the eye, he thought, and fumbled for his watch to check the time. It was just after midnight. "Al," he said, in a normal speaking voice. Al was a light sleeper; if the silence hadn't already woken him, Harold's voice would. "It's the eye. Let's go wake the kids up and play outside."

"That's crazy," Al told him. There was a pause. "I like it. Let's do it."

They crept down the stairs side by side. Harold kept his flashlight trained on their feet, while Al focused his a little bit out in front. Nick and Steve met them at the bottom of the stairs.

"What's going on?" whispered Nick.

"It's the eye," explained Al. "We thought we'd wake up the kids and go play outside for a while."

Harold said, to Steve, "You guys must be really light sleepers, if we woke you up just coming downstairs."

"You actually went to sleep?" Steve asked. "It's only midnight."

"Hey, where's that glow-in-the-dark Frisbee?" Nick asked, before Harold could say anything.

Nick and Steve went to look for the Frisbee -- of course, spending as much time on campus as they did, it only made sense that they would have a Frisbee for every occasion -- while Al and Harold roused the kids, and gathered up socks and boots, and sweatshirts and flashlights.

It was beautiful outside. In the eye of the storm, even the clouds had disappeared, or at least lessened, and they could see the stars. There was the sound of water dripping in the trees and off the roof. Crickets were chirping, and for a moment, Harold wondered why anyone would want to stay inside on a night with so much to offer.

Then he heard a slap. And another. "Hey, something just bit me!" one of the kids said indignantly. Probably one of the twins. Harold had noticed that their sense of royal entitlement tended to show up in the oddest places. For instance, they could be totally laid back about who got the last slice of pizza, but seem shocked that a mosquito would have the audacity to bite them.

"Whoa, check it out!" another kid called, pointing his flashlight straight up in the air. "They're drawn to the light!" The beam was illuminating several moths, and probably a whole flock of mosquitoes that Harold was (thankfully) too far away to see.

The kids seemed pretty evenly divided between bug haters and bug admirers, and Harold wondered if there was a way to please them all. Luckily, Nick and Steve once again came through to save the day.

"Here," Steve said, thrusting an armload of ... something ... at Harold. "We should have enough to ring the backyard. Al and Nick will go around past the hammock, and we'll go in the other direction, aiming to meet up near that big tree with the birdfeeder on it."

Harold squinted at what he was holding, but Steve's explanation hadn't given him any context to start guessing from. They felt like metal poles, heavier at the top than the bottom. "Enough what?" he asked.

"It's those citronella torches," Steve told him. They'll give us some light, and at least some psychological protection from the bugs. Once the kids get moving, they won't even notice the mosquitoes, and this makes the dark a little less scary."

In fact, with the lawn encircled by glowing torches, it looked like some kind of midieval fairy tale. It was, as Sabri put it, "totally cool." Playing outside at midnight in the middle of a hurricane, wearing raincoats over their pajamas; it felt almost surreal, like a moment out of time.

Harold didn't have any boots with him, so he was just wearing his flip-flops, and they kept slipping off in the wet grass. He finally just left them off after they caused him to get tagged again in in their multi-team frisbee - tag combo game. Basically, you chased whoever was holding the frisbee, and they could only stop the chase by throwing it to someone on their team. If you got tagged, you had to go touch "home base" (the back steps) before you could get back in the game. It was a game that involved a lot of running, which was good, because it meant the mosquitoes couldn't land on you. Harold was fairly sure that in the light of day, the rules wouldn't make any sense, but nobody stopped to question them.

The adults stepped out one by one, and Harold spent several fruitless minutes searching for his sandals. The kids didn't ever seem to get tired, but the bickering level increased. "I tagged you!" "No you didn't!" "He never touched base!" Before it could reach the level of generating some serious hurt feelings, and possibly an all-out war between opposing factions, Al got everyone's undivided attention by activating a glowstick. Soon they were all snapping and shaking. Even Nick and Steve re-emerged from the screened-in porch to take part.

There were glowstick sword fights, and glowstick catch, and even a little glowstick juggling, if tossing one in the air while quickly passing another from hand to hand counted as juggling. The kids competed to see who could throw their glowstick the highest, with and without catching it again, and then trying to throw it between a "goal" made by two of the torches. Harold liked that one because one of the throws illuminated his sandals, which he happily retrieved.

As the kids finally started to wind down, they moved closer to the house. They jumped in puddles, and flicked water off their fingers at each other. Harold and Al basically encouraged them to get as wet as possible. Harold jumped and splashed and flicked right alongside the kids. He got into a dew fight with Al that only ended when they were laughing too hard to continue. It was the kind of night where the usual rules just didn't apply.

Eventually, Nick and Steve tempted everyone back inside with the promise of dry clothes and hot chocolate. Even in the summer, running around for a couple hours outside, at night, wearing wet pajamas, could get you pretty chilled. They left their footwear on the porch and went inside. There was a big stack of towels sitting just inside the door. Bath towels, beach towels -- Harold thought some of them might have come from his house, since they looked awfully familiar. He ended up with one that had all the Ninja Turtles on it. That definitely wasn't from his house, and Nick confessed that it was his. Harold had never pictured Nick as a Ninja Turtles kind of guy, but he seemed a lot more approachable after that.

The saw the first lightning strike about the time Harold was stirring marshmallows into his hot chocolate. The thunder started rumbling as the kids were stacking their mugs in the sink. And by the time Harold poked his head into the living room and saw all five kids fast asleep -- PJ with her glowstick still in her hand -- the rain was once again pouring steadily down. The adults sat in the kitchen for a while longer. They didn't really talk, but the silence was a comfortable one. The light from the mini camp lantern and the clink of spoons seemed cosy and familiar.

Harold didn't want their timeless moment to end, but he yawned. Then Al yawned, then Steve, and then Harold again. Nick put his head down on the table. "We should sleep," he said. Steve nodded as he leaned back in his chair, giving another huge yawn.

"Yup, sleep is good," he said, closing his eyes.

Harold sighed. "But then we'd have to move."

"We could stay here," Al suggested. "I'm comfortable." As if to demonstrate this, he interlaced his fingers across his stomach and laid his head back against the chair.

"What if we fell out of our chairs?" Steve wanted to know. "It would be loud, might wake us up."

"We might hit our heads," Nick added. From his tone, Harold couldn't tell if this was intended to be an additional warning, or a potential positive solution to the problem of waking up from the loud noise of hitting the floor.

Harold had a great idea. He wasn't sure it was actually great, but it seemed great to his somewhat fuzzy brain. "We could just start on the floor," he said. "Then we wouldn't fall."

"Yeah!" Al said. "We could use all those towels for pillows and stuff."

"But they're all wet," protested Steve.

Al pondered this. "Oh yeah," he said.

So they headed for bed. Harold saw something glint as he shone the flashlight across the loft, and backtracked to find the source. Mama Tibbles and Bob were curled up nose to tail in the exact center of his bed.

"Hey, the cats are back," Al observed, in the way that very tired people state the obvious as if it's an epic revelation.

"At least there's no kittens this time," Harold replied.

The kids slept late the next morning. Harold was glad they were ten years old; he had a theory that for the first ten years of a kid's life, the hour they got up at when they "slept late" corresponded to their age. He couldn't personally remember waking his parents up at six every Saturday morning when he was a little boy, but they assured him he had.

The adults got up just after nine and held a strategy session in the kitchen. According to the radio weather reports, the main force of the hurricane was forecasted to be turning back towards the ocean and moving away over the course of the day. However, the rain would likely continue at least through the next morning, and the utility companies were reporting that all customers should have power back "within 72 hours." In other words, "we don't know when it will be back on, but don't call us to ask, because we're busy."

"So," said Steve, "what are we going to do today?" He and Nick had really gotten involved with the kid entertaining (never call it babysitting where they might overhear), and Harold was grateful for their help. He was running out of ideas.

"What about golf?" asked Nick. Harold pictured lightning striking a soaked golf course. "Indoor golf, of course," Nick added. Harold pictured broken windows and guilty faces. "Like what we did at that fair, remember?" Nick said to Steve.

"Oh yeah -- that was really cool," Steve said. He explained it to Harold and Al. "It was like miniature golf, but with these foam kind of balls and plastic clubs." He looked around speculatively. "I bet we could do a sort of course right in the house. What would we use for balls and clubs, though?"

They discussed tennis balls (too heavy), marbles (too small), and hackey sacks (not enough rolling and rebounding action). Then Nick said, "Hey wait, I've got an idea," and disappeared into the office / temporary bedroom. He came out with a bright yellow ball about two and a half inches in diameter. It had a big smiley face on it. "Perfect size," he said, holding it up. "Perfect weight," he added, squeezing it -- Harold realized it was one of those crushable stress balls. "And --" Nick set the ball on the floor and gave it a light kick with his foot. It quietly rebounded off a cabinet and came all the way back. "-- perfect bounciness. Plus, they're always handing these things out at campus events -- job fairs, picnics, concerts -- we've got a whole box of them."

That solved the ball issue, and seemed to get everyone's creative juices flowing. Al suggested using yardsticks as their "golf clubs," and Harold came up with mugs to simulate the holes. "Everyone's got too many mugs," he said. Of course, then they had to test it out. Steve grabbed a mug out of the drawer -- that always threw Harold off; who kept their mugs in a drawer? -- and put it on the floor. "Hey, the handle even keeps it stabilized!" he said. They all practiced hitting the little ball around the kitchen and into the mug. There was a lot of muffled laughter and "shh"-ing of each other, and the ball kept rolling back out of the mug once they got it in, but overall they declared the game to be great fun.

There was a brief moment of concern when Nick and Steve could only come up with one yardstick. "There's one at my house," Harold offered.

"Two," Al corrected. "I found one when I was poking around in the basement last week. What about your sisters?"

"I don't know; probably at least two," Harold said. Harold's family had trouble throwing anything away, but they weren't great at organizing, either. The problem was less likely to be whether they had yardsticks, and more whether they could find the yardsticks. "If we can round up four or five total, that should be enough -- we can always split into teams or something."

"You know what would be really fun," Nick said thoughtfully, "would be if we could play through. You know, with the STS. Get all three houses involved."

Harold looked at Al. "Is that possible?"

"I don't see why not," Al replied. "It hasn't gotten any of our atoms scrambled up yet; it shouldn't have any trouble with a simple ball. We should probably keep the doors closed as much as possible, though, just to save power."

Harold wondered exactly what kind of power the STS was running on. Not electricity, obviously, and there was no visible power source that he'd seen. Maybe some kind of tiny generator? Antimatter? Cooking oil? For all Harold knew, Al could be running the whole system off his watch battery, and that was why he kept asking everyone else what time it was.

They sent Nick to convince Eliza to let them use the girls' house. He had given a sigh of relief when Harold told him Charlotte was scheduled to be working all day. Then he'd looked guilty, and said, "No offense intended. She's just a little ..."

"Intense?" Harold offered, at the same time Al said, "Scary?" They all laughed. "Eliza can get like that too sometimes," Harold explained. "But only when she gets really focused on a project. Charlotte's always focused."

"Yeah, unlike you," Al said jokingly.

"Hey!" Harold mock-protested. "There's nothing wrong with being easily distracted. It's just my 'vivid imagination' -- or at least, those were the words Mom always used on my teachers. Besides, I figure my sisters have enough focus for all of us."

By the time Nick returned with an "okay" from Eliza and nine yardsticks (nine! apparently their dad had been collecting them at one point, and Eliza had several from her art classes), the kids were awake and cheerfully eating brunch. They wanted to start playing right away, but Harold and Al insisted that they at least change their clothes, brush their teeth, and take a few minutes to tidy up the living room before they'd begin the game. That gave Nick and Steve a chance to put 36 mugs into position; 12 in each house, with varying levels of difficulty.

It also gave Nick a chance to recruit Eliza to help out, so they had an equal number of kids and adults. They teamed up -- one adult and one kid per team, and handed out equipment. In an attempt to be as fair as possible, as well as draw out the activity for as much of the day as possible, they made the handing-out process into one long game of rock, paper, scissors. Harold wound up with Meshkalla as his partner, a wooden hardware store yardstick, and a bright red "Look Listen Live" railroad safety stress ball. Meshkalla got a tie-dyed ball that said "De-Stress Fest."

Each of the five teams started at a different "hole;" two in Nick and Steve's house, two in Charlotte and Eliza's house, and one in Harold and Al's house. The goal was to complete all the holes in one house before moving on to the next. Holes could be completed in any order, and you had to play the ball from wherever it stopped. The only exception was stairs: going up, you could just carry your ball to the top; going down you could either carry it or just play it.

Harold and Meshkalla began with the air mattress maze in the living room of Nick and Steve's house. Steve and PJ were in the loft; Harold was pretty sure they were aiming for the mug by Al's work cot. Neither he nor Meshkalla were particularly interested in keeping score, so they just alternated shots. Harold did demonstrate a proper golf grip for his teammate. It was surprisingly easy to achieve on their makeshift "club," and Meshkalla picked it up quickly, but her preferred style was to stand directly behind the ball and swing the yardstick between her legs like a little kid playing croquet. Harold stopped questioning it when she started consistently finishing before him.

They worked their way through Nick and Steve's house, detouring to the loft for the three mugs up there before finishing the downstairs so they could play down the stairs. It turned out that no matter how old you were, hitting a ball and watching it bounce down stairs and around corners was always fun. Harold thought the mug in the fireplace was particularly clever, in a fiendishly difficult sort of way. And they searched for a good ten minutes before they found the last mug in the front entryway closet.

Meshkalla grinned from ear to ear when she made a blind luck hole-in-one "putting" through the STS into a mug in Charlotte and Eliza's coat closet. Harold felt a bizarre sense of pride, and they laughed together when the same mug took him more than ten shots. They passed Al and Nadeka in the kitchen and traded stories.

"Hey, we got a hole-in-one too, right Nadeka?" Al said.

"Yeah, a hole in one something," Nadeka told them. "Al managed to land his ball in the toaster at your house. I think you may need a new one now, since he played it."

"Hey, it bounced!" Al protested.

Harold didn't even want to know if Al meant the ball, or the toaster. "What, are you guys playing the extreme version of indoor mini yardstick golf?" he asked. "Meshkalla and I haven't broken anything!"

"Al says we're just putting our hearts into the game," Nadeka said.

Meshkalla called right then, to say it was Harold's turn to go, but as he turned away he muttered, "I wish you were putting your minds into the game," just loud enough so he knew Al would hear it.

Dinner that night was soup and pasta. They ate at Charlotte and Eliza's house for once, since there wasn't really any need to be in hiding anymore. Harold got all the details on Al's toaster story, and everyone else shared their own mini-golf stories. No one else had destroyed any appliances, although Bruno had chewed on Nick and Sabri's yardstick when they stopped to get a snack, and Mama Tibbles had gotten cranky about so many people invading her sanctuary in Harold's house and hidden Eliza's ball -- she'd had to go back to Nick and Steve's for another one. Meshkalla talked about her hole-in-one, and Lishendri told how she'd thought her ball was in the coat closet, but it had actually bounced through into Harold's bathroom.

The rain finally tapered off while they were eating. To celebrate the end of Hurricane Penelope, Nick and Steve agreed to play for them again. "But only if everyone will help us sing this time," they'd said.

Harold had agreed, but figured he'd probably be mostly off the hook, since it wasn't like he knew any songs from their planet. It turned out he was wrong. Not about knowing any songs from Al's planet, but about being off the hook. Nick and Steve patiently taught everyone the chorus to each song before they played it. Sometimes it was just Harold and his sisters who needed to learn it, and sometimes even Al didn't know the words.

Harold had also been wrong in assuming that Nick and Steve would only play songs from their planet. They seemed to have a huge repetoire to call on, and they did it all without any sheet music or anything. They'd just look at each other, and one of them would strum a few notes, and the other one would nod. "Anyone know this one?" they'd ask, and off they'd go. Their Earth songs ranged from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to the latest alt rock radio hits. Harold could only assume there was similar diversity in their non-Earth selections.

After a while they started taking requests. Al said, "You know which one I want to hear." Harold thought it must be that bouncy tune they'd played for him before.

Nick rolled his eyes. "Come on, you must hear that song all the time."

"It's not the same," Al told him. "There's nothing like hearing it done by the masters to bring back all those good memories."

"'All those good memories?'" Steve asked. "You've got a pretty selective memory there, Al." But he was smiling as he said it. He and Nick looked at each other and gave identical theatrical sighs.

"Okay," Nick said. "By request, this is 'Winds of Change.'"

"Hey!" Lishendri spoke up. "That's our parents' song!" Harold was pretty sure she didn't mean that in the romantic "that's our song" kind of way. His suspicions were proved true when Al said, "Lishendri, no offense intended to your parents, but they're terrible at singing. Worse than me, even, and that's saying something. They didn't write that song."

"Then who did?" Lishendri wanted to know. Al just raised his eyebrows.

"You did say we should recognize them," PJ said thoughtfully, staring at Nick and Steve. There was a pause. "I bet it was them."

"I knew it!" Eliza crowed, like she just couldn't hold back her excitement any longer. "I knew it was you!" Harold wondered what she was talking about. Charlotte was looking at her like she was crazy, so at least he wasn't alone.

"When you played that song the first time," Eliza said, "I recognized it. Tina has a recording of it. She told me the whole story about you guys, and how you were famous, and then you wrote that song, and then you disappeared -- and then you played the song here, and I wondered... but it is you! This is so cool!"

Harold said, "Okay, that made no sense at all. Sorry for always being the clueless one here, but could someone explain that in words that make sense, maybe with some connecting details thrown in?" He was feeling a little miffed that Tina had told Eliza, but Al had never told him.

"Al?" Nick asked, offering him the floor.

"No, you go ahead," Al said. "I'm the one who brought it up; we might as well tell the whole thing, and you'll be better at that than me." He gave a wry grin. "I'll jump in if you leave out anything important."

"Steve?" Nick asked next, sounding plaintive.

Steve held up both hands. It looked like he was holding back laughter. "I had to tell it last time! It's your turn. I'll just be over here with Bruno. Tell us a story, Nick."

Nick sighed. "All right, here we go. A bunch of years ago, there was a debate over who should be in charge of our planet. The general consensus was that the Cals were doing a good job, but a small group of people started making a lot of noise about them being unfit to lead."

"What?! They're the best leaders ever!" Nadeka's voice was filled with righteous indignation on behalf of his parents.

"Well," said Nick, "you know that, and I know that, but back then, some people didn't. They thought your parents were somewhat ... unconventional; they made a lot of changes that not everyone approved of." He paused, and Harold got the impression that he was deliberately not looking at Al. "So this group, --"

Al raised his hand. "Um, I think this would be my cue. You forgot something. There was also the issue of a somewhat questionable family friend, who had recently gotten a somewhat questionable blind eye turned on some of his activities. Um, that would be me."

Charlotte and Eliza looked stunned. Harold felt smug. Now this was something he had known, or at least suspected, for a while. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, smiling smugly. Al gave him a quick smile, then looked nervously towards the kids. Harold didn't think he had anything to worry about. In fact, Sabri looked delighted. "Way to go, Al!" she said. "You rock!" The other kids nodded.

"Can I get back to my story now?" Nick asked.

"Sure ... I guess," Al said, sounding a little stunned.

"So this group was doing some agitating, rabble-rousing, that kind of thing. And Steve and I wanted to show our support for your parents, so we wrote them a song."

"Hey, you forgot something again." Al had recovered from his shock, apparently. "Nick and Steve also happened to be incredibly famous musicians and singers at the time. They didn't just 'write a song,' they --"

"Who's telling this story?" Nick interrupted.

"Apparently, not you," Al retorted.

"Well, if you'd let me finish..."

"Okay, fine -- go ahead. But if you start leaving out stuff again, I'm going to have to jump back in."

Nick took a deep breath and mock-glared at Al. "So, as I was saying ... We decided to write a song that would celebrate all the things we thought were really great about your parents. It kind of caught on." Al opened his mouth to say something, but Nick cut him off. "A lot. It became a sort of theme song for the Cals, and helped raise a lot of support for them. The dissent died down, but we wound up with our names undeniably linked to theirs. Which was great, don't get us wrong, but we weren't prepared for that level of public living. Even as musicians, we'd always tried to keep kind of a low profile. So we decided to leave, take off for a while, and try something new. We wound up here, and it's been incredible. It's -- well, it's a whole new world." He smiled ruefully. "Running a hot dog stand on a university campus isn't quite what we expected, but we wouldn't trade these years for anything."

Harold was expecting Al to say something, but it was PJ who jumped into the pause. "So when did I meet you?" she wanted to know.

Steve grinned. "Your parents provided our security for a while," he said. "They took you everywhere."

Then Eliza spoke up. "So, can we hear the song again, or what?" Everyone laughed. "What?" she said. "We've got the story now, can we get back to the music? I want to hear this famous song." Her voice shifted towards the melodramatic, like she was playing it up for the kids, trying to lighten the mood. "This song of legend, of lore, the song that changed the fate of an entire world..."

More laughter, and Nick and Steve blushed, but they picked up their guitars, and this time it was Steve who said, "By request, this is 'Winds of Change.'"

The clock was blinking 12:00 when Harold woke up the next morning. It took him a second to figure out why that was strange. Then -- "Hey, the power's back on!" Even better, the sun was shining. Harold felt sure it was going to be a great day.

There was a feeling of excitement in the house, a sense of action. Harold checked his watch. It was only seven a.m.; a very early hour compared to when they had been getting up during the hurricane, but he could already hear activity going on in the downstairs. There were dishes clinking in the kitchen, and something else -- maybe the tv was on? Harold looked around and realized he was the only person in the loft. Even without any solid plans for the day, that fact was enough to get him up and moving.

Until he realized that he didn't actually have any clean clothes left to wear. They had been planning another big laundry day before the hurricane hit, but it had gotten pushed down the priority list by storm preparation. Then once they'd lost the power, it just hadn't seemed important enough to drag all their stuff to one of the other houses. Despite that, Harold still should have had enough clothes to make it through. But there had been that unfortunate exploding paint incident with Lishendri's storm journal, and then the unfortunate glitter incident during the indoor mini-golf game (whose idea had it been to put one of the mugs in Charlotte and Eliza's craft supply closet, anyway?). Even his pajamas were out of the running, since they were still covered with grass stains from their midnight outdoor time during the eye.

So Harold did what anyone would do when faced with a similar dilemma -- he went over to the pile of "clothes to be washed," and the first t-shirt and pair of shorts that he deemed passably clean. After all, he figured, there was a big range of potential cleanliness between "sure, I'd like to get this washed" and "this should probably just be thrown away, but I'll try washing it first." Then he headed down to breakfast. It smelled like someone was cooking something.

The kitchen was suspiciously empty when he arrived, but there was coffee in the coffee maker, and a lot of noise coming from the living room. Harold filled a mug and headed in that direction.

"I don't get it -- why doesn't he just do that thing where he turns into a dragon?"

"That was the last show! No one turns into a dragon in this one!"

"Why can that woman do that green glowy shooting stuff out of her hands stuff? Isn't that kind of like a super power?"

"I don't know -- I think she must have fallen into a vat of radioactive waste or something like that."

"No -- I think the head bad guy experimented on her or something."

"Oh. Wait, she's not the head bad guy?"

"No, it's that guy!"

"But she's -- what's her name again? -- anyway, she's way smarter than him! And stronger! And wilier!"

"Is it safe to keep that little animal thing in his pocket like that?"

"Shh! The commercial's almost over. We're trying to watch this!"

Harold had been right about the tv being on. It looked like the kids were watching early morning cartoons, and probably had been for a while. They'd pulled their sleeping bags into a semi-circle around the television, and all of them had empty or mostly empty bowls next to them. Harold just hoped they'd been full of cereal, and not ice cream or something like that. Al, Nick, and Steve were sitting on the furniture behind them, also watching the television.

Al turned around as Harold entered the room. "Good morning!" he called cheerfully. "You're just in time for breakfast!"

"Second breakfast," corrected Nadeka.

"Shh!" one of the girls said.

Harold made his way through the chaos of furniture and air mattresses and all the stuff that had accumulated in the room over the last couple days. He sat down next to Al. "What's going on?" he asked in a stage whisper.

"We're watching cartoons," Al whispered back just as loudly. On the television, the show switched back to commercials. Wow, thought Harold. That was quick.

"We're watching cartoons," Nadeka corrected again. "You're just asking a lot of questions."

"Well, it doesn't make any sense!" Al replied, with mock indignation. "That girl's in what? Middle school? Why's she so strong? Where does she get all those gadgets and stuff? I'm just trying to figure it out."

"It's a cartoon, silly," Sabri told him. "It's not supposed to make sense! Hey, Harold!"

"Good morning Sabri," Harold told her. Then: "Good morning PJ, and Meshkalla, and Lishendri, and Nadeka. Good morning Nick and Steve and Al."

"Shhh!" Apparently the show was back on. Harold rolled his eyes at Al and wandered back towards the kitchen. Al followed him out.

"The kids woke up early and got themselves breakfast," Al said. "They all had Froot Loops, according to Sabri, because they make the milk turn colors." It was his turn to roll his eyes. "They came up and asked me if it was okay if they watched morning cartoons, so I got up too. Nick and Steve made some kind of egg thing that they're baking for everyone; it won't be done for another thirty minutes or so though. There's also cereal, although no Froot Loops, I'm afraid."

"Any Captain Crunch?" Harold asked. "Also, thanks for the coffee."

"Yeah, that was my contribution to the meal," Al said dryly. "I don't know about the Captain Crunch -- you want me to check?"

"No, I'll make that my contribution," Harold said. He checked the cupboard. "Okay, we've got Frosted Flakes, Wheaties, Special K, something organic, that chocolate chip cookies for breakfast stuff ... oh, hey, here's some Captain Crunch! You want any?"

"You could toss me the Frosted Flakes," Al said. Harold tossed. "Thanks. Nothing like coffee and sugar to start the day off right."

One of the kids called from the living room. "The next show's starting!" Harold and Al looked at each other. Harold shrugged. Two minutes later they were back on the sofa, eyes on the tv.

It only took Al thirty seconds to start in with the questions again. "And you're telling me nobody recognizes his voice? That makes no sense!"

"Shh!"

Breakfast lasted until almost nine o'clock. Coincidentally (or not), that was also when the morning cartoon block ended. Then there was the question of what to do with the rest of the day.

Nick and Steve decided that the ground was still too wet for them to set up their hot dog stand again. They were planning on sticking close to home and doing clean up from the storm, both inside and out. Harold called his sisters to check in, and found out they both had the day off -- Eliza's class wasn't meeting again till the next week, and Charlotte finally got a vacation day, after being on duty for pretty much the whole storm. Their plans matched Nick and Steve's, although Harold was pretty sure they hadn't gotten anything nearly as fancy for breakfast. He could really get used to being around people who knew how to cook!

Al wanted to contact the pirates as soon as possible, to see if they could start work on the doorway, and Harold had to call in to work and make sure the building was still standing. He'd gotten a group voicemail message about flooding the first night of the storm, warning everyone not to come in to work, but hadn't heard anything since. For all he knew, he didn't even have a job any more, but it didn't seem too likely. Since the aliens had bought the company, things had been running more smoothly than ever before. In fact, with the aliens in charge, it wouldn't really surprise him if there hadn't been any flooding at all; if it had just been a convenient cover story for some other reason they didn't want people in the building for a couple of days. He'd have to see if there had been any rumblings on the phone tree about it.

The kids didn't really know what they wanted to do. So Al put them all on roving clean up duty. Basically, they would have the freedom to roam amongst the three houses on their own, as long as they were doing something productive. Harold got the twins to come help him get his house opened up and aired out by promising that they could help reset all his clocks. He figured even if they accidentally broke one or two with their crazy technology aura thingies, he'd still wind up ahead in the deal.

"Yes, Mr. Struthers, I know the power was out. That was the hurricane." Harold sighed as he listened to Mr. Struthers -- one of his company's oldest (in years) clients -- talk on the other end of the line. "Hurricane Penelope," Harold said loudly. At least he could move around, now that his cell phone was fully charged again. Even with all the windows open, the house was still stuffy from being closed up for so many days. And hot. The basement was much cooler.

"No, Penelope. That was the name of the storm." Harold was sitting off on one side of the basement, watching Al take the doorway apart with Matthew and Betty. Kim had gone off with Meshkalla to make cookies or something at Nick and Steve's. "I'm not sure why they named it that, Mr. Struthers. I think there's a list that they go by." Actually, maybe they weren't taking the doorway apart. It was possible they were just taking part of the doorway apart. Or something. "Well, the meteorologists, I guess."

Al gestured for Harold to come over. "Can you put your finger here for a minute?"

"Excuse me?" Harold asked. Then, quickly, "No, sorry, Mr. Struthers, I wasn't talking to you." He put his finger where Al indicated. "Yes, I've heard animals can sense storms coming too." Covering the bottom half of his phone with one hand, he whispered, "Is this safe?"

"Of course," Betty told him with a smile. Harold wasn't convinced. He should have been more specific in his question. "Is it -- Your rabbit seemed to be twitching its nose a lot the day before the hurricane? More than usual, would you say?"

Al waved to get Harold's attention, then pointed at a screwdriver lying next to his foot. Harold shifted the phone so he could hold it between his ear and shoulder. "Yes, Mr. Struthers, it is definitely safe to plug your television back in now." He held the screwdriver out to Al, who nodded his thanks.

Suddenly, he heard a loud buzzing noise on the line. There was a tiny shock like static in his finger, and the phone went dead. Harold glared. "Did you know that would happen?" he asked, shaking the phone for emphasis.

Betty said, "No," at the same time Matthew said, "Yes."

Al looked uncomfortable. "Not exactly," he said. "Well, sort of."

Harold checked his phone. The ... whatever it was ... had done more than just disconnect it; it had completely drained the battery. "Now I have to go plug it in again," he complained. "Upstairs. Where it's hot."

"On the other hand, it did get you off the phone with Mr. Struthers," Al reminded him. "You know he's not going to patiently wait for you to call back; he's probably already talking to someoneelse."

This was true. Harold considered continuing the debate; he was certain he could get it to at least four or five "other hands," but it probably wasn't worth it. Al had that excited gleam in his eye that said he had just figured out something important, and Harold thought it was best to just leave him to it. Maybe Meshkalla and Kim were done with those cookies.

They weren't, or at least they hadn't gotten as far as bringing some over to Harold's house. Just as he was sitting down on the couch, his doorbell rang. Harold jumped. He was still having trouble shifting away from the "hiding" mentality. Luckily, he'd put the phone charger in the living room. His original goal had been picking the room where he could be the most comfortable, but the living room also happened to be the only room in the house that -- if you tilted your head and craned your neck -- you could see the front porch from its window.

It took Harold several seconds to recognize the people currently standing on his porch. It was his next-door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. MacAllistair. Mr. MacAllistair was holding a casserole dish. Mrs. MacAllistair rang the doorbell again. They didn't look too suspicious, although they'd never shown up at his house with serving dishes before.

Harold answered the door with a tentative, "Hello."

Mrs. MacAllistair swept into the house, with her husband trailing along behind her. "Harold, dear!" she cried. "Welcome home! It's so good to see the house all open and lived in again -- not that we're blaming you for having to be away, of course!"

She paused, and Harold realized she was waiting for him to say something. "Of course not," he said, hoping that was enough.

"The neighborhood just hasn't been the same without you here," Mrs. MacAllistair continued. "We've all been worried about you, of course, and I know you can't tell us anything about what you've been doing, but who knows what you've been eating, or even if you were able to eat! So I made you my famous stroganoff -- just pop it in the oven to heat it back up, dear. So good to see you again! Come along, Walter!"

And they were off again. Mr. MacAllistair -- Walter, apparently, and Harold realized he'd never known his first name -- paused just long enough to put the casserole into Harold's hands and mumble, "It really is quite good," before once more following his wife.

"Okay," Harold said to the casserole. "That was weird."

He put the casserole in the refrigerator and answered a few more phone calls. Around noon, the kids came by in a pack to take sub orders -- Eliza and Charlotte were treating everyone. Even Kim tagged along, carrying Harold's cookie delivery. Harold went to the basement to pass on the news -- about the subs, not the cookies; he was still a little angry about the whole cell phone incident. He wasn't sure where whatever Al and the "pirates" were doing fell on the grayscale of legality, but better safe than sorry. If the kids didn't see what they were doing, they'd always have the excuse of plausible deniability. When he came back upstairs with the order -- one meatball, one classic Italian, and one turkey with spinach and tomatoes and pepperjack cheese -- the kids were waiting.

"Someone just brought you this pie," Sabri said.

"It's blueberry," Kim added helpfully.

"Did you guys answer the door?" Harold asked. They didn't actually have any rules about that, and Harold was reluctant to make one, but he also felt responsible for the kids' safety.

"Of course not!" PJ said indignantly. Okay, maybe he didn't have to worry so much, Harold thought.

"The lady just left it on the porch," Nadeka explained. "And when she left, we went out and got it."

None of the kids seemed to think it was strange that someone would deliver a blueberry pie to Harold's door. "So, none of you think it's weird that someone would just come up and leave a pie at the door?" he asked them, just in case.

"No."

"Not me."

"Nope."

"Not really."

"Seems normal to me."

"I like pie!"

"Okay," Harold told them. If they were willing to take the pie at face value, so was he. Blueberry was his favorite.

Harold shared his story about the stroganoff and the pie over lunch. Nick and Steve thought it was hilarious; Charlotte thought it was suspicious. Eliza was focused on more practical concerns. "What kind of pie?" she asked.

After lunch, everyone decided it was time for a break. Except for Al and Matthew and Betty; they hadn't even showed up for lunch. When Harold dropped off their sandwiches, Al told him they were, "working on a theory." Harold left before they could ask him to "help out" again.

He didn't go far, however. They'd decided on movies as the afternoon activity. Lots of movies. Movies on three screens, even. With six kids and five adults, there was no way they'd ever be able to agree on a single movie, so they were going to play three at once, one in each house. Harold had volunteered for the most kid-friendly movies, so Kim could be close to her parents if she wanted to be.

That was how he'd ended up watching something animated. It was about a llama, and the llama talked for some reason, although Harold supposed that most animals talked in animated movies. He was sure he'd missed some important plot explanations by getting up to answer the front door every fifteen minutes. In addition to the stroganoff and the pie, his refrigerator was now stocked with lasagna (vegetarian and non-vegetarian varieties), homemade ice cream, cheesecake, and a "flower arrangement" made entirely of fruit. One person even brought a shrimp platter, and Harold still had no idea why.

At least the movie was good, although the "kid-friendly" plan had kind of backfired. The kids were all at Nick and Steve's house, watching that pirate movie again with Charlotte, and all the other adults were at Harold's house watching the talking llama.

After the llama movie segued into something else animated -- fish, this time -- Harold's viewing companions began to shift around. Nick and Steve left to check what was playing at their house, and Eliza stole his vegetarian lasagna. "To make more room in your refrigerator!" she insisted. "You don't even like vegetarian lasagna!"

Charlotte stopped by briefly to give Harold an update on the kids' locations, which he appreciated, since only Sabri had showed up at his house so far. The deliveries slowed down too; only the occasional neighborhood kid showing up with a plate of cookies, for which Harold was extremely grateful. He and Sabri settled in to watch a bunch of crazy fish swim around looking for each other. Harold thought that if he turned the sound off, it would be just like that screen saver on his computer.

He left to make popcorn when the two craziest-seeming fish were about to get eaten by sharks. It kind of seemed like the movie had been designed to be turned into a video game, but it did have some funny jokes. When he got back, he passed the popcorn to Sabri. "So, they didn't get eaten by the sharks, huh?"

"Nope," she told him, grabbing a handful of popcorn. "They got away. One of them knows lots of stuff, but only sometimes."

"Okay," Harold said. That made no sense at all, he thought to himself, but okay.

"Hey," Sabri suddenly asked. "Are you wearing Al's shirt?"

Harold's first reaction was an automatic no. Why would he be wearing one of Al's shirts? But when he thought about it, he started to wonder. Was it his shirt? Did he even own a blue t-shirt that said "Harvey's Bakery" on it? He remembered pulling his clothes out of the laundry pile that morning. Maybe it was Al's shirt. "I'm not sure," he said finally. "I was all out of clean ones, so I got this one from the laundry."

"Okay," said Sabri, like it was totally normal to take dirty clothes out of the laundry to wear again, and then wind up not knowing whose clothes you were wearing. Not for the first time, Harold wondered just how angry the kids' parents were going to be when they found out what their children had been doing all this time.

Maybe it was better not to think about it. He nudged Sabri's shoulder. "Is there any more popcorn over there?" She passed him the bag. He figured he could at least demonstrate reasonably good manners, and said, "Thank you, Sa-"

"Shh!" She cut him off. "This is a good part!"

Maybe next time.

Harold was on his third movie, watching something about superheroes with Steve, PJ, and the twins, when the lights went out. Actually, the lights were already out, because it was daytime, but the television went dark with that abrupt click-fizz that only seemed to happen when the power was suddenly cut off. The kids barely had time to react; their "Aw, man!", "No fair!", and one "Cool!" all tumbled out over top of each other, and then the tv was back.

Al's voice called up from the basement. "Sorry! That was us! It won't happen again!"

But it did. Four more times. Eventually, they all got tired of restarting the dvd at the closest scene break, and they headed down to the basement. "If Al and the pirates are making it so we can't watch our dvd," PJ reasoned, "it only seems fair that we watch them instead."

Harold agreed in principle, but reminded PJ that it might not be considered very polite to refer to Matthew and Betty as "pirates" to their faces.

"Okay," she said, sounding doubtful. "But Kim thought it was cool."

Harold sighed. So much for the pirate thing remaining a secret.

At least Al was excited to see them. "Sorry about the power thing," he told them. "But we've figured it out!"

There was more, much more. Harold thought that it was just like school -- he was trying to listen, and he wanted to understand what Al was saying, but not a single word of it made any sense. Al was talking a mile a minute, gesturing expansively, and Matthew and Betty were nodding at apparently all the appropriate spots. Harold glanced around surreptitiously and caught Steve's eyes. Harold raised his eyebrows in a silent "Huh?" Steve shrugged.

Finally Harold raised his hand. Al stopped in midsentence; "Yes?" he asked.

"Um, I'm not trying to be difficult or anything, but what exactly have you figured out?" Al took a deep breath, and Harold hurried to add, "In layman's terms."

"We know why the doorways aren't working now," Matthew said.

"Oh," the twins said in unison, nodding.

"Why didn't you just say that?" asked PJ.

"I did," Al said, looking a little confused himself.

Steve looked like he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to ask, but he said, "So ... why aren't they working? Little words," he reminded them.

"Well, it's the phones, see." Al said. "Matthew and Betty's planet just developed a brand new kind of communications technology -- basically, a new kind of phone. And it turns out that they ... resonate, sort of ... on the same frequency as the doorways. It actually wouldn't be a problem if they were using the doorways like we do, but because of the way they're accessing the doorway network, every time one of these phones goes through the system, it causes a small power drain. I'm pretty sure that's what Damaris was picking up, although I don't know how. The phones had been in -- beta-testing, I guess you'd call it -- for a while, and just recently they were released to the general public."

"Pretty much an overnight success," Matthew added. Harold noticed that Betty was being very quiet throughout the explanation.

"Exactly!" Al said. "So all of a sudden, there were a whole lot of these phones, all over the place. It was bound to happen eventually -- there was a large enough concentration of phones in a single part of the network. It caused a sort of feedback loop, where a massive power drain in the closest doorway ended up pulling energy from another doorway, and so on. Instead of evening out, like the system is designed to do, it kept growing, into a domino effect that shut down the whole network."

Harold wasn't sure whether he just wasn't understanding still, or if Al's explanation actually made no sense at all. Maybe it was one of those things where if you simplified it enough so that a normal person could understand it, it lost any sense of logic and rationality. It seemed to be a good time to employ the "just smile and nod" strategy.

"Well, good job figuring that out," he said. "I'm guessing that's why the tv kept shutting off?"

"Yeah, we were trying to recreate the situation," said Betty, speaking up for the first time. She looked tired. "The good news is that we were successful."

"So can we go home now?" Lishendri wanted to know.

Al winced. "That's the bad news," he said. "We know what's wrong now, but we're still not sure how to fix it. So no, you can't go home quite yet."

The kids took the news surprisingly well. Actually, they all wanted to help. PJ suggested a brainstorming session, and Nadeka recommended that they get the whole group together at dinner so that Al would only have to explain everything once. Personally, Harold had been hoping Al would have to explain it more than once, so that one of the explanations might make sense, but he could appreciate the efficiency of Nadeka's plan.

The twins basically took charge. They agreed to gather everyone at Harold's house, since he was the one who suddenly had all the food, and sent Steve off to spread the word. Harold thought they might meet some objections when they told Al, Matthew, and Betty to take a nap, but the three adults agreed easily. Harold was assigned to dinner prep duty, and PJ volunteered to take care of dishes and drinks. When Harold asked what the twins would be doing, Lishendri just gave him a look. "We're supervising," she told him. "Obviously."

"See, that's what I don't get. Aren't most of Earth's doorways still hooked into the local power grids?" Harold gestured with an oatmeal raisin cookie as he asked. Al's explanation had taken up the main course, and then everyone had moved into the living room for cookies. It wasn't as big as Nick and Steve's living room, and it felt a little cramped with six kids, eight adults, two cats, and a dog all taking up space. But they'd pushed the furniture back against the walls, and most of them were sitting on the floor, so it wasn't too bad.

"Wait, they're what?" Nick sounded surprised. Harold realized again just how much he and Steve had isolated themselves. He let Al answer, not sure how much he wanted to share while Matthew and Betty were there.

"It was almost two years ago; we had a little trouble at home. We were worried that the doorways might be vulnerable, so we hooked a lot of them up to local power supplies as a backup." Okay, that was pretty vague. And the kids were all quiet too. Harold was glad he hadn't said anything.

"And yes, they still are," Al said, and Harold realized Al was answering his question.

"So why didn't the power drain affect us? Or stop it from happening?"

"There was a lot of controversy about connecting the network to local power at all," Al said. "No one wanted to accidentally cause a power surge or blackout that would draw a lot of attention. So we installed a kind of automatic power-down into the system. If the power in the network goes above or below a specified range, it cuts itself off from the local grid."

Betty looked up from where she was braiding Kim's hair. "Actually, that's what keeps happening. We can turn on the doorway down there, but there's no network power, and when it tries to draw on local power, it's outside that range, so it powers down again."

"How much power are we talking about?" Steve asked. "I get that we don't want to draw a lot of attention, but ..."

Matthew cut him off. "A lot. Enough so people couldn't help but notice."

"Everyone in town? In the state? Everywhere?" Steve persisted.

"Probably regional," Al said.

"Best case scenario," Matthew muttered, and Harold stopped his reach for another cookie.

"Wait a minute," he said. "We ran that doorway off a bunch of generators." Nick and Steve looked even more surprised at this news, as did Meshkalla, and Harold remembered she had been one of the only ones not at the house at that time. "Why does it need so much more power now?"

Al put on his patient face. "Because then we were just powering the single doorway. The other doorways had their own power sources. Now the whole network is down, and a single doorway on its own is fairly useless. There wouldn't be anywhere to go. So even if you just try to power one doorway up, that one tries to activate and connect to all the others -- and there's no way generators are going to be able to handle that."

"So we need a really big power source?" Nick said questioningly.

"How about lightning?" Sabri asked.

"Yeah, right!" Nadeka said.

"What? It always works on tv," Sabri insisted.

"Yeah, but there's no storms now!"

"Oh yeah."

"What usually powers the doorway network?" Steve asked.

"Well, usually it pretty much powers itself." Great, Harold thought. Another explanation he was sure not to understand. Al continued, "It uses the same resonance effect that caused such a problem with the phones. With all the doorways powered up, a very small amount of energy input into the system can be magnified and support the whole network."

"So how was the network originally activated?" Harold again, even though he was starting to get frustrated. It was like trying to solve a puzzle blind, when everyone else could see. He felt like the answer must be right in front of them, and they were just circling around it.

"It wasn't, that's the thing," Al said. "When the 'network' began, it was just two doorways. The others were added one at a time, over a period of years. We're still adding new doorways. And before you ask, no, we can't do it that way again." Harold shut his mouth with a snap. He settled for just raising his eyebrows and giving Al a questioning look.

Al sighed. "Limited -- or 'focused' -- start-up was possible with the first generation of doorways, but not the later models. It was thought to be a potential security risk." He rolled his eyes. "Obviously this situation never came up in he planning meetings."

In the center of the room, the kids had put their heads together and were talking in quiet voices. Suddenly Lishendri looked up. "We've got it," she announced confidently. "You said there's nothing wrong with the doorways themselves; that you could power yours up if all the others were on. So all we have to do is power up all the doorways at the same time."

There was silence for a minute as everyone thought that through. From the little that Harold understood about what was going on, he thought the kids' solution would probably work. However, their plan had all the elegant simplicity of belling the cat. It got a ten for style, but he thought their ability to execute it was pretty much zero. Harold hated to be the voice of doom, but Al still had that "thinking" look on his face. Harold said, "How --?"

But the kids had apparently anticipated his question, because Nadeka cut him off before he could finish. "We thought of that!" he said excitedly. "We can use the ship!"

Okay, Harold also hated to be the voice of "huh?", but he was willing to ask when he deemed it necessary. Luckily, Charlotte beat him to it. "What ship?" she asked.

Harold wished he had picked a better seat. He was on the floor, leaning against the armchair (the chair itself was taken by Mama Tibbles and Bob). It was comfortable, but Charlotte was standing up next to the window, behind him and off to the side, so he couldn't turn around to see her face without making it really obvious. He was sure she'd gotten past her whole "the aliens are really some freaky cult" idea, but who knew how she'd react to a spaceship.

Al looked distracted as he answered. He was probably still thinking about the kids' suggestion. "Just because we prefer to travel via doorway doesn't mean we don't have spaceflight. There's at least one ship here, because one was brought here to set up the first Earth doorway, years back. I'm not even sure where it is, though."

Harold had, occasionally, wondered how Al's people had managed to get doorways on Earth. It had always struck him as one of those chicken and egg puzzles; clearly he just hadn't been considering enough possibilities.

"You lost it?" Eliza asked.

"Well, it's not mine," Al answered. "It moves around a lot."

"Trudy has it," PJ said. This got everyone's attention. "She does! I heard her talking to my parents about it once. She could use the ship to send a signal telling everyone when to turn on the doorways!"

"I keep telling you," Nadeka interrupted. "It doesn't have enough power to do that. That's what I did my research project on this year, remember?"

PJ looked angry, but before they could descend into bickering, Al spoke up. "Maybe not enough to send a signal to everyone, but a single message? To one recipient? I bet we could manage that." And then he was off again, speed-talking back and forth with Mathew and Betty, presumably about the technical logistics of such a plan. It was all beyond Harold's comprehension. He caught a few words, like "bandwidth," and "microburst," but they were off in their own world and Harold figured asking for explanations would only slow them down. He went to the kitchen to get another plate of cookies.

He spent a couple minutes debating between the chocolate chip cookies and the snickerdoodles (he decided to bring both), and when he returned to the living room, Al had Trudy on speakerphone. Using Harold's cell phone, of course, but Harold figured it was at least after working hours, and anyone else who was likely to call him was in the room already.

"What did I miss?" he whispered to Eliza, holding out the plate of snickerdoodles.

She took two, and ignored his disapproving look. "What?" she said. "They're small. And we might be here for a while. I think they've decided that the 'send a message' idea is a good one; now they're arguing about the message itself."

Most of the 'arguing' seemed to be between Al and Trudy, about who the recipient should be. That didn't make any sense. Even Harold could see that the obvious choice was the Cals -- they had the resources to deliver a widespread message, the power to make it happen quickly, and they were probably worried about their kids. He looked at the twins. Lishendri caught his eye and put her finger on her lips. Oh yeah. Their pirate guests didn't know that their daughter had spent the day with royalty, and apparently Al wanted to keep it that way.

On the sofa, Kim yawned. Matthew cleared his throat to get Al's attention. "Look," he said, "we've got to get Kim to bed. Do you need us for anything else?" Al said no, and everyone said goodnight. Matthew and Betty promised to be back in the morning, and asked to be updated if anything important happened overnight.

Once they were gone, Al said, "Well, that makes things easier. Trudy, do you have your digital recorder ready to go? Can you do this over the phone, or do you want us to come get you?"

Trudy assured him she was ready, and could manage the whole thing over the phone.

Al turned to the kids. "Okay, here we go. Passwords, everyone."

Lishendri went first, promptly saying "Sunshine" in a loud voice.

Meshkalla followed up with "Gatorade."

"Achilles," said Sabri.

The kids looked at Nadeka. He shook his head and gestured to PJ. "Gelatinous," she said.

Then it was back to Nadeka. "Fractal," he said, as if waiting to be corrected.

Sure enough, Lishendri whispered, "That was last month. This month it's broccoli!"

"Oh yeah," Nadeka said. "Broccoli."

Al looked like he was trying not to smile. "Seven dwarves," he added. "We believe the solution is a network-wide simultaneous power-up. Please broadcast message and countdown."

He paused, and Trudy said, "Okay, I've got it."

"Do we have to re-do it because I forgot my word?" Nadeka wanted to know.

"No, that just made it more authentic," Al told him. "I think we should send it just like that."

"I'm on it," said Trudy. "It'll probably take me a couple hours to get it sent, but we'll have an answer by morning."

They called their thanks, and Al said, "Good work everyone." He yawned, and it seemed to set off a chain reaction.

Eliza laughed as she yawned too. "I think it must be the signal to go to bed," she said.

They left the furniture where it was, but they did return the cookies to the kitchen and make sure they were covered. Then they all headed for the bathroom -- actually, the STS in the bathroom -- and went to their respective houses. Harold felt a little silly going back to Nick and Steve's house when there was really no reason to, but all their stuff was there, and he definitely wasn't up for moving it all before he fell asleep. The day seemed to catch up with him all at once. He almost tripped going down the loft stairs to say goodnight to all the kids, and then he ended up in Charlotte and Eliza's coat closet when he was trying to use the bathroom.

Al laughed at him when he re-entered the loft, and threw a pillow at him. Harold laughed too -- he was keeping the pillow.

Someone was shaking him. That was the first thing Harold noticed when he woke up the next morning. At least he assumed it was the next morning; it was actually still pretty dark.

"Wake up, Harold!" It sounded like Sabri.

"What's going on?" he mumbled. "Where's Al?" Kids in the early morning should definitely be Al's responsibility, Harold thought.

"He went to warn Charlotte and Eliza not to visit. There's strangers at the door!" Sabri sounded excited, rather than nervous, but she'd thought the hurricane was one big adventure, so Harold didn't know if he could trust her assessment of the situation.

"Who's at the door?" he asked.

"Strangers!" Sabri repeated. "Meshkalla woke up when they drove in the driveway, and she got the rest of us up, but Nick and Steve's door is closed, and the strangers are just sitting in their car! We didn't know what to do!"

"Okay," Harold said. He was almost awake, and the conversation was starting to register. "So Al knows, and I know, and Al's gone to tell my sisters not to visit unexpectedly."

"And Al said PJ could knock on Nick and Steve's door and tell them what's going on," Sabri added.

Harold said "Okay" again. "What does their car look like?" It was too much to hope for that the kids hadn't checked it out. The car was probably harmless, just some relatives, or friends, or even a fellow door-keeper coming to consult with Al, but it did seem strange that they would arrive at -- Harold checked his watch -- 5:30 in the morning.

"It's just regular looking," Sabri said. "And there's two people in it. The license plate says 'SETI2.'"

No way, Harold thought. It had to be a coincidence. There couldn't really be two people who worked for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence sitting in the driveway.

Al stepped back through the closet door, looking worried. He was holding his phone. "I just had Trudy run their license," he said. "They're from SETI, all right." He didn't pause in the loft, just headed down the stairs, and Harold and Sabri hurried after him. Everyone was standing in the dining room; Nick and Steve sleepily listening as the kids all tried to explain what was going on.

"Listen up," Al said, loud enough to catch everyone's attention. "We've got two SETI representatives in the driveway. I'm not sure why they haven't knocked on the door yet, but they can't come inside the house without a warrant unless we let them. I want everyone to check the living room -- anything that looks questionably Earth-origin, put it under your mattress, or in your backpack or something. Anywhere out of sight."

The kids hurried off, and Harold turned to Al. "I thought you said it would be perfectly safe to be sending and receiving signals from space. 'Years worth of backlog,' you said. So why is SETI here?"

"I don't know! There is a huge backlog! And the signal's not even coming from here!" Al still looked worried.

"Um." Steve gave a little wave. "It could be because of us. Our ship," he clarified.

"We did send and receive a lot of messages right before and after we arrived," Nick said. "And it would fit with your years or backlog theory. If they'd only analyzed the signals recently ... it could just be an unlucky coincidence that they're here right now."

"Is the ship here now?" Al asked. Harold noticed that he took the "Nick and Steve have a spaceship" news in stride. It kind of made sense, when he thought about it. They were trying to stay hidden, after all, and they definitely would have been noticed if they'd arrived through one of the doorways.

"Of course," Nick said.

"It's in the crawlspace," Steve added. Harold hadn't even known they had a crawlspace, so he guessed it was a pretty good hiding place.

Al nodded. "Okay, and I assume it's not transmitting or receiving anything at this point? Nothing the SETI goons could pick up if they have some kind of sensor with them?"

Nick and Steve were confident that it wasn't, and Al seemed willing to take their word for it. "How do we want to handle the goons?" was his next question.

"Slumber party?"

"Big family?"

"Girl scout troop?"

"Oh, I like that one," Nick said. "Our group is a little smaller than a regular troop, and we'll have to pass Nadeka off as a girl, but it's a great explanation. They could all be getting their... I don't know, indoor camping badge, or something."

There was a knock on the door. The goons had gotten tired of sitting in their car, apparently, and were going for the frontal attack.

Harold and Steve were relegated to the living room to watch the kids, while Nick answered the door and Al went up to the loft to disguise any potential alien-looking stuff they had up there. Harold couldn't hear the whole conversation that Nick was having, but he thought they might have to stop calling the SETI people 'goons.' They sounded about twelve, and extremely nervous. Harold wondered if this was their first time away from the office. Nick's voice sounded calm, with just a touch of "honestly, officer, I have no idea how my car ended up going 70 in that 40 zone!" Harold was confident that he had the situation under control.

The kids, of course, wanted to know everything that was happening. Steve distracted them by explaining their cover story -- the "Scout troop decoy," as he called it. Harold got the brilliant idea of having the kids each design a Scouting badge for one of the things they'd done on Earth, and draw it in their journals. He even borrowed a piece of paper so that he could draw one too.

Harold's design was a tent inside a house, for the indoor camping. PJ's was a hot dog in a bun; she said it was the Entrepreneurship Badge. Sabri called hers the Pajama Badge. Lishendri had gone for Indoor Camping as well -- her badge was a fireplace with marshmallows roasting on a stick in the flames. Nadeka's was the Bright Idea badge; a glowing lightbulb, and Meshkalla had desiged a Hurricane badge with rain drops and lightning.

All in all, it was pretty anticlimactic. Nick sent the SETI folks on their way with a smile and a wave, and they all laughed about it over breakfast. "I just told them the truth," Nick said. "Minus a few details. After all, I really don't know exactly what signals they were talking about. And nothing I've seen or heard around here has seemed strange to me. One of them did comment on our 'big family.' I said it was a Scouts thing -- turns out he's got a little girl who's a Girl Scout, and we commiserated about having to sew on all those badges."

"Did you find out why they sat in the car for so long after they got here?" Harold wanted to know.

Nick laughed. "Yeah -- turns out one of them's not real good at navigating, and last time they tried to check something on location, they ended up in the wrong state. So today they started extra early, only to find us with no trouble at all. Then they had an argument about whether they should knock on the door right away. One of them said it was too early, and the Girl Scout guy said it was weird to just sit in someone's driveway. They were very apologetic about the whole thing; I almost felt bad about not letting them in. But I did tell them where to go to get good coffee and donuts, so it's not like the trip was a total loss for them."

"If only they knew," Steve said, shaking his head with mock sadness. "They meet a real live alien, and what does he do? Gives them directions to the nearest coffee shop. What is the universe coming to?"

"So, explain to me again why everyone's here." Charlotte had her hands on her hips, clearly upset that her house was full of people and she was about to go off to work.

Harold started checking people off on his fingers. "Well, we didn't want to be at Nick and Steve's house, in case the SETI goons came back, so that's Nick, and Steve, and our kids; and Kim's here because her parents are here, and Matthew and Betty are here because they're working with Al on some way to keep their phones from messing up the doorways again. Al's here because he's responsible for keeping an eye on the kids; same for me, and we don't all fit in my house. Trudy's here because she's keeping track of the countdown for us; plus she knows this is where all the action is, and she doesn't like to miss anything." He paused. "And Eliza's here because she lives here, of course." Sometimes it was just too fun to tease Charlotte. She glared at him, and Harold laughed.

"What's the deal with this countdown?" she asked.

Trudy had sent their message, as promised, the night before. The broadcast had started shortly after -- Ilia's calm voice saying, "As you know, we have been working night and day to resolve our current situation. We appreciate your patience, and we have a plan that requires everyone's cooperation. We have started a countdown at ten hours; when that countdown reaches zero, we ask all door keepers to power up their doorways. We believe this will 'reboot' the system, so to speak. If we are successful, we ask that you refrain from using the doorways for anything except emergency travel until we can ensure that this situation will not occur again. Thank you."

The message looped continuously, along with the countdown. Trudy was monitoring both; since the countdown "hours" didn't match up exactly to Earth hours, and it had started during the night, it would reach zero at about 2:30 in the afternoon. The kids were wild; Harold had begged Eliza to help keep them entertained for the morning. He figured they could go out for lunch -- that would take a while, and then they could spend the afternoon hours packing and cleaning up at Nick and Steve's, but their SETI wake-up call at 5:30 had left a lot of morning hours to be filled, even after a long breakfast.

Eliza suggested kickball, and it was cool enough outside that everyone agreed. Harold was impressed; kickball was one of those classic games that you really didn't have to understand to have fun playing, and it could go on forever as long as you weren't too picky about keeping track of the score. They split into teams, with Harold, Nick, PJ, and the twins facing off against Eliza, Steve, Sabri, Meshkalla, and Kim.

They kept it fun, and the game gave everyone something to think about that wasn't asking how much time was left on the countdown every two seconds. Harold had been a little worried about Kim, since she was so much smaller and younger than everyone else, but she played like a pro, and the other kids helped her out. Meshkalla turned out to be really good at kickball, which surprised Harold. PJ was also good at it, which didn't surprise anyone.

Harold's team was in the outfield when the van pulled up. It was a white van, which always gave Harold a bad feeling. There were two people in the front, but only the driver got out. He walked towards their game, and Harold moved to intercept him. The man looked at Harold, and Harold crossed his arms in front of his chest. It felt like he was being evaluated, and he didn't like it one bit.

"Can I help you?" Harold asked, knowing he was being rude, but unable to shake his bad feeling about the stranger.

"I hope so," the man said. He was wearing sunglasses, but Harold thought he was examining everyone on the field. "We're looking for several people that we have reason to believe may currently be hiding out at this location."

Privately, Harold thought that description fit almost everyone currently at the house, but out loud he said, "Hiding out?"

"Don't play games with me, sir," the man said. Harold noted that his tone had turned distinctively ominous. "I can see the fugitives' daughter right over there."

Nadeka had moved up next to Harold "Are you talking about my sister?" he said, with all the belligerence a ten-year-old boy could muster.

Harold was grateful for his presence. It gave him the perfect excuse for his next move. "Don't worry," Harold said soothingly. "I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding. Why don't you and Lisa take your little sister inside and get a drink of water?"

Nadeka nodded his understanding and ran off; Lishendri followed him with no prompting. Harold saw them stop briefly to talk to Eliza, then they each took one of Kim's hands and led her to the house. Eliza pulled out her cell phone.

Harold turned back to the stranger. "I think you must be mistaken," he said. "Unless I'm one of these 'fugitives' you're looking for." Al had been coaching him on his 'story-telling' ability, and Harold used his tone to convey the idea that looking for fugitives was the most ridiculous idea he'd ever heard.

"You're the girl's father?" the man asked. He gestured at Eliza. "Is that her mother?"

Harold laughed, genuinely amused by the idea. "That's my sister," he said.

Nadeka must have made quick work of his explanation, because Al was already outside and striding purposefully towards them. "I'm Suzy's second parent," he said, coming to stand next to Harold. "What seems to be the problem?"

The man seemed to hesitate. "Maybe our information was incorrect," he said. "You haven't seen a suspicious man and woman around here lately?"

"With a little girl who looks just like our daughter?" Harold asked. "I think we would have noticed."

There were sirens in the distance, and they were getting closer. The cavalry was obviously on the way, and the man was looking nervous. "Well, I'm ... sorry to have bothered you. We'll just ... be on our way." He started edging away, back towards the van.

Harold was feeling magnanimous now that they had clearly won. "Do you want to leave us a card, or something? So we could give you a call if we see anything suspicious?"

"No, no, that's all right," the man said. "Thanks." And he practically ran back to the van, reaching the end of the driveway just as Charlotte pulled up to block it, sirens blaring. Harold didn't know what she said to them, but they put their blinker on to turn onto the road, and drove off at about ten miles an hour, so he figured it was something like, "We're watching you." Charlotte could be pretty intimidating when she wanted to be.

Kind of like how she was when she stepped out of her police car. "Would someone like to explain what's going on?" she asked. "I got a call from Eliza telling me to get over her pronto, it's an emergency, and I just reamed out those two creepy-looking guys in the van and I'm not sure why, and you're playing kickball?"

"Let's go inside," Al said. "I think our guests have some explaining to do."

Matthew and Betty looked sheepish, but not guilty, when everyone trooped inside. Harold thought that was probably a good sign. They waited until everyone was sitting down, although Matthew was fidgeting uncomfortably thewhole time. It was Betty who spoke first.

"So," she said. "I guess I should start with 'thank you.' Nadeka told us those men said we were fugitives --" Matthew snorted, and Betty gave him a stern look. "We're not, but you couldn't know that, and we appreciate you sticking up for us."

"Who are you?" Harold noticed with some surprise that it wasn't Charlotte who asked, but Eliza. Then again, she'd always been the most curious of the family, and the least patient.

"Well, the truth is, we're kind of famous," Betty admitted. "At least in some circles."

"Are you really here for a conference?" Al wanted to know.

"Yes," Matthew said, a little too quickly.

"But not the 'Galactic Travel, Commerce, and Government Conference and Supershow'?" Charlotte asked. Harold had been trying to think of that name himself, but she beat him to it.

"No," Betty said. "Not exactly."

Sabri broke in. "So who were those guys?" she asked. She didn't seem to care about the fame aspect or what conference they'd been attending; after all, she knew plenty of famous people. She was a famous person. And it wasn't like they weren't all keeping secrets from each other anyway. But the van guys were exciting; they were worth talking about.

Betty and Matthew sighed. "They're our number one fans," Matthew said, and Betty gave a little laugh.

"More like number one stalkers," she said.

Matthew nodded. "They've been following us for a while now. First it was just taking pictures and selling them to some of the less reputable news outlets; now we're worried they may try to kidnap Kim. This fugitive story is fairly new; they usually try to convince people they're our best friends, or long lost relatives."

"Well, I don't think they'll bother you again while you're here," Eliza said. She looked at Charlotte and grinned. "Charlotte here lit into them in full police officer mode, and they crawled off with their tails between their legs."

Everyone laughed, but Al looked thoughtful. "You know, once this is over, I know some people who might be able to help you out with security." This tacit admission that fame was not something the group was unfamiliar with opened the door to myriad stories about security teams, bodyguards, and weird fans that continued into lunch.

Al had been excused from packing and clean-up duties at Nick and Steve's so that he could continue working with Matthew and Betty on the phones' disruption of the doorway network. Trudy was with them, apparently deciding that the technological masterminds were likely to be more interesting, and less likely to volunteer her to run the vaccuum. Harold was glad to leave them to it; he'd much rather be rolling up sleeping bags and looking for lost shoes than debating how to get a highly independent group of people to agree to turn off their phones before travelling.

By 1:30, everyone had gathered at Harold's house, with about an hour left on the countdown. Even the cats and Bruno were there, having reached a basic truce; it seemed like they'd agreed to work together to be in the way as much as possible. The kids had put all their stuff in the basement, at least, which kept it out of the way.

"Is it safe to send them through right away?" Harold had asked. He didn't add "assuming this works," but he was thinking it. "Didn't Ilia's message say to only use the doorways for emergency travel?"

Al had assured him that the safest time to travel would actually be right after the network was back up and running. "It will take at least a few hours for all the 'hitchikers' to realize the system's back online," he said. "And hopefully by that time we'll have figured something out."

There was a neighborhood-wide yardsale going on in the street, but none of the kids wanted to go check it out. They seemed a little sad to be leaving, even though they were excited about going home. Nadeka had been writing in his storm journal non-stop since he'd gotten to the house. Lishendri waited until Nick took Bruno out to the backyard (with Kim in tow), and then said to Steve, "Are we allowed to tell our parents about you? Because if not, we should come up with something else to tell them so we all say the same thing."

Steve smiled. "You can tell them," he said. "Nick and I decided that maybe it's time we come out of retirement anyway. How does a visit next week sound? Eliza and Charlotte have already agreed to watch Bruno for us."

The kids cheered.

Harold felt mellow, in that "something important is about to happen but I have absolutely no control over it and there's nothing I need to do" kind of way. He was lying on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, when someone knocked on the door. "I'll get it," he called.

It was a frazzled-looking woman and a little boy. They looked vaguely familiar. He recognized the boy first. "Raphael?" he asked.

"How do you know my name?" the boy asked suspiciously.

"We've met before," Harold told him. "I'm Harold. We gave you a ride back to your car when we were camping and you, uh, lost track of the path."

"Oh my gosh!" said the woman. Linda, maybe? Lindsay? Lindy, Harold thought suddenly. That was it. "What a coincidence!" Lindy said. "We just moved to town, and we came to the yardsale, but -- do you think we could use your bathroom?"

"I have to go," said Raphael solemnly, looking up at Harold with big eyes.

"Of course!" Harold said, ushering them into the house. They were met by eight curious faces. Harold wondered what Lindy and Raphael would think of the full house. He said, "Everyone, this is Lindy and Raphael. We met them while we were camping. They're just here to borrow our bathroom for a minute." He saw Sabri's eyes go wide, and she shook her head frantically.

"They can't," she said quickly. "Remember? It's broken."

Huh? Harold gave her a puzzled look. The bathroom wasn't broken.

"Remember?" Sabri said again. "The door isn't working?"

Oh yeah. That. Harold had gotten so used to just popping through the STS and using Charlotte and Eliza's bathroom, he hadn't even thought about it. "Oh yeah, I forgot," he said. "The bathroom is broken. You might want to go next door."

But Raphael was now shifting from one foot to the other. "I have to go now," he whined.

His mother looked a little desperate. "Could I just hold the door shut?" she asked.

Now Harold was stuck. "Um."

"Maybe Al's done fixing it," Meshkalla said suddenly. "I'll go check." She hurried down the basement stairs. And wasn't that going to confuse Lindy, Harold thought, when she found out the bathroom wasn't in the basement. Luckily, it was Bob the kitten to the rescue. He walked right up to Raphael and sat down on his feet. Then he started to purr.

"Kitty!" Raphael said, instantly distracted.

Al must have already been on his way up, because he appeared almost immediately at the top of the stairs. He gave Harold a thumbs up and held up two fingers, mouthing "two minutes." Surely Bob was at least a two minute distraction.

Both Raphael and Lindy seemed enchanted by Bob's antics, but Harold still breathed a sigh of relief when Al came back around the corner to give the all clear. "The bathroom's fixed now," he said, going for the "brazen it out" approach. "It's this way."

When he shut the front door behind the still somewhat confused mother and son, Harold couldn't hold back the laughter any more.

"They're going to think you are so weird," Sabri told him.

It was time to head to the basement for the final minutes of the countdown, so Harold didn't bother replying. Besides, it was true.

At 2:37, at least according to Harold's watch, Al entered the activation code for the doorway, and it hummed into life again like there had never been a problem. Harold breathed a sigh of relief. It was drowned out by another cheer from the kids, who started grabbing their bags. Then it was another round of goodbyes, and hugs, and promises to visit soon, and they were gone. Matthew told each kid he'd see them on the other side, and sure enough, once the last one had stepped through the doorway, he disappeared, along with Betty and Kim.

Nick was the first to break the silence. "So what did you decide about the phone thing?"

Al waved a hand at the doorway. "If they just keep them off, there shouldn't be a problem. Betty's going to spread the word."

"Plus they set up a resonance of their own," Trudy added with a smirk. "If anyone does go through with a phone turned on, it'll get fried."

"Yes, that too," Al said. They talked a little longer, then Al and Nick and Steve transported Trudy home. Nick and Steve returned to pick up Bruno, and Harold sent them home with several trays of food. Then it was just Harold and Al. The house was quiet. It seemed like years since they'd been home. They sat on the kitchen floor, passing a plate of cookies back and forth.

The sun was setting. The mosquitoes were biting. They'd eaten hot dogs for dinner, and they were spending the evening sitting on the tiny font porch, bare feet up on the railing. Life was good.

"So I've been thinking," Al said.

"Hmm?" Harold watched a mosquito land on his leg, and he shooed it away.

"Maybe I'll throw a party. For my half-birthday."

Harold tried to keep a straight face. "And then we could take another vacation," he said.

They looked at each other. Al cracked first, with Harold right behind him. First smiles. And then they laughed and laughed.