Chapter 1: In which Harold and Al disappear in the middle of the night.

"Harold. Harold, wake up."

That was weird. It sounded like someone was saying his name. But it was Sunday; he didn't need to wake up. He was going to sleep in, and then they were going to walk into town and get waffles.

"Harold!" The voice was getting louder. This time it came accompanied by a loud and angry sounding "meow."

Harold finally pushed back the covers -- just far enough to say "What!" in the most cranky voice he could manage while still half-asleep. It was still dark out. Nobody wanted waffles on a Sunday when it was still dark out.

The claws digging into his stomach jolted him awake. "Ow!" he said. "What?" It was dark in the room, and he could sense more than see the cat next to him.

"Harold!" Now the voice was very loud, and Al burst through the doorway. He was illuminated by a dim glow, and Harold wondered sleepily if it was from a flashlight or Al's phone. It had been hard to find a flashlight around the house recently.

"We have to go now," Al said. "It's happening."

The last part of Harold's brain finally woke up, with a burst of adrenaline from Al's words. "Now?" he asked. He was already rolling off the air mattress and pulling on his socks.

Harold stuffed his feet into his shoes and felt around on the floor for his backpack. "For real?" They'd been mostly ready for weeks, and even practiced a couple times, but never in the middle of the night.

"Yeah," Al answered, and Harold could see he was already fully dressed and ready to go. Al scooped up Bob, and the three of them headed for the back door at a pace that wasn't quite a run, but was certainly faster than a walk.

The darkness would have made the house seem spooky even if it hadn't been almost empty. No sofa in the living room, no table in the kitchen. Their books and clothes and all those things Harold's mother would have called "knick-knacks" had been moved out almost a month ago.

It was cold outside. And damp -- Harold shivered in the night air. It smelled like it was going to rain, and everything was suddenly very quiet. Bob started growling. Al murmured something that Harold couldn't make out and set the cat on the ground. There was another growl. Harold was pretty sure Bob was staring at the house, but it was hard to tell in the dark. Then he could feel Bob twining around his feet. There was one last feline head butt against his knee, and Bob was gone.

Harold suppressed his instant urge to call the cat back. Bob was headed somewhere safe, and he'd stayed with them for as long as he could. Still, even with Al right next to him, the backyard suddenly seemed a lot emptier.

"My book!" He knew there was something he was going to forget. He'd been reading it before he fell asleep, and never put it back in his backpack. He could practically see where it was sitting on the floor in his mind's eye, and actually took a step back towards the house before Al put a hand on his arm to stop him.

"Leave it," Al said. "There's no time." He sounded tired, and Harold wondered how long he'd been awake. Al's was still holding his arm, and Harold shifted so that their hands slid together.

They stared at the house. Nothing happened.

Al flipped open his phone and Harold glanced down at it. Abruptly, there was a brilliant flash of white light, and the house was on fire.

"Whoa," he said, pulling Al back a couple steps. He'd even been expecting that, sort of.

"60 seconds," Al said, still watching his phone. "Send the message." That was important. 60 seconds was the countdown, and there were things Harold was supposed to be doing in that time.

"Right," he said. Al's phone was occupied with the countdown, so Harold was in charge of alerting everyone about what was going on. "Everyone" actually just meant his sisters and Trudy. Really, he could have just sent the message to Trudy, since they were all in the same place, but it seemed rude not to let his sisters know personally. He fumbled his phone open; the message was already written, it just needed to be sent. Harold had written the first part -- "Now." Al had added a string of numbers at the end that he said Trudy would understand. Harold kept forgetting to ask about them, but as he hit Send, his curiosity was renewed.

"Hey, what are those --" Harold was cut off by a muffled boom coming from the house. The ground shook beneath his feet. "What was that?" he asked.

"The doorway." Al sounded stricken, and Harold wrenched his gaze away from the flames. He tried blinking to clear the afterimages and focus on Al's face. It wasn't working, so he just wrapped his arms around him and held on tight. "Ten seconds," Al choked out. Harold closed his eyes.

Chapter 2: In which Harold and Al reappear somewhere else.

Harold opened his eyes, but he still couldn't see anything. Not because it was dark, but because it was so brilliantly lit that his eyes were actually watering. It must have been the light, because it couldn't be tears, not when they'd had so much time to prepare and get used to the idea of losing their home, leaving Earth, and going into hiding for an unknown amount of time while people were trying to kill them. Okay, maybe it could be tears.

"Al! Harold! Are you okay?" Nick and Steve rushed over to them.

Harold glanced at Al, who was sniffling and wiping his eyes in a very suspicious manner. Harold quickly wiped his own eyes. "Yeah," he said. "We're good."

"Did you get the message sent?" Steve asked.

Harold waved his phone. "Yeah," he said again. He felt like he should add something else, but half his brain was still telling him it was time to be sleeping, and the other half was loudly exclaiming that there was a fire, and he should be running, and he really wasn't sure what else there was to say, anyway.

"Good," Steve said. "Trudy will get the word out to everybody who needs to know what really happened; everyone else can hear the official explanation when it's released."

Nick clapped his hands. "Okay, let's get you settled. It's still night for you guys, right?"

"No," Al said, finally joining the conversation. "I mean, yes, it's night, but no, we don't want to go back to sleep. What's happening on Earth?"

And then everyone was walking away, leaving Harold to follow belatedly after. He'd only been on a spaceship once before, and he hadn't exactly been given the grand tour. In fact, he'd pretty much just arrived, sat in one place for a while, and then been sent back to Earth. Based on first impressions, Nick and Steve's ship seemed smaller, but it was hard to tell. The room they'd arrived in had been small, at least. And empty, except for them. Harold hoped the rest of the ship had furniture.

Chapter 3: In which Harold sees more of the ship, and explains what's going on.

Luckily, it did. Harold dropped his backpack on the floor -- was it called a deck, once you were on a spaceship? -- and sat down on a surprisingly comfortable bench sticking out from the wall. Wall? Hull? If all ships were like the Enterprise, then they were on the bridge, and Harold was leaning against the hull. He'd touched it first, just in case. He'd seen Apollo 13 six times, when he'd gotten mono in college, and he'd forgotten a lot of it, but not the part about tinfoil walls. Whatever it was, it was neither tinfoil-y or cold, and no one had yelled at him when he touched it, so it seemed safe enough to sit down and relax for a few minutes.

Al and Nick were looking at some kind of readout screen on the far wall. Suddenly it expanded, taking up the entire wall, which answered Harold's question about where the windshield was. Didn't every spaceship have some kind of a front window thing? Apparently on this ship it was all digital, or wireless, or something -- it wasn't an actual window into space, at least, which was absolutely fine with Harold. He'd always had a sort of touchy relationship with heights, and what was orbit except a long and hopefully controlled fall around a planet, from a very great height?

"Right now we're in a geosynchronous orbit, so we're still close enough to pick up signals like this," Nick said. Harold looked up, startled, wondering if Nick had somehow figured out what he was thinking. But Nick was looking at Al, and Al was nodding. "On the other side of the planet, of course," Nick added. "That way we won't run into anyone we're trying to avoid." Al nodded some more.

This part, Harold had heard before. There was a group of aliens out there who were big believers in the writings of someone who died a long time ago, who had made a lot of really vague predictions, kind of like Nostradamus on Earth. Someone had decided that a bunch of his predictions could match up with Harold and Al. Harold had thought it was kind of cool, until Al told him that the latest prediction indicated that Harold and Al would be responsible for "a great destruction."

Also, "The Protectioners," as they were called, decided that the best way to prevent the prediction from coming true was to make sure Harold and Al were "out of the picture."

"'The Protectioners?'" Harold had asked.

"Yeah, it's a translation issue," Al had said, rolling his eyes.

"'Out of the picture?'" Harold had asked.

"That means dead," Trudy had explained, confirming Harold's fear. There had been a group meeting as soon as The Protectioners' plan had been discovered, and Trudy had attended as the resident computer expert and head of the phone tree.

"But we're going to make sure that doesn't happen," Charlotte had said, glaring at Trudy. Trudy had already looked back at her computer by that point, and hadn't noticed.

She had simply said, "Of course we are." And then proceeded to lay out a plan that made Harold wonder once again if she was really as young as she looked.

In Trudy's plan, he and Al had to pretend that they had no idea what The Protectioners were doing, while actually preparing to escape Earth at a moment's notice. It seemed likely that The Protectioners would go for the grand gesture of destroying their house, so they moved out most of their belongings. They assembled backpacks full of all the necessities for going on the run and kept them nearby at all times. Nick and Steve took their spaceship out of storage -- they were providing the getaway car.

The school in Alabama -- Harold still wasn't sure exactly what it was called, since it seemed to be part university, part monastery, part corporation, and part who-knows-what-else, but they'd been on friendly terms ever since Harold and Al had taken a trip down there to retrieve an entirely different spaceship and ended up on a road trip extraordinaire that eventually involved both the FBI and a neighborhood barbecue. Anyway, the school had offered to provide sanctuary to Harold's sisters. Eliza was enrolled in classes, and Charlotte was doing some sort of police officer community outreach program. Harold was fairly certain it involved teaching some kind of seminar, but he'd heard the story while he was debating whether a space station would be warmer (pack shorts) or colder (pack thick socks) than New England in November, so he wasn't completely sure.

Trudy had also moved her base of operations to the school, and was keeping track of everything from there. Harold had been a little unclear on what "everything" consisted of, and it had been explained to him like this:

"You know, all the logistics of getting you two squirreled away somewhere else in the galaxy, and making sure the rest of us don't fall apart without you." (from Eliza)

"She's making sure you get all your space shots, so you don't give everyone measles or something. And finding out where to get good coffee in Alabama." (from Charlotte)

"Well, actually," Al had said, sounding uncomfortable. "And this is a worst case scenario, of course, but there is a very small chance that, well --"

Trudy, still looking at her computer, had interrupted at that point. "Worst case scenario," she said, "Earth finally figures out about all the aliens coming and going, and causes a major galactic incident, and people start shooting, and I get to figure out how to evacuate all of us off-planet without the doorway system operating."

Harold tried not to ask any more questions after that.

Chapter 4: In which they receive messages from Earth.

"We're cloaked right now," Nick said. "But we should still be able to pick up signals from Trudy."

The cloak had come up after Harold had decided not to ask any more questions, so he didn't have any idea how it worked, or what kind of signal Trudy was using to get through it, but he did know what message they were waiting for.

Steve reappeared from around a corner, carrying a bunch of water bottles. "Water?" he asked, offering a bottle to Harold.

"You have a mini-fridge on the bridge of your spaceship?" Harold asked.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it 'mini,'" Nick said. His eyes were still on the screen, but he held out a hand for water. "Wait, we're getting something."

Trudy's voice suddenly echoed through the ship. "This is Trudy. We know you can't send back, but we're going to assume everything went fine on your end. We got the text message -- very informative, by the way, thanks for that. Right now it looks like The Protectioners think they got you. They're still hanging around the planet, but I'm not picking up anything about a potential escape.

Tina's job in the whole mess had been to recruit other doorkeepers. The Protectioners' predictions and beliefs were common knowledge among most of the aliens on and around Earth. Most people just ignored them; Tina was spreading the word that Harold and Al's lives had been targeted and encouraging other doorkeepers to take a stand. It had worked, to some extent. The doorkeepers had rallied to Al's cause, and it sounded like all of them had agreed to go back home and shut down their doorways as a sort of joint protest.

It was the "keep it a secret" part that hadn't gone quite as planned. Between people who were leaving "just in case" the predictions turned out to be true, and the people who'd heard through the grapevine about the protest, the doorways had been seeing a lot of extra outgoing traffic. Harold was touched that Tina had stayed -- Al had encouraged her to leave, but she insisted that she had complete faith in him. Lots of people had been saying that to Al over the past weeks, but most of them had followed it up with things like, "But we always vacation back home at this time of year," or "It's just that my kids are worried about me, and they asked me to come home." It was nice that Tina was sticking it out.

After the message ended, there was silence on the ship. It was the most serious Harold had ever heard Trudy sound. Although really, he thought she was being a little melodramatic about the whole thing -- "here for the duration"? First of all, even if Trudy wasn't human, Harold knew she couldn't use technology from Al's planet, which meant no doorway travel anyway. And secondly, Trudy was calling from the one place on Earth that Harold was absolutely certain had at least one spacecraft in storage, which meant she wasn't exactly planet-bound if she didn't want to be.

The silence seemed to stretch on and on. Just as Harold was about to say something, Steve said, "Well, I guess that's it then"

That was it. It was time to head off, into the great unknown.

Chapter 5: In which care packages are distributed and explained, but not actually opened.

"Time to head off," Nick said, sitting down in a chair and tapping on a screen in front of him. "To the bus stop!"

"But first, care packages!" Steve said. "Everybody sit down and relax. The hard part is over -- now it's time for presents!"

It turned out that the bridge of the ship was pretty much the whole ship, except for the room that they'd transported into. At least that explained the refrigerator. Nick and Steve did something that looked complicated involving levers, and suddenly there was a large-ish table in front of Harold. It reminded him of watching his parents rearrange the "furniture" in their RV.

"Aren't you supposed to mail care packages?" Al asked. He pushed his backpack over towards where Harold's was lying, and sat down at the table.

Nick gave him a look. "You've been living in a college town too long," he said, blithely ignoring the fact that he and Steve had been living in the exact same college town for years before Al had moved in. "Handing out care packages face to face is so much more efficient. Plus, no thank you note required, because you can tell us in person."

Well, that did sound like college student reasoning. Harold wondered what kind of "care package" was considered appropriate for someone going on the run. He was pretty sure Campus Catering didn't offer any packages for that.

Steve rummaged around in a floor compartment while Nick swiveled a chair around to be at the table. Harold winced when he heard a crash, but Steve gave a triumphant "Aha!" He pulled out two familiar-looking navy and silver backpacks, bulging at the seams. "Here you go," he said.

"A lot of people contributed," Nick explained. "Everyone wanted to be here to help and see you off, but we just couldn't work the logistics. So we did these instead."

It had already been a long day -- night? Harold felt a little overwhelmed by the whole concept, and was glad when Al asked, "Do you want us to open them now?"

Nick and Steve nodded. "We have strict orders to report all reactions to each gift, so yes. The kids, in particular, have been very eager to know if you like what they picked."

Harold noticed that Steve's expression when Nick said that was a little too neutral, and gave him a questioning look. "They picked out their gifts all by themselves," Steve said. "Some of them made some … interesting choices."

Since the kids were all ten and eleven year olds from another planet, Harold was starting to feel a little nervous about what he was going to find. On the other hand, it was nice to know they'd put something like this together. "The kids" were a group of school classmates from Al's planet who had visited Earth on several occasions, involving power outages, hurricanes, pirates, spaceships, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, dioramas. They all also happened to be the children of important people back home, and were all holed up in the palace, away from any potential trouble.

"You should probably leave the backpacks themselves here," Steve was saying. "Since they're pretty easily identifiable." Harold nodded. The backpacks had also been a gift from the alien contingent, and his had his name embroidered on it. Just because he couldn't read it, didn't mean lots of other people couldn't. "But people assured me that everything would fit in your other packs."

Harold and Al looked at the stuffed backpacks doubtfully. Then they looked at each other. Harold shrugged, and Al laughed. "If they say so," Al said. "Let's see what we've got."

Chapter 6: In which Harold and Al check out their presents.

The biggest thing in the backpack was a large fluffy pillow. Harold pulled it out carefully, not wanting to jar loose any potentially breakable items. Then he shook it in Nick and Steve's direction. "Is this from Charlotte?" he asked accusingly.

"Yeah," Nick replied. "It's been in there a couple days, and they seem to expand to fit any available space, but it will pack down, I promise. It was tiny when she gave them to us."

Steve nudged Nick with his elbow. Hard. Nick sighed. "Okay, they were tiny when they were in the package. But we --" Another nudge. Another sigh. "Okay, I wanted to see what they looked like, so I opened one, but then I couldn't get it back in, so I had to open the other one so they matched. I really do think they'll pack down small again, though."

"Where did she get these?" Al asked admiringly. He didn't look like he'd heard anything Nick had said. He was examining the pillow from all angles, squishing it down and watching it puff up again.

Nick looked surprised. "I don't know," he said. "I assumed they were from Earth. She said something about camping, and Harold never remembering to bring a pillow."

That wasn't how Harold remembered it. He was the one who did remember a pillow, but he always had to give it to his sisters when they forgot, because they were younger. He hadn't brought a pillow on this particular trip, however -- trust Charlotte to figure out a way around the space issue with her amazing shrinking and expanding pillows.

"Hmm," Al said thoughtfully. "Maybe." Harold waited, but he didn't say anything else, just set the pillow off to one side with one more thoughtful look.

Harold reached his hand into the backpack. It was like unpacking his stocking on Christmas morning, trying to drag it out as long as possible. He felt something small and plastic-y feeling. Looking at it didn't seem to help in the identification process, so he turned to Al. "A charger-adapter," Al said. "We don't have any electronics with us."

Nick looked at Steve. "I thought you said you packed those things so they'd find everything in the right order!" he said.

"I did!" Steve said indignantly. "This is the right order. If I had put the other thing first, Harold would have gotten stressed out thinking he wouldn't have any way to charge it, and Al would have gone off to invent a charger for him using whatever spare parts he could scrounge from our ship, and we would have had to tell them anyway."

Harold blinked. "There's more to this one, then?" he asked.

Nick sighed, seeming resigned to Steve's argument. "Yeah."

"Check the front pocket," Steve said helpfully.

Harold unzipped the pocket. Inside was, of all things, an iPod. "An iPod?" he asked. "Isn't that kind of --"

"Like a giant sign that says, 'hey, I'm from Earth,'?" Nick finished for him. "Nope! iPods are all the rage in this part of the galaxy right now. That Steve Jobs is so clever -- and he's even nicer in person, did you know that?"

Harold couldn't even begin to imagine how Nick had ever met Steve Jobs, so he was going to let that one go. "What's on them?" he asked instead. He flipped it over, as if the contents might somehow be listed on the back. Al had one in his hand too, but it was blue. Harold's was yellow; he wondered if PJ had picked it out.

"The kids did all that," Steve said, "so we're not sure, but I think you'll like them." His expression said he clearly knew more than he was letting on. Harold moved on anyway. He was trying to figure out how it fit into the -- what had Al called it? -- "charger- adapter" thing.

"Here," Al said, turning the device over and hooking the iPod into what Harold had thought was the handle. "It works wirelessly, too, so as long as you keep them both stored in your pack, you should be fine."

"Oh," Harold said. "Thanks." He tried it himself -- it was easy, and he wondered if there was any way he could get a couple of them for his sisters for Christmas.

Nick and Steve clearly sensed that Harold and Al would be perfectly willing to go off with their new toys for hours, ignoring the remaining contents of the backpacks. "I told you that was the wrong order to pack things in," Nick said to Steve. "Come on guys, keep going -- the kids will be disappointed if we can't tell them how you liked all the gifts.

That did the trick. Harold quickly reached for the backpack and stuck his hand inside. "Okay, what's next?" he said. His fingers touched something that felt like a book, so he pulled it out. It was a book -- the same book he'd left behind by mistake, although it looked newer. "My book!" he exclaimed.

"That's from Eliza," Steve said. "She said she had ten dollars in the pool that the book was what you'd forget. Here exact words were, 'If I'm going to be hoping he forgets the book, I don't want to have to feel guilty if I'm right.'"

Harold nodded absently, trying to remember what page he'd been on. He thumbed through the first chapter, and a laminated card fell out. "Who's this from?" he asked. It looked like a picture id -- at least, it had his picture on it, and a lot of writing in a language he didn't recognize.

"There's a note with mine," Al said, slipping the note and card out of what looked like a blank journal. He opened the note and quickly scanned it. Harold wished suddenly for a camera, to capture the truly unique expression on Al's face. "Okay," Al said. "The note has nothing to do with the card. Did you two read this?" he asked, looking at Nick and Steve.

They both shook their heads. "Listen to this," Al said. "It's from Sabri. 'Dear Dad,'" Al read. "'I hope you're having fun. We've been researching Earth customs again in class, and I learned that lots of Earth criminals have kept journals! It's how the police catch them sometimes, though, so be careful with it. I hope it makes you think of Earth. We are all thinking about you. Love, Sabri.'"

Harold laughed. "Don't laugh," Al warned him. "She wanted to get you one too. 'PS - I wanted to give Uncle Harold a journal too, but Eliza said she'd already given him a book. PPS - Did you forget your toothbrush? That's what I guessed.'"

Her last postscript reminded Harold -- "A pool?" he asked. "There's a pool going on about what we were going to forget?"

Steve looked sheepish. Nick just said, "I can't believe your sister was right about the book! I thought for sure it was going to be your socks -- that's what I would have forgotten."

And then Steve added, "It was all in fun, really. Your other sister even made us use Monopoly money in stead of real money -- apparently they have really strict gambling laws in Alabama."

Charlotte was a police officer, and Harold could just imagine her laying down the law for the group. It was actually pretty funny, and the more he thought about it, the more funny it seemed. "Who kept the book?" he asked. "Wait, don't tell me. Was it Trudy?"

Nick and Steve both nodded. Of course. Trudy was the data keeper extraordinaire for the whole group, so she was the logical choice. Although he did wonder how she had managed to fit it in with so many other responsibilities. Maybe she didn't sleep. Harold was starting to feel like sleep might be a good idea, but Al still looked as awake as ever.

"I wonder what I forgot," Al said.

"Your watch," Harold said absently, giving his backpack a shake to see if it was empty yet. It wasn't, but he saw Al look down at his wrist with surprise.

"I didn't even notice," Al said, sounding very startled.

"How did you know?" Nick asked Harold. "I don't even think anyone guessed that."

Harold stood up and reached into his pocket, handing Al's watch over to him as he sat back down. "I saw it on the kitchen counter as we were leaving," he explained. "So I grabbed it -- I forgot about it till now."

Al put his watch on, and Harold picked up the ID card again. "So what is this?" he asked, waving it in the air.

"Don't lose it," Al said. "It's from Ilia and Janar, right?" He looked at Nick and Steve for confirmation.

"It's an ambassador pass," Nick said. He took Harold's card and pointed to various sections. "This part says who you are, and what your relationship is to the royal family. This section says that you're a protected personage -- kind of like diplomatic immunity."

Now Harold was confused. "I thought we were hiding. Why would we need these? Not that it's not great to have," he added hastily. He didn't want anyone to think he wasn't grateful, even though he still wasn't quite sure what the significance was.

"Think of it as a 'get out of jail free' card," Steve offered. "Hopefully you won't ever need to use it as anything other than a bookmark. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, that card could come in pretty handy. It will at least get you an interview with someone important."

Al took over the explanation, since Harold still looked confused. "You can use the card if you get caught, or into trouble with authorities somewhere. It would be easier for Ilia and Janar if they didn't have to get officially involved, but they're saying they're willing to support us if we need them. The card will get you a lot of attention, and if you use it, it will get back to the Cals, and they'll know you need help."

"Okay," Harold said. He wasn't sure whether to be thankful, because it was a pretty cool gift, or worried, because clearly not everyone thought that their "foolproof plan" was quite as "foolproof" as they'd made it seem when it was explained to him. He was going to say something else, but Al and Steve started talking about some technical detail on the cards, and Nick went off to check something with the ship's controls, and Harold closed his eyes, just for a minute.

Chapter 7: In which everyone eats breakfast.

When Harold opened his eyes, it felt like only a few minutes had passed. He checked his watch. He wasn't exactly sure when he had fallen asleep, but it looked like only a few minutes had passed. His neck hurt, though, and he rubbed it as he sat up. "What's going on?" he asked. Nick and Steve were nowhere to be seen, and Al was snoring quietly next to him, with his head resting on the table.

"We're nearly there." With the voice came a noticeable brightening of the lights, and Harold belatedly realized they had been dimmed. He squinted towards the front of the ship. One of the chairs swiveled towards him, and Steve gave him a small wave. "You and Al looked pretty beat; we figured you could use the sleep, if you could get it."

"Where's Nick?" Harold asked, getting up as quietly as he could. His sneakers didn't make any noise on the deck. Weren't spaceships supposed to have metal deck plating? This one seemed to have something much softer and quieter as its flooring material. He would almost have called it carpeting, if that word didn't seem so incongruous when combined with "spaceship."

"He's finding us a parking space," Steve said. "He'll be back in a minute."

Harold had always assumed that traveling in space would be luxurious and fun, with lots of smooth connections and instantaneous arrivals. So far, though, it was a lot more "driving on the interstate" than "Star Trek." Except they hadn't gotten lost yet, and there weren't any Tholians. He hoped. But still, parking spaces?

There was a thud, and Harold spun around. Al had shifted in his sleep and knocked one of their new chargers on the floor. He startled awake. "What?" Al said. "I'm ready for the laundry now."

Nick walked in just in time to hear Al's comment. "No laundry here," he said with a laugh. "How about some breakfast instead?" Turning to Steve, Nick tossed him a plastic circle -- at least, that was what it looked like to Harold. "We've got a spot in long term storage, but we'll have to wait a little while for it. There should still be plenty of time."

Harold realized he was starving. Even Al, who still looked mostly asleep, perked up at the mention of food. "Breakfast?" he asked.

They cleared off the table, stowing their new gifts in their larger packs. Al picked up the charger he'd knocked on the floor and shook it. "Impact resistant," he said. "Good feature."

Nick and Steve made several trips to the table with armloads of food. "We're trying to clear out the refrigerator," Nick explained. "Since we're coming with you, we don't want to leave anything perishable on board."

"Can we go over that part of the plan again?" Harold asked, munching on a waffle. The best thing about eating with Nick and Steve was that they never made a big deal about things like silverware. Harold thought it had something to do with running a hot dog stand in a college town, but he couldn't be sure. He just knew he always enjoyed waffles more when he could eat them with his fingers.

Nick gestured with his juice. "It's like this," he said. "Now that you've escaped The Protectioners' first attempt, they're going to be looking for you, so you're going into hiding." Nick had started back at the beginning of the plan. Harold was already crystal clear on that part -- it had been his house that burned down, after all -- but he could see Nick was on a roll, so he didn't say anything.

"We're using our ship to take you to this little station, because it's small enough so no one will notice, hopefully. From here we'll split up and head to a couple of the bigger stations. Steve will go with you, and I'll go with Al -- we'll help you get onto the stations without having to give away your actual identities."

That was the part Harold was confused about. How were Nick and Steve going to do that, exactly? Nick continued on before he could interrupt. "Harold, you've got a three day layover, then someone will come help you get to your next stop. Al, you've got a two day wait, then you'll be at another station for the third day. Both of you will meet up after that at our 'undisclosed location,' where you get to hang out until we can figure out how to deal with these Protectioner guys."

Huh. It seemed fairly straightforward when Nick laid it out like that, but Harold still felt nervous. He'd been living with aliens for years, on Earth, but this was the first time he'd ever been offplanet. Well, there had been that one time over the summer -- he and Al had spent a very brief period of time on a spaceship after they'd been kidnapped by aliens -- but Harold didn't really count that. This was his first real trip into space, and he was going to be all alone. No Al, no cats, no sisters checking up on him all the time, no text messages from the kids or baked goods coming from the neighbors. Harold suddenly realized that Nick was still talking.

"Just remember not to tell anyone your real name, and don't act like you know us once we leave the ship," Nick was saying. "Lots of cameras on these stations. But don't worry. It'll be fun."

"Fun" wasn't exactly the word Harold had been thinking of, but okay. He ate another waffle while he was trying to decide if he had forgotten any important questions. Al caught his eye and gave him a thumbs up. "We can do this," Al said. "You'll see -- everything will be fine, and we'll be back on Earth in no time." He lowered his voice and leaned in close. In a conspiratorial whisper, he added, "And we'll find a house with a bigger porch than these guys have."

Harold laughed, as Nick said "hey!" in a mock-indignant tone. Harold smiled back at Al. "I know," he said. "We can do it."

Chapter 8: In which the great unknown turns out to be neither great, nor unknown.

They entered the station as a group, since there was really no way to disguise the fact that they'd all arrived on the same ship. Once inside, however, they dispersed. Harold sat down right away. He figured that his best chance for not sticking out in the crowd was to stick with the crowd. Most people seemed to be sitting down, so he did too.

Using "rummaging around in his pack" as a cover, Harold saw Nick head straight for what looked like a snack food stand. They'd just eaten breakfast! Maybe he was just checking out what they had; they were almost like competitors in the snack food selling market, in a galactic sense.

Al went towards the far wall. It looked like it was filled with schedules. Of course, Harold couldn't read them -- apparently, only being able to read in English was going to be a problem. At least he'd gotten a neat translator from Trudy, so he could understand what people were saying. It would actually do written stuff too, it just took a while. Harold hoped his ride got there soon. He wasn't sure where Steve had gone, but it couldn't be far. The station was oddly similar to a train station he'd been in once on Earth -- small, crowded, hot, and grimy.

Forty minutes later, there was one more thing Harold could say for certain that galactic "bus stops" had in common with the ones on Earth. Nothing ever arrived when it was supposed to. He'd overheard several people grumbling about the perpetual lateness of the public transportation system. Apparently, the ships were always late -- except for the times when they were early, which meant you couldn't just get there late. You had to get to the station early, "just in case." It could have been lifted word for word from a conversation at the bus stop at the corner of Harold's street. He wasn't sure if that was reassuring (in a "we're all just people" kind of sense), or really discouraging (in a "really, with all this technology, they still can't figure out how to get the buses to run on time?" kind of way).

Fifty minutes later, Harold was starting to feel hungry. He suddenly saw the wisdom of Nick's strategy. The line for snacks had at least 25 people in it. Some of them were carrying babies.

Sixty minutes later, he snuck a glance at Steve, who had finally sat down several rows over. Steve's arms were folded across his chest, and he had slouched down far enough in his seat that he had propped his feet up on the chair across the aisle. There was a magazine draped across his face, and the pages were rustling as he breathed. He looked asleep. Harold decided it was time to look for his book.

Chapter 9: In which Harold rides the bus, and is bored.

One hundred and seventeen minutes later, a series of chimes echoed through the room. Harold looked up, but no one else did. Steve kept sleeping, and the kids who'd been playing in the aisle kept arguing over whose turn it was next.

Then a grinding sound started. It was followed by clicks, beeps, and a high pitched whistle that went on and on. It was like the real-life version of the noises that one of those old dial-up modems made. Finally, all the sounds stopped -- there was a half-second pause, and one more cheery "ding!" Harold wasn't sure whether he should applaud, or take cover.

The ceiling started blinking. Now people looked up. All the way up; Harold had to crane his neck to see what he'd thought was a plain ceiling reveal itself as a giant screen. Text scrolled across the white panels, and Harold hoped it wasn't anything he needed to understand. He didn't -- it was all explained again in pictures. First a picture of the station they were currently on, then a shuttle, then the station he was supposed to be headed for. There were several pictures that seemed to show all variety of creatures gathering up their belongings, which was what seemed to be going on around him, so Harold grabbed his pack and put it in his lap.

The ceiling went all white again, and a pink bar appeared. The pink was slowly getting smaller, like the loading bar on a computer, but in reverse. He wondered what happened when it was all gone. Maybe they would all line up, or a door would open and they'd all stampede towards it. Maybe -- the station fuzzed into gray all around him.

Or maybe they'd just be transported directly onto the shuttle. Harold's ears were ringing. He was starting to realize why Al's people preferred the doorways to the public shuttles. At least he had an aisle seat, so he wouldn't have to look out the window. It was also a seat near the back of the shuttle, so he had a good view of the other passengers.

He picked out Steve fairly easily, six rows ahead on the opposite side of the shuttle. He still had the magazine over his face. Harold wondered if he was actually still asleep, or if he was just faking it so he could avoid having to talk to his seat-mates -- two very bubbly looking people who kept trading brochures back and forth. Harold would have thought they were planning a sightseeing trip, except that all the brochures were upside down, and they kept bursting into laughter.

Next to Harold was a pet carrier. From the sounds, he was pretty sure there was a cat inside, but next to the carrier was a man dressed in a suit. When Harold glanced over at him, suit-guy put a protective hand on the carrier and raised one eyebrow. The message was clear -- "no looking, no touching, no talking." Harold kept his eyes averted after that.

The ride itself was smooth. There were screens in the back of each seat that let passengers know where they were along the route, and showed the progress of the shuttle in real time. Other than that, Harold couldn't even tell they were moving. There was no engine noise, no rumbling vibration or sense of forward momentum. It was weird. No wonder Al had told him not to worry about motion sickness.

The interior of the shuttle was a dull gray, with nondescript but fairly comfortable seats. Harold tried to file the information away, since he was sure his sisters would want to know all the details when he got back home. He hadn't noticed any cameras himself, but the boys in the row ahead of him had made a game out of finding them -- they'd been up to nine before they'd been shushed by the woman sitting with them. Harold figured she was probably their mom; she had totally used the "mom voice" on them, and they'd clammed up instantly.

Luggage was stored under the seats, like on an airplane, but with slightly more space, because nobody seemed to care whether it was under the seat, or just somewhere on the floor near your seat. Also like an airplane, after the first five minutes, it was completely boring.

Harold was bored. Everyone around him seemed to be typing on tiny screens, or talking into tiny phones. No one was doing anything fun to watch. Also, he realized that the seat screen wasn't showing a real time depiction of their location -- it was actually a looping video that showed them traveling the route again and again. Which meant he was bored and he had no idea where they were, or how much longer they were going to be traveling.

He looked around again. He felt sort of hungry, but he couldn't remember where he'd put the snacks in his backpack, and he didn't want to start looking for them if they were about to arrive. And no one else was eating, so he wasn't sure it was allowed. He also wanted to get up and walk around, but no one was doing that either, so he stayed sitting down. He looked at his watch. It was mid-morning back home, unless something had gone wacky with his watch. It had happened before. Alien technology didn't always interact with Earth technology in the best ways. He wondered what his sisters were doing. It was an hour earlier in Alabama, he remembered.

Harold was really bored. He thought about reading more in his book. He didn't want to waste it, though -- he only had one book. Plus, he wasn't sure he wanted to take the chance of leaving it behind again. He looked around the shuttle. There still wasn't anything interesting going on. He took his pulse. It was normal. His watch was probably working fine, then. He tried a couple times to do it without looking at his watch. It seemed like it should be possible to count seconds with one half of your brain, and count your pulse with the other half, like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. He couldn't do it.

Harold sighed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the suit-guy sitting by the window turn towards him, probably giving him an evil glare. Harold sighed again anyway; he was just that bored. He checked his watch again. He tried pushing all the buttons at once. Nothing happened. Then he ran through all of the different modes. The stopwatch was kind of fun. Harold was really, really bored.

Chapter 10: In which things get much less boring.

When the seat-back display started blinking, Harold was yawning. More streaming text, more picture tutorials. He'd only done it once before, and it was already feeling like a well-worn routine. He gripped his backpack straps and watched the pink bar shrink to zero. Six rows up, he could see that Steve had finally "woken up." The magazine was nowhere in sight. As the shuttle fuzzed out, Harold wondered what the station would look like.

Blue. Everything was blue, all around him. Blue and strobing, which was seriously not helping the ringing in his ears. Harold stumbled to his feet, but he couldn't see anything except the blue lights flashing. He also couldn't hear anything, which was starting to become a little worrisome. Suddenly the blue lights cut off, and Harold could see that he was in a white room similar to the one he and Al had appeared in on Nick and Steve's ship. The room was full of people who looked as dazed as he felt, and he realized there was some sort of announcement being broadcast. That was good, since it meant his hearing was back.

"Shuttle passengers," the announcement voice said. "A minor fluctuation has occurred in your transport beam. Do not be alarmed. Medical and security personnel will be arriving at your location momentarily. Please do not attempt to leave at this time. Form an orderly queue."

From the way people were rushing into the room (Harold assumed they were the aforementioned medical and security personnel), Harold was guessing that a "minor fluctuation" was definitely something to be alarmed about. Either that or these people were just really excited about their jobs. The other passengers also appeared to be quite alarmed. No orderly queue was forming. More like a disorderly mass, all asking questions at once and demanding to know what was happening, and where their shopping bag had gone, and who was in charge of the transport.

The most confusing part, for Harold at least, was that the station personnel weren't color-coded. On every sci-fi show he'd seen, the different departments had all worn different colored clothes, so it was easy to tell them apart. These people all looked the same -- they all wore gray pants, and green jackets. Some of them looked stern, so Harold figured they were from security. The medical ones just looked fluttery and concerned.

Within a few minutes, the stern ones had convinced most of the passengers to queue up, but they'd lost the fight for "orderly." Passengers had to go through security first -- ID check, bag check, etc. Then they passed through medical before they were free to go. Harold hoped this was part of Steve's plan, because he didn't actually have an ID.

Harold shuffled into line with the rest of the shuttle's passengers, hoping he was doing the right thing. He finally caught sight of Steve, chatting up a woman towards the front of the room. Steve was gesturing, but Harold was too far away to hear what he was saying. It must have been something like, "Can I cut in front of you," because the next thing Harold saw was the woman stepping out of line and letting Steve have her spot.

As the woman walked down the line, Harold could see she was studying each person carefully. When she passed where he was standing, she paused, gave a brilliant smile, and waved excitedly -- to the person directly behind him. That was weird. Harold glanced back; it was the suit guy with his cat carrier. Suit guy looked as confused as Harold was feeling. Were the woman's actions mere coincidence, or was it some kind of covert signal from Steve? Harold hated these secret plans. Next time he was going to insist on something simpler.

The line moved infinitesimally forward. Even with multiple security and medical screening stations, they weren't making much progress. Harold eavesdropped on the conversation going on in front of him while he tried not to worry. There were two people talking loudly about the situation. One of them had a bright orange hat on, and the other one had two baby carriers strapped to his body -- one in the front, and one in the back. Neither carrier appeared to be occupied with an actual baby.

"I told you we should have gone with your cousin," orange hat said. "What if we've been exposed to some terrible disease?"

"Deep breaths," baby carrier said. "Don't get freaked out by this. Remember what my dad said? This is probably just a training exercise or something."

"And they just happened to pick our shuttle?" orange hat said disbelievingly. "What if it's pirates?" Harold leaned in a little closer when he heard that. He and Al had met up with some pirates once, and they'd been really nice.

"Space pirates are just a myth," baby carrier scoffed. "Just like wormhole spiders and palm readers."

Orange hat had clearly been ready for that argument. "What about Noohl's Paradox?" she asked, sounding triumphant. "Everyone thought that was just a myth too, and then he came back."

Harold was curious about "Noohl's Paradox," and who had come back, but he really couldn't lean any closer without either falling over, or making it incredibly obvious that he was eavesdropping.

Baby carrier conceded the point. "Okay, yes," he said. "But I don't think you can compare time travel to --"

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a commotion at the front of the line. "What?" Harold heard someone shout. It sounded like Steve. "I can't hear you!" It was definitely Steve. "Don't you recognize me?" Steve yelled, loudly enough to carry throughout the room. "I'm a famous musician!"

There was a general rumbling throughout the crowd, and the queue began to lose any sense of order as people shifted to see what was going on. Harold let people push past him and ended up at the back edge of the group. He could still hear Steve yelling. "Can't you speak up?" Steve shouted again.

"Where... Is... Your... ID?" came another voice. Harold guessed it was one of the security people.

"I don't know!" Steve yelled back, drawing snickers from the crowd. "I think I might have lost it! Let me check!"

Harold was nowhere near close enough to se what was going on, but from the sounds, and the running commentary, he was pretty sure Steve had emptied his entire backpack onto the floor. He had finally stopped shouting, but he was still using what Harold would call a very loud voice. "ID... ID... let's see here, that's not it... hey, my lucky pants... oops, where'd that come from? I thought I'd left that at home... is this it? No...

The security personnel were getting more antsy by the second. They had all gathered around Steve, and the crowd moved in closer. Harold shifted with the crowd, and realized that he had somehow ended up on the other side of the security barrier, close to the medical area. Well, wasn't that convenient.

Several people were in the middle of getting checked out, trying to take advantage of the disturbance to jump the line. Harold edged closer, trying to do it without looking like he was edging closer. He was so intent on being inconspicuous that when a voice said, "Who's next? You, sir?" he almost said no. But the medic was looking right at him, so he tried to look confident, and not like someone who had just accidentally bypassed the security screening.

"Um, yes?" Harold said. So much for confidence. He really hoped he wasn't messing up the plan somehow.

"Have a seat," the medic said. "This will only take a minute." Harold sat, and the medic gave him a reassuring smile.

"Any dizziness, nausea, headache, blurred vision, or tingling in your extremities?" Harold shook his head. The noise from Steve's corner of the room got louder.

"Any aches, pains, unexplained bruising, bleeding, or hair loss?" Harold shook his head again. "No," he said. "I feel fine."

Steve gave a piercing scream. "My eyes!" Harold heard him yell. "My head!" There was a thud, followed by loud sobbing, and everyone started shouting for a doctor.

Harold's medic seemed torn -- he kept glancing at his list of questions, and then over to where Steve was -- convulsing? Fighting? Something noisy, anyway.

"Really," Harold said. "I feel perfectly fine. No complaints."

The medic hesitated for one more second, then ran his finger down the screen in the "no" column. "Great!" he said brightly. "You're free to go!" And he hurried off to Steve's corner.

Harold picked up his pack and walked out the door to freedom. Turned out Steve's plan hadn't been so bad after all.

Chapter 11: In which Harold sees the sights and hunkers down.

The station was huge. It reminded Harold of an airport -- a really big airport. Maybe a really big airport times two. There were lots of wide open spaces, places to sit, and of course restaurants and stores. Mostly, though, it was the people who made Harold think "airport."

Everybody in airports had a sense of purpose. Even when they were waiting, they were waiting for a reason -- they had a specific goal in mind. Harold always felt the buzz of anticipation when he was in airports, and the station was no different. Of course, combined with all that purpose and anticipation was the fact that once you entered the airport, the ability to actually achieve your goal was mostly out of your control. Airports were a great equalizer. Everyone was equally subject to the whims of flight delays, changed gates, and lost luggage.

When Harold was a kid, he'd wanted to live in an airport. His family had gone on vacation to Florida, and Harold's clearest memory had been the airport. He'd been fascinated by the different rules that seemed to apply at airports. For instance, his mom never let him sit on the floor when they went shopping, but at the airport he saw lots of people sitting on the floor. Some people were even sleeping!

As he'd gotten older, Harold had continued to enjoy airports. They seemed to exist outside of time -- you could be in an airport at 3:00 in the morning, or 3:00 in the afternoon, and there would be other people doing the exact same thing. The regular rules of night and day were ignored. No one questioned another person's actions in an airport -- you just assumed they knew what they were doing. At the same time, it was considered acceptable to sit down next to complete strangers and ask for advice. Basically, if you were a clueless alien trying not to be noticed on your first trip to outer space, an airport (or a space station) was the perfect place to be.

Harold thought he probably looked a little shell-shocked as he wandered down the sweeping concourse. Luckily, there were lots of people around who also looked lost, bewildered, and overwhelmed, so he fit right in. He wanted to explore, and definitely to find some windows to check out, but he tried to stay focused. "Find the temporary accommodations sector," he mumbled to himself. "Find the room, eat something, go to sleep. I can do that."

This was the part of the plan Harold had heartily approved of. Trudy had reserved a room (actually, a suite) for him on the station, under a false name. He just had to find it, then he could hang out for the next three days, running up his tab -- another one of Trudy's contributions -- and relaxing.

Harold looked around. There should be signs, right? Airports usually had lots of signs everywhere. He was clearly in some kind of arrival area, looking out on a sort of mall-like section. It looked like fun, but he remembered what Nick and Steve had said about cameras. He was supposed to be keeping a low profile. With a sigh that quickly turned into a yawn, Harold hefted his backpack onto his shoulders and started walking.

Within seconds, he found himself at a giant column. The whole thing seemed to be designed to draw the eye, and Harold was certainly entranced. The top half was like a movie screen, or maybe a computer screen saver. It was showing space -- stars, nebulas, galaxies, comets -- in a slow moving dance that Harold found incredibly soothing.

"It's psychologically designed to relax people, you know," came a voice behind him.

Harold jumped. "What?" he said, startled. He turned around -- it was orange hat!

Orange hat didn't seem to recognize him as a fellow shuttle passenger, and pointed up at the column. "The display," she said. "It's supposed to be relaxing." Then she frowned. "Or was it energizing? Anyway, I think it's kind of creepy, but lots of people like it."

Harold tried to stay neutral. "Well, it's definitely eye-catching," he offered.

"Oh, that's so everyone knows where the information center is located," orange hat said. "That's a whole different psychological element." She lowered her voice and leaned closer to Harold. "They're always watching, you know. First it's manipulating our emotions, then it's … well, you know. That's why I wear this hat." Actually, Harold had no idea what she was talking about, or when she had turned into a crazy person. Orange hat wandered off into the crowd. At least she'd let him know how to find the information center.

It turned out that Harold had been right about the signs. The "information center" was just a conglomeration of touch screens all around the base of the column. You could say what you were looking for out loud, and the computer would translate it and show you the pictorial representation of your destination. Then all you had to do was follow the signs. Harold was looking for the circle with an asterisk inside -- how that was supposed to represent "temporary accommodations," he wasn't sure, but it was fairly easy to remember.

Or so he thought. Harold ended up going back to the column twice after following the wrong symbol. It wasn't just an asterisk, it was an asterisk with four lines, dividing the circle into eight equal sections. On his second trip back to the computers, Harold fished a pen out of his backpack and drew the pizza-like symbol on his hand. After that it was a lot easier.

By the time he found what he was looking for, Harold was exhausted. He was sure there must have been a shorter route than the one he'd followed; even if you didn't count the backtracking, he felt like he'd been walking forever. He had clearly arrived, though. It was like stepping into a quiet haven when he crossed through the last set of doors. The floor, walls, and even the ceiling were covered in sound-muffling carpeting. Instead of bustling crowds, the hallway was empty except for Harold. Information screens were strategically placed along the walls, and Harold entered the code Trudy had given him.

Actually, Harold couldn't remember the code Trudy had given him, even though she'd told him again and again to memorize it. Instead, he took off his backpack and unclipped the top compartment. Flipping it up, he looked in the back left corner, where he'd copied Trudy's code in permanent marker onto the fabric of his pack.

Al had disapproved of Harold's strategy. Of course, he also hadn't had any trouble memorizing his code, either. "But what if someone steals your backpack?" Al had asked. "They'd be able to get into your room."

"If they already have my backpack, why would they bother breaking into my room?" Harold had replied. He thought it was a perfectly reasonable argument. Al had disagreed, but since it was already written, there was nothing he could do about it. In fact, that was why Harold had written it first, and then shared the plan with Al.

With the code, everything else was simple. The computer gave him directions to get to his room, and it was even close by. Harold didn't know if that was coincidence, or if Trudy just lacked confidence in his directional abilities. Maybe she knew he'd end up at this entrance, and picked a room that was near it on purpose. Maybe he was giving her too much credit, but he'd seen her do some pretty amazing things over the years, so he wasn't going to put anything past her abilities.

The room itself seemed nice. Big, and completely neutral in that odd, hotel-like way. The bed was comfortable. Harold kicked off his shoes and decided a nice long nap was in order.

Chapter 12: In which Harold tries to fix his watch, and debates on the nature of time and language.

Harold woke up to beeping. His watch alarm was going off. It took him a minute to find the watch (it turned out to be on his wrist), and then get the beeping to stop. Then he lay on the bed and tried to remember what was going on, and why he would possibly need to have his watch alarm set.

He reviewed the facts: fleeing Earth in the middle of the night in Nick and Steve's spaceship; check. Splitting up and riding the Boring Bus to the space station whose name he still didn't know; check. Steve putting on the performance of his life and Harold taking forever to find his room; check. The watch alarm still didn't seem to fit in anywhere.

Harold studied his watch, which was blinking 12:00. Okay, that was weird. Also, how was he going to figure out what time it was? Harold pushed a couple of buttons. He was still really tired. Maybe he had space travel jet lag. He took the watch off and stowed it in his pack, then went back to sleep.

Hunger woke him up the second time. Harold decided to tackle the room's computer to try to get some room service delivered, or whatever the alien equivalent of room service was on a galactic space station. It was easy, and Harold reminded himself that lots of people who were just as clueless as him managed space travel every day. Maybe not just as clueless as him, but definitely close.

No meat, no water, no milk -- those had been Al's suggestions for eating on the space station. Pasta, he said, was always a smart choice. Juice and pasta. Since mac and cheese was a staple food at Harold and Al's house, Harold didn't have any problems with that. It didn't sound like a very balanced diet, but for three days, it would be fine. Better than that week during finals in college, when he'd eaten nothing but ramen noodle soup for eight days straight. The computer menu had lots of pictures, and in the privacy of his own room, Harold could take all the time he needed to make Trudy's translator figure out the rest.

While he ate, he studied his watch. It had switched from blinking to not displaying anything at all. That seemed like a bad sign. Harold guessed that something about all the aliens and alien technology around was messing with its systems. People from Al's planet tended to have weird effects on Earth technology when they weren't concentrating, kind of like an anti-technology aura, so there was a precedent for that kind of thing. It did kind of ruin the conspiracy theory idea that Earth's technology was reverse engineered from crash-landed UFOs, though.

Harold wasn't very good at fixing things -- he usually left that for Al, who was great at it. Not for the first time that day, Harold regretted the fact that their brilliant "plan to keep Harold and Al safe" involved so much keeping them apart, too. He missed Al. Harold tucked his non-working watch into a backpack pocket, and tried not to think about what Al might be doing at that exact moment. Maybe he could at least figure out what time it was -- then he could guess what his sisters were doing. They weren't Al, but they were still family.

Like so many things that day, deciphering the time turned out to be both easier and harder than Harold expected. It was easier, because the computer screen terminal in his room had a handy clock function. It explained to him in simple words and pictures that according to "station time," it was approaching the night cycle, which would mark the official end of Harold's first day in outer space. Harold felt encouraged by this early success, especially because there seemed to be a "convert to planetary time" option included with the clock.

However, that was where things got much, much harder. Harold learned that for all their wonderful qualities, automatic translators had some negative aspects. He also learned that when you translated them, pretty much all planet names fell into one of two categories: the earth/ground/soil/land category, or the home/here/place of origin category. Input "Earth time" into the computer, and it was like typing "my house" into Google -- the likelihood that you would stumble upon something that actually fit what you were looking for was almost infinitesimally small. Of course, the computer tried to make up for that by letting you identify your target on a map. Too bad Harold had no idea where Earth was located in relation to his current position.

After a frustrating session of the "guess and check" method, Harold gave up. Temporarily, of course, he told himself. He was pretty sure Nick and Steve's "three days" meant three days of station time, and not Earth time. But not sure enough to give up completely. He'd get back to it, as soon as he slept a little more. Conveniently, they were just entering the station's night, and Harold found his toothbrush, and the bathroom, and went to bed.

Chapter 13: Day Two: In which Harold doesn't do much of anything at all.

It was on Harold's second day at the station that he managed to crack the "station time vs Earth time" barrier and get the computer to tell him what time it was back home. Having mastered what he considered to be a major accomplishment, Harold took the rest of the day off. He read his book, and ate a lot of snacks, and took a nap after lunch just like his mom made him do when he was a little kid. He realized he'd forgotten most of what he'd put in his backpack, so he unloaded everything and put it back in. It didn't all fit the first time, so he did it again. By that time he was feeling hungry again, so he ordered some more food. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

Chapter 14: Day Three: In which Harold has absolutely no inkling at all that something is wrong.

Harold woke up early on day three. Probably not too surprising, since he had gone to bed early the day before, and taken a nap in the afternoon. He ordered breakfast, and thought about how weird it was not to have any weather to think about. Usually, on Earth, he and Al would eat breakfast together and talk about their plans for the day. Weather was a topic that almost always came up -- if it was nice, they could do things outside; on rainy days, they could use the weather as an excuse to lounge around inside and do as little as possible. Harold wondered what the weather was like back home. Then he remembered that their house had burned down, and all their stuff was in storage, scattered around the country in various locations. It was a pretty depressing train of thought for breakfast.

On the plus side, it was day three! It was the day he'd be leaving the station, on his way to meet up with Al in what he'd privately been referring to as "the treehouse." When he was little, Harold had always wanted a treehouse, where he felt sure he'd be able to hide out from his sisters when they were being annoying. Of course, if he'd ever actually had a treehouse, his sisters probably would have taken it over in an instant, but that was beside the point. In Harold's mind, treehouses were firmly linked with the concept of hiding, and that was what he pictured every time someone brought up that component of the plan.

Harold was looking forward to meeting whoever it was he was supposed to be meeting. He hoped they would be able to give him an update about what was going on with The Protectioners. Had they increased their support base? Were Al's people still protesting? Harold had overheard a conversation between Al and Ilia about the possibility of The Protectioners calling for an interdiction of Earth. It seemed ridiculous, but they were getting a lot of people pretty scared with their predictions. When the interdiction rumors had started, lots of people who had originally planned to stay on Earth decided it would be safer to leave. Interdiction would mean no travel to or from Earth, and even people who didn't believe in what The Protectioners were saying didn't want to take the chance of being stuck on planet. Unfortunately, every person that left only made The Protectioners' arguments gain more credence.

With a determined effort, Harold shook the gloomy thoughts from his mind. He'd hear the latest news from whoever came to pick him up; until then there was no point in worrying.

He was already packed and ready to go, so there wasn't much to do except wait. Suddenly, Harold remembered the iPods the kids had put together for him and Al. He didn't think he'd seen it the day before, when he'd been reorganizing things in his pack, so where could it be? He checked all the little side pockets on the outside of the backpack. First he found a pad of paper, which would have been nice to have known about on the first day, when he'd been drawing on his hand. Then he found a rock, which seemed odd.

Finally, Harold thought of looking in the waist strap pocket. He'd never put anything in it, because it seemed like sort of a stupid place for a pocket -- and uncomfortably reminiscent of the fanny packs of the '90s. But he'd been pretty zoned out the night he'd gotten the iPod, and sure enough, there it was. It was one of the tiny ones, so he couldn’t check out the playlist ahead of time. He stuck the headphones in his ears, and pressed play somewhat warily.

"Hi Harold!" came Sabri's cheerful voice. "Welcome to your new iPod! There's tons of songs and stuff on here, plus we got everyone to record a message for you! Hope this makes your time as a fugitive more enjoyable!"

In the background of Sabri's recording, Harold could hear someone say, "You can't say that! He's not a fugitive!" And someone else said, "Well, he is kind of a fugitive!"

Sabri ignored all of it, and continued on. "Good luck Harold -- we miss you, and we'll see you soon!"

Harold smiled and shook his head at the same time. The kids were really enjoying this "on the run" thing a little too much. Still, the messages were a neat idea. He had to resist the urge to skip ahead and try to find them. Listening through would be a great way to pass the time until his ride showed up.

Chapter 15: In which Harold begins to get a small inkling that something might be wrong.

At the one hour mark, Harold wasn't worried. It was still morning, after all, and he was having fun listening to the seemingly random, yet somehow oddly appropriate song choices the kids had selected.

At the three hour mark, Harold was getting tired of listening. It hit him all of a sudden that he'd spent almost two full days inside the same suite of rooms, which was feeling a lot smaller than it had at first. He was restless, but he didn't want to risk leaving the room with his contact person on the way.

At the seven hour mark, Harold was beginning to get a little nervous. He reminded himself that Nick and Steve had said "three days," not two and a half days.

At the ten hour mark, Harold decided to officially start worrying. As if to celebrate the moment, the computer began flashing a signal of some kind. It looked like a warning, and Harold rushed over to see what it meant. The computer screen showed a picture of the room, then of a person walking through the door. No, not through the door -- out the door. Huh. What was that supposed to mean?

All the lights in the room began to blink on and off. The door opened on its own and stayed that way. It came to Harold in a flash, literally. His room reservation must have expired, and the room was kicking him out. It seemed designed to annoy visitors into leaving. He wondered what was next. Irritating noises? Sprinkler systems? A mechanical boot that popped out of the floor to kick occupants into the hallway? A whirring noise started up, and Harold decided not to wait around to find out what it was. He grabbed his pack and scurried for the hallway.

Of course, once he was in the hall, he had no idea what to do next. He considered sitting down to wait in the hall, but the lights flickered ominously, and it seemed smarter to move on. There must be a lounge, or a restaurant, or someplace where he could sit and keep an eye out for anyone walking into the temporary accommodations area and then walking out again right away, hopefully looking both worried and apologetic.

Chapter 16: In which Harold tries to do a good deed.

There was a lounge. Harold was sure it was a very comfortable lounge, too, but it was a lot harder to enjoy when he was worried about being stuck on a space station out in the middle of nowhere for the rest of his life. He had no money, no ID, and no knowledge of how the galactic transportation system actually worked. He didn't even have a way to call someone to let them know where he was. If no one came to get him, he was in big trouble.

Harold let himself get completely freaked out. What would he do? Where would he go? How could he get food? He had nowhere to sleep! He was sure the other occupants of the lounge could tell he was homeless, and what if they'd already called security on him? He could end up in jail forever and no one would ever find him!

Then he took a deep breath. Okay, freaking out time over. First off, there were actually quite a few people who knew where he was. Al, of course, and Nick and Steve. His sisters, and Trudy, plus Tina. Heck, even his parents probably knew where he was -- knowing his mom, she probably even knew the name of the station, which Harold still didn't. And there was always the mysterious person who was supposed to be coming to help him get to the hideout, although Harold was beginning to wonder if they did know where he was. Maybe they were lost.

Second issue -- no one was going to call security on him, because he wasn't doing anything wrong. It was an airport (well spaceship-port) lounge (glorified waiting room); it was designed for people to be able to come and wait for long periods of time. Sure, someone might notice if he slept there through the night, but hopefully it wouldn't come to that. Harold looked around the lounge, and he had no idea how long any of the people had been there. Had that tall woman been there when he'd arrived? Maybe. Even if everyone else was twice as observant as he was, most of them were occupied with issues of their own. For instance, that guy with all the kids had just left one behind.

Wait, what? Harold looked again -- yup, over in the corner, where a big group of kids had all been talking and playing, there was one left. All the others had followed after the adult that had been watching them. Harold tried to decide what to do. Should he call security? No, because he had no idea how to do that, and he was sure the first thing they'd ask him would be to see his ID. Should he chase after the man? Harold scanned the large open expanse outside the front door of the lounge. It was relatively quiet, but there were still a lot of people out there, and he didn't see the group anywhere.

The kid didn't look upset. She was just sitting in a chair, kicking her legs back and forth. She looked like she was waiting for something, or someone. Still, it didn't seem right that a little kid would be all alone in a gigantic space station. Harold picked up his pack and wandered casually over to her corner.

"You can't sit here," she said.

Harold was taken aback. He was still probably ten feet away from where the girl was sitting. "Okay," he said slowly. "Why not?"

"I can't talk to strangers," the girl said. She looked determinedly away from him, as if she could make him go away by denying his presence.

Harold gave a long-suffering sigh inside his head. This was going to be difficult. He took a step closer.

"Go away!" hissed the girl. Her eyes darted to the other people in the lounge -- there were several, but they were all tapping away at what Harold assumed was the alien equivalent of the notebook computer. No one was looking their way.

Harold stepped back, and sat down in a chair facing the girl. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay," he said in his best calm voice. "It looked like your group left without you."

The girl ignored him.

"Do you want me to see if I can find them?" Harold asked. He wasn't sure he'd be able to, but he could try.

"No!" she said. And then, again, "Go away!"

Harold wondered what to do next. Clearly, someone had taught the girl not to trust strangers, which was smart, except when it was a stranger who was trying to help her. He wasn't sure what exactly he could do to help her, but it felt wrong to leave her by herself. What if a bad stranger came along? What if she got kidnapped, or whatever happened to kids left all by themselves in this part of the galaxy?

Maybe she was just a bratty kid who had slipped away from her group on purpose. Maybe she wasn't supposed to be in the group at all, but was lost, or something. Maybe this would turn out to be a mistake. On the other hand, maybe not. "How about I just sit way over here?" Harold offered.

The girl frowned. She appeared to be thinking it over. "Okay," she said finally. Then she went back to ignoring him.

Harold thought it was nice to have something to worry about that wasn't his possible future in an alien jail. After what felt like about twenty minutes (his watch was still broken, so he couldn't be exactly sure), the girl tucked her legs up under her. Harold watched surreptitiously as her eyes drifted closed. Once she was asleep, he went back to watching the door. For the first time all day, he was actually hoping his contact wouldn't show up right then, at least not until he figured out where the kid was supposed to be.

Chapter 17: In which Harold travels down the rabbit hole, metaphorically speaking.

About the time the girl started to wake up, Harold was noticing that the person who'd just stopped in the door to the lounge was very tall. Then he noticed that the tall person wasn't carrying any luggage. That was unusual. Then he started to get a little nervous about the way the tall, luggage-less person was scanning the room, like he was looking for something.

Wait -- maybe he was looking for Harold! Maybe the tall, luggage-less guy was the person Harold had been waiting for all day. He looked like a teenager, though. Harold wasn't sure how old you had to be to pilot a spaceship, but he kind of hoped it was older than luggage-less guy looked. Still, the boy did head straight towards him.

"Tifa Zho!" The boy said, and Harold realized he was looking past Harold, right at the little girl. "You are in so much trouble! Mom's been looking for you everywhere!"

If she hadn't been awake before, she was now. "You're in trouble!" the girl said back, mustering the logic of the very young. "You said go away!"

The boy looked momentarily chagrinned, then exasperated. "Not up here!" he said. "How did you even get up here, anyway?"

"I went all the way to the column!" the girl said, not answering the question. "All by myself!" She was holding a slip of paper in her hand, and she waved it.

The boy looked horrified. "You walked to the column?" he repeated. "And got a printout?"

Harold frowned. You could get a printout? Why hadn't he known that? That would have been a lot easier than drawing on his hand.

"I am so dead," the boy muttered. Louder, he said, "Let's go. We have to go home now."

The little girl -- Tifa? -- hopped down from the chair and headed for her brother. He held out his hand, but she ignored it, holding up both arms. Without a word, the boy reached down and picked her up. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. And then, just as Harold thought everything was working out just fine with their little family moment, she added, "I got almost kidnapped!"

Everyone turned to look at her. She was pointing right at Harold. The boy spun around to glower at him, and Harold held his hands up. "I was just worried about her being all alone," he said quickly. "I didn't do anything."

There was a buzz of conversation in the lounge. The boy looked around, uncomfortable with all the attention they were suddenly getting. Harold just tried to sit and exude a "harmless and innocent" vibe.

"Are you okay?" the boy asked again. The girl nodded. The boy looked back at Harold, then around at the rest of the people in the room. Several of them were eyeing Harold with suspicion. The others were eyeing all three of them with suspicion. The boy bit his lip, but he was clearly running out of time before someone stepped in to inquire about what was happening. "You too," the boy finally said to Harold. "You're coming with us."

It sounded like something out of a police movie -- "you're coming with us". But Harold didn't exactly have anywhere else to go, and he hadn't done anything wrong, and maybe he could get some free dinner out of it. Al would have been able to get free dinner. So Harold stood up and shouldered his heavy pack. He led the way out of the lounge, but once they were into the crowd, he stopped. "I don't know where we're going," he said.

"I have to keep an eye on you," the boy said, sounding frustrated. "You can't be in the back."

"I'll lead," the girl said brightly, sliding out of her brother's arms. Both Harold and Tifa's brother opened their mouths to object, but it actually wasn't a bad idea. As long as the girl knew where they were going, of course. Harold wasn't about to ask, though.

"You don't know how to get there," the boy said dismissively.

"I do too!" the girl said. And she sped off, leaving Harold and the boy to follow after.

Harold took up his spot in the middle without complaint. Behind him, the boy was muttering again. "I am so dead."

Chapter 18: In which Harold meets the Zho family.

The boy's name was Xikade (pronounced "Zih-kay-dee"). Harold heard it plenty when the two siblings were reunited with their parents. "Tifa Zho," their mother would start. "You know you're not allowed up in the station proper. What were you doing up there?"

At the same time, their father would say, "Xikade Zho, how could you? It is your responsibility to look out for your younger sister." Then the parents would switch kids and start all over again. The kids proclaimed their innocence; fingers were pointed, thankfully not at Harold. No one seemed to actually be listening to what anyone else was saying, since they were all talking at once.

Eventually, everyone ran out of arguments, and Harold blinked at the sudden silence. When the Zhos argued, the argued loud.

"Are you the one who found my babies?" It looked like Harold had finally been noticed. "I can't thank you enough!" He found himself engulfed in a massive hug from the Zho's mom.

"Uh..." Harold searched for something to say.

"He tried to kidnap me!" Tifa piped up excitedly.

Somehow the hug transformed into an iron grip on the front of his shirt. "What?" Tifa's mom asked angrily, giving Harold a menacing stare. Harold thought she was going to start shouting again, this time at him, and he braced himself for the onslaught. She opened her mouth, but her eyes shifted to the pack he was wearing. Then she was yelling, but not at Harold.

"He has luggage!" she said to her son. "You brought a traveler down here? A criminal traveler?"

"Hey!" Harold objected.

"No talking!" she told him. She was still holding onto his shirt, so Harold shut his mouth. Whoever she was, Tifa and Xikade's mom was one scary lady.

"Tifa said he was a kidnapper right out loud, in the lounge upstairs," Xikade said. "Everyone was looking at us; they said they were going to call security, which would have been good, 'cause they could arrest him --" Here he pointed at Harold. "--but bad because we would have gotten in trouble too. And we couldn't just tell everyone it was okay, because then he might have kidnapped someone else! I didn't know what else to do!"

Harold was getting really tired of people accusing him of being a kidnapper. Free dinner wasn't worth this, especially when said dinner was looking less likely by the minute. He was hungry. "Look," he started to say, but a warning look from the Zho's mom made him stop.

The kids' dad was staring at him. "Tifa," the man said slowly. "How did you know he wanted to kidnap you?" He was still looking at Harold, but there was a thoughtful expression on his face.

"He came over," Tifa said. "He's a stranger. I told him to go away." She looked very confident and proud of herself.

"And did he go away?" her dad asked.

Tifa frowned. "No," she said, sounding irritated.

"He was sitting right there when I found her!" Xikade said, as if that was all the evidence required to prove Harold's guilt. But by that point both parents were starting to show signs of doubt.

"How long was he sitting there?" Tifa's dad asked her, still very calm.

"A long time!" she said. "I watched him, and it was boring. I fell asleep!"

Harold saw his opportunity and leapt into the conversation. "I was in the lounge," he said, "and I saw her all alone and I was worried." He tried to get the words out as quickly as possible, before someone interrupted him or told him to be quiet again. "I just wanted to make sure she was okay, and I didn't want to leave her all by herself. That's all. I was never trying to kidnap anybody. I only came with them because he told me to --" and he felt a certain joy at being able to point back at Xikade, "-- and because I didn't want security showing up to arrest me because of a misunderstanding."

All four Zhos stared at him. "Oh dear," the mother said. Then she smiled nervously, and let go of his shirt with a little pat. "I'm so sorry. Really, we're all sorry." Everyone was nodding.

"Sorry," Xikade said, looking down at his feet.

"You're not a kidnapper?" Tifa asked. Harold shook his head. "Oh," she said. Harold thought she looked a little disappointed.

"I'm Ayme," the woman said, still sounding apologetic. "And this is my husband, Kahoku. I am so sorry about this."

Harold waved it away. "It's fine, really," he said, trying to reassure her.

"Did you miss your ship?" Kahoku asked. "I hope not. We could help you get another ticket if you wanted. Or if you're staying on the station, we could take you back to your room. It wouldn't be any trouble or anything. We want to help."

For a moment, Harold was tempted to lay out all his troubles for them, one by one. For all their shouting, the Zhos seemed nice, and genuinely eager to make amends, and Harold really missed his family. But he didn't really know anything about these people, and what if they were really kidnappers, and the whole thing was just some elaborate ruse? "Ah... I don't really know what to say," Harold hedged. It was the truth.

He fumbled for something else to tell them. "I was supposed to be meeting someone today, but they never showed up."

Both Zho parents looked concerned. Their questions overlapped as they began talking at the same time again.

"Did you check the arrival logs to see if they were delayed?"

"Can you get in touch with them?"

"Maybe they left a message for you -- did you check your phone? Your room account? The board?"

Harold hesitated. "I don't actually know their name," he admitted. "It was supposed to be a --" secret, he almost said, but he managed to substitute "surprise" at the last second. There was no way to check if whoever it was had even arrived on the station, since he didn't know who it was. "And I didn't bring my phone." Actually, he had, but it was an actual Earth cell phone, designed to work on Earth. Harold was guessing that the translator was using "phone" as the closest word available for whatever personal communication device people used in space.

"What's the board?" he asked. He hadn't even known there was a way to leave messages for people on the station, so it seemed unlikely that anyone would try to contact him that way. Still, it couldn't hurt to check. "Could you show me how to check it?" He hoped it wasn't one of those subjects that would instantly reveal his total cluelessness about traveling in space.

Luckily, the Zhos didn't seem to find anything strange about it. "The board's been part of the station since it started," Ayme explained. "Back when it was just a little outpost, someone came up with the idea of a message board, so that people could record that they'd been here, and leave notes for anyone who might be traveling the same way. It's kind of grown since then," she said, "but it's tradition now, and it's still there. If you don't have a phone or a room account, and you don't know anyone on the station …" She paused, giving Harold a sideways glance. He didn't say anything, and she continued. "…then it's pretty much the best way to get information to someone."

"You can check it from here, if you want," she offered. "Xikade can show you how."

Xikade sat down in front of a wall screen. "The actual board is up on the travel levels," he said, as he entered code after code into the computer system. "But you can access it from any terminal on the station." There was a pause. "There it is," he said.

Harold stared. It wasn't a board, it was a wall, covered in writing, and pictures, and symbols, all of which looked completely alien to Harold. It seemed like an incredibly inefficient way to deliver information. "People send messages that way?" he asked in disbelief. "How do you find anything?"

Xikade gave him a look that only a teenager could produce. "It is searchable," he said. "What do you want to look for?"

Harold thought for a minute. He realized that nobody had asked his name the whole time he'd been on the station. Back on Earth, "Harold Jones" had been deemed to recognizable, so he was supposed to be going by his middle name for this trip, along with Al's last name. "Zabela is a very common name on my planet," Al had assured him.

With his finger, Harold traced the letter G on the screen. "Can you search for that?" he asked.

Xikade gave him another look. "Of course. Watch -- I'll show you how to do it." He drew a box around the letter. Harold was pretty much lost after that, but he didn't want to be rude, so he tried to pay attention. Data flashed past too quickly to read, until what he assumed was a results screen popped up. "There you go," Xikade said, and he gestured for Harold to take his seat.

There were a lot of results to look at, and Xikade wandered off after a couple minutes. The computer terminal was tucked into a small alcove in what seemed to be the entrance room / living room, and Harold's back was to the rest of the room. Once he was pretty sure Xikade had left the area completely, Harold snuck a glance around. The room was empty -- at least of other people. There was some very comfortable-looking furniture, though, and a whole wall covered with pictures. In the computer alcove, there was a small shelf sticking out from the wall. It had a sippy cup on it, which made Harold smile.

As he scrolled through the search results, Harold wondered what he was looking for. He didn't even know who would have written one, let alone what it might say, or how he would identify it. He'd picked the G on a whim, and stuck with it because of the old testing rule that you should always go with your first instinct. It didn't look like he was going to find anything, though. On the other hand, it wasn't like he had anywhere to go, so why not check?

Harold wondered what the Zhos were doing. Maybe they were making dinner, and they'd invite him to stay. After all, they'd let him use their computer terminal, and if he happened to be there when dinner was served, it would be the polite thing to do to invite him, right? Then again, maybe aliens didn't have that rule.

His stomach growled, and Harold sighed. There were no messages for him, at least none that he could find. He was back at square one. He was also hungry, and tired, and worried. Not to mention completely lost. Tifa had led them into a section of the station Harold had never seen before (which wasn't too hard, since he hadn't seen much), then through a door with a lot of pictures on it that seemed to indicate "Warning!" and "Stay Out -- This Means You!" Harold was fairly certain they were in the lower levels of the station, based on things Ayme had said when she was yelling at Tifa and Xikade, but he had no idea why. The Zhos rooms looked more like a home than temporary accommodations. Did they live on the station? All the time?

Chapter 19: In which Harold meets someone else, and dinner is finally mentioned out loud.

There was a knock at the door, and Harold jumped. Knocking? Really? On a space station? Shouldn't it be a buzzer, or a chime, or a flashing light or something? Although they had all those things on Earth, and people still knocked.

"It's Mr. Echalko Zhak!" Harold heard Xikade shout from somewhere further into the quarters. "I'll get it!"

The teenager hit the door at a dead run, just barely beating his younger sister, who had apparently snuck into the room when Harold hadn't been paying attention. She'd jumped off the couch when Xikade yelled, but her short legs couldn't get her to the door before him. "Mom!" she yelled, as only younger sisters could. "Xikade's being mean!"

Xikade rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said. "You open the door. Oh, wait -- you can't. Mom took away your card, remember?"

Tifa pouted. Harold watched with interest as Xikade pulled a necklace from under his shirt. On the chain was a small plastic card, which he stuck in a slot next to the door. It looked like one of those keychain tags that the big stores were always trying to get you to use for their super shopper programs and stuff. Xikade's apparently opened doors, which Harold thought was a lot more useful than getting a 10% discount every time you spent over $50.

The door slid open to reveal a short, balding man standing in the hallway. "Hi Mr. E!" both kids said in unison. Harold thought that was a very convenient way to shorten a very long name. Who needed two last names?

"Tifa! Xikade!" The short man looked genuinely pleased to see them. "Why aren't you eating dinner?"

He stepped into the room from the outside entrance just as Ayme and Kahoku came in from the other side. Harold had the uncomfortable feeling everyone was staring at him. He looked around. They were.

"Oh," Mr. Echalko Zhak said. "I didn't realize you had company."

Ayme waved it off. "You're welcome anytime; you know that. This is..." she trailed off, looking flustered. She was clearly trying to remember if Harold had told them his name, and she'd just forgotten it, or if he'd never actually introduced himself. He hadn't, but he wasn't sure it was the right time to be sharing that.

Kahoku jumped into the conversational lull. "Xikade, why don't you take Tifa to the kitchen and set another place for Mr. Echalko Zhak? And our guest as well, of course."

Harold was glad Tifa was leaving the room before she set off a whole new round of "he tried to kidnap me" arguments. "Hi," he said to the man whose name he'd decided was too long. He was aiming for the "brazen it out" strategy. After all, who was he to know that this sort of thing didn't happen all the time in space? "It's nice to meet you. I'm Gabe."

Chapter 20: In which Harold gets a place to stay.

Over the course of dinner, Harold learned several important things. First of all, Al had been right about the milk; it was disgusting. Luckily, it was also served in very small portions. Harold also learned that the Zhos did, in fact, live on the station. They were station employees, and the lower levels of the station were reserved for long term housing for employees and their families. The Zhos had been there a long time; long enough so that Tifa had lived her whole life in space, but they were planning to leave once their contract was up in another year.

Since there were kids, there was also a school. Mr. Echalko Zhak was one of the kids' teachers. Harold couldn't figure out what he taught, but it seemed to involve a lot of homework that the kids didn't want to do. Or at least, the teacher kept asking the kids about things he had apparently assigned, and the kids kept trying to avoid the questions by changing the subject.

Other than the milk, the food was delicious, and Harold's plan to say as little as possible was complemented nicely by his plan to eat as much as possible. He kept his head down and his mouth full, and let the conversation flow around him. He heard a rehashing of Tifa's adventures up on the travel level (minus, he noticed, her trip to the column for her printout), and Xikade's adventures looking for Tifa (minus the part where Harold was actually a station traveler innocently accused of attempted kidnapping). Then he heard a very abbreviated and completely fabricated story about how he was a visiting relative.

"How long are you staying?" asked Mr. Echalko Zhak.

"I'm not sure," Harold said.

"Do you have any news? What's happening out there?" the teacher pressed.

"I was pretty isolated," Harold said. Honesty was the best policy, after all. Then he stuffed a big bite of food into his mouth and chewed as slowly as possible.

"We always enjoy having you over," Ayme said to Mr. Echalko Zhak, with just a hint of a question in her voice. To Harold, it seemed like a not very subtle prod to explain why exactly the kids' school teacher had showed up at their door.

Mr. Echalko Zhak flushed. "Yes, thank you," he said. "I actually came over to tell you --" He looked at Harold, and paused. "Well, I wanted to let you know that I've been called away. I'm going back home."

The kids both protested and were shushed by their mom. "That's incredible," Kahoku said. "You've been here longer than anyone."

"Why are they calling you back?" Ayme wanted to know.

Again, the teacher looked at Harold. Harold wondered if he suspected there was more to the story than just a "visiting relative," and was censoring his words because of it. "I'm not completely sure," he said. "You know how these things are. It's probably just a mix-up in the system, and as soon as I get there they'll send me back here."

Everyone else was nodding, so Harold did too, but inside he was feeling a little disappointed. He was in outer space, on an alien space station, with aliens and space ships and cool technology, and it all seemed a lot like Earth. Bureaucracy was still inefficient and full of errors, and kids still didn't like doing homework, and everybody was still crazy about iPods, of all things.

"Who's going to teach our classes while you're gone?" Xikade asked.

Mr. Echalko Zhak shrugged. "I'm not sure," he said. "The station used to have a full time substitute available, but that got cut years ago. There's just not enough teachers to go around."

"But you'll be back in a few days, right?" Xikade asked, and Mr. Echalko Zhak looked uncomfortable.

"I hope so, yes," he said.

"I've got it!" Ayme exclaimed excitedly. "Gabe can teach at the school while you're gone!"

It took Harold a minute to realize she was talking about him, and he tried not to look horrified. Ayme continued on before anyone could say anything. "You like kids, right Gabe?" Harold wasn't sure how "not wanting to kidnap anyone" translated into "liking kids," but he didn't disagree.

"He could even stay in your rooms," Ayme said, looking at Mr. Echalko Zhak. "We'd put him up here, of course, but we're pretty tight for space with the four of us, and you know it's not good to leave rooms empty, even for a couple days. It's bad luck. Plus, your rooms are so close to the school; it would be really convenient."

"I'm not sure..." Mr. Echalko Zhak began. "I really needed to talk to you about something before I left --" His watch began beeping and he jumped up from the table. "And now I'm late --" He looked around frantically, but all the Zhos stayed calm. "And I need to go back to my rooms before I go --" Kahoku handed him his coat, and Xikade pointed him towards his shoes.

Tifa called out, "Bye Mr. E!" from her spot at the table. Harold stayed at the table as well, since he couldn't think of anything else to do.

He heard Ayme say, "So it's all settled then?" and a vague response. Then he heard the door slide open and closed, and Mr. Echalko Zhak was gone.

Once everyone was back at the table, Harold ventured a question. "Is he... always like that?"

"He's a little forgetful sometimes," Xikade said. "He says he's absent-minded."

"You don't mind filling in, do you?" Kahoku asked. "I know Ayme kind of volunteered you, but it's a great idea. It'll give you something to do while you wait for your friend to get here, and it'll keep the other teachers from getting overwhelmed. It's just for a day or two, I'm sure."

Harold wasn't sure at all, but he wasn't seeing a lot of other options. "Okay," he said. He had no idea what he was getting into. "Wait," he added quickly. "What am I supposed to teach?"

"Oh, Mr. Echalko Zhak is the culture teacher for the children," Ayme said. "It's a fun class; all the kids love it."

From the expressions on Tifa and Xikade's faces, their mom was overstating things by quite a bit. Harold remembered all the questions about homework. "Well..."

"It gives you somewhere to stay, too!" Ayme added. "Xikade, didn't you say Mr. Echalko Zhak always keeps a spare card in the classroom, in case he forgets his usual one?" Xikade nodded. "He forgot to leave one for you," Ayme said to Harold, "so we'll just go get the one from the classroom, and I'll show you your rooms!"

Harold gave up trying to decide if agreeing was a mistake, and just went along with it. "Okay," he said again. "Sounds good to me."

Chapter 21: In which Harold explores his new rooms.

Harold wanted to go on record stating that Ayme Zho's plan was the best ever, Mr. Echalko Zhak's somewhat dubious consent aside. Harold had a bed, and a computer, and a whole kitchen full of food. He even had a key card, thanks to Mr. Echalko Zhak's forgetful nature. He felt a little bad about using the man's rooms while he was gone, but Ayme assured him it would be fine, and Harold was sure she could have talked the teacher into full agreement if she'd had a few more minutes.

Still, Harold decided to be on his best houseguest behavior. He left his shoes by the door, and even briefly debated sleeping on the sofa. The bed looked really comfortable, though, and he gave in to temptation and moved his pack to the bedroom.

Mr. Echalko Zhak's rooms were smaller than the Zhos', but there was still plenty of space for one person. The entrance / living room / kitchen all sort of blended together into a single front room, with a bedroom and bathroom behind them. Everywhere, there were books. Shelves and shelves of books, and stacks of books on the floor and tables. It seemed a little excessive, but then Harold remembered that the man had apparently been living all alone on a space station for years and years. Harold didn't even want to contemplate what odd habits he'd pick up if he had to live in space for that long.

Harold moved a stack of books off the sofa and sat down. He reviewed his current circumstances. No one had come to pick him up when they were supposed to, and he had been accused of trying to abduct a little girl. On the plus side, he now had a nice place to stay and a plausible cover for the next day or so. He'd gotten a good dinner, and no one thought he was a kidnapper anymore. All in all, he was going to call the day a win and go to bed before anything else could happen.

Chapter 22: In which Harold is baffled and confused.

Harold woke up. He didn't think it was morning yet, but it wasn't nearly as dark as he thought it should be. He realized he'd left the lights on when he'd gone to bed. Too bad they weren't voice activated, like the lights on all those science fiction television shows. Harold tried to decide if it was worth getting up to shut them off. He could probably fall back asleep while they were still on, but hadn't Al read him some article from the internet about how sleeping with lights on was less restful? Maybe that was just televisions. Still, he should probably get up. And he would, any time now.

Harold tried to push back the covers. By the time he remembered that he was in his sleeping bag, it had tangled around his legs, and he slipped, missing his grab at the edge of the mattress on the way down and landing with a loud thump on the floor. Harold decided that going back to sleep would have been a better choice after all. He lay on the floor and closed his eyes, but the floor wasn't nearly as comfortable as the bed had been.

"Are you okay?" a voice asked.

"Of course he's okay," someone else said. "You'd know if he wasn't."

"Well, it's still nice to ask," the first voice replied. "It's polite, and respectful, and stuff."

Harold kept his eyes closed. Either he was still asleep and dreaming, in which case he might as well ignore any voices that he heard, or he'd hit his head falling off the bed and he was hallucinating. In that case, ignoring the voices was also a good bed. Although, if he'd hit his head, he probably should go back to sleep. He might be bleeding. Maybe he was in a coma -- no, that didn't make any sense, because when people were hallucinating in comas, they weren't supposed to know they were in a coma. At least, that was how it worked on tv. Although, Harold couldn't remember hitting his head. He wasn't sure whether that made it more or less likely that he was in a coma.

"You didn't hit your head."

"No, you're perfectly fine."

"Well, that's debatable. He is in a bit of a pickle, you know."

"I was just trying to be supportive!"

The voices were back. Harold opened his eyes reluctantly, but he didn't see anyone. "Who's there?" he asked.

"Ooh, we're invisible!" one of the voices said excitedly. "I've never been invisible before!"

"Yes, you have -- what about that time with all the snakes?"

"No, that doesn't count. The snake handler could see me; it was just the snakes who couldn't. Good thing, too -- I've always had a hard time with snakes."

Harold really thought that if invisible voices were going to pester him in the middle of the night, they could at least sound different enough so that it was easier to tell them apart. Maybe they had names. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Well, that's kind of a hard question to answer."

"That's why I like people from Earth; you always want to jump right in to the big questions."

Harold was suddenly very worried. They knew he was from Earth? How was that possible? How had they discovered him? Had they told anyone else? Were they going to turn him in?

"Relax!" both voices said in unison.

"We're not here to turn you in," one of them said.

"We're not really even here."

"Well, we are here, we're just not here here."

"Of course we're here, because here we are. You know?"

No, Harold didn't know. In fact, he had no idea what the voices were talking about. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said. An idea occurred to him. "Are you ghosts?"

"Ghosts as in the lingering spirits of the currently deceased, or ghosts as in the more ephemeral 'ghost in the machine' sense?"

Harold blinked. He really wasn't awake enough to process words like "ephemeral." "Um... yes?"

"No."

The "ghost in the machine" reference made Harold think. "Are you part of the computer?"

"No."

"But we like computers!"

"That's true; we like computers. They're very useful, don't you think?"

Harold wasn't feeling very reassured. He definitely wasn't sure he should answer the question. "Do you... grant wishes?" He didn't want to inadvertently say something that could be construed as a wish. If there was one thing that would make his night much much worse, it would be the whole thing going all "monkey's paw" on him.

"Ah, no," on of the voices said. "No wishes. We're more... informationally focused."

Was that good? Harold tried to remember his fairy tales. He and his sisters had tried to work this all out when they were kids. "Are there any consequences to the information you provide?"

There was a pause. "Yes?"

"I mean, you'll know more."

"You might be smarter, I guess?"

"Are there any negative consequences?" Harold persisted.

Another pause. "It's just information. It's not really positive or negative, right?"

"What about the time you made that girl cry? I'd say that was pretty negative."

"That was an accident! I thought we agreed that wasn't my fault!"/

"I'm just saying, information can be negative or positive, depending on how you interpret it."

"Exactly! It's the interpretation that makes it negative, or your reaction to the interpretation and the actual outcome, and how closely they match. It's not the information itself."

"Have we had this conversation before?"

"Yes. I think so, at least. Maybe it was a little different before?"

"I think I was saying your part before."

"Yeah, that was it. Hey, did that answer your question?"

It took Harold a moment to realize that the voices had switched back to talking to him. "Um, not really," he said, trying for honesty.

"Well, all the information in the universe isn't much good if it's not in a language you can understand."

"What?"

"What?" Harold echoed. Did that voice just call him stupid?

"I'm just saying -- sometimes people ask questions, but the question they think they're asking isn't really the question that they ask, and so the answer they get isn't really the answer they think it is. There's only just so much 'interpreting' we can do on our end, just like you on your end."

Harold tried to sum up. "So, you answer questions, and you tell the truth, it's just that the truth you tell isn't always the truth people hear."

"Yup! Sounds right to me."

"And you're here, now... why?"

"Because we're talking. It would be rude to leave in the middle of a conversation, right?"

Harold began to get the first inkling of how answers that were technically true could be less than helpful. "Um, is it important that we talk about this tonight?" he asked. "'Cause it's kind of late, and I have to get up early."

"No, we can talk anytime."

"Yeah, sleep well. We'll still be here when you wake up."

As Harold climbed back into bed, he wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be a reassurance, or a warning. He shut his eyes with great determination -- he could worry about it in the morning. Right before he fell asleep, he realized the lights were still on.

Chapter 23: In which Harold has a frustrating morning.

Harold woke up cranky and with the sinking feeling that h had to teach five different sections of "Alien Culture 101" (or whatever the alien culture he was currently pretending to know something about called it) to kids who all undoubtedly knew more than he did about the subject.

He also woke to the sound of chatter from two very cheerful voices. "Don't you two every sleep?" he asked grumpily.

"Nope!"

"You're lucky you've got two of us," the other voice said. "So we can talk to each other. Lots of people only have one, and then it's just talk talk talk all day long. We like talking; we don't like to be bored."

Harold tried to imagine having a voice talking to him all the time, 24 hours a day. Or however many hours there were in each "day" as it was calculated on the station. He thought that must be what it felt like to go insane.

"Not Echalko Zhak!" voice number one said excitedly.

"No -- he had seven!"

Seven?! Harold began to realize that Mr. Echalko Zhak probably wasn't as forgetful he'd been told. He was probably just incredibly distracted, all the time. Seven... what were they, exactly? Harold could hardly keep up with two!

"What are you called?" he asked. He didn't want to keep thinking of them as just "voices." It seemed weird, and it kind of made him feel like a crazy person, always thinking about what the voices were telling him.

"Lots of different things."

Well, that wasn't very helpful.

"I like 'helper spirits,' myself," one of them offered.

Helper spirits. Invisible helper spirits. Annoyingly awake in the early morning invisible helper spirits. "Can anyone else hear you?" he asked. "Or see you?"

Harold quickly realized his question had been too vague.

"Not right now."

Well, no, because there wasn't anyone else there. "Okay," he said. "Is there anywhere on this station right now where people other than me could see and/or hear you?"

"No." Both voices together that time, so Harold was pretty sure it was true.

"Why do I have two of you?" he asked. He hoped it wasn't because the universe thought he needed twice as much help as the average person.

"It's hard to say."

"It could be a lot of things, really.

"I think it's because you've got so many sets of two in your life already. I mean, you've got two parents, two sisters, two cats, two names -- it just makes sense that you'd have two helper spirits too."

Actually, that didn't make any sense at all to Harold. Why would the 'helper spirits' show up at that exact moment? Should he be worried? What if he was really going crazy? Did everyone have helper spirits? Did everyone else talk to their helper spirits, if they had them? He had just opened his mouth to start asking when one of the voices said, "You might want to eat breakfast now. You don't want to be late for your first class."

Harold found the omnipotence a little disturbing. Still, it was true. He would have to eat quickly to make it to the classroom level on time.

Chapter 24: In which everything changes. Sort of.

It hit Harold suddenly as he was walking down a deserted hallway. "I can ask anything, right?" he asked. Surround sound confirmation, one voice coming from each side. "Is Al safe?" Harold wanted to know.

"No," one of the voices said with frightening speed.

"Although you might want to clarify that question," the other voice added slowly. "Safe from what? Germs? Bruises? Discovery? Embarrassment? Abduction?"

Harold took a minute to process that, letting the adrenaline rush subside. "Huh," he said. "Okay, how about this: Is Al where he expected to be right now?"

"Yes."

Once again, one voice answered right away. The other was slower to respond, but generally offered better insight. Or maybe they switched off -- Harold still couldn't really identify which voice was which, although they were starting to sound more distinctive.

"But he's not where you expect him to be," the second voice said, confirming Harold's thoughts. "And he's not where he expected to be now when you last saw him."

That wasn't good. Was it? Then again, Harold wasn't where he had expected to be either. Maybe Al was somewhere better than he'd expected to be. Harold didn't think the so-called "helper spirits" were all that helpful. "Where is Al?" he asked, somewhat frustrated.

"Don't know."

"We'll go find him!"

Silence.

"Hello?" Harold called softly. No response. So they weren't all-knowing, after all. Harold wondered if they would actually find Al. He also wondered if Al would thank him for siccing his two "helpers" on him. Then Harold began to wonder why the hallways were deserted. He'd thought it was just the one outside his room, because he was so late getting out. But he hadn't seen a single person since the Zhos had dropped him off at his door the night before. Maybe it was always like that.

Or maybe not. The classroom level was also deserted. Harold checked the wall stripes again, but Ayme had clearly said that the green starbursts led straight to the classrooms, and that's what he'd followed. Plus, the rooms around him all looked like classrooms -- they had desks, and big screens on the front walls, and bright posters and projects posted up all around them. They had everything except students, and it was beginning to feel a little creepy to Harold.

He wasn't sure what to do about this new development. "What should I do?" he pondered out loud. No one answered, which probably meant his helper spirits were still off finding Al. "If this were a movie, this would be the point when some scary music would probably start playing, and then I'd hear a noise, and it would be something terrifying and suspenseful right behind me."

Harold stopped talking when he realized he'd just completely freaked himself out. He checked over his shoulder, just in case. Nothing was there, which was good. On the other hand, there still weren't any other people there, which he wasn't sure was good or not. Harold took a cautious step through the door of the closest classroom. Nothing happened, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He crept further into the room, moving as quietly as possible.

He was no stealth ninja, though, and his "quietly" wasn't very quiet. Harold tripped over a chair. The sound was loud in the empty room, and Harold hissed "Shhh!" at the chair, holding his finger to his lips. Then he heard it -- a scrabbling noise behind him. It sounded like some kind of animal. Maybe it was a huge, scary beast that had eaten all the children! Harold whipped around, determined to look death in the eyes before it consumed him, or maybe just spot a way to run away. But there was nothing there. No giant beast, even when he nervously checked the ceiling above his head. The scrabbling noise came again, and Harold noticed a tiny cage on the counter near the door. There was a tiny, furry, squeaky little critter inside that looked exactly like a gerbil. Harold had just been scared out of his mind by the class pet. He consoled himself with the idea that it was an alien gerbil, and maybe it had really big teeth, or a deadly poison, or something like that.

"Sweetums! I'm coming, Sweetums! Don't be scared!" The high-pitched voice was accompanied by the sound of running feet. The voice even sounded a little familiar.

Seconds later, Tifa Zho burst into the classroom. She skidded to a stop when she saw Harold standing there. "Mr. Gabe!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" Harold countered.

"I'm here to rescue Sweetums," Tifa said, pointing at the gerbil cage. Harold gave a mental sigh. He resisted the urge to ask about big teeth and poison.

"Rescue Sweetums from what?" he asked instead.

"For the drill," Tifa said. Her tone indicated that anyone who didn't know what she was talking about was a brain dead moron. Harold refrained from mentioning that he had no idea what she was talking about. Luckily, she kept going. "Everyone's already there. You weren't here when they announced it, so we did the whole evacuation ourselves." She sounded very proud of this accomplishment. "Except I forgot Sweetums, so I came back for him." Tifa pushed a chair over to the counter and climbed up in it, reaching back to pick up the cage. "Why weren't you here? All the teachers are supposed to go with us. It's the rule."

Harold reviewed what he knew. A group of people, including the students, had all been evacuated at some point that morning. It was a drill, or at least Tifa thought it was a drill. They were somewhere close enough to walk to, if Tifa had made it there and back on her short legs. And Tifa had come back for the gerbil. Harold wasn't sure if that part was important or not.

"Why did you come back?" Harold felt a little bad ignoring the girl's question. Kids were ignored a lot by grown-ups, just because the grown-ups were bigger and older and thought they were more important. Harold didn't feel more important than Tifa -- he just didn't know the answer to her question.

It didn't seem to bother her. "Because I forgot Sweetums!" she said.

"Are you allowed to come back after you've been evacuated?" Harold asked.

"Well, it was okay for me," Tifa said confidently. "That rule is just so people won't get lost. And I didn't, so it's fine."

Clearly the answer was no -- you weren't allowed to come back once you'd been evacuated. But Harold was already well acquainted with Tifa's concept of rules and how they applied to her (they didn't), so he just nodded. "You should get back," he said. "I'll come with you."

"Okay," Tifa said. "But I'll carry Sweetums, okay?"

That was fine with Harold, since he had no desire to carry Sweetums anywhere. Just because the creature was tiny, and fuzzy, and cute, and had a friendly-sounding name, and could be carried in a flimsy cage by a four-year old girl -- that didn't mean it had to be friendly.

Tifa led the way down the hall and around a corner. She stopped in the middle of an empty corridor. Uh-oh. Harold hoped they weren't lost. Then Tifa started stomping her foot on the floor. Stomp-stomp-stomp. Pause. Stomp-stomp-stomp. Pause. Stomp stomp stomp-pause, stomp stomp. It sounded sort of like the tune for Jingle Bells. Harold tried to act like he had some idea what was going on.

The floor opened up. Well, that wasn't what he'd been expecting. Tifa trotted down the now-visible stairs, and Harold followed at a much slower pace. The stairwell was dark, and kept cutting back on itself. By the time Harold got close enough to catch sight of Tifa again, she was deep in conversation with someone.

"I had to rescue Sweetums!" she was saying.

"Your life is more important than the class pet," the other person replied. "Besides, why didn't your teacher bring him?"

Oops. Harold slowed his steps.

"He wasn't there!" Tifa exclaimed. "But I found him! When I went back, and he came with me!"

"Your teacher wasn't in the classroom with you when you evacuated?" the other person asked. "You were supposed to have Ms. J this morning -- she's already here, I've got her checked off."

"No," Tifa said. "Ms. J is afternoon. We were supposed to have Mr. Gabe this morning, and I found him when I went back for Sweetums."

It was then that Harold finally reached the bottom of the stairs and emerged into dim light. "See, there he is!" Tifa said loudly, and was quickly shushed by the adult she'd been talking with.

"Tifa, you know the rules. No leaving the shelter during an evacuation. Please go find your parents and stay with them. Yes, you can take Sweetums with you." Tifa ran off, and the adult turned to face Harold.

Harold stopped and stared. It was Toby -- Zahar's brother, from the university bookstore. Toby was supposed to be with his brother on Al's planet. "Toby?" he said disbelievingly.

"Haro-- I mean, Mr. Gabe?" Toby looked shocked as well. "What are you doing here?"

"I wish I knew," Harold answered. "I just followed Tifa. What's going on?"

"You're not supposed to be here right now," Toby said, ignoring Harold's question. He gestured Harold back into the shadows of the stairwell. "Does anyone know you're here?"

Harold shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I thought someone was supposed to come yesterday, but no one showed up." Harold wasn't sure how much Toby knew about the plan, so he didn't want to mention Nick and Steve.

"Yeah," Toby said. "Echalko Zhak -- didn't he leave yesterday?"

The teacher? "I think so," Harold said. "I saw him when I was having dinner with the Zhos, and he said he was leaving that night. Why?"

"He was supposed to take you with him!" Toby said. "Did he say anything to you?"

Harold tried to remember. "I don't think so," he said. "He seemed distracted. He said he'd been called back home, and he didn't know why, and that he would probably be back in a couple days. Then he said he was late, and he rushed off."

Toby made a complicated hand gesture plus eye roll combo that seemed to indicate frustration, or disbelief, or possibly, "That Echalko Zhak -- what an idiot!"

"Well, you can't leave now," Toby said. "The whole station's been locked down."

"What?" Harold said. "Why?"

"Well, the official word is that it's just a drill, but pretty much no one believes that. It could be because the security department figured out you're on board, but I don't think so. You're good at flying under the radar." Toby paused, looking thoughtful. Harold wasn't sure if he'd just been complimented, or insulted. "I think there's probably a big bust going down in one of the black markets, but that's just me," Toby said. "Anyway, there's nothing we can do about it now. You might as well come in and relax."

Chapter 25: In which Harold finds more familiar faces, and they all play games and sing songs.

Toby led Harold away from the dark entrance and through a maze of tiny hallways. The light got progressively brighter as they went, and the hallways opened out onto a balcony overlooking a huge room full of people. "Whoa," Harold said.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Toby replied. "It's station procedure that whenever there's a lockdown, all the lower levels have to be evacuated. So everyone comes here. Technically, it's still in the lower levels, but this area is only used during evacuations, so they're able to use it through some loophole in the rules."

A cool breeze wafted past. Harold looked up and saw a bird flying above their heads. "Is that a --?"

"It's not real," Toby said. "I mean, it's real, it's just not a real seagull. It's a toy. Kind of like remote controlled cars on Earth. Probably one of the kids brought it from their classroom." Toby leaned over the rail and scanned the room. "Kaovot!" he bellowed. Harold blinked. He hadn't known Toby could yell that loud.

Despite the volume, Harold wasn't sure what Toby hoped to accomplish. The room was packed with people, and they all seemed to be talking. Kids were running around, food was being served over at one wall, and Harold was pretty sure there was music playing underneath all the other noise. But Toby just kept watching, and after a couple minutes, a clearing began to form in the crowd, and a single figure was left looking up at the balcony. "What?" the person yelled back.

Toby pointed up at the bird. The person on the floor -- Kaovot? -- nodded and pulled something out of his jacket. It looked like a cell phone or some kind of remote control. He pointed it at the bird, which suddenly stopped soaring and fell out of the air. Toby caught it before it could hit the ground and waved down to the person on the floor. "Thanks!" he called out.

Turning to Harold, Toby continued in a more normal voice. "No one's supposed to have stuff like this in here. Mostly because when you get this many people all together in one spot, all the signals start to overlap. You don't want your phone to suddenly start flying around the room, or your seagull to start broadcasting your private conversation. It's easier to just leave all that stuff off until the all clear is called."

"So what's with the …" Harold mimed pushing a button on a remote control, gesturing at the seagull toy.

"Oh, Kaovot's the enforcer for today," Toby said. "Your young friend there isn't the only one who thinks rules only apply to other people. Lots of the kids try to bring in stuff like this." Toby held up the seagull and flapped it up and down a couple times. "Kaovot's got a zapper -- it disrupts the signal so we can collect up the toys and figure out whose they are."

Harold nodded. Toby leaned back over the railing and pointed to the crowd below. "They do these evacuation drills every couple months. Officially, everyone is supposed to follow their normal daily schedule as much as possible, but mostly they just treat evacuation days like vacation days."

Harold looked around the room. It had looked like sheer chaos at first, but as Toby pointed things out, Harold could see that people were separated into some clear groups.

"Over there is food," Toby said, indicating the far wall. "Buffet style, so people can eat whenever they want. Mostly everything's good, but they still don't have anything that beats pizza. The only thing they really don't have is somewhere to sleep. We're all in here together till the all clear, but it hardly ever takes more than a day."

Harold had so many questions, he wasn't sure where to start. Why were the lower levels evacuated when the station was locked down? What was Toby doing on the station? What was going on with Al? What was Harold going to do next? That one seemed the most important. "What should I do next?" he asked.

Toby shrugged. "Well, here's what I know." He held up his and started ticking off points on his fingers. "You were supposed to leave the station yesterday with Echalko Zhak, and meet up with Nick outside the perimeter." Harold nodded, even though he still wasn't totally clear on that issue. It hadn't happened, so he didn't see any need to ask for clarification.

"You're still on the station," Toby continued, pointing to his second finger. Harold nodded again.

Toby paused. "I'm on the station too, trying to drum up some support for Tina's anti-Protectioner protests. They're going well, by the way. Tina's a lot more personable than the guy they've got doing PR for The Protectioners. Last I knew, she was working with Damaris' parents doing some research into those predictions that are causing so much trouble."

If there was one person Harold wanted on their side, it was Tina. She could talk her way into -- or out of -- anything, and she could convince a lot of people to agree with her along the way. If she was working on something, it would be something good.

"We're all under lockdown now, but it's unlikely that it's because of you, so we might as well have fun." Toby finished up his fourth point, and Harold waited for a fifth. No fifth point came. Toby looked expectantly at Harold.

"Okay," Harold said, not quite sure what Toby was waiting for. "Thanks."

Toby grinned. "Great!" he said. "Let's go."

There was a set of stairs not too far away, and they headed towards it. Harold wondered why there were so many stairs on such a technologically advanced space station. Maybe it was just in the evacuation zone, in case there was a power outage? On the other hand, it seemed like a power outage on a space station would cause more serious problems than not being able to use the elevators.

As they walked, Toby pointed out what they were passing. "Lots of the kids still hang out with their teachers. The teachers tell stories, sing songs, that sort of thing."

Harold was looking at a group of teenagers sitting in a circle and chanting in a language he didn't recognize when he bumped into somebody. "Oh, sorry," he said. "I wasn't looking."

The person he'd bumped into turned around. It was Nick. "Nick?" Harold asked. Nick shifted to the side and Harold saw Steve standing right next to him. "Steve?"

"Harol-- I mean, Gabe?" Nick said with surprise. "What are you doing here?"

Harold didn't even try to answer. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"We were invited," Steve explained. "You might not know this," he said, with a warning look, which Harold took to mean that he'd better at least pretend not to know it. "But I tried to visit the station several days ago and there was a small incident upon arrival."

Harold tried to project an air of surprised concern. "Really?" he asked. If Steve considered a screaming confrontation followed by convulsions to be a "small incident," Harold didn't want to know what he would consider a major one.

Steve nodded calmly. "Yes, there was a slight miscommunication with the security department. Luckily, it was resolved quickly and I was able to continue on my way. The station invited me to come back any time for a free stay. Nick and I decided to take them up on it and come by for a concert -- to show there were no hard feelings."

Harold appreciated Steve's recap, but he wasn't sure what the correct response would be. "A concert?" he asked.

"It was supposed to be today," Nick said.

"Hey, have you seen... anyone else?" Steve asked.

Harold assumed Steve must be talking about someone specific, since obviously he had seen many other people. The room was full of other people. "Well, I met up with Toby when I came in," Harold said, looking around for Toby. He was over by the chanting circle, but waved when he saw Harold looking. Harold just hoped he was using the name Toby on the station. Lots of the aliens that Harold met on Earth used Earth names, and he wasn't sure how many of them used their "alien names" when they were elsewhere in the galaxy.

"Okay," Nick said. He and Steve exchanged a glance. Harold wondered who else was going to pop up.

Toby came running back over. "They're going to try to do a group chant!" he called. "They've got a bet going with the parents to see who can get more people on their team. Come on!"

Nick and Steve looked as excited as Toby. Harold felt himself returning to the familiar territory of having no idea what was going on. He let himself be shepherded over to where the teenagers were sitting, hoping explanations would come later. At the very least, he hoped it would be before he was expected to chant anything.

Much to his surprise, Harold enjoyed the "group chant." It was really more like a "chant off," with the two teams facing each other for question and response chants. It would have felt like a pep rally, except that chants didn't sound anything like cheers. Most people just got to be backup chanters -- Harold didn't really have to do anything except chant a couple different sounds. It probably would have been even more fun if he'd known what he was saying, but Toby translated a little as they went along, and that helped.

"This one's my favorite," Toby said. "It's about the death of a star." That sounded … not at all good, actually. Harold's skepticism must have showed in his face, because Toby rushed to reassure him. "No, it's a great chant," Toby said. "Because it follows the motion of the star -- the chant is like the leading edge of the corona; it expands out until everyone's chanting, and then it contracts back in to just a single leader."

Harold noticed that several people on the outer edges of the group were already chanting. "Are they supposed to be doing that?" he asked. He was pretty sure the sun hadn't expanded that far yet.

"Those are the planets," Toby explained. "They get destroyed by the sun as it reaches them."

Harold decided to stop asking Toby what the chants were about.

Chapter 26: In which Nick and Steve finally explain what happened to Al, and why the plan isn't the plan anymore.

After the chanting competition (Harold wasn't sure who'd won -- he wasn't even sure who's team he had been on), there seemed to be a general mellowing of the atmosphere. Harold and Toby met back up with Nick and Steve and headed for the food area. For Harold, it seemed strange to be so relaxed. It was the first time in days that he couldn't describe his mood as "anxious," "terrified," or "worried out of his skull that something bad was going to happen that was going to be his fault."

In the absence of fear and paranoia, irritation set in. "Could somebody please tell me what's going on?" Harold said. The four of them had found a table that was as out of the way as you could get in a big open room filled with people, and Harold felt it was long past time for some explanations. "Why is it suddenly okay for all of us to sit down and eat together? I thought I was supposed to be hiding." If all the cloak and dagger stuff hadn't really been necessary, Harold was going to be mad. His house had burned down!

Nick looked at Steve. "I think Steve would explain it best," he said.

"No, you're the one who's great at talking," Steve replied. "I think you should explain."

"But you're the one who was with Harold when he got here," Nick insisted.

"Exactly," Steve said. "Harold was with me -- he already knows that part of it. You should explain because it's your part that he doesn't know yet."

Harold snuck a glance at Toby, who was watching the exchange with interest. His eyes went back and forth between Nick and Steve like he was at a tennis match.

"Okay, I'll explain," Nick said. Finally. Harold hoped the explanation would be simple, clear, and preferably including the words, "It was all a big misunderstanding and you can go home right now."

There was a long pause. Nick cleared his throat. "Well, it's sort of funny, actually. You're not supposed to be here anymore, you know." Harold nodded. He'd heard that much from Toby.

"You remember how we made up that plan?" Nick asked. It sounded like a rhetorical question, so Harold didn't say anything. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about the whole explanation. "It didn't exactly work out like we thought it would."

Steve jumped in. "You did great with your part; that wasn't a problem at all." Harold felt relieved. His biggest worry about the whole plan had been that his lack of knowledge about all things alien would give the game away.

"Steve's right," Nick said. "The problems on Steve's end didn't start until after he left the station."

"Hey!" Steve said indignantly. "What about the problems on your end. Your part went wrong way before mine did."

Nick shrugged. "It probably doesn't really matter at this point," he said. He looked at Harold. "That plan? It's been pretty much thrown out the window. Airlock. Whatever. Since we split up on the station, nothing's gone right."

He pointed his fork at Harold. "You're the only one who's actually done what you were supposed to do."

Steve interrupted again. "That's not true," he said. "I did what I was supposed to do."

Nick turned his fork on Steve. "No you didn't," he said. "You were supposed to leave the station without creating a major incident." He looked at Harold. "Do you know what he did?" Harold shook his head. "Steve's plan for getting you onto the station without needing an ID involved deciding to put the whole transport ship through quarantine procedures, then claiming he was allergic to something in the light. He spent more than a day being examined by the station's doctors. It may or may not surprise you to learn that they couldn't find anything wrong with him -- apparently they didn't scan his brain -- and now he has to wear this stupid medic alert bracelet every time he comes here!" Nick picked up Steve's wrist and shook it in Harold's direction. It did look like he had on one of those plastic bracelets like they gave you at the hospital.

Steve looked abashed. "I also may have agreed to come give a talk about how people live with serious allergies in their everyday lives," he admitted. "And how they can overcome them to do what they want."

"Are you actually allergic to anything?" Harold asked.

"No!" said Nick.

"Yes," Steve said at the same time. "Sort of."

"Just feeling a 'weird tingle' in your left ear every time they buzz you with that light does not make you allergic," Nick said.

"Anyway," he continued, looking back at Harold. "Steve's 'plan' meant he was a day late getting off the station, which meant he missed his check-in with Tina. Tina got worried --"

"Understandably so, given what was happening on your end," Steve muttered. Nick ignored him.

"-- and sent Toby to see what was going on."

Toby took up the thread of the explanation. "Along with a laundry list of other errands, which is why I didn't just come get you myself. Plus, at that point I thought we were still going with the 'keep it secret' part of the plan. So I got Tina to get Trudy to get Mr. Echalko Zhak recalled to his planet, and I told him that you were supposed to be his escort for the first part of his trip. But then he left without you -- sorry about that, by the way -- I still don't know why. I didn't know you were still here till you walked in with that girl this morning."

"What girl?" Nick asked. Harold opened his mouth to answer, but Nick cut him off. "No, never mind. I'll finish first."

Harold waited, but Nick looked like he was searching for words. Steve, who still looked a little put out by Nick's description of what he'd done, leaned across the table. "Nick lost Al," he said.

"What?" Harold said, loud enough to attract the attention of several tables nearby. He also ended up spitting water all over himself, since he'd just taken a drink when Steve spoke.

"Shh!" Nick said. He looked at Steve. "I was trying to think of a way to tell Harold that would be less disturbing, not more." Nick handed Harold a napkin.

"Thanks," Harold said, dabbing at his shirt. It was probably a lost cause.

"I didn't lose Al, exactly," Nick said. "We left the first station, about an hour after you and Steve, and everything seemed fine. It was a long trip, and I fell asleep partway through. When I woke up, we were being hijacked by space pirates!"

"I thought space pirates were just a myth," Harold said. He was sure that was what the people in front of him had been saying in line that day.

"They are," said Toby. "It's just that the myth is true."

"There are lots of different theories about the pirates," Steve said. "Some people think it's all one family, who pass the piracy secrets down through the generations. The current popular opinion is that 'space pirate' is just a name used by any petty thug stealing things from transports."

For once, Nick got to interrupt Steve. "Can I continue with my story?" he asked.

"Sure," Steve said. "I was just providing some background information."

"Anyway," Nick said, "we were being hijacked by space pirates. Real space pirates. It was a pretty typical hijacking, really. They showed up, hovered over the transport ship, and we all played bingo."

Harold was confused. "Is that some sort of code?" he asked. "Like, 'playing bingo' actually means there was some sort of gunfighting going on?"

Nick looked at him like Harold was the crazy one. "What? No, it means we played bingo. They called it Space, actually, which makes more sense anyway, but it's the same game."

"The pirates are kind of eccentric," Steve explained. "I was talking with one once and he said it got really boring always flying around in space and looking for treasure and stuff, so they came up with the bingo idea. They go out and find all sorts of stuff in space -- that's the treasure -- and then they hold up other ships and play bingo to trade their treasure for stuff that the passengers are carrying. Water, food, clothes, movies -- pretty much whatever the passengers have is fair game to get put in the pot."

"I've always wanted to be on a ship that was hijacked by space pirates," Toby said. "I've heard it's really fun."

Harold was still trying to figure out how Nick's story was going to get from bingo-playing space pirates to "losing" Al. A thought occurred to him. "You didn't put Al in the pot, did you?"

"What?" Nick looked shocked. "No, of course not! We weren't even sitting together! Al was way in the back, and I was towards the front, and everyone was playing bingo and having a great time. I gave them all those snacks I bought at the first station. And I won this!" Nick held out what looked like a shiny piece of glass. Toby leaned across Harold's plate to get a closer look.

Harold was beginning to feel a little impatient. "What happened to Al?" he asked.

"Well, I didn't think anything had happened to him," Nick said. "I thought everything was fine; I really did. But it's procedure on the transports that any time you have an unscheduled stop, you have to recheck the passenger list."

Harold must have looked confused, because Steve added, "Do a headcount, essentially." Harold nodded.

"So they did, and, well, Al was missing. He wasn't on the ship anymore." Nick looked nervous.

Harold felt like he'd already said "What?" too many times for the day. "How is that possible?" he asked instead.

"It's not," Toby said. "That's the problem."

Nick didn't say anything. "Nick?" Harold questioned.

Nick's answer was quiet, and he still looked nervous. "I think the pirates took him," he said.

"Which is impossible," Toby said. "Space pirates don't take people."

"Well, what else could have happened?" Nick asked. "People don't just disappear into thin air, either! He must have gone somewhere, and the only other ship around was the pirates' ship."

Steve ignored the growing argument between Nick and Toby in favor of speaking to Harold. "Nick contacted Tina as soon as he got off the transport ship, and Tina contacted Trudy. Trudy's been trying to pick up any information that might be out there about Al's location. Since the original plan is pretty much kaput at this point, Steve and I came to pick you up here."

"Plus, if Al could get away from the pirates, we thought he might come here too, since he knows you were supposed to be here," Nick added.

"But I'm not supposed to be here anymore," Harold said. People had told him that a lot in the past few hours; he wasn't likely to forget it.

Steve nodded. "Yeah, but we got here yesterday to try to meet up with you. Then we couldn't find you, and we thought we'd lost you too. When we met up with Toby, he told us he'd taken care of your ride off the station, so we stopped looking for you, and kept looking for Al. Then we found you anyway!" From his expression, Harold guessed that Steve's explanation actually made sense -- to Steve.

"Okay," Harold said, somewhat uncertainly. "So... we're not hiding anymore?"

"We can if you want to," Nick offered. "But I think your cover's blown anyway." Harold hadn't even known he had a cover. "Anyone who enters the evacuation zone is scanned and profiled, so if the station didn't know you were here before, they do now."

Toby nodded, but Steve looked thoughtful. "I don't know," he said. "If this was just a standard drill, I'd say you were right, but if it was a standard drill, I'd also say security should have been here by now to collect you. Not that you've done anything wrong," he hastened to add, "but because there's no record of you entering the station."

"How would they know who I was at all?" Harold asked. He imagined "Wanted" posters all over the galaxy with his and Al's pictures on them. Harold had never even been off of Earth -- how could his picture or "profile" be identified on an alien space station?

Toby gave him an odd look. "The internet doesn't just work on Earth," he said.

Chapter 27: In which Nick and Steve and Toby give Harold a lesson in galactic culture 101.

"Actually, it works better almost everywhere else," Nick said. "'Google Galactic' has been the most widely used search program on most planets for decades; Earth's been a little slow to catch up."

"'Don't be evil!'" Nick quoted with a laugh. "I love that slogan!"

Harold frowned. "I thought that was the Google mission statement," he said. "Isn't that different from a slogan?"

"It's a funny story, actually," Nick said. "See, Google Galactic does a lot of charitable giving around the galaxy, and they're definitely a household name -- they have a lot of brand recognition. And they're widely known as a pretty nice group of people. A while back they came out with an advertising campaign, using the slogan 'Go Google Galactic.' Then it got shortened to just a triple G. It was wildly popular -- t-shirts, hats, stickers, that kind of thing -- all with the GGG on them.

"But then their Earth representative said they'd never be able to use that on Earth, because it looked too much like 666. Earth people are superstitious, he said, and they believe in signs and omens. One of their holy books says that 666 is a mark of evil. He said he hadn't even read the book, and he still thought of it as soon as he saw the new line of temporary tattoos that had come out.

"So Google Galactic didn't want to cause problems on Earth; they were just starting out there, and they didn't have the kind of good reputation that they already had out here. They figured it wouldn't matter at first, since they weren't even using the name 'Google Galactic' on your planet. But eventually they figured Earth would be more a part of the galactic community, and they might want to bring back the Go Google Galactic campaign. As a preventative measure, they made "Don't be evil" their mission statement on Earth."

Nick took a drink of something Harold assumed was water, then continued his story. "It's simple, direct, and to the point. 'Don't be evil,' and the story behind it, caught on everywhere, and the slogan became 'Go Google Galactic: Don't be evil!'"

"Wow," Harold said.

"Is that really the Google mission statement?" Toby asked.

"I read about it somewhere," Harold said. "It really is. I just never realized it was a pre-emptive strike against a possible negative backlash to a slogan the organization might someday introduce to the planet, if they're still using it when Earth joins up with the rest of the galaxy. It seems …"

"Weird?"

"Prescient?"

"Overconfident?"

"I was going to say it seems like they really take the long view, but those others work too," Harold said.

Just at that moment, a boy ran up to the table. "Mr. Gabe!" he called. "Mr. Gabe, I found something!" It was Xikade Zho. He skidded to a stop beside the table. "I've been looking all over for you!" he said.

"Hi Xikade," Harold said. To the rest of the table, he said, "This is Xikade Zho. I met him yesterday, and he and his sister invited me over for dinner." There had been some tense moments in between the meeting and the inviting, but Harold glossed over those.

"Hi Xikade," Toby said. "My name's Toby."

"I'm Nick," Nick said.

"And I'm Steve," Steve said. "It's nice to meet you."

"I told Xikade that I was waiting for someone yesterday who hadn't showed up," Harold explained. "He helped me search the message board to see if anyone was trying to contact me."

"And I found something!" Xikade said. "I kept searching for your symbol that you showed me, and I found it! I've been looking for you all day, but I couldn't find you! Come on, I've got to show you!"

Harold glanced around table, but everyone looked as curious as he felt. "Just give us a second to clear our plates," he said. "We'll all come."

Chapter 28: In which everyone reads messages on the board.

Inside the evacuation zone, there was an area set aside for people to access the computer network on the station. The screens were exempt from the "no gadgets" rule -- "because they're not wireless," Xikade explained.

"I saved a record of that thing you drew," Xikade said. Harold didn't bother to explain that it was the first letter of his middle name, which was the name he had been going by when he was trying to keep people from finding out his first name, which started with a different letter. He didn't bother to explain that it was a letter at all, actually. The spoken language translators were excellent, but the written languages didn't have an equivalent level of advancement. Harold thought Trudy might have explained why at some point, but he couldn't remember.

Xikade sat down at one of the screens and called up a picture of the message board. "When I found out we were having an evacuation day today, I thought I'd look again." He made a face. "I don't like chanting." He scrolled over the board and zoomed in on an area near the bottom. "And I found this!"

Harold squinted. "What is that?" he asked. Xikade zoomed in further. "Oh!" Harold said.

In small, computer-generated script, there was a message. "Gabe: Head's up. We're coming to help. C & E."

Harold closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he opened his eyes and read the message again. "Somebody please tell me that doesn't say my sisters are coming here," he said.

"Is it for you?" Xikade asked. "What does it say?"

Harold just shook his head. He still couldn't believe it. Toby answered for him. "It is for him -- you did a good job finding it. It's from his family; he has two sisters, and they're going to come to the station."

"Are they younger sisters?" Xikade asked. "I have a younger sister."

"Yup," Toby replied. "They're both younger than Mr. Gabe, but they're older than you."

"How did they get a message on the board if they're not already here?" Xikade wanted to know. "You can't do that."

"How did they even know about the board?" Harold asked. "How are they getting here?"

"Aren't they supposed to be in Alabama?" Steve asked. "At the school with the Chandraskars?"

"Yeah," Harold said. "At least, I thought that was where they were. Now I'm not so sure. How did they find a spaceship?"

"The Chandraskars know everyone," Steve said. "If they were at the school, they probably could have gotten someone to build them a spaceship if they'd needed it. What I want to know is why they think there's going to be trouble, and why they think they should be here to help. You said you just found this today?" he said to Xikade.

"It wasn't their yesterday," Xikade said. "It just showed up this morning."

"Huh," Steve said. "Well, that's weird."

"Oh, I almost forgot," Xikade added. "I found one other thing, but I'm not sure it's right." He zoomed out. And out. He kept going until the whole wall was visible on the screen. "Normally if the computer picks out patterns at this level it's just random -- a quirk of the program. But this one seemed different."

Harold couldn't see anything. For once, he wasn't the only one. "What are we looking at?" Toby asked.

"I couldn't see it at first either," Xikade said. He called up the picture of the G that Harold had drawn. "But if you take this, and superimpose it over the wall -- look!" He dragged the G over the middle of the wall and highlighted twelve points along the letter. "These shapes are all identical," he said. "And they're in the right formation to make your symbol. Is that good? Did I find something cool?"

"Can we see the shapes up close?" Nick asked.

"Can you make it so we can see just those?" Steve's question overlapped with Nick's. Harold was still trying to see the G shape. He'd never been good at connect the dots.

Xikade did something complicated with the computer, and the shapes he'd identified suddenly filled the screen. They were cat paw prints. "It looks like there's some kind of writing inside them," Xikade said. "But I can't read it -- do you know what it says?"

Harold couldn't read it either, but Toby, Nick, and Steve all nodded. "'Gabe Zabela,'" Nick started, looking sideways at Harold.

"'Don't leave --'" Steve continued, and Toby finished for him.

"-- the station,'" Toby said.

"'We're coming to…'" Nick tilted his head to one side. "'help,' I think," he said finally. "That one's sort of hard to read."

"'Signed: Sabri, Nadeka, Damaris, Lishendri, Pjerin, Meshkalla, Zahar,'" Toby read.

"Who are they?" Xikade asked. "Do you know them?"

"We all know them," Steve said. "But I hope they're not really coming. The last thing we need is a bunch more people running around that we'll have to keep track of."

"I don't know, Steve," said Nick. "So far it seems like they're keeping track of us."

"Yeah," Toby said. "I'd say this message shows a pretty high level of ingenuity and access to resources. It might be helpful to have them around. They've been bored all cooped up in the --" Toby broke off and looked at Xikade. "--at home," he corrected himself. "And having those kids be bored is never a good thing."

Harold took it upon himself to try to answer Xikade's question. "We think the ones who sent this message are some kids we know," he explained. "Sabri, Nadeka, Damaris, Lishendri, Pjerin, Meshkalla, and Zahar are their names. They all go to school together, and they're still pretty young. Zahar is Toby's brother, and I'm sort of an honorary member of Sabri's family."

"Honorary?" Toby asked. "Don't tell her that -- as far as she's concerned you're a Zabela now, and you'll be a Zabela forever. That was all she could talk about when I was back home."

"Are they the ones you were supposed to meet yesterday?" Xikade asked.

"No," Harold said. "I'm not sure why they're coming."

Xikade shrugged. "They're just kids. Probably they just said they were coming because they miss you. Tifa says stuff like that all the time."

"Maybe," Harold said, ignoring the irony of that statement coming from Xikade, who not only was still a kid himself, but whose sister did, in fact, achieve at least some of her crazy statements, like getting all the way to the tower computer up on the main level. It was possible that the kids were all talk, but he didn't think it was very likely. Between the seven of them, he had no doubt they could find a way to get to the station if they really wanted to.

The others must have been thinking along the same lines, because Toby said, "I think we're going to need to find more rooms."

And with the truest words Harold had heard all day, Steve said, "I think we're going to need to find a new plan."

Chapter 29: In which Harold uncovers a problem with Steve's plan.

The problem with having four people who didn't have any idea what was going on try to come up with a workable plan was that none of them had any idea what was going on. "This isn't working," Harold said. "None of us have any idea what's going on, so it's impossible to plan ahead."

"I think we can all agree that we should stay on the station," Steve offered. Since they were still in lockdown in the station's evacuation zone, that seemed like a good idea.

"Maybe we should leave a message on the board," Toby said.

"What should it say?" Harold asked.

"How about 'Clueless but staying put,'" Nick said.

"Or, 'Please send more instructions,'" Steve said.

"We could write 'Test for echo'!" Toby exclaimed. Everyone looked at him. "What?" he asked. "I've always wanted to send that as a message."

Eventually, the four of them agreed that they really didn't have any message to send, and the idea was abandoned. "How long do these evacuation drills usually last?" Harold asked.

Nick and Steve shrugged. "I don't know," Nick said. "Toby?"

"Hey, I've only been here once before," Toby said. "I could go ask someone, if you wanted. One of my old roommates from college is working here now." Harold wondered if it was Kaovot -- and if he'd used that name on Earth. At a university, anything was possible.

Toby went off to find someone, and Nick and Steve decided to go back to the buffet for more food. Harold was left sitting alone, wondering what was going to happen next.

Chapter 30: In which yet another familiar face appears.

"Excuse me."

Harold was staring off into space when he heard the voice. He wasn't actually staring into space, since there were no outside windows in the room that he could see, but he was staring off into the distance.

"Excuse me. Harold?"

At the sound of his name, Harold jumped. He hadn't realized the person had been talking to him. Although it was possible the person wasn't talking to him -- Harold didn't see anyone he recognized standing near him, and no one had called him Harold in days. He was pretty sure everyone who knew him well enough to call him Harold also knew that he was currently going by Gabe.

For a minute, Harold wondered if the helper spirits were back. They sure were taking a long time finding Al. Maybe they'd gotten distracted along the way and were talking to someone else. Then someone tapped him on the shoulder.

"Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt --"

Harold jumped again and spun around. The person behind him didn't look familiar. He was wearing a long, khaki-colored cloak and a baseball cap that had the Baltimore Orioles logo on it. He was also smiling ear to ear. "Harold!" the man said.

Harold resisted the urge to shush him. "Hi!" he said instead. Hopefully the other person would say something revealing -- like what his name was, or how he knew Harold's name, or something that would give away whether or not Harold was supposed to know him.

"It's great to see you," the man said. "It feels like it's been forever since I last saw you."

"Yeah," Harold said. "You too." Who was this guy?

"I'm so glad I ran into you here." The man looked around as if searching for someone. "Is Al around right now too?"

Harold stopped trying to match the guy up with anyone he'd met before Al. That took out high school and college classmates, and any of Charlotte or Eliza's old boyfriends, plus anyone from that community softball team he'd been on for six months right after he'd graduated. It left... still too many people to make a reasonable guess.

"Is Al around?" Harold asked. "Have you seen him?"

The guy just looked confused. "Uh… no," he said. "That's why I asked. Is everything okay?"

"Of course," Harold said. Then he relented. "Except I honestly have no idea who you are. I'm sorry -- are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else?"

Harold was surprised when the guy laughed. "I guess I must look a little different," he said. "I haven't looked in a mirror in forever."

"I'm Matthew," he explained. Matthew? Harold racked his brain for a Matthew. "We met at the Misty Miles Motel, over the summer. I, uh, tried to steal your cat, remember? And then we got abducted by aliens, and I got amnesia, and we all drove to Washington DC?"

"Oh! Matthew!" Harold said. "How are you? What are you doing way out here?"

"That's why I wanted to talk to you and Al," Matthew said. "I just wanted to tell you that meeting you guys really changed my life. I didn't even realize Al was, you know, not from Earth, but somehow I ended up on this phone tree, and I was getting all these emails. It was weird at first, and I kind of freaked out. But then I met up with this guy named Sam, and he told me all about you and Al and all the different planets out here, and it was so cool! He hooked me up with this retreat group that goes to all kinds of out of the way places in the galaxy, and they do meditation, and energy work -- lots of finding your place in the universe kind of stuff. I really needed that, you know?"

Matthew didn't even wait for Harold to respond before he continued on. "Sam and I just got back from one of their desert retreats -- I still can't pronounce the name of the planet we were on -- and it was great! We weren't supposed to talk much, though, so I'm kind of making up for it now. I'm just so surprised to see you! I thought you and Al were pretty much settled on Earth!"

Harold blinked. "How long have you been away?" he asked.

"In Earth time?" Matthew asked. "Is it November there?" Harold nodded. "A couple of months, then," Matthew said. "We left a few weeks after the whole Washington DC experience. Why?"

Harold tried to figure out how to explain what had been going on. He wasn't used to talking with people who actually knew less than he did about current galactic events. "Have you heard of a group called 'The Protectioners'?" Harold asked.

Matthew frowned. "I know I've heard something about them," he said. "Wait -- do you mean The Protectioners, or the Very Protectioners?"

"What?" Harold said. "The Very Protectioners? Who are they?" His feeling of being the one who knew things was quickly fading.

"Well, The Protectioners believe in a set of predictions, or prophecies, that have been handed down in their sect for hundreds of thousands of generations. They believe that these predictions describe a specific series of events that will culminate in the destruction of the galaxy." Matthew looked at Harold questioningly, and Harold nodded. He actually had known that part, at least.

"The Very Protectioners --" Matthew frowned. "You know, if they didn't insist on such a literal translation of their name, it would make a lot more sense. Anyway, the Very Protectioners are a splinter group that formed, oh, probably less than ten generations ago. They believe in the same set of predictions, but they believe the predictions describe a symbolic series of events that every living creature experiences over the course of their own individual lifespan. For the Very Protectioners, the predictions are meant to help us accept the cycle of life with grace and dignity, and to learn from each step along the way."

"How do you know all that?" Harold asked.

Matthew shrugged. "There was a Comparative Galactic Religions seminar offered at the retreat. It was held in the only building that had air-conditioning, so it was pretty popular."

"Huh," Harold said. "Well, I've never heard of the Very Protectioners, but the regular Protectioners have decided that Al and I are the ones responsible for the series of events that brings "great destruction" to the galaxy. They've really got people in an uproar, so Al and I were going to go into hiding for a while. The plan kind of went wrong, though, and we think Al may have been kidnapped by space pirates."

"Really?" Matthew asked. "That doesn't sound like them. The pirates, I mean. It does sound like The Protectioners, unfortunately. That's too bad, though. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Harold thought for a minute. "I'm not really sure," he said. "Could you keep an eye out for Al? We're all sort of looking for him." Harold added, "I'm here with Nick and Steve -- do you know them yet?" When Matthew's eyes widened, Harold knew that he'd at least heard of Nick and Steve. "And Toby," Harold said. "He knows Sam, I think -- is Sam here too?"

"Yeah, he's around here somewhere," Matthew said. "I think he was going to try to meet up with someone he met last time he was on the station. I'll let him know what's going on and catch up with you later. Where are you staying?"

Harold gave him Mr. Echalko Zhak's room number, since he couldn't think of anything else. "Thanks," he called out, as Matthew away. "It's good to see you again." Matthew waved and disappeared into the crowd, presumably in search of Sam.

Chapter 31: In which Harold spends a lot of time explaining things to people.

Harold had just finished explaining the whole story about Matthew, and the amnesia, and the alien abduction, and Washington DC, and the phone tree, and how Matthew had offered to help look for Al, to Nick and Steve when Toby showed up. Luckily, Toby had Sam and Matthew with him, and had already heard the whole thing from Matthew. Harold was glad he didn't have to tell the surprisingly complicated story again. He didn't have the knack for summarizing a story down to its key points; he always ended up off on tangents and describing details that weren't important at all to the main point of the story. He'd spent three minutes ranting about the Rhode Island police department before Steve had gotten him back on track talking about how he and Al had met Matthew.

"Kaovot said he thinks the all clear will come soon," Toby said. "Then we can all get out of here and figure out what to do next."

There was a pause, and Harold looked around expectantly, waiting for whatever would signal the all-clear. They were ready, and it seemed like perfect timing. Nothing happened.

"'Soon' as in minutes?" Nick asked. "Or 'soon' as in sometime before tomorrow morning?"

"'Soon' as in now," Toby said. "It's coming."

Sure enough, it was less than a minute before loud klaxons began blaring, and big yellow lights starting flashing on and off. An announcement came over some kind of PA system, but Harold couldn't understand any of it. Maybe it wasn't being translated properly. Or maybe it was just really hard to hear over the klaxons. "How could I have missed this the first time?" Harold wondered out loud.

"I don't know," Toby said. "The original alarm is much more attention-grabbing than this. Did you really not notice? I thought that was just something you told Tifa."

"Who's Tifa?" everyone else wanted to know.

"She's a little girl who was supposed to be in my class today," Harold said. "We met yesterday on the main level of the station, and she and her brother -- that's Xikade, the one who found the messages -- took me back to their parents for dinner. She's the one who told me I was supposed to be here."

Of course, it wasn't that simple. First Matthew and Sam wanted to know about the messages, and then Steve said, "Did you say you were supposed to be teaching a class today?"

Chapter 32: In which Harold finds out he's going to be hosting a party.

Luckily, any day that included an evacuation drill also became a no school day. "Can you imagine trying to teach kids anything after they've been cooped up all together for hours?" Toby had asked. "It's easier for everyone to let the kids go run around and blow off some steam for the rest of the day."

Since Harold had seen plenty of kids running around in the evacuation zone, he wasn't really sure what the difference would be. It wasn't like they could go play outside, since they were on a space station. "Where do they go?" he asked.

"There's a bunch of play areas," Toby said. "They can go to those, or the pool, or the gyms. Lots of kids like to hang out in the weather lounges."

"Weather lounges?" Harold repeated.

"Yeah," Toby said. "This station's really set up for families to live here long-term if they want to. Some of these kids have been here their whole lives. The weather lounges can simulate weather on lots of different planets -- they were originally supposed to be educational, I think, kind of like planetariums on Earth. But everyone liked them so much that they sort of transformed into group gathering areas. Some of them are set to a certain planet all the time, and some of them are more random. You should check them out some time."

"Hey!" Nick called. "Catch up, guys! You're holding up the line!"

Harold glanced around. After the all clear had sounded there had been a rush for the doors, but it had quickly become a "hurry up and wait" phenomenon. Harold thought calling the shifting crowd a "line" was giving it a little more credit than it deserved, but it was true that he and Toby had gotten separated from Nick and Steve, who were now several yards ahead of them, talking with Matthew and Sam.

When they caught up, Nick said, "Guess what? We figured out what we should do for the rest of the day!"

"We're going to have a party!" Steve said.

Really? A party? "Okay," Harold said. "Why are we having a party?" The old plan had included a lot of hunkering down and not drawing attention, so he was having a little trouble adjusting to this new approach.

"I think it's a great idea," said Toby.

"It's perfect," Nick said. "See, none of us know what's going on -- we don't know what's happening with The Protectioners, or where Al is, or why Charlotte and Eliza and all the kids are coming here. But we've gotten two messages telling us to stay here, so I think we should."

"Me too," said Steve.

"I've got nowhere else to be right now," Toby said. "Tina told me not to come back until I found out what was going on with Al, and I'm not telling her he got kidnapped by space pirates without having a good follow-up. I'm staying."

"Our ride doesn't leave for another two days," Matthew said. "So I'm with you -- I think a party's a great idea."

"Think about it," Nick said. "There must be someone who could give us more information about what's happening. Maybe someone's seen Al, or heard something about The Protectioners. At a party, you get a chance to see lots of different people and talk to them; you can learn a lot without a lot of effort."

"Plus it's always good to make new friends," Steve said. "If you want to have a good neighbor, you have to be a good neighbor."

That made sense. Sort of. Harold shrugged. "Sure. Let's have a party." He figured that with Nick and Steve helping, little details like how and when and where would sort themselves in due time.

"Great!" Nick said. Then he turned to the person next to him. "We're having a party!" he announced. "At Echalko Zhak's rooms, this afternoon -- as soon as we get out of here. Come on by -- bring friends, bring food, it'll be great!"

The person (a total stranger, as far as Harold could tell) looked excited. "What a great idea!" she said. "I love parties! I have to go tell Yoish!"

"See you later!" Nick called after her. Then he turned back to Harold. "See? It's easy. Just start inviting people."

It reminded Harold of the time when he'd helped Al evacuate several thousand people through the doorway onto Earth. The six of them spread out and headed in separate directions, talking to everybody they crossed paths with. "We're hosting a party!" Harold would say. "Stop by at Echalko Zhak's rooms and say hi -- we'd love to see you!" He was glad no one asked him how to get there, since he didn't know, but several people asked what they should bring. "Whatever you want," Harold told them. He hoped that was a good answer, and that there wasn't some weird space station tradition of bringing... something he wouldn't want in his rooms. Although they weren't actually his rooms, and Harold sent a brief silent apology to Mr. Echalko Zhak for using his rooms to host a party without permission.

By the time Harold met back up with Steve, he figured he'd probably talked to close to 50 people. Around 20, though, he'd been able to stop inviting, because word had spread, and people started inviting him! He just told them all it sounded great, and he'd be there, and he hoped to see them soon.

"Is this really going to work?" Harold said to Steve. In Harold's experience, parties involved things like planning, and usually several trips to the grocery store for food, and drinks, and ice. Lots of ice.

"Sure," Steve said. "Nick's great at this sort of thing. It'll all come together; you'll see." Harold hoped those wouldn't turn out to be famous last words.

Chapter 33: In which Harold hosts a party.

There were already people waiting in the hallway outside Harold's rooms when they got back. Harold unlocked the door, thankful he hadn't forgotten (or lost) his key card, and Nick ushered everyone in. Harold recognized the Zho family, and Ayme introduced him to their neighbors on either side. "We wanted to come right over and see how you were settling in," Ayme said. "I'm so glad you're having this party, so you can meet everyone. I just heard that Mr. Echalko Zhak might have to stay on his planet for a bit longer than he originally thought -- we're so lucky to have you!"

Her words made Harold a little nervous, since he wasn't really planning on sticking around any longer than necessary, but he decided not to worry about it. "Thanks," he said.

Between Ayme and Nick, the living room area was quickly transformed into a chatting and eating space. The furniture was pushed back against the walls, and Harold made sure all his things were locked in the bedroom. Steve took charge of the kitchen and began whipping out plates of crackers and other snack items.

There was a steady stream of people passing through. Most of them brought food, and Harold hung out by the table and "sampled" as he chatted with people. It didn't seem to bother anyone that Harold was alternately called either Harold or Gabe, depending on who was talking. Nobody asked for his last name, so he didn't offer it. Maybe they thought his name was Harold Gabe. Or Gabe Harold. After all, he didn't know whether "Echalko Zhak" was a first name, a last name, both, or neither. It felt like it would be rude to ask, and everyone else seemed to feel the same way about his name.

One person brought a music system, and the volume of the party ratcheted up about three notches. On the positive side, Harold enjoyed listening to the music. On the negative side, it significantly reduced his chances of hearing anyone's name clearly enough to be able to repeat it, let alone remember it. Still, the party seemed like a success. There was food, and talk, and a couple of kids had set up some kind of video game competition on his wall screen, so there was even entertainment. Harold hadn't learned anything about Al, but it was still an enjoyable way to pass the time.

Things dropped off during the dinner hours. Enough so that Harold had time to sack out on the couch and watch Matthew and Sam debate which dishes were disposable and which should be washed and returned to their owners. He heard a knock at the door, and frowned. No one had been knocking earlier; they'd just walked right in.

"Come on in," Harold called, not moving from the couch. The door slid open, and a woman in a suit was standing on the other side. She was holding a cat carrier.

"Mr. Harold Gabriel Jones Zabela?" she asked formally, looking straight at Harold.

"Um," Harold said. "Yes?"

"Please sign here," she said. She held out a pad like UPS drivers used, but didn't step through the door. Harold sighed and got up.

"What am I signing for?" he asked.

"Just to certify the arrival," the woman said. "All the charges have already been paid."

Harold signed. Later, he would wonder why he hadn't asked more questions. How had the woman known where to find him? How had she known his name? What was in the carrier? But at the time, he didn't ask any of those questions. After all, people had been showing up at his door and giving him things all afternoon. And Matthew and Sam didn't seem to think anything odd was happening, and they were standing right there. So Harold just signed his name and accepted the cat carrier. "Thanks," he said.

"All part of the service," the woman replied, somewhat cryptically. The door slid closed, and Harold knelt down to examine the carrier.

"Wow, that was cool!" Matthew said. "Who was that?"

"It looked like someone from the FCS," Sam answered. "That's the best feline chauffeur service in the galaxy!"

Harold finally figured out how to get the carrier open. The door popped down to form a ramp, and a somewhat rumpled brown cat came walking out. "Bob?" Harold asked.

"Bob!" Matthew cried. "It's great to see you again!"

Bob sat down and began washing himself. He ignored all attempts to attract his attention, and glared at Sam when he got too close. Once he was cleaned and groomed to his satisfaction, Bob stalked over to the sofa, leapt up, and lay down right where Harold had been sitting. He curled up into a tidy circle and closed his eyes. Harold sighed. Wasn't that just like cats? They show up out of the blue, cause a big fuss, and then nap through the hard part.

After a lengthy debate, they decided to try moving Bob to the bedroom for the rest of the party. Someone had suggested moving the whole couch, but it wouldn't fit through the door. "What about just one cushion?" Sam asked.

"But what if he wakes up later and wants a different one?" Toby countered. "We could move all the cushions."

Harold contemplated what the living room would look like with a sofa in it that didn't have any cushions. Then he scooped Bob up and carried him into the bedroom. The cat never even opened his eyes. "There," he said, walking back into the living room. "Problem solved."

Scattered applause greeted him, and the first evening guests began arriving. The party was back in gear.

Harold, however, felt partied out. He hid out in the kitchen with Steve while Toby led the guests in a rousing game of In Vs. Out -- sort of a cross between mah jong and table tennis, as far as Harold could tell. It was noisy, that was for sure. Steve put him to work drying dishes, and Harold tried not to break anything.

Chapter 34: In which the party brings more old acquaintances back into Harold's life.

Harold was dozing at the kitchen table when he heard someone call his name.

"Harold! Harold -- oh, sorry. I didn't realize you were resting." Toby burst into the kitchen and stopped abruptly when he saw Harold.

"No, it's okay," Harold told him. "I'm awake. What's going on?"

"You're never going to believe who's here," Toby said.

Harold thought he was ready to believe just about anything. "Ilia and Janar?" he asked. "The zipper aliens? More cats? My parents?"

Toby frowned. "No," he said. "Zipper aliens?" Then he shook his head. "Never mind. Just come see!"

"Who is it?" asked Harold. He'd already had a lot of surprises for one day; a little forewarning would be a nice change.

Toby lowered his voice. "It's the pirates," he whispered.

"The pirates who kidnapped Al?" Harold asked. Now that would be surprising.

"No," Toby said. "Why would they be at your party? It's the technology pirates -- you know, Matthew and Betty and Kim? That's what they were calling themselves on Earth, at least."

Oh yeah. Harold remembered them. They had come to Earth looking for him and Al to help them fix the doorway system. Which they had broken. Or at least, played a part in breaking. Anyway, they were nice, once they stopped thinking that Harold had kidnapped their daughter. It was weird that they had thought that, and then Tifa had thought he was trying to kidnap her too. Did Harold give off some kind of creepy kidnapper vibe? Did he seem like the kind of person who would try to kidnap other people's children?

"Harold?" Toby's voice interrupted Harold's musings.

"What? Oh, yeah -- Matthew and Betty and Kim are here," Harold said. "What are they doing on the station?"

"I don't know," said Toby. "They just said they were here to see you."

Well, that was no stranger than anything else that had happened during the day, so Harold stood up. Just then Kim appeared in the doorway. "Harold!" she yelled excitedly.

"Hi," Harold said, trying to sound enthusiastic and not exhausted. "Have you met Toby?" he asked.

Kim shook her head. Toby went down on one knee and waved. "Hi," he said. "My name's Toby. We met once on Earth, when my brother Zahar and I were hanging out together."

"I'm Kim," Kim said. Harold wondered if that was actually her real name. On Earth, he'd assumed the whole family was using American names for cover, but if she was still introducing herself as Kim, maybe that was her name everywhere. Maybe it was short for something more alien-sounding, like Al's name. "It's my birthday!" she exclaimed.

"Wow," Toby said. "It's your birthday? That's so cool! What's your birthday wish?"

"My parents said I could go anywhere I wanted for my birthday," Kim said.

"And she picked here," Betty said, walking into the kitchen. Looking back towards the living room, she said, "Matthew! I found them! We're in the kitchen!" Seconds later both Matthews showed up at the door.

Matthew who was Kim's dad looked at Matthew from DC. "Hey," he said. "Your name's Matthew too?"

"Yeah," Matthew from DC said. "Are you from Earth? I'm from DC, but I've been off-planet for a couple months. This is my first time on the station."

Harold wondered how much sugar Matthew had eaten to still have that much energy. He'd heard Sam saying that the food at the desert retreat was a little questionable -- high on nutritional value, but low on taste -- and they'd both been eating almost constantly since the party began. "Hi Matthew," Harold said. "And Matthew," he added, to Matthew from DC. "Hello Betty. This is a pretty special day for Kim, huh?"

"It's my birthday!" Kim said again.

"We always let Kim pick something special to do on her birthday," Betty explained. "This time she wanted to visit the station." Checking to see if Kim was listening, Betty added, "We're not really sure why."

Harold shrugged. "Well, it's good to see you," he said. "How did you find out about the party?"

"Oh, we were visiting with some friends and they told us there was a party going on, and Kim insisted that we come. Actually, she said she would see you here -- we didn't believe it at the time, but…" It was Betty's turn to shrug. "Here you are. Where's Al?" She looked around as if Al might pop out from under the table or behind a chair.

Harold ignored the fact that Kim was apparently able to predict his location at will. "Al's missing right now," Harold said. "It's kind of a long story." He wasn't sure how involved Betty and Matthew really wanted to get, especially since Kim was with them. They had parted on good terms, but it wasn't like they'd kept in close contact with each other. And things had been a little tense there for a while before everyone had finally met face to face to explain what was going on.

Apparently, they wanted to get involved. "Missing?" Matthew who was Kim's dad said. "Of course we want to hear the whole story. Maybe we can help." There was a general shuffling of people and chairs. Nick and Steve volunteered to explain everything, and Harold somehow ended up on babysitting duty.

"Do you remember Bob?" he asked Kim. "He's here too -- do you want to see him?" They checked, but Bob was still sleeping, which wasn't very exciting.

"I just lost a tooth," Kim said. "Do you want to see?"

"Just now?" Harold asked, alarmed.

"No, today," Kim said. "See?" She held her mouth open wide and pointed to a small empty spot in the front.

"Wow," Harold told her. "You already have your new tooth coming in and everything!" He checked his watch. Only a couple minutes had gone by; not nearly enough time for Nick and Steve to have gotten through all the explanations.

"How about a movie?" Harold asked, having quickly run out of ideas for what a young child might like to do when confined to one set of rooms with a bunch of talking grown-ups.

"Yeah!" Kim said. "The llama movie!"

What? Harold had no idea what Kim was talking about. A movie about llamas? That sounded kind of boring. "Is that what the movie is called?" he asked uncertainly.

"No, I can't remember the title. But it's about a llama," Kim said. She looked completely confident in Harold's ability to identify the movie and produce it on command.

"Toby?" Harold asked hopefully. "A little help here?" Toby had been leaning on the doorway between the kitchen and living room. At Harold's question, he joined Harold and Kim in the living room.

"Sure," Toby said. "Did you see the movie on Earth?" he asked Kim, trying to narrow down the possibilities.

"I saw it at Harold's house," she said, pointing at Harold. Toby gave Harold a look that clearly said it was pretty pathetic that Harold didn't even know what movies he had at his own house.

"Okay, that's good," said Toby. "We can find that. Let's check the database." He and Kim headed for the computer; Harold trailed along behind. He really couldn't remember any movies about llamas at his house. They had done a three house movie marathon one afternoon while Kim was visiting, though, so it was possible she'd seen it then. Harold's house had been showing the most kid-friendly movies -- which of course had meant that all the kids had ended up at Nick and Steve's place, while most of the adults watched talking animals at Harold and Al's. Maybe one of the animals had been a talking llama -- he remembered some talking fish, but llamas didn't live underwater. That must have been a different movie.

Google Galactic worked as well (or better) than regular Google. Toby and Kim found the movie fairly quickly, and somehow got it to play on the wall screen. They settled onto the sofa with some leftover cookies that one of the party guests had brought. Harold dozed off a couple times, but he kept waking up to check on Kim -- it would look pretty bad if they lost someone else. Finally, Toby tossed him a blanket. "I'll keep my eye on her," Toby said. "Get some sleep if you can. We'll wake you up if anything interesting happens." Harold wasn't sure whether Toby meant something interesting in the movie, or something interesting in general, but he didn't argue. The next time he felt himself dozing off, he let himself go.

Chapter 35: In which new arrivals make Harold's rooms seem very crowded.

Harold woke up to the sound of voices. It was oddly familiar; Harold was getting a little tired of being woken up in the middle of the night by people he couldn't see. His neck hurt -- he must have fallen asleep on the sofa. The room was dark, and he peered toward where he thought the door was, trying to figure out who was talking. It didn't sound like the helper spirits, and he thought at least some of the people he'd run into the day before were planning on staying the night. He couldn't remember which ones. Matthew and Betty and Kim must have had their own rooms, though, and probably Nick and Steve too. Maybe it was Toby?

"Shhh!" someone whispered.

"That wasn't me!" someone else said.

"How was I supposed to know there would be a table right next to the door?" another voice came. None of them sounded like Toby.

"Putting a table next to the door -- yeah, that's totally crazy. Where else would the table be?" They were getting louder, or else Harold was just getting more awake.

"I thought you said this would be simple."

"Well, it would have been simple if we'd gotten here on time, when we were supposed to."

"You know, this would be a lot easier if we could turn a light on."

Harold sat up. He recognized that voice. "Charlotte?" he asked, disbelieving.

The room was suddenly flooded with light.

"What's going on?" Matthew from DC entered the living room from the bedroom. He was carrying Bob. "Whoa," Matthew said, stopping in his tracks at the sight of seven guilty-looking kids and two guilty-looking adults clustered near the door.

Harold stared at them in shock. It was his sisters, Charlotte and Eliza. They were barefoot. All the kids were there too -- Sabri and PJ, the Cal twins, Toby's brother Zahar, Damaris, and Meshkalla. They were wearing shoes. And, oddly, winter parkas. Harold ran a hand through his hair and tilted his head back and forth a couple times to get the stiffness out. "Hey everyone," he said, breaking the silence. "Come on in."

"Hi Harold," Zahar said. "Is Toby here?"

"I think so," Harold told him. Harold looked at Matthew. "Is Toby still here?"

Matthew looked back inside the bedroom. Harold thought that was a little strange -- wouldn't Matthew have seen Toby earlier if he was in the bedroom? On the other hand, why would Toby be in the kitchen? "I think so," Matthew said. "Maybe he's in the kitchen."

They both turned to look at the kitchen door. Toby didn't appear. "Huh," Harold said. He was really comfortable on the sofa. "Toby!" he called loudly. The kitchen door slid open and Toby hurried out.

"What's going on?" he said. "Were you calling? I had my iPod turned up -- whoa." Just like Matthew, Toby stared for a moment at the group by the door. Then he waved. "Hi Zahar! How's it going? Want a sandwich?"

Zahar did. In fact, all the kids wanted a sandwich. Except for PJ, who wanted a bowl of cereal. "What?" she asked. "It's morning; I want cereal."

Harold knew it would be next to impossible to get any valuable information out of the kids before they ate, so he sent them all off into the kitchen with Toby and Sam. Sam had joined the conversation late, when he tripped over his socks coming out of the bathroom. He didn't seem surprised at all to see all of them standing around the living room. "Hi everyone!" he'd said cheerfully. "Glad you made it!" Harold thought Sam was a little too cheerful, and that was how Sam got "volunteered" to help with food for the kids.

Harold had just opened his mouth to start questioning his sisters when one of the kids yelled from the kitchen, "Don't start without us!" Harold closed his mouth again.

"Feel free to sit down," he said to Charlotte and Eliza. "We don't have enough chairs for everyone, but you've got first choice, so you might as well take advantage of it. Do you … want some socks, or anything?" Harold wasn't sure if asking about the bare feet counted as "starting," but the floor was pretty cold, and he didn't want to be rude either.

Both of his sisters shook their heads. "We're good," said Eliza.

Before Harold had to try to think of something else to say, the kids came filing back into the living room. There were a few minutes of setting down plates and drinks, and taking off jackets, and going back to the kitchen for things they'd forgotten. Then Nadeka knocked over his juice glass, and PJ had to go to the bathroom. Finally, everyone was settled. "Who's going to start?" asked Lishendri.

Harold wanted the kids to start, but they were all eating. "I'll start," he said. He figured his story would be short, at least. "I'm Harold," he said, somewhat unnecessarily. "Or Gabe -- either one is fine; I'll answer to both. I usually live on Earth, but it was too dangerous to stay there with The Protectioners targeting me and Al, so I followed the plan --" Here he looked around the room, giving his sisters a particularly stern glance. Harold was a little upset that he was the only one who had followed the plan. "--and I've been here at the station , and I met up with all these people --" Harold gestured around him, "--and we've been waiting for you to show up."

"Did you get our message?" Sabri asked. "Damaris figured out how to send it, but we weren't sure you'd get it."

"We got it," Toby said. "But I didn't believe it. Did you all sneak out? Do your parents know where you are?"

"We came to help," Zahar said. "Of course our parents know where we are."

"We left a note!" Sabri said.

Great -- a note. Not like that strategy ever backfired. Harold imagined a galaxy-wide search being instigated at that very moment; he was so going to end up in trouble for this, he just knew it. "Um, just one note?" he asked.

"Well, we also told Tina," Sabri said. "But first we swore her to secrecy." Harold breathed a sigh of relief. Tina, of course, would never break her promise to the kids, but Harold had no doubt she could find some way of reassuring their parents, or at least making sure they found whatever note had been left for them.

"And then we snuck out!" Lishendri said excitedly. "It was fun! And we didn't get lost even once. Damaris is a really good navigator." She sounded admiring, and Damaris blushed.

"Everyone helped," Damaris said. "We couldn't have gotten onto the station without you and Nadeka." Harold wasn't sure he even wanted to know how they'd managed the trip.

"Okay," Harold said. He looked at Charlotte and Eliza, who were being suspiciously quiet. "What about you two? How did you get here?"

"Well..." Eliza started to say something, then stopped.

"We were at the school," Charlotte said. "In Alabama, following the plan," she emphasized. "Then the Chandraskars told us they thought you and Al were in trouble, and asked when we wanted to leave to come after you."

"What were we going to say?" asked Eliza. "'Sorry, we're not going. We think Harold can handle it on his own.' Remember, they've met you."

"Hey!" Harold said. "I was doing fine on my own!"

"Anyway," Charlotte continued. "They got us on a transport ship headed for the station, and here we are." Eliza nodded, and she and Charlotte sat back, clearly indicating they were done talking.

Harold narrowed his eyes. It seemed like something was missing from that story. Maybe several somethings. "Without any luggage?" he asked. "Or shoes?"

Someone giggled. It sounded like Sabri, and Harold turned to look at her. "Sabri?" he asked. She shook her head, eyes wide.

"I didn't say anything," she said. "I don't know anything about it. Not that there's anything to know. Because there isn't. It happened just like Charlotte said."

Someone else giggled, and was quickly cut off. One of the boys, Harold thought. Eliza sighed. "I knew this wouldn't work," she said. "Okay, here's what happened. We had a little trouble getting onto the station. One of us," and she looked at Charlotte, "got into an argument with station security."

"I was just pointing out some obvious flaws in their screening methods," Charlotte insisted. "As a police officer, it's my job to help keep people safe."

"Yes, well, startlingly, the security officers didn't take too kindly to your 'helpful observations,'" Eliza said to Charlotte. Then she looked back at Harold. "Both of us were 'detained' for extra checks," she said.

"They were in jail!" PJ said, with inexplicable delight.

"The security guards took away our shoes," Eliza said. "And our socks, after Charlotte told them they weren't being as thorough as security people on Earth. They didn't seem to like that."

Harold winced, imagining his sister arguing with station security by comparing them to Earth -- widely considered a somewhat backward planet by the rest of the galaxy, despite its popularity as a tourist destination. "How did you get out?" he asked. He crossed his fingers, hoping the words "escape," "fight," and "pursuit" would be absent from the explanation.

"We rescued them," Nadeka said proudly.

"Sort of," said Lishendri. "We couldn't get their luggage, though. Or their shoes. Sorry."

All seven kids nodded. They clearly felt that was as much of an explanation as should be needed. Harold looked at his sisters. Charlotte wouldn't meet his eyes. Eliza bit her lip. "We were released into the custody of the Cal family," she said. "The kids said you have a pass?"

"I do?" Harold asked, surprised. Then he remembered the plastic cards Nick and Steve had presented to him and Al back on their ship. Hadn't they said something about a "get out of jail free" card. "I thought those were only for emergencies," he said, frowning. "Are you sure we should use it?"

"We were in jail!" Charlotte said. "I consider that an emergency!"

Oh yeah. "Should I go look for it?" Harold asked. He was pretty sure it was still in his pack somewhere; he hadn't taken it out, at least.

"We just need to key it into the computer before morning," Lishendri said. "You still have a couple hours."

Harold thought about his backpack. "I better start looking," he said. "Feel free to keep explaining, though." He brought the pack into the living room and started rummaging through the pockets. Charlotte gave him, or maybe the pack itself, a dubious look. "I'll find it," Harold said. "You're the one who ended up in jail, remember?"

Matthew spoke up for the first time since everyone had sat down. "Xikade was pretty surprised you managed to get messages on the board without actually being here," he said. "I guess that's not supposed to be possible. What did you do?"

That hardly seemed like the most pressing question to be answered to Harold, but Matthew seemed genuinely curious. No one seemed inclined to answer, though. "Who's Xikade?" Eliza asked.

"Who are you?" Charlotte asked.

"This is Matthew," Harold said.

"No it's not," Charlotte replied.

"What?" Matthew said. He sounded confused, which was how Harold was feeling.

"He sure doesn't look like Matthew," Eliza said. "Plus, why would the pirates be here?"

"The pirates who kidnapped Al?" Harold asked. "Why does everyone keep thinking they're here?"

"Pirates kidnapped Al?" Charlotte repeated. "When?"

"Not space pirates," Eliza said. Harold noticed she didn't bat an eye at his statement that Al had been kidnapped by pirates. "The technology people, from this summer -- Matthew, and Betty, and... what was their daughter's name?"

"Kim," Harold answered. "They're here too, actually. Well, not here here," he added when Eliza started looking around the room. "But they're on the station. This is the Matthew that Al and I met on our road trip -- remember, when we got abducted by aliens? Matthew got amnesia, and we all went to Washington DC together."

There was a moment of silence. Then Charlotte said, "Your life is so weird."

Harold, who had finally discovered his ambassador pass tucked into a side pocket, waved it in the air. "At least I've never ended up in an alien jail," he said.

"Yeah, not yet," Eliza replied. Harold threw a pillow at her.

Chapter 36: In which somebody finally knows something new.

"So," Harold said, after all the necessary codes and information had been entered into the computer to avert future incarcerations. "Essentially, you're both here because the Chandraskars told you to come, but you don't actually know anything about what's going on."

Charlotte hemmed and hawed, not wanting to admit any lack of knowledge, but Eliza nodded. "Yup!" she said. "You said something about Al getting kidnapped by pirates?"

Harold held up a hand to keep anyone from leaping into yet another recitation of what had been happening over the last week or so. "Wait," he said. "Before we get into that, I think we should hear from the kids. Matthew, this is Nadeka, Lishendri, Damaris, PJ, Sabri, Meshkalla, and Zahar." Harold pointed out each kid as he introduced them. Everyone said hi except for Zahar, who waved distractedly from the midst of what looked like a very heated (though quiet) discussion with his brother.

"Ours is more of a show and tell," Sabri said. The kids all looked at each other. "Can we clear off one of these tables?"

Harold sent another silent apology to Mr. Echalko Zhak, wherever he was. Then he said, "Sure. Which one would be best?"

The kids exchanged looks again. "That one," Sabri said, pointing to the biggest one. Luckily, it had been used as a food storage table during the party, so it was already mostly empty. Harold, Toby, and Matthew moved the remaining items into the kitchen, and the kids started unzipping the pockets of their jackets and pulling things out. The winter parkas suddenly made sense. Harold felt his eyes go wide at some of the items that appeared on the table.

"How come you guys didn't get stopped by security?" he asked.

"They don't check kids as much," Meshkalla said. "We just told them we were on a school trip."

"Which we are," PJ added. "Since this is our whole class, and we're all on a trip together."

"Did they ask you where your teacher was?" Harold wondered out loud.

"We said the teacher had gone through a different line," Sabri said. Harold had noticed she was usually the most willing to admit to the activities that bent the rules a little further than normal. He wondered if that was Al's influence.

"What is it?" Sam asked. It looked like just a big mess of parts to Harold. Everyone had gathered around the table, which made for quite a crowd between the seven kids, Harold and his sisters, Matthew, Sam, and Toby. Harold was glad no one else had decided to stay over.

"Well, right now it's just a bunch of parts," Damaris said. "But once we put it together, it's going to be able to find Al." He paused. "Hopefully. We tested it back home, but not with Al, obviously. He was too far away then."

"Obviously," Harold agreed, even though he really had no idea what Damaris was talking about.

"I think I might have sat on this piece," PJ said, pulling a small object out of her pocket. "Is that okay?"

Everyone looked at it, and the general consensus seemed to be that it was fine. Harold didn't know what it was, but it looked intact. He was interested to see Damaris and Zahar taking the lead on construction -- he never thought of Damaris as technologically inclined, but he was clearly the driving force behind whatever they were building. "So what is it, exactly?" Harold asked. "A scanner?"

"It's actually really hard to build a scanner," Zahar said. "Al could probably do it. We could do it too, it would just take a lot longer. And we couldn't figure out how to keep it from using so much power."

Toby nodded. "One of my roommates built one once -- he shorted out power to the whole quad every time he tried to turn it on."

"Was that the year we had all those snowstorms?" Sam asked. "When the university served cold pizza for breakfast?"

"I think so," Toby said. "It was the year they offered a two-credit course in snow clearing."

"I always wondered what caused those power outages," Sam said. "And I think that course was just a rumor -- I called the registrar's office to sign up and they hung up on me."

"This is actually more like a..." Damaris looked around for help.

"It's a scanner," Sabri explained. "It's just designed to only scan for one specific thing."

"Al?" Harold guessed.

"No, people are hard," Sabri said. "This can't look for something that complicated." And for once, Sabri looked slightly uncomfortable with what they were doing. "Remember the iPods we gave you?" she asked.

"Yes," Harold said warily.

"Well, we were worried about you," she said. "So we tagged them before we gave them to you."

"Sabri!" Sam said. "You know that's not allowed. How did you even get tags?"

"We all agreed," Nadeka said. "And it's probably going to turn out to be a good thing, right? If we can use it to find Al?"

Sam still looked upset. Matthew waved his hand. "Sorry," he said. "But what's a tag? Is it like one of those RFID tags on Earth?"

It was the kids' turn to look confused. "RFID?" asked Damaris. "What's that?"

Toby stepped in to explain. "They're similar," he said. "The tags Sabri's talking about are smaller, and on our planet you're not allowed to attach them to anything without some kind of label to go with it."

"But that rule technically only applies to tags that are mass produced," Lishendri said. "We made these ones ourselves."

"Really?" Sam switched from angry to intrigued. "How?"

Harold tried to get the conversation back on track. He had a small suspicion it had never actually been on track, but he tried anyway. "So this … scanner-like thing is going to be able to locate the tag in Al's iPod?" he asked. "Will it take a long time?"

Damaris shook his head. "If the tag is within range, it should only take a few seconds," he said. "If it's beyond the range, we may be able to adjust it to scan further, but not all at once." With the air of someone who'd explained all these things before, Damaris traced a circle on the table. "If you imagine that this is how far the scanner can reach right now," he said, "which is just a few light minutes --"

Harold leaned closer to Eliza. "Is that a lot?" he whispered.

"I think so," she whispered back. "We don't do a lot of astronomy in my classes."

"It's a lot," Charlotte told them. "Like from the Earth to Venus, about."

That sounded like a lot to Harold, but space was pretty big, and they had no idea where Al might be. Damaris was still talking, and Harold stood on his tiptoes to see what he was drawing on the table. "If we reconfigure the directional components, we can try to get it to only look in one direction at once, like this --" He traced a pie shaped piece of the circle. "-- and then we could probably get it to reach farther, but it will take longer to get all around the circle."

And of course, what nobody was mentioning was that the whole plan hinged on the assumption that Al was still near his iPod. Harold crossed his fingers.

"Okay," Zahar said. "I think that's it." He patted the device, which didn't need nearly as much table space as the kids had indicated. A piece fell off. "Oops," he said.

"I'll just put it back -- wait," Damaris said. "I don't think this is part of it at all. Is someone missing a battery chip?"

Everyone patted their pockets. "It might be mine," Nadeka offered. Damaris passed it across the table.

"Now we're ready," he said. "Let me just synch it up to your wall screen." The screen on the wall brightened, and everyone turned to look at it. Damaris flipped a switch on the side of the scanner. Harold held his breath.

Chapter 37: In which several unexpected discoveries are made.

"Huh," Damaris said, staring at the screen. There was a single blinking dot clearly visible.

"Is that Al?" Harold asked. "Al's iPod, I mean?"

"Well, it should be," Damaris said slowly. "But it's really close to us. Did you guys switch iPods or anything?"

"I don't think so," Harold said. "Mine has all you guys singing "Happy Birthday Harold" on it, so I'm pretty sure it's the right one."

"It's your birthday?" Toby asked.

"It's next week," Harold explained. "But Al and I were still supposed to be hiding out wherever Nick and Steve were taking us by then, so the kids were getting ready early. Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that," he said, turning to Sabri. He was sure she was responsible for the problem. "I don't know what you did to my shuffle feature," Harold said, "but it plays that Happy Birthday song all the time. Practically every other song, sometimes."

Sabri just looked innocent. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she said. "The shuffle just picks songs at random, right? Maybe it's just a coincidence."

Harold stared at her, but she didn't back down. Somehow, someday, he would get her back. He wondered if Al would be willing to help. Probably. "Maybe," Harold said aloud. "Anyway, I'm sure it's mine."

"Well, that's weird," Zahar said. "Because the signal we're picking up is really close." He and Damaris began tinkering with the scanner device, discussing in low voices things like probabilities and scan radii. Harold wondered if it would be a good time to get a snack. He was hungry.

"What time is it?" Harold asked the room in general. He figured if it was close enough to morning, he could make an argument for breakfast. On the other hand, if it was still the middle of the night, he could always call it a midnight snack.

"8:27," Charlotte said offhandedly, glancing at her watch.

At the same time, Eliza said, "About 6:50."

They both stopped and looked at each other, then back down at their watches. Harold gave them a knowing look. "If my watch was working, I would have just checked the time myself," he said. "There's something wacky about the station, or maybe just traveling in space -- it's throwing off some of the Earth stuff. Not iPods, though," Harold said. "I don't know why."

"Because iPods were designed by Mr. Jobs," Sam said. "He's pretty good about compatibility." At Harold's raised eyebrow, Sam added, "In a galactic sense, at least. Oh, and I don't know what time it is either. Timekeeping devices weren't allowed at the retreat." Harold figured that must extend to Matthew too, so he looked around for Toby. He didn't appear to be in the living room anymore. He was probably in the kitchen again. That would mean Toby had gotten two kitchen trips, compared to Harold's zero!

"I'm going to go ask Toby," Harold said. He hurried off to the kitchen. Sure enough, Toby was sitting at the kitchen table with what looked like some leftover pie from the party. He looked up guiltily when Harold entered the room. "Is that the berry one?" Harold asked. It was mostly a rhetorical question, since Harold could plainly see that yes, it was the berry one. "Do we still have any of the apple-tasting one?" Harold didn't think it was actually made with apples, but it tasted like apple pie, and it was good. Toby nodded and pointed towards the counter with his fork. "Thanks," Harold said. "I'm starving!"

"Me too!" said Toby. "It's definitely time for breakfast." That was enough for Harold. If Toby said it was breakfast time, Harold was going to eat pie.

Eating pie was a serious business, so Harold and Toby ate in silence. So when the knock came on the living room door, they could hear it clearly. The living room was completely silent. The knocking got louder. Harold and Toby looked at each other. Who could be knocking? Station security? Angry neighbors?

"Do you think I should go answer the door?" Harold asked.

"It doesn’t sound like anyone else is going to," Toby said. Harold looked regretfully at his remaining pie. "I'll watch your pie for you," Toby offered.

Harold hurried out to the living room. Several whispered conversations seemed to be going on simultaneously. Half the kids looked like they were trying to convince Charlotte and Eliza that whoever was at the door wasn't there to arrest them and drag them back to jail. The other half of the kids appeared to be trying to convince Sam that the device they had built was at least mostly legal, and that it was highly unlikely that whoever was at the door was there to arrest the kids and drag them off to jail. Harold shook his head and answered the door.

It was too bad the doors on the station automatically slid open all the way. If they could open just partway, Harold could have leaned in the doorway and blocked the view of the inside of the room to the people in the hallway. As it was, Betty immediately focused on the scanner thing the kids had built. "Whoa," she said.

"Hi Betty," Harold said. "What's up?"

She gave him a look. "Can I come in?" she asked. Harold waved her in, but she held back in the hallway for a second. Betty held up a hand to forestall Harold's question and held a tiny phone up to her ear. "Matthew," she said. "Yeah, I found it. It's in Harold's rooms." She paused. "No, I said it would be here -- I totally win this one. You're chaperoning the next field trip no matter what." Another pause. "No, it's not a tie. I am clearly the winner, and you clearly have to pay the forfeit. No negotiating your way out of it." She rolled her eyes. "Fine -- I'll see you in a couple minutes." She tucked the phone back into her pocket and turned back to Harold. "Thanks," she said, walking into the room. "So, what is it?"

"Well, it's supposed to be a sort of a scanner," Harold said, when no one else jumped in to explain. "The kids brought it with them and put it together. It's supposed to help us find Al."

"Really?" Betty sounded intrigued. She took a step towards the table the device was sitting on, but stopped when another knock came on the door. "That'll be Matthew," she said.

"I'll get it," Harold offered. He opened the door and found Matthew, as expected. Matthew was holding Kim, who was asleep. "Come on in," Harold said quietly. "Do you want to put her in the bedroom?"

Once Kim was settled -- with Bob next to her, Harold noted -- the cat clearly felt not enough sleeping was going on -- everyone else regrouped in the living room. Harold ended up on the outskirts of the group, which was getting pretty big. He couldn't even see the table, but he could hear Damaris talking. "I'm telling you, it's not the scanner," Damaris was insisting.

"It has to be the scanner," Matthew said. "There's nothing else it could be."

"But the scanner shouldn't affect that," Damaris said. "Your ship, maybe. We already know our technology doesn't always get along well with yours, and I'm sorry if it's causing problems. But there's no possible way it could be affecting something on the station like that. Our planet helped design this station!"

Harold didn't think he'd ever heard Damaris say so many words at once. He also thought he had missed something important. "What did I miss?" he whispered to Toby, who handed him his pie. "Thanks."

Toby gave him a quick summary of what had been covered so far. "Matthew and Betty and Kim are here because they were woken up by someone on their ship a little while ago," Toby said. "Apparently, all sorts of little glitches started happening -- doors opening and closing on their own, lights turning on and off, that sort of thing. Mostly nuisance stuff, but pretty alarming all the same. It seems to have started at exactly the same time we turned the scanner thing on."

Oops. "What about the other thing they're talking about?" Harold asked. "With the station?"

"That's pretty weird," Toby said. "I guess the automatic door alert systems are acting up."

"What's that?" Harold asked.

Toby took a bite of pie, and Harold waited impatiently for him to finish. "Usually people don't knock on doors on space stations," Toby explained. "Well, some people do, but not most of them. There's supposed to be an automatic chime that will sound, and a little light that flashes in each room. That way you can tell there's someone at the door from anywhere in your rooms, without them having to knock so loudly."

"So they're not working?" Harold asked.

"They're not working the way they're supposed to," Toby corrected. "Sometimes they don't work at all, and sometimes they chime over and over again when no one's there, and sometimes they chime in the wrong rooms. It's really weird; I've never heard of something like that happening before."

Harold chewed thoughtfully. "And Matthew thinks it's the scanner?"

"Damaris says it's not," Toby said. "It does seem unlikely. I mean, he's right -- our planet helped design this station, so the technology should be compatible. They did say they tested it back home." He shrugged. "Matthew wants to take it apart so he can see how it works, and Damaris wants to turn it back on so they can see if it happens again."

Harold hadn't even known the machine was turned off. The door chimed. "See?" Matthew said. "It was the scanner."

Charlotte opened the door and peered up and down the hallway. "There's no one there," she said.

"See?" Zahar said. "It wasn't the scanner."

"Can we turn it back on now?" Sabri asked. "I want to find Al."

Damaris flipped the switch. The dot was back. "Huh," Betty said. "That's weird. Was it that close before?"

All the kids nodded. Harold couldn't really tell. Were they in the center of the picture, or at the edge? He wasn't sure how anyone was seeing context in the picture, but if Damaris said it looked like Al was close, that seemed good. Matthew from DC came over to stand with Toby and Harold. He was eating a piece of fruit that Harold couldn't identify. "Can you guys tell how they're reading that?" Matthew asked. "Cause it just looks like a dot to me."

Harold shook his head. "It looks like a dot to me too," he said.

Matthew who was Kim's dad was examining the screen carefully. "It looks like your scanner is picking something up that's actually on the station," he said. "But not on any part of the station that I'm familiar with."

"You've always said the station looked bigger on the outside than the inside," Betty said. "Maybe it is." She sounded doubtful, but Matthew brightened.

"That's right!" he said. "It does look bigger outside." He turned to the kids. "Does the station have any hidden levels?" he asked. "Secret tunnels, or concealed rooms, that kind of thing?"

All the kids looked baffled. "I don't know," said Nadeka. "Me neither," Lishendri added.

"Maybe they're not secret," Sam said. Harold was glad he was still on the other side of the room, so he didn't draw attention to the three who were eating. "Maybe they're just not public. They could be an older section of the station that's not used anymore, or something left over from the construction. I heard they had to build a lot of redundancies into the station during the building phase because of all the trouble they had getting supplies all the way out here."

"How would Al have ended up there?" Charlotte asked. "If it's not used any more, why would anyone be there?" Harold saw Matthew and Betty exchanging glances. It suddenly occurred to him that an unused section of a massive travel hub space station would be a very useful place for, say, technology pirates. Or some other kind of pirates, since Matthew and Betty didn't seem to know about it.

"Maybe the more important question is how can we end up there," Betty said. "If the scanner is picking up something somewhere on the station, we should check it out. It's just a question of figuring out how to access those sections."

"Are you eating pie?" Eliza suddenly asked, and Harold looked up quickly.

"Yes?" he said. "I was hungry."

"I'm hungry too," Sam said, walking across the room towards them. Matthew pulled a second piece of fruit out of a pocket somewhere and tossed it to him. "Thanks," he said. "I vote we all eat while we figure out how to get to where Al might be."

At that exact moment, Kim walked out of the bedroom rubbing her eyes. "The kitty's gone!" she said. "He went through the wall!"

Chapter 38: In which everybody goes treasure hunting.

There was a chaotic scramble for the bedroom. Harold was surprised that they all even managed to fit in the small room, but a lot of the kids were standing on the bed, so that helped. Kim was right. Bob was absent from the room, and there was a door-sized hole in the back wall. Harold was absolutely positive that there hadn't been a door there before. Almost absolutely positive, at least. "Was there a door there before?" he asked Matthew from DC.

"No, that's new," Matthew assured him. "I wonder where it came from." He sounded more curious than alarmed.

Harold was feeling alarmed. First Al got hijacked by pirates, and then Bob disappeared through a hole in the wall! That seemed bad. "This seems bad," Harold said to no one in particular.

"Actually, it could be good," Matthew who was Kim's dad said. "We were wondering how to access the non-public parts of the station, and here's a door. I think your cat's just helping us out."

"Don't worry," Damaris said. "Bob can take care of himself. He's probably just exploring."

"He's probably gone to find Al," Sabri said. "We should follow him."

It sounded like a great plan, and everyone agreed that following Bob into a dark, unused, potentially dangerous part of the station to look for Al, who might or might not be there, was a smart idea. Even Harold, although he wasn't quite sure why. There were just a few small snags along the way.

"It's really dark in there," Meshkalla said. "I didn't bring a flashlight."

"I have one," Harold said. "You can use mine." He made the offer without thinking, and she looked so relieved he couldn't take it back. However, it left him without a flashlight.

"I don't have a flashlight either," PJ said.

"I don't have any shoes," Charlotte said.

"Do you think we should get Nick and Steve?" Lishendri asked.

"We could go up to the travel levels and get some flashlights," Toby suggested.

"That would take too long," Sabri said. "I think we should go now."

"I'm not going without shoes," Charlotte said.

Eliza had been checking out the door. "Actually," she said. "We might not want shoes. Listen." Eliza knelt down and tapped her fingers against the floor just past the doorway. Even with a light tap, the sound echoed. "It's pretty noisy," she said. "Unless we want to let everyone know we're coming, we should probably just wear socks, or something."

Personally, Harold thought that any group made up of eight kids and eight grown-ups was going to make a lot of noise whether they were wearing shoes or not. It didn't seem worth arguing about, though.

"I have a flashlight on my phone," Sam said. "Anyone else?"

Between all of them, they managed two actual flashlights (Zahar turned out to have one in his jacket pocket that he'd forgotten about) and five phone lights. Meshkalla turned down Harold's flashlight when she found out it would mean she'd have to walk in front. Harold hoped it might find its way back to him, but it didn't. Somehow, he found himself out in front anyway, stepping gingerly through the door in his socks. "Shhh!" someone whispered. Harold rolled his eyes.

"Wait!" someone in the back said. "What about Nick and Steve?"

"Just make our shoes into an arrow shape pointing towards the door," Eliza said. "If they come looking for us, they'll know where we went." Harold blinked. That was the kind of solution only a theater major could come up with, but all the aliens seemed perfectly willing to go along with it.

"Okay, now we're ready," Harold heard from behind him. Sabri came up next to him and Harold recognized his flashlight. "Ready?" she asked.

"Let's go," Harold said.

Chapter 39: In which the searchers make a lot of noise, and finally find what they're looking for.

"Ow! Someone just stepped on my foot!"

"Shh!"

"Hold on a sec -- I need to roll up my pants."

"What?"

There was a thump from somewhere in the middle of the group, then a clatter as one of the phones hit the floor. "Oops. Sorry everyone, I tripped over something."

"That was me!"

"Oh, sorry. Are you okay?"

Harold sighed. "Quiet" was not a word that could be used to describe their progress so far. "Stealthy" wasn't either. Or "fast." He was pretty sure if he looked back, he would still be able to see the light from his bedroom spilling into the dark corridor. On the other hand, it felt good to finally be doing something, and taking action. Even if that action was just getting lost in a dark deserted corridor.

"Are we going in the right direction?"

"I think so. Next time we should make a portable scanner."

Harold really hoped there wasn't going to be a next time. There had already been a debate about which direction to go, with several people advocating a return to his rooms to check the scanner and actually draw some kind of map (Charlotte had been in that group). Betty had suggested splitting up so they could cover more ground, but she had been shot down by Harold, who didn't want any more people to get lost. Especially himself. "It's better if we all stick together," he had said. "Plus, there's not really enough lights for two groups."

They kept walking. It was still dark. It felt like it was getting warmer, though. "Does it feel like it's getting warmer?" Harold asked.

"I'm cold," Charlotte said.

"You're always cold," Eliza told her. "It feels warmer to me. Why, is that bad?"

"It's probably just because of the time of day," Toby said. "I think a lot of conduits and stuff are running in the walls and under the floors out here. They're probably heating up as the station goes into the morning rush." There was a pause, and he added, "It should be perfectly safe."

Gee, that was reassuring. Harold felt so much better. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"No," Toby said. "But it makes sense, right?"

"It's safe," Betty said decisively. "Do you think we would have brought Kim if we thought otherwise? We're monitoring the situation." She waved her phone light. "Now shhh."

They kept walking. The corridor they were in suddenly turned a corner and they found a light. And stairs. Everyone stopped. Sabri turned her flashlight off, and she and Harold looked at each other in the dim light. "What do you think?" Sabri asked.

She looked worried, and very young. Harold wondered how the other kids were holding up. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. "We'll find him," Harold said. He wanted to tell her not to worry, but couldn't. He was worried himself. He still couldn't quite believe Al had been hijacked by space pirates, but in the dark corridors of the hidden spaces of the station, the search for him seemed much more real.

"Straight on, or down?" Harold asked quietly, looking at everyone in the group. Kim was riding piggyback with her dad, and Toby had a kid on either side holding onto his shirt.

"Down, I think," said Damaris. "That's what it looked like on the scanner."

"I think down too," Zahar said. "Straight'll take us all the way around, but only on this level. We want to get lower."

Harold peered down the stairs. He couldn't see very far before they disappeared into more darkness. "How much lower?" he asked. "A lot?"

Eliza joined him at the front of the group. "We should toss down a rock," she said. "Or a lightstick. That's what they always do in movies, to see how far down things go."

"We don't have any rocks," Harold said. "Or lightsticks. Plus, wouldn't that make a lot of noise?"

"We could toss down one of the phones," Eliza suggested. Then she frowned. "Unless it broke when it hit the bottom. That wouldn't be good."

Harold put a foot on the first stair and bounced up and down. "It seems solid enough," he said. "I think we should just go. It's worked so far." And he started walking. The group had a tendency to get bogged down with things that took up a lot of time, and didn't lead to any really valuable conclusions. He and PJ had gotten ahead at one point and had to backtrack, only to find everyone else coming up with a written list of what the best emergency gear to have brought would have been, and whether they could have fit all of it into their pockets. Since (as far as Harold knew) none of the phones had a handy time travel feature, they were stuck with what they did have, and it wasn't the best time to be looking back.

Luckily, everyone followed Harold down the stairs. Most of the group was silent. Harold thought he could hear one of the kids counting the stairs as they descended, but he wasn't sure. It seemed like a lot of stairs before they reached another landing, and Damaris agreed they should look around before going any farther. By popular vote, they went left.

Harold's feet were starting to hurt. He wasn't used to walking on metal decks in socks for long periods of time. The energy level of the group in general seemed to be flagging. It was very quiet as they walked. And walked, and walked, and walked. They kept walking until what sounded like a very angry bird call pierced the air around them. Everyone jumped.

"What was that?" someone whispered. The noise came again, and the group shifted uneasily closer together.

Then Matthew from DC said, "Wait, I think it might be my phone." He pushed a few buttons and held the phone up to his ear. "Hello?" he said quietly. "Oh, hi Mr. Penderbliq -- how are you?" There was a pause, and Matthew put his hand over the bottom of the phone. "It's my boss," he whispered to the group. "I'm good too, Mr. Penderbliq," Matthew said into the phone, still very quietly. "I'm really sorry I can't talk any louder. I…" he paused, searching for a good excuse.

"Laryngitis," Eliza said.

"People sleeping," Matthew who was Kim's dad, pointing at Kim, who was, in fact, asleep again.

Matthew from DC nodded. "I'm right next to a little girl who's asleep," he said. "I don't want to wake her up." Another pause. Harold could hear the voice on the other end, but he couldn't make out the actual words. "Yes, I had a great time," Matthew said. "Thanks for calling. Yes, I'm still planning on being at work next week. I'll … let you know if my flights get delayed, okay? Okay, thanks again. I'll see you soon. Bye."

"Sorry about that," Matthew from DC said. "He always calls when I go away on vacation -- he likes to check in on me, I think." Then he turned to Sam. "What kind of a ring tone was that?" It was amazing how he could fit so much indignation into a whisper.

"You said your boss was kind of old," Sam said. "I thought it would be easy to remember."

"A pterodactyl scream?" Matthew asked. "I'm never letting you pick my ring tones again."

Harold could see Sam shrug even in the odd shadowy light of the cell phones. He looked like he was trying to keep himself from laughing, and Harold wondered what other sounds had been programmed into Matthew's phone without his knowledge. "Let's keep going," Sam suggested, before Harold could say anything.

They kept walking. "Every time we start walking, I always feel like we should say 'Rally Ho!'" Sabri said to Harold.

"I think it's 'Tally Ho,'" Harold told her.

"Really?" Sabri asked. "That doesn't make any sense. Why would we want to tally something?"

"Well," Harold started. Then he stopped. "Actually, I'm not sure," he said. "I guess 'Rally Ho' does kind of make more sense."

Nadeka, who was walking behind them, started to say something. "I think --"

Sabri cut him off. "Shhh," she said. "I see something!"

The group stopped moving. Everyone, for once, was completely quiet. Well, except for PJ, who sneezed. "Sorry," she whispered. Sam patted her shoulder, and everyone turned to see where Sabri was pointing. It looked like the corridor took another sharp turn up ahead, and there was some light coming around the corner.

"Do you think it's another staircase?" Harold asked as quietly as he could.

"No, look," Sabri said, pointing again. "There's something moving up there." Harold stared at the light again. It did look brighter than the last one, and it had a sort of shifting quality to it, like a flickering candle flame -- or like something was moving around in front of the light source. Sabri flipped off her flashlight again. "Come on," she said, creeping forward. Harold followed her, hoping he wasn't going to find something he really didn't want to find, like a space monster, or some disreputable space pirates having a party.

They all moved forward as quietly as possible. It wasn't silent, but it was cautious. If whatever was up ahead was sleeping, or maybe really distracted, it was possible it might miss their approach. Sabri, who had led the way fearlessly since the beginning, stopped short right before the corner. She looked at Harold. "Do you want me to look first?" Harold asked. Sabri nodded. Harold eased forward. He almost jumped out of his socks when he felt someone touch his shoulder.

He spun around, but it was just Charlotte. "Get lower," she whispered, gesturing with her free hand. "If they're looking, they'll be looking at eye level." Harold thought that would only work if whatever was around the corner was the same relative height as a human, but he did it anyway. After all, all the aliens he'd met so far had been mostly person-sized, so why mess with the trend? Harold crouched down and took a deep breath. He poked his head around the corner, hoping for the best.

There was a person standing with his back to Harold. A panel had been pulled off the wall and the person had both hands inside the wall. He was also wearing an iPod, and muttering to himself. "More awesome than who? More awesome than you, that's who. Come on, work with me here -- we can make everyone's screens go blank all at once, right? Of course we can." Harold stared in shock. It was Al.

"Al?" Harold said. Al didn't turn around. He probably had his iPod volume cranked up; Harold always nagged him about that on Earth.

"It's Al?" Sabri asked. "Al!" She ran around the corner, followed by everyone else. Harold didn't want to blink; he was afraid Al would disappear and they'd be back to walking around in the dark.

"Gah!" Al stumbled backwards when Sabri tackled him for a hug, and he tripped over his backpack.

"Al!" Sabri said again. "We found you!"

"Sabri?" Al asked. He looked around at their somewhat odd group. "Harold? What are you doing here?" Harold was embarrassed to find that he couldn't say anything. He just shook his head. Then he walked over to where Al was still sitting on the floor and pulled him up into a giant bear hug.

Harold pulled the earphone out of the ear closest to him. "I missed you," he murmured.

"I missed you too," Al said. Then, more loudly, he addressed the group. "How did you find me?" he asked. "And -- not that I'm not glad to see you -- but what are you all doing here? And what happened to all your shoes?"

Harold laughed. "It's a long story," he said. "Let's sit."

"Do you still have food in your backpack?" PJ asked. "I'm hungry."

"Me too," Matthew from DC said.

"Who are you?" Al asked.

"He's the Matthew we met on the road trip," Harold explained. "When we got abducted by the zipper aliens, and he got amnesia -- remember?"

To Harold's surprise, Al looked around nervously at his words. "Let's not talk about the zipper aliens," he said. "I think I lost them, but it was hard to tell. This place is like a maze."

"The zipper aliens are here?" Matthew from DC asked.

"Shouldn't we go back to Harold's rooms?" Matthew who was Kim's dad said. "Unless there's some reason we should stay." He looked at Al. Al just looked embarrassed.

"Not really," Al said. "I, uh, got kind of turned around. I kept wandering around in circles, and I was worried about running into, well, anyone really, so I was trying to get the attention of people in the station so they could come rescue me."

"From who?" Zahar asked, looking around curiously.

"Was that you?" Betty asked. "With the door chime system malfunctions?"

"I told you it wasn't our scanner," Damaris said.

"It was me," said Al. "I didn't think it worked, though, so I was trying to mess up the wall screens." He looked at Damaris. "What scanner? Did you guys come here all by yourselves?"

Lishendri's sweeping hand gesture encompassed the whole group. "We all came to rescue you," she said regally. "And we did."

"How did you get away from the pirates?" Sabri asked.

All the kids started asking questions at once. Harold waited for someone to take charge. No one did. He looked around in surprise. Matthew, Betty, and Kim were all off to one side -- Kim was awake, and cranky. It looked like Betty and Matthew were looking for something to keep her occupied. Sam and the other Matthew were talking to Toby about the best way to get back to Harold's rooms. Toby was saying they should just go back exactly the way they came, but Sam seemed to think there was a shorter route. Al just looked overwhelmed by all the questions being directed his way by the kids. It was up to Harold to restore order.

Harold took a step to the side and clapped his hands together. "Hey," he said. "Listen up." Much to his surprise, everyone stopped talking and looked at him. He hadn't really thought that was going to work. "This is what we're going to do," Harold said. Then he paused. What were they going to do? "We're all going to sit down," he said. "We will take a short rest." In a whisper to Al, he asked, "Have you eaten all your candy yet?"

Al shook his head. "I haven't had time," he whispered back.

"And we will eat some of Al's candy," Harold added. "Which is in his backpack." There was cheering from several members of the group. "Then we will go back to my rooms and everyone will explain their story, one at a time."

Kim raised her hand. "Is Al going to fix the station first?"

She was looking at Harold when she asked, so Harold said, "Yes, he is." Then he whispered to Al again. "You can do that, right?"

"I think so," Al said. "It's usually easier to make something stop working than to make it start again, though. I wasn't really thinking about fixing it when I was breaking it."

"Al's going to fix it," Harold said confidently. "I will find the candy." This seemed to satisfy everyone. The candy was easy to find, and the group quickly split into two camps: the fruit flavored Skittles lovers on one side, and the chocolately M&M lovers on the other. Luckily, Al had both. "How come I didn't get Skittles?" Harold asked Al, holding out the bag of M&Ms to him.

"Because you don't like Skittles?" Al asked. He took a handful of candy. "Thanks."

"Oh yeah," Harold said. "It's been a weird couple of days; I had sort of forgotten that. Huh." Anything from Earth was sounding pretty good to him right then, even Skittles. Except for those little candies that came on the strips of paper -- he still thought those were gross.

The candy worked to keep everyone occupied for a couple minutes. When conversation started up again, it was mostly not directed at Al, so Harold didn't try to quiet things down. The Skittles group, which included both Charlotte and Eliza, began playing some kind of guessing game. Charades, maybe, or possibly I Spy. A lot of laughter was coming from their side of the room. In fact, the noise level in general got high enough so Harold started to worry about someone sneaking up on them. "Are we worried about anyone sneaking up on us?" he asked Al.

Al shrugged. "Maybe?" he said. "I've been trying to get the attention of the people up on the station for hours, and no one's come yet."

"What about the zipper aliens?" Harold persisted. "Or the space pirates?" He didn't want to break his own rule and get into long explanations, but he also didn't want a bunch of pirates to come along and find them. Harold didn't really care whether the station's door chime alert systems were working or not. As far as he was concerned, they could leave right then, and leave the repairs to whoever's job it was to fix things like that on the station.

"I don't know," Al said. "I think I'm almost done, though, so I might as well finish."

Harold settled back on the floor next to where Al was working. "Okay," he said. "Want any help?" Harold didn't really expect Al to say yes; Harold's technological abilities were limited to things like setting the alarm on his watch and searching for game cheat codes on the internet. It seemed nice to ask, though.

"Sure," Al said. "Can you get me some more M&Ms?"

Chapter 40: In which the station's personnel finally realize something is going on.

It turned out Harold didn't have to worry about anyone sneaking up on them. Apparently, not everyone took off their shoes to travel through the lower levels more stealthily. Harold heard the sound of boots hitting the metal floor while they were still minutes away. Everyone else did too, and the group was suddenly quiet. Harold regretted taking charge earlier. It meant everyone was looking to him again to decide what to do. Harold looked at Al, but Al had turned his iPod back on and was still focused on the computer system. Harold waved to get his attention. "Someone's coming," Harold told Al.

"What?" Al said. He pulled the headphones out of his ears. The sound of people approaching was instantly obvious. "Oh," he said. "Someone's coming."

Well, that was no help. Harold stood up. There was really only one good option. Hiding was definitely out, as was outrunning whoever was bearing down on them. "Let's just wait for them to get here," Harold said to everyone. "Maybe they're coming to help." Charlotte made a noise that indicated her disbelief in that statement, and Harold glared at her. "Just try to look friendly and non-threatening," Harold added. "We're not doing anything wrong."

"It's probably station security," Al said. "Now that I'm all done, they finally figured out something was happening. Typical."

"Maybe you should put the panel back on the wall, then," Harold suggested. "So we look less suspicious." He was fairly certain whatever Al had been doing to the station's systems would be considered "doing something wrong" by station security, and the argument that Al was done now, and had fixed it, probably wouldn't carry much weight. Although they were going to look pretty suspicious anyway, a group of seventeen people sitting around (sixteen of them not wearing any shoes) doing nothing in the middle of a usually inaccessible area of the station.

Al put the panel back up. Then he sat down with everyone else. "Are there any M&Ms left?" he asked. The bag was handed over to him; Harold took a blue one as it passed. They waited.

And waited. "Are those footsteps actually getting softer?" Matthew who was Kim's dad asked.

"Maybe they're not looking for us," Harold suggested, unlikely as that seemed.

"Maybe they're lost," Al said.

They waited some more. The footsteps started to get louder again, and finally four people ran into view around the corner. "Stop!" one of them yelled. Since no one in Harold's group was moving, they just kept sitting there.

The four people definitely looked like station security. They were wearing uniforms and everything. They also appeared to have weapons out, although maybe that was just because of the flashlights mounted on top. "Don't move!" one of the guards yelled.

"Put your hands where we can see them!" came another shout. Harold, who had just put his hand into the candy bag, froze.

"Um, which is it?" he asked.

"No talking!" yelled the first guard. Harold decided not moving was the best course of action, and left his hand in the bag. He really hoped that whole "melt in your mouth, not in your hand" slogan was true, or else his hand was going to end up covered with chocolate.

The guards split up to surround the group. Harold thought that was sort of silly. First off, if they'd been planning on running, they would have started when they'd first heard the guards coming. They wouldn't have just been sitting around waiting to be found. Second, the guards were really outnumbered. Seventeen to four wasn't good odds; it seemed like it would make more sense for the guards to stick together. And third, did they really look that dangerous? Harold looked around and saw two concerned parents, one four year old wearing footie pajamas, seven wide-eyed kids with their hands on their knees, three college-age boys with a bag of Skittles in front of them, his sisters with their borrowed orange socks, and Al, who just looked tired. Unless it was Harold who looked like the unstable element in the group, he really wasn't sure what all the shouting was for.

"What's going on here?" one of the guards asked in a sharp voice. No one said anything. They had just been told not to talk, after all. "Well?" the guard said. "No one feels like talking? How about you?" He pointed his flashlight (and his weapon) at Kim. Kim burst into tears. Betty scooped her daughter into her lap and gave the guard a reproachful look.

"Hey!" Nadeka said. "That was mean!" The guard spun to face him. Nadeka's eyes widened, but he kept talking. "She wasn't doing anything wrong!"

"She wasn't?" the guard asked. "What about you? What are you doing?"

"I'm not doing anything wrong either!" Nadeka told him. "None of us are!"

His words seemed to break the dam, and suddenly everyone was talking. "We're just sitting here," Lishendri said.

"Yeah, what are you doing here?" Zahar asked.

"We were looking for our cat," Sabri said, not mentioning that they were originally looking for Al. Harold figured that since Al had clearly been found, it was okay to go with objective number two: find Bob. Where was Bob, anyway?

"It's scary down here," Meshkalla added.

"The cat went through a hole in the wall!" PJ said in her most innocent voice. "We were worried about him!"

"Then we got lost," Damaris said. "And we didn't know what to do! Are you here to rescue us?"

The torrent of words seemed to take the guards by surprise. The one closest to Harold even took a step back. "Quiet!" yelled the guard who had made Kim cry. "Who's in charge of this group?" Harold felt a sinking sensation gather in his stomach as everyone turned to look at him. How had he ended up in charge?

"What are you doing down here?" the guard asked Harold. He still sounded really angry. Maybe that was just the way he talked all the time.

Harold took a deep breath. "Well, it's like the kids said," Harold said slowly. "Our families were having a sleepover, and then we realized the cat was missing, and there was this great big hole -- just like a doorway -- in the wall, so we figured he must have gone through. And we were really worried about him -- you know how it is with cats -- so we figured we'd better go find him. We had no idea there would be so much ground to cover. I'm afraid we got a little turned around, and some of the kids got really tired of walking, and we still haven't found Bob, and now we can't figure out how to get back home."

"Who's Bob?" asked the guard suspiciously.

"Well," Harold started again, still talking as slowly as possible. "Bob is the cat. That's what we call him -- Bob. He's just a small cat, really. I hope he's okay." Harold tried to look worried. It wasn't too difficult, since he was worried, although not about Bob. Damaris was right -- Bob could take care of himself, wherever he was.

"Really." The guard still looked suspicious. Harold nodded earnestly. "We need a moment to discuss this," the guard said. All four guards gathered on the side of the room farthest away from Harold.

Harold resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Luckily, he also resisted the urge to comment on the efficiency of their tactics. So far, Charlotte had done the same. Harold didn't want the guards to recognize his sisters, since they'd already been in trouble once on the station. Instead, he pulled his hand out of the M&M bag. It was completely chocolate free. "Look," he whispered to Al. "They really don't melt in your hand."

"Wow," Al said. "And your hand was in there a long time. We should write to the company of something." None of the guards looked their way. They were all still busy discussing. Harold wondered what they were talking about. Whether to believe their story? What to do with them next? If 'Bob' was really a code word for something nefarious? Harold began eating M&Ms again. He wasn't really hungry, but it gave him something to do. He noticed that Kim had stopped crying, and was doing something with one of her parents' phones.

One of the guards stepped away from the others. It wasn't the one who'd been talking before. "Here's what we're going to do," the guard said. "Right now we're on patrol for a dangerous criminal that we believe is hiding out in this section of the station. We think this criminal is attempting to sabotage some of our most vital systems, and it is imperative that we find them as soon as possible." Harold deliberately didn't turn to look at Al. Sabri did, though, and Harold thought he saw a smile on Toby's face.

"Did any of you see anything suspicious while you were down here?" another guard asked.

There was a chorus of no's from everyone in the group. Harold even shook his head for extra emphasis. "Well, okay," the first guard said. "We're going to escort you back to the main levels of the station. There are several groups patrolling down here, and we'll put the word out about your cat. If anyone sees him, we'll let you know."

That wasn't very reassuring. Harold was sure that if Bob didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be. He tried to strike the right tone with his reply. "If you're sure," Harold said. "We'd appreciate the help, of course. I'm afraid we've gotten ourselves pretty lost. Do you think Bob will be all right down here all by himself?"

Al got into the act, patting Harold on the arm. "I'm sure the security officers will do everything they can," Al said. "We should get back. What if Bob found his way back all on his own? He might be waiting there for us already, wondering where we are. We should let the security officers do their job. I don't want to be down here if there's a criminal on the loose."

He sounded incredibly sincere. If Harold hadn't known that Al was the "criminal" the guards were looking for, he would have been convinced that Al was worried about his safety. Al even looked around nervously, as if the criminal might be lurking just outside his sight.

"Your friend is right," the guard told Harold. "We should go." No one commented on the lack of footwear among the group as they all stood up and got ready to leave. There was a mass checking of pockets, and figuring out who would carry the flashlights, and then they headed out. Harold was pretty sure they were going in the opposite direction from the one they'd arrived from, but he didn't say anything. He hoped the guards had a better sense of direction than him and Al.

Chapter 41: In which the space pirates make a surprise return appearance.

The walk back, escorted by four security officers without much patience (or humor), had a very solemn atmosphere. All the older kids grouped together in the center. Harold, Al, and Toby were in front, and Matthew from DC and Sam took the sides of the group. Betty, Matthew who was Kim's dad, and Kim brought up the rear, along with Harold's sisters. Kim refused to walk, and Matthew had already carried her most of the way down, so Betty was carrying her back. The guards were all in front. They had started with two guards in front and two in back, but Kim cried every time they got too close. Eventually, the guards had given up and all moved to the front. Harold had been worried at first about how the littlest member of their group was taking all the craziness, but she was currently using her mom's phone to talk to Matthew from DC on his phone, so Harold figured she was okay.

They made progress slowly, and Harold began to wonder about the guards' sense of direction after all. He thought about leaving a trail of M&Ms to mark where they'd been, but it seemed like a waste of good candy. Harold wished he had a phone, so he could talk to somebody too. He wondered what Nick and Steve were doing. He wondered what had happened to the two helper spirits he'd met the night before. "Hey," Harold said to Al, nudging his shoulder. "Did you hear any voices or anything while you were wandering around down here?" He hoped Al wouldn't look at him like he was crazy.

"Yeah," Al said, not acting like Harold was crazy at all. "A couple of the station imps came and found me, but they weren't much help. I sent them off to keep watch, and I haven't heard from them since. Why?"

"Station imps?" Harold asked. "They told me they liked to be called helper spirits."

Al waved his hand in a sort of 'whatever' gesture. "Sure, they like to be called helper spirits. They're just not usually that helpful. I like 'station imps' better. They get bored easy, but they like to talk to people. Are you the one who sent them after me? They were under the impression they weren't supposed to tell."

Harold frowned. "Maybe?" he said uncertainly. "I'm not really sure. I think I just said 'I wonder where Al is,' and they decided to go find you. Too bad they didn't come back and tell me where you were."

"Well, like I said, they get bored easy." Al and Harold walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Al said, "Do you hear something?"

Harold could hear a lot of things. He heard the footsteps of the four guards ahead of them -- those boots made a lot of noise. He heard the kids talking quietly behind him, and Sam laughing to his right. He thought he could hear his sisters talking about him in the back, but maybe that was just his imagination. He could even hear a weird buzzing noise -- wait. "Like a weird buzzing noise?" Harold asked.

"Yeah," said Al. "I think it's getting louder." It was. The guards stopped and looked back at them.

"What is that?" the angry guard asked.

"It's not us," Harold said. "I don't know what it is; I've never heard it before."

The noise continued to increase in intensity. Harold winced. The guards seemed to be at a loss. They looked at each other, but none of them moved. Harold put his h ands over his ears. The noise was making his head hurt, and he squeezed his eyes shut as if that would help block the pain. The buzzing got even louder for a second, then began to drop off again. Harold opened his eyes. Two people had joined them in the darkened hallway. One of them had a lantern. The other one had a parrot.

"Whoa," one of the guards shouted.

"Get back!" another guard yelled. "Who are you? How did you get here?" All four guards raised their weapons and pointed the lights at the newcomers. Harold was glad they didn't step backwards, since he was pretty sure that they were all standing close enough together that one step back from the front would have caused a domino effect of falls. If they were going to be facing down strangers in dark hallways, it seemed better to do it standing up.

The stranger with the parrot raised his hand. "Hey," he said. "Sorry about the noise. My engineer says it's a good way to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies. I keep telling her I'm not fighting any enemies right now, and that it's tough to start negotiations with people who all have headaches. So far I haven't convinced her."

The parrot opened its beak. "Awk!" it said. "Not convinced!"

"Who are you?" the guard repeated.

The strangers both looked puzzled. "We're space pirates," the one with the parrot said. "I'm the captain. Doesn't the parrot give it away?"

"Awk!" said the parrot. "Don't give it away! Keep it secret!"

Harold tried to move so he was hidden behind one of the security guards. "Are those the space pirates who stole you off the transport ship?" he whispered to Al.

"I don't know," Al whispered back. "I never met the captain. The guy on the left looks kind of familiar, though."

"There's no such thing as space pirates!" one of the guards said boldly. "You're under arrest for trespassing!"

The captain laughed. "I don't think so," he said. "After all, if there's no such thing as space pirates, then we don't exist, and someone who doesn't exist can't possibly be trespassing, right? Now, we're actually looking for someone, so if you could step to the side, he's supposed to be here somewhere…"

"Step aside!" squawked the parrot. "Right now!"

The captain sighed. "I hate it when he's like this," he said to the other pirate. "I can't even feed him a cracker to distract him." He raised his wrist and spoke into what Harold assumed was some kind of communicator. "Could somebody please give Igs a cracker?" the captain asked.

"No crackers!" the parrot said. "Don't wanna get fat! Awk!"

The captain sighed. He poked at the parrot sitting on his shoulder, and Harold was shocked to see his finger go right through. Was the parrot some kind of hologram? "Be quiet, Igs," the captain said irritably. "You're the one who wanted to come." The parrot ruffled its feathers.

"Now," said the captain, returning his attention to the group in front of him. "We didn't exactly expect such a crowd. We're looking for someone; maybe you've seen him?"

No one said anything. The guards hadn't stepped aside; they were still screening the rest of the group. Harold wondered if Al should try to make a break for it.

The captain frowned. The other pirate, the one with the lantern, tugged on his sleeve and whispered something in his ear. The captain brightened. "Good idea!" he said. Addressing the group again, he spoke loudly and enunciated each word clearly. "We are looking --" he made a 'searching' gesture, "-- for a man carrying a large backpack." Harold assumed his next hand gesture was meant to indicate 'backpack.' "The backpack... has a message... for us," the captain said, indicating himself and the other pirate. "Have. You. Seen. Him?" Then he turned back to the other pirate. Harold heard him mutter, "You know, this was a lot easier when we could just tie them up and search them."

Al stepped forward. "This backpack?" he asked, putting his large pack on the ground and stepping quickly back.

"Awk!" the parrot said again. "Message in a bottle!"

"Hey, I remember you!" the pirate with the lantern said, pointing at Al. "You're the one we were looking for! Where did all these people come from? You were all alone before!"

"No way to make friends!" the parrot squawked loudly.

"Igs is right, Shath," the captain said. "That sounded pretty confrontational to me. We're not here to cause trouble."

"We're not here to cause trouble," the captain said again, looking at Al. "Really. We thought you knew about the message."

"Message?" Al asked.

"Message in a bottle!" the parrot repeated. "Awk!"

"Here's the thing," said the captain. "We usually don't talk about this with strangers."

"Well, I usually don't let strangers go through my backpack," Al replied.

"Can we?" asked the other pirate. "That'd be great." He took a step towards the backpack, but the captain held out a hand to stop him.

"No," the captain said. "He can do it." From his expression, Harold couldn't tell if he was doing it to be friendly and trusting, or because he was cautious and untrusting.

"Okay," Al said. He stepped forward again and knelt down slowly. "What am I looking for?"

Harold saw the parrot -- hologram? -- open his beak. The captain saw it too. "Quiet, Igs," he said. "It's not in a bottle, and you know it." To Al, he said, "Well, this might sound a little odd, but do you have a pillow in there?"

"I think so," Al told him. "There's a message in the pillow?" He unzipped the main pocket slowly. Harold heard whispering behind him. Probably one of the kids, who wanted to see what was going on.

"Is it okay if we sit down?" Betty called from the back. The captain squinted back towards her. "It's just that we've got some young kids here," Betty said, "and they've never seen a real space pirate before. If we could sit down, they could all rest and everyone could see."

The captain puffed out his chest, and the parrot matched his pose. "Of course!" the captain said. "Everyone should get a chance to meet us." He turned to the other pirate. "Shath, do we still have some of those souvenir gold keys?"

Shath looked thoughtful. "I'm not sure," he said. "We used most of them at that reunion the other month, right? You want me to ask?" At the captain's nod, he stepped slightly away and raised his wrist. "Could someone check and see if we have any of the keys left over from the reunion?"

Harold tried to imagine what kind of reunion space pirates would attend. A family reunion? A reunion of all the people they'd pirated things from? Maybe Al would get an invitation to the next one. "Down in front!" someone called softly from behind him, and Harold hastily sat down, followed by the four guards.

Once everyone was seated, the captain struck a pose. The parrot flapped its wings and said, "Awk! Once upon a time! Awk!"

"Yes," said the captain. "Once upon a time -- no that's not the right story. This is the story of space piratery. Space pirates have a long and --" he stopped and looked at the kids. "-- and interesting history," the captain said. "There was a time when we were spread out across the galaxy. Space pirates were everywhere back then, but we were missing something -- a sense of community. Yes, we were loners, with no support network for our times of trouble. And it was in those difficult times that one pirate was the most famous of us all. No, not me," he said, even though Harold hadn't heard anyone suggesting it had been. "Another pirate. And it was that pirate who suggested we band together."

Harold wondered when the story was going to get exciting. The captain seemed to sense he was losing his audience. "So we did," the captain said quickly. "But there's always been a legend that a couple of us might have gotten lost along the way. We're pretty sure one of them is sending a message out into the galaxy. In your pillow," he finished in a rush. Harold frowned. Really? In a pillow? What kind of a message was that?

"I found it!" Al said triumphantly, holding the pillow over his head.

"Hey, that's the pillow from me," Harold heard Charlotte say in a surprised voice.

"I told you you should have just ordered them online," Eliza said.

Harold saw the pirate captain take a step forward, towards Al, and then there was a blinding flash of light. Harold blinked, trying to clear his vision. The corridor suddenly felt a lot more crowded. Even with spots still dancing in his eyes, Harold could see that a large group of people had joined them. Two... four... eight... If they would stop moving around, it would be a lot easier to count them. There were definitely more than ten. Somewhere between ten and twenty, maybe? And they looked familiar.

"The zipper aliens," Harold heard Matthew from DC whisper.

It was, in fact, the zipper aliens. And there were a lot of them. Harold was guessing the number was closer to twenty than ten, but they were all moving around and waving their hands. Unfortunately, whatever translation programs and devices that had been working for all the other aliens Harold had met didn't seem to be effective with the zipper aliens. They were making noise, and of course there was the hand waving, but Harold had no idea what they were trying to communicate. Most of them seemed clustered around Al. Just like when they'd snatched Harold, Al, Matthew, Bob, and two catnappers from the Misty Miles Motel, they were all wearing large, elaborate hats. Harold assumed the space pirates were still there as well, but he couldn't see them through the mass of zipper aliens and their big hats.

"Stop!" yelled one of the security guards.

"Nobody move!" yelled another one.

As usual, they were completely ignored, and the guards seemed to give up. "Why don't we ever get the simple assignments?" one of them asked. "Next time something weird is going on, don't call me. I’m going to be sick that day."

"What are they saying?" Toby asked Harold.

"I don't know," Harold told him.

"I think they're worried about something," a voice said next to Harold's left ear.

"They can all see that," another voice said, this time next to his right ear. "I think they're hungry."

The helper spirits -- or station imps -- were back.

Chapter 42: In which several misunderstandings are ironed out, and absolutely no shots are fired.

Harold stood up. Without a word, he eased his way through the group of chattering and gesticulating aliens to where Al was sitting. Al looked overwhelmed. The aliens completely ignored Harold, though, and he sat down next to Al. "Hey," Harold said.

"Hey," Al said back. "This is unexpected."

"Tell me about it," Harold said. "Plus, those invisible voices are back. I figured I'd come hang out with you, since you can hear them too. And because you might know what was going on with these guys." Harold indicated the noisy aliens around them.

"Hi!" one of the voices said cheerfully.

"Yup, I heard that," Al confirmed. "I thought you were going to keep watch," he said to the voice.

"We did!" said the other voice. "We were watching them the whole time! We watched them leave the station, and then we watched them come back to the station, and then we watched them looking for you, and now we're watching them here! You never told us to come back and tell you what they were doing."

Al sighed. "No, I guess I didn't," he said. Turning to Harold, Al said, "Here's what I know. The space pirates snatched me off the transport ship, but I was only on their ship for a couple of minutes. They didn't say much, so I didn't know why I was there. Apparently it had to do with this." Al gave the pillow a little shake. "Then all at once I was transported off the pirates' ship and onto the zipper aliens' ship. They weren't focused on explanations either, but they brought me here."

"They just dropped you off down here in the empty part of the station?" Harold asked.

"Not exactly," Al said. "All of them came with me. It seemed like we were here for a while, all sitting around and me trying to figure out what was going on. But then they all just got up and wandered off. It was weird, and I tried to follow them, but I got lost. Kept walking for a while, decided to see if I could get someone to come find me … that's pretty much where you came in."

"Don't forget about us!" one of the voices said. "We were there too!"

"I think they're trying to tell you something," the other voice said.

Harold debated whether it was worth it to try to pin down them down further on what exactly, the zipper aliens were trying to say. He wasn't sure whether the helper spirits could actually understand the aliens' words and gestures, or if they were just guessing. While he was thinking, he heard someone clapping.

*Clap.* *Clap.* *Clap-clap-clap.*

And then the pattern was echoed back: *Clap.* *Clap.* *Clap-clap-clap.*

Next came a slightly different pattern of claps: *Clap.* *Clap-clap.* *Clap.*

Again, it was echoed back. The corridor had fallen silent except for the clapping. Harold looked at Al in confusion, and found Al looking back at him the same way. The zipper aliens also seemed flustered by the noise, but even they stopped talking. It sounded like the original clapping patterns were coming from somewhere in Harold's group, but the echo back was definitely coming from both sides -- which meant even the pirates knew what was going on. Once everyone was quiet, the clapping stopped.

The silence was broken by the parrot. "Awk! Power clap! Awk! Quiet time!" he squawked.

Apparently, when one person clapped, and then everyone else clapped back the same pattern, it was called a power clap. Harold wondered if he would ever possibly have a use for that knowledge. He sort of hoped not.

"Let's all just stay calm," Harold heard Matthew who was Kim's dad say. Harold's view was blocked by the zipper aliens, but he was impressed by Matthew's willingness to even try taking charge of the situation. "First," Matthew said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Is there anyone here who understands the language of our guests?" He indicated the zipper aliens.

"Ooh! Ooh! We can! Tell them tell them tell them! We can do it! We can help!"

Harold winced as he got stereo surround voices -- one in each ear. He still wasn't convinced the helper spirits were doing much more than guessing, but it was -- maybe -- better than nothing. He paused before answering -- a nice long pause -- and he sighed with relief when he heard the pirate captain speak up.

"Oh fine," the captain said irritably. "We can do it. I'm not giving them any souvenir keys, though." Harold assumed he must have said something, or maybe used hand signals, because all the zipper aliens quietly sat down. Harold thought they looked a little sad. He hoped the pirate captain hadn't been mean. On the plus side, Harold could finally see what was going on.

"Thank you," Matthew said graciously. Harold saw that he had organized the rest of the group so that the station security guards were now furthest away from the "guests." "Could you please ask them why they're here?" Matthew said to the space pirate captain.

"I don't even need to ask them," the captain replied. "I know why they're here. Because they never listen." He addressed his last sentence to the zipper aliens, who looked abashed. The one closest to Al patted Al on the head. Harold raised his eyebrows. That was weird.

The more the pirate captain explained, the weirder it seemed. As far as Harold could tell, the space pirates had picked Al and Nick's transport ship at random for their usual hijacking and bingo routine. When they detected the message in Al's backpack, they assumed he knew about it, and transported him onto their ship. Al's confusion had made the pirates confused, and while they talked about what to do, the zipper aliens had come along and "rescued" Al.

"They're always following us around," the captain said. "We've tried to make them stop, but nothing ever works for long. Then we have to turn around and fix things when they get into trouble." He sounded just like an exasperated older brother, complaining about younger siblings tagging along behind him and ruining his fun. "And they like you, for some reason," the captain said to Al. "Apparently you've met before?" Al just shrugged, and the captain continued. "Anyway, they felt the need to save you from us, even though we told them we just wanted to talk to you, and we had to chase them all the way here. We've been looking for you ever since."

The captain stopped talking. Harold waited for him to continue, but apparently he was done. "They brought me here," Al offered. "Then they sort of, well..."

"Got distracted?" the captain asked. "Wandered off?" Al nodded. "Typical," the captain said, shaking his head. He said something to the zipper aliens then -- it involved lots of shouting and hand waving. If the tone was anything to go by, he was saying something like, "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times! Don't kidnap people and then forget about them!" The zipper aliens got all fluttery, and there was a lot more head patting. Harold began to regret coming to sit with Al. "They're sorry," the captain translated, somewhat unnecessarily. "As soon as they remembered about you, they came back looking."

"Well," said Matthew. "Now that we've sorted all that out, let's get on with the message."

The pirate captain frowned. "You want to hear it?" he asked.

"Sure," Matthew said. "Not that we don't trust you, of course. It's just that these two have had some trouble recently with The Protectioners --" At the captain's groan, he asked, "You've heard of them, I take it?"

"Heard of them? I could tell you stories -- what is it, Shath?" The other pirate pulled the captain aside and whispered to him urgently. "Oh. Yes, you're right," the captain said. "Sorry," the captain said to Matthew. "I can't tell you any stories about them, pending the resolution of our legal action suit against their organization. Maybe next time," he added. "Anyway, the message. Let's listen to the message."

Al tossed him the pillow, and the captain caught it one-handed. With the other hand he sprayed it with some kind of liquid spray he'd pulled out of his jacket. The pillow dissolved. A woman's voice started speaking. Harold checked, but it definitely looked like everyone could hear it this time. "Hi there," the voice said. "If you're hearing this, wow! I hope you've found a better way than using the dissolving spray; I'm working long and hard on this pillow and I'd hate to think it's going to be ruined." The pirate captain shifted uncomfortably, and Harold tried not to smile. "Today's been a good day for me," the voice continued conversationally. "I was going to put in my usual message about where I was, so someone could come chat with me in person, but I've been checking the signs, and I'm not sure the universe wants me to leave right now. Check back later; right now I've got lots of things to do around here! Bye now!" There was a sound like someone blowing out a candle, and the message was over.

"That's it?" Harold couldn't help asking.

The two pirates also looked surprised. Even the parrot seemed to be at a loss for words. "I guess so," Shath said.

"I expected more," said the captain. "Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Free souvenir keys for everyone!" And with a wave of his hand, the two space pirates disappeared. Where they had stood there was a pile of shiny gold keys.

Harold heard a collective "ooh!" from the kids. Despite what the captain had said about not giving anything to the zipper aliens, it looked like there were plenty of keys to go around. Matthew who was Kim's dad somehow made it to the pile first, and he supervised the distribution. Harold was startled to see the zipper aliens all form an orderly queue; each of them lined up, took a key, and disappeared. The rest of the group was much less organized. They gathered around Matthew in an excited, chattering, mass.

"Wow, a real pirate key!"

"What does yours say?"

"I think they all say the same thing: SPAA on one side, and this picture on the other side."

"'Space Pirates Are Awesome?''

"Maybe it's 'Space Pirates Associates Association.'"

"Wait till my parents see this!"

The only people who hung back were the four station security guards. "There's four more keys," Matthew offered. "Enough for everyone."

The guards looked at each other. "Sorry," one of the guards said. "We, uh, weren't exactly planning on including this in our official report for the day. It might be better if we didn't have souvenirs."

"We should give them to Nick and Steve!" Sabri said. "And Bob! And... I don't know who should get the last one."

Harold wondered what Nick and Steve -- and Bob -- were doing at that moment. "Maybe we should get back," he suggested. The security guards looked relieved.

"Yes!" one of the guards said quickly. "Let's get back. It's this way." And he began back the way they'd come. Once again, Harold found himself questioning their sense of direction. But a few minutes later, he saw light coming from the side of the hallway, and the whole group emerged into the station proper right near the entrance to the evacuation area. After that it was just a matter of bidding the security personnel an awkward goodbye, and making their way back to Harold's rooms.

Chapter 43: In which Nick and Steve find out what they missed.

They hit a snag at the door to Harold's rooms. The door, of course, required a card to open it. Harold had been worried about losing his card and accidentally locking himself out of his rooms, so he'd stored the card inside the one thing he knew he'd always have with him whenever he left -- his shoes. Which were now locked inside the room, along with all the rest of their shoes.

Luckily, Al was back, and he quickly went to work convincing the door to let them in. The adults were standing in a semi-circle around Al to hide his actions from any potential passers-by. The kids sat on the floor. Harold could hear them talking about what they planned to eat for breakfast once they got inside. He hoped they didn't think all those things were actually in his kitchen. Harold was trying to look innocent, like he stood around in corridors in his socks all the time, but he had the feeling the whole group looked very suspicious.

"Harold!" Nick and Steve came jogging down the corridor. "You're never going to believe--" Nick stopped abruptly as he and Steve slid to a stop at the edge of the group.

"I've got it!" Al called triumphantly, and the door slid open.

"Al?" Nick said, his voice full of disbelief. "What are you doing here?"

"What are any of you doing here?" Steve asked, looking in bewilderment at all the newcomers. Eliza and the twins waved.

"Why aren't you wearing any shoes?" Nick added.

Harold realized they could probably spend hours standing around in the hallway comparing stories. "I'm going inside," he announced. Everyone trailed after him, which didn't surprise him at all. Bob was sleeping on the sofa, which did surprise him, but not as much as he would have thought.

"Bob!" Matthew from DC said. "We found you!"

"Was Bob lost?" Steve asked, at the same time Nick said, "I thought we were looking for Al."

Despite Nick and Steve's obvious confusion, Harold wasn't really looking forward to going through all the explanations again. "Before we start," he said to Nick, "were you going to tell me something?"

"Oh yeah," Nick said. "When we woke up this morning, there was a message from Tina. Apparently she hooked up with this other group -- the Super Protectioners or something --'

"The Very Protectioners?" Harold asked.

"Yeah, how'd you know?" Nick was looking confused again, but Harold waved him on with his story. "Anyway, they helped her organize some kind of presentation that showed how each of the predictions The Protectioners have been pinning on you and Al could also be fulfilled by The Protectioners' own actions."

"She sent a copy," Steve said. "It's great; you should definitely see it before you go."

It was Harold's turn to be confused. "Go where?" he asked.

"Home," Nick said. "Tina's presentation really opened a lot of eyes; no one's putting much stock in The Protectioners' accusations anymore. You should be all set to go back to Earth whenever you want, now that you've found Al."

"Actually, could we get back to that?" Steve asked. "What happened last night?" Everyone started talking at once.

"We met space pirates!"

"We walked forever!"

"It was dark, and we went through the wall, and next time I want warmer socks!"

"The zipper aliens were awesome!"

"We almost got arrested!"

"I got a key!"

"Me too!"

Harold smiled at the rush of words. Nick and Steve were looking a little overwhelmed, but Harold figured they had probably gotten more sleep the night before than everyone else in the room put together, so he left them to fend for themselves. He slipped towards the kitchen -- maybe there was still some pie left over.

Chapter 44: In which everyone hangs around the space station.

"What are you doing?"

Harold opened his eyes when he heard the question. Sabri and PJ were standing right in front of him. "I'm lounging," Harold explained. "We're waiting in a lounge, so I'm lounging." Actually, he'd been trying to doze off. He felt like he hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in days. It wasn't going to get any better that night, either. Matthew, Betty, and Kim had volunteered to take people back to Earth on their ship (with a quick stop along the way so that Nick and Steve could pick up their ship). Harold, his sisters, Al, and of course Bob would also be going. Their scheduled arrival time? The middle of the night.

"Why?" Sabri asked. "There's so much to do!" She was eating again; it looked like some kind of snack food, but Harold couldn't identify it more than that. All the kids were enjoying what Harold considered the best feature of airports, even when they were in space -- the huge selection of food available in one place. Once everything had been worked out that morning, Toby had spoken with the kids' parents and arranged for them to get tickets on a transport back home. Toby would accompany them. Hopefully that would make it seem more like a planned and chaperoned school field trip, and less like all the kids had just decided to run away from home at the same time.

Harold shifted so he was sitting up straighter in his chair. Technically, anyone going with Matthew and Betty could leave the station at any time, but the kids' transport wasn't due until the afternoon, so everyone had decided to wait with them. Even Sam and Matthew from DC were still there, since their original departure time had been delayed.

"There you are!" Toby came hurrying up behind the girls. "What did we tell you about going off on your own?" Toby seemed especially glad to have the extra people there, since they were helping him watch the kids.

Sabri was saved from having to answer when Zahar and the twins bounded into the room. Al followed at a slightly slower pace. "Harold!" Nadeka said. "Guess what?"

"We can't tell him till everyone gets here," Lishendri told him.

"He can still guess," Nadeka said.

Harold wasn't sure he wanted to guess. "Does it have anything to do with space pirates?" he asked.

"Nope!" Zahar grinned. Behind him, Harold saw Sam returning with Meshkalla and his sisters.

"Is anyone going to get arrested?" Harold asked.

"Of course not," Lishendri said. "This is a good surprise."

"Where's Kim?" PJ asked Meshkalla. "I thought she was with you."

"She went back to the ship with her parents," Meshkalla explained.

"Did we miss it?" Damaris asked, slipping in behind Eliza. He was carrying Bob, and followed closely by Matthew from DC.

"Not yet," Nadeka said. "We're still waiting for Nick and Steve."

"We're here," Nick said, as he and Steve walked into the room. "What's going on?"

"We're here too," Betty said.

Matthew had Kim riding on his shoulders, and he ducked as he entered the room so she would avoid the door frame. "We wouldn't miss it," he said. At some invisible signal, everyone sat down, moving chairs around so everyone could see. Al sat down on the other side of Harold, and Sabri clapped her hands excitedly.

Harold rubbed his eyes. Maybe he'd been more asleep than he thought. When had everybody left? What was going on? "What's going on?" he asked.

Harold heard whispering. Then Eliza said, "Oh, are we going first?" She and Charlotte stood up and stepped forward.

"We're all really happy you can come back to Earth," Charlotte said to Harold and Al, "but we thought we were going to have more time than this to get things ready. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to figure out a new house for you guys."

"In the meantime," Eliza continued. "Here." She handed each of them a set of keys. "These are the keys to our house. Charlotte and I are going to be at the school a while longer, and you're welcome at the house for as long as you want." There was an indignant meow from Bob. "And Bob too, of course," Eliza added.

"And we have this for you," Betty said, stepping up before Harold could say anything. She handed him a card. "This is the contact information for one of our representatives on your planet; she's excellent at finding properties."

"Wow," Harold said. He hadn't been expecting that. "This is amazing. Thank you."

"Yeah," Al said softly. He looked around at everyone. "Thank you," he said seriously. There was a pause, and then Al laughed. "I can't believe you didn't let me go first! Now my present looks silly."

"Your present is perfect!" Sabri said. "We all know he needs one."

Al handed Harold a box. "Here," he said. "It's not much, compared to a house, but I wanted to say thank you for coming to rescue me. Even if you didn't know that was what you were doing."

Harold opened the box gingerly. "Hey!" he exclaimed. "A new watch!"

Sabri leaned over the arm of her chair to look at it. "It tells local time wherever you are in the galaxy," she said proudly.

"And you can set it to also tell you Earth time," Lishendri added.

"Plus it looks cool," Nadeka said.

"Don't worry," Al told him. "I'll help you set it." Harold promptly handed the watch back to him, and everyone laughed.

"This has been the best pirate hijacking, present giving, alien encounter, exploration, getting lost, not getting arrested, getting found again, adventure field trip ever!" Sabri said.

That pretty much summed it up. With everyone else talking around them, Harold nudged Al with his shoulder. "Hey," Harold said quietly. "I agree."