Chapter 1: In which Charlotte is confused by the mail.

Thump. The noise woke Harold out of a sound sleep, even as his brain was correctly identifying it as the exceedingly common "cat leaping off the bed" noise. It was probably Bob, headed for breakfast. Harold wondered if he could justify pulling the covers over his head and going back to sleep. It wasn't like he had anywhere to be that day. On the other hand, breakfast did sound good. The more he thought about it, the hungrier he felt, until he finally kicked off the light blanket and rolled to his feet. It was daylight, but he didn't see his watch anywhere, and it didn't seem important enough to flip up his laptop cover to check the time.

It wasn't until Harold reached the end of the hallway and went to turn towards the kitchen that he realized there were voices coming from the front entranceway.

"Why am I getting all your alien mail?"

That sounded like Charlotte. Shouldn't she be at work?

"Oh good, it worked!"

That was definitely Al. Which explained why Bob had gotten up; Al was a sucker for the big cat eyes and rumbling purr, and always put a little extra food in the dish. Harold mentally debated between checking what was going on at the front door and checking to see if there was anything to eat. Bob meowed imperiously from just inside the kitchen door. Apparently Al had been sidetracked before filling the food bowl, and Bob was not pleased.

Harold yawned as he rummaged in the cupboard for Bob's food. Of course Bob couldn't just eat the same food as Mama Tibbles; that would be way too easy. She was probably off mooching breakfast from one of the neighbors -- she insisted on acting like a stray, despite the fact that she knew she was welcome at Harold's house any time, and at least according to Al, had never actually been homeless. Bob butted his head against Harold's leg before settling in to eat, and Harold accepted the gesture as a feline thank you. Then it was time for his own food. He grabbed a handful of cookies and a glass of water, and wandered towards the front door, where Charlotte and Al were still talking.

Charlotte broke off whatever she had been saying when she saw him. "Cookies for breakfast?" she asked, in what Harold privately thought of as her "police officer voice." He was obviously in trouble for something, and it wasn't his breakfast food choices -- he happened to know she considered cookies the fifth major food group, acceptable for any meal of the day.

"They're oatmeal," Harold said, as if that explained everything. Oatmeal was healthy, right? He handed Charlotte a cookie, then turned to Al. "Why is my sister here?" Harold asked in a conversational tone.

Al helped himself to a cookie as well. "She wants to know why she's getting all my 'alien' mail." Harold could practically hear the quote marks around the word 'alien.'

"Oh good," he said, unconsciously echoing Al's earlier comment. "It worked!"

Charlotte rolled her eyes.

Chapter 2: In which Charlotte is confused by much more than just the mail.

It actually did all make perfect sense. At least, that was what Al kept saying, but Charlotte wasn't buying it. "Don't you have a job?" she asked.

Harold winced. "Not exactly," he said. There was a pause. "Not any more."

Al jumped in to explain. "See, there can only be two people, and it was specified that it had to actually be us, so --"

"-- "So they fired me," Harold finished dryly. "Hold on a sec, you'll love this." He shuffled through the stacks of paper piled on the kitchen table until he found the piece he was looking for, which he waved triumphantly. "See?"

"Is that an actual pink slip?" Charlotte sounded disbelieving. "I always thought that was just a saying."

"Well, the company has an … interesting sense of humor," Harold said.

Al nodded. "They do throw an excellent party, though. I thought it was very enjoyable."

"Yeah, I'm so glad you had fun at my 'you're fired' party." Harold mock-glared across the table at Al.

"Whoa," Charlotte interrupted. "Hold it right there. "Where was I when all of this was happening?" She was back to using her police officer voice. Oops.

Harold knew what she was really asking was 'Why didn't I know about this before now?', but he didn't have a good answer, so he focused on the most literal interpretation of the question.

"Well, you had those summer police training seminars, and Eliza was off visiting with Mom and Dad in the Midwest… We just found out about this a week or so ago, and the party was right before you got back." Harold wasn't about to admit that he'd been putting off this explanation for as long as possible -- there really was no easy way to explain the situation, and there were a couple parts he knew Charlotte would be particularly unhappy about.

He took a deep breath. "It started when we got this letter --"

Charlotte held up a hand. "Okay, stop right there. You're probably not going to want to explain this twice--" Harold didn't even want to explain it once. Sometimes he wondered why he hadn't moved farther away from his sisters. "--so I'm going to call Eliza and have her come over. Her morning class should just be finishing up, so it won't take her too long."

Chapter 3: In which everything is explained.

By the time Eliza arrived, Harold, Al, and Charlotte were comfortably ensconced in the living room. It was a beautiful day, and it might have been nice to have an outdoor family meeting, but sometimes Charlotte got a little loud, and the rumors still hadn't died down from the last time (okay, last two times) something like this had happened. There were still people in the neighborhood who were convinced that Harold and Al were some kind of secret government agents. Which wasn't all that far from the mark -- Al, at least, was a sort of government agent, just not for any Earth government. Harold was just the guy who'd happened to move into the house where Al kept his secret doorway between Earth and his own planet, and then ended up coming along for the ride through the monkey coups, hurricanes, rock stars, and visiting dignitaries that had cropped up along the way.

Harold still thought of himself as a perfectly ordinary guy, but apparently not everyone agreed with that. There was a tradition on Al's planet that young people, at some point in their school career, imagined, planned, and executed a single massive prank. Al maintained that this kept teachers from dealing with daily tricks and jokes, channeling all the students' energy into their one prank; apparently, many students planned for years, working singly or in groups, before pulling their prank. Earth, according to Al, was a popular testing ground. Harold had always considered the tradition to be vaguely cool, but had never given it much thought.

That was before the letter. Before Al had explained to him that he'd be losing his job, going on a road trip, and heading to the deep south to retrieve, of all things, a space ship. Harold remembered the conversation with crystal clarity.

"I thought these pranks were supposed to affect a large number of people," he'd said hopefully. "Just making the two of us do something doesn't seem that spectacular."

"Large numbers of regular people," Al clarified. "Or a small number of famous or well-known people. Like us," he'd added, at Harold's confused look. "You've had the leader of my planet over to your house for dinner -- you think people don't know who you are?"

Actually, Harold had never really thought about it that way. He'd met the Cal children first, when they were on their first field trip to Earth a few years back, and only later found out that their parents were planetary leaders. He still thought of them the way he'd first been introduced to them, as Nadeka and Lishendri's mom and dad. Huh. Apparently, he'd realized, he was considered a famous public figure on a planet he'd never even visited.

Whoever came up with the prank currently taking over his life certainly had some interesting connections. Al was a doorkeeper, part of a network of people all over Earth who operated the "doorways" between planets. The doorway system was pre-dated by honest-to-goodness spaceships (obviously, the first doorway had to get there somehow, and the easiest way was by ship). There were very few spaceships left on Earth, at least from Al's people, and they were supposed to be very secret and very well guarded. So secret that Al hadn't even known one was missing until he found out he and Harold were supposed to go find it and bring it back.

"You lost it?" Harold had asked.

"Well it's not mine," Al protested. "Besides, it wasn't lost, it was stolen. Someone must have a lot of friends on this planet." His expression was an odd combination of irritation and pride.

"And we have to go find it?" Harold had asked.

Al waved the letter. "They tell us where to go. It's rather like a ransom note, actually: where to be, when to be there. I wonder if we'll have to actually do anything to get it back, or if just showing up will be enough."

"Why can't we just .. steal it back?"

"Because," Al had said, adding in a vague hand gesture encompassing the two of them, "how would we do that?"

He had a point. Harold didn't even know what the ship looked like. He tried again. "Trudy was in charge of the ship last I knew -- since she lost it, shouldn't she be in charge of getting it back?"

"She's in school." Ah. Which was clearly more important than, say, his job. Harold had one idea left. "Couldn't the Cals just order whoever it is to give the ship back?"

Al looked considering. "Technically? The Cals have limited jurisdiction on Earth, and no jurisdiction if whoever has the ship now isn't from my planet. Officially recognizing anything that relates to pranking is frowned upon, and I'm sure whoever set this up is counting on that." He paused, like he was trying to decide whether to share the next part. "Plus, I think the kids may be involved with this somehow. I can't help but notice that they get a nice vacation out of the deal."

It was true. While Harold had been "fired" from his alien-run company, Al's job was a little harder to reassign. Actually, as Al was fond of reminding him, it was Harold's fault that it could be reassigned at all. Shortly after they had first met, an attempted monkey coup (no, really) had forced the evacuation of Al's entire planet. Harold had been the instigator of an idea that allowed them to jerry-rig the doorway to accept an alternate keeper after Al had collapsed from exhaustion. That meant that while Al and Harold were headed south on their ship search, Al's daughter/niece Sabri would be handling the doorway. She would be accompanied by the rest of her school class and a variety of adults.

It was this last part that Charlotte and Eliza were currently confused about. Harold had managed to stay out of the discussion for the most part as Al tried to explain things. "So all we have to do is show up down there on the right day, get the ship, and bring it back. It all makes perfect sense, really." Harold wanted to laugh at the expressions on his sisters' faces as they listened to Al. Al made it sound like it was totally normal to just drop everything, turn your house over to a bunch of kids, and take off on some wacky road trip, but Harold knew all the work that had actually gone into the logistics of their expedition.

"You keep saying that," Charlotte said, in an exasperated tone. "But I still don't believe it."

"How are the kids going to get to school?" Eliza wanted to know. Trust her to ask a completely random question.

"We're leaving them the Armada," Harold said. He had never been completely comfortable with the huge SUV, since it tended to stand out like a sore thumb in the small college town. He was happy to have a good reason to leave it behind for the road trip and take his old car, despite it's small size and tendency towards unreliability.

"And you're really doing this thing?" Charlotte asked.

Harold sensed the questioning was winding down. Earlier in the year, his sisters had helped play host to five of the seven kids in Sabri's class when the doorway system had malfunctioned. There had been pirates, and a hurricane, and a whole lot of confusion, but everything had worked out fine in the end. Unfortunately, it had left Charlotte and Eliza with the idea that weird things were drawn to their brother, and they'd better keep a close eye on him. Charlotte seemed to think it was her duty as a police officer. Harold suspected Eliza was just keeping close tabs on him so that if anything exciting happened, she could be involved. It was nice and all, having his family around, but it was wearing a little thin.

"Yes," he said firmly.

Chapter 4: In which Harold tries to pack.

Harold wasn't feeling quite so confident two days later, when he was trying to pack for the trip. Harold hated packing. He was sitting on the floor in his bedroom, staring at an empty duffel bag. Al was back on his own planet, finalizing arrangements for the kids' arrival. The plan was to have the whole class of seven students arrive in time for the first day of classes at the local middle school. Sabri, PJ, Meshkalla, Damaris, Nadeka, Lishendri, and Zahar would be accompanied full time by three security guards (the only way their parents would allow them to be off-planet for so long). The parents themselves would take turns spending time on Earth as their schedules allowed -- mostly on their planet's weekends, which as far as Harold could tell, didn't follow Earth's calendar in any way, shape, or form.

With ten people planning on moving into the house that weekend, Harold thought it would be best to have his gear for the trip packed -- he just knew he was going to wind up sleeping on the sofa and forgetting something important. Also, he wanted to "kid-proof" the house somewhat before they arrived. Not that there was anything too questionable lying around, but the kids were still only ten, and Harold and Al weren't going to be around to do damage control if they got into something they shouldn't. Instead, Harold's job was to remove any stuff that was potentially dangerous (or just plain embarrassing), and stash it at Nick and Steve's.

Harold was still debating whether he would need a button-down shirt on the trip when Bob found him. The cat sauntered into the room and instantly assessed where to be for maximum impeding of progress. He climbed into the duffel bag and lay down, purring. Harold sighed. "Well, at least I have a good excuse now when Al asks me if I'm done packing." Bob closed his eyes and purred louder.

"I saw that." Al's voice sounded amused. "I thought you were packing."

Harold was sprawled out on the bed, and he looked up from the number puzzle he'd been glaring at. His former co-workers had presented him with a whole book of the puzzles at his party, saying it would "give him something to occupy his time." The difficulty level was described on the cover as "brain bending," and Harold hadn't managed to complete a single one without help. Once he'd filled in a couple of empty spaces from the answers at the back of the book, he was all set -- Al considered this "cheating," and seemed to have an uncanny knack for sensing when Harold was about to peek.

"Bob's using my duffel bag," Harold explained. "I didn't want to disturb him." There was a pause. "Plus, I hate packing."

"We're going on a road trip, not out into the wilderness," Al said. "If you forget something, we can always just pick up another one on the way." The "rules" of their challenge stated that Al wasn't allowed to use his personal transporter to get around or pick things up. He'd been irritated until Harold pointed out that the rules didn't say anything about other people using personal transporters to bring things to them. Harold had refrained from mentioning that he never got to use a personal transporter, since they weren't compatible with "Earthlings," and that Al really shouldn't be complaining.

In the end, Al agreed to go pick up takeout for dinner, on the condition that Harold was completely packed by the time he got home. Harold was zipping the last bag when he head the car rumble into the driveway, and Bob watched the whole thing from his new perch on top of the bed pillows.

Chapter 5: In which the kids arrive, and everything is chaos.

"Uncle Al! Uncle Harold!"

"Hi Mama Tibbles!"

"Wow, Bob looks great! Is he bigger than last time we visited?"

"I'm hungry!"

"Can we have pizza?"

"This bag is heavy!"

"Can we visit Nick and Steve?"

"Where are Charlotte and Eliza?"

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

There really were no words to describe the effect of seven ten-year olds descending on your house, full of energy, at 8:00 in the morning. "Chaos" came close, but it didn't have quite the right note of insanity in it. At least the kids came with their own "keepers" this time, although Harold would never use that word out loud anywhere the three tough-looking guards accompanying the kids might hear it. He and Al had pretty much had sole responsibility for Sabri, PJ, Meshkalla, and the twins during their adventures earlier in the year, and Harold was convinced he hadn't fully recovered from the experience. Being a parent was hard.

Al, as usual, seemed completely unperturbed. "Hi everyone," he said cheerfully, receiving a chorus of his and other greetings in return. "You made good time this morning; we just finished breakfast. The cats are have been waiting too -- I think they're looking forward to being spoiled incessantly for the next couple weeks."

Harold snorted inwardly at that. As if he and Al didn't already spoil them enough.

"We have snacks in the kitchen, and you can all bring your bags upstairs and leave them in the living room for now. Nick and Steve and Charlotte and Eliza are all joining us for dinner, so you'll see them later today. And you all know where the bathroom is, so feel free to use it any time." He smiled. "I promise you won't end up at someone else's house by walking through the door."

Several of the kids actually looked disappointed by that. Al had created a stationary transport system back in the beginning of the summer, connecting their house to Charlotte and Eliza's, and that house to Nick and Steve's place. It had been incredibly convenient for quick travel between the houses, but Harold had never quite gotten used to stepping through his bathroom door and ending up in Charlotte and Eliza's front hall closet. Clearly the kids who hadn't been on Earth for that adventure had heard stories about some of the odd uses they'd put the system to.

Harold and Al had planned to spend this day hanging out with the kids, answering any questions that might come up, and helping them get settled in the house / neighborhood / planet. First stop: the school the kids would be attending while they were on Earth. Classes weren't in session yet, but the school was open to anyone who wanted to come in and look around. Harold didn't know what schools were like on their planet, but he was expecting to have to deal with a certain amount of culture shock. They'd all been on Earth before, of course, but hanging around town was quite a different experience than encountering the public school system.

As usual, they surprised him. There was just one question, one thing they were all dying to know, and Harold never would have guessed what it was. When all seven kids and five adults piled out of their cars in front of the building, Harold saw every single one of the kids look around, frown, then look around again. It was Nadeka who spoke first.

"You said it was called the 'middle' school, right?" he asked. His tone indicated that he already knew the answer, but couldn't quite fathom it.

"Yes," Harold said, not sure where this was leading.

"So … what is it in the middle of?"

Harold wanted to laugh, except that it was so obvious that Nadeka was 100% serious in his question. He tried to explain instead. "Well, it's not physically in the middle," he said. "It's in between the other two schools you attend: elementary school and high school."

"So it goes elementary school, middle school, then high school?" That was Meshkalla. Harold knew that on Al's planet the schools were called primary, secondary, and tertiary, which made a lot more sense. Meshkalla sounded like she was trying to remember to be "culturally understanding" (a concept Al assured him all the kids understood, and would be employing throughout their visit), but not actually succeeding. Oh well, at least she was trying.

Lishendri was more blunt. As the daughter of arguably the most important people on her planet, she was used to speaking her mind and having her voice heard. "That doesn't make any sense," she said. Nadeka nudged her and whispered something in her ear. She blushed. "Oh yeah," she said. "Sorry."

Harold did laugh that time. "Don't worry," he said. "The names really don't make any sense. It actually used to be called 'junior high,' but people didn't like that either, so it got changed to middle. You won't be the only ones complaining about the name, even if you do it in school. I think the only reason it's never been changed again is because no one can agree on a better word."

This seemed to satisfy everyone, and the tour continued. Harold slowly got used to the presence of the three security guards -- it helped once he learned their names, and Tom, Kyp, and Suzy cracked jokes and interacted with everyone like they were, well, normal people, not trained bodyguards. Then again, Harold had never met any other trained bodyguards, so he didn't really know what they usually acted like, but these particular three seemed nice.

It was harder to adapt to the auditory confusion that seemed to envelop their group like a cloud. Twelve people created a lot of noise. And all the kids wanted to share everything that had been happening in their lives with Harold and Al, and they kept interrupting each other and inserting comments into other peoples' stories. Even Damaris, who Harold remembered as somewhat quiet and shy, and Zahar, who Harold had pegged as very independent, demanded their share of attention. In fact, Zahar was actually the most effective at it. He wasn't loud, he just picked which adult he wanted to talk to and said their name. Over and over. Harold estimated it had taken less than ten seconds of hearing "Harold … Harold … Harold … Harold …" before he broke off his conversation with Tom and heard all about Zahar's summer hiking with his brother.

The school looked mostly the same as Harold remembered it. Hallways, classrooms, lockers. They'd added an extra wing since he'd been a student, but even there, the atmosphere of familiarity was the same. The kids seemed fascinated by everything, asking question after question. Harold and Tom fielded most of them, leaving Al to get engrossed in talking about … something… with Suzy and Kyp. Harold got all the "Did you have Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so? Are they nice?" questions (usually he'd never heard of the teacher in question, but there were a few familiar names -- a couple of teachers he'd thought were old when he had them, and one very surreal moment when he realized someone he'd graduated high school with was now apparently teaching at the middle school). Tom handled the questions like, "Do they serve vegetarian food for lunch?" (Tom said, "We'll be packing all your lunches," with a sideways look at Harold, like he was hoping Harold wouldn't take offense at this implication that cafeteria food was substandard. Harold assured him that he thought packing lunch was the only smart choice, and that he and his sisters had done the same thing.)

The group ended their school tour in the auditorium. Harold thought they must have made an odd picture, all twelve of them spread out across the stage, pulling sandwiches and bottles of water out of matching navy and silver backpacks. Harold eyed his own navy and silver bag with pride. The kids had presented him and Al with the backpacks when they arrived through the doorway. Harold had carried one once before, on the field trip where he first met the class, but it had been plain -- just a loaner, so he could carry the first aid kit around more easily. This one was personalized.

Harold had been impressed by the backpacks the first time he'd seen them. Each one had some sort of picture or design on them to signify who they belonged to. He'd asked Al about them and found out that the kids created the designs themselves, and were only limited in what they did by their own creativity. Then he'd added, "Well, and the fact that a lot of their teachers are also their parents."

Harold's backpack had a stylized planet Earth, encircled by an embroidered silver design. Al's was decorated with what looked like a cross between a complex math equation and a garden, all bright colors and swirling lines. Al had laughed when he'd seen it; apparently it had something to do with the science behind the doorways. That left only the guards without backpacks, but they seemed to have unlimited pocket space for whatever they needed to carry. Harold had been looking forward to seeing them stash a sandwich or a water bottle in one of those pockets -- would it make a weird looking bulge, like it would for any normal person who tried to put a bottle of water in their pocket, or would it fall prey to the disciplined aura that surrounded the guards and flatten out like magic? Al had given him an odd look when he'd mentioned it, though, and said, "Don't be silly. Obviously, they'll just put their food in our backpacks."

Chapter 6: Dinner with the family. (Or, we can never go back to that restaurant again.)

Looking back, maybe going out to eat hadn't been the best idea. But their group had been big, and seemed to be growing every time Harold had checked in with Eliza, the unofficial party planner, and the logistics of fitting that many people into any of the available houses had seemed prohibitive. Not to mention no one wanted to take on the challenge of preparing a meal for close to 20 people, some of whom had very specific things that they would and wouldn't eat. So they had transferred those problems to the closest restaurant that advertised "casual, family dining" and seemed to have a varied enough menu. Harold was pretty sure their waitress was wishing she'd called in sick.

"Could you give us another couple minutes?" he asked the girl, whose nametag read "Sarah" with a smiley face sticker next to it. He hoped that meant she was feeling cheerful. Patient would be good too.

Originally, Harold and Al had simply planned to take the kids out to dinner to celebrate the kids' arrival and Harold and Al's imminent departure. That alone would have been nine people, but of course they had to invite Suzy and Kyp and Tom, and that made 12. Al suggested that Nick and Steve should be included, and after Charlotte got so upset at being left out of the loop, she and Eliza were invited as well, bumping their number to 16.

Harold wasn't quite sure what had happened after that. It sounded like Eliza had invited Tina, and Tina had invited Trudy and Toby. Toby was Zahar's brother, and was taking classes at the university in town, Trudy was basically the techie for Al's people on Earth -- she looked young, but she knew more about computers than he ever would, and a lot more than he ever wanted Charlotte to find out about. Tina was a friend of Eliza's, also an alien, and Harold wasn't quite sure what she was doing on Earth, but he suspected she might have taken over his old job, so he didn't want to ask.

Their group of 19 had basically taken over the back half of the restaurant, pushing tables together and generally rearranging furniture until people could talk from table to table without yelling or feeling like they had their back to most of the group. Then came the really tricky part: ordering.

"Do you think this pizza has mozzarella on it?"

"It says it comes on a bed of 'leafy greens' -- do I like those?"

"Is this one vegetarian?"

"'Cause I'm allergic to mozzarella…"

"Ooh, Mom thinks I might have a nut allergy; do you think this has nuts?"

"They don't even have those kind of nuts on this … continent."

"Do I like fish?"

"Can I get my pizza without any cheese on it?"

"What do you think is in a 'vinaigrette'?"

"Do they have peanut butter sandwiches?"

"What are you having?"

Harold eventually ordered a party platter of mixed appetizers for each table, giving everyone more time to think. It was a rocky start, but once everyone was eating, things calmed down, and Sarah was much friendlier after Harold assured her they wouldn't be asking for separate checks.

"Family reunion?" she asked.

"Something like that." He hoped she wouldn't press for more details.

It wasn't until they'd ordered dessert that the whispers started. And the nudging. Not from the other diners; they'd studiously ignored the group from the moment they entered the restaurant. No, this was at their own tables, and it was making Harold nervous.

Finally, Eliza stood up, drawing everyone's attention. Knowing his sister, Harold felt it was important to be ready for anything, so he put down his slice of pizza. Best case scenario, he'd be clapping, or possibly accepting some kind of gift items. Worst case scenario, he'd be making a run for the nearest possible exit. Harold tried to glance around surreptitiously -- through the kitchen? Out the window? Al gave him a questioning glance, and Harold just shrugged.

"This is an important day," Eliza was saying. "We're welcoming some return guests, marking the end of the summer holidays, and -- my personal favorite -- celebrating the departure of my brother. We'll miss you, Al, but try to keep him gone a long time, all right?"

Everyone laughed, and Harold pretended to make a lunge for his youngest sibling, only to be "held back" by Al. Eliza was laughing too, but she said, "In all seriousness, we will miss you, and we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to keep in touch with us. On that note, Nick and Steve have something for each of you."

Really? It was best case scenario time, then -- presents!

"Actually, Suzy, Kyp, and Tom helped out with these," Steve said. He passed over two cell phones -- not in any packaging, but clearly new. Harold wondered what the three security guards had contributed to the gift. They had just arrived that morning; what could they have done between then and now?

Al asked the question for him. He turned the phone over and around in his hand, looking at it from every angle, like it might be dangerous. He hadn't opened it. "Ah … what did they do, exactly?" Al asked.

Kyp laughed, but Tom and Suzy looked a little sheepish. Nick passed over two more phones. "They got us these," he said.

"Hey, that looks like my phone -- oh…" Harold trailed off.

"We knew you were planning on leaving tomorrow morning, and we wanted you to have these phones," Nick explained. "But we didn't think you'd want the hassle of programming all the numbers from your old phones to the new ones. So Tom and Suzy … borrowed … your old phones for us so we could do it for you."

"Cool." Al seemed satisfied, so Harold flipped open his new phone and began exploring its features.

"I think you should have given the phones out last," Tina said. "I'm pretty sure they're done paying attention to the rest of us now."

"That's okay -- we don't have any more presents for them anyway. The next gifts are only for those who are too young to drive." A couple of the kids looked confused, so Eliza added, "Too young to drive here, I should say. In this … state."

"She means under 16," Charlotte added.

"That's all of you," Toby said, indicating all the kids in Sabri's class, "plus Trudy, if you want one."

Toby and Tina had joined forces with Harold's sisters to buy each kid one of those hard plastic water bottles. "They're supposed to be indestructible," Tina explained, and Harold was glad he wasn't going to be around when the kids tried to test that claim.

"And we put carabiners on all of them --"

"The real ones," Toby broke in. "Not those wussy ones you can't really use for climbing."

"-- so you can attach them to your backpacks," Eliza finished, giving Toby an odd look. Harold wasn't sure if it was a "that's really weird, why would they ever need actual carabiners" look, or an admiring "that's so awesome, I wish I'd thought of it," look. The kids certainly thought it was a selling point, though. They exclaimed over the brightly colored plastic, and Harold was impressed by how the adults had managed to pick designs that seemed to suit each kid. He hadn't even known the bottles came in anything other than the classic clear.

Harold was distracted from his dessert by his new phone, which he discovered had a terrific version of Tetris on it. It was getting late by the time plates were finally clear, and the noise level increased considerably as everyone gathered up coats (and in some cases, shoes) and headed for the door. As he stepped out into the night air, the kids exclaiming over the moon, the breeze feeling warm after the air-conditioned restaurant, Harold wondered why he'd ever wanted to go away.

Chapter 7: In which Harold and Al finally get on the road, along with an unexpected companion.

Oh yeah. This was why.

Harold had been waiting for twenty minutes to get into the bathroom. All four girls were in there, which he had hoped in vain would be efficient, despite the eye roll Suzy had given when he'd asked about it. Instead, it seemed to have exponentially increased the time each girl needed to spend in there. Last time he'd passed the door, he'd heard a lot of splashing, followed by giggling. How did they find so much to talk about in the bathroom?

Al was in the kitchen arguing with someone about breakfast, and the three boys were camped out in the living room, playing with the TV. Not watching it, just playing with it, flipping through channels and pushing all the buttons on the remote, just to see what would happen. Nadeka was eagerly sharing all the knowledge he'd gained about DVD players and channel surfing on his last visit to Earth, since neither Zahar nor Damaris had been involved with that one.

Harold fled to the garage, with the pretense of going out for the Sunday morning paper. All his stuff was packed in already in the car. He looked longingly at his laptop carrying case. Even his book of number puzzles was tucked away in a pocket somewhere. Bob, who had made himself scarce since the kids' arrival the day before, appeared from somewhere and leapt up on the hood of the car. Harold climbed up beside him, and they sat in silence, looking out the garage door onto the quiet street.

"Harold, if you're not back in 30 seconds, I'm taking your turn in the bathroom!" Al's loud voice carried to the garage, and obviously to the street as well, as Harold saw a woman out walking her dog turn in startlement at the words. He gave her a wave and went back inside. He still didn't have the paper, but his good humor had been restored. Plus, there were waffles for breakfast. They weren't the usual microwaveable ones that he kept stocked in the freezer, and there was a waffle maker plugged in on the counter. Harold didn't own a waffle maker.

"I don't own a waffle maker," he said conversationally, pouring syrup on a stack of delicious-looking waffles. Just because he couldn't explain their presence on his plate didn't mean he wasn't going to enjoy eating them.

"No, we brought it with us," Tom said. "Juice?"

Harold knew there hadn't been any juice in the refrigerator the day before, but sure enough, but sure enough, Tom was holding up a carton that read "Premium Organic Orange Juice." "Did you bring that with you too?"

Tom frowned at him. "Of course not. Kyp went to the store this morning. Why would we pack juice in our luggage?"

Harold could have asked the same about the waffle maker, but it obviously made sense to someone, so he let it drop. Al came to his conversational rescue with the classic, "The weather looks nice today. Good day for driving."

It was the first day of September. They actually had until the 15th to reach their destination -- some school down in Alabama, Harold kept forgetting the name -- but they were giving themselves extra time to be tourists along the way. See the sights, explore some scenic byways. Plus, they wanted to be absolutely positive they would get to Alabama in time. If they lost the ship because they missed some easily achieved deadline, they'd never live it down.

As expected, there were a couple last minute delays. First Harold wanted to help with the breakfast dishes, then Al got caught up fixing the clock radio in the back bedroom. That made Harold remember he'd never found his watch, and all twelve of them got involved in the search. It finally turned up under the sofa, along with a jingle ball cat toy, an old TV Guide magazine, and an awful lot of dust. Harold and Al made it all the way to the car after that one, where they encountered their last unexpected delay.

Bob was still sitting on the hood. When Harold lifted him down, he circled their legs like a shark, tracing some unidentifiable pattern. As soon as the car door opened, he jumped inside and hunkered down on one of the duffel bags in the backseat. Harold and Al exchanged glances. Bob looked defiantly at both of them. Harold didn't say a word, just headed back to the house to collect up Bob's harness and leash. As he walked out of the garage, he heard Al asking, "Are you sure? It's not going to be like when we go to the park, you know." It looked like the "traveling tag team" (as Trudy had dubbed them the night before) had gained a third member.

Chapter 8: In which the road trip finally begins.

It really was a beautiful day for driving. Being in the car was still a novelty, and Harold was enjoying being a passenger. He was supposed to be "navigating," while Al drove, but they didn't have any maps, and Harold hadn't driven to Boston in years. Usually he just took the train.

A vague "drive south" had worked at first, but once they hit the city Harold had pulled out his laptop to see if he could find a wireless connection. They were supposed to be visiting the aquarium, ostensibly to check it out as a possible weekend trip destination for the kids, but really just because it sounded like fun. Harold hadn't been to the aquarium since he'd been in middle school.

"Hey, listen to this," Harold said. "Apparently, you can use aspirin to make a flood detector!"

Al glanced over briefly before looking back to the road. "Are you checking your email? You're supposed to be looking up how to get to the aquarium -- we're going to get lost if you keep clicking through on those amazon.com ads."

Harold almost snickered at Al's tone. City driving was stressful at the best of times, especially for someone like Al, who hardly ever had to drive anywhere, but Harold almost expected the next words out of his mouth to be, "I'll pull this car over right now!"

"Okay, I'm pulling over," Al said, and Harold blinked in surprise. "I've got to get off the road, and we obviously have no idea where we're going. I'm hungry, and I'm not going any further until I know we're not getting further away from the destination."

Come to think of it, Harold was hungry too. They'd eaten breakfast late, but it had still been hours since then. Bob meowed, as if to indicate that he was hungry too. "You are not getting anything," Harold told him.

"We can't just leave him in the car," Al said, parking outside a small café. They both sat for a minute, pondering the situation.

"All right," Harold said. "How about this? I'll hang out over there --" he waved to indicate the small grassy area next to the restaurant, "-- and give Bob a chance to stretch his legs. The sign says they have Internet access, so you can take my computer and figure out how to get to the aquarium."

This seemed workable to both Al and Bob, so Harold clipped on Bob's harness and leash and headed for the grass, as if walking a cat was something he did every day. At first Bob acted put out by the leash, but Harold assured him it was necessary, and soon he was romping like a kitten and chasing after a small butterfly. Al returned after just a couple minutes.

"The owner loves cats," he explained. "She saw Bob through the window and wants to meet him; she says you should both come in so we can all eat together." Harold raised his eyebrows -- really? "She seems nice," Al insisted.

They were the only customers. Martha, who was apparently the owner of the café, or at least the only person who was working there that day. Harold was surprised, since it seemed like Sunday afternoons would be a busy time for a restaurant, but he'd seen a lot of strange things in the last couple years, and so far this one wasn't even making the top 100.

Now, when Martha pulled up a chair for Bob (who instantly loved her, which Harold considered a point in her favor, despite his suspicion that Bob would love anyone who gave him his own chair at the table), it got a little stranger. And when Martha brought them their food, and she brought a plate for herself too, pulling up a fourth chair, it was stranger still. Maybe top 50 material. But Al was right -- she did seem nice. And she gave them directions that got them to the aquarium in record time.

Unfortunately, even record time wasn't enough to get them there before closing time. It turned out the aquarium had closed at four that day, because of some renovations they were doing on the penguin habitat. Harold and Al looked at the closed doors and stared accusingly at the sign. This had not been in the plan.

"Well, this wasn't in the plan," Harold said.

"Now what?" Al wanted to know.

"We could come back tomorrow -- it's not like the plan was written in stone."

That led to the difficult decision of where to stay that night. Harold had heard that Motel 6 advertised itself as "pet-friendly." Their website explained that one "well-behaved family pet" was allowed, as long as it was declared at check-in. "No sleeping bags?" he wondered aloud. "Why not?"

"They probably don't want you to have more people sleeping in the room than are allowed," Al said.

"But what if my 'well-behaved family pet' has to have his special sleeping bag bed?" Harold wanted to know. Not that Bob slept on a sleeping bag; he was perfectly content to sleep on a regular bed, as long as the people weren't taking up too much room. But still, it was the principle of the thing. "I'll have to ask the motel about it when we get there. It doesn’t seem fair to make your undeclared guests sleep on the hard floor, even if your cat doesn't want the sleeping bag. And how are they even going to know if I have a sleeping bag with me?"

"Maybe you should save those questions for right before we leave," Al suggested.

Chapter 9: In which a trip to the aquarium turns into an odd sort of lunch.

The Motel 6 was as pet-friendly as it claimed. Bob hammed it up, and all the receptionists loved him. When Harold and Al left the next morning for the aquarium (not a pet-friendly facility), Harold's only worry was that one of them might try to take Bob home with them. Al assured him Bob wouldn't allow it, and they left him in charge, guarding their luggage.

The aquarium was beautiful. Al and Harold both agreed it would be an excellent trip for the kids. Harold was a little surprised by how many floors there were, and how much there was to see. "It didn't seem this big when I was in school," he said. "I'm exhausted!"

They were staring at one of the multi-level tanks; Harold was particularly drawn to the turtles, while Al seemed fascinated by one of the striped fish. "It just keeps swimming around and around," he said. "What's it doing?"

A woman standing nearby turned around at his question. "I've heard that fish have this really tiny memory, so probably it doesn't even know it's swimming in circles. You know, it's like, 'Whoa, kelp! And look at that turtle!' And then three minutes later it's like, 'Whoa, kelp!' all over again."

That didn't sound very realistic to Harold -- if the fish had such a tiny memory, how did it remember what kelp was called?

"Those are some pretty advanced thought processes for a ray-finned fish," Al said thoughtfully, still staring at the tank.

The woman gave Al a look that clearly said, "You are very strange," and turned her attention to Harold. Harold thought she looked familiar. Apparently, she thought the same.

"You look really familiar," she said. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

Harold had no idea. It was possible, but he didn't know where he would have met someone who seemed to have such a low opinion of sea life.

The woman persisted, and it turned out they'd gone to high school together. Harold didn't think they'd been friends in high school, but she insisted on following them to the museum's restaurant. She chatted the whole way about what was going on with everyone from their class. Harold recognized about one name in five, and spent a lot of time smiling and nodding. Al seemed highly amused by the whole thing.

"Al?!" They were waiting in line to place their order, and Harold and Al both turned at the name. The woman from Harold's high school class broke off what she was saying when she realized they were no longer paying attention. Harold still didn't know her name -- once she'd remembered his name, she hadn't bothered to introduce herself, and now it seemed rude to ask. D-something? L-something?

"I can't believe I ran into you here!" Now another woman had joined their group, talking excitedly to Al. "What are you doing here?" She gestured to her outfit -- she was wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt with the aquarium logo embroidered on it. "I'm working, but I'm on break right now -- have you ordered yet?"

Al shook his head, and the woman joined them in line. "I'm Cate," she said, ignoring the irritated mutterings of the couple behind them in line. "Wow, you must be Harold -- it's so cool to meet you for real. I saw you back during the evac--" Al cleared his throat, and shook his head. Cate looked startled. "Oh, sorry," she said. Then, "I'm Cate," she repeated brightly, and held her hand out to the other woman. "It's nice to meet you."

Harold was relieved to be spared the embarrassing task of introducing someone whose name he didn't know. "I'm Julie McCabe," she said. Huh, Harold thought. That didn't begin with D or L. "It's nice to meet you too."

Lunch was surreal. That was really the only word Harold could think of to describe it. Cate kept trying to find out more about Harold, whom she clearly viewed as somewhat of a celebrity, without giving away the fact that she hadn't been born on Earth. Julie kept trying to find out Harold had done that made him so praiseworthy.

"It's so cool to meet someone who went to school with Harold," Cate was saying. "I mean, everyone knows about Al now, but Harold's different. You must be so proud to know him."

Harold could see Julie getting suspicious. He'd been nothing to write home about in school, especially with two younger sisters always hanging around. And he'd studiously avoided all the reunions the former class president had tried to organize. Really, who held a high school reunion every year? It was just ridiculous. He'd had enough of his classmates by the time he graduated, and didn't feel the need to revisit that part of his life each year, or in fact ever.

"Really?" Julie said. "I haven't seen that much of Harold since school; he never makes it to the reunions, you know."

"Oh, Al's the same way." Cate laughed. "You know how it is; they get busy, and there's always another world to save or government to overthrow."

Julie's eyebrows rose significantly, and Harold resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He and Al had never done either of those things. At least not on their own. This was just going to start another wave of rumors, he could tell.

"And they're so good with the children," Cate gushed. "Those kids are the future, you know, and everyone talks about how they might not even be here if it wasn't for Harold and Al! It's really brought the whole …" she searched for a word. Probably a replacement for "planet," Harold guessed.

"Area?" Al offered.

"Area, yes, that's it. Such good publicity, you know. I would never have even known about this job if it wasn't for them and those kids!"

As far as Harold could tell, Cate had never been to Earth before the worldwide evacuation of her home planet brought her here. She'd come through Al's doorway and had clearly liked what she'd seen of Earth enough to come back for an extended visit. He had no idea what the kids had to do with it, though. But Cate didn't seem to like Julie much, so maybe she was just playing her.

"Oh, my break's almost over." Amazingly, Cate had managed to eat all her food while she was talking. "I've got to go, but it was so good to see you. I can't wait to tell everyone!"

Once she was gone, there was an uncomfortable silence at the table. "Actually, we've got to take off as well," Al said, sounding apologetic. Harold looked over at him. "Bob will get worried," Al told him. Harold personally thought that Bob wouldn't start to worry until the motel staff stopped bringing him cat toys and extra treats, but he was willing to take the excuse to get away from Julie.

"You're right," he said. "And he'll want to go for a walk, anyway." Harold turned to Julie. "It was nice to see you again," he said politely.

She looked a little shell-shocked, but managed a smile when Al shook her hand and said, "And it was a pleasure to meet you." Harold turned back to look at her before he and Al turned the corner into the main corridor, and she was dialing her cell phone.

"She's fine," he said. "And now I really don't want to go to any of my school reunions."

Chapter 10: In which Tom becomes a den mother, and Harold pinch hits on homework.

As suspected, Bob was perfectly fine when they returned to the motel. He was happy to go for a walk, though, and they found a pet supplies store that welcomed animals. Al carried Bob to the "Toys and Beds" section, while Harold was relegated to buying more cat food and a couple of travel dishes for food and water. At the register, he got into a long conversation with the cashier about traveling with cats, and the cashier mentioned that the brand of food Harold had bought was only sold in specific regions. Harold went back and bought two more bags, just in case. Then he realized that he would have to carry them back to the motel, along with whatever Bob had decided he couldn't live without for another two weeks.

Instead, Harold left his purchases at the register and found Al to let him know that he was going back to the motel to get the car. Fifteen minutes later he pulled up in front of the store only to find Al sitting on the sidewalk with Bob in his lap, surrounded by bags. He was talking to someone on his phone.

"No, don't bother," Al said, as Harold approached. "He's right here." Harold gave him a questioning look, and Al held the phone against his shoulder. "It's Tom," Al explained quietly. "He's got a question about the kids' homework."

It was Monday. School didn't even start until Wednesday, but the school had organized a "Welcome Back / Getting to Know You" picnic that all the middle schoolers were invited to. "They got homework at a picnic?" Harold asked.

Al shrugged, and handed him the phone. Harold tossed him the keys, and Al started loading the bags into the car. "Hello?" Harold spoke into the phone, wondering which one of the guards was on homework duty.

"Harold? This is Tom. What's a diorama?"

"A what?" Harold asked.

"A diorama," Tom repeated. "All the kids met their new classes and teachers today, and they've all gotten split up."

They'd actually expected that something like that might happen. They were calling it a "student exchange," but there was no actual exchange that was happening. The middle school didn't get to send seven of their students to Al's planet, they just ended up with seven more students than expected on their rosters. No single class could handle that many additional students, so they were divided among multiple classes.

"All of them?" Harold said, aware that so far he hadn't been at all helpful in the conversation.

"No, there's three fifth grade classes, plus a combined fifth/sixth class," Tom said. "Meshkalla and Lishendri got paired up, along with Zahar and Nadeka. Damaris and PJ are in the combined class, and Sabri ended up the solo student."

"How did she take it?" Harold wanted to know. He knew she was independent, but he could also imagine her being upset at being separated from her friends.

"Oh, she's fine," Tom said. "The twins are mad, though. They'll get over it. Anyway, they all came home from this picnic and they all got assigned some version of sharing what they did over the summer. Mostly just writing a paper or making a poster, but Damaris and PJ's teacher wants them to make this 'diorama' thing. Al said you might know what it was."

"Okay," Harold said. His brain was distracted by a sudden mental image of Tom, Kyp, and Suzy, who were three of the toughest and most menacing people he'd ever met, sitting around his kitchen table and puzzling out fifth grade homework assignments. "A diorama is a three dimensional scene inside a -- well, we usually used a shoe box in my family -- and you tip it on its side and put the scene inside, so it's on display." Wow, that just sounded more and more stupid the more he explained it.

"The short side, or the long side?" Tom asked, sounding very serious.

"Uh, the long side," Harold said.

"Okay, the long side," Tom repeated back. "Hold on…" Harold wondered if he was taking notes. "What are you supposed to make the figures out of?"

Harold guessed that arts and crafts weren't a big part of the curriculum at the kids' usual school. "Construction paper, pipe cleaners, tinfoil, blocks… really anything you have around the house is fair game. You should give Eliza a call on that one; she keeps tons of stuff like that in the basement at her house."

"…tinfoil, blocks … call Eliza…" Tom was muttering as he wrote things down, and Harold felt one last hint was important.

"It's really not supposed to represent everything you did over the summer," Harold said. "Most kids just pick something they did a lot that they liked, like swimming, and make a diorama of that."

After he'd hung up the phone, Harold hoped that they saved all the projects -- he really wanted to see those dioramas. He called Eliza to warn her of the impending craft invasion, and she promised to do her best to keep the projects to a reasonable fifth grade level. However, since Harold was pretty sure one of her fifth grade projects had included an edible (and very realistic) depiction of the Battle of Gettysburg, he wasn't totally convinced of her ability to keep that promise.

By the time that conversation was over, they were back at the hotel. There they face the challenge of integrating their new purchases in with their old luggage, and making sure everything would still fit in the car. That night they wrote out all the directions they would need (hopefully) to reach the Rhode Island coast, and watched a documentary about Egypt on the History Channel. Harold dreamed of cats jumping over the Nile.

Chapter 10: In which Harold and Al drive a long way.

The interesting thing about driving on a huge interstate for hours and hours was that you tended to see the same cars over and over again. You passed a station wagon with a tie-dyed canoe tied on top, then ten minutes later, the same station wagon passed you. You noticed a car in the far lane with the radio turned up way too loud, and all of a sudden they were right next to you, and you were singing along, because it really was a good song. There were cars that used their blinkers to change lanes, and cars that dove in and out of traffic like their drivers had learned to drive playing video games. And then there were the cars that used their blinkers, but didn't change lanes. They just left their blinker on. Forever.

It was one of those cars that Harold and Al were currently stuck behind. Harold was driving, and there was a tractor trailer truck on either side of him, making passing impossible. "That blinking is driving me insane," he said.

"Hm?" Al looked up from his phone. Harold couldn't tell if he'd been playing Tetris or text messaging with the kids, who had adopted their old phones.

"That car ahead of us," Harold explained. "They've got their blinker on, but they're not changing lanes. It's been on for a good five minutes now."

"Too bad we can't radio them or something," Al said. "That would be really convenient." Harold hoped Al wasn't about to start taking his car apart while he was driving. "Or I could just shout out the window or something."

"I think the odds of that causing an accident of some sort are probably higher than the odds of that making the driver turn off his blinker," Harold told him.

They joked about different uses for the car-to-car radio until they found a rest area that looked big enough to support several restaurants. They were trying to make their travel easier by avoiding the busiest times on the road, so their "lunch" was coming at about 2 p.m. Charlotte said they were just trying to justify sleeping until ten every morning. Harold thought that was just a side benefit.

They ate at one of the outside picnic tables. The weather was warm, but not as hot as it often was at the start of September, and the table was in the shade. It was nice to be out of the car. Bob obviously thought so too; he prowled all around the table, rolled around in the grass, and then proceeded to sharpen his claws on one of the wooden table supports.

Harold and Al dragged out the meal as long as possible before they pulled out their directions. According to the estimated time, they should have already reached their destination. "But obviously not," Al said, looking around at the clearly un-coast like scenery.

A tall man approached their table. Harold had seen him walking in the parking lot with a woman and a boy who looked about the same age as Sabri. "Excuse me," the man said. "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation--"

Really? Harold thought. The tables weren't that close together, and he certainly hadn't overheard anyone else's conversation.

"Did you say you were trying to get to Rhode Island? From Boston?"

Uh-oh. If they weren't even in Rhode Island yet, they'd made a serious error somewhere.

"Yes," Al said. "That's right."

"Um… can I assume you weren't planning on going there via New York?"

Harold just groaned. "It had to be that road," he said, "when we were going north and south at the same time. I had a bad feeling about that road."

"Well, I asked if you were sure that was the right exit," Al said.

"You were the one with the directions!" Harold retorted. "Of course I wasn't sure!"

The tall man cleared his throat. "Okay, well, it sounds like you've gotten a little turned around. Basically, go back the way you came, and stay on the highway until you hit the Rhode Island border. After that, you're on your own -- I've never actually been to Rhode Island."

It seemed a bit sad to Harold that they were taking directions from someone who had never even visited the place they were trying to reach, but he couldn't deny that turning around seemed like a good idea. If they went east long enough, they were bound to hit the ocean, right? Of course, that would only work if they could read the road signs well enough to actually be driving east, but still. It should work.

"Thanks," Al said. "That's terrific!" He sounded like he really meant it, too, which Harold thought was impressive. "Where are you headed?"

"Oh, we're just going to pick up my niece from school," the man said.

"From school?" Harold asked. Most schools had just started, and she was already getting picked up.

"It was the summer session," the man explained. "Although even if she was attending the fall semester, she probably would have wanted to come home. We're having a sort of family reunion in a couple weeks, and nobody wants to miss it." He looked over to a nearby table, where the woman and boy Harold had seen earlier were sitting. "It looks like everyone's ready to go," the man said, "so I've got to head back. Good luck with your trip!"

"Same to you," Al said, and Harold chimed in right after.

"Yeah, good luck. Have fun at the reunion!" Harold was wondering what the man's family did at reunions -- his own experience with large family reunions was all bad. He and his sisters always tried to have inescapable commitments elsewhere whenever an invitation came their way.

The man waved, and walked quickly back to his table. It definitely wasn't within hearing distance, Harold decided. Oh well. It wasn't like they could get more lost. He and Al watched in bemusement as the group pulled sleek looking backpacks out from under the table, donned leather jackets, and walked into the parking lot carrying motorcycle helmets under their arms. The woman was carrying two helmets, presumably for herself and the missing niece.

Harold looked at Al, who looked as surprised as Harold felt. Bob gave a little meow and jumped on the table. He sat down, looking smug, as if to say, "I knew they were leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding, act of kindness doers with super-hearing the whole time." They both laughed, and Al offered Bob a french fry.

Chapter 11: In which everyone wonders how people went on vacation before cell phones were invented.

Al took over the driving after lunch. "Sure, once we have directions, you want to drive again," Harold had said, but Al had countered with the fact that they had actually started with directions that morning, they just hadn't been able to follow them. The newness of being in the car for multiple hours had worn off, and Harold was bored. He turned on the radio, but none of his preset stations came in anymore. That led to looking for the car manual, so he could change them. He was pretty sure the manual was in the glove compartment; at least, he couldn't think of anywhere else he would have thought was a smart place to put it the last time he'd used it (probably back when he set the radio buttons the first time).

Harold pulled out a winter hat (but no gloves), a handful of Dunkin' Donuts napkins, the car charger for his old cell phone, a set of keys to his sisters' cars, and a half-empty bag of cough drops before finally unearthing the manual. He dumped all the other stuff back in, and had just opened the manual when a phone rang. At first Harold couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from. There was a phone on the dashboard, but it wasn't ringing. Harold patted his pockets -- nothing. He looked around, but it wasn't like there were that many places for it to be. It wasn't like it was in the next room or something. His backpack, maybe?

The only problem with that idea was that Bob was currently sleeping on top of Harold's backpack. Harold tried to reach back and dislodge him gently, but the cat was just outside fingertip range. Harold considered just grabbing the backpack and pulling, but an angry cat inside a tiny car wasn't his idea of a fun time. "Don't crash," he told Al, unbuckling his seatbelt.

"Want me to pull over?" Al asked.

"No, that's probably more dangerous than having my seatbelt off on a road like this." As Harold was talking, he leaned further into the back seat. As soon as he nudged Bob off the top of his backpack, Harold could see the ringing phone tucked into one of the outside pockets. "Got it," he said, sliding back into his seat and re-buckling his seatbelt. Amazingly, the call hadn't gone to voicemail yet. Harold flipped the phone open.

"Hello?" he said.

Silence. "Hello?" Harold asked again, louder.

"…Is this … Al Baxter's phone?" a tentative voice asked.

Harold didn't know whose phone it was. His first reaction was to say no -- it was in his backpack, so it was probably his phone. On the other hand, he had been talking to Tom on Al's phone the day before, and Harold couldn't remember whether he'd ever given it back.

"Um… hold on," he said. He reached for the phone on the dashboard and opened it. The screen said "Harold's Phone." And hey, he had a text message. Harold tried to hold onto both phones and access his message at the same time.

"Yes, this is Al's phone," he said distractedly. The message was from Sabri.

"Could I speak to him please?" the voice said, still tentative.

Apparently Sabri had finished her poster; she'd sent a picture of it. It looked like a three-dimensional pie chart (sphere chart?), and each section was a different summer activity. Harold couldn't make out any of the words, but it had a lot of bright colors, and hopefully Eliza would have vetoed anything too alien-sounding.

Suddenly the question sank in. "Wait, who is this?" he asked.

"I really need to talk to Al Baxter," they repeated. "Is he there?"

Harold looked at Al. Bob had woken up and climbed into the front seat while Harold was distracted with the phones. He was sitting in Al's lap, and Al had one hand on the cat and the other hand on the wheel.

"He's a little busy right now," Harold said. "Could I give him a message for you?"

There was a pause. "I'm only supposed to give the message to Mr. Baxter. She says it's important."

"Who says it's important?" Harold asked. This was getting irritating. If it was really that important, just spit it out already! "Can you at least tell me who the message is from?"

Another pause, and Harold wondered if the caller was conferring with someone on the other end. "It's from Mrs. Gardener," the voice finally said. "But that's all I can tell you."

Harold mouthed "Mrs. Gardener?" to Al, who by that point was looking very curious. Al just rolled his eyes and turned back to the road. Okay, not important, then, Harold thought.

"Okay, look,' he told the person on the p hone. "I'm going to hang up, and I want you to call back right away. I won't pick up the phone, and you can leave a voicemail message for Al."

This seemed acceptable, so Harold hung up. The phone rang again almost instantly. As they waited for the call to go to voicemail, Harold described the conversation to Al. They both watched the blinking light that indicated a message was being recorded -- and it was a long message.

"So who's Mrs. Gardener?" Harold asked.

"She's from my planet," Al said. From Al's tone, Harold guessed Al wasn't too pleased about having to claim her. "She insists on coming to Earth every few months -- something about drinking the water -- but as soon as she gets here, she gets sick. Or at least she says she does. She's a bit of a hypochondriac; she's always convinced she has some terrible illness, and has to go back home again."

"So why is it so important that she only speak with you?" Harold could understand why she'd want to get in touch with the door keeper, to arrange a trip home, but it didn't sound like anything that needed to be kept secret.

"That's the best part," Al said. "She's also kind of paranoid, and she's convinced that she's not allowed to tell anyone anything. She probably some receptionist at her hotel to make the call without even telling them what the message was."

That answered Harold's last question (why didn't Mrs. Gardener make the call herself?). "So… do you want to listen to the message?" he asked. Bob had settled down, and Al would probably be able to handle just listening to a voicemail while he was driving, especially since he'd figured out how to use the cruise control.

"No, you can do it," Al said. "Then we'll need to call the house and figure out how to convince her to go through the doorway without me there. Maybe Tom will help; he's great at looking mysterious and slightly menacing at the same time."

Harold listened to the message, and it was just like Al had predicted. Mrs. Gardener had decided she was sick, and wanted to go home. She wanted to know when Al could open the doorway for her -- "and make sure there's no one else around this time!" she reminded. Wasn't she going to get a surprise, Harold thought. There were more people in the house than ever. Maybe Tom could pick her up at her hotel (which she helpfully provided the name and room number of), and transport her directly to the basement. Harold left the message on the phone, just in case Al wanted to hear it later, and called home.

"Hello?"

Harold frowned. That didn't sound like any of the voices he was expecting to hear. It was a kid's voice, but it sounded younger than any of the boys he knew were supposed to be living at the house right then. "Hello," he said. "This is Harold. Who is this?"

"I'm Douglas," the boy answered proudly.

"Hi Douglas," Harold said. He tried to think of a nice way to say 'what are you doing in my house?' "Is there anyone else there right now?"

"Sure," Douglas said. "Lots of people."

Well, that was less than helpful. Harold tried again. "Is Tom there?"

Douglas was quiet for a second. "Is he the big scary looking guy?"

Harold fought the urge to laugh. "Um, yes, I'm pretty sure that's Tom," he said. "Could you get him for me?"

"Okay!" Then -- "TOM!!" Harold winced. The neighbors couldn't help hearing that one. Then again, wasn't one of the neighborhood kids named Douglas?

Harold couldn't hear much of the conversation that followed Douglas' shout. It sounded like someone was scolding the boy for being so loud, and why was he inside, anyway? Everyone else was outside. Everyone else? Harold wondered how many people were there. He didn't recognize the scolding voice either. Finally, someone else picked up the phone.

"Hello? Harold?"

"Tom!" Harold was relieved to find that at least someone he thought was at the house was, in fact, there. He wavered for a minute, trying to decide if he should ask what was going on, but decided to simply forge ahead. "We've got a small situation with a Mrs. Gardener…"

Chapter 12: In which Harold and Al finally make it to Rhode Island.

So it turned out Rhode Island was a lot like New Hampshire, but with a lot more coast. Or at least a higher percentage of coast. The ocean came right into the middle of the state, and everywhere smelled like salt water. By some great stroke of luck, the first beach they came to allowed animals. Actually, the sign read, "Pets Welcome" in big letters. In smaller letters, it said, "This includes dogs, cats, rabbits, hedgehogs, llamas, and others." And then in even smaller print, down by the bottom, there was the warning, "Please leave your iguanas at home, as they tend to burrow."

Harold looked at Al. Al looked back at him. "Okay," said Harold. "So…not exactly like back home."

Despite the odd sign, the beach looked completely normal. Crowds of people, towels tossed haphazardly over beach chairs, kids running in and out of the surf while their parents looked on, and of course, lots and lots of sand. Harold and Al climbed out of the car eagerly. Harold was more than ready to be outside after so many hours of driving. Bob was a little more cautious, and Harold realized he'd probably never been to a beach before. The large cat paused in the door and sniffed the air. He sneezed. "Bless you," Harold said automatically.

Bob was fine as the walked down the sidewalk, and only hesitated a little on the stairs leading down to the beach. But on the last step he stopped. His expression said, "You've got to be kidding me -- you can't seriously expect me to walk in that, right?" He stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on Al's leg, switching his expression to sad and piteous.

Harold thought they must have made a funny picture, walking across the sand together. Al was holding the cat, but Harold still had the leash wrapped around his wrist. They drew less attention than Harold expected, however -- he guessed that compared to a llama, two men and a cat weren't terribly exciting. They ended up about half a mile down the beach, sitting on the rocks and sharing a bucket of fried chicken and the biggest order of fries Harold had ever seen.

It was heading into those late afternoon / evening hours, when the beachgoing crowd shifted. Parents packed up their coolers and beach toys and took their children home; dedicated surfers and beach volleyball players showed up to take their spots. Bob had relaxed enough to perch on his own rock, once he'd found one that wasn't too sandy, and Harold thought it was only a matter of time before he would give in to the lure of the shallow tidepool and stick his paws in.

"Look," Al said suddenly. "It's a ninja."

Harold followed Al's gaze. Sure enough, a person in an all-black karate uniform was striding down the beach in their direction. That was weird.

"Huh," Harold said. "That's weird."

The uniformed person stopped a ways away and turned towards the water. Harold looked away and got distracted by watching the seagulls wheel and call. When he looked back, there were a whole bunch of people wearing karate uniforms, and it looked like more were arriving by the minute. Most of the uniforms were white, and Harold wondered how hard it was to get sand and mud out of an outfit like that.

It was the perfect dinner theater. Harold and Al weren't quite close enough to make out what the group was saying, but it looked like they were having some sort of outdoor class. They jogged up and down the beach and did jumping jacks and push-ups. They stretched. They kicked and punched, and one of their exercises looked an awful lot like the game Duck Duck Goose. There appeared to be a lot of laughing going on, especially once the group moved into the water.

By the time the "ninjas" left, the sun was starting to set. Harold and Al gathered up a slightly damp Bob and headed back to their car. Suddenly the decision to go to the beach before finding a place to stay overnight wasn't looking quite as smart. Harold was tired, and as they drove away from the beach, all they saw at the local motels were "No Vacancy" signs. The first place with rooms available had a no-pets policy. So did the second, and the third. And the fourth.

"Remind me again why we came to Rhode Island?" Harold complained, after a receptionist wearing a badge that said "We're Here to Make Your Stay Exceptional" told him in no uncertain terms that "no cats are allowed," even after Harold explained that Bob wasn't really a pet, he was really more like a member of the family.

"Because it was the only New England state you had never visited," Al reminded him. Almost under his breath, he grumbled, "And now I can see why."

"Hey!" Harold said. "It's not that bad. It is pretty."

"Yes, very New England-y," Al replied. "Except we can't find anywhere to stay that will take cats. I vote we just take a room at the next place we find and smuggle Bob in inside one of our bags."

Harold was hoping their beach-finding luck would kick back in, and they would turn down the next road to find a warm, homey, bed and breakfast with a kindly caretaker who loved cats and would make them a delicious meal of eggs and bacon the next morning. However, it was not to be. They arrived at a motel that, at best, could be described as well lit. Harold didn't think that there was much else going for it; certainly the woman at the desk didn't strike him as the kindly caretaker type.

"What's your policy about cats?" Harold asked.

The woman glared at him. "Are you from the FDA? We told you last time, the whole thing is just a nasty rumor some of the local boys cooked up about us. Why don't you go investigate them for a change?"

"Ah… I'm not with the FDA," Harold said. "I'm just looking to rent a room for the night."

"Oh yeah?" The woman examined him like she was checking to see if the words "I'm lying!" were embroidered somewhere on his clothes, or maybe tattooed on his skin. "Where's your luggage?" she asked suspiciously.

Just then Al stumbled through the door, loaded down with bags. "Right there," Harold said. "Well, that's a lot of it, anyway."

For a moment, he thought the woman was going to give him a hard time about having too much luggage, but she just gave a little "harrumph" sound. "Two rooms?" she asked.

"No, just one is good, thanks," Harold answered.

She handed over an electronic key card. "Checkout's by 11, or you pay for another night. You're in unit 7; go outside and to the right, halfway down the row. If you have any questions or concerns about your room, call the front office."

And apparently that was it. The woman picked up a magazine (it looked like National Geographic), and ceased to acknowledge their existence. Harold and Al exchanged glances. Then Harold shrugged, and they carried their luggage down to unit 7. Harold decided that in this case, the saying about discretion being the better part of valor held true, and he didn't ask about cats again.

Chapter 13: In which the kids experience their first day of school on Earth, and Harold and Al have a very early morning.

It was Al's voice that woke Harold the next morning. That, and the fact that Al was shaking his shoulder.

"Don't you want to say goodbye to the kids before they go off to school?" Al asked him.

No, Harold didn't want to say goodbye to the kids before they left for school. Harold wanted to be sleeping. Being at the beach always tired him out. "What time is it?" he mumbled.

"It's 5:30!" There was a pause; presumably Al listening to someone on the other end of the phone. "Sabri says good morning." Another pause. "PJ says good morning too. So does Damaris. And -- okay, everyone else says good morning too."

5:30? Harold was still stuck on that. 5:30? In the morning? That was just wrong. In many ways. Why were the kids up at 5:30? Harold didn't remember middle school all that clearly, but he was pretty certain he hadn't woken up at 5:30 in the morning. And he was completely certain he hadn't been calling his relatives at that time of day.

Harold glanced at Al, who seemed intent on whatever he was saying to … Sabri, Harold assumed. Maybe Harold could get away with falling back asleep.

No such luck. "Here's Harold," Al was saying. Harold saw a phone move into his range of vision. "It's Sabri," Al told him. "She wants to talk to you."

Harold tried for a glare, but he was pretty sure it fell short. He took the phone without sitting up, but he did roll over onto his back. "Hi Sabri," he said. "Have fun at school today." He didn't wait for an answer. "Hold that thought, okay? Is Tom up? Can you put him on?" Tom was the unofficial "mom" of the group.

When Harold heard the phone change hands, along with Sabri's voice saying, "It's Harold. He wants to talk to you," he started talking.

"5:30 is way too early to be making phone calls," he told Tom. "I don't care what the kids told you. They're going to do just fine today; they're a million times smarter than the average fifth grader on this planet, and they all have each other as backup. School is fun, and they're going to have a blast. Tell them they can call back this afternoon." Then he hung up.

"That was kind of rude," Al said. Harold couldn't tell if his tone was disapproving or admiring.

"It's 5:30 in the morning," he said, as if this explained everything. Then he tossed the phone on the floor and pulled the covers over his head. He was going back to sleep.

Chapter 14: In which there is a day of rest, which turns out not to be very restful.

Harold felt much better when he woke up several hours later. He and Al decided to stay another day in Rhode Island to take a break from all the traveling. Harold volunteered to find a grocery store and buy some real food while Al talked to the receptionist about extending their stay. Coming back, Harold thought the parking lot looked surprisingly full, but he didn't see any people around to ask about it, so he let it slip from his mind. Maybe slightly dingy motels with weird receptionists and vague policies about pets were highly popular in Rhode Island.

They spent the day hanging out at the motel's pool -- it had a pool! -- eating and playing cards. They'd started out with the high tech version, on their computers, but the motel didn't have any Internet access, and Harold wasn't confident of his ability not to ruin his laptop by dropping it in a puddle of water next to the pool. Given those two facts, traditional cards seemed like a smart choice. That meant another trip to the store. Harold thought there might be even more cars in the parking lot when he got back, but it was hard to tell.

Cell phones were allowed at the school the kids were attending, but they weren't supposed to be used during school hours. Harold wondered how anyone learned anything if all the students disregarded that rule as blatantly as the seven aliens. He wanted to ask how they were doing it, but thought that might be construed as tacit approval. Every fifteen minutes or so, one of their phones would signal they had a message -- Harold's played the 1812 Overture, while Al's was the theme from X-Files. Nick and Steve had programmed the different ring tones, and Harold couldn't figure out how to change it, so he was stuck with the 1812 until it drove him so insane he begged Al to fix it.

First Nadeka forgot his lunch, and felt the need to text everyone in his phone book with that news. Kyp just did the same to let everyone know he'd dropped the missing lunch off at the school's front office. Then Zahar was bored. Then they were all bored. Then Sabri's teacher said something funny, which reminded Lishendri of a joke one of the students had told her, about the smartest man in the world. Harold wondered how many bad habits they were going to pick up from the public school system.

By the time Harold and Al ate lunch, Harold was starting to wonder where all the people were. The parking lot had been full when he'd last checked, but the pool was deserted except for him and Al. That seemed odd.

Al called the house when the kids were supposed to be home from school, and they all gathered around the speakerphone and shared stories about their days. It turned out a lot of their "what I did on my summer vacation" projects had featured things like indoor golf and playing outside at midnight during the eye of a hurricane -- things that five of the seven kids had done on Earth when they'd been there at the beginning of the summer. None of the teachers had assigned any more homework so far, which was a relief. The kids went outside to burn off some of the pent-up energy from sitting through a day of school, and Harold and Al continued the conversation with Tom and Suzy.

Harold and Al shared their plans to drive to Washington DC the next day, and spend a few days exploring the city before they headed further south. Tom and Suzy shared that they were looking forward to Thursday for an entirely different reason -- PJ's dads were visiting for three days, and would take over the kid-sitting for a while.

Chapter 15: In which the non-restful part of the day takes place.

It was dark, and Bob was upset. Harold could hear him hissing and yowling, and it jerked him out of his dreams of eating the most delicious tuna salad he'd ever tasted. As soon as he sat up, he heard an unfamiliar voice say, "Don't move! Or the cat gets it!"

Who said things like that? Harold wondered silently. He wished he could see something; he was pretty sure the voice had come from by the door, but he couldn't really tell. And where was Al?

"Where's your friend?" the voice asked harshly.

Harold felt around, but Al was definitely not on the bed. "Ah… I don't know," he said, knowing that probably wasn't the answer the voice was looking for. At least Bob seemed to have quieted down a little.

"Yeah right," the voice said. "Come on, I'm not kidding here. Where is he?"

Um, Harold really didn't know where Al was. He'd been right there just a few hours ago.

Just then Harold heard the sound of the bathroom door opening, and he could see the glow of a cell phone. Hopefully, that was Al, and he was on the phone with someone who would rescue them. Harold didn't know what was going on, but he was pretty sure they were going to need rescuing at some point. Any time now, really, would be fine with him. On the other hand, who took their phone into the bathroom?

"Don't move!" the voice said again. Harold thought it was sounding a little more agitated. "Hang up the phone!"

The light from the cell phone disappeared. "Harold?" Al asked, in a calm voice.

"Right here," Harold called back.

"No talking! Nobody move!"

Definite agitation that time, Harold thought, as he listened to the harsh breathing coming from near the doorway. He was confident it was the doorway now that Al had come out of the bathroom. The room just wasn't that big.

As he sat there, Harold wondered if he ought to be making some sort of plan. That was what people always did in the movies. He tried, but couldn't think of anything. He did think that the voice had perhaps made a tactical error in making Al hang up the phone, since the light had been a good indicator of where he'd been standing. Maybe Al had a plan.

"Okay, here's what you're going to do." That wasn't Al's voice. Darn. "Put your hands on your heads and sit down on the floor."

Harold tried to follow the directions in the order they were given and nearly fell off the bed. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Where's the carrier for the cat?" the voice asked, ignoring the loud crash. "We're going for a little drive."

"He doesn't have one," said Al. The voice made a frustrated sort of growl, and Harold jumped in.

"No, really," he said. "We don't have a carrier. We just use a leash and a harness to take him outside, and he sleeps on the bed usually, so there's never been any need for one … until … well, now." Harold trailed off at the end, hoping his words had been believable enough, since they were, in fact, true.

The voice sighed. "Where are they, then?"

Harold hesitated. He really didn't want to answer this one.

Finally Al spoke up. "They're in our car."

"How did you get the cat in the building, then?" The voice sounded angry again.

"I carried him," Al said.

Under your coat, Harold added silently, so the receptionist wouldn't see him, just in case she happened to be looking out the window at that moment.

"Look, what's going on here?" Harold wanted to know. He thought it was past time that the question got asked. Harold had been comparing the events to a typical adventure movie plot; they seemed to be at the moment when the antagonist went into a long expository monologue, giving the protagonists backup time to mount a rescue.

"Shut up!" Apparently the voice didn't agree. Maybe he'd seen a different movie. "I'm thinking." There was a tense silence. Even Bob was quiet.

"Okay, new plan," the voice said. "We'll take your car. You're both coming. Let's go."

"Um, I'm not wearing any shoes," Harold said.

Al chimed in too. "I'm not wearing any pants."

The air conditioning unit in their room wasn't working very well, and it was hot. The only window was in the bathroom above the sink. Harold wasn't actually wearing any pants either; just boxers, but he hadn't wanted to say that. Trust Al to get right to the heart of the matter.

"Okay, this is the worst catnapping ever!" The voice sounded almost frantic. The lights suddenly came on, and for a minute Harold was still blind. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. When things came into focus, he couldn't believe his eyes.

The source of the menacing-sounding voice had apparently been a teenage boy, who was currently sitting on the floor, crying. His face was buried in his hands. Bob, who had minutes earlier been howling to get away, was sitting in his lap. Harold watched Bob rub his head against the boy's chest, then turn to look at Harold as if to say, "Well? Do something!"

Al looked as flabbergasted as Harold felt. "I'm going to put some clothes on," he said finally.

That seemed like a good idea. Harold still wasn't sure what was going on, but he felt like just about any situation would be improved by clothes. He and Al dressed silently, while the boy by the door sobbed. Harold took advantage of the opportunity to pack up everything that had been left lying around the room. If there was going to be a kidnapping, or a catnapping, or whatever, he didn't want to accidentally leave his toothbrush behind.

Finally, Al set a bottle of water on the floor next to the boy and scooped up the cat, retreating back to where Harold was sitting against the bed. "Let's hear it," he said. "What's going on?"

The sobs had been getting quieter, and at Al's words, they stopped completely. The boy sniffed loudly and looked at the floor between his feet. "I was trying to rescue your cat," he said.

"By stealing him?" Harold couldn't help asking.

"I wasn't going to hurt him," the boy said insistently. "I would never do that!"

The door opened. The black-clad woman who stuck her head in did a double take at the sight of the three of them sitting on the floor and quickly brought up a small and scary looking gun. "Nobody move," she said.

It was like déjà vu. Then another woman walked into the room. "I thought you said they were all asleep," she said accusingly to woman number one.

"No, I said they should all be asleep," the woman replied. "And then I said it seemed weird that the light came on, and maybe we should wait, but no, you had to barge ahead."

"Look, I don't know where all this hostility is coming from, but I really don't think this is the time to bring it out," the second woman said.

"No -- I can't take it any more!" The first woman spoke more loudly. "When we started this, you said it would be empowering, and now your disenfranchising me at every turn. Why do you always get to be in charge?"

Harold saw the second woman open her mouth, and then everything went all sparkly, like when you stand up too fast. His ears were ringing. This can't be good, he thought to himself.

Chapter 16: In which Harold and Al (and company) are abducted by aliens.

Harold felt nauseous. He wondered if he was getting sick, maybe food poisoning, or the bird flu. Then he opened his eyes, and realized that no, the world had just gone insane. Strangely, it was a comfort.

Al was sitting next to him, and Harold asked, "What's happening?" in a quiet voice.

"We've been abducted by aliens," Al said just as quietly. He sounded positively gleeful.

"Yes, I can see that," Harold told him. "Do they know that you're --"

"No," Al replied. "At least, I don't think so."

"What about Bob?" A small part of Harold's brain went 'yes!' because he'd been waiting to say that forever, but a larger part reminded him that inserting random pop culture references into his day to day life in spontaneous and humorous ways wasn't exactly a top priority right at the moment.

"He's here too," Al said. "So are our guests."

"Any idea why?" Harold had come to accept that there were aliens out there, and that some of them lived on Earth, but the whole 'alien abduction' thing seemed a little clichéd.

"No -- they haven't done anything since we got here. They're just kind of hanging out over there, talking." Al sounded irritated that the experience hadn't been more exciting so far.

Harold thought it looked more like the aliens were arguing. Then again, it was hard to tell, with the hats. He thought they were hats, at least. "Huh," he said. He looked around. All the occupants of their motel room were against one wall of the room (did you call it a room on a spaceship?). The two women were staring silently at the group of aliens. The boy was staring at the field of stars visible out the window (was it called a window on a spaceship?). Bob was sleeping, and wasn't that just typical of a cat?

After a few minutes, Harold was bored. "I'm bored," he told Al.

"Tell me about it," Al said. "I thought an alien abduction would be a lot cooler than this."

They were still talking in quieter-than-normal voices, but Harold was beginning to feel more relaxed, now that no threatening moves had been made towards them for a while. It didn't look like any of the aliens were even watching them. He slowly reached for his pocket, where he'd stuffed his phone when they were packing. Al leaned over his shoulder as he flipped the cover open.

"The red highlighted components are in an error state! Please pay urgent attention to their configuration!" The unfamiliar message scrolled across the screen, followed by a list of what Harold assumed were components of the phone's software. They were all red.

Harold closed the phone with a sigh. Apparently they weren't designed to work in outer space. Given his life, and his current situation, Harold thought that was a serious design flaw. He wondered if Al could fix it.

"I'm hungry," Al said suddenly.

Harold hadn't really thought about it, but now that Al said something, he was feeling hungry too. "What time is it?" he asked. Harold was starting to think that this might go down as the weirdest night of his life, and that was saying something. Okay, he didn't have that many weird nights to compare it too -- really just one that he could bring to mind right away, but that one had been weird.

"I don't know," Al told him. "My watch is broken."

Harold checked his own wrist automatically, but his watch had stopped as well. "I wonder how long we've been gone," he said. "Wait -- your watch is broken? Like, it's not telling time anymore, or the whole thing isn't working?" Al's watch also functioned as a very convenient mode of transportation -- all the aliens had them, as far as Harold could tell, and they allowed them to instantly transport themselves from one location to another. Al wasn't supposed to use his on their trip, but Harold was pretty sure this would count as extenuating circumstances.

Al gave him a funny look. "Well, I haven't exactly tried to use it," he said. "It's not designed to work over distances this large, and I'd be a little worried about ending up, oh, in space."

Oh yeah. Plus it wouldn't really be subtle, either. Harold made a mental note to himself not to ask stupid questions without thinking about them first. He also noted that being abducted by boring aliens made Al a little cranky.

Personally, Harold was fine with the low excitement level. His body was reminding him that it had been sleeping before, and could it please get back to that now? Harold told it no, and looked around for their backpacks. "Is our stuff here too?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's down past the arguing ladies," Al said.

Since Harold had been avoiding looking at them, that explained why he hadn't seen it. "I'm going to go get my backpack," he announced. "I'm hungry too, and I've got snacks in there." Remembering his manners, he asked Al, "Would you like me to get yours too?"

Al looked impressed. "Sure," he replied. "That would be great." Harold wondered if it was a good sign or a bad sign that Al didn't volunteer to go along.

"Okay," Harold said, and stood up slowly. No reaction from the aliens on the other side of the room. He kept his eyes on them as he walked carefully down the line of people, but they didn't move from their group huddle. Harold and Al's luggage was laid out just like the people were, single file along the wall. Harold picked up both backpacks -- they were right next to each other, which was a relief -- and then froze at the sound they made scraping along the floor. Still no reaction from the huddle, though, and after a second he relaxed and made his way back down the row to Al.

As Harold sat down again, he hoped he had an extra sweatshirt in his backpack. The floor didn't look like metal grating, which Harold had always thought was the construction material of choice for alien spaceship floors, but it was hard. And cold. Sitting on a sweatshirt and watching a huddle, Harold thought to himself -- it's just like being at a football game, except it's in space, and they never actually play the ball.

He had pretty much stopped paying attention to the aliens (the other aliens, Harold reminded himself) by that point. There was a lot of background noise going on, between the ladies arguing, and the aliens -- he assumed -- talking, and a lower pitched noise that Harold thought was probably coming from the ship itself. So Harold was surprised when the first pull of the zipper on his backpack brought complete silence. He looked up in shock, only to see all of the aliens headed towards him.

Chapter 17: In which alien encounters turn out to not be what anyone expected.

If Harold had ever thought about it, which he hadn't, he probably would have guessed that the greatest thing Earth had to offer was something like the democratic process, or maybe the ability of humans to work together towards a common goal. Zippers never would have made the list.

But it was zippers that seemed to intrigue the aliens. They really liked them. It took a bizarre set of charades combined with a whole lot of guessing, but when Harold finally passed over his zip-up jacket, the huddle re-formed and the aliens pulled the zipper up and down and examined it from every angle. It was kind of weird, actually. Harold hoped he hadn't left anything important in his jacket pockets, since it didn't seem like he was getting it back any time soon.

"They can't have abducted five people just to learn about zippers," Al said. He sounded exasperated; clearly these aliens were not living up to his expectations.

"Plus a cat," Harold added. He was really hoping Bob stayed asleep. He knew as soon as the cat woke up, Bob would want to start exploring, and that really didn't seem like a good idea. First, who knew how these zipper-crazy aliens would react? Second, what if Bob got lost?

"Plus a cat," Al agreed. "Well, they seem distracted again. Do you have any of the chocolate flavored Power Bars? I'm all out."

Harold traded Al a chocolate Power Bar for one of the berry flavored ones, and they passed a water bottle back and forth. The boy who had woken them an uncertain amount of time ago with his botched catnapping was staring at them. Finally, Harold couldn't take it anymore. "Look, do you want a Power Bar?"

The boy nodded. Harold asked if he liked the peanut butter ones, and the boy nodded again. Harold passed it over with no regret -- the peanut butter flavor had come packaged as a set with the other two, but he and Al didn't like it. They couldn't throw them away at home, though, because Harold's sisters were big on not wasting food, and Harold was a terrible liar. This was the perfect solution, as far as he was concerned.

"I can't believe you're eating at a time like this!" The comment was hissed down the line from one of the women.

Really? It seemed like the perfect time to eat to Harold. He was hungry, he had food available, and who knew when he was going to get the chance to eat again? So far the aliens seemed fairly harmless, but maybe in five minutes they were going to take away all their belongings and stuff them into tiny rooms until they starved to death -- you just couldn't tell.

Al turned to the woman and asked in his most innocent tone, "Did you want one? We have plenty."

"No I don't want one! This is not the time for eating! We've been abducted by aliens!" The woman's voice was getting louder.

"Well, there's not much else to do," Harold said reasonably.

"This peanut butter one is really good," the boy chimed in. "You should try one."

"But -- aliens!" the woman stuttered.

"Yes, it's very disturbing," Al agreed, and Harold laughed.

"You'd know," he said.

"Hey, can I see your phone for a minute?" Al asked. "I've got an idea."

Harold shrugged. "Sure." This time it was his turn to look over Al's shoulder as Al fiddled with the phone. Al was great with electronics, but Harold wasn't sure what he was going for this time.

"What are you doing?" Harold asked.

"I might be able to boost the signal somehow, get in touch with someone to at least let them know where we are." Al pulled his own phone out of his pocket and set the two of them side by side. "All right," he said after a while. "I think I've got it."

All the lights went out. Harold heard shrieking, and assumed it was the women. "Oops," Al muttered. Silence. Then, "Mrow?"

A lower level of lighting returned -- Harold thought they must be the equivalent of emergency lights -- and Harold could see Bob was awake and stretching. Harold mentally rolled his eyes. Of course, when everything else was going wrong, why not add a cat to the mix?

Like all things, though, this one didn't turn out quite as Harold expected. After a long period of boredom and sitting, waiting for something to happen, it seemed like everything happened at once. All the lights came back on, and Harold blinked in the sudden glare. A loud alarm started wailing. At least, Harold assumed it was an alarm -- for all he knew, it could be some weird alien version of dance music. And the odd shuffling and running about that the aliens were doing could be their version of hip-hop, but it looked a lot more like panic to Harold.

"What did you do?" one of the women yelled.

"It wasn't me!" Al said.

Harold wasn't totally convinced of that, but he was willing to believe it. It did seem unlikely that trying to place a call would cause a spaceship-wide emergency, no matter how incompatible the technology was.

Then the world went sparkly. Harold had just enough time to think, 'Oh, not again" before the ringing in his ears drowned out even his own thoughts.

Chapter 18: In which more things go wrong.

When Harold woke up, there was sun in his eyes, and a police officer pointing a gun at him. "Oh, crap," he said.

"Interesting choice of words," the police officer said. He consulted a piece of paper in his hand. His right hand, Harold noticed, which meant the gun was in his left.

"You're a lefty," Harold said. Then he wondered why he had said that. Maybe he had some sort of concussion? Or it could just be lack of sleep; Harold still wasn't sure what time it was, but he was pretty sure he'd missed at least half a night's sleep somewhere.

"You're very observant," the officer said, and his tone said that he did not think that was a good thing. "Would you be Mr. Jones? Mr. Baxter? Or Mr. Doesn't Carry an ID on him?"

"Jones," Harold replied. He looked around; apparently, he was the first to regain consciousness after … whatever it was the aliens had used to send them back to Earth. Bob was nearby, which was a relief, and Al was right next to him. The boy was back over by the outside door, and Harold couldn't see the two women. Maybe they were on the other side of the bed? Harold hoped they weren't missing. They'd been obnoxious, but that didn't mean he wanted to try to explain to a police officer that yes, there had been two women in the room the night before, who had threatened to kidnap them, but then they had all been abducted by aliens, and now the women were gone. It didn't make any sense even in Harold's head, so he knew he wouldn't be able to explain it to anyone else.

"Hey, do you have a warrant?" Harold asked. Charlotte had explained some basic police rules when she was going through her academy training; Harold was a little fuzzy on how the motel room aspect played into things, but he was pretty sure a warrant was still necessary for a search, and his ID had definitely been in his backpack last time he checked.

"The door was open," the officer said, and Harold narrowed his eyes. Really? Maybe the women had left it ajar when they'd come in earlier. Harold really wanted to ask what day it was, but he thought the room already looked like they'd had some kind of wild party in it, and he didn't want to add to that impression. Instead, he glanced at his watch, but it was still broken. Not broken "the seconds aren't advancing in one-second intervals, I think it got stopped or something," but broken "the screen is blank and none of the buttons are working, so chances of revival are slim to none."

"So," the officer said. "Where were you last night between the hours of three and four in the morning?"

There were several possible answers to that question, and Harold wasn't sure which one was true, because he wasn't in the habit of documenting his activities by the minute, especially when it was the middle of the night. The way Harold figured it, at three o'clock in the morning, he'd either been: being held hostage in his motel room by a teenage boy, being held hostage in his motel room by two armed women, or held as a guest / prisoner on board an alien spaceship. Unless it was actually Saturday instead of Friday, in which case the answer was probably "unconscious somewhere."

"Um, what day is it?" Harold asked.

The police officer gave him a look that said, 'I know you're an insane criminal probably involved with drugs and all manner of other unsavory things, and I will not rest until I have made you confess everything you've done wrong since the first grade.' Luckily, Harold was used to this look, since he'd seen it many times on his younger sister. He said nothing.

Finally, the police officer said, "It's Friday." Then, grudgingly, "A little after noon."

Well, that was a relief. "What's going on? Why are the police here?" Harold asked. Maybe he could put off the question of what he'd been doing a little longer.

The police officer looked at him suspiciously, and Harold tried to look harmless. "Last night there was an incident here at this motel," the officer said. "Two women were seen entering this room, where they reportedly remained for several hours. After leaving the room just before dawn, the women moved several rooms down where they carried out their crime."

"Which was?" Harold prompted. Apparently he hadn't been the first one to wake up. It was kind of ironic that he was being questioned by the police, since if he had woken up first, he probably would have called the police, and had them come arrest the two women in question. He still wasn't sure about the boy.

"A catnapping. You've heard of Baxter, the Meow Mix cat?" Harold thought the man must be joking, but he sounded serious. "He was staying here last night, traveling to a commercial shoot under armed guard. Now he's missing."

Now Harold was really wishing Al was awake, because he was practically a professional at stuff like this. Harold's head was still spinning from everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, and he was definitely having more of a reaction to the transportation beam thingie than he had the first time. He hoped it hadn't malfunctioned, or if it had, he hoped there wouldn't be any serious side effects. Like feeling this stupid for the rest of his life.

"Well, I don't know everything that's going on," Harold said, "But those women came here to try to catnap Bob, not Baxter." He pointed at the still-unconscious cat.

The police officer didn't seem to think this was very likely. "Is Bob famous?" he asked. Harold shook his head. "Are you rich -- able to pay a lot of ransom money?" Harold shook his head again; he wasn't rich, at least, and he didn't want to get into Al's financial situation. "Then I'm pretty sure it was Bob here who was the mistake; probably they came here first by accident."

It came to Harold suddenly what must have happened. "Was Baxter traveling under some sort of assumed name?" he asked. He got a nod and another suspicious glance in response. Harold pointed at Al. "His last name is Baxter -- that's the name the room is reserved under. They probably found out that 'Baxter' had reserved unit number 7, so they came here, and there was a cat, so they just figured it must be Baxter!"

The police officer nodded. "That makes sense," he said. Harold hoped he would gloss over the fact that there were still several unexplained hours that the women had supposedly spent in the room. And the fact that there were still two unconscious people lying on the floor. There was silence as Harold sat hoping and the police officer sat pondering. Then the officer's radio crackled to life, and he excused himself. In less than a minute, he was back, telling Harold not to leave the motel, and to make sure no one else in the room left either, and then he was gone, and Harold was confused. Was he in charge? Was he under arrest? Why couldn't Al have been the one awake for this, and Harold could have stayed blissfully unconscious through the whole thing?

Chapter 19: In which Harold finds out about some of those negative side effects.

Bob woke up next. He was, as Harold's mom would have said, one cranky kitty. When Harold offered him a dish of water, first he turned his nose up at it, then he clawed Harold's leg when he took it away. With a sigh, Harold placed the dish back on the floor, and added a second dish with some cat food in it. Not Meow Mix, luckily -- that would have just been too weird. Bob gave him an angry look.

"Look, I’m sorry we didn't wake you up on the ship, okay?" Harold tried for a sincere sounding apology. "We were worried about you. It's not like you missed anything exciting, anyway -- you were awake for the only part that wasn't totally boring. Mostly it was just a lot of sitting around." Bob's look said that if he had been awake, he would have made something interesting happen. Which was exactly what Harold had been afraid of, but he wasn't about to tell that to the cat.

Bob won the staring contest and settled down to his breakfast (lunch?) like the whole thing had been his idea. Harold left him to it. He hoped whoever woke up next was in a better mood.

It was weird, Harold thought, being awake when other people were asleep, especially in the middle of the day. He'd retrieved Bob's leash and harness from the car (which was still there, he'd been relieved to see), and they'd gone for a short walk around the motel. All of the cars Harold had seen yesterday were gone; the motel appeared to be deserted. Except for the yellow police tape across the entrance, it looked exactly the same as it had when he and Al had first arrived.

Once he arrived back at unit seven, only to find that Al and the unnamed boy still hadn't woken up, Harold began to get a little worried. He didn't know how long it had been, but it felt like a long time. Maybe he should try to wake them, or call the hospital or something. Then again, what would he tell them? These people are unconscious, but I don't know why. No, I don't know what happened to them, because it was happening to me at the same time, and I was unconscious too. Also, one of them is an alien, so please don't look too closely at any of his test results.

Then Harold realized that Al's eyes were open. "Al!" he cried happily.

There was no response, but Al did bring his hand up to poke his finger in his ear.

"Al?" Harold asked. Al didn't look at him, but he did make a humming noise and then frown. Harold walked over and knelt down beside him.

"Harold!" Al said. Then he frowned again. He opened his mouth. "Aaahhhhhh," he said loudly. He worked his jaw from side to side and swallowed very deliberately. It looked like he was trying to make his ears pop. Then Al knocked on his head. Okay, Harold didn't know what that was about.

"Al?" Harold asked again. "Are you okay?"

"I can't hear you," said Al, "but I'm going to guess you just asked if I'm okay." He tilted his head to the side. Harold nodded. "Well, I can't hear anything," Al said. "Other than that, I feel fine." Harold raised his eyebrows. "Okay, not fine. What time is it, anyway?"

Harold shrugged and showed Al his blank watch. He said, "Friday," and watched as Al did a double take.

"Friday?" Al asked. Harold nodded. "Not Thursday?"

Oh, Harold realized. They had arrived at the motel on Tuesday evening, spent all day Wednesday there, and then been abducted Wednesday night. They had lost a day somewhere -- and he hadn't even noticed! Harold wondered if his apparent mental deficiency ranked as more or less serious than Al's (hopefully) temporary deafness. He grabbed the pad of paper and pen on the bedside table and wrote, "The alien transportation beam made me stupid."

Al laughed. "Well, it made me deaf, so I guess we're even," he said. Harold wasn't sure that made any sense, but he was pretty much doubting everything his brain was telling him at that point. Al didn't seem too worried, so that was a good sign. "I'm sure it will pass," Al added. "Actually, hold on a sec."

And then he let loose with the loudest, most blood-curdling scream Harold had ever heard. Harold stared at Al in shock, but Al just said, "See? I could hear that, a little, sort of. My hearing's already starting to come back." Then he pointed towards the door. "Look, he's awake."

Sure enough, the teenage boy who'd been lying on the floor, dead to the world, since Harold had regained consciousness, was sitting up and looking around. Harold was guessing Al's scream had done the trick. Actually, Harold was guessing that anyone who'd been asleep within a one-mile radius was probably awake after that scream. Al was loud.

"Hi," Harold said, and the boy turned to look at him. Harold was a little wary of what his reaction might be. He was pretty sure the boy had been trying to kidnap (catnap?) Bob, but he obviously wasn't a hardened criminal, if his breakdown afterwards was any indication. Still, if Harold had tried to commit a felony, failed, been held hostage, then been abducted by aliens, all in the same motel room, his first instinct would probably be to try to get away from that room as fast as humanly possible. And the police officer had told Harold to keep everyone there until he got back.

"I'm Harold," Harold said. "This is Al." He gestured beside him, and Al waved, picking up the gist of the conversation. "What's your name?"

"Um…" The boy looked puzzled, then worried. "I don't know," he said finally. "I think I have amnesia."

Chapter 20: In which everyone gets to know each other (sort of) and Harold finally checks in with the homefront.

Harold didn't know how amnesia worked, but it seemed very odd. For instance, the amnesiac he was currently using as the only subject in his unscientific study could remember that he liked cheese pizza, but couldn't come up with his own name. On the other hand, who didn't like pizza?

They had ordered the pizza shortly after everyone was awake. Actually, Harold ordered the pizza, since Al still couldn't hear anything short of a yell, and the kid couldn't remember if he had any money. Eating always put people in a better mood, and they were all sitting around doing a rather odd version of getting to know each other.

"You must not know me either," the teenager said. "So how did we end up here?" He looked a little worried.

Al looked at Harold questioningly, and Harold typed, 'he wants to know how he ended up here.' They had discovered that whatever technology destroying impact the aliens had knowingly or unknowingly unleashed only affected things that were "on," like watches and cell phones. Their laptops were spared, and Harold was using his to type the conversation for Al, since his typing was faster than his writing, and he really couldn't yell loud enough for long enough to get the message across that way.

Al laughed. "Tell him," he typed. Al thought it was weird to speak without being able to hear what he was saying, so he was typing too.

Harold tried to think of a nice way to explain things. "You tried to steal our cat," he said. Wait, that didn't seem nice.

"Really?" The boy seemed shocked. "Bob? That doesn't sound like something I would do. At least, I hope it doesn't."

Harold typed, 'he says stealing our cat doesn't sound like something he'd do.' Then he said, "You weren't very good at it, if that makes you feel any better."

Al tapped his shoulder, and Harold looked down at the computer screen. 'he did say he would never hurt bob' it said. "Oh yeah," Harold said. "You did say that you would never hurt him, too." He paused. "And then you cried."

The boy looked horrified. "What?"

"Really," Harold said. "You broke into our room on Wednesday night, and grabbed Bob. He went crazy, and it woke me up, and Al was in the bathroom talking on his cell phone for some reason, but you didn't know that, and you really did sound pretty menacing." The boy looked slightly reassured at this news, so Harold continued. "But you wanted a carrier for Bob, and we don't have one, and his leash and stuff were in the car, and then Al and I weren't wearing any pants, and it all just kind of spiraled out of control. That was when you were, you know, crying."

There was a pause, as the boy absorbed this new information. Then he frowned. "Wait -- did you say Wednesday night? Isn't it Friday?"

Then Harold had to explain all about the alien abduction. And the two women, and the police, and the actual catnapping, and about halfway through he realized that the aliens had never given his jacket back, and that made him so upset he had to eat another slice of pizza. Surprisingly, the boy seemed much less worried about being abducted by aliens than he did about crying. Teenagers -- who could predict them?

Harold was just winding down the part where the police officer told him they all had to stay at the motel, when the boy started looking nervous again. Also, Harold thought that he really should come up with something better to call him in his head. "The boy" was getting old. Maybe 'amnesia boy,' or 'the boy who couldn't remember anything.' 'Bob's buddy?' Perhaps something simple, like 'Joe.' After all, his name could be Joe. Or 'Carl.' Harold had always thought Carl was a nice name.

Al nudged him, and Harold realized that the kid whose name might be Joe was talking. "--have to stay in the same room?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Harold said. "I was thinking."

Maybe Joe repeated his question. "Did the police officer say we all had to stay here specifically, like here in this room?"

"No, just not to leave the motel," Harold said. "Besides, I already left the room to walk the cat."

Maybe Joe nodded. He looked like he wanted to ask something else, but he didn't say anything.

"What is it?" Harold asked.

"Um… what did you tell the police about me?" Maybe Joe asked. "Did you tell them about Bob?"

"He didn't ask," Harold said. "We didn't really talk about you, although he did mention that you didn't seem to have an ID. Maybe you'll remember stuff by the time he comes back, and they'll have found Baxter, and we can all just go home."

"I wonder if anyone's waiting for me to come home," Maybe Joe said sadly.

And then all of a sudden Harold had a terrifying realization: the last time he and Al had been in touch with anyone at home had been Wednesday -- now it was Friday, and neither of their phones was working, and no one knew where they were. They were in big trouble. Harold typed quickly, and watched Al turn a shade paler as he read the words. The kids were probably frantic.

"Hey, what are you guys writing over there?" Maybe Joe asked.

"We want to trade," Harold said jokingly. "You can have our families, and we'll pretend to have amnesia."

Maybe Joe looked intrigued. Harold realized they'd never be able to pull it off -- maybe he was getting smarter again? -- and left Joe and Al looking through digital pictures on the laptop while he gingerly picked up the phone next to the bed and dialed. It felt strange to be using a regular phone again, even after just a couple days of being entirely dependent on his cell phone. At least it was a cordless.

The line was busy. Harold hung up after just a few seconds, feeling strangely indignant. Then the phone rang. He stared at it. He knew his house didn't have caller ID, or at least it hadn't when he left, so it couldn't be them. Maybe it was the police? Harold picked up the receiver and said, "Hello?"

"Harold Gabriel Jones!" a familiar voice yelled in his ear. Harold held the phone a few inches further away from his ear. "You better have a darn good explanation for this!" It was Charlotte. Harold didn't know how she'd gotten the number for the motel room, or what she thought needed explaining, but he was pretty sure he was about to find out.

"Hi Charlotte," Harold said. Charlotte, he mouthed to Al, whose eyes widened.

"What?" Maybe Joe said worriedly. "Who is it?"

Al was still looking at Harold, and hadn't heard the question, so Harold put his hand over the receiver and explained. "It's my sister," Harold said. The boy still looked confused. "She's upset," Harold added.

"Is there something wrong? Do you need to go help?" the boy asked.

"I think she thinks something's wrong here," Harold said.

"Well…" Maybe Joe trailed off, but his hand gesture said, 'Your sister is clearly quite intelligent, since there are clearly many things wrong here.'

Harold put the phone back up to his ear. "Sorry about that," he said. "How did you get this number? Not that I'm not glad to hear from you." He considered adding, 'I was just about to call,' but despite the fact that it was almost true, he knew no one would believe it.

"Who are you talking to?" Charlotte asked, ignoring his question. She sounded suspicious. But then, Charlotte tended to be the most cautious of the three siblings. There was a story in their family about Charlotte in elementary school -- a police officer had visited Charlotte's classroom, and Charlotte had demanded to see his badge before she would believe that he really worked for the police. She had also been the first one to question why the Tooth Fairy had the same handwriting as their mom -- Harold hadn't really noticed, and Eliza had apparently believed that the Tooth Fairy couldn't write in English, so she had to magically possess other people to get them to write for her. That was probably why Charlotte was now an officer of the law herself, while Eliza was a theater major.

And Harold -- well, Harold was stuck. He'd opened his mouth to answer Charlotte's very simple question, and realized there was no simple response. "Well, that's a good question," he hedged. "A very good question."

"Gabe…" Charlotte's voice had a warning tone, but at least she hadn't used his full name that time.

"Look, Al and I were just eating lunch with someone we met here in Rhode Island." Harold tried for the truth. He thought he'd start with what he did know, instead of opening with the fact that he didn't know the kid's name. "We're all fine, really. Nothing to worry about."

"Really," Charlotte said, and Harold could tell his casual approach had just died a quick and painless death. "Then maybe you can explain something to me. I got home from work yesterday to find fifty-three text messages on my cell phone, all from people you were supposed to be keeping in touch with. Apparently you had dropped off the radar -- you hadn't called, hadn't emailed, oh -- and your phones weren't accepting any calls or messages! No one knew where you were, although, believe me, there was no lack of theories."

She paused to take a breath, and Harold heard a muffled, "Shh!" in the background. He wondered if Charlotte was over at his house with the kids. He hoped they hadn't freaked out too much. Before he could ask, the tirade continued.

"So I reassure everyone -- no, I say, I'm sure everything's fine, but apparently no one believes me, because today I get a call in the middle of my lunch asking if I can come to the school to pick up all the kids, who are being sent home for fighting in the cafeteria. Fighting! And of course, I did, and I asked the school, 'Why didn't you call their first emergency contacts?' since I know I'm pretty far down the list, and what do they tell me? 'Those numbers have all been busy.' Which seemed really weird, until I took the kids home and found out the whole house had been busy calling every motel between Rhode Island and Washington DC trying to find you."

Harold felt guilty, and reminded himself that he hadn't exactly been picnicking on the beach for all that time. He wondered if Charlotte would believe him if he tried to tell her what had happened on his end for those two days.

"But wait!" Charlotte was really getting into it, Harold thought. Definitely not going to believe him. He remembered that the first time he'd tried to explain an alien encounter to her, she'd ended up thinking he was involved in a cult. "It gets better! Then I get a phone call from the Rhode Island police force, asking me all sorts of questions about a Mr. Harold Jones, who's currently involved in a pending investigation into a felonious catnapping!" Ah, Harold thought, that's how she got this number.

"It wasn't me," he assured her.

"I know that!" Charlotte said. Then she gave a short laugh, and Harold heard her take a deep breath. "I just wish I knew how you kept ending up in situations like this," she said.

Actually, Harold kind of resented that last statement. As far as he was concerned, this was an entirely new situation for him and Al. They'd never been involved in a felonious catnapping before! Never been to Rhode Island; Harold had never even been on a road trip before this. He'd certainly never struggled with below average brainpower while eating pizza with an amnesiac former hostage taker and would-be catnapper of the wrong cat. The only part of the whole situation that could be considered even remotely ironically familiar was the part with the aliens, and Charlotte didn't even know about that yet!

Harold took a deep breath himself. "I can explain," he said.

Charlotte interrupted him. "Wait," she said. "Let me put you on speakerphone. That way everyone can hear that you're absolutely fine." Harold could imagine her glaring out at the group of kids and adults, emphasizing that she had been right all along. Either that, he thought, or she was rolling her eyes.

After a second, Charlotte said, "Okay, you're all set. Go ahead."

There was a chorus of hi's and hello's, and a lot of 'are you okay's' and 'we were so worried's.' Harold was pretty sure he heard someone ask what they were eating for lunch, which made him laugh. "Hi!" he called back. "We're all okay; I'm so sorry you were worried. It's been a little wacky here, but things are getting back to normal, I hope." He tried to type while he was talking, but ended up with gibberish. He paused and wrote, 'say hi, everyone's on speakerphone' so Al could see it.

"Hi everyone," Al said.

"Al sounds funny," a voice Harold thought was Sabri's announced suspiciously. "What's going on?" Apparently she had been taking lessons from Charlotte.

Her statement set off a barrage of rapid-fire questions and comments that he couldn't always connect to a speaker. There seemed to be more grown-up voices than he was expecting, and it took him a minute to remember that PJ's dads were supposed to be there.

"I knew there was something weird going on!"

"Maybe he's just tired."

"Are there bad guys there? Maybe it's a code!"

"Well don't say anything!"

"I told you so!"

"I think we should go down there."

"Yeah, they might need our help!"

"Can we?"

"Please?"

"Yeah, we don't want to go to school."

"We want to go see Al and Harold!"

"No!" Harold interrupted. He didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but he was almost positive that the last thing they needed was seven kids and who knows how many adults showing up at unit number 7 of the -- what was the motel called again?

"Let me just explain," Harold said. The chatter quieted down, and Harold started at the beginning. Again. He explained about Rhode Island, and the motel, and staying an extra day, and then all the rest. The best part was that he finally found out what Al had been doing that night, when he'd been in the bathroom with his cell phone. Apparently, he and the twins were engaged in a sort of cell phone war, and they had sent some cell phone software virus to his phone. It started beeping at random intervals, anywhere from ten seconds to three minutes apart, and it had driven Al so nuts that he felt the need to retaliate right away. Harold, of course, had slept right through the beeping, and the break-in that had followed.

Harold had been worried that either he, or someone on the other end of the conversation, would say something to give away the fact that the majority of the participants were from another planet. He thought that might make their already afflicted by amnesia guest a little weirded out. But Al was keeping the boy distracted with some activity that seemed to involve passing a pad of paper back and forth. Harold couldn't see what they were writing on it, but he was willing to bet it was more exciting than repeating for what felt like the hundredth time that no, the aliens hadn't identified themselves, and no, he didn't want them to contact their families and cause an interplanetary dispute over the issue.

Finally, everyone seemed satisfied. Well, not really, but the speakerphone participants' rising satisfaction and Harold's rapidly dropping patience reached equilibrium, and he was able to get off the phone after promising to call at least twice the next day, and make sure he and Al got plenty of sleep, and drink lots of fluids. Then -- "Dammit!" He realized he hadn't asked anyone to send down their old cell phones, which at least would have had all their phone book information in them. But there was no way he was calling back, so they would just have to live without them for a while longer.

Maybe Joe sounded sympathetic as he said, "Family." That was it, but that single word carried with it a wealth of understanding.

Chapter 21: In which Al starts to get his hearing back, and everyone does a lot of yelling.

"Hey, I heard that," Al said, looking at Harold. "Sort of."

"Really?" Harold said. "That's great!"

"Okay, didn't catch that," Al said. "Say something louder."

"HOW ABOUT NOW?" Harold called. Maybe Joe glared at him, but Al grinned.

"Yup! I heard you!' He sounded so excited that Harold decided he was willing to risk the wrath of scary motel receptionists.

"THAT'S GREAT!" Harold yelled. He turned to the other occupant of the room. "What about you?" Harold tapped his own head for emphasis.

"What?" Al said. Apparently now that he could hear some things, he was unwilling to be left out of any conversations that might be taking place.

"I ASKED IF HE REMEMBERS ANYTHING YET!" Harold yelled.

Maybe Joe shook his head. He looked sad, which made Harold feel bad. There was an awkward silence for a minute or two. Then Al announced, "I'm bored. Are you sure we're not allowed to leave the motel?"

Harold assured Al that his memory of the police officer's instructions hadn't changed. "YES!" he yelled loudly. Actually, this yelling thing was kind of fun.

It was hard to find activities that three people would be willing to do when one of them was mostly deaf and one of them couldn't remember whether they could swim. Eventually they settled upon a tried and true boredom relieving technique -- hassling other people. Harold called the front desk and asked them to send over a list of all the local restaurants that would deliver to the motel. Then he called to ask for a list of video stores that would deliver. Then he called to ask how the closed captioning feature on the TV worked.

By the time Harold hung up for the third time, after giving the receptionist a Charlotte-worthy rant about how they were guests at the motel, considerably inconvenienced by the police investigation necessary due to an apparent lack of appropriate security provided by motel staff, Maybe Joe was in tears from laughing so hard, and even Al had managed to follow most of the conversation. Harold had increased his volume several times. "They'd be happy to send over the information we're looking for," Harold said calmly, and that set Joe off again. It wasn't quite as funny when he had to repeat it a top volume for Al, but Al laughed anyway.

They let Joe pick the movies. It had been Al's suggestion; he said that maybe seeing something familiar would help Joe's memory return. Forty-five minutes later, as Harold surveyed a wide array of action movies, filled with car chases, sword fights, and shootouts, he said, "No offense, but I hope these don't bring back a lot of memories."

Harold had been in charge of food, and they settled in for their movie marathon with a huge amount of Chinese takeout, plus a giant case of bottled water supplied by the motel. Chinese food always made him tired, but it tasted good. And it wasn't like he had anywhere to be.

Chapter 22: In which Harold finds out that the police force isn't always as organized as he might hope.

It was Saturday afternoon by the time they ran out of movies and food, and everyone started wondering why they hadn't heard from the police. Not that anyone wanted to get arrested or anything, but there must be something happening with the investigation, and it would be nice to stay informed.

There were two phone numbers listed the business card the police officer had left Harold. He dialed the first one: voicemail. He dialed the second one: a perky sounding woman answered the phone. "Hello, Rhode Island Police Department, how may I help you?"

"Hi," Harold said. "My name is Harold Jones, and I was speaking yesterday with an Officer … Dulaney?" He paused there to see what the woman's reaction would be.

"Officer Dulaney won't be back on duty until Monday," the woman told him. "Would you like to leave a message?"

Harold wasn't sure. No, he didn't really want to leave a message; he'd already done that on the voicemail line. On the other hand, he really didn't want to be stuck at the Misty Miles Motel for another two days either. "Well," he said. "It's just that he told me no one was allowed to leave the motel, and I was wondering when we might be able to continue on with our trip."

There was a pause. "I'm going to have to go check with my supervisor," the woman said finally. "What did you say your name was again?"

"Harold Jones."

"Could you spell that for me?"

Was she serious? Who struggled with the spelling of Harold Jones? "H as in highway," Harold said, "a r o l d. Then J as in jazzercise, o n e s."

"Thank you. Please hold."

Harold had enough time to relay the entire conversation to Joe and Al, then spend several minutes trying to pick a pencil up off the floor with his toes, before the hold music cut off and the woman was back.

"Mr. Jones?" she asked politely.

"Yes, I'm here," Harold said.

"What was it you were discussing with Officer Dulaney again?" the woman asked.

"The catnapping," Harold said. He'd assumed it was obvious -- were there other crimes that had taken place at that motel on the same day? "Of Baxter, the cat from all those Meow Mix ads. We're at the same motel."

"Thank you. Please hold," the woman said.

Harold waited. He'd barely had time to get bored before the woman was back.

"I'm afraid Officer Dulaney is the only person covering your case at this point, and since he's unavailable, you are going to need to remain at the motel until further notice." She sounded apologetic, but Harold wasn't convinced. He'd used that same tone on people at his old job too many times to buy it coming from someone else.

"And there's no way to contact Officer Dulaney before Monday?" Harold pressed. "Could you at least let us know if they've found Baxter yet?"

Another pause. "I'm going to have to check with my supervisor," the woman said again. Harold stifled a groan as the hold music returned.

This time it was an even longer wait. Harold had time to relay the conversation to Al and Joe, crumple up five pieces of paper to throw for the cat, twirl the pencil through his fingers twenty three times, and Al try to teach Joe how to juggle. Finally the woman was back.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Jones," she said, "but I can't comment on any ongoing investigation." Then she stopped, like she was waiting for some response.

"Okay," Harold said. "Well … thanks, and have a good weekend, I guess."

The perky tone was back as the woman said, "Thank you for calling, Mr. Jones. The Rhode Island Police Department is happy to answer any questions you might have; please feel free to call any time if there is something we can do to help. Have a nice day!"

Harold hung up the phone feeling like he'd been given the runaround. "That was weird," he said.

"What?" Al asked, cupping his hand around the ear closest to Harold.

Harold just sighed. It was going to be one of those days.

Chapter 23: In which Harold, Al, Bob, and Joe finally say goodbye to the Misty Miles Motel.

By Monday morning, they weren't just bored. They had surpassed bored. They had invented new levels of bored. On the plus side, Al's hearing had mostly returned. On the negative side, Harold was saddened to realize that this was probably as smart as he had ever been.

Joe was also experiencing a lessening of his alien induced amnesia. One of the first things he had remembered was that his name was actually Matthew. This had led to several humorous moments. For one, Harold kept forgetting to call him Matthew. He'd been calling 'Joe' and 'Maybe Joe' in his head so much that it occasionally just popped out.

Al had a different problem. Back when Matthew was still Joe, Al had always said his name with a slight emphasis, as if he was putting invisible air quotes around it. While this provided much humor, Al had trouble breaking the habit when he switched to Matthew. "Hey, 'Matthew,'" Al would say, "Could you toss me the remote?" And Matthew would say, "But my name is Matthew."

Then there were the kids. As promised, Harold and Al checked in at least twice a day. Actually, they had checked in a lot more than that, due to the extreme boredom of the weekend. Harold was growing more and more convinced that Joe -- Matthew -- wasn't at all convinced that he and Al were just normal guys, with normal friends and relatives. The kids weren't always careful about what they talked about over the speakerphone, and there had been quite a few references to "back home," and what they were planning to do when they got back there. Joe -- Matthew -- had conspicuously not asked where the kids were from, or why they were staying at Harold and Al's house, or why they needed three security guards. He hadn't even asked why kids who were supposedly doing a student exchange had their parents visiting them.

Matthew had asked where Harold and Al were headed. It turned out that he lived in Washington DC, but had been visiting Rhode Island when he happened to hear about the planned catnapping of Baxter. Hoping to mount a pre-emptive rescue, he'd wound up in the wrong room, "rescuing" Bob. Harold wasn't sure how many of the details Matthew really couldn't remember, and how many he was just unwilling to share, but it fit the facts that he knew, so Harold was willing to accept it.

By the time Officer Dulaney showed up, Al had already extended the offer of a ride to DC, and they were making plans for replacing Matthew's belongings. The police officer demeanor was much different than the last time Harold had seen him. He seemed almost embarrassed as he explained that the three of them were free to go.

"We caught up with the women early this morning," the officer said. "To be honest, I'm not sure how they got as far as they did; when we found them they were arguing so much they couldn't even agree which font to use for their ransom note."

"So Baxter is okay?" Harold asked.

Officer Dulaney nodded. "Yes, he's fine. He's back with his entourage now. They were so happy to have him back that they decided not to press charges." He shifted his gaze to Matthew, who had been trying to look inconspicuous in the background. "By the way, we found this in their motel room," the officer said, handing Matthew a wallet. "It is yours, right?"

Matthew nodded. "Yes sir."

The officer narrowed his eyes, but Matthew didn't say anything else. "Look, I don't know what's going on here," the officer said, "and since no one is willing to press charges, I probably never will." He turned his head so he could include Harold and Al in his comments. Harold did his best to look innocent and trustworthy, and hoped he was doing half as good a job at it as Al and Matthew. "But it all seems awfully suspicious to me. I don't want to hear about you getting involved in anything else questionable in this state. Now, you're all free to go, and I recommend you get a move on while the light is still good." He gave them one last look for good measure, like he was memorizing their vital stats just in case he ever had to identify them in a lineup. Then he was gone.

"Did he just kick us out of Rhode Island?" Harold asked the room in general.

"I think so," Al said. Al looked at Matthew. "He doesn't like you very much, does he?"

"Me?" Matthew said indignantly. "This wasn't my fault!"

"Well, it was right after you said something that he started getting all weird," Harold said. He didn't want to point fingers, but it did seem a little strange.

"Maybe I remind him of someone," Matthew said. "Anyway, it's not like we were all gung-ho to hang around here in Rhode Island anyway."

It was true. And they'd been packed for days, ever since before the abduction. It was definitely time to get back on the road.

"You said it," Al agreed. "Let's go!" One last check of the room, and a generous tip for the motel staff, later, they all piled into the car and headed for the highway.

Chapter 24: In which everyone is surprised, for a variety of reasons.

It didn't take long to figure out that none of the occupants of Harold's car had any idea how to get where they were going. Except for maybe Bob, but he wasn't sharing.

"So, Washington DC is south of here, right?" The question came from Al, who was driving. Harold found this somewhat alarming, since Al was currently going 75 mph along a highway that Harold hadn't seen any of the signs for.

"Yes, DC is south of Rhode Island," Harold said. How could Al not know that? Sure, he was an alien and everything, and sure, Harold couldn't even come up with the names of two major locations on Al's planet, let alone their relative geographic positions, but … Okay, Al had every right to be confirming their direction.

Harold felt even less superior after his next statement. "It's actually about…" Harold paused. "How long does it take to get to DC from here?" He looked at Matthew, who should have some estimate, since he had supposedly made the reverse trip sometime in the last week.

"Um, about ten hours, I think," Matthew said.

"What?!" Harold was shocked. "Ten hours? It's already mid-afternoon! We'll never make it!" He had been hoping for a quick jaunt down the coast, three or four hours at the most, but apparently he had fallen prey to the upper northeasterner mindset that said Rhode Island was practically halfway to Florida, and anywhere below that was redneck territory.

"Well, give or take an hour or two," Matthew said. "It depends on traffic, and road conditions, and … " he trailed off.

"Maybe you should Mapquest it," Al suggested. "That way we'd have the official time estimate, and hopefully easy to follow directions too."

That sounded like a great idea, but the execution turned out to be more difficult than expected. Harold was sitting in the front passenger seat, with Matthew in the back on the driver's side. They had managed to compress most of their luggage into the trunk, but there was still quite an assortment on the half of the seat (and floor) that Matthew wasn't occupying. Harold thought it was a good thing Matthew had misplaced all of his belongings, since there wasn't really any space for them in the car. He thought almost longingly of the spacious Armada.

Matthew poked around until he found a laptop case, and handed it up to Harold. It turned out to be Al's, but at that point, Harold didn't want to quibble. Especially if they really were going to be driving together for ten hours.

Unfortunately, Harold's lap was already occupied. By Bob. "Don't you want to go sit with Matthew?" Harold said. Bob twitched an ear, but otherwise didn't acknowledge Harold's comments in any way. Apparently no, Bob didn't want to go sit with Matthew. "How about with Al?"

Suddenly, it was like the car was possessed by the three stooges. A tractor-trailer truck blew past them on the left, horn blaring. Bob leapt into the air. All his fur stuck straight out, making him look two -- no, Harold thought, it was really more like three times -- bigger. Harold flinched and ended up hitting himself in the head with the laptop case. The car in front of them braked suddenly, just as Bob jumped onto Al's shoulder, continuing up over his head and into the back seat. Al yelped as the claws dug in, and Harold felt the car do a little shimmy. There was a "Whoa!" from the back seat, then a "Mrow!" and the sound of falling luggage.

Then quiet. Harold realized that somewhere in the fray the radio had come on, apparently to a station that didn't come in anymore, because all he could hear was static. "Is everyone okay?" Harold asked tentatively.

"Ow," Al said. "Your cat has sharp claws."

"My cat?" Harold said. "I believe Bob has claimed both of us equally; that makes him as much your cat as mine."

"No, no," Al replied. "The kids gave him to you. That makes him your cat."

Harold objected. "But it was your kids," he said. "Your responsibility."

"Hey, they're not all my kids," Al said indignantly. "You can't hold me responsible for that."

They were just kidding, of course. They'd had this conversation many times before, usually after Bob threw up somewhere, or jumped up on the kitchen table during dinner. It was just a way of relieving stress, of reassuring themselves that they hadn't just died in a terrible fiery crash on the interstate. But suddenly Harold remembered that they weren't alone in the car. He wasn't worried about Bob; he was sure the cat had come out on top of whatever mess their luggage had become. It was a cat thing. No, Harold was worried about Matthew. More specifically, the possibility that Matthew was becoming more and more convinced that he and Al were raving lunatics. Harold reviewed what Matthew probably knew or had guessed about them: they had regular contact with a group of kids and adults who all seemed to live at a place that both Harold and Al referred to as "home;" Al was apparently willing to take responsibility for some of the kids, but not all of them; and they were both total slaves to their cat.

"Matthew?" Harold asked. "You okay?"

"I'm good," Matthew said. Harold twisted in his seat to look back. It didn't look like Matthew was ready to leap out of the car and make a run for it, but Harold had never been very good at reading body language.

"How's Bob?" Harold asked.

Matthew looked to his right. "He looks fine. He's glaring at me, so I'm guessing he's okay."

Harold nodded. "That's usually a good sign."

"Not to interrupt," Al interrupted, "but -- directions? Apparently we're headed into Connecticut, and I'd really like to make sure we're going in the right direction." He waited a beat. "This time."

"Hey!" Harold laughed. "That was not my fault. Also, I'm sure Connecticut is right -- we don't want to go back to Massachusetts, and there's not really anywhere else to go except Connecticut." But he still hustled to get the laptop up and running, just in case.

Chapter 25: In which they finally get to Washington DC.

It took them more than ten hours. "Not my fault," Harold insisted, but they had gotten lost a few times, missing exits and then having to take other exits, and wending their way through rush hour traffic. They even developed a rule of thumb for identifying those 'we're lost' moments: if they speed limit dropped below 40, they'd gotten off track, and it was time to find a gas station / convenience store / fast food restaurant, stretch their legs, buy some snacks, and check the map again. It worked surprisingly well, actually.

They drove through the night, sleeping, driving, and navigating in shifts. Harold had been a little nervous about letting a recovering amnesiac behind the wheel, but Matthew's license said he was 18, and Harold had to admit he was an excellent driver. Sadly, though, not a good navigator.

Harold had only been vaguely awake when Al pulled the car into a shopping plaza and got out with Matthew to go "get directions back to the highway." It was still dark out, and he quickly fell back asleep, leaning on their pile of duffel bags and listening to a cat purr instead of the rumble of the engine. So he slept through the longer than usual rest stop -- long line at the bathroom, he was told later -- and only woke up when he heard the car doors slamming.

"Isn't that nice?" Al's voice said. "I think it's nice."

Harold blinked his eyes open, squinting towards the driver's seat. It looked like Al was holding a piece of paper.

"Sure I think it's nice," Matthew was saying. "I'm just saying it's also a little weird. It's three o'clock in the morning; what are they doing looking around in other people's cars?"

"What's going on?" Harold yawned, sat up, and winced at the pain in his neck.

"Someone left a note for you," Al said. "Tucked under the windshield wiper."

"For me?" Harold asked. "What does it say?"

Al held up the piece of paper and read from it. "'If you need help, there's places you can go.' Then it lists the names, phone numbers, and addresses of a couple shelters, and it ends with 'Good luck.' It's handwritten; someone must have seen you sleeping in the car and assumed you were in trouble."

"Huh." Harold thought about that. "That's nice." He paused. "And also kind of weird. Where are we, anyway?"

"That's the good news," Matthew said. "We made it!"

Harold looked around just to be sure. Nope, they were still in the parking lot of some shopping plaza. "Really?" he asked.

"We're in DC!" Matthew sounded way too awake.

"Oh, good," Harold said. His brain was still sleeping, and he felt like he was at least a half step behind the conversational ball. Probably more like two or three steps behind. "What do we do now?"

"Now we find a place to stay," Al said firmly. "And sleep. We've got good directions; don't worry. We'll wake you up once we get there."

Chapter 26: In which Matthew goes home, and Harold and Al sleep a lot.

The sun was up by the time Al shook Harold awake and announced that they had reached whatever destination they'd been looking for. At least, Harold thought it must be up, but it was raining, so it was hard to tell. He could see the rain, so that was a good sign, right? What was it about sleeping in the car that made him feel so completely un-rested?

It turned out that Al and Matthew really had found them a nice place to stay. It was a sort of bed and breakfast, country inn transplanted to the city type of place. Very homey. Very nice. Harold and Al carried the bags, and Matthew carried the cat, and they ended up with two rooms right next to each other. Al sent Matthew off to bed with a reminder to make sure he let them know before he left, and Harold wondered what they'd talked about while he'd been asleep in the car.

"How much coffee have you had since yesterday?" Harold asked sleepily. He'd managed to get his shoes off, but it had seemed more difficult than it should have -- especially since they were flip-flops. Al was still bouncing around the room, checking out every corner and fiddling with the window curtains.

"A lot," Al said offhandedly. In other words, way more than he was planning to admit. "It's wearing off, though. It's like I can feel my brain shutting down."

Harold decided that keeping his eyes open was really more attention than the conversation was deserving of at that point, so he let them close.

When he opened them again, it was still raining, but the sky seemed considerably lighter. And Harold felt considerably more awake. Actually good, in fact. He decided that you were never young enough to drive all night without feeling like crap afterwards. Clearly this hotel had been a brilliant idea. He wondered what time it was. As usual, his watch was missing. His cell phone was broken, and his laptop was -- somewhere. He couldn’t even use the sun to tell the time, since it was hidden by the clouds. Not that he knew how to tell the time by looking at the sun, but still -- it was the principle of the thing.

Harold decided that he was perhaps not quite as awake as he'd first thought, and went back to sleep.

It was the knocking that woke Harold next. Someone was knocking on the door. Harold looked around. Al was still asleep, so it wasn't him. Harold didn't see Bob, but it didn't sound like cat paws; it sounded like a person. Matthew, Harold suddenly realized. It must be Matthew. Maybe he had Bob?

Harold slipped off the bed and padded barefoot over to the door. He pulled it open and stepped out into the hall, leaving the door ajar. The hotel really was like a nice inn or a bed and breakfast; there were no key cards or doors that automatically locked when you shut them, but Harold didn't want to take any chances. Plus it seemed friendlier, leaving the door open. And it wasn't like they hadn't all been staying in the same room at the Misty Miles Motel the day before -- or was it two days before?

"Hi Matthew," Harold said. "Did you get some sleep?"

Matthew was holding Bob, who was draped over his shoulder looking completely relaxed. Harold could hear his purr even standing several feet away. "Yeah," Matthew said. "Bob kept me company. The rooms are great, huh? I'd always heard good things about this place; I guess they were right."

Harold hadn't even looked at the room. His eyes had mostly been closed since they'd arrived. The bed was comfortable, though, so he said, "Yeah, it's great."

They heard a voice call from inside the room. "Liar," Al said sleepily. "You haven't even looked at the room."

"Well, the bed is comfortable," Harold said. "Anyway, if Al's awake, come on in." He opened the door wider and gestured for Matthew to go ahead.

"Thanks," Matthew said. Harold wondered if he should offer him a chair. Their motel room hadn't actually had any chairs, so they'd spent a lot of time sitting on the floor. Now it seemed like they had passed the point in their acquaintance where things like that would be required, but they'd never actually done it. Matthew solved Harold's seating dilemma by lowering himself to the floor and leaning against the chair. "This way Bob can sit in my lap if he wants," Matthew explained.

Honestly, Harold didn't see why Bob couldn't sit in Matthew's lap in the chair, but he was relieved to have had the seating decision taken out of his hands. Harold sat on the floor as well, leaning back against the bed, and Al moved to sit next to him. It felt a little awkward, actually. Back at the Misty Miles, they had shared a special bond -- abducted by aliens! afflicted by strange probably alien induced physiological oddities! inconvenienced by inefficient law enforcement officials! There had been nothing to do except hang out together, so they'd made it work. Now that they were free to do as they pleased, and they were all themselves again, Harold was beginning to realize how unlikely it was that the three of them -- four, if you counted Bob -- ever would have traveled ten hours in a car together in any other set of circumstances.

There was one question that was weighing particularly heavily on Harold's mind. He'd been wondering about it all day, really. "So, what time is it?" he asked.

"It's a little before 6:30," Matthew said. "Actually, that's why I knocked -- they're about to serve dinner downstairs, and I thought we could maybe all eat together before I take off. You know, something other than take out or fast food."

6:30? No wonder Harold felt so rested and refreshed. He'd slept more than 12 hours. Also, he was starving. "I'm starving," he said. "Wait -- we should call home," he added.

"Um, I actually already did," Matthew said. "I've been awake for a while, and I didn't want anyone to worry about you guys. I spoke to someone named Suzy? She said she'd let everyone know things were fine."

Oh good, Harold thought. Then he thought, wait -- "How did you know our phone number?" he asked. He and Al had both called multiple times from the motel, but it's not like they had said the phone number out loud or anything. Harold shot an accusatory glance at Bob.

"I just looked you up in the phone book," Matthew said, and Harold changed his look from accusatory to apologetic.

"Good thinking," Al said briskly. "Food now?"

Bob slid off Matthew's lap with a loud "prrow?" and pranced over to the door. Al laughed and stood up. Harold and Matthew scrambled to follow. "Thank you, Bob," Al said, pulling open the door. "Lead the way."

Chapter 27: In which Harold and Al visit the National Mall and see some familiar faces.

One of the many wonderful amenities offered by their hotel was that it was an official bus stop. Matthew took a late bus after dinner, promising to call their house and leave his cell number once he had a new phone. Harold and Al took one the next morning after breakfast, heading for Union Station. From there, they would walk to the National Mall and see the sights. Harold was hoping they had already met their weird events quota for the trip and that he and Al would be just two more tourists.

Bob had stayed behind. Harold assumed he was still sleeping; apparently he'd had quite a busy day they day before with Matthew. "Been awake for a while" actually meant that Matthew had slept for only an hour or two, then spent the rest of the day awake and exploring with Bob. When Harold and Al had departed in the morning, Bob had hardly twitched an ear. The hotel staff promised to check in on him throughout the day, and Harold predicted a day filled with pampering.

Still, when you travel with a cat, he's never far from your thoughts.

"Hey, look at those bags," Al said. Union Station had an astoundingly bizarre assortment of stores. It was huge. Just when Harold thought they'd reached the exit, it turned out the doors just led into another section of the building. And most of it seemed to be filled with opportunities to spend money. The weird part was that Harold couldn't identify any kind of order to the stores; no logical layout that might allow you to intuit the contents of a store based on the stores around it.

Case in point: they had just passed a candle store and some kind of name brand clothing outlet. Harold could see a sit-down restaurant across the way, as well as a bookstore and a sunglasses kiosk. At the next store down, the signs and long line seemed to indicate an ice cream parlor. But behind the window Al was pointing at, Harold could see luggage. Luggage and purses.

"Wouldn't one of those be great for Bob?" Harold looked, but Al's gesture seemed to encompass the whole display.

"A rolling suit presser?" Harold guessed.

"No -- a shoulder bag," Al said. "Then we could carry him more easily when we had to go inside stores and places that only allow animals small enough to be carried."

Harold couldn't tell if Al was joking or not. "I am not buying a purse so I can take the cat into the library." He said it very firmly, just in case Al hadn't been joking. "People already think I'm a nutjob; I don't want to cement myself in their minds as the guy who carries his cat around in his purse everywhere he goes."

"Maybe I should get one," Al said, looking at the display again. He was serious.

"Maybe we should get going," Harold said hopefully. "You could always get it on the way back -- that way you wouldn't have to carry it all day." Also, maybe Al would forget about it by then. Personally, Harold thought that walking was good for Bob; it kept him fit, and trim, and their town already had one person who carried -- well, it was some kind of animal -- around in a purse all the time, and that was one of those things that a town just didn't need two of.

They walked out of Union Station into bright sunshine. It was a perfect day for exploring the nation's capitol. Or at least, for walking down the National Mall and possibly checking out some of the Smithsonian museums, then buying something completely and totally unhealthy for lunch.

"Uncle Al! Uncle Harold!" That was a funny coincidence, Harold thought -- there were two other people named Harold and Al on the Mall today. What were the odds?

"Did you hear that?" he asked Al.

"Huh?" Al looked up from a brochure for the Air and Space Museum. "What?"

"Someone just called 'Uncle Al! Uncle Harold!' -- I just thought it was a funny coincidence," Harold said.

"Yeah -- what are the odds?" Al looked around and shrugged. Then he passed the brochure to Harold. "Hey, check this out," he said. "They have an IMAX show!"

Harold and Al headed down the sidewalk together. On one side were the museums -- an astonishing array, mostly for things that Harold would never thought of building a museum for. On the other side of them were the distinctive green lawns of the National Mall. Or so Harold assumed. What was actually, literally to the other side was a long, unbroken line of buses. School buses, Coach buses, Greyhound buses, even some of those really nice buses that bands and stuff traveled in. Through the spaces between the buses, small though they were, Harold could glimpse green every once in a while. He wondered how the buses got out. They were parked in a road, obviously, but there wasn't anyone driving in it. In fact, lots of people were walking in it. Maybe there were special times of day for buses to arrive and depart where they cleared the road for driving?

"Harold! Al!" A voice called from behind them. They both turned around.

Harold frowned. He was pretty sure he was looking at the person who'd just called his name, but they didn't look familiar. Even stranger, then person didn't seem to recognize him, despite apparently knowing his name.

"Harold! Al!" The person called again. When he saw Harold looking at him, he jogged over. "Hey, could you pass it on? We're trying to find two people named 'Harold' and 'Al.'"

Harold was confused.

"Um, we're Harold and Al," Al said, in a tone of voice that said he wasn't sure whether he wanted to admit to the fact.

"Wow!" the guy said. "I found you! Hey, you should go back that way," he said, half turning and gesturing behind him. "There's some people looking for you." He paused. "I can't believe I was the one to find you. This is so cool!" He shook both their hands, and pulled out his cell phone to share his cool moment of the day before Harold could decide whether or not to point out that technically, Harold and Al found him.

"So, someone's looking for us," Al said.

"Yeah," Harold said. "Maybe that 'Uncle Harold,' 'Uncle Al' thing wasn't such a coincidence."

They started moving back the way they'd come. Every few steps, they'd encounter someone calling out their names. It significantly slowed their progress, since they felt the need to stop and let each person know that they were Harold and Al, and had in fact been found.

"It's got to be the kids," Harold said. "I don't know how, but they must be behind this."

"I'm just not sure whether to be embarrassed that they've tracked us down like wandering children, or impressed that they managed it so quickly," Al said.

And then they were there. A milling group of matching backpacks, chatting excitedly with anyone who would listen to encourage them to aid in the search. Harold was relieved to see the imposing figures of Tom, Kyp, and Suzy all watching over the group. The kids were pretty savvy, and they were less likely to encounter anyone really dangerous standing in front of the Smithsonian museum of -- whatever the one with the fountain was -- than, say, in the actual city outside the Mall, but still -- Harold would feel really bad if something happened to them while they were visiting his planet. Or any planet, really, but more guilty if it happened on Earth.

It was Kyp who spotted them first. "Al! Harold!" he called out warmly. "Over here!"

Greetings were exchanged all around. It turned out the asking complete strangers to call out their names thing had been the brainchild of the twins. Apparently it was based on some tradition they'd read about where a child who got lost would start clapping, and then everyone around them would start clapping in an ever-expanding circle until the kid's parents were found. It sounded really neat, but Harold wasn't sure it made sense the way they were explaining it. "I'm … not sure you did it quite right," he said.

"Well, obviously we didn't do the clapping part," Lishendri told him. "Because we weren't lost!"

Harold decided that must make sense in some way that only ten-year olds could understand, because all of them were nodding. He looked at Tom, who just shrugged.

"It's great to see everyone," Al said. "What are you doing here?"

Harold had been wondering the same thing. Weren't they supposed to be in school. "Isn't this a school day?" he asked.

"We're taking a mental health day," Sabri said. Harold raised his eyebrows.

"We were worried about you," Damaris said.

Pjerin followed up with, "School's boring," and Zahar nodded.

"We're on an educational trip," Nadeka said.

Lishendri added, "Yeah, to see government, and culture and stuff."

"And you!" Meshkalla finished.

Suzy laughed. "I'd say that pretty much covers it," she said. "Everyone wanted to see you --" indicating Al and Harold "-- and we knew you were planning on being here today. It is a good learning experience, so we told the school this was a special holiday back home and took the day off."

"It was an early release day anyway," Tom added, and didn't that bring back memories. Harold remembered vaguely that early release days were always the second Wednesday of each month, and were generally much anticipated because of the lack of anything that got done on those days.

"And we already did all our homework," Sabri said.

"Hey, you don't have to convince me," Harold said. "I think it's great -- we've missed you guys too."

Al agreed, and they adjourned across the street to the grass to discuss plans. It turned out the kids weren't really that big on museums, and Harold remembered how boring they had always seemed when he was their age. Actually, most museums still seemed that boring. But they made good landmarks, and the best part of these museums was that they were all interesting from the outside, so you didn't even have to go into them. Plus, they were good resting spots -- without them, the walk from one end of the National Mall to the other would seem really, really long.

Everyone agreed that traversing the Mall and eating outside were both on the agenda. After that, there were a variety of options being championed by one or more kids. Harold and Al watched as Tom deftly let each person explain their ideas, then led the group in an eyes closed vote. Harold noted that Tom didn't specify that it was actually a democratic, majority rules vote -- clearly he was experienced in handling a group of seven assertive and opinionated ten-year olds.

Chapter 28: In which Harold is surprised by how out of place aliens don’t seem in Washington DC.

It was decided that their first stop would be the Air and Space Museum. They would take in one of the IMAX shows, look around a little -- the kids seemed particularly excited about the prospect of the gift shop -- and then eat lunch. Of course, they had managed to pick one of the only museums with a line to get in. And not just any line; a long line, stretching out the doors, down the stairs, and out onto the sidewalk. Luckily, the kids had a lot of stories to share about what they'd been doing at school to help pass the time.

Harold was surprised at how much they sounded just like regular Earth kids when they talked about getting up early, school lunches, homework, and gym class. He realized that he had only ever spent a lot of time with them in unusual situations; never this totally normal, day to day stuff. In those unusual situations, the kids seemed unusual too. But hearing Sabri tell Al about her latest spelling test, Harold thought they could all totally pass for Earth-raised kids. Then he remembered the clapping story and the random strangers calling his name on the National Mall. Okay, Harold amended, maybe not completely like regular kids.

He had another moment of concern when they went through security, but they made it through without incident. Harold remembered Al searching the kids' backpacks before their first Earth field trip a few years back, and assumed that Tom had done something similar before this outing. Or maybe it had been Kyp -- he was the one looking like he was biting his tongue and looking somewhat disdainfully at the door security guards. Harold guessed they didn't meet his high standards.

The museum really was amazingly cool. All the alien members of the group expressed disbelief at the moon launch capsule that had brought the astronauts back to Earth. "You flew in that?" Nadeka asked.

"Yup!" Harold, for once, felt inordinately proud of being from Earth. "Well, not me personally," he added. "But yes, people flew in that." He couldn't tell if Nadeka's expression was impressed or horrified. Given that he was a ten-year old boy, Harold decided to add some extra information to help him make up his mind. "Fly might be the wrong word," Harold said. "It was really more like -- dropped out of the sky to crash into the ocean."

That did it. Nadeka was definitely impressed. "Cool!" he said.

Harold could hear similar conversations occurring all around the capsule. That was the best part of being in the Air and Space Museum, he thought -- the stuff displayed was alien to all of them, even people who had been born on Earth. It wasn't like Harold had ever seen a Saturn 5 rocket up close and personal, despite being born on the same planet (and even the same country) that they had been developed in. He was pretty sure the United States had developed the Saturn 5. He decided he'd better check the informational signs first.

It seemed like there was always more to see, and before they knew it, it was time for their show. Another long line, but at least this time they got to sit down to wait. Well, some people did. Harold was kept busy with bathroom runs. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten elected as the official person to ask when one of the kids had to go, but he was definitely their first choice. And it wasn't like they all had to go at the same time; no, it was more like a chain reaction -- it seemed like as soon as one person got back, another one wanted to go.

Luckily, the wait to get into the theater was long enough for everyone to go and get back. Harold was just arriving back to their spot in the line with Zahar (who had insisted for the first ten minutes that he didn't have to use the bathroom, only to change his mind at the last second) when they started allowing people in. Harold and Al were at the front, and Harold could feel Zahar's hand holding onto one of his backpack straps. It was a unique approach to the 'make a chain' approach to keeping track of groups in crowded places, and even Harold could appreciate the fact that it left the adults with their hands free.

They ended up in two separate rows in the middle of the theater. Harold was in the middle of the higher row, with Nadeka on his left and Sabri on his right. He was sure there was some strategic reasoning behind the seating arrangement, since Suzy had directed their choices, but he didn't know what it was. He hoped he didn't have any important role to fill, because he became totally engrossed by the film, which was about Mars -- it had been his favorite planet when he was little, and it still held a place of honor in his heart.

The kids seemed impressed as well. It wasn't until after all the lights had come back on that the argument began.

"I'm hungry," Lishendri said, immediately echoed by her twin.

"Me too," said Sabri. Harold was apparently sitting in the 'hungry' section; all three of them were sitting in his row.

"But I still want to go to the gift shop!" Zahar said, in a voice that Harold recognized as close to almost approaching whining.

"You said we could see the battleship," Meshkalla insisted. Really? Harold thought. He tried to think 'Meshkalla' and 'battleship' in the same sentence, but there was a mental disconnect. He'd have to get a picture.

"Can we eat now?" Nadeka addressed his question to Harold, who really didn't want to get put in the middle. He felt uncomfortably like he'd been singled out as the weakest link among the adults.

"You should have eaten during the movie," PJ said.

"I didn't want to be disruptive!"

Harold realized that Damaris hadn't said anything just as the boy stood up. There was a sudden lull in the argument, and Harold suspected it wasn't accidental. "I think that we should let Harold and Al decide what we do next," Damaris said quietly.

Uh-oh. Harold didn't want to be responsible for this decision, but the kids were all nodding, and the guards had apparently decided not to get involved in this one. He looked at Al. Al took a deep breath, and looked thoughtfully back at him. "I think," Al said slowly, "that we should eat first, then come back to the museum to fit in the other things that people want to see. Eating now will give us time to think about what's the most important to fit in, and give us energy do everything we pick."

More nodding, and the guards seemed to take the decision as made, because they started the kids gathering up their backpacks and checking to make sure nothing got left behind. The kids also seemed to accept Al's pronouncement, because there was no more arguing. In no time at all, they'd made their way back outside into the sun and the heat.

Chapter 29: In which everyone eats, and they play the name game.

"So there's this person who's a writer or something, and the whole fifth grade at school is doing this writing project with them." PJ gestured with her water bottle to illustrate her words.

They were sitting roughly in a circle, all twelve of them camped out in the grass with hot dogs, hamburgers, and french fries from one of the street vendors. Harold would have thought that twelve people with matching backpacks would stand out pretty much anywhere, but he would have been wrong. No one looked twice at them, although one couple did ask which place they'd gotten their food from. PJ was explaining what sounded like some kind of artist in residence program that all the kids' classes were involved in.

"What are you writing?" Harold asked.

"Well, so far we haven't really written anything," PJ said.

"We're doing a bunch of these writing exercises," Nadeka added. "It's supposed to help us 'own the writing process.'" He sounded doubtful, and Harold could almost hear the quote marks.

"I liked the last one," Sabri said. "It was cool." This seemingly simple statement produced a flurry of comments.

"Yeah, yours was cool."

"I liked all of them."

"I thought it was hard."

"It was good practice, though."

"But the grammar part didn't make any sense!"

"We had to research!"

"They wouldn't let me use the cool one."

Al waved a hand. "Hey, now you've got us all curious. What was this writing exercise?"

It took several minutes of often contrary explanations, but Harold finally thought he understood the gist of it. It sounded like the kids had taken the letters of their first name, then created a sentence where each word in the sentence started with the letters of that person's name. There was some debate over whether or not proper grammar had been one of the rules; apparently it had been encouraged, but not required.

"Mine was 'Sable astronauts bring ritzy interrogation,'" Sabri said proudly.

"Zahar's was inspired by you guys," said PJ.

Everyone looked at Zahar. Harold wondered what he and Al had done that would inspire something like this, and he hoped it wasn't too embarrassing. "Mine was 'Zipper action helps aid rescue.'" The kids were laughing before Zahar had even finished talking, and Harold was guessing the story of their alien abduction had become somewhat of a joke in the household.

"I'm so glad you're finding our harrowing narrow escape so humorous," Harold said in his most stern voice, but he couldn't keep a smile off his face, and it set everyone off again.

"I think we should all share," Sabri said. "We even came up with ones for Tom and Kyp and Suzy!"

"Then we'll have to think of ones for Harold and Al too!" Meshkalla sounded excited.

"Why don't we just go around the circle," Al suggested.

Directly to Al's right was Sabri. "I already said mine," she said. "'Sable astronauts bring ritzy interrogation.'" She turned to PJ. "Your turn!"

PJ looked a little hesitant, and Sabri said, "PJ's is really good, but it's more serious. Do you want me to say it for you?"

PJ's expression turned determined. "No, I can do it," she said. "Mine was 'Pajama jokes enter rudely into nightmares.' There was a boy who was being mean about my name, but he's not any more." Her look of satisfaction was echoed around the circle, and Harold wondered what they had done. Maybe it was better if he didn't know.

"I like Damaris'," PJ said, effectively ending her turn and turning the attention to the next person in the circle.

"'Dragons approaching moonless air rise in silence,'" Damaris offered. Wow, that was pretty deep, Harold thought.

Nadeka scowled when the attention turned to him. "Well, my first one was really good, but they wouldn't let me use it."

"Why not?" Harold asked.

"The teacher said it was too violent -- but it wasn't! 'New allies deny efforts; karate applied' is not violent -- it's using the martial arts as a last resort, just like you're supposed to!"

"So what did you do instead?" Al asked, sidestepping the issues of violence and fairness.

"'News access denied: enter key again,'" Nadeka said. "The teacher tried to tell me I couldn't use that one either, because it wasn't grammatically correct, but I showed her in a book that it was right, so she had to let me." Harold was beginning to feel a little sorry for Nadeka's teacher. She sounded like she was a stickler for rules, and Nadeka and Zahar were both the kind of kids who couldn't see a rule without challenging it, or at least challenging the reasoning behind it. It was going to be a long couple weeks for Mrs. Phelps.

"I shared mine already too," Zahar said. "So it's Meshkalla's turn. She has the longest one."

Harold had been wondering about that. Meshkalla's name seemed to him to be the most difficult to work with because of the letters in it.

"Okay," Meshkalla said. "Let's see if I can do it in the right order. 'Many energetic, seemingly happy kangaroos, actually like lounging around.'"

Lishendri had been counting on her fingers. "Hey, my name has the same number of letters as Meshkalla's!" she said. That got Zahar counting, and Lishendri added, "Mine was 'Lists include several hints; example: never drill risky ice.'"

That was getting complicated, Harold thought. "So, were the longer names easier, or harder?" he asked.

"Easier," the kids said together. "Tom and Kyp's names were the hardest," Lishendri added.

Harold looked at the guards. "Troublemakers offend monarchs," Tom offered. That was startlingly appropriate, given Tom's line of work, and Harold wondered if Kyp's was similarly accurate.

Kyp made a face. "I still don't like mine," he said. "Can't you guys think of something cooler?" Suzy laughed at him.

"Just think of it as being undercover, Mr. 'Knitting yields pullovers,'" she said.

"Yeah, easy for you to say," Kyp retorted. "'Seven underwater zebras yodeled' is totally cool already."

"Hey, I've got one for Harold," Al said. "What about this: 'Helpful assistance riles old ladies dining'?"

"Not the old ladies," Harold said. "I seriously thought that woman was going to hit me with her purse."

Then, of course, they had to share the whole story, about being on the road, and how they'd stopped at a rest area along the highway, and Harold had tried to hold the door for a group of women entering the restaurant, and they had called him a male chauvinist pig, and Harold had tried to defend himself. Needless to say, the rest area had asked them to leave shortly after that.

"You could use 'Hairy arms rile old ladies dancing,'" Sabri suggested.

"Or 'Hoarding apricots ruins old lady's digestion.'" That one came from Kyp, who was clearly enjoying having the uncoolness burden be falling on someone else for once.

"Would it be possible to have one without any old ladies in it?" Harold requested.

Al was ready for him, though. "What about 'He's a really outstanding line dancer'?" Al suggested.

Harold groaned. "I don't know if that's better or worse," he said.

Chapter 30: In which the FBI suddenly gets involved.

"Maybe we should get going." That was Harold's half-hearted suggestion the next morning, but the only action it produced was Al pulling the covers back over his head. Harold felt like doing the same. In some ways, Harold couldn't have asked for a better day in DC than the day they'd had with the kids. It had been great to see all of them, and Harold wouldn't trade the experience for anything. But then they had all left, and Harold had been struck by homesickness. He and Al were all alone again, and their motivation was at an all time low.

Harold must have dozed off again, because the next thing he heard was Al arguing with the cat. He opened his eyes just in time to see the weirdest expression on Bob's face. Was it possible for cats to roll their eyes? If it was, that's what Bob was doing. Apparently he wasn't buying Al's reasoning that it only took twelve hours to get to Alabama, so it wouldn't matter if they slept late.

Bob won the argument, and Harold and Al were packed up and ready to go one hour (and one more delicious breakfast) later. But they weren't headed for Alabama. No, they were headed somewhere much more important -- to buy new phones. "I don't know how we've made it this long without them," Al had said. "But I'm not crossing one more state line without a cell phone." Harold wasn't arguing. At least programming a new phone would give him something to do on the 800 plus mile trip south.

Of course, Al had to test all the phones, and ask what seemed like hundreds of questions about their reception capabilities. Harold didn't really understand cell phones -- he pretty much thought it was enough just to be able to operate the phone, and even that was a stretch sometimes. "I'm going to go walk the cat," he told Al. "Whatever you pick is fine with me." That wasn't entirely true, but Harold figured that Al knew him well enough that he'd ask what kind of games were on the phone before he made his selection.

Harold and Bob covered several blocks; long enough so Harold was carrying Bob by the end, and Al was waiting by the car when they got back. Harold volunteered to drive, since Al was so obviously smitten with his new phone. Maybe Al would work on Harold's phone book numbers in return.

The biggest problem with driving long stretches on a single interstate, Harold found, wasn't that it was boring. Not that boredom wasn't a problem, but cruise control and conversation were usually enough to keep him entertained. But boredom wasn't the biggest problem. That honor fell to the fact that when your next landmark or exit wasn't for another hundred miles, it took almost a hundred miles to figure out you were on the wrong road. Thanks to that little mishap, they were several hours behind schedule right from the start.

Then there was the pizza. Harold had always maintained that pizza was one of those foods that, even when it was bad, it was good. But that was before he had tried to order pizza in the south. And they weren't even really south yet! As soon as they'd hit Virginia, though, the pizza took a sharp downhill turn. Since when did green olives and black olives count as a 'vegetable medley'?

On the positive side, Al did program Harold's phone. They even got Matthew's number, thanks to a quick check in call to Tom. And they did, eventually, end up on I-85, headed for Tuscaloosa. And they found a national chain restaurant to eat at for dinner. Sadly, though, that was where the good luck fairy deserted them.

"I'm telling you, this state has some kind of anti-cat prejudice!" They had reached the southern edge of North Carolina at a crawl, thanks to rush hour traffic. Harold had also reached the end of his patience, thanks to a string of rejections from motels that would "absolutely not, no exceptions" accept cats. Not a pet friendly Motel 6 in sight. Even Bob was starting to lose his cat-ly cool. He meowed pitifully. "Look, we're staying at the next one no matter what," Harold said.

They pulled into the parking lot of a well-lit, tidy-looking motel. The Vacancy sign was blinking. Harold marched inside.

For five minutes, Harold badgered the young, clean-cut clerk with questions about everything from room size to maid service. He asked about rates, and whether or not the windows opened, and how the air conditioning worked, even the number of pillows on the beds and what kind of soaps were in the bathrooms. Then he casually tossed in, "Now, does this establishment allow cats on the premises?"

The young man behind the desk was clearly a bit beleaguered by that point, but he kept his polite tone. "No, sir. I'm sorry, but no pets are allowed here. You would have to take them to a local kennel."

"Well, thank you for your information," Harold said politely. "I'll take one room for the night, please."

Now the clerk looked confused. "You don't … have a cat, sir?"

Harold's voice said, "No," but his tone said, 'Of course not, are you crazy? Why would you ask me something like that?'

"Okay…" The clerk still looked a little suspicious, but he handed over a key card. "Here you go, sir. You'll be in room 7."

Harold handed the card back. "Could I have a different room please?" He really didn't want to be up all night worried about being abducted by aliens. Maybe he was just being superstitious, but being in another room number 7 seemed like it was asking for trouble.

Now the clerk's expression clearly said that Harold was one of those 'difficult' customers. Harold could see the professional politeness wearing thin, but the clerk managed to resist the temptation to ask the 'what's wrong with you?' that was clearly on the tip of his tongue. Harold didn't elaborate, though. He just raised his eyebrows.

"Is there something wrong with room 7?" the clerk asked.

"Not that I know of," Harold said. "I'd just like a different room." He wiggled the key card for emphasis.

The clerk sighed, but took the card back. "All right, sir. What about room 5?"

Harold shrugged. "That's fine," he said. Accepting the new key card, he added, "Thanks," in a bright tone. "Have a great night!"

Chapter 31: In which there is a tense moment regarding Bob.

Everything went fine until the next morning. Room number 5 was excellent, and there were no alien abductions for the whole night. At least, none that Harold had to be awake for, and at that point that was all he was asking for. Well, it would be nice to have his jacket back, too, but he wasn't really asking for that.

The knock on their door took everyone in the room by surprise. Actually, Bob kept sleeping, but it woke Harold and Al up. Harold nudged Al with his elbow. "Your turn," he said. He was even pretty sure it was true. Hadn't he been the one to answer the phone the morning before when Eliza called before class?

Al rolled out of bed and headed for the door. Harold assumed he was headed for the door, at least. Harold wasn't actually watching; he was going back to sleep.

"Good morning," Harold heard a voice say. Way too cheery a voice for morning. "This is your 9 am wake up call." Weren't wake up calls supposed to come on the phone? "Unfortunately, we experienced some high winds last night and it knocked out our phone lines temporarily, so we're doing our wake up calls door to door."

"Okay." Al sounded only vaguely more awake than Harold felt. It was nine already?

"That's not a cat, is it?" The cheery voice had switched to stern. Uh-oh.

"No." Al's answer was short and didn't invite any questions. Unfortunately, cheery voice wasn't deterred.

"It looks like a cat," the voice insisted. "Cats aren't allowed here."

Harold wondered how long it would take to gather up their stuff and flee the motel -- could they make it before the police arrived? Would the motel put them on a motel blacklist, so they'd never be able to make reservations again?

"Well of course it looks like a cat." Al was clearly waking up. "It's animatronic." Okay, Harold had thought Al was waking up, but now he wasn't sure. Animatronic?

"What?" Cheery voice was clearly as confused as Harold.

"You know, animatronic," Al said. "Like a robotic cat. We're beta testers." Yes, Harold thought, Bob was like a robotic cat, except that he was real.

Surprisingly, cheery voice seemed to buy Al's bizarre excuse. "Wow, that's really neat. So it's for people who are travelling, huh? And have to leave their pets at home?"

Al lowered his voice. "You can't tell anyone, okay? It's still very experimental, very hush hush. You already know more than half our research department."

Harold still wasn't completely awake, but he was pretty sure that didn't make any sense. It didn't seem to matter to cheery voice, though -- they seemed completely taken in. "Okay," cheery voice said, "I understand -- no one will hear anything from me. You've got my word on it."

"Good," Al said firmly. "Thanks for the wake up call -- knock. Have a nice day." And he shut the door and locked it.

"Animatronic?" Harold asked from the bed.

"Hey, I was under pressure," Al said. "It was the first thing I thought of." They both laughed, and Bob stretched and rolled over. It was going to be a good day.

Chapter 32: In which it turns out to not be such a good day after all.

Harold dozed through most of South Carolina. It was amazing how tiring sitting in the car could be. They were just going across the short western tip of the state, continuing to follow 85. South Carolina seemed to have a lot of peach orchards in it. Harold had always thought Georgia was the Peach State, but maybe he was remembering wrong.

It was in Georgia that they ran into trouble. The car suddenly made a funny sound -- a little stutter and cough. And then the engine died. Al yelped, but managed to flip on the hazard lights and coast them into the breakdown lane and most of the way off the highway. Luckily, there was a wide swath of grass to the side of the road, instead of forest or that metal fencing. They looked at each other.

"It sounded like we ran out of gas," Harold offered.

"But the gauge still says we have half a tank," Al said. Harold tried to remember the last time they'd filled up, and couldn't.

"Maybe it's broken?" Harold knew Al was a genius with fixing things, but he was pretty sure even Al couldn't produce more gas out of thin air.

Unfortunately, plan A (call for automotive assistance on their cell phones) failed because of a total lack of cell reception in the area. They were still working on a plan B.

"Well, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to be parked here," Harold said. "So at some point, the state police should show up to yell at us, and hopefully we can explain what happened and get help." This led to a long conversation about state police versus local police, and Harold's understanding of who had what jurisdiction and responsibility, as communicated to him by Charlotte.

It felt hot compared to what Harold expected in September, and they didn't want to stress the car more by running the air conditioning off the battery, so Harold and Al were sitting outside, on the far side of the car from the traffic. Bob wasn't crazy about the noise, so he had elected to stay in Al's lap. They were playing Spit, a fast-paced card game the kids had learned at school, when the police arrived. Not the state police, though -- it was a local sheriff's car that pulled off the road in front of them. Al sent Harold a look that clearly said 'some help you were in the predictions department.' Harold shrugged, and they both stood up.

Once the sheriff was close enough to (hopefully) see that they weren't doing anything dangerous and/or suspicious, Harold tossed the deck of cards back into the car. Al hoisted Bob up onto his shoulder.

"You boys need some help?" the sheriff called out.

"We ran out of gas," Harold explained. "We didn't realize that the gas gauge was broken until it was too late."

The sheriff laughed. "I had a truck like that once. Truck lasted for thirty years, but the gas gauge gave up the ghost after 25. I learned to fill her up every 100 miles or so. It was before those fancy trip odometers, too, so I had to keep track of the mileage in my head."

"That must have been tough," Harold said, when it looked like the sheriff expected some kind of response.

The sheriff laughed again. "Oh, it wasn't so bad," he said. "Just had to make sure it was full before a long weekend, if you know what I mean."

Actually, Harold didn't know, but he thought playing along was probably the best strategy. Luckily, the sheriff continued without any response from him.

"You boys are lucky I was driving this way," the sheriff said. "All the staties are busy with some kind of federal case headed our way, so you could have been waiting a while." Harold and Al nodded like they knew what he was talking about it. "I'll just call Joe down at the station and have him get Henry to run over with some gasoline."

They expressed their thanks, and the sheriff went off to use the radio in his car.

"What are we going to talk to him about until the gas gets here?" Al whispered to Harold. Harold had never seen Al look so stressed about talking with a stranger before.

"I don't know," Harold said. "Whatever comes up, I guess. Why?"

"I've never been to the South before," Al said, "but I've heard the stories."

Harold had no idea what stories Al had heard about the south, but apparently they were terrifying. "Look," he said, "we'll just talk about fishing, and boats, and what the sheriff thinks about the hurricane season this year. It'll be fine; you'll see."

When the sheriff came back with the news that Henry should be arriving twenty minutes or so, Harold thanked him again, then said, "So, we're just visiting, but this is really an amazing part of the country. You don't think we'll get a late hurricane while we're here, do you?"

"Nah," the sheriff said. "It's been real quiet this season. Now, I remember back in the old days…" And he was off, relating story after story of storms and seasons past. Harold just nodded and inserted appropriate comments when needed -- "Wow, that's incredible!" or "And the boat was on top of the school? Amazing!" or his personal favorite, "I can't believe it!"

It turned out that the sheriff did own a boat, and as twenty minutes stretched to thirty, Harold indicated that he had been thinking about buying a boat one of these days, and did the sheriff have any advice? That strategy did backfire a little -- the sheriff was more than willing to talk about boats, but Harold was required to write things down, and he couldn't leave anything out without risking giving away the fact that he wasn't, in fact, interested in boats. On the plus side, he wrote everything really slowly, and usually asked for at least one repeat before he "got it down."

At the sixty minute mark, just as Harold was beginning to wonder if he and Al and the sheriff were caught in some kind of time warp, or perhaps a really boring episode of Candid Camera, Henry pulled up with the gas. That, too, seemed to take much longer than Harold would have expected, but that could have just been the fact that he was getting really hungry. They had food in the car, but it seemed rude to eat without offering something to the sheriff and Henry, and Harold really didn't want to give up his last chocolate Power Bar to a stranger. He remembered his parents talking about their RV travels in the south. "The south is just like here," his mom had said. "Only slower. Lots slower." He was pretty sure his dad had followed that with a story about waiting 20 minutes at a grocery store register with only two people in front of him.

But he and Al kept their cool, and remained friendly and polite till the end. Finally, Henry was done, and the sheriff wished them a safe trip, and even helped them merge back into traffic. A little behind schedule, but they were back on the road.

Chapter 33: In which Harold and Al encounter an odd gas station.

Harold hated I-85. The directions looked so simple on their printout -- "stay on 85." What the directions failed to mention was that 85 went straight through Atlanta. No, not straight through -- more like followed a crazy, meandering, bizzaro-world path through the city that only a geographically oriented savant would be able to follow. It was a testament to how lost they had become that when Al announced they had just passed a sign for Roswell, Harold actually had a brief moment of panic that they had somehow ended up in New Mexico.

It turned out that Alabama also had a city named Roswell, and in Roswell was a very nice gas station that Harold and Al stopped at to try to get directions. Actually, Al went inside to get directions (and face his fear of people from the south), and Harold stayed with Bob and the car, filling up the tank. After the last incident, they weren't taking any chances.

Harold wondered what was taking so long. He tried to convert to southern time in his head, but it still seemed like he'd been waiting for a long time. Suddenly, a thought occurred to Harold -- were they going to lose an hour or gain an hour when they crossed the Alabama border? He was pretty sure they were crossing into a new time zone, but he could never remember whether it got earlier or later as you went west. The sun rose in the east, so it would be dawn on the East Coast before it was dawn on the West Coast. That must mean -- if it was 5 am on the coast of Maine, it would still only be 4 am in Alabama. So they were gaining an hour. Good -- they'd probably need it.

It seemed like even the gas pumps moved more slowly in the south. Harold leaned against the car as he watched the numbers tick by. It was that pre-evening time, when it wasn't quite twilight, but you could tell the sun was about to go down. The gas station had been deserted when Harold and Al had pulled in, but now there were several other vehicles there. At the pump next to his, Harold watched as a woman climbed down from the driver's seat of an ancient-looking pickup truck. He wondered if she was related to the sheriff they'd met before. Also, was her shirt on inside out? He tried to stare without being too obvious about it, and he could definitely see the tag on the outside of her shirt. Maybe it was some new fashion.

When Al finally emerged from the gas station, he looked -- bewildered; that was the only word Harold could think of to describe it. Harold wanted to ask 'are you okay?' but he knew Al would just say that he was fine. "Did you get directions?" Harold asked instead.

Al opened his mouth to say something, then frowned. "I'm not sure," he said. "I asked the person behind the counter, and he told me he couldn't give me directions to Alabama, and that the place I should ask was a rest stop on some highway somewhere. Then everyone in the gas station started talking about Georgia is so much better than Alabama, and all the people they'd met in their lives who was lost, and for some reason squirrels kept popping up in the conversation."

"Actual squirrels?" Harold asked.

"Well, not actual squirrels like there were actually squirrels standing around talking, but I'm pretty sure the people were talking about real squirrels, yeah." Suddenly Al looked alarmed. "Why, do you think it was some kind of code?"

"No," Harold said slowly. "I mean, probably not. Roswell, New Mexico has aliens; maybe Roswell, Georgia has squirrels. Maybe it's like their claim to fame or something."

Al looked doubtful, and Harold had to agree. He'd seen a lot of squirrels in his life, but they had never registered very high on his list of interesting things to talk about in gas stations with total strangers. "Did you at least get directions to the rest stop?" he asked.

"Yeah, we're set to go," Al replied. As they started up the car and pulled slowly out of the gas station, the woman with her shirt on backwards waved goodbye.

Chapter 34: In which Harold and Al finally get on the right track.

By the time they made it to the rest stop, it was full dark. Harold was tired, but it was already Friday evening, and they had to reach Tuscaloosa by Saturday. He and Al were planning on driving through the night. But first, they needed directions. And coffee.

This time it was Harold's turn to get directions. It was the nicest rest stop he'd ever seen. They even had a lounge area with comfortable chairs and sofas. Best of all, they allowed pets inside, so Al and Bob explored the lounge while Harold sought out someone knowledgeable-looking. The man selling coffee turned out to be a retired truck driver who gave very clear, very detailed instructions -- Harold wrote everything down, making careful note of the places the trucker said were particularly confusing.

Feeling victorious, Harold made his way back to the lounge, only to find Al and Bob fast asleep on one of the sofas. They looked really comfortable. Suddenly Harold felt exhausted. Maybe he'd just sit down for a minute or two and just rest his eyes.

"Hey." Someone was shaking him. "Hey, wake up. You're not allowed to sleep here."

What? Harold blinked. Wow, that light was bright. "What?" he said.

"You're at a rest stop." It sounded kind of like his mom's voice. That was nice. "You fell asleep. But you're not allowed to stay the night here; you have to go to a motel." It really did sound like his mom. He could even imagine his mom saying that. Harold hoped it wasn't really his mom. That would be weird. He opened his eyes to check.

Nope. It wasn't his mom, but some elderly looking woman who waved at him when Harold finally got his eyes focused on her. "Hi!" she said.

"What time is it?" Harold asked.

"Oh, nine-ish," the woman replied, checking her watch.

Harold groaned.

"It's okay," the woman said. "There's still plenty of time to find a nice motel and get your full eight hours in." She looked like she must get eight hours every night -- she was way too awake for how Harold was feeling.

"No," Harold said. "We have to go. We have to get to --" shoot, what was that city called again? "--Alabama," he finished lamely. "To a city, in Alabama." He reached around to nudge Al. "Hey," he said softly. "It's time to get up; we've got to get moving again."

Al startled awake, drawing a disgruntled meow from Bob. "I'm awake," he said. "Whoa, that was a weird dream. I dreamed we were in Tuscaloosa, and we found the --" he broke off as he realized he and Harold weren't alone. "Hi," he said.

"Hi!" the woman repeated. "You both look like you need some coffee. It sounds like you've got a long night ahead of you."

Harold couldn't disagree with that, so they walked through the nearly deserted rest area and ordered large coffees from the man Harold had gotten directions from earlier. The woman insisted on paying. When they sat down, she said, "So -- I'm pretty sure I know what's going on here."

Harold opened his mouth to protest. He didn't see any possible way she could know that they were on the last day of a weeklong trip to Tuscaloosa to pick up an alien spaceship that had been stolen as a prank. The woman held up her hand to stop him. "No, don't say anything. It's probably better if you don't confirm or deny -- you know, just in case I have to testify."

What?! Harold realized he was breaking the number one rule his parents had always drilled into him: never talk to strangers. Appearances can be deceiving, they'd always said, and apparently it was true. He and Al were obviously in the presence of a total nutcase. And she had paid for their coffee! Now they were indebted to her! He quickly looked her up and down -- she looked elderly and harmless, hopefully he and Al could take her if she decided to attack. What if she had the trucker on her side, though? It could be a conspiracy. Harold wished Charlotte were there.

"Really, ma'am, I think you have the wrong idea about us," Al said. "We're not involved in anything illegal; we just have a deadline to meet and we don't want to miss it."

Harold nodded. He didn't think Earth had any laws regarding transporting alien spaceships over state lines, so he was pretty confident they weren't breaking any of them. "That's right," Harold said. "We just happen to get lost easily, so it's taken us a little longer than we expected."

The woman also nodded. "Good story," she said. "That's smart -- 'getting lost' a lot to throw them off your trail. You're running out of time, though, right? Have to get to Tuscaloosa quick before someone beats you there?"

Al said, "Well, we do want to get there as soon as possible." Harold frowned. Why was this sounding so familiar? He was sure he'd heard this story before -- maybe in a television show? Or a movie -- it could be a movie. Unlike his actual life, Harold thought, which was usually pretty plain. Although he had encountered more than his fair share of excitement since meeting Al. At least they hadn't lost the power so far on this trip -- yet. Harold surreptitiously knocked on the underside of the wood trim on their table. Better safe than sorry.

"Here's what I think you should do," the woman was saying. "You've probably already stayed here too long, so you need to get on the road. You know how to get there?" Harold and Al both nodded that time. "Good. You've still got a ways to go, so you'll need more coffee. Always use cash; don't tell anyone your names -- what am I saying, of course you already know that." She rummaged in her purse for a minute, then held out a fifty-dollar bill. "Here. Take this. Good luck."

Harold stared at her in disbelief. "What are you waiting for?" she said. "Go, go! Wait, I should go too. But we shouldn't leave at the same time. I'll go first. No, you should go first. I'll use the bathroom, then go." She ended with another "Good luck," and walked away. Harold and Al looked at each other.

"Was that -- really weird?" Harold asked quietly."

"Yes," Al said. He waved the fifty-dollar bill. "What should we do with this?"

They could keep it, but that felt kind of weird too. Harold stood up. "I've got an idea," he said. He walked over to the coffee counter and gestured to the trucker who'd given him directions earlier. "That woman we were just talking to," Harold said. "Does she come in here a lot?"

The man nodded and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, she's here all the time. Kinda crazy, but she's a nice lady. Why?"

Harold handed him the fifty. "Could you set up an anonymous tab for her with this? She gave it to us because she thinks we're on the run -- which we're not --" Harold added quickly, seeing the man's expression turn suspicious. "-- but we'd really like to give the money back to her somehow, and this seems like something she'd enjoy."

The retired trucker turned rest stop coffee shop server's expression softened. "What a nice thing to do. Thanks!" He even gave them free refills before they left.

Chapter 35: In which Alabama beckons, and for once, no one gets lost.

It was a night of small victories. Free refills were nothing to be sneezed at all on their own, but when Harold and Al reached the first landmark on their new and improved directions, Harold felt like celebrating. When they finally reached the Alabama border, gaining an extra hour was like icing on the cake.

They sailed down dark highways, often one of the only cars on the road. Harold always loved driving when there were no other cars in sight -- it was rare, which made it even more spectacular when it actually happened. He was in such a good mood, he didn't even mind that every station they could pick up on the radio seemed to play 'Sweet Home Alabama' at least once every ten songs. It didn't seem to matter whether the station's main playlist was rock, pop, country, oldies, or alternative -- that song was on it.

There was something kind of cool about driving through the night, and being awake when the sky began to lighten. At 6:00, they pulled off the road to feed Bob and take a snack and water break. Harold called home, delighted at the prospect of waking someone else up for once. But the phone was picked up before the first ring had finished.

"Good morning," a cheery voice said. "This is Ilia Cal; who am I speaking with?"

"Ilia?" Harold asked, surprised.

"Harold? Is that you? You're up early today! I just arrived last night to see everyone; are you there yet? What's it like? How's Al?" Ilia sounded very excited; Harold wondered if she genuinely was that interested in how their trip was going, or if sounding excited about things was just one of those skills you picked up when you were the leader of an entire planet.

"Al's good," Harold said. "We're almost there, just taking a quick break before we make the final push. I admit, I wasn't expecting to find anyone awake when I called.'

"Well, today is a special day," Ilia said. "The kids don't have school, so they invited Janar and I on a visit -- they're practicing being liaisons, I think. Apparently we're going on a tour of local points of interest. I got up early to get a little paperwork done before the big event."

Harold didn't know whether he should feel relieved that even on alien planets, some things remained the same, or dismayed that even on a planet as cool as Al's seemed to be, paperwork was still the bane of leadership. "How is everyone?" he asked, while he was trying to decide.

"Oh, everyone's fine here," Ilia said. "We arrived pretty late last night, so I haven't had a chance to talk to your sisters yet, but Tom said they were enjoying all the talk in town about where you've gone." Ilia sounded so sincere that Harold almost believed her. He wanted to believe her, but he couldn't quite imagine Charlotte being happy about people all over town asking her questions about him. "I heard the kids played hooky to visit you and Al earlier -- did they behave themselves?"

"They were great," Harold said. He decided not to mention how the kids had found them -- he didn't want to get anyone in trouble, and nothing bad had come of it. "We loved seeing them, and I hope they didn't miss too much at school." It sounded like Ilia was doing something in the background. Cooking something, maybe, or watching TV. It was hard to tell over the phone.

Ilia laughed. "No, they're fine with school. They're actually used to getting a lot more work back home, so this is like a vacation for them. Last night we got in to find them all helping Sabri with her math homework -- her teacher's big on repetition, apparently."

They talked for a few more minutes, exchanging news of the past few days, and then Harold passed the phone off to Al. After that, Harold pretty much stopped paying attention, and he had dozed off in the driver's seat when Al handed him back the phone. "Everything all set?" Harold asked. He knew Al had wanted to check in about how doorway travel had been going while he'd been away, as well as find out about current events back on his planet.

"We're good," Al said. "Let's get this done. We must be almost there, right?"

"I hope so," Harold said. He was ready to be finished with this trip. "What's the place we're looking for, again?"

Al flipped through their stack of directions. "It's called the 'Team Black Belt Academy' -- I'm guessing it's some kind of martial arts school."

"How are they hiding a spaceship at a dojo?" Harold wondered out loud.

"I don't think the ship is actually there," Al said. "I think we're supposed to meet someone there who knows where the ship is, and they'll take us there."

Traffic was picking up again as early morning commuters hit the roads. Wait, Harold thought suddenly, it was Saturday -- there shouldn't be any early morning commuters, right? Where were all those cars coming from? As far as Harold was concerned, Saturday mornings were for sleeping. If you had to be awake, watching cartoons was an acceptable activity. Driving on the interstate didn't rank high on his list of things to do on the weekend.

"Why are all these cars on the road?" he asked.

Al shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it's a Southern thing."

Chapter 36: In which they finally arrive at the Team Black Belt Academy.

"Tuscaloosa's fun to say," Al commented. They were off the highway and into the outskirts of the city. At that point Harold and Al had been awake since the morning before -- almost 24 hours, minus naps -- and they were both feeling a little punchy.

"Tuscaloosa," Harold said. Yes, it was fun to say. "Tus-ca-loo-sa," he repeated. "They should write a song about Tuscaloosa. Like 'Sweet Home Alabama.' It could be 'Sweet Home Tuscaloosa.'"

"Or 'My Little Tuscaloosa Tornado,'" offered Al.

"'Postmarked Tuscaloosa.'"

"'If You're Gonna Play in Tuscaloosa.'"

"'One Night in Tuscaloosa.'"

"'Only in Tuscaloosa.'"

"'The Devil Went Down to Tuscaloosa.'"

"'Tuscaloosa Town.'"

"'Tuscaloosa Breezes.'"

"'Walking in Tuscaloosa.'"

"'All the Way to Tuscaloosa.'"

"'Tuscaloosa in My Windshield.'"

Harold laughed. "Those last two could be our theme songs for this trip. That, or 'Taking the Long Way to Tuscaloosa.'"

"It's the scenic route," Al managed, before he also burst into laughter. Then: "Hey, isn't that where we're going?"

It was still early morning, and most of the businesses they'd been passing were still closed. It was kind of eerie, actually, like driving through a ghost town. Up ahead, though, one building had its doors open and a flag flying out front. At least fifteen cars were parked in the small lot next to it. Harold squinted, but couldn't make out the sign. "I don't know," he said. "Slow down a little."

There was no one behind them, so Al slowed to a crawl. It seemed silly, after all the detours and stops they'd made along the way, to be worried about missing the parking lot and having to turn around, but that didn't make it any less true.

Al was right. They had finally found the Team Black Belt Academy. Harold knew martial artists were supposed to be disciplined, but seven o'clock in the morning? On a Saturday? That seemed a little extreme. After Al parked the car, both of them just sat there for a minute. "We made it," Al said. It was almost hard to believe. "We made it!"

"We really did it," Harold said. Hopefully, the hard part was done. Harold hadn't really given much thought to what they would do once they got to Alabama. Would they just be allowed to take the ship home with them? How did you transport a spaceship, anyway? "What do we do now?" he asked.

"We should probably go inside," Al said. "Why don't you go first -- I'll walk Bob, and then come in and join you."

Harold didn't want to go in first. "I could walk Bob," he offered, trying to make it sound like that was the more difficult task, and he was really only offering out of the goodness of his heart. In the backseat, Bob woke up. He stretched, yawned, and climbed into the front seat to sit on Al's lap. Al looked at Bob. Bob looked at Harold.

"Okay," Harold said. "You walk Bob. I'll brave the school."

It was nice outside, especially after being in the car for so long. It had the feeling of a day that was going to get hot, but wasn't yet. Harold took a deep breath. The air smelled nice. Figuring he might need to write something down, he grabbed his backpack from the car. He'd gotten in the habit of carrying it over the last week, since it usually contained his wallet, snacks, and water bottle -- the three essentials. As he approached the open doors of the dojo, he could hear loud music coming from inside. Loud music and yelling. Neither of which stopped when he walked in the door.

Harold stared at the scene in front of him. It appeared to be organized chaos, with the emphasis on the chaos. There were probably twenty or so people out on the mat covered floor, doing … kicks? Eliza had done tae kwon do for a couple months when she was little, and Charlotte had done some basic hand to hand combat training for the police department, but Harold had never really been involved with it. He did notice that it was much warmer inside than outside, despite the large fans placed around the mats. He would have thought a martial arts school this big would have gone for air conditioning, but maybe it was a tradition thing. Although it's not like they had fans back in the old days either.

Suddenly the music lost a considerable amount of its previous volume. There was clapping, and Harold saw some nudging and pointing in his direction. A boy moved to what Harold assumed was the front of the classroom, since it seemed to get everyone's attention. "Great warm up, everyone," the boy said. "Allie, why don't you come up and lead stretching?"

"Yes, Sensei!" Harold jumped at the loud yell that came from the back of the room, close to where he was standing. Then he watched in surprise as a tiny girl who couldn't be more than ten ran to the front. How did someone so little yell that loud? The boy spoke again. "Once you're stretched out, I want you to go through the entire show, with the music this time. Let's work on our transitions, okay?"

Harold jumped again as this time the whole room shouted back a "Yes, Sensei." Then the boy headed towards Harold, only turning once to bow at the edge of the mats.

"Hi!" he said enthusiastically. "Welcome to the Team Black Belt Academy! What can I do for you?"

"Hi," Harold said. "I'm Harold Jones; I'm supposed to be meeting someone here?"

The boy's smile disappeared. His eyes narrowed. "Let's go talk about this in the office," he said. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked away. Harold was surprised, but didn't really have any choice. He followed.

The office really was an office -- it had a desk, and a cushy ergonomic swivel chair on wheels, and a computer. It also had a wide variety of weapons displayed on the walls, from swords to … things Harold didn't know the names for, but they looked dangerous. There were also a lot of photos, and one wall had a large window that looked out on the rest of the school.

"So, you're supposed to meet someone here," the boy said. Harold wondered if this was his office. He seemed a little young to be running a karate school. "And I'm guessing you can't give me a name, right?"

"Well, my name is Harold Jones," Harold said. "It's Saturday, right? September 15th? I'm pretty sure I'm expected."

"Yeah, like we've never heard that one before," the boy scoffed. Harold wondered how obvious it was that he had no idea what the boy was talking about. "How do I know you're really who you say you are?" He was sounding more suspicious by the minute.

Harold really didn't want to get into an argument, especially with someone who probably knew how to use all the weapons on the walls. He sighed, and shrugged off his backpack, planning to search out his ID, and if necessary, his cell phone. Maybe he could call Ilia. He wished Al was there; Al was much better at this sort of thing, and Harold was worried he was going to mess it up after they'd already made it so far.

The kid's eyes widened as he got a good look at the backpack. "Well, that certainly helps," he said. Then he tilted his head and stared at the picture of Earth. With deliberate casualness, he said, "You say your name is Harold, but that's not what your sisters call you, is it?"

Harold was confused. Where had that question come from? He said, "No, they call me Gabe. It's my middle name. Why?"

"Okay!" The boy sounded cheerful again, losing any trace of suspicion. "Just checking! You know, you could have just showed me that right away -- it would have saved time." He was searching the desk, and finally picked up a piece of paper. He scanned down it. "Aren't there supposed to be two of you?" he asked, looking back up at Harold, then looking around like he might have simply missed the second person somehow. "Where's --" he looked down at the paper again, "--Al?"

"He's walking the cat," Harold said absently. He felt totally confused. "Shown you what at the beginning? How did you know that about my sisters?"

"It says it right there on your backpack," the boy said, pointing at the stylized Earth. "Around the Earth. 'This backpack belongs to Mr. Harold G. Jones. His sisters call him Gabe.' Nice penmanship, too." Then it was his turn to look confused. "Did you just say walking the cat?"

Harold nodded. "He should be here in a minute. It's been a long night."

"Were you driving all night?" the boy asked. Harold nodded again. "You cut it pretty close, don't you think? We actually expected you before now; we were starting to get worried."

Harold didn't think he had seemed too worried earlier, when Harold first announced his name, but he decided that might not be the best thing to mention. "We had a couple of … unexpected delays," he said instead. "They slowed us down." And wasn't that the understatement of the year. Just then Al walked through the door, Bob trotting next to him. "There's Al," Harold said, pointing. He stuck his head out the office door and waved Al over. Al waved back and scooped Bob onto his shoulder, drawing the attention of the students still practicing out on the floor. Al ignored them.

"Hi," Al said, once he was inside the office. "I'm Al."

"My name's Bart," the boy said. "It's nice to meet you." Harold tried not to roll his eyes. Of course, it was nice to meet Al, but he'd gotten the third degree. That settled it -- all first contact meetings were solely under Al's jurisdiction from now on. Next time, Harold was walking the cat.

"You must be tired," Bart said. "Normally, I would offer you a place here, but our air conditioning is broken. You'd probably be more comfortable if I just took you out to the school."

Well, that explained the fans. Harold thought they were already at the school, though. "School?" he asked.

"That's what we call it," Bart explained. "It keeps the tourists down. It's where the monks live." He must have seen Harold and Al's blank looks, because he added, "It's where … you know, the ship is." He looked a little uncomfortable to have just admitted that out loud, and he looked around as if to verify that no one had been listening in.

Al nodded. "Oh, of course," he said. "The monks." Harold was ninety percent sure Al was faking it, but he nodded too.

Bart looked relieved. "Okay, so all you have to do is head west about ten miles…"

Harold tuned him out. It was his turn to drive, but it was Al's turn to navigate. Al scribbled in his notebook, and Bart drew them a diagram and called goodbye as they headed back outside. Harold sang, "on the road again; just can't wait to be on the road again," very softly, under his breath, and then laughed when Al chased him all the way back to the car.

Chapter 37: In which Harold and Al find out why their instructions said to arrive by Saturday, not on Saturday.

Harold could see why they called it a school. It looked surprisingly similar to a college campus -- lots of buildings scattered among the green space, paths running everywhere, and people walking around with backpacks. Not everyone had a backpack, but enough to give that "school" feeling. Harold parked the car near a bunch of other vehicles in a lot marked 'Visitor's Parking.'

It wasn't until they'd gotten out of the car, gotten Bob into his harness, and were headed towards the nearest building, that Harold noticed something was off. He looked around, trying to pinpoint what it was.

At the same time, Al moved a step closer. "It's kind of … quiet, don't you think?" he said in a low voice.

That was it, Harold realized. He could hear birds and insects and stuff, but no voices. No yelled greetings between friends, no talking, no music playing. "Yeah," he said. "Really quiet. That's really weird." Harold noticed he was talking really quietly too.

"Maybe it's a monk thing?" Al said tentatively.

Harold shrugged. That was a much better choice than, say, a campus full of robots, or everyone being possessed by some kind of evil force. And it did seem more likely than everyone having laryngitis at the same time, or Harold and Al suddenly developing selective deafness.

Neither of them said another word as they walked towards the Visitor Center. At the door, Bob put his paws up on Harold's leg, and Harold picked him up. Al took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.

Only to be greeted by a perfectly normal scene -- a front desk, where a woman looked up from her computer and smiled at them. Harold smiled back, hoping it was the right thing to do, and Al waved. Harold noticed Al still had Bob's leash wrapped around his wrist. The woman beckoned them over to the desk, where she handed them a laminated index card. Al took it, and Harold shifted Bob so he could read over Al's shoulder.

Well. That was interesting. Harold and Al exchanged glances, and Al handed the card back. The woman smiled again, and pushed over a logbook of some kind, where Harold assumed they were supposed to sign-in. He wrote 'Harold Jones,' and added 'Bart sent us' for good measure. Al just wrote 'Al.'

Harold had always wondered about Al's real last name. He used Baxter for most Earth things, but Harold was pretty sure that was just for convenience. Trudy Baxter was the aliens' Earth bound computer genius, and she handled a lot of those tricky situations that Harold tried not to think too hard about, like just how did Al get a credit card, anyway? Harold tried to remember whether he knew the last names of anyone else from Al's planet. There were the Cals -- Ilia and Janar and the twins -- but that was the only one he could think of.

The woman's eyes widened when she read their names, and she grabbed a pad of paper and started writing. It seemed rude to try to read it as she was writing, so Harold looked around the room instead. There was a big fish tank in one corner, and Bob was mesmerized. There weren't any other people working right then, although there were several other desks with computers on them scattered throughout the room. Harold was guessing that if you couldn't chat with your co-workers, there really wasn't any reason not to telecommute. And maybe they purposely scheduled less work for the Week of Silence. Harold wondered if writing was allowed for all participants, or if that was a special exception made for visitors.

The sound of paper ripping made Harold jump, and he was surprised at how loud it sounded. The woman handed the page to Al. Harold leaned in again so he could read it.

Harold and Al nodded and smiled their thanks. They were almost at the door, when a loud stomping made them turn around. The woman held up another piece of paper, and Al walked back to grab it. It said, "Your cat can roam around if s/he wants." Harold wasn't sure if that was a good idea, but it was nice to know.

Once they were back outside, Harold realized that all the paths were color-coded, he just hadn't noticed it before. Luckily, the yellow path seemed to end at a building not too far away, so they grabbed their bags from the car and started walking.

The visitor's residential building was yellow. Not the bright sunflower yellow that was painted on the path, but still noticeably yellow. Harold had the urge to say, "I wonder if the dining buildings are blue," but remembered at the last second he was supposed to be quiet. They picked a room on the second floor, about halfway down the hall. Al took off Bob's harness and leash, replacing them with a collar that had his name and the house phone number embroidered on it. Eliza had given it to them for Christmas the year before. Harold dumped their bags in the corner, noticing they had a great view of a playing field out their window, as well as their own bathroom.

He turned back towards the door to see Al holding it open and looking questioningly at Bob. Bob stuck his head into the hall, looked both ways, then turned around and jumped up on the bed. Harold laughed. Laughing was okay, right? Al shut the door again, and Harold pulled the shades closed. It was time to follow Bob's example and get some serious sleeping done.

Chapter 38: In which Harold and Al are asleep, and miss all of the no doubt very exciting things that everyone else is doing.

Chapter 39: In which Harold and Al find out what's going on, or at least get breakfast.

Harold wasn't sure what woke him up, but when he opened his eyes, he felt awake enough so he knew he'd be up for a while. He had been worried when he fell asleep that he would forget about the no talking rule, but he remembered as soon as he opened his mouth. No talking even in their room? That was going to be hard. Harold spent a couple minutes lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, thinking about it.

Eventually, Harold decided that getting up and eating something was more important than figuring out an easy way to communicate. And taking a shower was even higher on the priority list than eating. The bathroom was really nice -- homey feeling, without all the dust and debris that tended to collect in his actual home bathroom. When he returned to the main room, Harold saw that Al was also awake, and had was doing something with his computer. Al gave him a wave and pointed at the computer screen as they switched places.

One of the text editing programs was open. Well, that was clever, Harold thought.

"Good morning," the words on the screen read. "Typing's not talking, right? Can you believe it's Sunday?" Sunday? Really? Harold checked the date on the computer clock, then double-checked on his watch just in case. Yup, it was Sunday. He had noticed it was light out, and had apparently been overly optimistic to think that he might have woken up on the same day he'd gone to sleep. No such luck. Good thing they'd called home early Saturday morning -- everyone would be irritated by the lack of the latest news, but not yet worried enough to send out the search teams.

Harold contemplated what to tell them while he got dressed and pulled out a Power Bar to snack on. It looked like another nice day outside, which meant shorts and a T-shirt. Harold loved summer -- it was the only time of year when he could get away with wearing the same pair of shorts every day for a week, and it definitely made packing easier. While he waited for Al to be done in the bathroom, Harold unpacked his own computer, noticing that it was detecting a wireless network. He wrote "Good morning -- I can't believe we slept till Sunday! We should email home -- then breakfast?"

Al nodded when he read the message, and Harold tossed him a Power Bar. Helpfully, the password for the network was posted on the door of their room, so they were both able to log on and catch up with e-mails. The first few days of their trip, Harold had attempted to use the computer in the car, but had quickly discovered that it made him carsick, so he hadn't tried again. It was nice to finally be out of the car; Harold hoped they got to stay a few days before they started the long drive back.

He'd gotten caught up reading a lengthy e-mail of forwarded jokes from -- of all people -- Kyp, when Al tapped on the table. Harold looked up, and Al waved his Power Bar wrapper in the air. Al turned his computer around, and he'd written BREAKFAST? in large bold letters. Harold nodded, and they set out.

It seemed a little silly, Harold thought, to carry his backpack to breakfast. But ever since he'd been abducted by aliens, he felt a little nervous about being without it. Plus, if they were going to be writing stuff instead of talking, he'd rather use a notebook than a napkin.

Very quickly, Harold realized that they had been spoiled by the yellow path. The blue path, which allegedly led to the dining building, seemed to go on forever. Along the way, Harold and Al received a lot of waves and even more strange looks. Harold wasn't sure if the double takes were for him and Al, or if they were directed at Bob, who was darting around their feet, clearly delighted to be outside and off his leash for once.

Finally, they reached the dining building. It was blue. Harold wondered if the whole campus was similarly color coded, or if it was just the buildings most likely to be frequented by visitors. A rainbow colored campus would be cool, if somewhat strange looking. Harold was a little wary about letting Bob into the building, but he was insistent, and the woman at the Visitor Center did say he was allowed to roam free.

Breakfast turned out to be more like brunch, but the building was surprisingly full given the late hour. On the other hand, it was Sunday -- but weren't monks supposed to be all 'early to bed, early to rise' kind of people? Maybe that was only certain kinds of monks. Harold was also surprised at how noisy it was in the building. Even without talking, when there were … probably 50, Harold guessed … 50 people all eating together, there was quite a bit of noise produced.

There were all ages represented, too. Harold saw plenty of adults and college age kids, but also younger children, and even a few babies. He wondered how the Week of Silence worked for little kids. Maybe they got an exemption, at least until they were old enough to understand why people were shushing them all the time. As soon as Harold and Al stepped into the room, a familiar face at a nearby table stood up and waved them over. It was Bart, from the Team Black Belt Academy.

They headed in Bart's direction, and he started scribbling furiously on a pad of paper. He ripped off the top sheet and handed it to them when they got close enough.

Harold smiled and nodded at Bart. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. He wasn't sure why he would want to go see Bart's parents, but it wasn't like he had anything else planned for the day. He felt a tug on his shirt and looked down at a girl who also looked familiar. He wondered if she was the same one he'd seen the day before at the martial arts school. She pointed at two empty chairs next to her, and then pointed at him and Al with a questioning expression. Harold looked at Al, and they both nodded. The girl beamed.

A few minutes later, after a trip through the buffet line, Harold and Al were seated at the table. Everything looked delicious; Harold just hoped his eyes hadn't been bigger than his stomach. It had been a while since he'd had to gauge portions like this in college. The same girl tugged his sleeve and handed him a slip of paper that said "Can I pat your cat?" on it. Harold nodded around a mouthful of pancakes. He didn't really have any say in it; it was Bob's decision who got to pat him, but it was good to know that the girl wasn't allergic or anything.

As he ate, Harold realized that there were actually conversations going on all around him. Some tables seemed to have a communal notebook sitting in the middle, so everyone could write. Other people were writing on napkins, or using their food to create elaborate diagrams. Harold even saw a couple people using what looked like sign language, although he couldn't tell whether it was part of an official set of signs or just a sort of advanced charades. It seemed rude to stare, even if he couldn't understand what they were saying. At their own table, there seemed to be some sort of debate going that involved moving Cheerios around in various patterns. Each Cheerio seemed to represent a different person, kind like those X's and O's patterns for football teams. It seemed complicated to Harold, and he contented himself with another trip to the buffet line.

Chapter 40: In which Bart's parents are introduced.

Harold felt like he was getting into a bad habit of meeting important people through their kids. Was that a bad habit? Maybe it was a good habit. It was just that all the important people that Harold knew, he'd met because he knew their kids -- before he knew their kids were famous. Except for Al, who was kind of famous, but Harold had met him because of their cat, so he wasn't sure that counted. It just seemed like a weird coincidence, as Bart led them to meet his "mom and dad" in what was clearly the equivalent of the president's house on a regular university campus.

Harold and Al were ushered into a room that looked like a cross between the living room of a house and the waiting room of an office. They sat down, while Bart continued through the room to knock on a door at the far end. If it had been a normal house, Harold would have guessed it was the kitchen. After a second, Bart opened the door and stuck his head into whatever room was behind it -- then he gestured to Harold and Al to go in. Bart himself left, which made Harold a little nervous. Not that he had any real reason to trust Bart, but at least he recognized him. Not for the first time, Harold wished he could talk. A little pep talk from Al would really help him feel better about the whole situation. Instead, Al grabbed his shoulder, smiled, and gave a thumbs up. Surprisingly, that helped too.

Harold blinked in surprise when he stepped through the door Bart had knocked on. It was a kitchen. A very normal looking kitchen, with a middle-aged man and woman sitting at a very normal looking kitchen table. They looked about the same age as his own parents, Harold thought. He realized he had never met Al's parents. He wondered why. This whole no talking rule sure left a lot of time for thinking.

Bart's parents smiled and waved, and pointed at the two empty chairs at the table. Harold and Al smiled and waved too. Harold hoped smiling and waving didn't mean something other than what he thought it did. It was just a standard Earth greeting, right? Bart's dad handed everyone a tablet and stylus, then wrote on his own. Harold's eyes widened as the words appeared in the air above the table. That was so cool. He looked at Al, who was staring at both the tablet and display with wonder, and no small amount of envy. Harold resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Clearly Al had just discovered his next project.

Other than the super cool technology, the conversation was pretty mundane. Bart's parents welcomed them to the school, said they were free to wander around anywhere they wanted and stay as long as they liked. They apologized for being in the midst of their Week of Silence, but said there were still many ways to communicate, and anyone on campus would be happy to answer their questions or assist them if they needed help with anything. Then they had asked if Harold and Al would mind a small escort when they took the ship back home -- for security, they said, and -- they added afterwards -- several of the students who were … personally involved … with the project wanted to see it through till the end. Harold and Al agreed, with the condition that they wouldn't have to navigate, and looked forward to a much easier trip home. The conversation took all of twenty minutes, and then Harold and Al were back outside, with the whole day ahead of them.

Chapter 41: In which everyone relaxes (a.k.a. the calm before the storm).

They hadn't seen Bob since breakfast. He had apparently decided that the girl who'd asked to pat him was a good companion, and had only given Harold a disbelieving look from her lap when Harold indicated they were leaving the dining building. His expression said, 'Why would ever want to leave? Well, you go on ahead. I'll be here.' All the people they had met so far seemed very cat friendly, so Harold was working under the assumption that Bob was fine.

After a brief written conversation, Harold and Al took off in different directions. They both had their cell phones, and agreed to text message each other before they went to lunch, if not before. Al was looking for someone who would talk technology with him. Harold was looking for the library. He wanted to find out more about this rather odd "school."

That meant Harold was following the purple trail. He thought the trip would be worth it just to see if the library building was painted purple. He was almost disappointed when it wasn't. It was a huge brick building, but it did have purple doors, and purple trim around the many large windows. Once inside, Harold was instantly surrounded by that comforting library atmosphere that all libraries seemed to have. He headed straight for a computer terminal and sat down. He might not have the technological know-how that Al possessed, but a basic search engine? That, he could handle.

It was fascinating. Apparently, "the school" really was a school. Sort of. Their application form called it a "self-directed learning community." After reading a lot of stuff off the network, Harold learned that people of any age could apply, although they had to fill out the application themselves, which must cut down on the really young ones. Most of the really little kids he'd seen were family members of current students or teachers. In addition, people from any planet could apply. He still wasn't sure if any regular Earth people with no knowledge of aliens ended up in the school -- it seemed unlikely; maybe the application process weeded them out.

The school itself was fairly isolated. Harold had wondered why a school that seemed so focused on alternative learning was located in Alabama, instead of, say, California. He found the answer on a FAQ page, where the writer explained that Alabama had lots more cheap land available, and lots fewer people who wanted to ask questions. And they did need a lot of land. The "self-directed" part of the learning experience seemed to mean that students basically planned their own curriculum. There was more -- much, much more -- about requirements, and how to find teachers, but Harold skipped it. He was skimming, not looking for another college degree.

Just for curiosity's sake, he typed in "Team Black Belt Academy," and got over 100 responses. The Team Black Belt Academy, Harold learned, was one of several collaborative projects that the school ran. Some of the students were from the school, and the rest were from local towns. They had their own website, which included a countdown to the day the air conditioning was supposed to be fixed (Monday, apparently), as well as an announcement of the "eXtreme team Black Belt Academy Demonstration Squad" practice at 7 am the day before. Harold was impressed. Even though the 7 am time logically made sense (it was the coolest part of the day), he still couldn't imagine willingly getting up that early to practice karate.

Harold's stomach growled at the same time that his cell phone started to vibrate. He logged off the computer and went outside to check his messages. It looked like Al had found a kindred spirit in one of the labs, and had also found a way to get pre-made lunches delivered to him, which he wanted to share with Harold. The last part of Al's message was somewhat cryptic. 'Meet me at the car'? Harold wondered. Why? But he was hungry, and he wanted to see what Al had been up to, so he headed for the parking lot.

Luckily, Harold was a lot better at navigating on foot than in the car, and he made it back to the visitor parking area with no problems. It was hot in the car. Since he was the first to arrive, he dug his keys out of his backpack and got the windows rolled down. He wondered if there was some way to put some kind of beeper into Bob's collar, so they could let him know when they were looking for him.

Harold saw Al coming when he was still a couple minutes away, and gave him a wave. And apparently, no beeper was needed, because Bob showed up at the same time, in a miracle of cat timing that Harold knew he would never understand. When Al arrived, he silently urged Harold and Bob in to the car, handed Harold a bag that smelled delicious, and started the engine. Driving slowly, he went about 100 yards back down the long "driveway" of the school. Then he pulled over in the shade under a big tree and turned the car off again.

"Ahh," Al said with obvious relief.

Harold, who had been looking out the window at the tree, whipped his head around in surprise at the noise.

"It's okay to talk here," Al told him. "One of the science kids told me about it. We're not allowed to talk on campus, but technically the car is our property, so as long as you make a token effort to be away from the school…"

Harold nodded, remembered he could talk, and said, "That's awesome. So, we have to stay in the car, huh? Can we open the doors?"

"Yup!" With the doors open, a nice cross breeze drifted through the car; in the shade, it felt much cooler than Harold had felt walking across campus in the bright sun.

"What's for lunch?" Harold asked. "I'm starving."

Al started pulling things out of the bag. "They have this sub shop right on campus that delivers here and into town. They're supposed to be really good sandwiches."

They were. Harold thought it was the best meal he'd had in days. He and Al chatted about their mornings and fed Bob scraps from their sandwiches. Bob just purred and purred. It was incredibly relaxing. Harold was finishing off Al's bag of chips, with his seat mostly reclined, when a thought occurred to him. "Hey, what's this place called, anyway? The school, I mean. I was reading about it on the network, but it was always referred to as 'campus' or 'the school.' It must have a name, right?"

There was a pause as Al thought about it. "You know, I'm not sure," he said. "I feel like it should have a name, but I don't think I've seen it or read it anywhere. Didn't Bart say something about monks?"

"Yeah," Harold said. "I've been wondering about that too. Aren't monks all religious and stuff? I don't think I've seen anything like that."

"I don't know." Al shrugged. "On my planet a monk is just someone who dedicates themselves to one specific thing at the exclusion of other things. Maybe we just haven't met them yet."

"Maybe the school is just a front for a secret society of monks," Harold said jokingly.

"Yeah, monks who steal things," Al added.

"What do you think of them wanting to send people home with us?" Harold asked.

"It's fine with me," Al said. "It might raise a few eyebrows, I guess -- 'Hey, here's our spaceship, which we never officially lost, and certainly was never stolen by these nice people that we've brought to visit you. We just happened to meet them when we went on a road trip to Alabama, which we took for no official reason, and now we're all here, along with this ship that just happens to be in the same place at the same time.'"

Harold laughed. "Where do you think the ship is right now?"

Al looked thoughtful. "I'm not sure. I don't know how they got it away from Trudy, but it would have been really obvious if they'd flown it down here, and it would have taken a phenomenal amount of power to transport it the whole way. I bet they drove it down, in a truck. Or a really big van. Probably a truck."

"Really?" Harold was surprised. "Like an 18 wheeler? It would fit in something like that?"

Al gave him a strange look. "Sure," he said. "It's not that big. Trudy kept it in her basement, as far as I know. We're not talking about the Starship Enterprise here, just a little spaceship."

Huh. Harold had never seen the ship; he hadn't even really imagined what it must look like, but he'd always had the impression that it was bigger than that. "Huh," he said out loud. "I don't know how to drive an 18 wheeler."

Now it was Al's turn to look surprised. "Neither do I," he said. "Maybe one of the people that comes with us is going to drive the truck."

That just seemed weird to Harold. "In that case, why are we here at all?" he asked. "What was the point?"

"Who knows?" Al said. "Maybe it's a Southern thing."

The South was strange and mysterious, Harold thought. And they had gotten a nice vacation out of it. He decided not to worry about it. After all, it wasn't even his ship, and Al kept insisting it wasn't his either. If the monks, or whoever they were, wanted to drive it up and down the east coast on a lark, who was he to question it?

There didn't seem to be anything left to say, so they sat in silence. Bob was still purring. He could hear cicadas in the grass all around them, and a bird was singing off and on in the tree. The breeze smelled like summer. Life was good. Harold dozed off.

Chapter 42: In which the calm before the storm officially ends.

Although Harold would swear he was never really asleep, he definitely got more awake when Bob jumped into his lap. Harold automatically put his hand up and started patting, looking around for Al. Who was right where he'd left him -- sitting in the driver's seat. Al had a half-eaten cookie in one hand, and his cell phone in the other.

"I have a message," Al said, sounding a little startled. "From the President's office. So do you, I think."

Harold reached for his phone, tucked into a side pocket on his backpack. Sure enough, the message light was blinking. "Mine says 'Chandraskar,'" Harold said. "Is that Bart's last name?"

"I think so," Al replied. "That was the name on the mailbox, at least." Harold hadn't even thought to check. Good thing Al was there. "Does your message say we're supposed to meet with them as soon as possible?"

Harold quickly accessed the message and read it through. It was short, and didn't sound quite as friendly as he remembered Bart's mom and dad being that morning. "Yeah," he said. "I wonder why?"

Al looked guilty. "I hope we're not going to get in trouble for talking."

"I thought you said it was okay!"

"Well, that's what the science kid said! But we haven't done anything else wrong!"

Harold thought back. Boston, Rhode Island, DC, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama. "We did sneak Bob into that motel where cats weren't allowed, and that other motel where they might not have been allowed," Harold said. "But it doesn't seem like the school would get upset about that; they like Bob." He couldn't think of anything else even remotely questionable that they had done. They hadn't even taken that woman's fifty-dollar bill!

Driving back to the Visitor's Lot, and walking to the President's office, Harold felt remarkably like a little kid about to get yelled at by his parents. Bob had taken off again as soon as they parked the car, leaving Harold and Al to face the music alone. They entered the house with no small amount of trepidation. Bart met them in the waiting room with a smile, but he looked worried. This time he went with them into the kitchen, then down a set of stairs into what looked like an actual office. His parents were both there, seated behind two large desks.

"Please, have a seat," the woman said. "I'm not sure we introduced ourselves earlier; I'm Sashi Chandraskar -- this is my husband, Tejas."

Harold didn't know what to do. Wasn't it the Week of Silence? Was this some kind of trick? "Are we …" in trouble, was what he wanted to ask "…allowed to talk?"

"Sure," Tejas said. "We just made up that whole Week of Silence thing anyway; it's not like it's carved in stone. It started, I don't know … ten years ago?" He looked at Sashi, who nodded.

"Lots of people get exemptions," she said. "It's no big deal. The whole thing was originally just supposed to be for the kids, anyway."

Sashi grinned at Bart, who gave an indignant "Hey!"

"Once it started, lots of people wanted to join in. Eventually it was easier to just make it campus wide for the week, so at least everyone was doing it at the same time."

Tejas added, "That way we didn't have any students claiming they were doing their days of silence right when one of their professors wanted them to give an oral presentation."

They didn't sound angry. Harold hoped that was a good sign. "Okay," he said. "Um… what's going on?"

Tejas fidgeted in his chair. Sashi sighed. "Well, that's what we wanted to talk to you about," she said. "And we're not jumping to any conclusions," she added quickly. "Really, we've heard lots of wonderful things about both of you, and I don't want you to feel like we're accusing you of anything."

Uh-oh, Harold thought. This could not be good.

Tejas picked up the conversational thread. "It's just that … people have been asking about you in town. Looking for you, I mean. And they're from the FBI. We were just wondering if you knew anything about it."

Harold was dumbfounded. He looked at Al, who looked equally confused. "No," Harold said, just as Al said, "Are you sure they're looking for us?"

Bart spoke up for the first time. "Two men came to the dojo this morning during practice. They asked for you by name -- Harold Jones and Al Baxter. They even had a picture; it looked like it was from a surveillance camera or something, maybe from a store. They wanted to know if anyone had seen you, or had heard about two guys coming through town recently with out of state plates."

"What did you tell them?" Al asked, sounding as if he was merely curious.

"We told them no, of course," Bart said indignantly. "Well, I told them no, and the rest of the team followed my lead. We talked about you yesterday. Even the townies are used to all kinds of people coming out to the school for sanctuary -- they know we'll take care of any problems out here; no one wants the FBI poking around their life."

Sashi and Tejas nodded in agreement. Harold was a little disturbed by the team's willingness to follow Bart's example in lying to federal agents, but maybe that was just because he had a cop for a sister.

Al was looking thoughtful again. "Could you tell where the picture was taken? What kind of store we were in?" Bart shook his head, and Al looked disappointed.

"I need to talk to Charlotte," Harold announced. He looked at the Chandraskars questioningly.

Apparently his and Al's reactions had been enough to convince Sashi and Tejas that they were innocent, or at least didn't have any idea what they were guilty of, because Sashi gestured to the phone on her desk. "Maybe you should use my phone," she suggested. "Just in case they're tracking yours."

Harold looked at Al. "Can they do that with a cell phone?" Al shrugged. He either didn't know, or wasn't willing to give away that he knew.

"You probably shouldn't call her directly, either," Bart said. "If they're serious about finding you, they might be watching your family." He sounded excited, and Harold wondered just how many action movies he'd watched in his life. On the other hand, he did live at a school with an interplanetary student body; maybe he had real life experience with this kind of thing.

Harold thought for a minute. "What about Nick and Steve?" Al offered. "They're pretty under the radar in terms of connection with the family, but they could get in touch with Charlotte easily."

It was a good plan, and luckily, Nick and Steve's number was one of the ones Al actually remembered, so it was in their new phones. Harold waited anxiously as Al dialed the phone.

Al gave a thumbs up when the phone was picked up on the other end. "Hi, Nick," he said. "It's Al … Yeah, we're good, how are things up north? … Really? Congratulations! You must be so excited … Well, we have a little problem actually … No, Bob's fine … See, it sounds like there's a couple of FBI agents looking for us-- … No! That's the problem, we don't know why, but it seems like it's probably not to give us a good citizenship award. We wanted to get Charlotte's advice, but we're worried that their house might be under surveillance … I know it sounds crazy … Do you think you could talk to her? … Yeah, that would be great. You can call back at--" Al broke off and looked down at the piece of paper Tejas had just handed him, then rattled off the phone number for Nick. "No, it's not my cell," Al said. "It's kind of a long story … Yeah, it's a good one … Thanks a lot. We'll talk to you later."

When he hung up the phone, Al explained to the group. "He's going to take Charlotte out to lunch. He'll call us back when he has news." Harold breathed a sigh of relief. Not that he had doubted that Nick and Steve would be willing to help, but it was nice to be back on familiar ground, even if it was only for a minute.

"Well, it sounds like we have some time on our hands," Tejas said. "What does everyone want to do?"

Chapter 43: In which there is an interlude, and Charlotte tells everyone what to do.

Playing cards wouldn't have been Harold's first choice, but it did help pass the time. Mid-afternoon was the hottest time of day, so it was nice to be inside in the air conditioning. Most of campus was taking a break before their evening activities, and the whole thing had a sort of surreal feeling to it. According to Bart, the school was currently in the midst of an Uno craze, and he produced a deck from somewhere in his backpack. Much to Harold's surprise, Sashi and Tejas were delighted to play, saying they needed to "brush up on their strategy." Harold hadn't even known there was a strategy to Uno.

An hour later, he was really hoping there was a strategy to the game. If there wasn't, the only explanations he could come up with for how badly he was losing every game were that Tejas and Sashi were cheating, or that he was extraordinarily unlucky -- neither of which was very encouraging given the current situation. He felt relieved when the phone rang, and hoped that Nick would give them good news.

This time, Sashi had them listen to the call in speakerphone mode, so everyone could hear what Nick was saying, and everyone could contribute to the conversation.

"Al?" Nick said.

"Hi Nick," Al replied. "This is Al. Harold's listening too, and so are Tejas and Sashi Chandraskar -- they run the school we're staying at now -- and their son, Bart."

"What did Charlotte say?" asked Harold.

"Well, I told her about the FBI following you, but she already knew. She'd been planning on calling me, in fact, to tell you to be careful. She says there's a couple agents watching your house, too, but they've been keeping a low profile. They just arrived a couple hours ago. They haven't been asking your neighbors about you, haven't approached any of the people currently staying at your house -- they haven't even talked to Charlotte or Eliza."

Harold wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Al beat him to it, asking, "Does she think that's good or bad?"

"She's not sure," Nick said. "She says it doesn't seem like they're just looking for you because you committed some big crime or something; it's more like they're investigating you."

"Have all the kids been staying inside?" Al wanted to know. It was probably too much to hope that the house would look deserted, as it rightfully should be if its two residents were out of state, but lots of photos of people who didn't officially exist on Earth seemed bad.

"Charlotte told me she was confident that Tom was handling everything on their end. They can always take everyone back through the doorway if worst comes to worst, but it's not a great solution." Harold tried to imagine what the FBI would make of the mysterious piece of technology hidden away in his basement -- it wasn't anything good, he was sure.

Nick paused, then added, "She also said -- and this is a direct quote -- 'if you think they won't notice when the school bus stops there Monday morning, you're crazy.'"

Harold looked at Al. "I thought Kyp was going to drive the kids to school in the Armada," he said.

"Hey, I'm just repeating what your sister told me," Nick said. "For all I know, they're riding a magic carpet to school every morning."

"I don't think that's very likely," Tejas said, seeming totally serious. "Flying carpets are notoriously difficult to handle, and they tend to be fairly temperamental around children."

There was a pause at the other end of the line. "Um, okay," Nick said.

Harold jumped in. "What does Charlotte think we should do?" he asked. It wasn't exactly news to him that his younger sister thought he was crazy. He wanted her professional opinion, not her personal observations.

Nick seemed to be back on familiar ground with this question. "Well, you have a couple options," he said. "Charlotte says if you really did commit some FBI-worthy crime, you should probably flee Earth with Al in the spaceship you just recovered. She'll get the kids and everyone back through the doorway and blow up your house. Trudy can manufacture some death records for you and hopefully throw the FBI off track." Nick paused, seeming to enjoy the stunned silence he'd created.

"On the other hand," Nick said, "if you and Al are being pursued by the FBI because of some bizarre misunderstanding that could only happen to you, which she seemed to think was much more likely, Charlotte recommends that you come home as soon as possible. It should only take a day or two, and you'll probably have agents on your trail the whole time, but you should be able to claim you had no idea they were looking for you. Once you're home, you'll have a lot more options, and a lot more people to make a fuss if you suddenly disappear. Hopefully the whole thing can be cleared up then. Oh, and Charlotte says try not to get lost."

Harold and Al both thanked Nick for passing on the information, and Nick told them to call any time. Tejas and Sashi were very polite, and said it was nice to speak with Nick, and they hoped to meet him in person someday. Harold's mind was whirling as everyone said goodbye. How long would it take to get home if they drove non-stop? Could they handle that much driving? What about the ship?

Al seemed similarly lost in thought, and it was Tejas who clapped his hands together and said, "Well, isn't this exciting! Makes me wish I could go with you! No time to dwell, though -- let's get this show on the road!"

Chapter 44: In which the return road trip begins.

Harold quickly realized that "let's get this show on the road" actually meant "let's get to start thinking about planning to go somewhere." In Harold's family, that would usually mean he had at least a couple days to get started packing. But when Tejas and Sashi were doing the planning, everything seemed to go in fast forward. Tejas started making lists; Sashi started sending emails. Bart spent a minute or two complaining that he wasn't going to be able to go, since he had to stay to practice with the karate team. Then he disappeared off somewhere to "check the vehicles."

Harold could hear the ping … ping … ping as Sashi got her replies. Tejas underlined something sharply on his paper, then stood up. "Okay, I'm just going to go clear this with the departments; make sure we've got everything." He turned to Harold and Al. "If I don't see you again before you leave, good luck with everything. It was a pleasure to have you visit our school, and I hope you come again." Then he grinned. "I'm sure we'll meet again!"

Harold didn't know about that, but he hoped it didn't mean that the ship was going to get stolen any more times. He was pretty much done with that whole experience. Maybe just a friendly visit? And hopefully no FBI involvement; that would be nice too.

Harold wanted to ask what was going on, but it seemed rude. He also thought it might make him seem kind of slow, since he was pretty sure he was supposed to already know what was going on. They were getting ready to go, right?

Sashi stood up as well, giving them a friendly smile. "I'm sure you'd like to get packed," she said. "We're almost organized on our end, so we should be able to leave within the hour. I know you want to get home as soon as possible." And then she was ushering them outside, sending them off with a wave.

Harold wondered what had just happened. He opened his mouth, and Al shook his head. That's right -- they were still doing the silence thing. They walked quickly back to their room, where Bob was waiting at the door. Harold really wondered how Bob got his information.

As soon as they closed the door behind them, Al said, "Okay, what just happened there?"

Harold sighed with relief. "Thank you! At least I'm not the only one who doesn't know what's going on."

It wasn't like they actually had a lot of packing to do, so they sat on the floor. Al munched on some crackers he pulled out of his backpack. "Here's what I got," Al said. "For some reason, the FBI is investigating us. Tejas and Sashi, who are clearly in charge here, believe that we haven't done anything wrong. They're planning … something … that has to do with the people they're sending back home with us."

"And there's vehicles," Harold added helpfully. "And supplies or something."

"Yeah," Al said. "They're very organized here." The way he said it, Harold couldn't tell if he meant it as a compliment or not.

Harold nodded, and grabbed one of Al's crackers. "Good food, though."

Chapter 45: In which the return road trip begins, for real this time.

Forty-five minutes later, Harold loaded the last of their bags into the car. Theirs was the only car in the Visitor's lot. Harold hadn't seen any other parking lots, and he wondered where all the students and staff parked. His question was answered a minute later, as he heard a loud rumbling. It was like something out of a movie. A nearby building that looked like a typical two, maybe three car garage was the source of the noise. The door rolled up, and an RV slowly pulled out. Followed by another RV. And another. Harold was trying to convince himself that you could, possibly, fit that many vehicles in that building, when a fourth RV appeared. And just to add insult to injury, a tractor trailer truck. Now that was just not possible.

"Whoa," Al said.

Bart jumped down from the driver's side of the truck. "Underground garage," he explained. "It cuts down on UV damage."

Among other things, Harold thought, but he kept it to himself. Instead, he said, "I thought you weren't going to be able to come."

"I'm not," Bart said. "But I'm working on my CDL, and Skip said I could drive the truck out of the garage for practice. I'm just here to make the introductions."

Skip was a somewhat grizzled looking older man. Harold wanted to say elderly, but he couldn't quite reconcile that word with Skip's spiky gray hair. Their traveling companions were a remarkably mixed bag. There was a family of four with twin boys, several middle age couples, and assorted teenagers. Harold thought Bart did a great job with the introductions, but it wasn't as effective as one might have wished. Everyone already seemed to know him and Al and Bob, and Harold couldn't remember anything except for Skip's name and the fact that the twins were apparently called DJ and JD, which seemed unnecessarily confusing.

Bart also handed out two-way radios -- one for each vehicle. Then he turned things over to Skip, who seemed to be at least nominally in charge of the trip. Skip explained the planned rotation of drivers, so they would be able to drive straight through and everyone would be able to get some sleep. Harold was surprised to see that the plan seemed new to everyone -- he figured he and Al would be the only ones in the dark, but it looked as though most of the other people were just as clueless. Harold tried to imagine what Sashi's email must have said; he thought it might have been something like, "Road trip to New England has been moved up to this afternoon. Please email back as soon as possible if you plan to go. Pack your bags and be ready in an hour; details -- including exact destination, duration of trip, and possible government involvement -- to follow." Probably it had ended with a cheery "thanks!"

They spent a few minutes doing the meet and greet routine, while anyone who wanted to use the bathroom one more time headed for the Visitor's Center, and Harold and Al double checked to make sure they hadn't forgotten anything. They were on the road before Harold remembered that he had planned to ask if he could see the ship. After all, it seemed only fair that he have the chance to look at the thing that had led to this whole … whatever it was. Now he'd have to wait till they got home.

Still, despite the strange circumstances, it was a great day for driving. Harold and Al rolled the windows down and turned up the radio. They were right in the middle of the caravan, between two of the RVs, so hopefully they wouldn't be able to get lost this time. In three hours, they'd stop at a rest area to stretch their legs and switch drivers. Harold's shift wasn't until nighttime, so he had a while to just relax. Depending on traffic, and how long their rest breaks lasted, they should be arriving back home sometime Monday afternoon.

Chapter 46: In which there is lots of driving, and Harold learns how much shorter trips are when you don't get lost all the time.

"Omaha."

"Alaska."

"The Antilles."

"Saskatchewan. Hey, which is our exit again?"

"Fifteen, I think. Nuremberg."

"… Galveston."

"Hey, that's N again!"

"Nome."

"What?"

"Nome. It's in Alaska."

"Cool. How's it spelled?"

"N-o-m-e, I think. Or else I would have used it for G."

It was dark, and Harold was alone in the car. Al and Bob were sleeping in one of the RVs. The radio was getting a lot of use, though. After a couple rest stops, everyone was feeling more comfortable with each other, and the late night drivers were using the radios to keep themselves awake. The current activity was the last letter / first letter game, with place names. Harold was actually doing pretty well, because they had limited it to Earth place names, and not all the players were native. E was a tough one , though. "Estonia," he said finally.

"Nice!" came back an admiring voice -- one of the teenagers, Harold thought. "Atlantis."

"Hey, that's fictional!" someone objected.

"It's mythological," the first person said. "That's totally different. We don't know it didn't exist."

Someone else chimed in. "There's nothing in the rules that says it has to be a visitable place. I say Atlantis counts."

Harold laughed, and the hours flew by.

He took a sleeping break after his driving shift was over, and when he woke up, they were off the highway. "Where are we?" he asked sleepily. It seemed too early to be that close to home.

"We're taking a shortcut," one of the twins said. DJ, or JD -- they weren't even identical, but Harold couldn't remember which name went with which twin.

"Sort of," the other twin said. "Skip heard on his CB that there was a truck rollover on the interstate; no one was hurt, but it's got traffic backed up for miles."

"Yeah, and guess what was in the truck?" Harold had no idea, and luckily the pause wasn't really long enough for him to answer. "Traffic cones! At least they're coming in handy!"

The second twin picked up the story again. "So we got off the main road, and now we're going the back way. We've got another hour or so till our next break, and then there should just be one more leg to go."

Harold couldn't believe how fast the return trip had gone. He was driving again, this time with Al in the passenger seat. Bob had made the rounds through all the vehicles, but Harold was pretty sure he was currently with Skip in the 18-wheeler. It was just after 4 on Monday, and they were just pulling into town. Skip had switched to the back of the caravan, and Harold was in the lead -- which was kind of nice, because even though he was really grateful to everyone else for keeping them from getting lost along the way, it would have been weird if they had known the exact location of his house. They probably did, of course, but it was nice to maintain the illusion.

It felt good to be back in familiar surroundings. Four RVs and a giant tractor trailer truck looked a lot bigger on Birch Street than they had on the interstate, though. Al had called ahead to let everyone know they were almost there, but no one had picked up the phone. When Harold and Al parked in the garage, they could see that the Armada was still there -- other than that, the house looked deserted. Two of the RVs made it into the driveway, and Harold winced as the other two drove onto the lawn. The truck, thankfully, stayed parked on the side of the road.

Chapter 47: In which almost everyone ends up in the same place at the same time.

"Well, that's certainly not subtle," Al said, as the entire group gathered around the front porch. They heard a siren in the distance just as the Tom burst through the front door.

"Tom!" Al called happily. "It's good to see you!" Tom looked a little warily at the large group in front of him. "Where is everyone?" Al asked.

The siren was getting closer. In fact, it was headed right for them. Harold watched as the police car pulled over right behind the truck, and Charlotte and Eliza jumped out. "Hi!" he called out.

Charlotte hugged him. Eliza hugged Al. Then they switched. Once the hugs were done, Charlotte looked around. "Who are all these people?" she asked.

"We met them in Alabama," Harold explained. "They came back with us." It was the bare minimum of explanations; really it only stated the obvious, but Harold didn't know much more than that, so he didn't elaborate.

"Well, they shouldn't stay here," Charlotte said. "The FBI are on their way right now. They were at the police station when someone called in to say you were back -- I heard the call in my car, and I was almost home, so I picked up Eliza and came straight here."

"We want to help," Skip said. It didn't look like any of the Alabama crew was planning on leaving anytime soon. They were pulling out folding tables and camp chairs, and rolling out the awnings on their RVs. It looked like they were setting up for a party, rather than a police confrontation.

Al was looking at Tom again. "Are the kids here?" he asked.

Tom shook his head. "No, they stayed at school to work on a project. They're supposed to be coming home on the late bus. Suzy's tailing your FBI 'friends,' and Kyp had to go home earlier because he broke out in hives -- we think it was some kind of cheese that he ate."

Cheese? Harold thought. Suzy walked out from inside the house. She must have used her transporter to arrive ahead of the FBI. "They're here," she said. A dark colored sedan with tinted windows pulled over in front of the truck. Two men wearing suits stepped out. Harold was impressed by their ability to remain expressionless in the face of the odd scene in front of them. Was that a grill the teenagers were setting up?

The two agents headed straight for Harold and Al. "Harold Jones. Al Baxter." It wasn't a question, but somehow the man managed to get a questioning inflection into his tone.

"That's us," Al said. "Can I offer you a seat?"

"Bottle of water?" Harold offered. The rest of the group joined in.

"Hot dog?"

"Hamburger?"

"Veggie burger?"

"Can of soda?"

"No!" the first agent said firmly. The second one shrugged. Harold handed him a bottle of water, just in case.

"Could we move this inside?" the first agent said. "We need to ask you a few questions."

Charlotte had moved behind the two men, and Harold saw her shake her head. "We'd like to stay out here," he said. "But we'd be happy to answer your questions. Are you sure you don't want to sit?"

Harold was distracted by the squeal of air brakes, and missed the agent's response. The late bus had just arrived at the end of the street, and seven very excited kids were currently sprinting in their direction.

"Harold! Al!" More hugging took place, and Harold noticed that while Al greeted every kid, he never used their names. After a couple minutes, one of the agents cleared his throat.

"If you don't mind," he said, and Harold detected a hint of impatience in his voice, "could we continue?" Sabri pouted, and the agent gave her a look that could loosely be interpreted as a glare. The kids instantly retreated behind Harold and Al, where he could hear the teenagers pulling them into the group.

"What is it you'd like to talk with us about?" Al asked.

One of the men pulled a notebook out of his pocket. "On Thursday, September 13th, we have a record of Al Baxter purchasing two cellular phones in a store in Washington, DC. We also have a surveillance video that places both of you at the store."

"Yes, we were there," Al said.

"The store's owner thought you exhibited some suspicious behavior," the other man said. "He called his local police department, who ran the name Al Baxter through his database -- and found out you were on the national Watch List."

"Really?" Harold knew he should stay quiet, but the question burst out before he could censor himself. He hoped he sounded shocked and disbelieving, instead of amused. Al? On a national Watch List?

"Your name is on the list as well, Mr. Jones." The agent looked back and forth between them.

Harold couldn't help it. "Really?" he said again. "Me?" He knew it was serious, and he'd heard all the horror stories about how being on one of the watch lists could cause you all sorts of problems at airports and things like that, but it just seemed ridiculous. How had he ended up on the list?

The agent sounded very stern as he explained. "In the fall of 2005, a Mr. Al Baxter purchased over one hundred cell phones from a local retail establishment. Was that you, Mr. Baxter?"

Actually, it had been Harold, using Al's credit card, but Harold didn't think they wanted to bring that up right now. "Yes," said Al.

"And you, Mr. Jones -- do you admit that Mr. Baxter lives here, at 15 Birch Street, in a house that is listed under your name?"

"Yes," Harold said. Al didn't live there all the time; sometimes he spent time on his own planet, but again, Harold decided that was a detail that didn't need to be mentioned.

The second agent seemed to get tired of the first agent's slow line of questioning. "What did you do with the phones?" he asked.

Oh. Harold wasn't sure how they were supposed to answer that one. He didn't think 'we gave them to a bunch of alien refugees who were staying on our planet for a couple days' was going to go over very well.

Chapter 48: In which even more people arrive.

"He donated them to our school, of course." One of the women, B-something, Harold thought, had moved right beside them. She offered the explanation as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, then turned to Al. "I told you to take the tax deduction for those! I know it's a lot of paperwork, but look what happens when you let things like that slide! You get armed men showing up on your doorstep! Look, they even called for backup, they think you're so dangerous!"

It was true. Another sedan was pulling up in front of the first. Two more agents stepped out, looking slightly the worse for wear. For one thing, they weren't wearing their jackets or ties, and their sleeves were rolled up to their elbows. The first thing they said when they walked over was, "Is that water? Do you mind --?"

The woman who had spoken handed them each a bottle, smiling sweetly at them. "There's food, too, if you're hungry," she said.

"I'm starving," agent number three said.

Agent one glared at the others. "We're in the middle of this," he said. "What happened to you two, anyway?"

Agent four kept one eye on the grill as he answered. "We got stuck in this crazy traffic jam coming up from Alabama. It was hours in the blazing sun. We haven't had a real meal in more than 24 hours."

"Anyone a vegetarian?" came the call from the grill.

Agent three gave a nervous glance at agent one, but raised his hand. "I'm a vegetarian," he said.

Agent one's frustration was clearly growing, as he sensed he was losing control of the situation. The woman whose name Harold thought began with B patted him on the arm and handed him a business card. "Here's the number for our school," she said kindly. "They can confirm what I've told you, and I'm sure they'll be able to send you any paperwork you might need." She lowered her voice. "Al's done so much for our organization; I'd hate to lose such a good contributor because of this misunderstanding. I'm sure you understand how it is."

Agent one grumbled a little more, but took the card and stepped away from the group, already pulling out his phone. The B-woman turned to the other agents. "Now, how about some food?" she said.

In no time, the other three agents were seated in folding camp chairs, with paper plates full of food in their laps. Tom was still standing guard at the front door, but even he had relaxed into a slightly less tense position. The teenagers were keeping the kids occupied with a game of Frisbee on the part of the lawn farthest away from the FBI, which Harold thought was smart. When he saw another car coming down the road, he almost groaned, but it was just the mailman. Mailwoman, actually. She looked a little stunned, and Harold knew this day would keep the gossip mill going for months.

Agent one flipped his phone shut and walked back to the group. He didn't look too happy. Harold hoped that was good. He spoke under his breath to the woman who'd given the agent the card. "Whose phone number was on that card?" he asked.

"Sashi's," she told him. "Don't worry, she'll back us up -- DJ relayed the whole story to her as we were talking." She pointed to the side of the house, where DJ was standing in a shadow. To the casual observer, he was just taking a break from the game in the shade, but Harold saw the flash of a cell phone in his hand.

"Their story checks out," Agent one said gruffly. "Paperwork's being faxed to the local police station now." He glared at Harold and Al, seeming upset that he wouldn't get to arrest them. "We'll be keeping an eye on you," he said. Then he turned to the other three agents. "Let's go."

Harold expected an instant reaction, so he was surprised when agent two said, "But I'm only halfway through my hot dog. It would be rude not to finish."

Agent one actually rolled his eyes, and stole a potato chip off agent two's plate. "Fine," he said. "Finish your hot dog. I suppose you two want to stay as well?" he asked three and four. They nodded. Another eye roll, and they agent one sighed. "Is there Sprite?" he asked the group at large, and Skip tossed one over. "Thanks," he said.

Chapter 49: In which the FBI leave, and stories are exchanged.

It took another twenty minutes for the four agents to finish their food and depart. Once they were gone, the gathering kicked into a higher gear, and there was no more denying that it was, in fact, a party. They managed to keep the noise down to a dull roar, and Harold considered it lucky that none of the neighbors called the police (although that might have been because there was already a police cruiser parked right there). Late afternoon snacks turned into dinner, and more food was produced from somewhere. Many, many stories were told. Most were highly exaggerated, although, sadly, not the one about how many times he and Al had gotten lost on their way to Alabama.

Eliza seemed particularly intrigued by the school, while Charlotte had started some kind of chart with Suzy about all the different ways Harold and Al had gotten into trouble since they'd met. Around midnight, Tom and Skip took off to take the ship back to Trudy. Everyone else trooped into the house to use the bathroom (and look around, and see the doorway, and ask lots more questions about everything), then headed to their respective beds. As Harold was falling asleep, he realized he still hadn't seen the spaceship.

Chapter 50: In which one last loose end gets tidied up.

It was a week later when the package arrived. Their guests from Alabama had returned home, and the kids were attending their last day of school on Earth. The air had an end of summer feel to it as Harold walked to the mailbox. It was early, for once, and he was surprised to see the midsize US Postal Service package wedged into the box. It was addressed to Harold Gabriel Jones; the return address space was empty. Harold frowned and gave the box a little shake.

When he got inside, he called Al to take a look at it. Al shook it too. "Well, it's not ticking," Al said. "I guess you should open it."

Harold didn't feel very reassured by that, but he grabbed a knife and sliced the tape holding the box shut. There was only one thing inside.

"My jacket!"