Katherine Alice Applegate: Invasion

"It's coming this way," Rachel said.

"It's hard to be sure." I could barely whisper, my mouth was so dry.

"No, it's coming this way," Rachel said. She has a very definite way of talking. Like she's totally sure of everything she says.

Rachel was right. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. And it was slowing down. Now I could see pretty clearly what it looked like.

"It's not exactly a flying saucer," I said.

First of all, it wasn't all that big. It was about as long as a school bus. The front end was a pod, shaped almost like an egg. Extending from the back of the pod was a long, narrow shaft. There were two crooked, stubby winglike things, and on the end of each wing was a long tube that glowed bright blue on the back end.

The little spaceship looked almost cute. You know, kind of harmless. Except that it had a sort of tail — a mean-looking tail that curved up and forward, corning to a point that looked as sharp as a needle.

"That tail thing," I said. "It looks like a weapon."

"Definitely," Marco agreed.

The little ship kept coming nearer, going slower all the time.

"It's stopping," Rachel said. She had the same strange, not-quite-real tone in her voice that I had. Like we couldn't believe what we were seeing. Like maybe we didn't want to believe.

"I think it sees us," Marco said. "Should we run? Maybe we should run home and get a camera. Do you know how much money we could get for a video of a real UFO?"

"If we run, they might… I don't know, zap us with phasers on full power," I said. I meant it as a joke. Kind of.

"Phasers are only on Star Trek," Marco said, rolling his eyes the way he does when he thinks I'm being a dweeb. Like he was some kind of expert on alien spaceships. Right.

The ship stopped and hovered almost directly over our heads, maybe a hundred feet in the air. I could feel the hair on my head standing on end. When I glanced at Rachel it was almost funny. She has this long blond hair and it was sticking straight out in every direction. Only Cassie looked normal.

"What do you think it is?" Marco asked. He sounded a little shakier, not so laid-back now that the thing was so close. To be honest, I was a little scared, too. A little scared, as in so terrified I couldn't move. But at the same time, it was all cool beyond any coolness ever. I mean, it was a spaceship! Right there over my head.

Tobias was actually grinning, but that's Tobias for you. He's never scared of weird stuff. It's the normal stuff he can't stand. "I think it's going to land," he said, this huge smile on his face. His eyes were bright and excited, and his blond hair was standing up in clumps.

The ship began to descend. "It's coming right at us!" I cried.

I had to fight an urge to run yammering across the field all the way home, where I could crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head. But I knew that this was an important, amazing thing. I knew I had to stay and see it all.

I guess the others felt the same way, because we all just stood there, as the ship hummed and glowed and slowly settled down in an open space between piles of junk and tumbled walls. I noticed there were black burn marks along the top of the pod section. Some of the skin of the pod had been melted. It touched the ground and instantly the blue lights went off. Rachel's hair fell back down onto her neck.

"It isn't very big, is it?" Rachel whispered.

"It's about — " I tried to think, "about three or four times as big as our minivan."

"We should tell someone," Marco said. "I mean, this is kind of major, you know? Spaceships don't just land in the construction site every day. We should call the cops or the army or the president or something. We'd be totally famous. We'd get to be on Letterman for sure."

"Yeah, you're right," I agreed. "We should call someone." But none of us moved. None of us was just going to walk away from a spaceship.

"I wonder if we should try and talk to it," Rachel suggested. She was standing there with her hands on her hips looking at the spaceship like it was a puzzle she had to figure out. "I mean, we should communicate. If that's even possible."

Tobias nodded. He stepped forward and held out his hands. I guess he was showing whoever was in the ship that he wasn't carrying any kind of weapon or anything. "It's safe," he said in a loud, clear voice. "We won't hurt you."

"Do you think they speak English?" I wondered.

"Well, everyone speaks English on Star Trek," Cassie said with a nervous laugh.

Tobias tried again. "Please, come out We won't hurt you."

I froze. Okay, I had definitely heard someone say "I know," only… there hadn't been any sound. I mean, I heard it, but I didn't really hear it.

Maybe this was all a dream. I looked kind of sideways at Cassie. She looked back at me. Our eyes met. She had heard it, too. I looked at Rachel. She was turning her head back and forth, like she was looking for where that sound — that wasn't a sound — could have come from. I started to get a sick, twisty feeling in my stomach.

"Did everyone hear that?" Tobias whispered.

We all nodded at once, very slowly.

"Can you come out?" Tobias asked in his loud, talking-to-aliens voice.

"We won't be frightened," Tobias said.

"Speak for yourself," I muttered. The others giggled nervously.

A thin arc of light appeared, a doorway, opening slowly in the smooth side of the pod part of the ship. I stood there, totally hypnotized. I just stared, waiting.

The opening grew, like a crescent moon at first, then a full, bright circle.

And then he appeared.

My first reaction was that someone had cloned a person and a deer together. The creature had a head and shoulders and arms that were more or less where they should have been, though the skin was a pale shade of blue. But below that he had fur, a mix of blue and tan, covering a four-legged body that really did look like it belonged to a deer, or maybe a small horse.

He ducked his head out the doorway and I could see that even the fairly normal-looking parts of him weren't all that normal. For a start, he had no mouth, just three vertical slits. And then there were his eyes. Two of them were where they should have been, although they were a glittery green color that was kind of shocking. But the real shock was the other eyes. He had what seemed like horns, only on the top of each horn was an eye. The horns could move, twisting to point the eyes front and back or up and down.

I thought the eyes were bad, until I saw the tail. It was like a scorpion's tail, thick and powerful-looking. On the end was a wickedly curved, very sharp-looking horn or stinger. It reminded me of the alien's spaceship. It had seemed kind of cute and harmless, till you noticed the tail. The alien seemed kind of harmless at first glance, too. Then you saw that tail of his and you thought, whoa, this guy could do some damage if he wanted.

"Hello," Tobias said. His voice was gentle, like he was talking to a baby. He was grinning. I realized I was smiling, too. And at the same moment, I realized that there were tears in my eyes, I can't really describe how it felt, except that it seemed like the alien was someone I'd known forever. Like an old friend I hadn't seen in a long, longtime.

the alien said, in that silent way that you only heard inside your head.

"Hi," we all said back.

To my surprise, the alien staggered. He fell out of the ship to the ground. Tobias tried to grab him and hold him up, but the alien slipped from his grasp and fell back to the dirt.

"Look!" Cassie cried. She pointed at a burn that covered half the alien's right side. "He's hurt he said.

"Can we help you? We can call an ambulance or something," Marco said.