In ten words or less, Max updated his fellow hybrids on what had just happened. "We can't lose that Chevy!" he stressed passionately. "We can't let Morton hurt Liz again!"Sirens sounded nearby, growing louder by the second. "The police," Maria realized, drawn by the gunshots, the auto accidents, or both. "Hang on!" she warned Max and Alex as she threw the Jetta into drive and peeled out of the parking lot, going from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds. With any luck, she hoped, the cops would be too tied up with the big highway pileup to chase after them right away. In the rearview mirror, she saw the Jeep zooming right behind her. Michael had already used his powers, she saw, to repair the damage to their windshield. Hold on, Liz, she thought, following Morton's escape route along the shoulder of the highway. We're coming for you! Pouring on the speed, they came within sight of the blue Chevy before long. At first, Iiz and her kidnappers were heading north on 180, toward Carlsbad proper, but they quickly veered off the main highway, turning left onto a less-populated side road that led west toward the mountains. Motels, souvenir shops, and fast- food restaurants soon gave way to flat, barren, desert scenery. Cacti and yucca provided sparse decoration to the arid landscape whizzing past them on both sides of the road. Keeping one eye on the road and the other on the speeding convertible carrying away her friend, Maria tried to figure out where Morton and his accomplice were heading. Geography wasn't exactly her forte, but she didn't remember much in this direction except the mountains and maybe the northern tip of the park.

Okay, she recalled, there was always Las Cruces, where the university was, but that was almost 150 miles away, on the other side of the Guadalupe Mountains. Surely the science guy wasn't planning to take a shanghaied teenage girl all the way back to his snazzy labs and academic colleagues? They must be planning to hide out in the mountains somewhere, she guessed, pushing the speedometer needle up to eighty and beyond. Not if 1 have anything to say about it! Morton knew they were chasing him, of course, especially after they followed him off the highway into the desert, where pretty soon they were the only cars on the road. He glared back at them from the back of the convertible, holding onto his cap with one hand and his gun with the other. Maria glimpsed the back of Liz's head, bizarro red hair and all, but she was too far away to tell how Liz was holding up. First the shooting, now this! she agonized silently, trying to imagine what her friend was going through now. This must be like her worst nightmare coming true.

"Can't you just blast him or something?" she asked Max in desperation. She had the air conditioner turned all the way up, but still felt covered in sweat. "Some sort of Czechoslovakian tractor beam maybe?"Max shook his head. "It's not that easy," he explained succinctly, "not at these speeds." Shunning seat belts, he perched on the very edge of the backseat, leaning forward between Maria and Alex, his head and shoulders straining to bring him as close to the fleeing Chevy as possible. "If that car crashes, Liz could be killed."So much for that brilliant idea, Maria thought. She desperately wanted to close the gap between them and the convertible, just so she could get a better look at Liz, but knew that she had to keep a safe distance between the Jetta and Morton's gun. He had already fired at them a couple of times, but without much success, the wild shots ricocheting off the asphalt ahead of the Jetta or whizzing by overhead. Don't take too many chances, she warned herself, knowing that Liz was depending on her. Morton had to run out of gas and bullets eventually. If I have to, III chase him all the way to Tucson.

The wail of a solitary police siren, coming from several miles behind them, complicated her plans. She couldn't see any flashing lights in the mirror yet, but the siren definitely sounded like it was getting closer. "Do you think they've got our description?" she asked uneasily, sharing an anxious look with Alex. There was no way they could rescue Liz if they had to cope with the police, too. Too bad we're way out of Sheriff Valenti's jurisdiction, she thought.

"Don't worry about that," Max said grimly, dropping back into his own seat. He rolled down the window and shoved his arm outside, placing his palm against the outside of the door. "Just keep driving," he said, his brow knitting in concentration.

What in the world-? She gulped, nearly losing control of the wheel, as the Jetta's cherry-red paint job changed before her eyes, a new metallic-green color spreading out from the right side of the vehicle, where Max's hand was, until the entire exterior of the car resembled some giant, glittering, green bug.

"Hey, pretty cool!" Alex enthused, impressed by the Jetta's instant makeover. "You ever consider a career in grand theft auto, Max?" he joked in an obvious attempt to relieve some of the tension in the car. "You'd be a natural."I changed the license plates, too," Max replied dryly. He sounded winded, as though the large-scale transformation had taken a lot out of him. "Just to be safe."Maria had mixed feelings about this whole thing. "Urn, you can change it back, right?" She glanced sheepishly back at Max. "Otherwise, my mom is going to freak."Keep driving," Max repeated, unconcerned with anything except Liz's safe recovery. He sank back into his seat, exhausted.

Peering in the mirror, she saw that Michael and Isabel had apparently been inspired by Max's ingenuity; widiin seconds, the olive-green Jeep had acquired a spanking new black paint job. She wondered briefly whedier Michael or Isabel had selected the color, then blinked her eyes as the numbers and letters on the Jeep's front license plate rearranged themselves. Vow, she thought, amazed at how adept her alien friends were getting with their powers. Instant, automotive dyslexia.

She had to wonder what Joe Morton thought of the pursuing cars' uncanny metamorphoses. Tearing her gaze away from the mirror, she looked ahead-and saw the no-good gunman staring back at the Jetta with a totally flabbergasted expression on his ugly face. Hahl Maria gloated, enjoying his extreme confusion and discomfort. Maybe the Jeep and the Jetta's unnatural transformations would put the fear of God-or, at the very least, little green men- into die slimeball.

A flashing blue light appeared in her mirror, ruining the moment. Looking back out her side window, she saw a black-and-white State Patrol car zooming up fast behind them. Instinctively, she put her foot on the brake, slowing down to something closer to die legal speed limit. A few car lengths back, behind the wheel of the Jeep, Isabel obviously did the same.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Max shouted, watching in horror as Morton's blue Chevy pulled farther ahead of them, disappearing toward the not-so-distant mountains. "They're getting away!"You want those cops to pull us over?" she snapped back at him, fully aware that Liz was speeding farther away from them with each passing second. "You want to try explaining to the police what's going on?" She knew there was no other choice but to slow down and hope the cop car passed them by. "If you've got a better idea, Max, lay it on me!"Despite his all-consuming desire to rescue Liz from Morton's clutches, Max couldn't argue with Maria's trenchant assessment of their current predicament. Hissing in frustration, he slammed his fist into his palm as his anguished eyes watched the Chevy shrink toward the horizon.

lights flashing, siren blaring, the State Patrol car drew up behind the two slowing vehicles. "Okay, everyone put on their Not-Guilty faces," Maria said, swallowing hard. A horrible thought occurred to her and she suddenly prayed that Michael and Isabel had been shrewd enough to transmute their bogus air force uniforms into something less incriminating. That was all they needed now: for the pair of disguised aliens to get busted for impersonating an officer (or two).