"Yes, sir, Lieutenant."

"You guys, just go along with them," Tobias said as he opened his wings and began to fly off. "l'll keep an eye out for you. Just play dumb."

"You heard him, Marco," Rachel whispered with an exaggerated wink.

"Be yourself."

Naturally, Rachel was completely unafraid. But then, Rachel is never afraid. I was afraid. But that's because I'm sane, unlike Rachel.

The soldiers leaped down from the rocks and quickly searched us as we lay facedown in the sand. It was a quick search: We were wearing our morphing outfits.

"All right, get up. Put on your shoes," the lieutenant said.

I winced. Shoes! Oh, man, we'd never be able to explain this.

"No shoes, sir!" the sergeant said.

I saw the frown form on the lieutenant's face. "Hey. Wait a minute. It's a couple of miles back to the road. How'd you get here without shoes? For that matter, there hasn't been a car down that road all day. How did you get here at all?"

I looked at Rachel. Rachel looked at Marco. Marco put on a big grin and said, "It was the Martians, Lieutenant. We were dropped here by aliens."

Chapter 9

“My name is Captain Torrelli. I am in charge of security for this facility."

We were in a very small, very airless, very brightly lit room. There were no windows. And whenever the door opened you saw a guy in an Air Force uniform.

A tough-looking guy in an Air Force uniform.

A tough-looking guy in an Air Force uniform, cradling a small machine gun.

There was also a bulletin board. On it were small posters reminding everyone that "Security is our business." And exhorting everyone to toler-ate "Zero Defects."

But there was also something more familiar that caught my eye. One of the little flyers was for The Gardens. The Gardens is the big combination amusement park and zoo where my mom is one of the vets. Below the flyer was a sign-up sheet, bearing a lot of names.

"Hi, Captain," Marco said. "How's it going?"

The captain glanced over at the lieutenant who had picked us up. The lieutenant just shrugged.

"Now look, kids, maybe you don't realize it, but you're in trouble," the captain said.

"Yes, sir, we realize we made a big mistake," I said. "It was totally an accident. We didn't even know there was anything back here in the Dry Lands. And boy, we'd never, ever come back again if you let us go, that's for sure."

I smiled innocently. I nudged Rachel and she smiled innocently as well. I prayed that Marco would get a clue and smile innocently so we could just — "So. Where do you keep the alien?" Marco asked.

So much for Marco getting a clue.

The captain pressed his lips tightly together until they turned pale. Then he said, "Look, kid, this is an Air Force installation. We don't discuss what we do here, but I am authorized to tell you one thing: There are no aliens here!"

"Yeah, right. Sir," Marco snorted.

"What's your name, son?"

"Urn . . . Mulder. Fox Mulder."

"Well, you are in a world of hurt, Fox Mulder. You have violated federal law. You could be thrown in prison!"

"Sir?" I interrupted. "Please just ignore Mar— I mean, Fox."

"Yeah. He's an idiot," Rachel added.

"He just likes to annoy people. We're just kids, you know. We didn't mean any harm. Couldn't you just give us a warning?"

"A very stern warning, even," Rachel agreed.

"Normally that's just what we'd do," the captain said. "We do get our share of Looney Tunes and crackpots out here." He looked directly at Marco as he said "crackpots." "However, we have ourselves a little mystery here. See, none of you is wearing shoes. The lieutenant's men searched the area — no shoes. And it is physically impossible to have walked across all that undergrowth and through those rocks without shoes."

"So we're busted for not having shoes?" Rachel asked.

"Look, what's the big deal, sir?" Marco asked. "If you have an alien here, why not just tell everyone?"

The captain gave Marco a long, hard stare. "I want the three of you to write down your names and your parents' phone numbers on this piece of paper." He shoved a clipboard at Marco. "We're gonna call your folks.

Maybe they'll appreciate your sense of humor."

I watched over Marco's shoulder as he wrote down "Fox Mulder." Then he followed it by a phone number.

Rachel identified herself as Dana Scully.

Then it was my turn. And I drew a total blank. See, I don't really watch X-Files.The captain stared at me as I held the pen poised over the paper and sweated.

What name? What name?

"Don't you know your own name?"

"Urn . . . sure. It's . . . Cindy! That's it, Cindy. Cindy . . . Crawford."

Marco stared at me. Rachel stared at me. I wrote down the name with a trembling hand and then wrote in some random numbers.

The two officers left. There was a loud click from the lock closing.

"Cindy Crawford?" Marco demanded. "What are you, nuts?"

"Me? Me? How about you?"

"Every guy in the country knows who Cindy Crawford is!"

"We have to get out of here. Fast!" Rachel said. "I gave him the phone number for Pizza Hut delivery."

"I gave him the number for the Sports Scoreboard recording," Marco said.

"I just gave him one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight!" I said.

"Eight? You gave him eight numbers?" Marco laughed. "Remind me not to ever be a spy with you. Now how do we get outta here?"

"I can morph to grizzly and—" Rachel started to say.

"No!" I cried. "These are good guys and, as far as we know, they're, not Yeerks! We can't hurt anyone! We need something small enough to get out beneath the door. I say housefly."

"I hate doing flies," Rachel shuddered.

"Ant?"

"No way."

"Cockroach?"

Rachel nodded. "Okay. I'll do cockroach."

Marco looked at her, mystified. "Flies gross you out but roaches don't?"

But Rachel and I were already busy morphing and Marco had to hurry to keep up.

This time the floor didn't rise toward us. It leaped! And the changes didn't involve the gentle, rather lovely transformation of skin into feathers.

This time the transformation started for Marco with antennae. Two huge, long, spiky antennae shot straight out of his forehead.

SPLEEET!

For Rachel the change began with the legs. The middle pair of legs. The ones that grew right out of her chest.

"Yah!" I yelled, even though I knew what to expect more or less. Still, seeing antennae come popping out of a friend's head and hairy, articulated legs from your best friend's chest. . . well, it is gross.

But I wasn't able to really focus too much on them. Because I was becoming distracted by the fact that one-foot squares of linoleum now looked as big as a front lawn. And by the fact that I could hear the sound of every bone in my body dissolving into mush. And by the fact that my skin was turning hard and smooth.

SPLOOOT! Legs popped out of my chest.

SPROUT! Antennae zoomed out of my head.

My own legs shriveled. I fell forward! I stuck out my hands to catch myself, but I no longer had hands.

"I've changed my mind," Rachel started to say jokingly. But whatever she had wanted to say next was lost because her pretty, human face turned hard and bronze, and her mouth split into the clicking mouthparts of a roach.