“Aren’t you coming in?” Aggy asked Logan in front of the library. Thatcher, Kian, and Darius walked on.
“No. If I can’t stake out the Sarrises’ house, I’ll stake out Sandwiches. At least two dogs have been taken from there. I’m betting Mr. Sarris shows up again. This time I’ll stop him.”
“I really think he’s a regular guy, Logan. Just because he’s hairy and wasn’t born in America doesn’t make him—”
“An alien?” Logan asked with a smirk.
“Not the kind you mean,” Aggy said, and walked away.
Logan moved over to his tree to set up.
It was that time again, between school and dinner, when a lot of people converged on Sandwiches, including people with dogs. Logan watched as they patted their dogs good-bye, told them to be good, to be quiet, and to stay, or tied them to the bike rack or the
BUS STOP
sign or a bench. Some of the dogs waited patiently, panting, their long tongues curling. A few whimpered. One, a clumsy, tawny puppy with big paws, whined loudly and pitiably. People came over and petted it, some spoke baby talk to it. The pup calmed down until they left, then resumed whining. Logan noted all of this on his clipboard.
In time, his friends and Darius reemerged from the library. Aggy was carrying
Pinky Pye
, the sequel to
Ginger Pye.
“Did you see anything suspicious?” Kian asked Logan.
Logan shook his head, then, speaking to Darius, added, “I haven’t seen your dad.”
“Stop that, Logan,” Aggy said. “It’s not funny, and it’s not nice.”
“I’m not trying to be funny or nice,” Logan said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Darius said. “He probably just feels bad about not having a dad of his own.”
Logan whirled around. “What did you say?” he said, leaning in close to Darius.
“I say we should stop talking about each other’s dads.”
Logan glowered at Thatcher, then Kian, wondering which had revealed personal information about him to Darius.
“You’re not watching the store,” Aggy said.
Logan huffed, then returned to his stakeout.
“Hey,” he said, after lifting his binoculars to his eyes. “Where’s the puppy?”
“What puppy?” Thatcher asked. “Where was it? Was it stolen?”
“There was a puppy tied up outside the door just a second ago,” Logan said. “Now it’s gone.”
“Its owner came out and got him?” Darius suggested.
“Yeah, probably,” Aggy said, but her voice was tainted with doubt.
“It wasn’t its owner that got him,” Logan said. ” Come on. Crew!” And he ran toward the store, his backpack bouncing behind him as he went.
“Is he serious?” Darius asked Aggy. “He really thinks a dog was stolen in the split second he looked away?”
“That’s how it happened with Festus.” Her eyes widened.
“Come on!” she said, and ran after Logan. The three boys fell in behind her.
When Logan reached the store’s entrance, he found a woman in brightly colored Lycra bike clothes glancing about, a confused look on her face.
“Was it your pup, ma’am?” Logan asked.
“Pardon me?” she said.
“Your pup, ma’am. Was it yours?”
“She must have gotten loose….”
“Is this her collar, ma’am?” Logan asked, lifting a yellow leather collar attached to a nylon lead, the other end of which was tied to the bike rack.
The woman looked at it. “Yes, that’s Nilla’s.”
Logan dropped the collar and walked past her into the store, confident he’d find Mr. Sarris there. He peered down the store’s four aisles, checking out the deli and the produce section. No hairy guy.
When he was running back out of the front door, he slammed into Darius.
“Whoa, there,” Darius said.
“You!” Logan said. “Where’s your dad?”
“I thought we talked about this.”
“He has to be around …,” Logan said, and ran off down the sidewalk.
The woman began calling, “Nilla! Nilla! Where are you, Nilla!”
Aggy recognized the woman’s growing panic and tried to comfort her. “It’s okay. We’ll find her. We’ll find her.”
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Thatcher added. “We’re the Canine Rescue Unit. The Crew. We’re on it.”
“Right,” Kian said.
“The what?” Darius asked.
A couple of blocks away, Logan spotted the old man in the electric wheelchair rolling along the sidewalk. Logan was supposed to be looking for the puppy thief, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to compare the wheelchair to the one pictured in the flyer. He had it with him this time, in his backpack.
“Excuse me, sir!” he called, running toward the man. “Excuse me!”
Instead of stopping, the wheelchair accelerated.
Logan did, too.
“Wait, sir!” he yelled. “I only want to ask you a question!”
At the corner, the wheelchair turned sharply to the right, so sharply the chair’s left wheels momentarily lifted off the ground.
“Whoa! Careful!” Logan yelled.
Though he was pretty sure he was now in pursuit of a thief of a different kind—not a dognapper, but a chairnapper—Logan didn’t want to see an old man thrown from his speeding, motorized mobility aid.
He cut the chairnapper off by crossing diagonally through the parking lot of an alternative medical center, then planted himself in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the wheelchair’s path. The old man let go of the joystick, and the wheelchair slowed to a stop.
The man wore the same dark blue stocking cap as before. This time he had no paper to duck behind, and his huge, dark sunglasses had slid down to the tip of his long, sloped nose. His eyes were extremely far apart, and their large, dusky irises practically crowded out all the white. His mouth was broad, his lips sucked in, his chin knobby and bare, save for the fine gray whiskers that covered most of his face. He was hunched in his chair, his narrow shoulders wrapped in a plaid shawl, wheezing softly but rapidly. This wheezing led Logan to look again at the man’s nose, which was when he noticed that the man had no nostrils.
“You again,” the man said, though his mouth remained shut. A faint amber glow pulsed beneath his chin.
“Hello, sir,” Logan said. “I wanted to ask you—”
The man’s mouth suddenly gaped wide, revealing long rows of small, rounded teeth and a big, pink, triangular tongue that tightened and vibrated.
Logan blacked out.
Hovering dogs. That’s what Logan saw when he awoke. Hovering dogs, tumbling and twisting in the air, some paddling their legs as if in slow motion, others just drifting. They were not easy to count, but Logan put their number at between ten and thirteen.
Logan was also hovering. Like the dogs, he floated in midair, weightless and naked.
“This must be a dream,” he said, his words sounding gurgly, as if they came from his mouth inside bubbles.
He had the sense he was floating in a room of some kind, but that the blue-hued walls, floor, and ceiling were translucent and elastic. He was trapped inside a big blue balloon filled with blue Jell-O.
Whatever it was that kept Logan and the dogs aloft—was it a liquid? a gas? something in between?—it was breathable, like air, and gave them the ability to defy gravity. Which was not unpleasant. In fact, it was fun.
Some of the dogs were making their way toward Logan, dog paddling through the air, and so he attempted to meet them halfway, via the breaststroke. It was slow going through the gummy air. Kicking his feet helped.
The first dog he met was Pickles, the dog that had vanished out of her collar as Logan was boarding the school bus. He offered her his open hand. She sniffed his fingers, then licked them.
“Hi, Pickles,” he gurgled.
Other dogs arrived, some that Logan recognized from the flyers, including a little Pomeranian mix: Ollie. And there was Nilla, the puppy that had disappeared from Sandwiches. It had been while looking for Nilla’s thief that Logan had come across the old man in the wheelchair, and chased him down, and discovered what a very odd-looking man he was; how, in fact, he had …
“No nostrils,” Logan said aloud.
He remembered the old man opening his huge mouth.
“Maybe the old guy conked me on the head. Maybe he knocked me unconscious. Maybe he’s the dognapper? He was at Sandwiches when Festus disappeared. He was the only one around, in fact. Did he beam me here? Did he beam the dogs? Is this his spaceship?”
The dogs began to bark and wag their tails sluggishly through the water. Logan sensed there was someone behind him and spun around to find a creature swiftly and gracefully approaching him. It was bigger than a dog, as big as a man. When it was upon him, Logan saw it had a gray face, with wide-set eyes, a sloped nose, and a broad grin. It was the face of the old man in the wheelchair. The body attached to it was not wearing a sweatsuit or a shawl. It was not wearing anything. It had flippers. And a tail.
The old man was a dolphin.
The dolphin circled twice, then rose into a vertical position, face-to-face with Logan. Its expression did not seem angry. It seemed curious.
Pickles swam to the creature and licked its face. The creature made a shrill, chipper, gurgling sound.
Upon closer inspection, Logan found reasons to question his conclusion that the creature was a dolphin—or, at least, a dolphin from Earth. The creature had flippers, for example, but on the tip of each it had fingers and a thumb. Its body was long and sleek, but its lower half was separated into two legs with no knees and flukes at the end. The dorsal fin was short and blunt, as was its beak—blunt enough to allow the creature to pass as human, Logan thought.
“You aren’t a dolphin, are you?” Logan asked.
A small dot of golden light glowed from the alien’s throat, as if through its skin.
“No,” the creature replied. Its beak didn’t open and close when it spoke, the sound coming more from its throat than its mouth. The voice was less shrill and chipper than before, less dolphiny, more human sounding. All of this made Logan suspicious.
“Is that a translation device in your throat?” he asked, pointing at the golden spot.
The creature nodded deeply, almost bowing, which afforded Logan a view of the blowhole on top of its head.
“You’re not from Earth, are you?” Logan asked.
Again the golden spot glowed, and the creature replied, “I am not.”
“What planet are you from?”
“I can tell you what it is called,” the alien said, “but I don’t think you’ll be able to hear it. The name is spoken at a frequency higher than humans can hear.”
“I’d like to hear it anyway.”
The alien opened its mouth. Its pink, triangular tongue tightened and vibrated, as it had before Logan blacked out.
The dogs howled.
“You were right,” he said. “I couldn’t hear it.”
“The dogs could,” the alien said.
“Are you male or female?” Logan asked. “Or do you have something else on your planet?”
“Female.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Not one you can hear.”
“I’ll just say ‘ma’am,’ then.”
“What is ‘ma’am’?”
“It’s the polite word for a woman.”
“I see.”
“Why did you come to Earth, ma’am?” Logan asked.
“We came because you have water, and an atmosphere with oxygen. We were on a treasure-seeking mission. My employer wanted to stop to see if there was anything of interest on your planet, anything we might bring home and sell.”
“And your employer liked our dogs?”
“Yes. We don’t have dogs on our planet.”
“So your boss started beaming them here?”
“What is ‘beaming’?”
“Zapping them. Disintegrating them and then reintegrating them.”
The light in her throat glowed longer for this one, as if extra translation was required.
“That is not precisely how it’s done,” she said, “but yes, my employer has been sending the dogs here.”
“How is it done … precisely?” Logan asked.
“It involves sound. High-frequency sounds. We produce, and can hear, much higher sounds than humans. Like your dolphins. And your dogs. That is one of the things my employer likes about your dogs. They can hear us.”
“Why don’t you steal dolphins?”
“My employer says the dolphins are too similar to us. Yet primitive.”
“Interesting,” Logan said, and reached back for his clipboard to make some notes, when he remembered he didn’t have his backpack. It was back on Earth. With his clothes.
“Where is your employer, ma’am?”
“In your town. He poses as an old man.”
“Aha!” Logan said. “So you’re not him. You’re a second alien!”
He had assumed wrong: this was not the alien in the wheelchair. He had also assumed right, though: there was more than one.
“You look a lot like your boss, ma’am,” he said.
“Maybe to human eyes,” the alien said.
“Do you go to Earth, too, and steal dogs?”
The alien shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t do that. I stay here and take care of them.”
She reached out and scratched the top of Pickles’s head. Pickles panted.
“They like you, don’t they, ma’am?”
“I like them.”
Logan thought he detected a smile on her face. Unfortunately, the alien’s mouth, like the mouth of the creature she resembled, always seemed to be grinning.
“Does your boss plan to take over Earth, ma’am?” Logan asked.
“No. He just wants to take the dogs.”
“
All
of them?”
“No. Only as many as we can carry.”
“What about me?” Logan asked. “Are you going to take me?”
The alien didn’t answer.
“You’re going to send me home, aren’t you?” Logan asked, his voice starting to shake.
It hit him that it was possible he would not see his home—his mom, his friends, his dog, his
planet
—ever again, that he had really been abducted by aliens and was being held prisoner in outer space.
Outer space.
While this was tremendously exciting to Logan, it was also absolutely terrifying.
The alien flapped her flippers, causing her to drift away from him.
“What
are
you going to do with me, ma’am?” His fear was rapidly transforming into anger.
The alien retreated farther.
“I want to go
home
!” Logan screamed.
“Now!”
With a single, mighty beat of her legs, the alien was gone.