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  The camera moved around behind it so that we could see a bulge containing no fewer than two dozen baby henchbeasts—they were growing right out of the creature’s back! And, right then and there, several of the offspring took advantage of the lifted shirt to separate from their parent’s flesh and leap to the floor.

  The next scene was from a chicken coop filled with hundreds upon hundreds of the henchbeast offspring, leaping and clinging to the arms and legs of an overburdened alien parent who was attempting to refill a trough with motor oil.

  “If they can breed that quickly…” Judy started to say. “Yeah,” I continued, “this planet’s toast.”

  Chapter 59

  SO THAT WAS Number 5’s plan. And a darn good one too… I mean, if your objective is to generate close to two billion hours of exploitative entertainment and destroy an entire species in the process.

  Well, at least I could cross four more items off the mystery board:

  1)Why had Number 5 picked relatively weak, unintelligent henchbeasts as his primary helpers? Because this particular species happened to replicate and grow to adulthood faster than any other in the cosmos, meaning Number 5 would be able to breed a big enough goon squad in time to get his show on the air for the next intergalactic network season.

  2)What was the deal with all the motor oil I’d seen the aliens stealing and guzzling? Nothing has more easily digestible raw calories for this species—useful for rapidly growing babies, and their parents—than motor oil.

  3)Why were the aliens always lapping up the sludge left behind by their melted human victims? Because, while it’s high in calories, a diet of motor oil is lacking in certain essential vitamins and minerals, whereas a melted human body has lots of essential nutritive ingredients needed for raising healthy aliens.

  4)What was the deal with the fish food the women had been purchasing at S-Mart that day? They’d been taking it to feed the baby Number 5s they were raising in the fish ponds at Wiggers’ farm.

  So now I just had a few dozen remaining questions to answer. Questions, you know, like, was there a weakness in his plan?

  Personally, I was starting to have doubts.

  “Judy,” I said, “let’s get you home now, okay?”

  She didn’t say anything, which I thought was strange. But not as strange as what I saw when I turned to speak to her—because there was nobody there.

  Chapter 60

  “WHERE THE —?!” I started to say, but then I spotted her—on one of the van’s monitors. She had taken the bazooka and was running across the road between the parking garage and the TV station.

  No time to waste chasing to her, so I decided to teleport myself instead. It’s a skill Dad had me practicing lately. I really had to grok where it was I needed to go, and it required way more focus than I could usually pull off near the clutches of an alien… but right now, Judy was running straight into a death trap, and there was only one thing I cared about.

  I materialized on the sidewalk in front of her and—as gently as possible, of course—tackled her and shoved her into the hedges in front of the station.

  “Are you crazy?!”

  “Let go of me, Daniel.”

  “You think you can run over here with a gun and take on the twenty-first-most-powerful alien on the planet—and who knows how many of his goons—just like that?”

  “You said yourself it was a pretty powerful gun.”

  “Yeah, well, if you can get them to agree to stand in a straight line and not move while you squeeze the trigger, sure, you might have a chance. But there’s a bigger chance they’d turn that thing against you.”

  “But you were just sitting there watching and listening, and every single passing minute these monsters are getting a little closer to taking over not just Holliswood but the whole planet! You said so yourself!”

  She was like a tiger trying to wrench herself out of my grasp to keep running. Then, all at once, she went limp under my weight and looked at me sadly. “I know you don’t have any family left to save… but I have mine.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

  “I mean, if you could go back in time and have another chance to save your parents, wouldn’t you?”

  “Look, Judy, you can have all the powerful weapons in the world, but if you don’t have a plan—and if you don’t know what you’re getting into—you won’t have a snowball’s chance in Atlanta.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in fighting evil aliens, it’s that it’s very important to do some serious homework. You see, with tests like this, there are no makeup exams. You fail, and that’s the end.”

  “But with your powers…”

  “My powers are only as good as my imagination. And my imagination is only as good as what I’ve learned. That’s why I have to study things really hard. If we bide our time, we’ll have a better chance.”

  “Prove it, Daniel,” Judy demanded, but her steely blue eyes softened a little now.

  “Okay,” I went on, secretly admiring her negotiating skills. “Since I have the sense that you aren’t going to go home quietly unless I prove what I mean, let’s at least leave the gun here and sneak inside so I can show you something that will change your mind, okay?”

  “And if you’re not right, you give me back the bazooka—plus a platoon of Navy SEALs—to help me bust in through the front door.”

  She looked me in the eye, and we both started to smile.

  “But if you are right,” she went on, “what do you get from me?”

  “Then I get to take you home and, um, you have to go about your life like normal till I give the sign, okay?”

  “That’s it?” she asked, leaning in close. “You can’t think of anything else you might like?”

  And so we made out right there in the bushes in front of the alien-infested TV station.

  And while I’m not an Alien Hunter who’s in the habit of kissing and telling, I made up my mind—next time I saw her in her diner uniform—to change her name tag from “Judy Blue Eyes” to “Judy Mind Blower.”

  Chapter 61

  WE SNUCK INTO the station through the freight entrance at the back of the building.

  The first thing we noticed was that the place smelled like a zoo—a zoo at which the cage cleaners had been on strike for a week. It’s a well-documented fact that personal hygiene is a really low-priority item for the Outer Ones, but it never fails to take my breath away when I go somewhere they’ve been—especially if the windows haven’t been left open.

  I had to make us invisible twice as patrolling henchbeasts scuttled past, but we found our way to the alien-built central server core on the second floor without too much trouble.

  I quickly sat down at the administrator’s terminal and brought up a blinking holographic map of the world, which spun slowly in the center of the room. Every village, town, and city on Earth was labeled in successively wider rings of color radiating from the tiny red bull’s-eye that was Holliswood, ending in a big blue circle that covered the backside of the planet.

  Each color zone had a countdown clock on it. Holliswood’s was counting down below 73 hours now, while the next ring was counting down from 273 hours, the one after that 473 hours, the one after that 673 hours… all the way to the last at 4,473 hours, which corresponded to about six months from now, the equivalent of an intergalactic broadcast season.

  “I knew it,” I said. “This town is just the pilot episode.”

  “So this is just the beginning…” Judy echoed.

  “And in a matter of months, they will have filmed the demise of every single human settlement on the planet, from New York City to the smallest fishing village on the Indian Ocean.”

  “Okay, but there’s something you haven’t thought about,” Judy challenged. “If these goons are, like, doubling their population every few days, how’s the chief alien going to control them all? You said he’s the director—and directors are the ones who make the shows work, right? All those aliens are
going to need somebody to tell them how to run each location, and he can’t very well get to over a thousand cities in a single day… can he? I mean he sure doesn’t look like Santa Claus.”

  “Well, Sherlock, that’s the reason he has the women of Holliswood coughing up his babies in that pond.”

  “So I guess his kids must grow pretty fast too. But can they become smart enough to run a filmed invasion that quickly?”

  “I don’t know exactly how it’s possible, but I bet he’s figured that out too. I think I may have seen some training equipment that will let him manage that end of things.”

  “Okay, Mr. Alien Smarty Pants, so is that what you wanted to show me?” Judy asked, sounding skeptical. “I mean, still, won’t it be harder to put these guys out of business when there are millions of them, rather than just hundreds, like right now? Shouldn’t we go ahead and attack before they’ve bred?”

  “Well, there’s one more thing,” I said, typing in a code. The display in front of us briefly flashed “Emergency Abort Test 2,” and then a crowd of shoppers dancing the Electric Slide in some grocery store checkout lines appeared on-screen.

  After about fifteen seconds, the music was interrupted by Number 5’s voice. “Very nice! Now stop dancing,” he said, and began to laugh. “And, now… stop breathing.”

  First one fell, then another, then dozens of victims collapsed to the floor. I fast-forwarded so we didn’t have to watch the whole horrible thing but stopped where a henchbeast walked out, kicked a couple of the bodies, and gave a thumbs-up.

  “Ex-cellent,” Number 5 chortled.

  I stopped the playback. How could any intelligent being be so twisted? I mean, I guess I’d seen evil before, but the fact that he was doing this just for laughs…

  “So you mean —?” asked Judy.

  “Yeah, he can make people die at his command.”

  “Including my parents?” she asked, drawing a deep breath and wiping her eyes.

  I nodded.

  “Promise me you’re going to stop him, Daniel.”

  “I promise we’ll stop him,” I said. “Now let’s get out of this place and get you home.”

  Chapter 62

  “LOOKS LIKE WE made it with three minutes to spare,” I said as we pulled up in front of her house.

  “What? My curfew, you mean? Now there’s a joke. Here, let’s go for a walk,” she said.

  “I’d like nothing better, Ms. Blue Eyes, but this is our first date, and I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with your parents, and, anyhow, there’s kind of this alien invasion going on that I’ve been entrusted with shutting down and —”

  The front door opened, and Mr. and Mrs. McGillicutty rushed out onto the porch.

  “Did everything go okay?” asked Judy’s mom, clutching her husband’s arm nervously and looking accusingly at her daughter. Mr. McG seemed pretty agitated himself.

  “We had a great time,” said Judy, annoyance starting to cloud her concern for her parents.

  “Are you sure?” asked Mr. McG.

  “What’s the matter with you two?” asked Judy. “I’m back before curfew, aren’t I?”

  “Well, that’s just it, dear. How good a date could you have been if he got you home before curfew?! Daniel, was she rude? Did she remember to say please and thank-you?”

  “Your daughter is the loveliest, smartest, bravest girl I’ve ever had the privilege of taking on a date, Mrs. McG.”

  It was Judy’s turn to blush.

  “Well,” said Judy’s mom, and she and her husband immediately brightened. “Well, in that case—I mean we’re not trying to rush you or anything—but we want to let you know we’re really laid back, and you don’t need to come to Mr. McGillicutty and formally ask for her hand. Whatever you two are comfortable w—”

  “MOM!!!”

  “What, dear? I just want to lay things out there for Daniel’s benefit —”

  “You guys homeschooling me in academics is one thing, but telling me how to conduct my social life, and talking to me about marriage —!”

  “Don’t yell at your mother, Judy. We just happen to have some experience with these things, and when the right person comes along, well, you can just tell.”

  “That’s right, Dad, I can tell. You don’t need to tell me in front of a date and embarrass me beyond all reason.”

  “But Daniel here’s such a terrif—”

  “Actually, I’m not as perfect as you guys might think,” I said, backing slowly down the stairs. “I mean, I really have my share of issues. I’ve had trouble maintaining a fixed residence —”

  “I could clear out the rooms above the garage for you,” suggested Mrs. McG. “There’s even a working shower over there —”

  “And I regularly find myself cavorting with disreputable types. Really disreputable types —”

  “Look, he’s even self-effacing!” said Judy’s mom.

  “They’re right, honey,” Mr. McG relented, winking at his wife. “Let’s stay out of this. Why don’t we go to the kitchen and rewash some dishes so that we’re out of their hair and they can have their space?”

  “Oh, okay. Right,” said Judy’s mom, giving her own subtlety-free wink back at her husband.

  “I’m so sorry about them,” whispered Judy as they went back into the house. “Actually, I’m mortified.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I whispered back. “I expect Number 5’s recent mind games have affected their social boundaries a little is all. The brain’s a delicate organ, you know. Probably when he zapped them, he caused some unintentional side effects. Like making them desperate for you to get married to an alien,” I explained, thinking that he probably didn’t intend for them to pick this particular alien.

  “Gosh, I hope you’re right. My life is over if they’re going to treat my dates like this. Not that I can imagine dating anybody but you, of course. Daniel, I really did have a wonderful evening, even if it did mostly revolve around those nightmarish aliens.”

  I probably would have blushed even if she hadn’t given me a kiss right then, but she did, and my head nearly burst with happiness.

  “I can’t believe those aliens want to make a comedy of us,” she said.

  “The Divine Comedy, maybe,” I babbled.

  “Aw, you’re so sweet,” she said, and gave me a kiss I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

  Chapter 63

  “YOU OKAY BACK there?” I asked through the helmet’s intercom.

  “You’re going a little fast, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” I said, briefly popping a wheelie, and bringing the speedometer up to 110 miles per hour.

  I was elated. It was a beautiful day, and I finally had a solid theory about how I might possibly stop Number 5.

  Also, I was alone with one of my favorite people in the whole universe.

  “Stop squeezing so hard, Dana,” I said. Taking Judy along this morning to check out Number 5’s farm had been out of the question, of course—because of my vow never to imperil any humans, and my need to concentrate.

  “Well, slow down! You’re making me wish we’d gone to school instead.”

  “School—I totally forgot!” I said. “This could be a problem.”

  I pulled the bike over, and we took off our helmets.

  “What’s the big deal?” asked Dana. “We’ve only been once. You think they’re going to miss us?”

  “The problem is that we’re on the books now. And if they don’t get a call, and I don’t show up, they may have a truant officer stop by the house. And if a truant officer goes out to the house and finds nobody there, he may call it in on a radio or a cell phone. If he does that, Number 5 may just pick up the signal and wonder what’s going on. Because, you see, Dad’s program, if it’s working, has been fooling him into thinking I’m there. And this could blow that cover.”

  “I guess you’re pretty smart anticipating a problem like that,” said Dana, one hand on her hip and the other
extended toward me, her finger and thumb pinched together. “But clearly you’re not so smart about other things.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, and swallowed nervously as I saw that she was holding a long black hair.

  “Been riding around with somebody with wavy black hair, Daniel? This was on the collar of your motorcycle jacket.”

  “Oh, um, that, well… you know I really better get Mom here to deal with that truant officer situation, so, sorry if this seems sudden —”

  I dematerialized Dana and took a deep breath before summoning Mom.

  In some ways, this girl business was way more complicated than hunting aliens.

  Chapter 64

  “MOM,” I SAID. “Here’s your iPhone. Do you think you could call your friend at the principal’s office and tell her I’m sick?”

  “Of course, honey,” she said, and happily dialed the school’s attendance line.

  “Yes, this is Mrs. Exley calling again—Daniel’s mother?… Fine. How are you today?… That’s wonderful. And your policies? How are they?… What do I mean? I mean if you were a normal person, I might ask about your family, but it seems clear to me that school district policies are what’s closest to your heart…

  “Well, that’s all very interesting, but actually this isn’t a social call. I’m just following up to say that Daniel’s staying home today.… No, it’s for none of the reasons he stayed home yesterday.

  “Today, you see, he’s quite sick.… You need his doctor’s name, you say? No problemo. You have a pen? I’m going to warn you, he has more than one disease, and we’re seeing a bunch of different specialists today.

  “Number ten: He is being treated by Doctor Yuri Fishman for voltaic catfish fever.

  “Number nine: He’s seeing Doctor Yvonne Yurmunni for interstellar impecuniosity.

  “Number eight: He has an appointment with Doctor Darth Crater for his space pox vaccination.