snarled. “How’s yours?”
“I just thought....”
“At a time like this, your scientific experiments are out of place. Set up your fun-fair project tomorrow.”
“I think it’s important to know how far away it is,” I informed Chester.
“The only thing that’s important,” Chester told me calmly, “is that it doesn’t get any closer.”
It got closer. Adding a weird meep meep sound to its orchestration, it started blinking an insistent red light at us and growing smoothly larger.
“Is it after us?” I asked.
“Come on,” Chester said. “Let’s not stay here and find out.”
We started running, following the trail. Chester and I ran as fast as we could, which was pretty fast considering our sedentary lives. Sylvia loped along with us with the easy grace of a young gazelle. I decided to tell her to run faster if she could and let us catch up, but I didn’t have enough breath to talk and run at the same time.
The saucer swerved slightly, correcting its aim and settling whether it was after us or not, and I tripped. Flat on my face. The gravel dug into my nose and forehead and something sharp scraped across my leg. My eyes filled with a warm, sticky wetness and I couldn’t see. There was no pain, and my brain seemed curiously clear. Everything was happening in slow motion. I tried to get up, but my leg wouldn’t work and I fell back down. At least, I thought, this will give Chester and Sylvia a better chance to get away. I wondered whether there would someday be a brass marker at the spot where I had fallen.
Two hands tugged at my elbow, a slim arm was slid under my shoulder, and in a second I was on my feet. “Can you walk?” Sylvia inquired anxiously.
“You are the clumsiest person on the whole West Coast,” panted Chester.
It is a curious trait of the human animal that in times of stress, if he doesn’t panic, he tends to become overly polite and verbose. Well, anyway, I do. “If you two would proceed up the trail, I shall endeavor to follow as soon as possible,” said I. “Not that I don’t fully appreciate your stopping for me.”
“Don’t be silly,” Chester said. “Here, wipe the blood off your face.” He handed me a great square of fabric.
“Look!” Sylvia said.
“Wow!” Chester breathed.
“Where?” I asked, trying to clear my eyes. “At what? What’s happening?” As soon as I could see, I looked around. There was nothing in sight but trees. “Where is it?” I yelped, turning quickly through three hundred and sixty degrees. “What happened to it?”
“It disappeared in sections,” Sylvia said. “I saw it blink out.”
“In sections?”
“Yars,” drawled Chester in the accent he uses to explain anything he doesn’t understand. “In sections, from left to right. As if it were the moon and a cloud passed in front of it.”
“You don’t think that could be it, do you?” I asked, staring apprehensively at the sky. “Or maybe it just turned its running lights out.”
“No,” Chester said “There was something permanent about this. Besides, you can see stars through where it was. It’s gone.”
I brushed myself off. “I wonder what it was.”
“I thought we’d already settled that,” said Chester, smiling tightly at me. “It’s a flying saucer.”
I discovered I could walk, so we continued down the trail.
“I hope it didn’t frighten Adolphus too much,” Sylvia said.
I had the sudden notion that it might be what had happened to Adolphus, but I didn’t say it.
“Are you all right?” Chester asked me. “Do you want to go on, or go back and get medicated?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just a few abrasions. Continue the quest.”
Sylvia took my hand and looked at me solemnly. “I’m glad, Michael the Theodore Bear, that you were not hurt.” Somehow the nickname, which Chester had fastened on me when the world was young, didn’t sound so silly when Sylvia said it.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Then, let us find Adolphus.” She sang, “Trala, tralee. Would you tootle a little, Chester?” Sylvia had amazing powers of recuperation. She skipped ahead of us on the path.
“A lot of things seem to be happening all at once,” I told Chester.
“Enemy action,” he replied.
“Huh?”
“That’s what you told me once. An old Army motto you had found when you were doing those war books. ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.’ This is the third time.”
“You have a point,” I admitted as we walked down the path together. “I wonder what next?”
B
L
I
P
CHAPTER THREE
That answered my question. Something had happened, although I had no idea what. First of all, there was that blip. It wasn’t exactly a sound, it was more like a feeling —a gut-wrenching, universe-shaking, giant blip of a feeling. Then there were the changes.
It was now daylight; seemingly early morning, just after dawn, but nonetheless daylight. We were still in the middle of a woods, but it was a different woods. It was more ordered: the trees seemed almost laid out in rows. The path was now a narrow brick road. A narrow —as a matter of fact —yellow brick road.
“Michael! Chester! Help!”
We ran ahead. There, sitting on yellow bricks, was Sylvia. She was crying; long, convulsive sobs that racked her thin body and left her shaking. “Help me. Please. It’s awful,” she gasped.
“She’s hysterical,” Chester said helpfully.
“What’s the matter, Sylvia?” I asked, squatting down beside her. Silly question; what wasn’t?
Chester bent over us. “Slap her on the back,” he suggested. “Put your head between your legs,” he told Sylvia.
I ignored him. “You’ll be all right,” I told Sylvia, taking her in my arms and holding her tightly. “Come on, now. What’s the matter?”
Sylvia clutched my arm tightly for a minute and then let go and pushed me away. “Let me lie down for a while, please. That...thing...whatever it was, twisted my insides all up. Didn’t you feel it?”
“We felt it,” I told her, rolling my jacket up and putting
