Eviction Notice Page 2

  When Gary asked me to come up with a design, I said of course, before I considered at all what it might take. I searched the web for hours trying to come up with something that would be great – but also something that we could actually do. Some of those crop circles on the web were amazing and really complicated: big swooshes and swirls and twisted interlocking patterns. I needed something much simpler if we had to do it all by hand. In the end, I made the design as an homage to the Dickers' prank from last year. I had their Do-Be-Do-Be-Do stuck in my head for weeks, and then it hit me, a pattern like that sound: round, high, round, high, round. It looked alien enough. Like stick figures, or planets with crosses, but on a really huge scale.

  The week after graduation we finally got everything ready. And on Thursday night we grabbed plywood, rope, flashlights, a heavy stake, and a sledgehammer, a GPS, and lots of Monster to keep us up. Gary had the excellent idea of scoring sulphur from the science lab to spray all over the site. We stayed at my house going over the final plans. Dad goes to sleep pretty early, being a farmer and all, and my dogs, Rusty and Gyp, know Jenny and the guys really well, so we wouldn't have any trouble sneaking out without a ruckus. If we kept on track, I'd be back before dad got up.

  At 11:00 we headed out. If dad heard us he would just figure Barnaby and Gary were going home, which was normal enough for a summer night. Also, in the back of my mind, I think I figured Dad was aware that something was going on. He never hid the fact that he had gotten that truck up on the school roof back in his day, and for the past couple of weeks he'd given us lots of time to ourselves without butting in.

  We took Barnaby's old junker car and went to his house, stacked the plywood and stuff in my uncle Roger's truck and headed out. We got to Eller's place about midnight. He's got two thousand acres of corn next to twenty acres of woods down by a creek. It's well off the main road so no one would see us. When I first saw it, I got why Gary was so adamant about Jenny's getting the arial photography. If not for the media plan, nobody was ever going to see it way out here. It would have been a very lame prank.

  The corn was still real green, but it was already five feet tall. The night was cold for June, with a million stars when the moon got low in the sky, so I was glad we had something to do to stay warm. I was only wearing a tanktop and had to borrow Gary's flannel, or else I would have frozen. Gary and Barnaby hauled the plywood. Jenny and I brought the stakes and rope and stuff.

  Gary already knew where we'd put it. He'd scoped it out days before: exactly the meeting place of 42 degrees north latitude and 94 degrees west longitude. That had to have meaning to someone. I mean if I were a space alien, I would want my symbol right on the big lines crossing the globe too.

  We had a good area picked out, about two or three hundred yards from the dirt road, and about a hundred yards from the woods. The area was dry and level – not surprising for where we live – but with lots of good, even stalks, tall and leafy. We had hundreds of feet of rope, which would be necessary to make the circles exactly round, and in line. So first we drove the stake where the center of the first circle would go. Then we went in a line east, marked the end about 220 feet away and ran the centers off that line.

  It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. The plywood had been cut into four-foot squares, and got very heavy, the rope caught on everything, and we got a million paper cuts from the edges of the corn leaves. We took turns standing in the middle of each of the circles as we made them, drawing out more rope in a radius, making sure that the center stake didn't come loose and the rope stayed tight. Then everyone else took the big, four-by-four pieces of heavy plywood and pressed the stalks of corn flat to the ground in a big spiral. It seemed like it took forever, but eventually we got it done: three large circles in a perfect line, each one fifty feet across, with lines making crosses between each circle. Gary then walked around and sprayed sulfur all over the place from a plant-food sprayer, while I checked the measurements. Finally we met up in the center to look at our work. The lines were straight and the circles perfectly round, but still it was kind of disappointing, because it was pretty hard to get the feel of it from right in the middle and with barely any light.

  “I brought these,” Jenny said, handing out four candles, “for a séance.”

  “A christening!” said Gary.

  “Do-be-do-be-do,” I chimed in, and we all broke down into laughing.

  Jenny lit our candles and got us all quiet, “Great spirit of the universe, send us your magical powers.”

  “And keep the cops away,” Barnaby snorted as Jenny started slapping him.

  I thought it might get kind of awkward if they got all lovey-dovey there in the dark with the candles and stars, so it was good she started hitting him.

  Suddenly the alarm in my cell went off.

  “Darn. If I'm going to make it home before dad gets up, we've gotta go.”

  “I bet we get in the news,” Jenny said, as we scrambled to gather up all our stakes, ropes, food, sodas, and everything.

  “We'd better, or this will be a big waste of time,” Gary said, raising his eyebrows, as he looked around to make sure we didn't leave any evidence behind.

  We scuttled off to uncle Roger's truck and started off. As we headed out, I could see the tiniest hint of light slipping into the east. It was going to be close, but they dropped me off at the driveway so my dogs wouldn't bark and wake up dad, and I jogged the quarter mile to my house. I had to stop off at the barn to let Rusty and Gyp know it was me so they didn't go crazy, and then I headed in.

  The stairs creaked as I snuck in, but I got to bed in time, and just before I fell asleep I heard my dad's alarm go off.

  You see what I mean? I'm not the end of the world type. Real end of the world people probably don't care about their dad, or their alarm, or how cool their senior prank will be. They probably don't even have cell phones. Real end of the world types have bunkers, and five-year stocks of Campbell's Soup and 500 gallons of water stored up in jugs. They have short-wave radios and guns and fierce dogs, and... Well, okay, Rusty and Gyp are actually pretty terrifying, and dad's got a few guns, and the truth is, he's got 1000 gallons of water in the cistern. But he's a farmer. Farmers aren't end-of-the-worlders. A little crazy maybe. But not end-of-the-worlders.

  Anyway, the point is, after we left, as a thin ribbon of dawn stole across the eastern horizon, and our beautiful crop circle stood staring into the millions of stars, one of those stars just fell out of the sky. This bright greenish star bent over the earth and suddenly broke into a bunch of pieces all streaking to the ground, and sending the distant air a little thup, tup, tup. Or at least, that's how it would have sounded if people heard it in Ogden, but right up close, it must have been like the sky exploded. A meteorite blasting out of the stars, becoming big fireballs that ripped up the quiet night. They landed in the fields and woods right next to our crop circle, setting the woods on fire, throwing dirt and dust way up into the air, and gouging huge grooves into the ground.

  And well, there it was. All this mess because of our dumb senior prank. Do-be-do-be-do.

  Chapter 3

  Space Traders

  WHAT was so bad about some meteorite hitting a cornfield in Iowa? Well it turned out that this was no ordinary moon rock. It was a space pod, and it was supposed to be carrying a delivery to some very strange people.

  About the time I was falling asleep in Iowa, out on the east coast, the morning was a good bit farther along. The sun was above the horizon. Beautiful golden light was chasing away the fog. You wouldn't guess that you were in a marsh right outside of an amazing city like New York. Long-legged birds stalked the shores looking for fish. Quiet breezes made hardly a ripple on the water, which swapped places here and there with the muddy shore, for mile upon mile. A light mist floated silently over the rushes and sedges, and huge canes of marsh grass stood so still you'd think they were just waiting for some space alien to come smoosh them right down into a great big crop circle. And that's just what happened next.

  Right about 6:30 in the morning, a bunch of the canes simply collapsed in a great swoosh. Then another swirl fell, and another, as a crop circle opened in New Jersey, in the same pattern we had just made more than a thousand miles away: round, high, round, high, round.

  Tall canes with full seed-headed spikes all smashed in spiral circles connected by a straight line with crosses in between. It was almost a perfect match. In fact, from above, this crop circle looked exactly like ours. And from the monitor of the alien space ship circling low over the Earth, and coming in for a landing in New Jersey to meet up with the delivery space pod that just crashed in Iowa, there was really no way at all to tell them apart.

  This particular monitor was on the bridge of a space ship owned by someone named Aloon Zigilbraxis, an actual space alien. He was waiting for the space pod because he was supposed to deliver its contents to the Interstellar Galactic Council. Aloon was a Space Trader, which is kind of a cool job, even if he was a big jerk.

  Aloon was tall with dark even-cropped hair, a kind of long nose, and was not bad looking for an old guy. Basically human in appearance, he would have been kind of dashing if he didn't look like our Vice Principal, Mr. Marter. Same ugly, Wal-Mart pullover shirt. Same smile that made you think he was happy 'cause he was about to give you detention.

  Aloon had a passable ship, which didn't need a big crew to operate. And that was good because it wasn't exactly large enough for a big crew. The most it could handle comfortably was probably a dozen full-time shipmates. But what it lacked in size it more than failed to make up for in style. It was a KX2 Starjumper with a SLP 2000 onboard computer. And anyone who was anyone – which in Aloon's mind didn't include anyone on Earth – knew that the Starjumper was a first-rate second-
rate space ship. It was competently self-automated, with its only unusually good feature being maneuverability. It cornered well. Other than that, it wasn't particularly sleek, or fast. It had no offensive armaments or auto-evacuation teleporters, and it cost a small mountain in maintenance costs. About half of his total income went into that ship.

  For that expense he got a modest ship that mostly took care of itself: small overhead, few commitments, and a small crew. Aloon liked it this way. If you had a big crew, you had to have a big payroll. Also you had to keep them loyal. The problem with people was that everybody's got an opinion. And you don't want a bunch of second-guessing when you're flying light-speed through the ring of a super nova or surfing the event horizon of a black hole. And while it's true that Aloon had never actually gone light speed through a super nova before, or even so much as looked at a black hole before – which is just a figure of speech, because you can't actually look “at” a black hole – the point is, too many people confuse things.

  “Scrap, cloak the ship,” Aloon calmly ordered.

  Aloon's crew were exactly two, and they were total creeps: Carl, whose real name was Nardron Mixilpix – a name he hated, and Beelzin Ilkoscrap, who mostly went by Scrap. The bridge itself was pretty large. And with its alien monitors, symbols, cool chairs and work-stations bolted to the floor – which even in space is called a deck – it would have been impressive, if it weren't for the dirty cups, plates of old food, and magazines all over the place, the dead potted plants, balled up scraps of paper, smudged walls, worn out upholstery, crumbs from who-knows-what, and the discarded shirts that lay on the backs of their chairs. What is it with boys?

  “Cloak the ship, Scrap.” Aloon calmly iterated.

  Out in space, there are lots of aliens who are slender brain buckets with translucent blue skin, shiny chrome plated and white robed, clean lines and stylistic curves. They're kind of stoic space priests with cryptic ESP telepathy.

  “Scrap, the cloak, cloak the ship.” Aloon calmly barked.

  Not these space aliens. They were three bachelor males running a not-very-profitable, semi-professional trading outfit. Jaded on space flight and technology, bored with complaining about the incompetence of everyone in the universe, hunkering down in a job, getting by until they could get their big break, clueless about what that break might actually be. Aloon's crew were uncombed, unstuffed, and frankly could have smelled better.

  “Dammit Scrap, turn on the cloak.” Aloon calmly shouted as he strode over to Scrap's console and calmly slammed the cloaking buttons.

  It might not have actually looked calm, but it was a point of pride with Aloon that he seldom lost his head. And this was actually true now. He knew that Scrap was distracted by his holo-puzzle. Scrap zoned out on that game for hours on end, which was fine most of the time. In space travel, you get a lot of down time, and Aloon wasn't actually upset by Scrap's inability to focus. In space, just like anywhere, you get what you pay for, and Scrap was pretty much the bottom of the heap. But even still, you had to keep the appearance of authority or it was work, work, work: everyone with an opinion, nobody doing what you tell them.

  Over the years, Aloon had noticed that the more trivial the decision, the more people thought their opinion was important to add in. You might not have an opinion about whether to set the Gan-Flux Damper to 97.6720 like the owners manual said, or 97.6799, like most engineers would tell you – and of course, the difference could blow up your ship – but say you want to put green upholstery on the seat-covers and suddenly everyone's a damn interior decorator.

  So Aloon put on a proper display to keep Scrap in line. “Scrap, when I tell you to cloak the ship, cloak the damn thing!”

  “Yes, Scrap,” Carl added for sport, “cloak the ship or it will be Grover's Mill all over again.”

  “That wasn't my fault,” said Scrap bitterly under his breath, as he shut down his game and tried to arrange himself to seem like he was working.

  Aloon had found Scrap from a contact on Esralon Six who specialized in making such connections. Scrap had “worked” most recently in the Trancor Mines of Quum; an awful place in an open magma sea, where they pulled impermeable Trancor like salt water taffy into huge spools for use in warp engine coils. I say “worked” in quotes because Quum is a slave planet, and this was no job. Before the mines, Scrap worked as a petty errand boy for Marsius Beel, a serious player in galactic organized crime. Highly dangerous. Almost a legend in the underworld. Aloon figured that Scrap's stint in the Trancor Mines was probably punishment by the Council for working with Beel.

  Scrap's whole life had been made up of these small screw-ups, jail time, and firings. Seventy years ago he had actually visited Earth. While he was working with a military hardware delivery unit, he failed to cloak a cargo ship as it landed for emergency maintenance on the U.S. eastern seaboard. The resulting mishaps caused a small disaster in New Jersey. Carl somehow learned about it, and it was his pleasure to keep the story alive.

  “Cast your mind back,” he said, “an early industrial town in a small insignificant backwater planet.”

  “Pattern match on landing beacon, Carl,” Aloon ordered conversationally.

  “Yes sir. Pattern matched... One small delivery, that was all, the new Xarn 4 Walking Pod War-maker.”

  Scrap continued muttering his defense, “It wasn't my fault.”

  “Begin landing sequence,” Aloon said in a calm voice, so as not to interrupt Carl's fun. It was best, Aloon thought, to keep out of things like this. Let the pack establish the ranking and keep your eye on the big picture.

  “Landing sequence initiated Sir...” and Carl continued needling, “All the rage it was. Full Zorch 10 lasers, auto-mandate, search and destroy, 900 Grease-Tip Narsil Blasters...”

  Scrap muttered, “The GXL was on the fritz – anybody could have made that mistake...”

  “A thing of beauty, and an easy job...”

  “It wasn't my fault.”

  “I never said it was.”

  Aloon continued the landing, “Carl, update the Council: Earth landing in good order. Acquiring package shortly.”

  Scrap said, half to himself, “If I had known the cloak would fail I wouldn't have tried to land.”

  “Council updated sir,” said Carl, and then, “Indeed we are all but cogs in the great machine – wheels within wheels, ad infinitum. But the hapless humans did fire on your ship – and the Xarn 4 auto-defense did set fire to the whole city. And of course, it contracted some strange virus and was rendered useless, and cost a major fortune.”

  Scrap raised his voice, “It wasn't my fault!”

  At this point Aloon usually had to step in, “Don't be insane Scrap. Of course it wasn't your fault.”

  “Because fault implies intelligence?” Carl asked with a doe-eyed expression of mock innocence.

  “No,” said Aloon, “All things work by natural laws – nothing can circumvent them. You don't blame a river for breaking its banks. You don't blame your chair for metal fatigue. So you Scrap, are no more to blame for Grover's Mill, than the GXL was at fault for its malfunction.”

  Carl pushed a button to set the thrusters for landing, but then asked, almost like he was actually curious, “Captain, it's funny, what ever happened to the GXL?”

  “They trashed it on the Pirus Digestion Incinerator.”

  Carl's wide, satisfied smile left no doubt on Scrap's poor mind what fate he thought Scrap deserved. Carl had been with Aloon for a very long time. Unlike Aloon, he had no ambitions for grandeur or fame. His interests were money, being left alone, and the comfort of not being jailed for a lifetime of petty misdeeds. That was all Carl desired; those small indulgences and one good kick at the house dog. I told you they were creeps.

  So, while small revenge plots gathered and popped in Scrap's unhappy brain, Aloon's ship was lowering quietly through the atmosphere above the eastern seaboard – the crop symbol still registering on the monitor: round, high, round, high, round.

  “Scrap, when's the rendezvous?” Aloon asked.

  “Any time now, sir,” Scrap pouted.

  “What's the package Captain?” Carl asked.