"Go away, Kanamits! You go away!"
Anthony Fremont, using whatever power he had, began to undo some of the things the Kanamits had done.
You could tell Anthony was using his power by the way the freckle-faced boy had his face scrunched up, by the way he glared, by the way he clenched his tiny fists.
Floating TV sets hovered over the cornfield. Each TV screen showed a round saucer, a giant Kanamit spaceship, above a different city. Paris. Munich. London. Tokyo. Washington DC. New York City. Many others.
As Anthony glared, each spaceship, one by one, disappeared.
Anthony looked back at his father who gave him an approving smile. In response, Anthony nodded and smiled. Which was odd. The boy rarely smiled.
How did all this begin? It began when a tall bald Kanamit made the mistake of walking into Anthony's backyard. Wearing a hideous too-big smile, the Kanamit knelt down to talk to Anthony.
"My, my, little boy," he said in a comically deep announcer voice. "You look good enough to eat."
This was after the television stations broadcast the film clip of the woman shouting, "'To Serve Man!' It's a cookbook!" After that, the Kanamits stopped pretending they were anything but human-eating creatures. And they especially enjoyed taunting children.
No doubt it was the loathsome character of the Kanamits that caused Anthony to shoot a harsh look at his tall bald visitor.
"You're a bad man!" he shouted. "You're a very bad man!"
The Kanamit's smile drooped in the moment just before he vanished. But that wasn't enough for Anthony. As he stood up, and clenched his fists, the other Kanamits in the area vanished along with their spaceship.
Seeing this, Don Fremont rushed over to his son.
"Anthony, these Kanamits. They're all over the world."
Agnes Fremont took her place beside her husband. "Maybe if you think hard enough, you can make more of them go away," she said gently. "Even a little bit would help."
"I will," Anthony said with a fierce determined look on his face.
And so it was that those TV sets hovered over the cornfield, showing not one single Kanamit spaceship.
The father smiled as he put his arms around his boy. "Son, I knew you could create two-headed animals. But I honestly didn't think you could do all this!"
"It took hours but you did it." The mother's smile twitched a little. "It must be this terrible situation that's brought out all this great power in you."
"That could be, I guess," Anthony said with a shrug. Reverting to his usual angry face, he looked up at his parents. "They were bad men! They were very bad men!"
"They were," the mother said as she stroked her son's hair.
"But you got rid of their spaceships," Mr. Fremont said.
"I sent them all away!" Anthony nodded toward the TV screens. "You tell about what I did, news man. You tell everyone!"
On each TV screen, Walter Cronkite appeared. Mother and father listened attentively as Mr. Cronkite read a news item.
"We're getting reports from around the world of the Kanamits and their spaceships, how it seems they have all disappeared. So far, there is not a single report of even one Kanamit sighting."
The father smiled proudly, arms around his wife. The mother smiled broadly as she gasped and clasped her hands. Anthony used a toy shovel to pick at dirt on the ground.
Cronkite went on in his serious somber tone. "Spaceships on their way to the Kanamits' home planet have returned to Earth with all passengers intact but not a single Kanamit on board. Here to confirm this is decoding specialist Michael Chambers."
A dark-haired man with a dazed look and a loose tie mumbled into a microphone.
"I found the door to my room open. Or maybe I should say I found the door to my cell open. Once I got out in the corridor, I found only the other prisoners, no Kanamits. When we went down the stairs at the main entrance, we found we were back on Earth. But again, we have encountered no Kanamits. Not on the ship, not on the ground. I repeat: we haven't seen any Kanamits."
"And there you have it," Cronkite said. "That's the way it is."
"Anthony, did you do that?" the father asked as he knelt down. "Did you bring that ship back?"
"I brought them all back," Anthony said as he continued to dig. "But not the Kanamits. I sent them all away. I sent them somewhere they'll never bother us again. Where they're frozen and can't do anything."
"Good work, son!"
Mr. Fremont beamed but Mrs. Fremont's smile was still a little nervous.
"It was real good you did that, Anthony."
"I know," the boy said blithely. Then he lit up. "Hey! I just got an idea! Watch this!"
Once again, Anthony glared, and several Kanamits appeared in the backyard. They were all shaking and holding each other. This got worse when several police cars appeared along with dazed and confused police officers. The guns flew out of their hands and fired by themselves. Before the bullets could hit the Kanamits, they stopped in mid-air and hung there. Great tears shot out of the eyes of the trembling Kanamit huggers.
Anthony waved one hand and the bullets fell. With a wave of his other hand, cars, Kanamits and cops-all went away.
"That was real good," the mother said in a fearful voice. "That was real good you did that, Anthony."
The father knelt down and clasped Anthony's shoulders. "You saved us, son. You saved the world!"
"I know," Anthony said as he continued to dig. Looking up, he squinted as he formed a serious look of uncertainty. "The thing is, other aliens might try to hurt the people of Earth. I have to put everyone where they'll be safe and no one can bother them."
Anthony formed his most serious look of concentration.
On the floating TV screens, one by one, each city disappeared. London. Munich. Tokyo. Washington, DC. New York. All the people and buildings gone.
Then each floating TV set vanished.
Now Mrs. Fremont trembled as she clutched her husband. The man wore a dazed frightened look, and he was barely able to speak.
"Anthony, did you send them all away, all the cities?"
Anthony rose. "I sent away everyone and everything," he said proudly. As he squinted with one eye, he curled his lower lip. "Everyone on Earth is in a safe place now. The Kanamits are in another place. It's a place I call the cornfield. That's where I send bad people and freeze them."
When the freckle-faced boy smiled, it was a smile that was not quite right. "Now it'll just be us, the people in this town. And if anyone comes to bother us, I'll send them away. Into the cornfield."
As the mother wept and the father stared, Anthony plopped down on the ground and once again used his small shovel to dig up clods of dirt.
"Now I want to play for a while," he said. His voice was as harash and sinister as the look on his face. "And nobody better bother me."