One month later...

The first thing that startled Buster after he disembarked the plane with his parents was an article in the Elwood Times. An old duck woman, sitting in the terminal at the Katzenellenbogan Airport, had left a local news section lying in the seat next to her while she giggled at the comics. Buster, glimpsing a familiar face in a photo, asked the woman if he could take the part of the paper she had finished and read it.

"Go ahead, young man," said the duck woman with a toothy grin. Before Buster had a chance to ask himself whether ducks should have teeth, the smiling woman introduced herself. "My name's Betty. What's yours?"

"Uh, Buster Baxter, ma'am," Buster replied a bit nervously. His parents, Bitzi Baxter and Harry Mills, stood behind him and scowled impatiently, as if they disapproved of their son starting up a conversation with a stranger, or simply wanted to get to their hotel room as quickly as possible so they could take off their coats and sweaters.

"I'm so happy to meet you," Betty said to Buster as she patted him on the shoulder. For an instant Buster thought he could see tears forming in the woman's eyes, as if she had recognized him as her long-lost grandson.

"And I'm glad to meet..." Buster began, but stopped when the corner of his eye caught a headline in the newspaper section he was holding: SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING GIRL. The picture underneath featured the face of...

"Omigosh!" cried Buster as he turned to his parents, who were resting their carry-on bags on the floor. "Mom, Dad, look! It's Prunella!"

Surprised, Bitzi snatched the paper from her son's hand. "Prunella? Missing?" she exclaimed. "That's awful! She's been lost for ten days! And look at all the spelling errors in this article!"

"That poor, poor girl." Betty shook her head sadly. "All the police in town are looking for her. Of course, they have nothing better to do."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked the woman.

"There hasn't been a single crime reported since the day that girl disappeared," Betty explained. "And everybody's nice to each other all the time. I walk down the street and everyone smiles and waves at me, even people I don't know. Just yesterday my landlord told me I could have an extension on my rent if I needed one, and he's always been a mean, stingy man."

"Weeeeiiiirrrrd," said Buster in hushed amazement.

The old duck woman then grabbed him by the shoulder and drew him closer, so that his ears were level with her beak. "I think it's aliens," she whispered.

As Buster and his parents took their leave of the woman, they began to notice that the people in the crowded terminal were behaving, by and large, unusually. While on previous visits to the airport they had been surrounded by mainly scowling, self-absorbed passengers and a few smiling airline employees, on this occasion nearly everyone wore a cheerful smile. It reminded Buster of the few times he had gone to church with his mother's family, where everybody knew each other and wished each other well. Now and then someone would hand a compliment to his parents, such as, "What a handsome little boy!" or, "With those ears, I bet he can hear for miles." Some even offered him pieces of candy, but his mother had instructed him to never take food from strangers.

As they waited at the baggage claim, Harry remarked to Bitzi about the unexpected increase in friendliness. "If you ask me, Mayor Cook's pumping a bunch of money into improving the city's public image."

"If Mayor Cook had anything to do with it," Bitzi quipped, "nobody would be smiling."

The auto rental clerk seemed to go out of her way to make Bitzi, Harry, and Buster feel happy and comfortable, even offering a special discount beyond what they had obtained through their travel agency. Before long they had left their winter gear in the hotel room (Chicago being in the grip of a cold snap) and were on the road, heading toward the neighborhood where Buster had once lived along with his Lakewood Elementary classmates.

"So, who should we visit first?" asked Harry Mills as he pulled into the highway offramp.

"Arthur!" shouted Buster without hesitation. "And then Francine, and The Brain, and Sue Ellen, and..."

Several minutes later, as the car pulled to a stop in front of the Read home, Buster was still rattling off the names of the old friends he wished to visit. "...and Mrs. McGrady, and Ms. Turner the librarian, and Principal Haney, and Toby, and Slink, and the Molinas, and Camp Counselor Becky..."

Excitement filled Buster's heart as he hurried toward the door with his parents. He was about to be reunited with his good aardvark friend Arthur Read, who he hadn't seen for months. The door swung open and Mr. and Mrs. Read appeared in the doorway, looking for the most part as he remembered them. It didn't surprise him that they were smiling and happy like the people at the airport and the hotel, as he had expected them to greet him in that manner. No, what surprised him was something else.

Peering between the legs of Arthur's parents into the living room of the house, he saw Arthur, D.W., and an unfamiliar, dark-complexioned boy sitting together on the couch, smiling vapidly while they watched TV. His sensitive ears picked up the sound from the television, and recognized it as...Mary Moo Cow!

Buster almost fell backwards from the shock. Arthur and D.W. watching Mary Moo Cow together? Without fighting? And enjoying it? How was this possible?

Was it something they had put in the water supply while he was gone?

The three kids leaped from the couch and scurried from the living room when they saw Buster in the doorway. "Buster! Buster!" yelled Arthur, who then did something he had never been known to do before. He ran right up to Buster, threw his arms around the boy, and...hugged him.

The embarrassed Buster feared that he would choke. "Mom!" he cried. "Get my inhaler!"

Arthur introduced his new housemate, Adil, to Buster as Bitzi reached into her purse to retrieve Buster's inhaler. "This is Adil Faruk, from Turkey."

"I am pleased to meet you," said Adil, shaking Buster's hand.

Buster grinned. "I remember you. Did you ever tell me what lamb's eyes taste like?"

Once he had inhaled a bit of asthma medication, Buster followed Arthur, D.W., and Adil into the living room. At first he was hesitant to look at the TV screen, suspecting that some sort of subliminal foul play had transformed his old pal into a Moo fan. When he did look, he noticed that Mary and her young acolytes had been joined by a new character, a dancing calf with a clown face.

"That's New Moo Revue," said D.W., pointing at the TV screen. "Mrs. Stiles is Mary Moo Cow."

"You're kidding!" exclaimed Buster in astonishment. "Mrs. Stiles? Is she trying to revive her acting career?"

"The little cow is named Mini Moo," D.W. continued. "That's Binky, but the voice is Fern."

"No way." Buster shook his head incredulously. "I don't believe it. Binky in a cow costume?"

"I didn't believe it either," Arthur told him.

As Buster sat next to his friends on the couch, he asked the question that had been burning in his mind. "Why are you watching this, Arthur? What happened to Bunny League?"

"The local station doesn't carry Bunny League anymore," Arthur replied. "Or Bionic Bunny, or Laura Cleft, or Rat Woman. Those action cartoons are too violent for kids."

Buster became more stunned with every passing second. Arthur watching Mary Moo Cow...Bunny League dropped from the lineup...Binky dancing around in a cow costume...what had Elwood City come to?

It only got weirder as he visited his other friends. Muffy handing out fifty-dollar bills to passing strangers. Francine decorating the walls of her bedroom with travel posters, and Catherine not objecting. Sue Ellen's family leaving suddenly for a mysterious emergency mission. Quinn Cooper shopping for clothes with Muffy. Van and Beat hanging out with the now cleanly-attired Molly and Rattles. The new girl, Mavis, who had a memory gap a year long. Curiouser and curiouser...

...and then he visited The Brain.

Alan, surprisingly, didn't seem as blissfully happy as the other kids. On the contrary, he looked weary and glum. Buster had never seen him so obviously depressed, even after they had competed in the third-grade Mathathon and Alan had inexplicably lost. "Come into my bedroom," he invited Buster as their parents were engaged in friendly chatter. "I need to talk to you about something."

Buster followed Alan into the bedroom, hoping to obtain some clue as to the boy's exhausted emotional state. Alan closed the door after them, then sat down on his bed. Buster noticed that the "I Have a Dream" poster on the wall had come loose in one corner and was hanging crooked, so he busied himself in correcting it.

Alan sighed. "It's nice to get a chance to talk to somebody who isn't...perfect," he remarked dolefully.

"What's going on, Alan?" asked Buster as he seated himself in a chair. "Prunella's disappeared, all my friends are acting weird, the whole city's acting weird. It's not aliens, is it? I know it can't be aliens."

Alan shook his head weakly. "It's not aliens, Buster. It's something worse."

Buster gaped. What could possibly be worse than an alien takeover?

"I was the last person to see Prunella," Alan went on, his voice tinged with fear. "I don't know where she is now. I don't know if she's alive or dead. She was there one minute, the next she was gone."

"Was she abducted?" asked Buster breathlessly.

"Seems that way," Alan replied. "There's an evil force at work, Buster. It hasn't shown itself since it took Prunella ten days ago. I don't know if or when it'll come back, but if it does come back, then the whole city's in danger...maybe even the world."

The world? Buster couldn't believe his ears, accurate as they were. First the imminent extinction of the banana...and now the impending destruction of the world?

"It all started about a month ago," Alan continued, "when a man named Angus Winslow came into town."

TBC