Sue Ellen's abrupt disappearance left the entire class slack-jawed in astonishment. No one, especially Mrs. Krantz, could think of a word to say.

Finally George interrupted the stunned silence. "The aliens took her!" he blurted out.

Muffy glared at the moose boy, as if to remind him of the promise he had made to keep Buster's abduction a secret.

"Maybe it was that Grobblitz fellow," Van suggested.

"What would he want with Sue Ellen?" Beat wondered.

"Maybe there's a shortage of curly hair on his planet," Francine theorized.

While Mrs. Krantz frantically searched under the desks for her adopted daughter, Muffy tried to defuse the mystery before her friends came too close to the truth. "People don't just disappear," she said skeptically. "If you ask me, it's just a Halloween prank. Sue Ellen, Buster, Alan, Prunella, the triplets--they're all in it together."

"Their parents don't think it's a joke," Arthur pointed out.

"Then they must be part of the lie as well," said Muffy with certainty. "It's a far-reaching conspiracy."

Arthur groaned. He had just been elected student body president, and now his friends were vanishing left and right without explanation. Never before had he felt so powerless.

----

Alan felt incredibly weird. It was Monday morning, a school morning, but he wasn't at school. Yet he didn't feel weird because he wasn't at school--he felt weird because he wanted to be at school. He looked forward to Monday mornings and the excitement and challenge of a new school week. Other kids didn't. That made him weird.

It didn't help that he was in the company of five other truant children, as well as two career criminals.

"While I was merged with the scientists at Ballford Prep," his sister Tegan was explaining, "I learned about another school where two more children are being held. It's called Trumbull Academy, and it's somewhere in Scepter City." The bear girl's cropped brown hair had grown only half an inch since she had cut it earlier to avoid detection.

"What do you know about these children?" Mansch inquired of her. "What powers do they have?"

"The girl's a telepath," Tegan answered. "She has a range of over a mile. I don't know about the boy."

"The girl would make a useful addition to our force," Mansch remarked. "We'll check it out this evening. If we decide it's worth further investigation, you and Alan may get a chance to put your body-switching powers to the test."

"Uh, you're not planning to do anything illegal, are you?" asked Prunella in a concerned tone.

"Holding children against their will is illegal," said Mansch self-righteously. "If I set them free, I'm only upholding the law."

Clearly not reassured by the cat man's declaration, Prunella rose and left the table where Alan, Tegan, C.V., Claire, and Victor were holding conference with Mansch and his partner, Bernie.

She was standing with her face toward a corner, moping anxiously, when Alan and Tegan walked up to her. "Those men scare me," she admitted. "This house scares me. I miss my mom and dad."

Alan laid his hands on her shoulders and grinned facetiously. "You can go home if you want. And when you wake up in the morning, you'll forget all about this scary house and those scary men."

Prunella let out a sigh of resignation.

"Maybe you'll be lucky," said Alan. "Maybe we'll find a kid with healing powers who can fix the problem with your memory."

"Someone's gonna get hurt," the rat girl worried.

"Maybe not," said Tegan encouragingly. "If we switch Mansch with one of the guards, all he has to do is walk in and..."

The girl stopped in mid-thought. An expression of glazed terror gripped her face.

"What's wrong?" her brother asked.

Tegan screamed as if demons were gnawing at her brain.

All at the table leaped to their feet. While Alan and Prunella wondered how to help, Tegan clutched her scalp and wailed in agony. Thinking the neuroblocker barette might be the cause of her torment, she ripped it from her head and tossed it onto the floor. This only made matters worse, as Prunella and Alan suddenly felt her pain as well.

Then, before the dumbfounded eyes of everyone present, she glowed briefly and vanished.

----

April leaned against the cell door, gazing through the mesh at her parents, who were confined across the way. She had spent nearly half an hour in the bare, dreary quarters, listening to the constant humming sound of what she guessed was a spaceship, and wishing she could burst free and embrace her mother and father, whom she had thought to be dead.

"I just can't believe it," she said quietly and wistfully. "I came back in time to stop you from being killed, but you were never killed to begin with."

She heard a noise of whining and confused footsteps from the neighboring cell, and then the door in front of her flew open. She quickly put out a sneaker-clad foot to stop herself from falling.

Two sphere-headed aliens with drawn weapons stood outside, and were escorting a peevish-looking Sue Ellen into April's prison unit. "We just brought another one on board, and we need to free up your cell," one of the aliens explained in a deep-pitched voice. "Since you two look so much alike, we figured you would get along."

The metal door slid closed, trapping Sue Ellen and her almost-thirteen future self together. The alien guards turned sharply and marched away.

"Are you okay?" asked April with a smile.

"Yeah," Sue Ellen replied. "A little scared." She glanced around the cramped, dimly-lit habitation. "Does your cell have a bathroom? I really need to pee."

"Pick a corner, and I'll turn my back," April quipped.

While the two cat girls pondered the lack of septic facilities, a bizarre, but not altogether unfamiliar, sensation took hold of their minds. The barrier separating the thoughts of one from those of the other dissolved, and they could read each other perfectly without words. They had experienced such a melding of consciousness once before, when Alan and Tegan had stripped Francine's personality from their brains.

They both realized at once who the occupant of Sue Ellen's old cell was.

"I'm sorry," came Tegan's telepathic voice. "I've lost my barette. I can't stop myself from merging."

"How did you end up here?" asked Sue Ellen and April in mental unison.

"The same way that you did," was Tegan's reply. The speech-free conversation proceeded at the speed of thought.

"But you're not an alien," the cat girls observed.

"But you two are," Tegan mused. "Interesting."

"Interesting indeed," thought Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong, who were near enough to be drawn into the involuntary mind merge. "We spent many years on Earth, but you're the first human telepath we've encountered. Are there others like you?"

"Many," Tegan answered.

"The sphere-heads must have detected you and brought you aboard because of the differences in your brain," thought the Armstrong parents. "They should figure out before long that you're not a Yordilian spy."

"Alan and Prunella are with you," Sue Ellen realized with relief. "We were worried about them, especially Prunella, because of her condition."

"But Buster and the triplets are still unaccounted for," April added.

"Triplets?" the girls' parents inquired.

Sue Ellen began to explain the brief visit of the Belnap family to the neighborhood. As she did so, images of the cat woman and her three daughters formed in the minds of her parents, followed by sudden shock and outrage.

"She's a Yordilian," Mrs. Armstrong stated. "I recognize her. She's one of the richest women on the planet."

"If Buster disappeared at the same time they did," thought Mr. Armstrong, "that can mean only one thing."

"Omigosh," Sue Ellen marveled. "It's finally happened. Buster's been abducted by aliens!"

----

to be continued