Mom and Dad walked back into the house.

"We can't find Calvin, anywhere." Dad said. "I'm starting to get worried."

They walked into the livingroom.

Jon was standing there.

His eyes weren't in focus, and he was bumbling to himself about flying horse shoe raddish that got put on a hamburger that was going into the deep reaches of New Hampshire.

I could just go on and on about what he was babbling about, but I'm a busy writer trying to compose this story, so your going to have to think of the most ridiculous thing in the universe, and multiply by goose feathers. You'll get a vague idea on the drone that was leaving Jon's mouth, and filling the room with toxic vapors of idiocy .

Mom and Dad exchanged glances, then left.

Garfield and Odie were hiding under the bed.

"OK, Odie, what are we going to do?"

Odie shrugged.

"The two parents are no help, the kid and tiger are out of commission, and Jon..."

Garfield and Odie exchanged glances.

"Actually, I don't want to say any more." Garfield said, rubbing his chin.

Meanwhile, high up in space in the mothership, Earl's alien crew had been left on the ship. unsupervised. For several days.

In other words, if you don't know Earl's crew, the entire place was trashed.

Soda bottles and pizza boxes littered the floors, and everybody was arguing about who was going to pick up the ship.

"Did anyone ever find that Shadowfax that Hank let loose on the ship?" Lenny asked.

"Yeah I think it's in the control room somewhere." Alex said.

Mikey walked up to the control room door, and pushed the button that would open it.

FWOOOSH!

Papers, boxes, half eaten pizzas and three space rats collapsed onto the alien.

When, he climbed out, he pushed his tentacles into the mess, and called, "Oh Mr Shadowfax! Are you in there?"

"SCREEEECH!"

"Yeah, he's in there. Somewhere."

The aliens all stood in circles, doing nothing.

"Hey! Who wants to order more pizza!"

Several tentacles went into the air.

Alex rushed over, and picked up the intergalactic telephone, and started pressing buttons.

"Hope I get the right number this time." He said.

Calvin and Hobbes tiptoed and crawled across the balcony, searching for Rupert without actually going down the stairs.

Since Rupert wasn't even in the house, at the moment, that didn't do much good.

"What are we going to do when we get Rupert?" Hobbes asked.

"Well, I'll bite his head, and you can kick him in the shins, and I'll punch his face, and you can..."

"Never mind."

Finally, Calvin and Hobbes tiptoed down the stairs, looked around, and peeked into the livingroom.

There they found Jon.

Babbling.

Calvin and Hobbes exchanged glances.

"I don't even want to know." Hobbes said.

He turned around, and started up the stairs.

"Wait, we have to think up a plan!" Calvin yelled.

"I have a plan. Sit under the house and keep the story going for several weeks."

"OK, fine! Go be bored! I'm going to go defeat Rupert!"

"Bye, bye, Calvin."

"You'll be sorry, of corse! I'll receive all the medals of honor, and you'll be hiding like a weenie under the house!"

"I only hope I'll be able to live with myself."

Hobbes dove back into the tunnel.

Calvin muttered and grumbled, and tiptoed around the house.

Soon he came to the room that Rupert and Earl were sleeping in.

He started to search the closet.

"Alright, Rupert! What's your diabolical plan!"

In the closet, Calvin found golf equipment, Jon's cookbook and year book, some photos of Jon in a zebra suit, and a bag of chips, but nothing relating to aliens.

"Phooey." Calvin said, slamming the door.

"Hey look, I found the rescue squad." Hobbes said, sarcastically, looking under the bed.

Calvin peeked under the bed, and stared at Garfield.

"What are you doing out of your hiding spot, spike head?" Garfield clashed, with his ears pinned back.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Am I in the presence of the King of Laziness? Should I kneel?" Calvin shot back.

Garfield's claws shot out of his paws, and he gave Calvin a deadly growl, soon, they were rolling around on the ground, fighting.

Hobbes and Odie watched.

"Well, We can't say neither of them got any exercises." Hobbes said.

Odie barked, happily, not paying attention to anything around him.

Soon, Calvin and Garfield got tired, and stopped fighting. They agreed to a fifteen minute truce, shook hands, and thought about how they were going to defeat Rupert.

They had been thinking for about five minutes, when all at once, the four heard a beeping sound.

Calvin, Hobbes and Garfield looked up.

Even Odie paused from drooling on his own foot to listen in.

"Huh." Calvin said. "A beeping sound."

"Yup." Hobbes said. "I do believe it is coming from your back."

"My back?" Calvin yelled, staring at Hobbes in utter confusuion.

"Yes," Garfield said. "You've hooked your CD player onto the back of your shirt, and there is a little red light on it blinking at every beep."

"Well whaddyaknow?" Calvin said, excitedly. "I got a phone call!"

Calvin reached behind his back, and picked the MTM up.

"This is never happened before." Said Calvin. "I've never got a phone call!"

"How come?" Hobbes asked.

"My phone number is ten billion digits long." Calvin replied.

Hobbes' eyes blanked out.

"Who's have the patience or the luck to dial that?" Garfield demanded.

"Who cares? Let's see who's calling!"

Calvin pressed a button on his MTM.

A voice came out.

"Hello? Pizza Parlor? I'd like to order a large cheese pizza. with onions and anchovies and tomatoes and a hamburger and more cheese and horseradish and a side of lava dippin' sauce and a hotdog covered in lava and mushrooms and some other pizza ingredient I didn't mention and lard and toaster crumbs and mustard and anchovy paste and sauerkraut and about fifty diet lava drinks to be delivered, please."

Garfield made a disgusted look.

"Onions!" he spat.

Calvin and Hobbes exchanged looks of glee.

"It's Earl's crew!" Calvin yelled.

Hobbes whispered something in Calvin's ear.

Calvin turned to the MTM, and took on his best Earl impression.

"Help! It's Earl, your loving captain!"

"Your working at the pizza parlor, now?" Alex the alien asked, shocked.

"What?" Calvin asked, in his regular voice. Then he returned to Earl's usual rough voice. "No! I's Earl, you've reached the wrong number, you dunce!"

"Oh, maybe I should have pressed the eight before the star key at three o'clock." Alex said.

Calvin rolled his eyes.

"Never mind that! We're in mortal danger!"

"That's cool."

"The Earth Potentate is just to powerful!"

"Uh."

"And it would be real brave of you to come down here with Lenny and everybody else and save me! Your loyal hard working captain!"

"Well, I've always tried to be real."

"Exactly! Now get down here on the double and save me from the fierce predator called the Earth Potentate!"

"Righto, boss! HEY GUYS! WE'RE GONNA BE HEROS!"

Calvin chuckled to himself, and wondered out loud, "Now how are those dunces going to get here?"

"Why don't we just use those tracking thing-a-ma-bobs you installed in your suit last Tuesday."

"Oh... uh...sure" Calvin said.

Alex hung up the phone, turned to the alien crew, and promptly slipped on a banana peal, and feel to the ground. CRASH!

Calvin chuckled, and turned off the MTM.

"Well, great." Garfield grumbled. "Now we have an entire alien nation coming to get us! What help is that going to do?"

"You'll see." Calvin said, dusting his hands together.

"Until the aliens get here, though," Hobbes said. "I think it would be smart to hide under the bed."

Calvin, Garfield, and Odie quickly discovered that they were out in the open, for the world to see... and they decided to move themselves under the bed, with Hobbes.

Earl's crew may be coming. But that still left twenty minutes for them to get here.

Plus twenty more. The first twenty is for getting here. the second twenty is for dawdling, looking at the clouds, watching bumble bees, messing up, attempting to fix the mess up, and hiding the wreckage.

Garfield, Odie, Calvin and Hobbes didn't have that kind of time...

And they couldn't wait for it in the middle of Rupert's room.