Sixteen: Escape from Galaluna

Another flashback episode! No Solomon here.

Seventeen: Under the Three Moons

Solomon wondered what the aliens thought of snow. People of earth who lived in warm climates, tropical or desert for example, never saw snow and thus were filled with wonder or fear when they encountered it. Other people lived in very cold areas and saw snow as a constant annoyance.

Solomon believed there had to be snow on the Lunis' home planet. All life needed water, and the Lunises were very close to humans physically as far as G3 could tell. What was the climate like on their planet? Hot, cold, or varied throughout like earth? How often did they see snow, and what did they think of it? Wonderful or annoying?

Solomon's internal questions for the aliens were normally more dramatic than this. He was filled with curiosity when it came to these aliens, but most of his queries were about their world, technology, and purpose. Not about something as trivial as weather. Yet these smaller-scale questions struck him as he was looking out on the cold sky from the control room's large glass wall, at the endless clouds below. It was snowing presently, but G3 HQ was far too high to experience it.

Solomon enjoyed the snow, and after the events of the past months he had grown a new appreciation for it. He had always liked the cold and calm of winter. It was quiet and crisp. He supposed that was why he was interested in outer space as well.

With the winter season came a peace over earth; no alien monsters had come in quite a few weeks. Solomon wondered if it was because the aliens did not like the cold, or perhaps their own planet was going through a temperature change they was blocking them from coming. Yet he had no data; G3 knew nothing of what happened on the other side of the Portal, where all the aliens came from. For now, it was closed and there was no trace of alien activity.

So G3 enjoyed a break from the action. It was almost like the aliens had never come; there were no alien bodies to clean up, no unfamiliar technology to research, and no monsters to battle. Things were as they had been before the Lunises first landed in their blue rocket. G3 returned to what it had been doing before the alien arrivals beginning months ago. Scientists researched on how to improve technology, tweaking the G3 fighter jets and even working on the Motherbird. Agents trained, mostly in the simulators provided for such purposes, and monitored the G3 space station satellites off-world.

None of these other priorities distracted G3 from the Lunises, however. But there was little to learn over the December weeks.

As if the mere thought had jinxed it, Solomon's com buzzed to alert him of a fresh spy report. Not turning away from the window, Solomon activated his holo-screen and began to read. His spies had seen fit to notify him that Ilana had become president of the Homecoming Committee.

That was interesting—the Lunises did not go out for clubs. G3 watched every bit of Sherman High; from book clubs to student council to the cheerleading troop, and the Lunises were not a part of any of them. (Solomon did not know if Ilana had tried out for the cheerleading troop or not, as the blob monster had attacked the day of tryouts and G3 spies had been unable to swipe the list of participants. If Ilana hadtried, she had not gotten in.)

Why was Ilana interested in the Homecoming Dance? Did the aliens do dances on their home world?

Homeworld.

Homecoming.

Solomon paused as that thought hit him. He didn't know why the Lunises were here, but he knew they were only children. Ilana especially was kind and gentle spirit. She hadto miss her home, and this dance, which centered on the idea of home, had to remind her of it. So she had joined the committee in charge of it to be involved with the dance.

She was coping with her homesickness through this dance. But what would she do with such an event? How would she pour her emotions into a high school dance?

Solomon looked up from the report, back to the window and outside. The blue sky was a lighter, colder shade than usual, and the clouds below did not open to reveal earth's surface for miles. Solomon remembered of how it was snowing below, though G3 HQ was too far above the clouds to experience it.

He tilted his head, thinking for a moment as he watched the clouds drift below. As head of the Homecoming Committee, Ilana would majorly be in charge of decorations. Would she do choose a theme similar to her home planet?

Solomon brought the report back up and began to issue an order; once the Homecoming dance was over, he wanted everything Ilana had made. Every balloon and scrap of confetti would be taken by G3.

OOO

Things continued to be peaceful up to the dance. Ilana spent all her afternoons, even weekends, at the school, preparing for her Homecoming. It made it easy for the G3 spies to keep track of her. But on the night when her work would finally paid off, the Portal opened and a new creature came speeding to earth.

Solomon could not believe the timing. The dance was only minutesfrom starting. For one instinctive moment he wondered if the Lunises would wait until after the dance to fight it, but Solomon's logic kicked in and he knew they would never do that. They would not let a monster roam free and hurt earth simply for a high school dance. And yet, considering how important this dance seemed to Ilana, Solomon wished they could. She had been working for weeks.

Sure enough, few minutes after the creature landed, Titan appeared outside of Sherman and began to head to the crash site.

Solomon sat down in the control room, preparing to watch this next fight. Since it had been more time than usual since the last monster had attacked, would this one be especially strong?

"Pull up Titan on the satellite," Solomon ordered.

"Sir," an agent objected, "due to the cloud cover, we can't get a visual on the area."

Solomon straightened. "Where has the creature crashed?"

"A windmill field, many miles outside Sherman. It would take us forty-five minutes to reach it from here."

Solomon clenched his jaw; the fight would be over by then.

G3 hadn't been able to view all the fights Titan got into. They hadn't been able to view the fight shortly after Lance and Ilana's abduction by G3, nor the battle against the frog-creature that had come in a ship. The Lunises had triumphed in both battles; everybattle.

Solomon had confidence in them. He would have preferred to watch the battle, but there was no indication that Titan would lose this fight.

There was still work for G3 to do, however. "Prepare a retrieval team," Solomon ordered. "Place surveillance at the Lunis household and alert me when they return to it. Continue with the plans to retrieve the Sherman High dance decorations."

He stood and strode out.

OOO

By the afternoon of the next day, G3 had used an extra display room to set up everything Ilana had made for the Sherman Homecoming Dance. Solomon's agents knew where everything had been and had recreated the scene. They had even built bleachers like the ones in Sherman High's gymnasium, covered the floor with smooth wood planks and painted on the Sherman High logo, and built fake windows that imitated the dark, snowy outside.

When Solomon walked into the room, he felt as if he had left the entire HQ behind. It was exactly like Sherman High's gymnasium on the night of the Homecoming Dance.

Solomon couldn't help but be impressed with Ilana's work—there were streamers and ribbons that covered the ceiling in well-matching colors. The thickness of the decorations overlapped near the edges of the room so the walls were barely visible in the dim lighting. It gave the illusion that the space went on forever.

There were four large bulbs set on the edges of the room, slightly taller than a person, that looked like huge flowers just about to open up. A swirling pattern was hand-drawn onto them and their tips were bursting with ribbons.

The room was lit in mostly standard ways one would expect at a high school dance. There was a mirror ball that speckled the room with gentle rays of illumination. Most light in the room changed color, each shade complimenting the rest of the decorations. Lanterns hung from the ceiling provided dim, star-like light.

There was a beautiful painting against one side of the room of a clear night sky. Distant snow-capped mountains were below the gentle starry sky. Fake, glittery snow was gathered at the foot of the canvas as if snow from the painted mountains had somehow leaked into the real world. Large cardboard cutouts a short distance from the painting also gave the same impression—and among the cutouts, there were two cardboard people smiling a few feet from the actual paintings.

These people looked human and smiled happily in frozen display. One was knelt over a basket, with one hand waving towards its observers. Another one, a woman, held baskets of fruit on both on her head and in her hands.

Solomon leaned down before the kneeling cardboard cut-out and looked at it closely. Was this supposed to be an alien? Or had Ilana edited it to be human? Both Ilana and Lance appeared human; if this was their home planet, would there be humans there as well? Was there any difference between earth humans and these aliens?

Solomon turned away from it and looked up at the mountainous painting. There was a building on one of the peaks, but it was too small for any details of it to be made out. The realbeacon of architecture of Ilana's creations was the palace.

Behind the main stage of the dance floor was a magnificent white and red palace. Ilana had made the palace out of four large parts—the largest piece was furthest while the other three parts were propped up before it to give the palace dimensions. The palace had gaping windows and tall columns. Lights were strung underneath, giving it a blinding radiance that shined like nothing else in the room.

Solomon had long dreamed of visiting another alien culture. It was one of the purposes of G3—to find other life out in the universe. Since Lance and Ilana had come, he knew it wasout there. He wasn't sure if he would ever get to see it, but here, here he saw some shadow replication of it.

Solomon spent hours in that display room, under the glittering three moons Ilana had sculpted to remind her of home.