I shut off the computer, but not before we'd discovered that the machine mapped out more than just the interior of buildings.

Dad practically fell headlong rushing down the stairs to investigate. "Boy!" he shouted, pointing his finger.

He stopped, staring at the mess. "You really did make a bomb, didn't you?"

"No," I protested. "It's not like that. It's..."

Jamie spoke before I could offer my own muddled explanation. "It's safer."

Dad laughed. "Sure as hell could have fooled me!" He frowned at the smashed window. "Great. That's just what we need."

He made us staple plastic over the damage, then just stood there, staring at us with his arms crossed. "I'd ground you, but you seem perfectly content to stay indoors."

"Nothing's on fire," Jamie pointed out.

Dad rolled his eyes. "True...But you made a mess, probably disturbed the whole neighborhood..."

Gertie held a softball up to the broken glass. "They probably just thought we were playing baseball."

He didn't look so sure. "Your mother would have freaked out and punished you. You certainly deserve it. Myself, well...I set up this lab for a reason. The only question I must ask is, is there any money making potential involved here? Alternative fuel, that kind of thing? At least spare me the inconvenience of stopping at gas stations!"

"Um," I stammered. "Maybe?"

Dad looked skeptical. "That's a no, isn't it? You gave me the same `Maybe' before I tried selling your computers."

Jamie swept up pieces of a broken jar. "I don't know. The thing looks like something the military could use."

Dad winced. "Let's, uh, keep that under the category of `home defense' for the time being. I'll leave you to it, as long as you don't blow up the cabin anymore."

"We didn't blow it-" I began, but Jamie just elbowed me.

"We'll test it away from the house from now on."

I could read dismay in Dad's face. Jamie cleared it up by adding, "In a secure place. Somewhere no one can see us working."

Dad gave us a reluctant nod, then marched up to our work table, examining the diagrams. His face developed that look he got when he forgot where he parked the car.

Gertie smiled at him. "You dreamed about it too, didn't you?"

"Have you ever considered the possibility that your little green man may have an ulterior motive?"

I seethed a little at what he implied. "Like what? ET's my friend!"

Gertie looked puzzled. "What's an all...terrier...ult...ter?"

Dad smiled, rubbing her head. "You know...ulterior. Like, when Tom Sawyer's dad told him to paint a fence, so Tom tells the neighbor kids how fun it is to do his job, so his lazy ass doesn't have to paint it himself. You got a secret agenda that you're not telling folks."

"ET's not like that, and, and even if he was, I wouldn't mind painting his fences."

Dad sighed. "Tyke, how do you know you can trust him? Maybe when he goes home he takes his face off and eats people like they do in that TV show."

I'd seen that show too, but I couldn't imagine ET as a red jumpsuit wearing space Nazi. "Dad, he doesn't want to eat us. He had plenty of chances. Mostly he just ate Reese's Pieces."

He laughed. "You sure? Maybe he just wasn't hungry."

When Dad noticed my serious expression, he groaned. "Say you're a Zulu, living in a hut in Africa, and some rich white factory owner gives you blueprints to a power station. Okay, so maybe you make your own light bulbs or fans or something, but the guy's got an agenda. Next thing you know, he's trying to sell you a bunch of stuff you don't need, or the power station is something they need to run a new factory that will make him millions. Kills all the plants, dumps trash everywhere. You see my point?"

"But ET loves plants!" Gertie argued. "He'd never do that!"

"Yeah? What about his cousins? What about his government?"

She didn't have an answer to that.

"...For all we know, his planet could look like a big trash dump. Maybe your friend is like one of those treehugger types that's trying to un-mess up our environment."

Gertie's facial expression reminded me of that time when mom told her that babies came `From a woman's tummy.'

Jamie, who seemed undecided up to this point, put in her two cents. "Wait, he can't be both a tree hugger and an industrial expansionist."

"Okay, so what if his little machine starts blowing up lumber mills and McDonald's restaurants, and putting granola eating John Denver in the White House? My point is, we don't know anything about all this. You've got Pandora's Box. It could do anything, if it doesn't alert the FBI and everyone else to our presence first."

"We'll be careful."

Dad's response sounded skeptical. "If you say so."

Michael, having gotten home about this time, joined us in the disaster area, looking annoyed at all the broken stuff. "You guys are nuts."

We spent the rest of the evening cleaning everything up and putting things away.

It had gotten really late, and Dad wanted to sleep, so we couldn't do any further experiments. "Off to bed, Doctor Oppenheimer," he had said.

For Jamie, Dad had gotten an old army cot out of storage, setting it up next to Gertie's bed. Gertie got all excited about it because it was like she'd gained a big sister and they were having a slumber party. She kept the lights on, dolling my girlfriend's hair and playing around until Dad got mad and yelled, "Jan! Cindy! Stop screwing around and get to bed!"

"My name's Anna," Gertie corrected.

"It's a Brady Bunch reference! I know tomorrow is Saturday, but some people have work! Sleep! Now!"

I, on the other hand, found myself just lying in bed with the lights off, staring at the ceiling.

Jamie called me on the walkie. "Elliott..."

I picked up. "You can't sleep either?"

"You think Edison slept when he got the idea for the light bulb?"

"I've heard people thought of the light before him, but yeah, he probably didn't sleep..."

"So what do you think we just made?"

"I'm not sure. It seems to be some kind of energy field. Maybe when we finally get our spaceship built, we can use it to, I don't know, smash asteroids? You know, like a photon torpedo or something?" I mean, if you fire a gun in space, your whole body goes flying back in the opposite direction, so this could prevent that...Anyways, we won't know until we test it some more. Away from the house."

A moment later, Dad's voice came on the walkie-talkie. "Go to bed, kids! Over and out!"

I didn't dream about anything special, just flying like Peter Pan and getting lost on the way to school with lions chasing after me.

A gravelly male voice awakened me from my slumber.

I crept into the living room, discovered a mustached black man in a Celts jersey sitting with dad. He laughed and smoked, telling Dad a story I couldn't hear. Sweat glistened on his well toned arms.

The moment Dad noticed me spying, he grinned and muttered to the stranger, waving me over. "Elliott, this is Nicholas, Ruby's brother."

Nick shook my hand, giving me a kindly look. "Any friend of Ruby's is a friend of mine."

I gave Dad a questioning look.

"Relax, kid. He's been briefed." He continued his conversation. "How is she holding up?"

"As well as can be expected. They had her locked up, but they let her out of the place. `Still can't so much as fart without some guy in a black van following her around."

"And the girls?"

"They're fine. She's doing the single mom thing. You know that's nothing new to her."

Dad sighed. "I hate having to choose between her and my brats. She's not mad, is she?"

Nick gave him a slight smirk. "Naw. She still loves the hell out of you. You may be white, but you're a good man."

"You tell her I still love the hell out of her."

"Is it true you proposed?"

Dad shrugged. "Can't say I see that ever happening now..."

Nick frowned. "I know. Some heavy sh-" he gave me a sideways glance. "Stuff going down..."

"You're a good brother, Nick. It's so hard for me to find people I can trust these days."

"I know what it's like to be on the run. Believe you me, I have no love for the po-po. I've had five years' worth of experience on the subject."

Dad gave him a wry smile. "Had mine remanded to community service."

Nick rolled his eyes. "Steve, sometimes you got a bad habit of not knowing when to stop talking."

I pointed to a Topsy's bucket on the table. "What's with the popcorn?"

The man gave me a cheesy grin. "Peace offering. The girls couldn't just walk out of your dad's house with a wad of cash and a handgun, not with all those government types watching, so they staged a little movie night...I think there's a love letter under the cinnamon."

"I'm not going to blow my hand off if I decide to eat caramel, am I?" Dad joked.

Nick grinned. "Naw, man, it's under the butter side. Only the shells are in the caramel..."

I stared, wondering how they managed to pull off that trick without being caught. "So Ruby just handed you the bucket, and nobody said anything?"

Our guest laughed. "Naw, man! Nothing that easy to trace. We played kind of a shell game. Filled the bucket a few times along the way. I was actually the last one to get it. At one time, the army dudes actually made us open it up. Good thing they didn't check the weight."

By now, Gertie had awakened. "Daddy, who's this?"

Dad put a hand on our guest's shoulder. "Sugar, this is Nick, Ruby's brother."

My sister wrinkled her nose. "Smoking's bad for you."

Nick chuckled. "Are you certain, little miss? `Cuz I've seen some old assed Indians..."

The look on Dad's face said `Play time is over, Nick.' "C'mon. She's right. Indians roll their own, and they'd be dead if they smoked like you do. Put it out."

"What about George Burns?"

"He smokes cigars."

Nick stubbed out his cigarette, glanced at Jamie, now standing at the door to the hallway. "Damn, man, how many kids you got?"

Dad shot her a disapproving glance. "I only gained one extra since last time. Not mine. Let's just call it an adoption."

Our visitor furrowed his brow, making a face like he recognized her. "She's...cute. What's her name?"

"Lori. She was homeless, so I took her in."

The look on Nick's face said he didn't buy it. "You sure she don't got parents looking for her?"

Dad shrugged. "One of the many disadvantages of being a fugitive from the law."

Nick nodded, rising from the table. "I'll do some research."

He bid us all farewell, gave Michael a "Goodbye, young man" on the way out the door, Mike seeming to know the guy already.

Gertie popped the lid on the aluminum drum. "Are we having popcorn for breakfast?"

Dad closed the lid again. "C'mon, give your pops some credit."

He had made our breakfast while talking to Nick, but of course the little visit had delayed him, so he didn't have time to read us Ruby's letter. He merely locked the gun in a safe and left for work.

Mike was off to the shop, it was just us. As usual, we'd been told to not go far from the house, keep the place locked up if we went somewhere...Dad also gave Gertie instructions to report to him if things between me and Jamie got "More than familial."

My sister had grimaced. "You mean like kissing and stuff?"

In response, Dad had laughed and rubbed her head. "Exactly."

When he had driven off, Jamie cried, "Great! Now what do we do? If that guy finds out who I am, he'll tell your dad!"

"He also said he wasn't friends with the police," I pointed out. "Besides, you're the one who ran away from home. You didn't want to tell Dad, so I guess you just gotta cross your fingers and hope he doesn't find out anything."

Jamie frowned. "Gee, thanks a lot!"

"What! I don't know how to help you. You're going to get caught, I just don't know when. Want to live in that abandoned building again or something?"

Jamie gave me a look like she might. "Maybe I'll sneak out the moment he finds out."

I sighed. "Maybe you should just go back home."

She reddened. "No way! You're the coolest boy I ever met! Besides...what do you think they'll do to me if I go back?"

The thought did trouble me. "I...don't know. Maybe they'll just watch you, like Ruby. I'm guessing they won't lock you up like they did me."

"You made my chest glow."

I blushed. "Yeah, but they don't know that."

Jamie abruptly changed the subject. "Let's go field test that asteroid smasher thing."

In case you're wondering, things stayed "Familial." We had a lot more important things to do.

As mentioned previously, I'd been doing some experiments with alternate sources of electricity. Dad let me take apart some bad discarded car batteries for this purpose. A little sunlight, a little plant pulp, and a few plans and diagrams from our Dungeons and Dragons manual got me all the power I needed to make my asteroid crusher mobile. We placed the equipment in the Radio Flyer and a wheelbarrow, setting up everything in a heavily wooded area downhill from the cabin.

The computer I placed on a stump.

"We're missing Kidd Video," Gertie complained as she watched me type.

My girlfriend stared. "What's Kidd Video?"

"It's a show," I groaned. "A rock band gets sucked into a mirror and someone turns them into cartoons." I groaned. "You want to watch cartoons, or see ET again?"

"ET," Gertie sighed, sitting down on a rock.

Jamie helped me hook up cables. "What do you expect to accomplish with all this anyway? I mean, say you build this...ship, and actually get into space. What then? What are you trying to do?"

"Dunno, maybe go someplace where I don't have to hide?"

"So you're just going to leave earth and live with your alien friend forever?"

"I don't really have a choice! I mean, what else can I do?"

"You're talking about leaving your planet and your whole family behind."

"I've pretty much done that anyway. The moment I go back to mom, some guy in a van is going to pop out and drag me off to an army base. Either that, or I'll spend my whole life in hiding."

"What about your sister?"

"Yeah!" Gertie exclaimed. "What about me!"

I swallowed. "I'll take you along with me. I don't want anyone putting you in a cell again."

My sister looked glum. "But then I'll never see mommy."

"Gertie, I don't think we're going to get to see mommy again."

Gertie burst into tears. I held her.

"Tell me it's not true!" she whimpered. "Please, Elliott!"

"I...I can't. We're freaks, and those guys in vans want to stick us in an army base forever. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're probably lying."

She cried more, but all I could do was hold her and pat her back. "You're saying ET is our family now? We're going to leave daddy, too?"

"We're only making things hard for him. He has to keep hiding from the cops and stuff. That's no kind of life. If we go into space, and live with ET, he won't have to worry about us being captured again."

"But then he'll go to jail! And what about Michael?"

I shook my head. "I guess we probably should take Mike along..." Then, to Jamie I stammered, "And if you wanted, you could join us..."

"Why not fly to Mexico...or Australia? Or even better yet, a deserted island? You don't have to leave the planet!"

"Someone could still find me."

Jamie rubbed her face in frustration. "They could find you anyway, with radar, or a satellite. By the way, what would your dad do?"

"He's the one that broke me out. He'll understand. I'd ask him to come with, but it already sounds like he doesn't trust ET very much."

"How do you even know you'll be safe with...ET's people? For that matter, how do you know they'll have air?"

"He seemed to breathe my air just fine."

"You ever seen that Twilight Zone about the guy that gets put in the zoo? That could be you, Elliott!"

"And I'll get locked in a cell if I go home. What's the difference?"

We made the orb appear again.

Jamie frowned at the display. "I wish your friend had given us some instructions."

"Wait. Maybe he has." I rushed back to the cabin, returning with the books Jamie had taken from my old house. After studying the alien's handwriting for a few moments, I discovered our new invention was more than a weapon. "Hey! It says here we can reshape the thing!"

Thanks to ET's notes, we learned ways of opening and closing the sphere in different ways, and got a pretty good idea of how to control it.

Now, a squirrel had been watching us the whole time from the bough of a tree. I know, it's weird, but some animals are funny, and just sit there and stare at you, especially if you don't make any sudden moves. Plus I'd read somewhere that alien abductees sometimes had a special connection with animal life.

Pointing, Jamie pushed me away from the keypad, quickly typing commands into the system.

The squirrel let out a frantic squeal as the glowing orb appeared around its little body, lifting it into the air.

It rolled around and around inside the ball, like a hamster in an exercise toy, then gave up running, lying flat on the bottom as it passively surrendered to the experience. I have never heard a squirrel make weirder noises.

Giggling, we piloted the creature every which way.

We must have toyed with the poor thing a little too long. It stopped moving, and didn't appear to be breathing.

"You killed it!" Gertie cried. "Shut it off! Shut it off!"

I quickly did so, rushing to examine our fuzzy little test subject.

Jamie leaned in close, about ready to touch it. "What do you think happened?"

I squinted at the tiny creature to see if its chest moved. It really did look dead. "Not sure. Maybe he ran out of air."

"Oh I feel so bad!"

Gertie started crying. "No! Mister Squirrel!"

The squirrel let out a feeble gasp, then opened its beady black eyes.

A huge breath followed, then several frightened shallow breaths as it realized it had been surrounded by humans.

With a quack, and a terrified shriek, the rodent bolted, shooting off like a rocket into the brush somewhere.

My sister breathed a huge sigh of relief. I frowned in puzzlement.

Jamie allowed herself a chuckle. "Bet that would make amazing pest control."

Gertie didn't find her comment that funny.

"Sorry. Anyways, that's interesting. If we can lift a squirrel, we can probably move a whole person."

"Yeah, but anyone who tries it will just pass out like that squirrel."

"Any idea why he didn't stop breathing the moment we put him in the bubble?"

"The same reason why a fish will live if you scoop it out of a river with a bucket. We must have grabbed some air when we caught him."

My sister stepped out on the patch of dirt in front of our equipment. "Do me next. I'll hold my breath." She inhaled and kept it in to illustrate.

"No, Gertie!" I protested. "It's too dangerous!"

"Please? I want to show Mister Squirrel I'm sorry."

"Gertie, he's just a squirrel."

"And you're just a person," Gertie pouted. "He was okay, you just did it too long. I'll hold my breath, I promise."

"Gertie..."

"How are we ever going to see ET if you're too chicken to let me try it?" she whimpered.

I gave Jamie a questioning look, but she only argued, "She's got a point. You saw how that squirrel flew. We just got to be careful about how long we leave her in the bubble."

My sister grinned. "Yaay!"

Gertie didn't hold her breath. At least, not before we put her in the bubble. Still, she seemed okay, even when she forgot and tried to breathe. She giggled as we floated her around the trees, way up above the branches and canopy.

All of a sudden, my sister looked suspiciously tired. "Gertie! Are you all right?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I...guess. I feel...sleepy."

"Quick!" Jamie shouted. "Get her down!"

My fingers rushed across the keyboard. My girlfriend hurried underneath the bubble, arms outstretched. "Gertie! Get ready to fall!"

In her semiconscious state, Gertie didn't even try to prepare herself. Jamie had to jump back a foot to grab her before she hit the ground.

For a moment, my sister just gasped in Jamie's arms.

"Are you all right?"

Gertie nodded. "I...just...couldn't breathe, and my head got all swimmy and I saw stars."

"Running out of air will do that to you."

My girlfriend and I stared at each other.

"You know what this means, don't you?"

Jamie nodded. "But what are we going to do about the oxygen supply?"

I saw a guy in a movie making compressed air by hooking two empty barrels together with surgical tubing and pouring water into one of them. The water forced the air in the other tank to compress. I improvised a small version of that by soldering together coffee cans and an industrial sized peanut butter jar.

Jamie frowned at my invention. "Couldn't we just swipe some oxygen equipment from a nursing home?"

I looked at her like she were crazy. "How could you even suggest such a thing?"

"I've seen some people stockpile them. They're on a temporary recovery situation, back from the hospital or something, you know, `on the mend', and the paperwork gets messed up and then nobody comes to pick up the extra tanks."

I stared, thinking she might be onto something, after all. "Do you...know somebody like that?"

"In California."

I rolled my eyes. "That's helpful. Anyways, ET's book showed me how to make a few things that could triple the natural air production of plants. I think we could probably do that." I tapped the coffee cans. "We could also build a bigger one of these, I mean, fill a trash can with water or something..."

"And breathe in garbage? Gross!"

"I think there's a few rain barrels around here somewhere..."

Due to Gertie being small, and having little lungs, we let her play astronaut again, this time with our homemade scuba tank. She got stuck in a tree and broke the equipment. Gertie ended up having to hold her breath while we lowered her down in the bubble.

The grin on her face...it was like she'd just discovered a new roller coaster. We had to discourage her from going again.

We spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to build a vehicle out of our bubble machine, and constructing some sort of air apparatus.

Okay, well, Gertie tried to make flight suits out of shower curtains and pajamas, but Jamie and I spent our time drawing up materials lists, scrounging up whatever we could that matched the item's description.

Dad came home a little while later. "So...What did you kids blow up today?"

I wasn't sure how to begin, or what I should tell him. "Nothing."

"It's not a bomb," Gertie blurted. "We made a giant bubble, and I flew. I actually flew! I'm going to be an astronaut!"

Dad rolled his eyes when he noticed the sewing job she'd given to her pajamas. "Is that a fact."

Jamie spun it into the `pretend' direction. "I was the alien monster. Rar!"

My sister's face turned a bright red. "No you weren't! You were helping me fly! Tell him the truth!"

Jamie gave him a cheesy grin. "Oh yeah! I completely forgot! We were doing that!" She made pretend spaceship noises, pantomiming walking on the moon. "Shooooommm!"

That's how Dad dismissed it as a game. Not much of a stretch, really. Who would believe that we actually made my sister float in the air with a computer program?

We ate dinner, and Dad read Ruby's letter to us, well, the parts suitable for kids. My guess is that he had been savoring the note all day long, refusing to read it until he got home, for he seemed as excited to read as we were to hear it.

In the letter, Ruby said she missed us, that mom was still trying to find us, and talking to the cops a lot. They had a warrant out for Dad's arrest.

I flinched when Dad read about "One of E/W's classmates" going missing. By then, I could tell all the pieces had fallen together in his head.

Dad stopped reading, just glaring at me, breathing heavily through his nose, hands shaking as they crinkled the edges of the paper.

Dad set the paper down, balling his fists. He looked ready to hit someone. "I'm disappointed in you, Elliott. Real disappointed. You lied to me."

[0000]

Note: The movie with the diving equipment he mentioned was Frog Dreaming, also starring the kid from ET.