Turning red on one cheek, Gertie pouted, then burst into tears. We all stared at the alien.

Jamie was fuming. "Why'd you do that for?"

I scowled. "Yeah! What did we ever do to you?"

With eyes darting back and forth, Urdorla turned to face my girlfriend. "You...are...fat." It seemed they had picked up our language, more or less, and the bad parts of it, too. "You will never see Vorxora."

Looking like she'd eaten a mouthful of lemons, the alien waddled away.

Jamie put her hands on her hips. "That was mean!"

My sister still cried. I gave her a hug. "C'mon. I'm sure they're not all like that."

"What if they are?" Her lower lip trembled. "What if ET really doesn't want to see us, and this is all a big mistake?"

"Gertie, why would he tell us to come visit him if he doesn't want us to? Why would he give us all these instructions? Even if all the other ones are mean, there's no way he'll treat us like that!"

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. "You're right. I just, I don't know, I thought this place was going to be perfect and we'd never run into any problems."

Jamie patted her on the back. "We're in space, Gertie. This isn't heaven."

With a grumpy sneer, Colzest pointed his disproportionately long arms at the dirt. "Work."

Since I didn't have an alien snail in my ear, I and Jamie demanded answers by grabbing his hands.

Instead of getting a response, we both received a sensation like we'd grabbed hold of an electric fence. We saw stars, blacked out for a minute, awakening on the ground.

Jamie groaned as she dusted herself off. "So that's what it feels like."

The alien made impatient stomps with his webbed feet. "Work."

We grudgingly obeyed, planting seeds for tomatoes and peppers, burying radishes and sweet potato buds.

"I guess this isn't so bad..."

Jamie stuck out her tongue. "Yeah. I saw your little salad gardens. Unfortunately I think this kinda sucks...At least Gertie is feeling better."

I shoveled, watching my sister. Indeed she seemed to have recovered from her heartbreak, becoming engrossed in playing with the dirt. "I guess there is that..."

"Lack of common sense isn't a good enough description for what she has. She's impulsive. More impulsive than us. At her age, you don't get social phobias, you talk to whoever you want, presidents, celebrities, the opposite sex, you don't get scared the same way. She's also more innocent than us, because she's younger, and doesn't know about grownup things. Little kids have more imagination. I bet she still believes in Santa Claus, doesn't she?"

I shrugged. "I...guess? And it's weird because we're Jewish."

"So it's like Peter Pan. The more grown up you are, the less you can fly."

"Stop talking or go home!" Colzest scolded.

Me and Jamie rolled eyes at each other, continuing to work. The aliens gave us baby turnips to plant, squash, blueberries and cranberries. Lunar soil is rich in iron and magnesium, perfect for those kinds of plants.

We did a great job, but received no compliments.

"I'm hungry," Gertie complained a half hour later. "When's lunch?"

Colzest responded with a growl. "No talking. Work."

Jamie scowled at him. "Broken record."

An hour passed, but no food came. Gertie kept complaining about being hungry.

Jamie touched Colzest's shoulder. "Excuse me, sir-"

She ended up picking herself up off the ground. "You jerk!"

"Let's go back to the ship," I suggested. "We'll eat canned beans."

The moment we tried to leave, every Qulpari in the place surrounded us, long arms pointing to our patch of dirt. "Work."

"You guys could sure learn a few things about hospitality!"

With rumbling stomachs, we reluctantly did as we were told.

Jamie churned the soil, dropped in seeds. "Why do you think they're doing this?"

"I don't know. I thought we were pretty well behaved!"

"Maybe they don't want us here."

"Why not just tell us we're not welcome?"

"I don't know, maybe they're just upset because we shared their advanced space flight technology with other humans or something."

Gertie kept sniffing, trying to hold it together. Neither dad nor mom ever let us go hungry, not even in a religious observance like Lent or Yom Kippur.

We tried to sneak some apples out of trees, swipe some corn, that kind of thing, but the aliens used their powers to snatch the items out of our hands before we could eat any of them. The only thing we managed to get in our stomachs was a little wheat we'd gotten from rolling chaff around in our fingers. Hardly filling.

Jamie packed dirt into a hole. "I still don't get why they're being so mean."

The sounds of munching and slurping prompted me to salivate. I looked up and actually witnessed Qulpari passing food around to each other, eating right in our presence, as if they knew how angry it would make us! Fruits, vegetables, breads...

Jamie clenched and unclenched her fists. "What is all this? Are they daring us to punch them or something?"

I frowned. "I...don't know."

"If they really want us to slim down, this is not the way to do it."

Jamie dug a channel for the water to trickle into our plants. "Elliott, do you think I'm fat?"

I stared. "No way! I wouldn't change a thing!"

She chuckled. "Thank you. I needed to hear that."

"I think the only reason why Urdorla told you that was because their spaceships are tiny or something."

"Tell them we'll take our own if they improve it."

Not having the slug thing in my ear, I grabbed Colzest's arm, to make the attempt.

The alien made a noise like a gargling tomcat and stomped away. We tried to walk away too, but the other Qulpari only crowded us in and sent another one of their friends forward to boss us around, this one tall, with paisley-like markings on the chest and forehead. "Work."

We planted saplings, tilled and watered.

"Jamie," I said. "Who do you love more, me or Roger?"

The look on her face said `Roger.' "Elliott..."

Before she could say another word, a clod of dirt struck her in the back of the head. "Hey!"

Another hit Gertie, and she cried because she got some in her eye. I calmed her down, helped her rinse out the injured area. When another came flying my way, I grabbed my own dirt clod, throwing it at the nearest alien. "You leave my sister alone!"

The dirt clod barely grazed the alien's webbed feet. They responded by pelting us with gravel.

"Why are you doing this!" Jamie shouted. "We never did any harm to you!"

More gravel flew at us. One of my lenses chipped.

"What's wrong with these guys? Do they hate human beings or something?...Is this some kind of revenge for what we did to them?...Or our planet?"

I thought about how people mistreated ET and frowned.

Gertie cried as a rock struck her in the head.

"For old sluggish aliens, they sure got a throwing arm!"

I could take no more of this. In anger, I grabbed a rock of my own, knocking down Gertie's attacker with one well aimed throw. He lay groaning on the dirt, rubbing his bruised head.

Jamie, seeing another Qulpari poised with a rock, pre-empted the strike with one of her own.

The rock stopped in inch away from a green tortoise patterned Qulpari face. The creature calmly raised a hand, and the piece of basalt spun rapidly end over end, rocketing our way.

Jamie raised to block the flying object.

To my surprise, it stopped before making contact with her body, rebounding into the ceiling.

A stalactite broke loose, dislodging a squeaking bat.

I watched in horror as the large mineral dropped from the roof, crushing a Qulpari to death. The strangled tomcat's wail that came out the victim's mouth would not be easily forgotten.

Mr. Paisley snarled at us, pointing down the trail we came from. "You will never go to Jufuceri! Go back to your planet!"

"I'm sorry!" Jamie whimpered. "I didn't mean to-"

"Go!" the alien shouted.

"Fine! Then I'm not sorry. You shouldn't have been playing with rocks in the first place!" She stomped down the trail ahead of us.

My sister was in tears. Even I found myself wiping my eyes as I took her hand, leading her away from the scene of the tragedy. "C'mon. I think we'll both feel better once we get some food in our stomachs."

The Qulpari blocked us in, kept us going the way they wanted with their weirdly elongated arms, sometimes by levitating a big rock or using telekinesis to throw vines in our path when they weren't fast enough to run interception.

Jamie scowled as a particularly large boulder flew across her path to block her in. "If they can do that, why couldn't they stop their friend from getting smooshed?"

I could only shrug. "Maybe they got distracted. Or maybe they expected us to stop it."

She sighed. "So now what do we do?"

Gertie tried to apologize to every Qulpari she encountered along the way, but they all pretty much had the same thing to say to us: "Go away," "Leave us alone," and "Go back to your planet." She became even more tearful and sad.

Rilquza and Tolmina frowned at us as we passed, but said nothing, leaving us puzzled about their level of friendship.

We at last returned to the Thunder Road, debating our next move.

"We should go to Hawaii," Jamie suggested. "Find an uncharted island. Something with lots of bananas and stuff we can live on."

I rolled my eyes. "You mean like Gilligan's Island?"

"Why not? They said we couldn't make it to their stupid planet! I mean, say someone did catch us. Maybe they'll set up a little encampment on the island where we can at least hike around and stuff."

"I don't want to go."

"They'll throw rocks. They're not leaving us any choice."

I opened the door to my ship, but just leaned on the frame. "This is too important just to give up."

"What do you want to do, risk death by flying to their planet in our junker?"

"Maybe?" I shook my head. "We've sacrificed too much to go down without a fight. We can't just let them boss us around. We need to show them we're serious."

Jamie put a hand on my shoulder. "What do you suggest?"

I sighed through my nostrils. "We wait."

"So, what...are we just going to stand around and let them throw rocks and dirt at us?"

"We'll stay in the Thunder Road. If it gets bad, we can switch on the bubble."

She swallowed. "What happens if we switch it on and it sends us straight into the arms of those army guys?"

"If they're dumb enough to do that, it'll be their fault if those army guys come up here and start doing experiments on them."

"Okay, so they'll send us to Siberia, or maybe turn it into a bomb that blows us and them to bits. Still not fun."

"So we won't turn on the engine."

"They'll break the windows."

"We'll still have the bubble."

"Without the engine?

I punched the hull, knocking a tile loose. "Okay, so we'll die. But we'll die free."

Jamie rubbed her face in frustration. "I hope you're right about this."

I climbed in the cockpit, opening the food compartment. "So what do you want for lunch? I guess we could mix some Ramen with chicken noodle and meter—"

I couldn't finish the sentence The aliens had stolen our food. "Dammit."

"They left the engine and oxygen stuff alone but gave us nothing to eat? They really want us to go home, don't they?"

Gertie hadn't cried like this since Grandma died. We hugged her and told her it was all right. "We'll figure out something. I'm...sure of it...Remember when Mom told us about Yom Kippur?"

My sister reluctantly nodded. "Are we going to be able to break our fast at breakfast?"

I sighed. "We can only hope."

The aliens tossed a couple rocks at our vehicle, knocking more tiles loose, cracking the glass. Otherwise left us alone.

"Either they want us to rely on the bubble, or they want us to die."

"I'm not giving up."

Gertie put on some Phil Collins (Throwing It All Away) because it made her feel better. We curled up on the floor, napping a little. Not so easy to do on an empty stomach.

A sudden wave of overwhelming sadness brought us groaning into a sitting position.

Not something we consciously thought about, it had been broadcasted into our brains, so we could all feel it.

We got up, staring around the spiderweb crack in the window.

Outside, a sort of funeral procession passed by, all the Qulpari slowly waddling like penguins in a line, levitating the mutilated corpse of their fallen comrade with their psychokinetic powers.

The aliens looked at us with sad, accusing faces. We nonverbally telegraphed `I'm sorry,' but it didn't seem to help. Gertie buried her face into my clothing and sobbed.

As soon as the waddling group had gained a fair distance from us, I got out of our vehicle, trailing behind.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Jamie hissed to me. "I mean, they were trying to stone us to death!"

"You think that would stop Captain Kirk? I'm going where no man has gone before."

She snorted. "Yeah. That's worked great so far."

"Beats running away with our tail between our legs."

"All right. Make that `Where no one has gone before.'"

"Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of `nobody,' or `no person.'"

We ducked behind a bush when we noticed a Qulpari looking our way.

"Nobody ought to keep his mouth shut!"

I pantomimed zipping my lips.

The Qulpari took the body down a cave tunnel beside the waterfall, a place they hadn't shown us before. The speleothems had been carved with the Qulpari god symbol, graven images of their kind, and alien style `arabesques'.

Around the curve of the tunnel, we found...pieces of art crafted from hundreds of alien bones, like the French catacombs and dark ages cathedrals Geraldo or some news guy would use for a Halloween TV special.

Since the slope and curve of the tunnel gave us a balcony view of the place, we hid behind the pillars and watched the happenings below.

The procession stopped in a giant cenote, an eerie glowing light shining down like the sun from above. The light glowed so intensely that it made the lake water look like neon paint.

The Qulpari laid their dead friend in the water with their long ape's length arms, Rilquza standing among them, uttering soft squirrel quacks.

"What do you think they're doing?" I whispered to Gertie as they waded in with the body, laying hands.

Each of the Qulpari came forward, one at a time, to touch the victim, making strange sounds. Jamie whispered something to me, but I was too fascinated by the ceremony.

"I...don't know," my sister muttered. "It's a funeral. Seems like...funeral stuff."

Jamie tugged on my shirt. "Elliott!"

I glanced her way and nearly jumped out of my skin.

A Qulpari had snuck up on us without a sound, and now stared at us, bug eyed, not difficult for creatures that already had giant sized eyeballs, but at the moment this one's seemed...more so.

I thought for sure the stranger would attack us, but instead he grudgingly pointed to the water, nodding his head that way.

With much nervousness, we complied, wading into the glowing pool. Although essentially polluting the place with our unwashed clothing and dirty shoes, the aliens did not scold us. Instead, they moved aside to let us in.

Me, my sister and Jamie found ourselves in tears as we touched the poor dead creature.

Jamie wiped her teary eyes. "I'm sorry. We didn't mean for this to happen."

Gertie, too emotional to even say anything, just cried.

"I didn't even know him, but I wished I could have!" I sobbed. "I mean, sure, he would have just thrown rocks at me, but..." I couldn't finish the sentence. The guilt and sadness choked me up too much.

We grieved for what felt like several minutes, the aliens making weird chanting sounds.

Eventually I got tired and took my hand away. "I'm going back to the ship."

When I waded backwards, a Qulpari growled, "Stay."

I laid my hand on the corpse again.

More chanting.

Something wet and sticky oozed over my hand like chicken fat. I shuddered as the creature's flesh crumbled and melted beneath my fingers.

Then, more horribly still, something wiggled within the body, as if trying to get out.

To my shock and absolute disgust, the aliens peeled more of the disintegrating skin away, pulled out rib bones, frantically trying to help...this wiggling thing to escape.

They uncovered a pale smiling thing resembling an axolotl with fins, catfish whiskers and tentacles.

The rest of its body squirmed out, scaly, glowing, multiple finned bluegill tail...and then it did a dolphin jump, and a pair of wings unfurled from its back.

The strange creature flapped into the air, hovered above as it made noises to its comrades.

It zoomed into the light.

"Go," Colzest growled.

Tolmina's face wrinkled. "Go home now."

"Go home," the other aliens repeated.

We glumly obeyed, marching back up the tunnel.

"What do you think that...creature was?" Jamie asked. "The alien's soul?"

I scratched my head. "I...don't think it's a soul. I mean, when ET died, he just came back, he didn't turn into anything. I never saw a ghost."

"Did he have access to a glowing lake?"

"Well...no...but I kinda don't think that's what we saw."

"You think it's some kind of mutation? Or a baby of some kind?"

"Tolmina said she had a mother and a father, so they probably don't birth from dead bodies."

My sister seemed oddly...uplifted by the experience. "Maybe that's just something that happens to them when they get to a really old age. Maybe their bodies just get wore out and so this other thing comes out."

The moment we got within sight of the Thunder Road, a lion jumped out in front of us and roared.