The lion quickly padded closer.

"Run," I gasped.

Jamie, as they said on Ghostbusters, appeared to be "Terrified beyond all rational thought," so I repeated myself louder.

We fled blindly in a random direction, shoving through the vegetation, enduring the slapping sting when we caught a branch or a stalk of...something or another on the rebound.

When we thought we had gained a safe distance, the lion would spring forward a little and catch right back up to us.

Gertie tripped over a rock and fell to the ground.

The lion jumped up to her with a cold hungry look on its features. A spot of drool crept out of the corners of its mouth.

All of a sudden, Jamie just snapped. With a brazen disregard for her own safety, she leapt between Gertie and the lion, screaming in the big feline's face. "You leave her alone!"

To my utter surprise and astonishment, the lion actually got scared, bounding away from us like a pet cat terrified by a fireworks show.

She stared. "Wow, I didn't think that would actually work!"

I helped my sister to her feet. "They've been grabbing animals and stuff from a very young age. I think you'd describe that as `bred in captivity.' It probably doesn't know how to behave in the wild."

We stood, conveniently enough, in a patch of corn. Since ET's friends had become so inhospitable, we decided it fair to shuck the plants and see if any were ripe enough to eat. A lot turned out to be green, but we found a couple that looked good. Me and Jamie gave those to Gertie so she wouldn't cry so much. We also got her a cucumber. A little dirty from the ground, but she was so hungry that didn't care, devouring it like an apple. Me and Jamie ate bell peppers. We drank water from an irrigation channel.

Colzest awaited us at the Thunder Road with his arms crossed. "You have failed the test."

"What test?" Jamie shouted. "The nearly starving to death test? Or the not murdering your friends while you're trying to stone us to death test? Or was it that last one where you tried to feed us to a lion?"

Making that gargling marbles sound, the alien waddled off into the jungle.

Since we already outstayed our welcome, Gertie boldly played with the heart/computer thing we'd parked in front of...well, until someone shut off its power from another location.

"So this was a test," Jamie grumbled as we climbed back into the ship.

I slumped into a car seat. "Yeah. And we failed."

"What were they testing us for, exactly?"

"I...don't know. At least we know they weren't treating us like crap for no good reason."

"How were we supposed to pass a test we knew nothing about? It doesn't make sense!"

"Maybe it's something psychological. You know, like a study."

"You don't fail a study. You publish the results in a textbook."

"So it's a different kind of study. I heard that Thomas Edison used to take his job applicants out to dinner and watch the guys to see which ones put seasoning on their meal before trying it out. The guys who were open to new experiences would actually taste it first. He hired them instead of the guys that came to the table with their opinions already formed."

"So what would attacking your employees tell you about anything?"

"I...have no idea."

"Well, you heard him. We failed. We might as well leave."

I shook my head. "We're sitting on a conveyor. You'd think they would have just rolled us back out if they really wanted us gone. We don't even know what they're testing, or what failing it means. Maybe they'll let us re-take the test."

"And get hit by rocks again? I'm sorry, Elliott, I'm out!"

I swallowed. "Do you really want to go back?"

Jamie sighed. "Not really. But I'm not going to stay if they're going to keep torturing us."

"Then stay in the Thunder Road. I'll...figure out how to get you food and stuff."

If she could breathe fire, she probably would have. "Elliott, if they attack us again, I'm flying this thing to Hawaii, with or without you."

I stared. She didn't appear to be joking. Honestly, I didn't blame her. "Fine. I hope it never comes to that."

"I hope so too."

We tried to recover our sleep, regretting how uncomfortable and sloppily we'd built our ship.

I climbed out and sat on the ground, watching the animals.

A calico patterned Qulpari waddled up to me. I instinctively flinched and raised my hands, expecting another thrown rock.

"Safe. No harm."

I shakily let my guard down, let him come closer. His slimy fingered touched my temples.

How many cows have you eaten? he (Oznobli) asked in my mind.

"Since I've been alive? Or just this year?"

I felt his emotion of disgust and recoil at what I was about to say: `All of them,' and `I'm so hungry, I'm ready to add another to the total,' so I verbally answered, "Cows are big, so probably at least two or three large ones every year I've been alive."

You will not get any more. If their taste makes you salivate, you should go home.

"I'm Jewish. I'm okay with dietary restrictions."

I do not know `Jew.'

"It's a race of people."

Oznobli seemed bewildered with the associated mental images, Tallits, Shofar, bearded guys in black hats...

We have no `Jew' here. No humans. You will be alone. You should leave.

"No. I'm staying."

His fingers stayed on my temples.

I kind of wished he'd just hit me with a rock. A flood of emotion rushed through my mind, all sorts of painful thoughts and memories, more or less everything that could possibly make me homesick. A memory of mother during that fateful Halloween when ET showed up, worried sick, when I ran away from home to help the alien, screaming when she found her son being menaced by a deadly space creature. All that pain, all that sadness I caused her when she found me getting sick like ET. Mom had a slight problem with alcohol, but Oznobli glossed over the things I wouldn't miss, making me feel as bad as possible about leaving.

Thoughts about my Dad and Michael came to mind. They probably went to jail or some military compound. Mental pictures formed, of them, Mom and other family members looking sad, thinking I'm dead.

"Stop!" I cried, pushing the alien back. I walked away with tears in my eyes.

This must have satisfied Oznobli, for then he just said, "Go home" and waddled off.

"What was that about?" Jamie asked from the spaceship door.

I didn't answer, I just cried.

Jamie came down and hugged me.

"He...got in my head. He was trying to make me want to go home. It kind of worked."

She patted me on the back. "You said it yourself. If you go back, you'll just end up in the place."

"I know. It just hurts."

Something thumped on the dirt. I glanced down and saw a couple giant sized turnips. Red potatoes bumped against the hull of our vehicle.

I looked up just in time to see Urdorla shuffling into the foliage.

I found a few more vegetables hidden elsewhere. We had dinner, in other words.

Aside from eating, we didn't have much to do. We made experimental forays into the aliens' jungle, but found ourselves being driven back by grumpy aliens or the wildlife. Jamie almost got bitten by a snake. We ended up huddling around the spaceship, hiding whenever anything rustled the foliage.

"This is boring," Gertie complained as she drew in the dirt with a stick.

Jamie gave her an incredulous look. "Seriously?"

I stuck another tile back on our ship. "You can't expect to have fun every minute."

"We haven't had fun here at all!"

"I...I know, but that's life. We gotta have patience and put up with a few things if we want to get anywhere."

Jamie, thinking quickly, pointed to a black and white shape. "Hey Gertie! There's that goose again!"

My sister smirked. "You think he's looking for crumbs?"

"I don't know...What do you think his name is?"

The game cheered Gertie somewhat. "...Uncle Featherpants."

We kept her and ourselves busy watching the jungle and naming animals for awhile.

The fun ended when Gertie pointed at a squashy alien shape. "Mr. Meanie Head."

Oznobli again.

His paisley face no longer wrinkled in anger or annoyance. Instead he looked sad.

He waved Gertie closer, touching her temples. The two locked eyes.

When he released her, my sister burst into tears. "I wanna go home!"

We hugged her, tried to calm her down, but she just kept saying she wanted to go home.

Worse, when we let go, she switched the ship's engine on. I and Jamie jumped in just seconds before it took off.

The Thunder Road appeared to have gained a mind of its own. The moment we rose in the air, I our machine had plotted a course straight back the way we came.

"Gertie! No! What did you do!"

My sister pushed buttons on the keyboard, but they did nothing to stop the ship from moving. "All I did was turn it on! I promise!"

"Figures," Jamie grumbled. "They are going to send us back into the arms of those soldiers."

Now Gertie cried worse.

We were leaving, one way or another.

Thinking quickly, I pushed her aside, opening the engine cabinet. "Brace yourselves, guys, this is going to hurt!"

I pulled out all the important wires, causing our vehicle to smash down on the lunar soil. Well, as much as a vehicle can smash in that level of gravity.

"I wanna see mommy," Gertie sobbed. All we could do was hug her.

We had an audience, the expressions on their faces so grave that I thought we'd killed someone else. When I got out, I didn't see anything but broken asbestos shingles.

"Elliott! What's going on!" Jamie called out the door.

The moment she came outside, a group of Qulpari surrounded her, touching their hands to her forehead. Now she was crying.

She climbed in the Thunder Road, plugged in the wires, sat down and wept.

I held her. "We all knew this wasn't going to be a vacation."

Jamie sniffed, wiped her eyes. "I...think I need to be alone for awhile."

She got out, marching off down a trail. Shockingly, nobody got in her way.

I didn't bother following because I figured she needed the space, and where was she really going to go?

I didn't let her completely disappear from view, trailing a few yards behind, in case she got in trouble, ran into the lion again or something.

Tolmina came up to me with a potted plant. A pathetic ugly looking flower with two wilting blooms and a couple baby buds struggling to open. "Ugh! Why are you bringing me that?"

The alien pressed it into my hands. "Care."

Gertie lifted a leaf. "I think she wants you to fix the plant."

"You have got to be kidding!"

"Care," Tolmina repeated, loping away.

I sighed. "Guess I've done stuff like this before..."

I thought back to all those plant books I've read and set to work improving the soil, trimming, giving it plant food and water...the place did have some good plant lights already...

Jamie escaped my field of vision. I left the plant and followed her a bit. Gertie kept close to me, eyes searching, like I was, for any new predator that might be lurking, a tiger, alligator, whatever.

About halfway down the trail, Jamie came marching our way with a white object perched on her shoulder. When she got closer, I saw it was the axolotl thing that had come out of the dead alien. "I don't think this guy is a ghost. I just fed him two apples."

The creature smiled, flapped over to me, rubbed up against my neck.

"He seems...friendly for someone we just murdered."

"I don't think he remembers anything. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise...any sign of Cowardly Lion?"

I shook my head. "Feel any better?"

"...Not...really...Are we going to be vegetarian from now on?"

"Looks like it."

"Chickens are kind of cute..."

"Maybe since we showed them we're serious, they want to show us they're serious too. That's why they're reminding us of home and everything."

The flying fish thing continued to be our companion for some reason. It made us feel guilty, but we took friends where we could find them.

"We should give him a name," Jamie said.

"It probably already had a name."

She sighed. "I doubt it remembers."

"Charles," Gertie blurted.

Jamie chuckled. "Brings a new meaning to the phrase, `Sorry, Charlie.'"

"Tolmina gave Elliott a plant."

Jamie snorted in amusement. "What for? Is this a botany exam now?"

I knelt by my handiwork. "I don't know. They just told me to care for it."

"Maybe we can retake their test."

A strange basket awaited us at the ship. Kind of a cornucopia, except the cone-like thing stood like a vase. I don't think a human being could make something like it without toppling over. It contained a bunch of raw produce, vegetables, fruits, beans, a few mushrooms, and a mixture of nuts.

Jamie peeled a banana. "Does this mean that we passed?"

I shook my head. "You'd think they would have put us back in that hut, or talked to us about going to their planet if we passed. I don't know what this means, except maybe that they don't want us to starve to death."

She opened a pouch of seeds she found in the bottom. "Are they expecting us to plant these?"

The seeds definitely didn't look edible. "I...don't know. Maybe part of the test is seeing if we can grow our own food?"

"We'll starve before anything grows out there!"

I ate an apple. "Let's worry about that later. Right now, they've fed us, and basically given us dessert."

Charlie sampled some of our food. Gertie was okay with it, sharing everything. Me and Jamie decided to go along with it too, since we relied on the aliens' generosity.

After a rest awhile, we returned to the plot of ground we'd worked earlier, planting the seeds, and my sickly plant. Nobody stopped us, strangely enough.

The aliens stared as we worked, probably because they hadn't seen us do things voluntarily, or for survival.

Charlie tried to help, but his little baby arms couldn't do much of anything useful. He kept getting in the way. As annoying as it was, we didn't scold him, out of respect to our hosts.

Jamie gawked at the plot we'd been working earlier that day. "How is that even possible?"

I looked where she pointed. A bunch of green sprouts already poked out of the ground.

"Didn't we just plant seeds there a couple hours ago? There's no way they could have grown that fast!"

"You think they switched them out while we were...sitting out for penalty?"

Jamie's facial expression said she thought that's what they did. "They can make rocks float, get in your head, and control vines. Who knows what else they can do?"

Gertie unfolded a baby cabbage. "ET made my dying geraniums bloom all by themselves. He didn't switch the dirt or anything."

I raised an eyebrow. "That's a good point."

"All right." Jamie broke up an untouched patch of dirt. "Let's make sure we have lunch tomorrow."

We farmed.

Hours later, weary from our labors, we came back to the Thunder Road to recover.

Upon our arrival, Oznobli gave Gertie a potted tomato plant, one just barely beginning to grow. "Care."

"But I just farmed!" she moaned.

I patted her on the back. "Take it. At least you have an easy plant."

Jamie nodded. "And it can make food!"

She herself received a fern. It seemed the aliens had opinions about who was the best horticulturist.

I thought I would get to rest when I returned to the ship, but no, Tolmina threw a potato at my head. I blocked it.

He used his powers to fling it back at me. I blocked again.

Tolmina tried to hit me once more. It felt like some weird version of ping pong.

After about the fourth or fifth time I'd blocking the potato (it must have been way underripe), he stopped the spud in midair. "No."

He flung the tuber at me again, prompting me to block in the same way.

"No."

After a few more rounds of this `game', he growled "Fail," walking away.

"These guys are crazy," Jamie muttered.

"No kidding!"

Exhausted, none of us had difficulty catching shut-eye at the end of that long day.

When we awoke, Tolmina and Rilquza appeared outside our spaceship door.

Tolmina threw a potato at my head again.

I blocked.

He said no.

"What do you want me to do!" I shouted.

When he flung it back again, I got mad, and...somehow used my mind to bunt it away from myself.

He served a couple more times. Each time I got a little better, gaining control of the ability instead of merely using it for self defense. Of course, nosebleeds and headaches appeared to be unavoidable. The potato struck me as I wiped my nose.

"Fol-low," the aliens said in unison.

Jamie sighed. "Great. Now what."

"I...don't know."

A tree corridor ran parallel to the main entry airlock and its stone walls. We followed this path for several yards, arriving at a strange...garden, this one bearing a crop of massive plants appearing to be cousins of Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors.

Rilquza and Tolmina paused in front of one, chanting and stretching out glowing hands.

To my absolute astonishment, the giant leaves unfurled to reveal a pale almond shaped...thing the size of a dump truck.

They had somehow grown this spaceship thing. Its wings resembled enormous leaves, a big stem-like fin ran along its veiny dome, two large spheroids growing from its sides like pods.

Tolmina opened a hatch on the side of the object, gave all three of us an expectant look.

"Pack."