After nearly dying of hypothermia and being taken into a building not much better than the outside (well, except for the wind break) and finally warming up, going back out was the last thing we wanted to do. At least we had parkas now.

Icy winds buffeted us as we rushed out with our equipment. Roy had to help Gertie on account of the amplifier.

We faced two oozing giants, three monsters as tall as Roy, plus two my height.

"How did they get past Vorxora?" Roy asked.

I shook my head. "ET's not Superman. And these...creatures..."

Dark liquid rolled across the snow like an overturned can of motor oil, and a third child sized creature emerged from the ooze.

Roy scrunched up his face. "Hmmm. I guess he would have needed a mop to stop something like that!"

Jamie switched off her collar. "You think they're okay back on Jufuceri?"

"I don't know. Warkinde hates ET."

"I don't get it. Why's he coming after us? Shouldn't his real beef be against ET?"

I furrowed my brow. "You'd think...but then again, I did just help destroy Xetgupa."

"Maybe ET's already dead, and that's why he's coming after us."

"Don't say that!" I shouted. "Please! I can't lose him again!"

Jamie squeezed my hand.

Through the blinding snow, I caught sight of the shimmering portal. I pointed. "Guys! ET didn't strand us here after all!...And he might still be alive!"

"Well praise God for small miracles."

Roy didn't look so happy. "Something tells me these people would be better off if we had."

"Let's do something about it." Jamie reactivated her collar. Gertie flipped the switch on the amp. I readied my instrument. Roy still had his alien flute.

Before we played a note, pairs of wings emerged from the backs of the giants, and now we had ooze falcons.

Jamie raised a hand, signaling `Three, two, one.'

We played. Still strange to think of musical performance as battle, but blasters and light sabers aren't the Qulpari style.

Jamie sang, causing a giant to erupt into flame.

She stopped, scowling at the fire and black smoke. It burned like a pile of rubber tires soaked in gasoline. "Man, what the hell?"

The giant staggered back at the percussive notes of her regular speech, but, receiving only physical attack, quickly recovered. It and its allies closed in on us.

"Keep singing!" Gertie feverishly strummed chords. "It's working!"

I stared. My sister had seen what we hadn't: The flame morphing into something like white fire fighter's foam, swelling around the giant's chest and shoulders. It bubbled, overflowing in a way that reminded me of times when I put the wrong type of soap into mom's dishwasher.

We played with greater gusto, my instrument drenching the creatures in a rain of neon blue...chemical that caused the foaming to swell.

Expecting my sister's guitar to be useless, I glanced at her as I played.

I did a double take. A glowing sphere now flickered in the air before her, flashing and growing in size as she coaxed notes from the steel strings. Little lightning bolts cracked out from its center, striking the airborne creatures. They foamed and fell shrieking into the snow, leaving behind harmless suds.

The amplifier exploded and shorted out, muting the guitar.

I thought for a moment Gertie's playing had done it, but then I noticed bullet holes.

"Stop playing or she dies!" a voice shouted over the howling wind and what remained of our music.

I looked back. Jamie's mother had my parallel universe mom held at gunpoint.

Jamie deactivated her collar and whirled around, staring at the woman. "Mom? What are you doing?"

"Just getting a little revenge, sweetie. You destroyed some very important machinery and killed my mate Xetgupa. You shouldn't have gotten yourself involved with Vorxora. You've made yourself very dead!"

Roy stowed his instrument. "Why's she talking like that?"

I swallowed. "I think Warkinde found a way to possess her."

The woman gave me a nasty smile in response.

The oily monsters stomped closer. Before long, they'd be close enough to engulf us like amoebas.

Mrs. Markwell cocked the hammer back on the trigger. "I should kill this woman just to spite you, but I want that collar. Hand it over to me now, and I might be persuaded to let her live."

Stomp. A black giant now loomed over me. He could practically reach down and choke me, and probably would have, had Mrs. Markwell given the order. I slowly crept away from it, hoping my movements wouldn't jeopardize the hostage situation.

Jamie's mother only smirked. "The collar. Now."

"Don't do it!" Mom cried, but Jamie already had the collar unsnapped, throwing it to her duplicate mother.

A bad toss, perhaps intentionally so. It landed in the snow a few feet away from her.

In just about every story about a hostage, the same things generally happen:

The heroes or the hostage try something foolish, and the hostage gets killed.

The heroes throw the villain something important, the villain bends over to pick it up, and the heroes disarm him.

The villain gets the important item, he gives a big speech, and they shoot him while he's grandstanding.

Warkinde/Jamie's mom must have seen some of these stories, for she kept the gun pressed to my mom's head the whole time. She scooted Mom closer to the collar, forced Mom to go down with her as she bent over to pick it up.

When my sister closed her eyes and raised her hand like Yoda, I flinched. "Gertie, no!"

Already I could see the outcome: Like the hero in some cop show or western, she'd knock the weapon out of the woman's hand, but not before she squeezed the trigger.

I looked away, not wanting to see the terrible aftermath.

I winced at the explosive sound of the pistol going off.

A grunt, then cursing.

Mrs. Markwell cursing. Not quite the cheery "I've just killed your mother" tone I expected.

Trembling, I returned my attention to Mom.

During Mrs. Markwell's moment of distracted collar grabbing, my sister had used her power to push the woman's finger out of the trigger guard, then sent the gun flying into a wall. My mom elbowed Mrs. Markwell in the stomach, snatching the gun from the snow.

For a few tense seconds, the two wrestled for the weapon.

With a look of triumph, Mrs. Markwell pried the gun free from Mom's fingers.

The triumphant look turned to dismay when `Dad' stepped out of a doorway, and a model Coelacanth came crashing down on her head. She collapsed unconscious in the snowdrift. "Sorry about that, Rosemary. You weren't acting yourself."

Dad gave me a thumbs up. "Keep doing what you're doing! It's working!"

"What about Jamie's mom?"

"Don't worry. I'll take care of that. You...play that funky music." He hefted Mrs. Markwell over his shoulder, carrying her into the Quonset hut.

"Yeah..." Jamie scoffed as she brushed off her alien collar. "How will we do that when we're down an amp? It's not like I can just plug this thing into a guitar!"

"Why not?" Gertie asked.

Jamie cast the oily beasts an anxious glance. "What do you want me to do? Hold the collar up to your guitar? Let you ride piggyback with your guitar while I sing? You're a small kid, but not that small!"

When a giant came stomping her way, Jamie groaned and held the collar against Gertie's guitar, singing at it.

It worked better than expected. Ball lightning shot out from the guitar, making both girls' hair stand on end. A previously unseen ooze falcon burst into a spray of white foam.

Although clutched in Jamie's fist, the sounds of her voice and the guitar traveled where she pointed the collar, tearing a foaming gash in the giant's knee.

I resumed my alien `woodwind' accompaniment, Roy joining in with his flute.

The giant staggered back in an explosion of foaming suds.

Boom! It hit the ground with a thunderous crash, its impact creating a huge spreading crack across the icy terrain.

Roy paused his playing for a moment. "Uh, guys? You are aware that this continent is essentially one giant glacier, right?"

Jamie gave a grave nod and kept singing.

"Guess we're dead either way..." Roy started in with the flute again.

A sudden honk caused us all to jump, and make the music sound like a section of a record where the needle skipped.

When I turned to investigate the sound, I nearly dropped my instrument.

Dad had joined us...with a bagpipe!

And he could play the song!

In case you're wondering, no, he didn't wear a kilt, just his normal parka and cold weather gear. The blaring instrument caused more showers of blue stuff to come raining down from the sky, melting away a pair of Qulpari shaped slime creatures.

Thanks to Dad, we made short work of the second giant.

Unfortunately, the weight of the large collapsing body caused the crack in the ice to expand into a fissure. Icy water erupted from the gap like some freezing version of a volcanic fault. Massive chunks of ice dropped away, exposing lakes of frigid sea water. No fish, penguins or whales down there, the commotion probably scared them all off.

Despite the danger, we kept playing.

"Why do I suddenly feel like the band that went down with the Titanic?" Roy asked.

I and Jamie stared at him.

"You never read about that?"

We both shook our heads, resuming the serenade.

When I saw Spike waving to me from a floating chunk of ice, I thought I'd hallucinated, especially when all the blowing snow obscured my view of him. But then he raised his hands and made one of the child sized oil monsters fly into the air, directly in the path of Gertie's lightning bolts.

When the blob disintegrated, Spike gestured frantically to the shimmering portal I could just barely see through the snow.

One child sized monster and three Qulpari shaped ones remaining. I could almost swear that new monsters had sprung from the ones we'd just destroyed, or oozed from the gateway somehow.

The ground cracked further, exposing more frozen lakes.

Dad stopped piping, waving us to the Quonset hut. "I got this! You kids get somewhere safe!"

Jamie gave me a questioning look.

I pointed in Spike's direction. "We gotta go that way, or else we'll never get home!"

"You see the portal?"

"I saw Spike!"

The ice cracked behind her. Swallowing hard, she cast a hopeful look back at the hut, then, with less enthusiasm, squinted into the snow opposite.

She shoved the collar into her parka. "You'd better not be wrong!"

We took off running, Gertie leaving the guitar behind for the sake of speed. Not easy to run in our baggy clothing, but we tried.

Dad stopped playing when we jumped the fissure. "Hey! Where are you going?"

Roy shrugged. "Back to where we come from, I hope!"

We hopped on an ice floe just as it broke off the main and drifted into a lake.

Gertie pointed. "I see him!"

There Spike stood, on a larger ice floe, the cavern portal glowing nearby. He waved us onward with an urgency I'd seldom seen in him before.

Jamie jumped across the gap, no problem. Roy merely had to step over the gap, but then the ice sheet moved.

I caught the side of the floe, but my legs splashed down in Arctic water.

Gertie fell all the way in. I and Roy had to help her get back out, and her boots got lost in the watery depths.

I climbed up on the ice, shivering and shifting from foot to foot to keep warm.

"Let's go," Roy urged. "It's warmer in the cave."

Jamie nodded, and the two disappeared through the portal.

I and Gertie, though...

Although the cold ate right through to the bone, we stared back at our parallel universe father, watching him battle against the remaining slime creatures with his bagpipe.

Catching our gaze, he paused his playing for a moment, giving us a sad little wave goodbye.

Gertie whimpered a little.

A tear rolled down my cheek as I waved back.

The ice cracked beneath my boots. With chattering teeth, I put a hand on my sister's shoulder. "C'mon. It's not safe."

She gave a reluctant nod, taking my hand.

We entered the portal, turning our back to the parallel earth and our duplicate parents forever.