There's a Spaceship in My Tree! (12 page)

And that, of course, was the problem. Jared was up to something. They could feel it like thunder in the distance. Right now would be a good time for whatever made them special to kick in with some brilliant plan.

18
War Games

The season wasn't really ready yet for snow, so, by the end of the day, it was mostly melted. Ghoulie got permission to sleep over with Beamer; but your typical sleepover it wasn't. Mom and Dad couldn't figure it out — no Xbox, no shaving cream fights, no monster flicks. They had dinner and then watched E.T.'s death scene seven times.

They even went to bed early. Then, instead of exchanging ghost stories, they just lay there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling.

“You know what our problem is, don't you?” Ghoulie said.

“What?” Beamer said.

“We have more Achilles' heels than Jared does.”

“Yeah, that's for sure,” Beamer sighed.

They lay there silently for awhile, then Beamer started crying . . . or was it laughing?

“One thing about being pulverized . . . ,” Beamer chortled after a few moments.

“What's that?” Ghoulie asked with a smirk.

“ . . . We won't have to untie our shoes to get them off,” Beamer finished with a snuffled laugh.

“Nice try, MacIntyre,” Ghoulie drawled. “If you think of a way to make Jared laugh to death, let me know.”

“Jared doesn't laugh at funny,” Beamer said, still snickering. “Only at mean.”

“Right, I forgot,” Ghoulie said wryly. “Laughter's the only thing he's afraid of — people laughing at him, that is.”

Beamer's snuffled laughter faded into silence. A germ of an idea began to form in his mind. Suddenly he rolled over and sat up. “That's it!” he shouted. “That's his Achilles' heel!”

“MacIntyre,” Ghoulie groaned, “haven't we had enough of heels for awhile?”

“So, whadda we got to lose?” Beamer demanded, jumping out of bed. “If we can get him into something so funny that everybody'll split their guts laughing — ”

“How are we going to do that?” Ghoulie inquired, reluctantly sitting up. “Bozo the Clown is dead, and Ronald MacDonald's not available, and in no way does Jared resemble either one of them.”

“But that's not — ” Beamer tried to interrupt.

“And suppose we could set him up,” Ghoulie kept on. “We'd have to get him in front of an audience, which would be about as easy as getting Mount Rushmore to Nashville. Not to mention, we'd become worm meat for the effort.”

“We're already worm meat,” Beamer shot back, “but if we make it happen when and where and how
we
choose, then . . .”

“ . . . We can turn Jared's homicidal tendencies into comedy?” Ghoulie finished for him doubtfully. “Man, you really are a dreamer.”

“Can you get one of your dad's other video cameras Saturday morning?” Beamer said, pacing the floor in excitement.

“Yeah . . . ,” he responded, suddenly getting the drift of Beamer's idea.

“Listen, Scilla said that Jared cuts through the park every Saturday to go to the afternoon movie, right?”

“Uh, I think so . . . yeah, right. But that's soon!”

“That's probably all the time we've got left!”

A few minutes later Beamer and Ghoulie were cutting through the attic en route to the tree ship. Beamer had to practically drag Ghoulie past the web. Actually, Beamer wasn't too keen on it himself, the way it glowed eerie silver in the moonbeam.

Climbing through the tall windows, they crept across the shingled roof to the big tree branch which overhung the house.

Ghoulie stopped just before he was ready to step from the roof to the tree. “Did you hear what your sister said at dinner?” he said, eyeing the tree curiously.

“No, listening to her has been known to cause brain damage,” said Beamer with a smirk.

“Well, she was just repeating what that scientist guy she follows around said.”

“Oh man, not him!”

“He's found an energy field around the tree — bigger than the one around the web! But get this: they're connected, passing energy back and forth between them.”

“My sister said that? She doesn't know a field from a hair brush.”

“Well, she didn't say it quite that way. I had to do a little translation.”

“Do you think that's why we go off to other galaxies in our heads?”

“I don't know. I'm thinking about it.”

It was warm, like Indian summer, and the music of night life was all around them as they climbed through the tangle of branches. The night was bright, even though the sky was mostly clouded over. A circular opening around the full moon made it look like a giant eye in the sky.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Beamer said, catching a glint from something in the tree. He looked closer, then slowly reached inside his old friend the squirrel's home toward whatever it was. What he came out with was that shiny dark object Beamer had seen the squirrel carrying around months ago. Beamer held it up in the moonlight and turned it around and around.

“The meteor!” he suddenly blurted.

“What are you talking about?” Ghoulie asked, scrunching up close to peer over his shoulder.

“This is the missing chip from the meteor in the museum.”

“Come on, Beamer, it's just a rock,” Ghoulie muttered, as he moved on up the tree.

“That's what you said to Ms. Parker. Ghoulie, this is it. I'm sure of it!”

“Okay, okay, so you've got a piece of a meteor for your very own,” Ghoulie said, still uninterested.

“No, it's more than that. It's a piece of a falling star, a star that hit
my
tree, Ghoulie —
my
tree!”

“Sure, Beamer. Now would you hurry and get up here,” Ghoulie ordered impatiently.

“D'ya know what I think? The energy field came from the meteor. It had some kind of radiation so that when it blasted the tree, it gave it some kind of . . . something. The squirrel . . . or maybe its ancestor all those years ago,” Beamer went on talking to the air, “must have mistaken it for an acorn and taken it up to its nest.”

Beamer pocketed his new treasure and reached back in the hollow to pick up a handful of acorns. “We're gonna need all the help we can get. I'll pay ya' back later,” he said to the invisible squirrel, and then he began to throw the nuts, one by one, at Scilla's window. Finally it opened and Scilla's irritated face poked out.

“Hey, what's it take for a girl to get a little sleep around here?” she asked with a gigantic yawn.

“Meet us in the ship,” Beamer whispered loudly. “We've got work to do.”

“Now? Are you crazy?” she exclaimed.

“It's now or never, and I mean
never
.”

She gave him a long look. “I'll be right over.”

*   *   *   *   *

A little after five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, Jared and four other boys were on their bicycles, weaving in and out of traffic. Anyone within ten blocks would have known where they were from the sound of horns blaring. Usually only Jeffries and Slocum went with Jared to the Saturday movie. Today, though, was special. Today, there was going to be a war.

The movie —
Mean Streets Aflame
— couldn't have been better chosen to pump them up for the massacre ahead. Yes, “Operation Demolition” was underway. You see, bad guys make plans too. Before Beamer even had a glimmer of an idea, Jared had already laid out his hit plan. Like a teen Mafia kingpin, he'd gathered all the facts; he'd analyzed his enemies — their abilities and limitations, who would be where, when — and predicted their means of retaliation.

In one swift attack, Jared was going to bring them to their knees . . . forever.

*   *   *   *   *

Beamer and Ghoulie were waiting at the far end of the park where the largest of the forest paths opened up into a broad playing field.

“Now I know what it feels like to be a guppy,” groaned Ghoulie, propping his head on top of his bicycle handlebars. He fingered nervously the strap to a small video camera that was slung around his neck.

“How else are we going to get him into the backyard?” Beamer explained for the seventeenth time.

“Being bait for a shark is not what I had in mind!”

“All we gotta do is make sure we don't let him get too close.”

They sat quietly on their bikes, anxiously looking up the trail. The wind rippled their clothes, tugging at the hood of Ghoulie's sweatjacket. A sky full of big, puffy clouds made the park a patchwork of green and shadow.

“What's taking them so long?” Ghoulie finally broke the silence.

“I don't know,” Beamer shrugged. “Maybe the movie went long.”

“But we got the time for the next showing, remember?”

“Yeah, okay . . . well, then . . . could be they stopped for a Coke or a video game or something. I don't know.”

Ghoulie turned to wipe his nose on his sleeve, then lost his breath in a world-class
gasp
! Beamer turned around to see what the matter was, and saw Ghoulie's eyes growing to roughly the size of poached eggs. He followed the direction of Ghoulie's shaking finger.

19
Invasion!

There they were — the bad news troop — in full force, coming from the wrong direction and going the wrong way. The Star-Fighters had been outflanked, outfoxed, out-maneuvered, and were definitely out-manned. Just like that, Beamer's plan was blown to pieces.

“Well, we'll just have to try again next Saturday,” Beamer said, trying to shrug it off.

Then the full extent of the disaster blew over them like a nuclear shock wave. Just when Jared's goon squad should have zigged
left
for home, they zigged
right
!

“I don't like the looks of this,” Beamer murmured, a lump forming in his throat. “They're headed for Murphy Street.” Then he saw it — the crooked fan tail of a crowbar sticking out of Jared's saddle bag.

“Oh no!” Beamer gasped as he watched them round a turn onto Murphy Street. “They're headed for the house!” he cried.

Beamer and Ghoulie peeled out at near light speed, but there was a major pit where Beamer's stomach should have been. Not even warp drive was going to get them home ahead of Jared. And Scilla was there alone!

Yep, Jared couldn't have timed it better if he'd been able to read their minds. Erin was at cheerleader tryouts and Michael was with Dad and Mom, who were working at the school rummage sale.

Beamer pedaled like his life depended upon it, shaking his head in dismay. Right now, the battle for the tree ship had all the earmarks of a middle-school Armageddon.

*   *   *   *   *

One thing was in Scilla's favor: She didn't have time to worry about it. Perched in her treetop lookout position, she was watching for Beamer and Ghoulie to come tearing around the corner into Murphy Street, with Jared and gang in hot pursuit. The only trouble she'd had so far was from birds. A whole flock of tiny, noisy black birds heading south had settled in their tree for a rest stop. Her grandma called them starlings. In fact, it took her a minute to realize that the new noise at the bottom of the tree wasn't coming from them.

“All right,” she suddenly heard a voice snarl from below. “Looks like we caught 'em with their pants down. Let's make this quick and messy.”

Scilla nearly fell out of her perch.
Where are Beamer and Ghoulie?

“Do we have to carry up the sledgehammer?” Slocum whined.

“Holy tamole!” Scilla mouthed silently. In desperation, she quietly slipped and tripped and sometimes fell, branch by branch, down toward the tree ship.

Jared and his gang hadn't spotted her yet.

“Yeah, take it,” Jared growled. “We don't want anything left of their precious tree house but splinters.” Slocum groaned and tucked the sledgehammer in his belt.

As Jared vaulted onto the slanted trunk, Scilla landed, rump first, on the ramp. “Just like a bunch of boys to leave a girl to do their dirty work,” she muttered as she pushed painfully to her feet.
This isn't even my fight. Maybe I could just hide in the leaves until they leave.

When Jared got where the slanted trunk turned and climbed more straight up, he stopped, suddenly uneasy. “You guys go first,” he called behind. “I'll take . . . uh . . . an anchor position . . . in case the dorks show up and are stupid enough to follow us up the tree.”

Seemingly satisfied with this thin explanation, Jared's clones scrambled past him and on up into the branches, thickly cloaked with dark red leaves. Jared could see snatches of the bullet-shaped structure, newly painted and gleaming. What bothered him was the not-quite-blocked-out memory of the last time he had climbed this tree. But that time he had been alone. Now he was here in force. He took a deep breath, tucked his crowbar into his belt, and again started to climb.

Scilla quickly shut and barred the tree ship's door behind her. She looked at the plywood control panels, her eyes again flaring in panic. There were supposed to be three pair of hands working the controls, not just one. She paced back and forth like an anxious penguin trying to decide what to do first.

Then, just as if someone had flipped a switch, she was Lieutenant Bruzelski again and everything popped into focus. Why she was alone on the scout vessel, she couldn't say, but she knew her duty. “Screen on — mark zero, zero, zero!” she announced authoritatively, her hands playing across the dials. Immediately the view screen flickered on and, with it, the camera. “Yes!” she exclaimed, seeing the view angle shift to focus directly on the area below the ship.

There they were, Jeffries and Slocum, along with two others, Phillips and Johnson. At least that's who she thought they were. She blinked to clear her eyes, then took another look. To her Lieutenant Bruzelski eyes, these were entirely different creatures — creatures from a world alien to her own. The one Scilla had thought was Slocum now had gills that flared every time he took a breath and a large floppy fin at the top of his head which kept falling into his eyes. Jeffries got stuck with the bug eyes and antennae and what may or may not have been a mustache. The other two had pig heads with big slavering lips, floppy ears, and pimples.