MY MOST PEACEFUL sleep since getting run over by a Mack truck ended abruptly with somebody yanking at my leg.
“Hey, kid. Wake up. What are you doing in here? The museum doesn’t open for four hours.”
It was a security guard. One of the guys I had put into snooze mode so my friends and I could enjoy our night in the museum without any adult supervision or interference. I looked around the planetarium. The seats were all empty. The gang was gone.
“What the heck do you think you’re doing in here, anyway?” demanded the guard.
“Well, sir,” I said very contritely, “I was with my school group and I guess I must’ve fallen asleep during the star show. I hope I didn’t miss my bus.”
“Your bus? It’s six o’clock in the morning. There aren’t any freaking school buses outside.”
“Really? Gosh. How will I get back to school?”
“Wait a second. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been asleep in here since yesterday afternoon? How come I didn’t see you when I made my rounds last night?”
I could tell the guard wasn’t buying my cover story. He was also getting his grump on, big time. Probably because he didn’t sleep very well last night. I guess I should’ve made sure he was sitting in a chair or lying down in a comfy mummy’s sarcophagus before I put him under. It’s never very comfortable to sleep standing up. Unless, of course, you’re a horse.
“There’s something hinky going on here,” said the grouchy security guard as he reached for the radio clipped to his belt. I figured he was about to summon backup or a truant officer or maybe even the NYPD.
So, powers feeling fully functional, I employed a little Alpar Nokian mind trick and altered the guard’s mental perception of “what the heck” was going on. It’s sort of an instant hypnosis type of thing I do. And, yes, it can be a blast at parties.
“Oh, I see,” said the guard, clipping his walkie-talkie back to his belt. “You got separated from your school group. But now you’re going to walk out of the museum and take the subway home. That sounds like a very good plan, young man.”
“Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.”
“You too,” said the guard, a placid smile on his face.
Actually, I just hoped my day didn’t include getting stabbed in the back by a lightning bolt.
I decided I’d better check in with Mel’s father, FBI Special Agent Martin Judge, down in Washington, D.C. I needed to fill him in on the new developments regarding Number 1, the leader of all the alien outlaws on Terra Firma. Special Agent Judge headed up the government’s Interplanetary Outlaw Unit, or IOU, which even he considered a lame name but couldn’t change it. “It’s already etched in the glass on my office door,” he’d told me.
Agent Judge had also been one of my father’s few earthling friends. They’d worked together, years ago, hunting down the aliens infesting Earth. Judge had lost his wife, Mel’s mom, to The Prayer. For me, that meant the man had definitely earned the right to be included in my final alien hunt.
When I exited the museum, I ducked into a nearby dog run. The place was empty and secluded behind a hedgerow. I figured it would be the best place for me to teleport down to D.C. without attracting too much unwanted attention.
Usually, when I teleport it’s instantaneous. There’s no woo-woo music like on Star Trek. No glittering ghost image of my body as I fade out of view. I just focus on where I want to be and—BOOM!—I’m there.
Only not today.
Apparently, not all my powers were up and running.
Either that, or the omnipotent Number 1 was over-riding my mental circuitry, bending my mind as if it were a warm Twizzler—doing to me what I had done to the security guard.
Whatever the reason, I wasn’t able to mentally project myself down to the nation’s capital. So, once again, I tapped into my internal Wi-Fi to explore alternate means of transportation.
Flying commercial was out. Airplanes have to travel through the sky where godlike aliens typically hang out. I’d be an easy target trapped inside a metal tube hurtling along at thirty thousand feet.
I’d have to take the train. Amtrak.
But first I’d take the subway from West Eighty-First Street down to New York’s Penn Station.
Because the subway was underground where there’d be a much lower risk of lightning strikes.