July 5, 1947—11:05 a.m.

Pig stink.

That’s how you can tell you are exactly at the halfway mark between our ranch and Dibs’s daddy’s pig farm, because that’s when the stink of pig hits you smack-dab between the eyes like a fat, smelly bullet.

After collecting all my Martian hunt necessities and saddling up Pitch, I meet Dibs at his daddy’s farm just like we planned.

Things to bring on a Martian hunt:

1. One slingshot. Check.

2. A token of peace and goodwill—one small American flag. Check.

3. Shortstop. Check.

Dibs is already there waiting on top of True Belle, posing like a slick character in a cowboy movie, chewing on the end of a piece of long grass like he’s trying to be Roy Rogers or something. Except he doesn’t look like the King of the Cowboys to me. To me, he just looks like a scared, skinny kid pretending he’s not.

There’s dried blood on the side of his mouth.

“You’re late,” he tells me.

“You got…there’s blood.” I point to the corner of my own lip.

A red wave rolls over his cheeks as he quickly licks his palm and scrubs the stain clean. Then he leans in my direction, puckering up his lips to show me. “Gone?” he asks.

“Still looks kind of red,” I tell him.

He rubs at it again.

“Maybe you should let Momma—”

“Why are you so late?” he snaps, readjusting the canteen that’s strapped across his chest. “Thought you might have chickened out. We said eleven o’clock, didn’t we?”

I point to his canteen. “Good idea. I forgot about water,” I say. “What else you got with you?”

“A box of Red Hots, a pocketful of marbles, and this.” He pulls out his metal Buck Rogers Atomic Disintegrator Pistol.

“What are the marbles for?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Sometimes you need marbles.”

“For a flying saucer hunt?”

“Well, what do you think you’re going to do with that?” He points to Shortstop peeking his one hanging eye out of the bib of my overalls.

I push Shortstop’s head back deeper inside the pocket. “He’s not all I brought,” I tell Dibs. “I brought an American flag and a slingshot, too.”

Dibs closes one eye tight and aims his Buck Rogers Atomic Disintegrator Pistol in the direction of Foster Ranch. “Yep, we have to be ready in case we find ourselves on the front lines of interstellar warfare,” he says. “If something’s still alive out there and they’re not friendly, we need to be prepared. I hope you know that it might be up to us to defend our Earth from planetary invasion.”

“And you’re going to do it with that?” I point to his stupid toy gun.

“Yep.” He pulls the trigger and blows on the end of the gun before he holsters it in the back pocket of his overalls.

“At least my weapon’s real,” I say.

He snorts. “What’s a slingshot going to do?”

“A slingshot is way better than some toy gun,” I inform him. “Momma says it can cause a real mean skin irritation or poke an eye right out.”

He shrugs. “I suppose.” He pulls a stained, used-to-be-white hanky out of his pocket. “I also brought this. So they know we come in peace, and if they know the rules of warfare, they won’t fire on us if we wave a white flag. You think Martians know the rules of warfare? Oh, and this came today.” He holds out his fist.

“You got the Kix Atomic Bomb Ring?”

“Yep.” He huffs hot air on it and rubs it against his dirty pants leg. “It’ll detect anything radiating out there.”

“I don’t think it detects radiation,” I tell him.

“Sure does.”

“It doesn’t say it detects radiation on the Kix cereal box,” I say.

“Kix can’t charge fifteen cents and a box top for nothing,” he informs me.

“Do you really think things might be radiating out there?” I look off into the distance. “I guess if it’s a misfired atom bomb or something they’re experimenting with that got away from them. Even a meteorite could be radiating from space. Or if it’s some kind of new Russian technology.”

“Or a Martian ship,” Dibs adds.

“How do you know Martian ships radiate?”

“Everybody knows,” he tells me.

“Come on,” I say. “We’ve got to get going or we aren’t going to make it back in time to finish our chores.”

“Tune in tomorrow, boys and girls,” Dibs says in his radio announcer voice, “and watch Mylo and Dibs search for a real live flying saucer out in the middle of the desert. This episode brought to you by Kellogg’s Pep, the buildup wheat cereal. With fruit, sugar, and milk, maaaaan, it sure is delicious!”

“Will you just come on?” I say to Dibs, snapping Pitch’s reins.

We start out through the hot desert.

Me and Pitch are out front and Dibs on True Belle trudges up behind. Horseshoes clomp the dry ground and crunch over stone, low brush, and tumbleweeds loosened by last night’s storm.

We’re on our way to find a flying saucer.