Melvin was confused—and no, he wasn’t working on a nasty math problem. He and James were flying above the Hollywood sign, looking for anything sinister or devious.
“That’s funny,” Melvin said.
“What is?” James asked.
“I just heard something go splat, and I’m still flying.”
“It sounded more like thud to me.”
Melvin and James stopped and were hovering. They listened for more crashing sound effects—or kabonking ones. But all was quiet.
“Maybe we should go and check on Candace and Margaret,” suggested Melvin.
Yes, Melvin, stop having this mid-air conversation and get moving.
Superheroes!
And so Melvin and James stopped patrolling the air above the Hollywood sign and headed to Lair Hill. Little did they know that they were already too late.
“What if something happened to them?” James said as they streaked across the sky. “What if we’re already too late?”
James didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to repeat what the narrator said. He’d only been in a few Melvin Beederman books, while Melvin had been in, like, ALL of them.
* * *
While Melvin and James were hightailing it over to Lair Hill to check on the girls, Candace and Margaret were picking themselves up off the ground. Or at least they were trying to. They’d not only been shot out of the sky; they’d been stunned.
“Can you move, Candace?” Margaret asked.
“Only my mouth. Wait a second—my eyelids seem to be working.”
“Poor Melvin. Now I know what it means to go splat.”
“Don’t you mean thud?”
“Whatever.”
Yes, girls, whatever. Can’t you see those aliens coming your way?
The aliens were getting closer and closer.
“What do we do?” Candace asked, still unable to move.
“Not sure,” Margaret replied. “My guess is we won’t be able to blink them to death.”
Indeed they wouldn’t. There was nothing they could do but wait—and scream!
“Shut them up,” Monkey Wrench said.
He and the other aliens reached the girls and did just that. They gagged them, using Elbow’s socks. If you think humans have stinky feet, you should get a whiff of alien feet. Your nose will never be the same.
But, of course, they didn’t gag the girls in time. Their screams still went forth and reached the ears of Melvin and James, who were racing to the rescue.
The problem was, the aliens had a huge head start.