“Thank you girls for coming over and helping me look for Jasper,” said Mrs. Dash, when Lily and Katie got into her car. “I am absolutely frantic.”
“No probs, Mrs. Dash,” said Katie, slamming the door shut. “Where did you say you think he’s gone?”
Dolores Dash answered, “The region of the Horsehead Nebula,” and she hit the gas.
Lily said quietly, “To find his dad?”
“Oh . . .,” said Mrs. Dash, disgusted. “His dad.”
“How do you know he went to the Horsehead Nebula?” Katie asked.
“The coordinates on his new teleporter. And when I found out he was missing, I ran down to the garage. He took his space suit with him. He wouldn’t have had time to go get it if he’d been abducted from his room.” She put her red thumbnail between her teeth and bit it in worry. “I’m sorry, girls,” she said. “I don’t mean to startle you. We could talk about something pleasanter. How are things with you? Katie, how are your serial killer conjoined twins?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Fine. It turned out one twin was good and one was evil, so they’re duking it out right now at a gymnastics class. I hope the good one wins.”
“It must be very difficult for you, over in Horror Hollow.”
Katie shrugged. “No worse than for you and Jasper. I can’t believe him, taking off without us. He’s kind of a jerk. I mean, a jerk I totally love, but a jerk.”
Lily said, “How are we going to find him? Do we have to follow him to the Horsehead Nebula?”
Mrs. Dash sighed. “I don’t know, Lily. That’s the problem. I really don’t know.”
She screeched into her garage of the future and hit a button on her dashboard. A robotic hand snaked out and pulled the garage door shut behind them.
As she got out of the car, Mrs. Dash took off her sunglasses and head scarf. “Look,” she said sentimentally, pointing to a pegboard. “That’s where my little boy usually hangs his interplanetary pressure suit. And that’s where he plugs in his Pneumatic Air Recycler to recharge it. He even took his own air with him.” Close to tears, she wailed, “What kind of mother am I, girls? What kind of mother lets her own son go off alone to someplace where there’s not even any oxygen?”
She shook her head, and they went upstairs.
As they walked through the glassed-in living room, Katie looked out the window and saw a dog running over the snow toward the house.
“Look at that cute dog out on your lawn!” said Katie. “Is it the neighbor’s?”
Mrs. Dash squinted. “Oh, that’s Terence, the mischievous, hyperintelligent dog from next door.”
The dog was barking viciously at nothing.
Katie asked, “What kind of a dog is he?”
“A poodle–cocker spaniel mix. Whatever that’s called. A cocker-doodle.”
The dog growled at nothing, or maybe at something on the roof. Anyway, he started backing up and whining.
Katie said, “He looks really smart. But he’s acting weird. What’s wrong with him?”
Mrs. Dash waved her hand in the air. “Who knows? He usually only acts like that when something terrifying and alien is invading.”
Katie exclaimed, “He’s super cute, even when he’s barking at the unknown.”
“He’s not so cute when he leaves messes all over your lawn. I am tired of waking up at dawn every morning to a cocker-doodle doo. Come along, girls. I’ll show you the teleporter machine.”
They continued up the stairs.
Out on the white, snowy lawn, Terence the cocker-doodle backed away from the Dashes’ house of the future, growling and whimpering.
Like I said: as if there was something alien on the roof.
* * *
Lily, Katie, and Mrs. Dash stood in Jasper’s dimly lit bedroom laboratory. They were inspecting the teleporter. Mrs. Dash said, “Jasper told me that it teleports you to a similar machine on another world. He just had a hunch there was a receiving station where that beam came from, in the region of the Horsehead Nebula.” She sighed. “A hunch. My little boy is fifteen hundred light-years away because of a hunch. What if there was no receiving station there? What if there was nothing? What if his molecules just . . . you know . . . scattered? He might not even exist anymore!”
Katie took her wrist. “Mrs. Dash, Jasper wouldn’t do something stupid. He’s never been stupid in his whole life. Don’t worry.”
Lily said, “The green light is on. So that must mean that something worked.” She examined the machine. She could see in a little window. “There’s a lever in there so you can work it from inside. It’s pushed to ’Teleport.’ ”
“Yes, Lily,” said Mrs. Dash. “Yes, see, he must have sent himself away. And look. These dials here have the spatial coordinates for Zeblion III, a planet near the Horsehead Nebula.”
“So why don’t we just follow him?” Katie said.
“Oh, that would be frightfully dangerous,” said Mrs. Dash. “For one thing, he was wearing a space suit when he went. There probably isn’t even any atmosphere where he is.”
“No probs,” said Katie enthusiastically. “He made Lily and me space suits once for a picnic on Jupiter. There sure is a lot of gravity there. The sandwiches were totally smooshed.”I
Katie slid open one of Jasper’s closets. She rummaged through all the gadgets.
Mrs. Dash thought hard. “Yes . . . And I have a suit left over from when I was an astronomer. . . . Somewhere . . . I remember it had a darling little skirt to it. . . . But really, we’d have to phone your parents first before we go to a nebula. Katie, your father is still cross with me from the time I took you to Santa’s Christmas Fun World and you lost your dental retainer. So I think interstellar travel would be out of the question.”
“Ta-da!” said Katie, and pulled two space suits out of the closet.
Lily was just starting to say, “Katie, I’m not sure we should just—” when they all stopped still.
There was a noise from Mrs. Dash’s bedroom. A crash. A clatter. Breaking glass. Crunching.
Dolores Dash, Lily, and Katie looked at one another wildly.
Something had just burst through the window in the other room.
They strained to hear more. There was no sound.
Mrs. Dash hissed, “Curse that wall-to-wall carpeting.”
Down the hall, something surveyed Mrs. Dash’s bedroom. It found nothing of interest there. A bed. A nightstand. A lamp. A closet, full of clothes. The alien being moved to the door. It turned the knob.
It made its way down the hall.
Its footfalls were slow and deliberate.
It came to Jasper’s room. It opened the door.
It walked in.
It saw all the experiments laid out on benches and frames and brackets. It walked to the teleporter machine. It examined the dials and the cranks.
Then it turned.
There was a frigid breeze in the room. The alien being looked at the bedroom window.II
It went to look out.
There was a rope ladder leading down from the window. There was one pair—and only one pair—of human footprints in the snow, leading into the forest.
It turned suspiciously and looked around the room.
I In Jasper Dash #113: Jasper Dash and the Gas Giant Picnic.
II Through the window in your bedroom at the vacation house, Busby Spence used to stare up at the stars each night. He saw outer space above the pines.
In one of those huge old pines you see, Busby and his father built a tree house. Busby’s father sawed the wood, singing funny songs. He and Busby banged in the nails together. It was a great tree house with a deck and a rope-swing and everything. You could jump off the rope-swing into the lake. All the kids from the neighborhood met at the tree house to read comics and talk about their baseball games.
During the war, Busby Spence and his friend Harmon stopped using the tree house. This was because in the summer of 1942 it was completely taken over by a mean, sloppy gang of raccoons.
Busby and Harmon tried to get the raccoons out of the tree house by banging on the floor from below with a stick. Then they tried throwing rocks in the window. The raccoons didn’t budge.
So Harmon and Busby tried to hold a meeting in the tree house anyway. They sat in one corner and the raccoons sat in the other corner. Busby read out the Order of Business in a loud, firm voice.
The raccoons stared at Busby and Harmon, and Busby and Harmon stared back.
It was a short, loud meeting and was followed by a trip to the doctor and lots of shots and stitches.
Finally Busby and Harmon built a new tree house. The second tree house was not as good as the first tree house. Busby’s father wasn’t around to help. He was great at building things—very careful and precise—and Busby wasn’t. Busby wished his father was there to teach him how to measure and cut everything right. None of the boards in the second tree house fit, and the whole thing wobbled. From the second tree house Busby and Harmon could occasionally see the raccoons lying on their backs and relaxing on the porch of the first tree house.
Sometimes Busby and Harmon used the second tree house as a base to attack the raccoon thugs in the first tree house. And when Harmon and Busby left food in the second tree house, the gang of raccoons invaded at night and stole it, lugging it back to the first tree house. The raccoons would eat the food sitting on the porch, in full view. Then Busby and Harmon would huck pinecones. Then the raccoons would make a kind of scary laughing noise. Things went back and forth.
This went on for many months. It was one of the lesser-known battles of the Second World War.
Now, in a new century, you look out through those pines at the lake and the dark hills. The snoring of your cousin Maxwell rattles the walls. The tree houses are gone, and have been gone for two generations. You stare at the stars.
Nights pass in your life too.