Jasper looked at the Garxx of Krilm in astonishment. He fought with the blobby chair to stand up.
The Garxx of Krilm screamed. Their screams were high-pitched and hissy.
What they saw was a big, wobbly creature with little arms and legs flailing around and bumbling toward them.
They didn’t know what a Dirrillill looked like, but this blob monster was clearly one.
They all cried a high, weird “EeeeEEEeeeeEEEeeeeEEEE!”
They started firing flame rays wildly around the room.
Jasper ducked behind the wobbling chair and kicked the teleporter door shut behind him.
Whump! Behind him, Katie and Lily appeared in the booth.
The Garxx saw that something else had arrived. They saw four arms and two heads.
They made more high, whistly screams. They stumbled behind the desk and fired their beams! Jasper’s shelves collapsed! His old experiments exploded!
Jasper yelled, “Stop, chaps! Stop!”
But they didn’t listen. They thought they were fighting the beginning of a Dirrillillim invasion. They thought their interstellar goose was cooked.
The flame rays shot past Jasper. The closet exploded, the walls cracked, and the wall-to-wall carpet caught on fire.
And they shot a ray of fire straight into the blobby chair.
SPLAT!
It popped and coated everything in green slime.
WHOOSH!
The slime caught fire. It was flammable slime.
The Garxx of Krilm were terrified. Some jumped out the window that was open. Others jumped out the window that was closed. Glass flew everywhere.
The Garxx of Krilm scrambled, wheezing high, fluty screams, toward the woods and their saucer. Their long arms were stretched straight out in panic.
In a moment, they were gone. They left lots of footprints in the snow.
Jasper wiped flaming slime off his suit. When he was no longer burning, he opened the teleporter door.
The girls got out. They shut the door.
“Wow,” said Katie. “What was that?”
“I believe,” said Jasper, “I have just recalled where I have heard the name of the Garxx of Krilm. I’ve seen wanted posters with their goggly, awful helmets in every space station from here to Neptune. They’re a piratical race. They’re robbers and thieves. They probably just traced the Dirrillill’s beam here so they could find this—the teleporter. They wanted to know how to make their own teleporters so they could move more quickly around the galaxy, for their heists and getaways. They didn’t care about you or about me. They just wanted to take apart these machines and figure out what made the booths tick. They just wanted a spree.”
“Whoa,” said Katie.
Lily shook her head.
Then the teleporter blinked one last time. Mrs. Dash stood inside.
Her atoms had just flown through the vast emptiness, past asteroids, past warm worlds where weird flowers unfurled toward alien suns. She had been hurled across the universe.
Now she stepped out into her son’s bedroom.
She unclipped her helmet and took it off. She fluffed and pressed at her careful hair. “What a terrible, terrible day this has been,” she said. She looked around at Jasper’s stuff.
The bed had collapsed. The outer wall of Jasper’s room was blackened and blown up. The cold winter wind blew in.
But they had all made it back alive. They stood in the smoke, looking around at the wreckage of Jasper’s furniture.
“Gosh,” said Katie.
Mrs. Dash said, “I guess someone has got to clean his room.”
Lily pointed out, “You’re going to need a new wall.”
Mrs. Dash grimaced and looked around. “This house could do with a change anyway. As an example, those curtains have got to go. For one thing, they’re on fire.”
She went and leaned out the broken wall, looking at the rubble and glass fragments on the snow below. “This house is a mess. I have devoted myself to its upkeep, and still, the carpets are getting moldy, the windows are scratched and frosted over—where they haven’t been blown out—and now we need structural concrete work. House of the future: I cannot stand it. I simply cannot.”
She walked over to the teleporter. “And this thing.” She didn’t have to say another word. Jasper joined her, and mother and son began pulling the teleporter apart piece by piece. Mrs. Dash shook her head, yanking handfuls of wires out of the engine. She asked her son for a screwdriver, and he handed it to her.
“Mother?” said Jasper.
“Darling.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t clean up. Maybe we should, I don’t know, rebuild the house of the future differently from what it was before. Something new.”
Mrs. Dash paused her work, shocked. “Jasper, are you serious?”
Jasper looked down. “I’m sorry for suggesting it, Mother.”
“Sorry? No, Jasper, that’s a wonderful idea! I’ve wanted to change the house for so long—but I was always worried you would miss the way it used to be! You do like things to stay the same.”
“Maybe, but I have a million ideas for hidden rooms and household gadgets,” said Jasper. “And I think more of the house could float in the air.”
“That’s wonderful, honey!” With a wide smile on her face, Mrs. Dash turned back to hacking at the teleportation crystal with the point of the screwdriver. “Why, maybe we could add an observatory for the roof! I’ve always wanted one with just a little telescope so I can pick up my old astronomy work. And we could put a high-energy particle collider in the rec room! I’ve had my eye on one for so long. . . .”
“Why, sure!” said Jasper. “Right when I get back from chasing down the Garxx of Krilm. And turning them in to the interplanetary police.”
Mrs. Dash’s smile dropped. “Jasper, you cannot go rocketing off alone to chase those bug-eyed thugs.”
“But I’ve got to,” said the Boy Technonaut.
Lily was sorry to hear that just when they had gotten back from all that danger, Jasper wanted to leave them again. She was sad to think about him alone so soon, in the huge, empty reaches of space, drifting through infinite coldness and darkness.
“Hey, Jasper,” she said softly. “Are you sure you want to go back out again so soon? I mean, won’t you feel lonesome?”
Jasper was just about to answer when Katie said, “Hey, Dashes! The fire department is here.” She pointed out through the hole in the wall. A bunch of guys in helmets were looking up at the smoke. “And there’s Mr. Krome. From school.”
“Hello?” came the principal’s voice. “Is everyone okay in there?”
The Dashes stood up and went to the ruined windows. They waved down to the firemen and Mr. Krome. “Yes, thank you, boys,” said Mrs. Dash. “We’re just dandy. It was interstellar thieves, is all.”
Mr. Krome explained, “I was coming over to see how Jasper was. . . . He seemed a little upset yesterday at the science fair . . . and then I saw the wall explode, so I called the fire department.”
Jasper smiled proudly. “This time, it wasn’t an experiment of mine that caused the explosion, Mr. Krome! It was space-faring rascals!”
Mr. Krome didn’t look very comforted by that. “Oh, sure . . . Great . . . Well, if everything’s okay then . . .” He shuffled from foot to foot in the snow.
“It was very nice of you to come by,” said Mrs. Dash, leaning against a burning wall and waving. “Extremely kind.”
Mr. Krome nodded. “Do you need help with the, um, broken glass? Or the dresser that’s on fire behind you?”
Mrs. Dash thought for a moment. Then she said, “That would be delightful, Mr. Krome. Climb right up the rope ladder.”
As he clambered up, Mrs. Dash said to Jasper, “I’ll take care of things here.” She had a twinkle in her eye. “I have a little idea. Do you think, Jasper, instead of chasing the Garxx of Krilm yourself, you could just go up in space and report their plans to the interplanetary police?”
“I could.”
“Well . . . Why don’t Katie and Lily talk to their parents and see if they’re allowed to go with you, then? There won’t be any danger, right? You’ll just be flying up, talking to the police up there, maybe taking in a few of the sights, and coming right back here. You could make a little jaunt out of it.”
“That sounds great!” said Katie, and Lily’s eyes were wide with pleasure beneath her bangs.
Jasper said, “Mother! That’s a swell idea! All three of us together! I promise, absolutely promise, we won’t chase the Garxx ourselves.”
Lily asked, “Mrs. Dash, are you really okay with us leaving? Don’t you want some help cleaning up around here?” The curtains quietly crackled. Snow blew in through the huge hole in the busted wall and the blasted windows.
“Oh, don’t worry about that, girls,” said Mrs. Dash. “Every house can use a good airing out in midwinter.”I
I “The house is winterized,” says Mr. Galbatta, who owns the place your family is renting. “We come up here sometimes around New Year’s to air it out a little. Go skiing. Go skating. It’s a great place in the winter.”
You’re all packing up and about to leave. Your vacation is over. Mr. Galbatta is there to pick up the front door key from your family and lock the place up.
You have to be back in school soon.
There’s a question you want to ask Mr. Galbatta.
The others are taking a last look at the lake. Mr. Galbatta is digging around in the rain gutter with his hand, pulling out clumps of dried leaves. You put your duffel bag in the back of the car. Then you unzip it and take out Jasper Dash and His Marvelous Electro-Neutron Sled. You go over to Mr. Galbatta and say, “Excuse me?” You explain that you got these books at the church rummage sale, but that the books originally came from this house.
“That’s right,” said Mr. Galbatta. “Funny. We just got rid of them. Look at ’em: back like a bad penny.”
You ask him who Busby Spence is.
“Oh,” he says. “Buzz Spence. My wife’s dad. Yeah. Great guy.”
You ask what happened to him when he grew up.
“He worked in the tech industry. You know, building stuff. Early computers. That kind of thing. He was good with all that.”
You ask whether Mr. Spence wants his books back.
“Naw,” says Mr. Galbatta. “He’s dead. He died of lung cancer a while back. So the books are yours. He’d, uh, he’d want you to have ’em.”
You wonder. You open the book and look at the name written in bad handwriting on the inside of the cover: “Busby Spence.” It’s a child’s handwriting. “1942.” It has been a long time since then.
You think of Buzz Spence the old man, making coffee in this house or mowing the grass. He would want you to have the books, sure.
Then you try to think about Busby Spence the kid. A kid about your age. You look at his house, at his name written in pencil. It’s almost like he’s staring back at you through the angular glass of the Second World War, like you are part of a conversation with him—with him and with Jasper Dash—the three of you—all telling tales—all pals—all in this story together.
Sure. He’d want you to have the books. They’re a message from another time. A communication from a very different world.
You stow the book in your bag and run down to see Busby Spence’s lake for the last time.