2

I didn’t know what to say. Behind me, I heard my sister laugh again and run up the stairs. Did she know about this?

“My name is Vern,” said the slug. “Are you Tommy Frasier?”

I nodded. A giant slug in my refrigerator was pretty weird. A giant slug that talked was even weirder. A giant slug that knew my name was so weird I could hardly believe it.

“I have traveled halfway across the galaxy to find you,” he said. “Our planet needs your help.”

“Maybe we should talk someplace else,” I said.

My dad hates it when I leave the refrigerator door open too long. He always asks me if I’m trying to cool down the whole house. I never understand what he means by that. If I was trying to cool down the whole house, I would have opened the freezer door, too.

Vern the slug hopped off of the refrigerator shelf and landed on the floor with a wet plopping sound.

My mom must have heard the noise. “Are you all right in there, Tommy?” she called.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“If you made a mess, don’t forget to clean it up.”

Vern followed me out the back door and onto our porch. There, in the back yard, was a silvery metal spaceship. It was about as big as Mom’s mini-van, but it was shaped like a rounded tube with windows down the sides. It rested on three skinny metal legs. A ramp stretched from the middle of the ship down to the ground.

“Is that yours?” I asked.

“Yes. Do you think anyone will notice it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then we will have to talk fast.” Vern slithered up the fence post so we could talk eye-to-eye.

“We need your help,” Vern said.

4

“What about my mom and dad? I don’t think they’d let me go,” I said.

Vern bobbed his eyestalks up and down. I learned later that this meant he was thinking hard.

“Do you really think they’d miss you?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure they would.”

“Let me go and talk to them.” Before I could stop him, Vern had scooted across the deck and into the house.

I froze. Should I yell to Mom that a giant talking yellow slug was on the way? I didn’t think she’d believe me.

A few minutes later, Vern returned. He was smiling.

“It’s all set,” he said. “Your mom says to be careful.”

This seemed a little too easy. I opened the screen door and leaned in.

“Mom!” I called.

“Have a good time!” she yelled back at me.

“You mean I can go?”

“Just be careful. I love you!”

I closed the door and looked down at Vern. He was smiling up at me and wiggling his slimy tail.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you later. Right now, we have to get going.”

Inside Vern’s ship, there was barely enough room for me to sit down. Vern slithered into the pilot’s chair and wrapped himself around the steering wheel.

“Are you comfortable back there?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

I was just being polite. This wasn’t comfortable at all. But I was about to take off in a real spaceship flown by a real space alien. I could handle not being comfortable.

“Here we go.” Vern pressed a big red button  with his head. I could feel the ship lift off the ground.

I looked out the windows. We were higher than the trees around my house. Then I could see the whole neighborhood. A few seconds later, it seemed like I was looking down at a globe of the world.

We were in space. The stars were bright. There were more of them than I had ever seen. A satellite flew past us as we left the earth behind.

“What time is it?” Vern asked.

I checked my watch. “Four-thirty.”

“Oh, boy. I was supposed to meet the others at four-thirty. We’ll have to hurry. Hang on.”

Vern pushed a lever. The ship rumbled. We were moving a lot faster now. The stars flew past so quickly that I had a hard time seeing them.

Vern bent one eyestalk down to look at a round glowing green screen.

“The rest of the Space Slugs are meeting at a little asteroid up ahead. We should be there pretty soon. I hope they haven’t started without us.”

5

A few minutes later, I saw a shiny dot in the distance. As we got closer, it got bigger.

“This should be the asteroid,” Vern said.

“Are you sure that’s an asteroid?” I asked. It looked like it was made out of metal. In fact, it looked like a spaceship.

It was a lot bigger than our ship. As we got closer, it turned and showed a big black one-eyed skull and crossbones painted on the side.

“That can’t be good,” I said.

“Space pirates!” Vern shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”

Vern pressed buttons and pulled levers on the control panel, but it was too late. The pirate ship was faster than we were.

It swung around and started to chase us down. A huge door opened in the bottom of the ship and swallowed us up.

It was dark inside the pirate ship. A few distant purple lights showed that we were in some kind of cargo hold. There were a few other ships lying around, like a giant had been playing with them and forgot to put them back.

“Tommy?” Vern asked.

“Yes?”

“Are you feeling brave?”

I thought about it. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Good. Because I’m terrified.”

We heard a metal clanging noise from somewhere close by.

“What was that?” Vern asked. His bright yellow body seemed slimier than usual. I wondered if that meant he was sweating.

“It might not be anything,” I said.

“Or it might be that!” Vern pointed out the window with his eyestalks. A tall metal shape was moving toward us.

“It’s a robot,” I said.

“It’s a space pirate robot!” Vern said.

The robot towered over our little ship. It leaned down, picked the ship up, and began to shake it.

It shook hard. A few seconds later, Vern and I had tumbled out and were lying in a heap at the robot’s feet.

I looked up at it. The robot had thick legs and long arms with strong metal hands. Its body was bigger than an ice-cream truck. It had a tiny head with glowing red eyes and a little antenna that stuck up from the top.

It set down Vern’s ship with a clang.

“Ahoy there,” it said to us. “Follow me, please. Or else.”

The robot led us into a different part of the ship. The robot’s antenna scraped along the ceiling as we walked.

“Do you think we should run for it?” I whispered to Vern.

“I don’t think we’d be able to get the ship free. Besides, I can’t run very fast.”

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot about that.”

The robot stopped in front of a metal door. It punched a button and the door slid open.

“In you go. Step lively,” the robot said.

This had to be the bridge of the ship. There was a big window, some computer consoles, and a steering wheel that was taller than I was. There was also an alien in a pirate outfit standing before the wheel.

“Yo-ho there, matey,” the pirate captain said to the robot. “What did you bring me today?”

7

There was an enormous roar. For a second, I thought our escape pod was about to blow up. Then the pod’s engines pushed us away from the pirate ship and we were free.

“You did it!” Vern grunted. The force of the engines pushed us back into our seats. This made it hard to talk.

“Are you all right?” I asked. Poor Vern was being squashed into the shape of a pancake.

“I’m excellent,” he said. “I knew you were going to be a great warrior! See how you defeated those space pirates?”

A rusty red planet grew larger and larger in the window.

“Vern?” I asked.

“The rest of the Space Slugs are going to be super impressed when I show up with you.”

“Vern?” I asked again. The planet was getting bigger.

“I wonder where they are. We were supposed to meet them at an asteroid right around here. I hope they didn’t run into the pirate.”

“Vern, should we be worried about that?” I struggled to raise my arm and point. The planet now filled up the entire window. There was no doubt that we were going to hit it.

Vern shook his eyestalks. “We’re fine. The escape pod should be able to land itself as long at the auto-pilot is on.”

“How can we tell if it’s on?”

“It’s the green light.”

I checked the little control panel. “I don’t see a green light.”

“It doesn’t have to be green. Maybe it’s one of those red ones.”

“You don’t know?”

“Not exactly.”

Outside, the edges of the window were starting to glow red. We had entered the planet’s atmosphere. In a few minutes, we would either land or we would crash.