Charlie kept staring at the board, looking for an escape. Finally, realizing the situation was hopeless, he slowly laid down his king in a show of defeat.
“Yee-ha!” shouted Jasper. “Checkmate, you old coot, you. First time in thirty years. All right, pay up, fifty cents, right in my hot little hand.”
Charlie pulled out the coins and gave them to Jasper. “Okay, but next time, put him in check, all right?” Charlie looked up at Theodore and froze. “ALIEN!” he screamed.
Theodore looked around with alarm. “Alien? Where?”
“There!” Charlie said, pointing right at him. Jasper looked at Theodore and started yelling too. “Help! Police!”
“Help! Police!” cried Theodore. “Aliens, there are aliens!”
Charlie and Jasper got up and ran – rather, they hobbled briskly – with their canes down the sidewalk, away from Theodore.
People were hustling out of their stores and houses to see what the fuss was. The minister came tearing out of the church.
“What’s going on?” he yelled. “We’re trying to have a wedding rehearsal.”
Theodore came running up behind him. “Aliens. It’s aliens! Get the police.”
“Aliens?” said the minister skeptically. “Where?” He turned and saw Theodore.
“AAAAHHHH!” screamed the minister.
“Do you see them?” Theodore asked urgently.
The minister backed up, pointing at Theodore and trying to say something, but he couldn’t quite get it out. By now everyone in town was pouring into the streets. When they spotted Theodore they all started shouting, and picking up things to throw at him.
It finally dawned on the blue Fry. “They think I’m the alien. Quite ridiculous.” He faced the growing crowd. “Listen, all of you, I’m not an alien.”
They stared at back at him, unconvinced.
“Now I know that I look different than all of you, but I’m also quite intelligent, kind, and well-mannered. I’m sure that we’ll all get along wonderfully.”
There was silence and then a man shouted, “I say we squash the big blue thing!”
“YEAH! SQUASH HIM!” yelled the crowd in unison.
“Oh dear,” said Theodore. “I do believe they intend me harm.” He took a step back, and then another and another. “You know, you really should treat visitors to your town with a little more courtesy.” When the crowd started coming at him carrying big sticks, he used his enormous brain to come up with a stellar plan.
He turned and ran as fast as he could.
“Alien!” screamed the crowd as they ran after him.
“Barbarians!” yelled a terrified Theodore.
He increased his pace, turned a corner, and ducked down another street.
“Theodore!”
Theodore looked ahead of him.
It was Freddy. He was standing at the end of the street and waving at him. “This way, quick!”
Theodore shot ahead, joined Freddy, and they turned the corner and ran hard.
“How are we going to get away?”
“Just follow me; I’ll think of something.” Freddy ducked down another street and Theodore followed.
As he was running down the street, Freddy eyed a store with an awning out front. Behind the store was a railroad track down which a train was slowly moving. “All right – angle of trajectory, speed of us, speed of train, mass times energy, gravitational factors, friction pattern, wind velocity and direction,” Freddy said to himself. “Theodore, listen carefully, here’s the plan.” Freddy told him his idea. “Your timing has to be perfect.”
“As a genius I will accept nothing less of myself. But you’re sure I can do it?”
“I built your legs with a core of coiled aluminum. It’s the same material that lets Curly rise up in the air.”
A minute later the crowd turned the corner and saw Theodore. The same man yelled, “Squash him!”
“I bet he was a nasty little child, too,” said Theodore. What the crowd couldn’t see was that Freddy was curled up in a little ball against Theodore’s chest, holding tightly onto the blue Fry.
“YEEEEE-HAAAAAA!” yelled Theodore as he leaped high up into the air, hit the awning, bounced on it like a trampoline, shot to the sky, stretched as far as he could, and snagged the last car on the train with the tip of his left pinky. He pulled himself up onto the train while Freddy ducked down so the crowd couldn’t see him. Theodore adjusted his glasses and tidied his bowtie. He looked down at the crowd.
“Well,” he called out, “what did you expect from a genius? Hasta la vista, baby!”
The man in the crowd who had wanted to squash Theodore looked at the person next to him. “Hey, he’s pretty smart for a big blue thing.”
“Yeee-haaa?” said Freddy as the train rolled away from Pookesville.
Theodore looked embarrassed. “Despite my scholarly demeanor, I’ve always harbored a secret ambition to be a cowboy.”
Freddy lay down on top of the train and closed his eyes. “A blue cowboy.”
“What did you say, Freddy?”
“Oh, nothing.”
The train rolled on.
CHAPTER10
Freddy and Theodore hooked up with all the others and headed back to Freddy’s laboratory to hide after Freddy convinced them it would be safe. The Fries had told him about his sister discovering them. “I’ll take care of that,” he said.
On the way back the Fries shared their adventures with one another.
“Those people wouldn’t even listen to me,” said Theodore indignantly as he brushed dirt and grime off his bowtie. “It was most undignified having to escape on the top of a train, of all things.”
“Well, what about us?” wailed Meese. “We were almost trampled to death by people who throw little balls around and then cheer about it.”
“Yeah, it was the coolest thing that ever happened to me,” said Si excitedly. Meese bopped him on the head.
“Wow, nice punch there, Meese,” noted Si. “You’re a good hitter.”
Howie said, “I’ve never been to a baseball game like that. Pretty weird.”
“Well, I had a great time at the pie factory,” said Wally.
“He threw up all over the forest,” said Freddy. “It was pretty disgusting. All the animals gave us really mean looks for destroying their home.”
Wally replied in an offended tone, “Hey, I offered to clean it up.”
“Yeah, using a leaf,” shot back Ziggy.
“One of the squirrels bit me in the butt. I think it left a mark,” complained Wally.
When they got to Freddy’s lab, the Fries looked around in amazement at all the equipment and gadgets.
“Cool, little dudee-rudee,” commented Wally. “So can you, like, invent food with all this stuff?”
Theodore pointed to a wall of odd-looking things. “What are those?”
“Things my dad invented. Anti-gravity flight belts, pill slingers, neuromuscular disruptors, you know, just your basic stuff.” Freddy looked at all the Fries. “Okay, guys,” he said, “After what happened today, you’ve really got to stay here in my lab. Okay?”
The Fries all nodded.
“Let’s go, Howie,” said Freddy.
When they reached the farmhouse, they stopped dead. There was a police car in the driveway. And there was Adam Spanker’s father, Police Chief Stewie Spanker, confronting Alfred Funkhouser.
Behind them, on their motor scooters, were Adam Spanker and his gang, looking very, very happy.
“Wow, cool,” said Howie. “Is your dad going to be, like, arrested? I’ve never seen anybody arrested before except on TV.”
“No, he’s not going to be arrested,” answered Freddy hotly. He stared nervously at the police chief and the Spanker gang. “At least I hope he’s not.” He paused and added, “I wonder what Dad’s blown up now?”
Freddy and Howie ran up to Alfred, who was holding something that looked like twenty pairs of scissors connected together and attached to a large battery thingamajig in his right hand. He held a large pizza pie in his left hand.