George felt tense and nervous, since he knew what was about to happen. The instant he touched the door he felt like his tongue was being sucked right down into his stomach. Everything around him seemed to be growing at fantastic speed. Then he found himself on his hands and knees looking up at the door which had been so tiny only a second ago.

“Wow!” said George, shaking a little as he dizzily stood up. “That is so weird.”

“Kind of fun, isn’t it?” replied the protector. “You’ll get used to it.” Then he trotted through the door. George followed and watched in amazement as the protector instantly changed from a dog back to his former flabby-skinned self the instant he went through the door.

“Come on in and let’s do a search on these pictures,” said the protector, taking the camera from George. They went over to what looked like a simple printer, such as the one his mother had for her camera at home.

“I got this printer at Wal-Mart too,” said the protector with an embarrassed smile at George. “Not all of my gadgets are fancy, high tech things from outer space.”

The protector connected a cord to the camera and quickly printed off the pictures they had taken at the fallen star. Then he led George over to a plain glass screen with a slot below it, right next to the snorkfinder they had used the day before.

“This is the news finder,” said the protector. “It’s kind of old fashioned, but it still works quite well. All you do is put a picture or a request into the slot and it will search all of the newspapers on every planet in the known universe and show whatever it matches.”

“You mean other planets have newspapers?” asked George in surprise.

“You bet,” replied the protector. “Although most of them are never actually printed on paper. They usually come over the viewscreen. Anyway, let’s put in a picture of the fallen star and see what we get.”

The protector popped a picture into the slot. A humming noise immediately started from the news finder. The protector turned to George and said in embarrassment, “like I said, it’s a bit old fashioned. I really should replace it. Sometimes it takes a whole 15 seconds to do a universe search of billions of newspapers, and give a result. Terribly slow, you know.”

A voice suddenly came out of the machine, startling George. Mechanically it said, “there is only one matching result out of 10,487,501,908,432 news sources. There are 90,586,273 similar objects that are not quite a perfect match. Would you like to see all of them?” The voice sounded anxious, as if begging to show them all of its matches.

“No thanks,” said the protector. There was a sigh of disappointment from the news finder. “That’s pretty incredible, though,” the protector said to George. “Only one exactly matching result in the entire universe! Usually there’s at least 20 exact matches for about everything I ever search for. I even searched for an Australian platypus once just for fun, and found 34 exact matches across the universe!”

The protector touched the upper right hand corner of the screen. “The upper right hand corner is exact matches, and the upper left is similar objects,” he explained.

A picture and text appeared on the screen. The picture showed an object that looked so much like his fallen star that George had a hard time believing it was not the same one. The text was unreadable, but looked familiar somehow.

“Gorzubee!” cried the protector. “This newspaper picture is from right here on earth! It’s from a newspaper in China! Out of millions of worlds across the galaxy, that was the only match!”

“China?” said George in surprise.

“That’s right,” said the protector. “Here, let’s get a translation so we can read what it says.” He touched the lower right corner of the screen. Instantly the text changed to English, and George read the following:

“In the early morning of July 7, residents of Xhengxou were startled out of their sleep by a falling star which crashed into the ground on the outskirts of the city. Authorities have closely examined the meteorite and determined that it is not radioactive or dangerous. It consists of a metallic-like substance with an extension pointing in a northward direction. Authorities estimate that the meteorite was several times larger than it now is before it tumbled to earth, but most of its mass burned off due to the intense heat of entering the earth’s atmosphere. Officials from the army are guarding the meteorite until it can be safely transported to the National Museum. Meanwhile, many residents near where the meteorite landed have relocated out of an unfounded fear that others may fall nearby.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting?” said the protector, rubbing his flabby chin. “They’re both right and wrong about it burning off a lot of its mass upon entering the earth’s atmosphere. Normally that is the case, but my examination of your fallen star led me to believe that very little if any of its surface burned off during entry. It seems to be made of an extremely high grade metal, similar to NASA spacecraft, that doesn’t melt off with heat. I’d bet the Chinese authorities know that, but didn’t want it repeated in the newspaper, since that would arouse greater suspicion. That’s why they’re calling it a meteorite, when it’s really not.”

“Why would they be worried about that?” asked George curiously.

“They probably don’t want to admit that it appears to be made by someone or something, which would indicate life outside your planet,” the protector replied. “That could create widespread anxiety and draw more attention to it than they want, at least until they know more about what the thing is and how to protect their people from whoever is out there. The Chinese government is far more secretive than your own. It’s surprising they revealed even this much information about the fallen star.”

“But why would the exact same fallen star come down in China?” asked George. “And almost at the same time, too. The one fell here on July 6th.”

“Which was the 7th in China,” said the protector. “It appears they fell at the same time. But why they did, and what they are doing here, is a great mystery.” The protector squinted his eyes in concentration. “Two things are certain,” he said after a moment. “First, it isn’t a mere coincidence that these two identical objects landed on earth at the same time. Second, given what you saw the other night and what I know about the Grak, I would say the Grak are the ones who sent them down here for some devious purpose of their own.”

Suddenly George felt something prickly on the back of his neck. He jumped and turned around, but it was only Emberly who had rolled over from the couch, then bounced up to his neck.

“Hi, there,” he said, picking her up. “How are you doing today?”

Emberly got so excited that she bounced from one of George’s hands to the other, and then up on his head. George laughed and reached up to pull her off, but she bounced away and then up to the top of the fridge.

“I told you she liked you,” said the protector. “I just wish she could get along as well when she’s a girl,” he said with a sigh.

“What?” said George uncomprehendingly.

“Like I said before, she was sent to me so I could find her a new home here on earth, since there are no more of her kind,” said the protector. “She’s highly intelligent so I hesitate to turn her into an animal and let her lose. So I tried the other day to turn her into a human girl. I guess she didn’t like it though. She just about turned that supermarket upside down!”

“You took her into a supermarket?” George asked in amazement. He stared at the pink fuzz ball for a minute, trying in vain to imagine it as a girl going crazy in the aisles of food.

Suddenly George’s cell phone rang, causing the protector to jump and look around wildly. Then he grinned sheepishly. “Your cell phone,” he mumbled in embarrassment. “I knew that.”

George clicked the button on the phone.

“George, where are you?” came his mother’s worried voice.

The protector hurriedly whispered to George, “Ant number 4 brought us back to where we started, just around the corner from your street.”

“I’m just up the street,” said George.

“Well, it’s past time you were back,” said his mother. Then she added as an afterthought, “did you find the little dog’s home?”

“Yeah,” said George with a grin. “He’s home now.” The protector grinned too. “I’ll be right home, Mom.”

“Well, you better be,” she answered. “We’ve got to get ready for our trip, you know.”

“Our trip?” George repeated blankly.

“Yes, you remember, don’t you?” said his mother. “We’re going to Sacramento tomorrow to take the pickled peaches to your Aunt Agnes.”

“Oh, darn!” said George. “I forgot. Do I have to go?”

“Yes,” said his mother firmly. “We’ve been planning this trip for 3 weeks and she’s expecting all of us. Janet tried to get out of going too, and I wouldn’t let her.”

“Darn,” said George again.

“It’s not that bad,” said his mother. “Anyway, you’re going. And I expect you back home in 5 minutes!”

“O.k. Mom,” said George unhappily. He clicked off the cell phone. “Looks like I’ll be gone all day tomorrow,” he said grumpily.

“That’s too bad,” said the protector. “I was thinking we need to go to China tomorrow.”

“Go to China!” exclaimed George.

“Yep,” replied the protector. “We need to take a look at their fallen star. And most importantly, we need to see if anyone there found an Uth stone like yours. The newspaper didn’t mention anything about one.”

“That’s right!” cried George. “If everything else about it is the same, there should have been an Uth stone there too.”

“Well,” said the protector, “I just hope if there was one it’s not in the wrong hands. Anyway, you’d better get going. Just meet me in front of your house in the morning the day after tomorrow and we’ll go to China then.”

“Gosh, I sure wish I didn’t have to go to Aunt Agnes’ place tomorrow,” said George.

“It’s all right,” said the protector with a smile. “It’s only one day. And it will give me some time to do some testing on your fallen star to try to find a clue about what it’s made of.”

George gave Emberly a final pat, then went to the door. He paused for a second, then turned and asked, “how are we going to talk to people or understand them in China? And how are we going to even get there?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” replied the protector. “But I’ll describe it all the day after tomorrow. Now go, before your Mom gets upset.”

“O.k.” said George reluctantly. There were still so many things he wanted to ask that he hated to leave. But he knew his mother well enough to know he had to get home fast.

“I’ll see you the day after tomorrow then,” he called as he ducked through the door.

“O.k.” came the protector’s reply. Then in a voice that seemed to fade into the distance like a rock being dropped into a well, George heard the protector say, “Watch your head!”

The instruction came too late. George’s head banged into something hard and he suddenly found himself sitting sideways, back to his full size, with his head stuck under the passenger seat of the Volkswagen.

George heard the protector’s tiny voice yelling, “don’t worry, you’ll get better at it. Now you’d better get going. I’ll see you in two days.”

George struggled out from under the seat, righted himself, and waved to the miniature protector standing in the door far below. Then he hopped out of the car and raced for home.