Back in the Chevy, Glass shook herself awake.

“Got it,” she mumbled into the radio. There was silence. A faint thump came out of it. “Ninja?”

There was no response.

Glass’s mind raced. What could have happened? Mind control? Ambush? Aliens?

She shifted in her seat. Her foot bumped into something. It rattled under the seat. She pulled it out. It was a long, gleaming knife.

Glass’s stomach dropped out of her.

She burst out of the Chevy, running towards the nearest place Ninja had supposedly been. Nothing. She went along the route, staring around wildly. There it was. The radio. It was lying alone on the ground.

“Dammit,” she said, looking at the scuffles in the dirt. “Aliens.”

Glass had a special website for Aliens. Hundreds of people used it to call in tips. She sorted through the entries to create an average description of a UFO. She now sent out a call to all her watchers to flag any recent sightings on a map.

She got a recent flag, very nearby, from a prepper named Dave. He was one of her favorite informants. He was madder than a march hare, but his data always seemed legitimate. He even had radar.

Going AWOL from the police force, she drove off at top speed, leaving dark skid marks on the road and shouting at pedestrians.

Dave had an afro the size of a basketball and eyes as wide as saucers. He smelled like three-day-old carrion, and there were stains all over his shirt.

Glass saluted him, military-style. “Permission to come aboard, sir?”

“Granted!”

She entered his ramshackle house, resisting the urge to cover her nose.

“The craft’s headed southwest,” he told her, “It’s still barely within range of the radar. Shall I fire the missiles?”

“That won’t be needed. Do we have a means of communication?”

Dave offered up the crusty handset to a HAM radio.

“Can you link that with the spaceship?” she asked.

“Rosebud is available,” he said cryptically.

Glass looked at him sideways and slowly took the radio.

The dashboard buzzed with static. Ninja, May, and Mr Clean stopped to look at it as a voice came through. “Alright, listen up, you damn aliens. I want my partner back now, or I’m gonna blow you out of the sky. I have access to seven nuclear codes, and I won’t hesitate to fire. You may respond and blow our tiny planet to pieces, but at least you’ll be injured. And if that ends up hurting Ninja, I’m going to blast you even more.”

Mr Clean laughed. “Is that your friend? She’s crazy.” He looked down at the dashboard. “How did she get my communication—” He rubbed his bald head, eyes wide.

“What’s wrong?” May said, holding her position.

“An old— an old colleague. From my intergalactic military days. I thought he was dead.”

Ninja knew that voice. It was not a dead alien. How had Glass gotten onto the comms? “Why’d you think he was dead?” she asked conversationally.

“He was given the death sentence. He got on the wrong side of a fat princess.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He called her fat. He always had a problem with telling the truth. It was almost pathological.”

“So he was a pathological truth-teller instead of a pathological liar.”

“That’s probably possible,” May said thoughtfully. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Stop distracting us!”

“But what about the nuclear threat?” Ninja asked.

“Pshh,” May said. “What’s the likelihood of an average cop having access to a nuke?”

“Oh, she’s not an average cop. She’s a consultant. But she has lots of connections.”

“You mean she has resources too?”

“Exactly.”

“No matter what the girl is saying,” Mr Clean said, “We need to check this out. If it’s possible he’s alive…” He thought for a minute. “We need to check it out.”