around waiting with him; the little intercity saucer was already parked nearby, hovering about ten feet above the field of bright green salt-marsh hay, with a gleaming metal ramp leading up to it from one of the wooden boardwalks. The thing created so little breeze Alison barely even noticed that her hair was blowing around since she’d forgotten to wear the bright pink cap Grandma had knitted her last year.
“Well, I’d better get back home,” Dad said. “The Universal Health people are going to be there in less than an hour.” They hugged quickly and Alison shouldered her pack.
There was plenty of room in the saucer, which had a diameter about as long as a school bus and could seat about seventy-five people in two concentric rings. The saucer was half empty, so Alison had no trouble getting a window seat. Of course, you never got to see the really cool part…
“Good morning, folks, and welcome aboard the Hemi-Viscount Oofffffff’calalius,” the High One pilot said over the intercom, in what sounded like a down-home Southern accent. Not that long ago, he would have been out among his human passengers, pressing tentacles to hands, but the insurgency had gotten so bad they didn’t dare emerge from their sealed-off pod at the top of the saucer. “We’d like to thank you for choosing Imperial Spacelines for this short hop to Proxima Centauri 5.”
Alison sat bolt upright and shouted in alarm, but the intercom voice was chuckling.
“Jest kiddin’ there, folks, this girl’s only going to Baltimore. If your final destination is Proxima Centauri’s fifth planet, you’re going to need a bigger saucer and some rather elaborate breathing apparatus.”
A kindly-looking middle-aged lady on Alison’s right leaned over and patted her on the arm. “Sorry he gave you a fright, dear. I take this flight all the time, the pilot fancies himself quite a comedian.” Alison managed a weak grin.
Meanwhile the saucer had lifted silently and without any sensation of acceleration into the stratosphere. Alison could see all of Chincoteague and the fat fishhook shape of Assateague Island’s southern end out her window. But she didn’t get to enjoy the view long.
The pilot was back on the intercom, his tone serious. “Passengers, please put your window shades in the full upright and locked position for bubble blowing.”
Alison put her hand out obediently, but hesitated, her breath taken away by the green and tawny islands in the deep blue sea below her.
The pilot’s voice sounded a sterner note. “Folks, I cannot hyperinflate the bubble universe we need to make the hop to Baltimore until you all—”
The lady to Alison’s right reached over and snapped the plastic cover down, pinching Alison’s right fingertips so she yelped.
“That’s better, folks. Brace for bubble!”
Alison’s stomach turned a sick somersault, which made her forget all about the dirty look the lady was giving her. She barely had time to wonder whether it was really true that seeing a bubble universe would make you go insane before the pilot said pleasantly that he’d like to be the first to welcome them to Baltimore and the passengers were free to watch their descent to the landing field.
The bus to Sunup Happy Life Dwellings took longer than the saucer ride had, leaving Alison too much time to fret over how Grandma would feel about her coming alone for help with a school assignment. What if she got mad? She’d been so transparently eager for everyone to stay the last time they visited, back in August. Alison bit her nails until they bled, punishing herself for having written so few letters in the three months that had passed since then. Poor Grandma! She’d had the same longevity treatments as everyone else, but since her stroke she couldn’t live on her own—and yet she missed her family and especially Grandpa, who had dropped dead suddenly of a heart defect no one even knew he had.
When the bus pulled up at the glassed-in “sunroom,” Grandma was there waiting for her, all but jumping up and down with excitement. “Hello, dear! How is school? How’s my favorite granddaughter doing in twelfth grade?”
“Fine, Grandma.” Good Lord, she’d obviously gotten her hair done for this visit. The chestnut strands were carefully piled up in the wasp’s nest that had been popular fifty years ago, and she had on her best blue dress, the one with the white lacy collar. Her face was so carefully made up you could hardly even tell the left side was droopy from the stroke.
Alison was flattered and ashamed, all at once. As they walked up to Grandma’s room she explained what she needed for her school assignment.
“So you need me to reminisce about the good old days?” Grandma said. “I can do that! But first, let’s sit down in the kitchen and get you your milk and Oreos.”
“I’m on a diet, Grandma,” Alison protested, but the plate was already in front of her, the glass (which had originally been a jam jar) was full of ice-cold milk, and it was too much to resist as her grandmother started talking.
“Your grandfather and I were students at Towson State, north of town. We weren’t really into our studies because we were hippies, of course. Counterculture freaks,” she said.
“I don’t know what a ‘counterculture’ is.”
“Disturbers of the Cosmic Harmony, they’d call us now. They called us worse back then. The day of the moon landing, Phil and I went to a be-in on campus.”
“A what?”
“A big party where people were passing around joints and dropping acid.”
“Grandma!”
She shrugged her shoulders under her lace collar. “You want to know how it was, I’m telling you how it was. Somebody had set up a big color TV on a podium, with a dozen extension cords connected to each other running to the dean’s office in the administration building. Which was closed, since it was summer, so somebody must’ve had to break in.”
Alison clapped her hand over her mouth and let out a shocked giggle.
“When the great moment happened, Phil and I were in the middle of an argument.”
“An argument? About what?”
“About whether the moon landing was real or the government was faking it.”
“Just like Barry Freed!” Alison said, half-whispering.
“Who? Anyway, I can’t even remember which side I was taking. But suddenly people were gasping, screaming, freaking out. I remember one guy said real loud, ‘Worst trip ever!’ Phil and me, we just looked at each other. Most everybody ran off, hoping that it really was just a bad trip and if they slept it off it would go away.
“We were part of the small group that stayed and got to see the mothership descending over the White House an hour later.” Grandma chuckled. “People said afterward that the mothership looked like a giant bath toy, and that Risssss-erianus creature resembled a shower cap. But Phil always said it was the White House and that wind-up doll of a president who looked like toys, next to those huge things.”
Alison stiffened instinctively. You just didn’t talk about the Viceroy of Earth and the High Satrap like that. But Grandma had her own rules. I’d better get to the point. “Grandma, this is all really cool, but the point of my paper is how the High Ones brought world peace. What were the huge celebrations like that night, when the High Ones destroyed all the world’s nuclear weapons?”
Grandma absently pulled apart an Oreo, dunked the half without the cream filling in her milk, and took a slow, meditative bite before answering. “So that’s what they’re teaching you kids now, huh? Huge celebrations? There were some pretty raucous parties that night, it’s true. From what I heard, they made our ‘be-in’ look like a little kid’s birthday party. End-of-the-world hysteria is what it was. People thought we were all gonna die.”
“What? But the High Ones had just saved us from, like, extinction!”
Grandma shook her head. “We had our own little party that night, Phil and I.” She winked at