At home, Tommy stood contemplating the container of frijole delight that sat on the kitchen table. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Linda. Linda, lying stomach down on her bed, picked up her cell phone from her night stand. “Hello?” she said.
“Linda? This is Tommy. Just fine…Listen, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t Spaz and I team up with you and what’s his name for this project of Mr. Beaker’s? We could probably knock it off in half the time if we all worked together.”
Linda sat up on her bed. “I don’t think so, Tommy. I mean, the experience just wouldn’t be the same. And besides, there’s not enough room in Stretch’s Corvette for all of us. But thanks, anyway. Bye.”
Linda placed her cell phone back on the nightstand, stood up and walked over to Stretch, who was standing in the doorway. He put his arms around her. “What did that creep want?”
“Nothing, darling,” murmured Linda contentedly, as she molded herself to her new man. “Nothing at all.”
___
Spaz walked up to the front door of the Dinkle home carrying a telescope in one hand. He had an expensive looking camera strung from his neck. He rang the Dinkle doorbell and after a few seconds Tammy Dinkle opened the door. “Yes?” she asked.
Spaz, already in the spirit of Mr. Beaker’s assignment, began to wax poetic. “The orbs of Venus and her sisters do appear, amid all the heavenly bodies far and near.”
Tammy backed away from the door into the living room. “Mother, there’s a pervert at the door!”
Tommy sped down the stairs, pulling on a light jacket as he descended. “It’s for me!” he yelled.
“I should have known he was a friend of yours,” Tammy said scathingly as Tommy zipped by her.
“Let’s get this over with.” said Tommy to Spaz.
“Right,” replied Spaz with enthusiasm.
“Bye, sis,” Tommy said over his shoulder as he stepped out the door. Spaz and Tommy walked down the front sidewalk away from the house as Tammy slammed the Dinkle front door. “Lead the way, boss,” said Tommy, since Spaz seemed to have a destination already determined. Spaz led Tommy out of the town and they began to climb a gently sloping hill that rose up from behind a residential area of Tootville. After about fifteen minutes of walking along a trail up the slope, Tommy knew exactly where they were going. “I don’t get it.,” said Tommy. “Why the ridge?”
“Inspiration. That and the fact that we’ll be able to get some awesome pictures from up there.”
“Pictures?”
“Yeah. This camera mounts on the telescope and you can take pictures as well as just look.”
The boys at last reached a level area overlooking the residential section. Below them the lights of Tootville glowed while to their rear lay a wooded area. A round, full moon, surrounded by a sea of shimmering, twinkling stars, bathed the ridge in a mysterious, silvery light.
“This is it,” announced Spaz victoriously.
Tommy, not exactly thrilled about the hike up to the ridge, muttered, “You’re sure it’s not another twenty miles further along?”
Spaz remained oblivious to Tommy’s lack of enthusiasm. “Nope. This is the spot,” he said excitedly. “Let’s set up the telescope by that big rock.” He pointed in the direction of a nearby boulder. “This could be our night of destiny. I feel it.”
Spaz walked over to a flat area near the large rock and began to set up his equipment. Tommy, as he ambled toward Spaz, sank halfway to the top of his socks in a deep puddle of gooey, reddish mud, probably a result of a rainstorm from the previous week. His shoes and socks were covered with the stuff. “Yuk!” he complained.
“Oh, yeah. Watch out for that mud puddle.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Spaz focused the telescope after mounting the camera and motioned to Tommy. “Take a look at this.” Tommy, shaking mud from his shoes as he walked, approached Spaz and peered into the instrument. The bright lunar surface was pockmarked with impact craters. He could make out what he thought were mountain ranges along with low, flat areas. “Those dark areas are basaltic lava,” explained Spaz. “You never see the back side of the moon but it was first photographed in 1959 by the Russian Luna-3 and in the sixties by the American Lunar Orbiters.” Spaz was obviously no novice at lunar observation.
Tommy looked up from gazing into the telescope. “How do you know so much about photography?”
“It’s my hobby. It seems like taking pictures is about the only thing I can do without screwing up.”
“Well then, get to work, professor,” said Tommy, beginning to relax a little from the earlier events of the day. Tommy stepped over to the large rock, tennis shoes squishing from the gooey mud. He sat down on it with his back to Spaz and gazed up, elbows on knees, at the constellations. He thought about Mr. Beaker’s lectures on the vastness of the cosmos and the amazing complexities of the universe and wondered what it all meant. Compared with the infinite reaches of space, his problems for the moment seemed insignificant and mundane.
With Tommy lost in his thoughts, Spaz quietly turned the telescope around and pointed it in the direction of the town. He focused the telescope on Chesty McBust’s bedroom window and caught her in the act of undressing. Spaz began to snap pictures of her.
“You know, maybe Mr. Beaker was right,” mused Tommy, still staring up into the night sky. “Maybe the fact that we’re together here tonight could mean this is a turning point in our lives.”
Spaz was still snapping pictures of Chesty, who, with her back to the window, had removed everything but her panties. “Undoubtedly,” he said. His mind wasn’t completely focused on what Tommy was saying.
Tommy continued to stare up into the cosmos. “I mean, isn’t this one of the most inspiring moons you’ve ever seen?”
At that moment Chesty pulled down her panties and Spaz immortalized the moment with a click of the camera. “You can say that again,” he replied enthusiastically.
There was a faint rustling of branches and Officer Down, a pot-bellied policeman from the Tootville police force, emerged from the underbrush. “What are you punks doing here?” he asked angrily.
Startled, Tommy replied, “Oh, nothing, Officer Down. This is a homework assignment. We’re supposed to admire the handiwork of nature.”
“That thing is pointed in the wrong direction to be looking at the stars. I know what you’ve been up to. Now pack up your stuff and get out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” said Spaz, with a guilty look on his face.
The boys hurriedly grabbed the equipment and started back down the trail. Officer Down yelled after them, “And don’t let me catch you two fooling around up here again!”
Officer Down watched as the two boys disappeared from view and then lifted to his eyes the binoculars that were dangling from his neck. “Little perverts…This is my spot.” Officer Down stared into his binoculars while adjusting the focus. The sound of a snapping twig startled him and he turned toward the noise. “I thought I told you two not to…” he began and then stopped.
There, with the full moon in the background, loomed a grotesque, seven foot tall alien shapeshifter. Officer Down screamed in terror as the monstrous thing rushed slavering toward him.