Davy walked alongside his father, grinning slightly. "Mom's on the loose again, isn't she, dad?"
"Looks like." said Mr. Caulfield. "And you keep your distance until you're hosed off."
Davy frowned. Not exactly the 'welcome home' he'd wanted. "Am I in trouble?"
Mr. Caulfield sighed. "If I had the slighest idea what to punish you for, probably. But I don't. I don't see anything here that was specifically your fault, or anybody's. And — maybe I'm at fault somewhat, too. I know that living in a semi-remote area like this hasn't made it easy for you to make friends. I'm glad you've got these other boys to play with. And I guess if you have to start making friends from other planets, then maybe…
Davy laughed. "Dad, it's okay, really. I like it out here. And I'm not lonely — anymore."
And it all worked out quite well. Mrs. Caulfield, who was an excellent cook, prepared an immense meal for the entire group while Mr. Caulfield turned the hose on them in the backyard and cleaned them up enough to head inside and take more thorough showers, which was the most fun any of them had had in a while. Jahv explained to Mrs. Caulfield about certain food avoidances, and the meal, despite being served in the evening, essentially amounted to an immense breakfast consisting of several dozen pancakes, and plenty of bacon and scrambled eggs. Toben figured that the food alone was worth staying on this planet. Everyone was grateful. Arion, especially, and somewhat surprisingly given his usually caustic personality, was unfailingly courteous and polite to the adult Caulfields. He would explain later that respect for parents and elders was an integral part of his society.
Niklas, Keith, and Martin returned to their homes with sufficient explanations. Even Keith's stepfather accepted it. Besides, it had kept the boy out of the house for most of the weekend, and that was good riddance as far as Mr. Dillinger was concerned.
Within a day, the aliens had set up a new home, more sophisticated than ever, thanks to the cargo containers Toben had brought with him. They could keep track of their new world and remain totally undetected at the edge of the woods. Davy got to see a lot of them, mostly because Mrs. Caulfield kept inviting them in for meals or sending out plates of cookies. Mr. Caulfield accepted this quietly enough, but was not entirely at ease around the strange youngsters.
And a small newspaper headline caught Niklas' attention, the day after they had returned. His father was reading the paper, and Niklas saw the headline on the back page and borrowed the paper after his father was finished with it. Apparently there had been a massive power overload at the Keisner amusement park. No one had been hurt, but every ride had stalled, Mr. Keisner had seemingly vanished, and no one could get the place started again. It was closed indefinitely.
That, thought Niklas, was a nice little ending to this particular adventure, even as part of him wondered — what would happen next?
In the days that followed the aliens' return to Earth and their inadvertant but unavoidable revealing of themselves to Davy's parents, events proceeded reasonably well — under the circumstances.
There were some problems with a lot of the equipment that Toben had beamed down. A lot of it hadn't taken well to landing in mud, the containers had not been water-tight, and some of the containers of equipment that had missed landing in the mud had taken some damage by materializing several feet in the air. A few had bounced on rocks.
The least damaged was an independent piece of equipment that would allow the boys to monitor certain galactic communication channels, not unlike an interstellar Cable TV system. This device had its own built-in generator, and was ready to use, although getting a decent picture on some stations wasn't easy.
The most damaged, unfortunately, had been the power generator that Toben had brought with him, and the food replicator. Both could be repaired, but first they'd need to be cleaned and dried out. Such delicate equipment was not expected to take a dip in mud. Toben expected it was going to take several weeks to even begin repair work on either device, because it was going to take that long just to get all the mud and sand out of them.
Without the power generator, none of the aliens' main machinery would work. They could use a few basic hand-held devices, such as some of their medical equipment — at least what they had of THAT that wasn't in need of some level of repair, but setting up a home in the woods was, for now, out of the question.
It didn't help that the tent-dome that Toben had brought with him had also suffered some damage. According to Toben, when properly activated, the tent-dome would resemble more of a trapezoid shape, at least on the outside, and be far larger on the inside, sectioned into multiple tesseract rooms, than the aliens' previous home.
Unfortunately, when he activated it, the end result looked like something that broke several laws of visual perspective, to say nothing of possibly a few laws of physics. Toben quickly collapsed the tent-dome back into its stasis form, hoping and also confident that he COULD repair it, but he'd need powered tools to do it with. That would require the generator. No one had been especially inclined to enter the malfunctioning structure, since there had probably been a chance of getting trapped inside of it.
That meant, for the time being, that the boys would have to reside under the Caulfield roof. Reaction to this on the part of the Caulfields was mixed. Davy loved the idea, Mrs. Caulfield accepted it readily enough, and Mr. Caulfield said that the boys were welcome for as long as necessary, but he tended to keep out of their way, and was secretly hoping it wouldn't take too long for Toben to fix their machinery.
There had also been some initial concern about Skerby, Toben's pet skerbit, possibly running off. Early on, the little creature had showed considerable interest in exploring its new world. Toben generally had to keep the little furball on a leash, even inside. This made Skerby miserable. However, one day, Skerby did manage to get off his leash, and bounded off into the woods before Toben and Martin, who was visiting that day, could catch up to it.
A few minutes later, though, Skerby came dashing back, wild-eyed, whining, and jumped immediately into Toben's arms, shaking like a leaf. Since that time, Skerby had been entirely content to remain indoors, and insisted on being on the leash whenever taken outdoors, and walked so close to Toben's heel that the youngster was sometimes worried he was going to step on the animal.
No one ever figured out what had so scared the skerbit. Had Toben and Martin been able to keep up that one day, they would have discovered that Skerby came across a medium-sized cottontail rabbit, who had taken an immediate dislike to the alien creature, but instead of running off with fear, and despite being distinctly smaller than Skerby, still managed to give him a rather sound beating. Not much more then Skerby's pride had been hurt, but the skerbit had decided in its little animal brain that if this was the nature of even the most harmless-looking wildlife on this planet, then Skerby was distinctly better off as an indoor pet.
The closest any of them came to figuring out what might've bothered Skerby was the night they all sat down to watch a video of "Watership Down" and the skerbit had screamed and spent the rest of the night under the bed in Davy's room.
Finding room for everyone had been difficult, but not excessively so. Morik was the least comfortable staying indoors all the time, so he was more than content to rig a hammock on the porch and sleep there. One thing that hadn't been damaged among the supplies Toben had brought down had been several air mattresses, which he, Keyro, and Jahv used in the living room. Arion, used to somewhat better conditions and not sleeping on the floor, tended to take the couch.
Initially, it had seemed to Davy and some of the others that Toben was essentially a blue-skinned, longer-haired version of Jahv. But he wasn't. He lacked Jahv's creativity in coming up with new devices. Conversely, he was a lot better at repairing existing devices than Jahv could ever expect to be — including a few that Jahv himself had built. The days of "what sort of machine is Jahv going to get us intro trouble with now" might be in the past.
Toben was also generally more outgoing than Jahv, certainly more adventurous, and also had more of a sense of humor, although this wasn't entirely appreciated since he also had a penchant for sarcasm. He was also a good bit more unruly and untidy. He not only liked his hair long, he didn't tend to comb it much, and generally had to be told by someone else to go take a bath.
However, Toben was initially not especially comfortable with physical contact. In this, he was much like a traditional Botaran, and the first time he saw Jahv and Keyro cuddling up on their air mattress he could hardly believe it. He wasn't offended, just surprised. A couple of nights later, though, Jahv asked Toben if he wanted to come over and share the mattress. Toben had been reluctant, even a little scared, but once he had done so, he found it most enjoyable.
Toben also expressed the least objection when the three Botarans were told that as long as they lived under the Caulfield roof, they were expected to wear some form of clothing at all times. This had been one edict that Mr. Caulfield had delivered. Perhaps it shouldn't've been surprising. Toben had spent most of his life on board a starship, where it was expected that even Botaran children be dressed. Keyro tried to get around the rule as much as possible, generally wearing underwear and nothing else.
Feeding these boys was no easy feat, even for Mrs. Caulfield's considerable ability, and the fact that she liked to cook. It wasn't so much the amount they were capable of eating, although that was a factor, it was the fact that she had to tailor menus to take the boys' preferences and, more importantly, allergies and avoidances into consideration. It took about a week, but she finally nailed down a menu that was at once filling, enjoyable, and safe for everyone to eat.
Everyone enjoyed pancakes or waffles, although Morik tended to avoid maple syrup. Potatoes of any sort were fine, and, being children, french fries were an obvious favorite. Hamburgers were workable provided that Mrs. Caulfield didn't put any toppings on them, but just served the boys plain burgers and let them choose their own toppings from a plate in the center of the dinner table. The Botarans all loved pickle slices. Arion so despised tomato slices for some reason that he tended to turn the plate around so that they were as far away from him as possible.
There were a few universal rules. Everybody seemed to like scrambled eggs, and bacon. None of them seemed to like cheese — which pretty well ruled out pizza.
Such were the routines gradually established with five assorted aliens living in the Caulfield house.
One afternoon, Davy decided to take Jahv and Toben up to the treehouse he had built. He didn't use it as often as he once did, but it was still up in the tree and still in good condition, and Jahv and Toben had been working so hard to clean and repair the machinery that they'd been skipping meals and, according to Keyro, been getting a little testy, so Davy dragged them out for a break.
It was a warm summer day, and as usual on such days, Davy was dressed in overalls and not much else. Jahv and Toben had decided to dress pretty much as Davy had for being outside, although Jahv's overalls were bright yellow, and Toben's were bright red, and both seemed to be made from the same kind of plastic-coated fabric as raincoats.
Toben was initially surprised to learn that Davy had built the treehouse. "Where did you think it came from?" asked Davy, when they were standing at the base of the tree.
Toben shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I assumed some large species of bird had built it. Why, when you have such a nice house to live in, would you build a place like that, and up in a tree?"
Jahv poked Toben in the ribs. "Owww! But — overall, I mean, it seems like a decent enough construct."
Davy smiled. "Thanks. I guess I built it so I could have someplace to get away from everything else sometimes. Besides, I love climbing around in this tree. Come on, I'll show you around inside."
Davy headed up into the tree. Toben looked reluctant. "You ever been up in there?" he asked Jahv.
"Once, not too long after I first arrived here." replied Jahv. "It's primitive, but not a bad place."
"I'm just not used to climbing." said Toben.
"Oh, come on. You must've had to climb around inside that ship of yours any number of times to make repairs."
"That was a ship — machinery. Stuff I understood." stated Toben. "I don't know from trees."
"Well, Davy's invited us, and it would be rude not to accept." said Jahv. "So get climbing."
The treehouse was much as Davy had left it. Several old sleeping bags and blankets padded much of the floor. There was a small box with some toys, snacks, and assorted supplies in one corner, and a lantern hanging from a hook in the ceiling.
"Cozy," said Toben. Davy was stretched out on one of the sleeping bags. Jahv and Toben sat at the edge of the cushioned area.
"You know it was in here that I first met Keith and Martin." started Davy. Then suddenly a new head poked into the treehouse. "Hi guys!" It was Martin. "I thought I saw somebody coming up in here."
Martin was wearing knee-length shorts and no shirt. He clambered into the treehouse and joined the others.
"Is Keyro expecting you?" asked Jahv politely.
"Nah, not for another half hour." said Martin. "I just left the house early, that's all."