Martians Abroad

“All right, here we go,” Charles said, a gleeful tone in his voice. “Polly, order a taxi, they can pick him up right at the front door.”

I found the contact number on the tourist info page and got Ladhi to double-check the address for me. ETA: five minutes.

“Taxi on the way,” I said.

“Good. All right, turn your volumes up, it’s showtime.”

On the kidnapper’s handheld feed, a door alert sounded.

“Is that it?” said the second guy. “Is that the signal?”

“No, we were supposed to get a call,” said the first guy.

“Then who’s at the door?”

“Stay here, I’ll go check.”

A bit of rustling while the guy moved through the rooms, padded down the stairs, and opened a door. “What?”

A younger male voice said, “Yeah, we have an order for a dozen pizzas to be delivered to this address for some kind of party?”

“What? I think there’s been a mistake, we haven’t ordered any pizzas…”

“But the order is right here, they’ve already been paid for and everything.”

“Well, we don’t want them, can you take them somewhere else? The employee mess hall maybe?”

I decided right then that this pizza-delivery thing must have been invented for its comic value.

“Let’s wrap this up,” Charles said.

A loud alarm rang, making Ladhi and me slap our hands over our ears. Another fire alarm? I couldn’t tell where it was coming from until I looked back at my handheld. The box showing the kidnapper’s handheld suddenly got an image, blurring as it zipped past, as the guy took it out of his pocket to look at it. “What is that?!”

“What am I supposed to do about these pizzas?”

“Hey, you, get back here!” That was the other kidnapper, and I heard heavy footsteps slamming down a staircase.

Then things got very messy. I might have thought this would be like watching a vid, clandestinely eavesdropping while we got the audio and visual feed from the kidnappers’ handhelds. Like sitting in the corner, watching events unfold. This wasn’t like that at all. There was a lot of shouting and running, and the guy must have shoved his handheld back in his pocket because everything went dark again, and the alarm was still blaring, echoing off the walls in the house they were in, adding to the chaos.

“There, he’s outside! Check the video feed!” Angelyn said, and then Charles sent the image from that camera feed to the rest of us, and finally this was like watching a vid. There was George, standing on the street, looking back and forth in a panic. A guy standing there in some kind of food-services uniform, holding a stack of flat boxes, blinked back at him in confusion, and the two kidnappers barreled out the door after him. George ran.

“And there’s the taxi,” Charles observed. The taxi was an electric-powered groundcar painted a mustard yellow with a lighted sign on top. Another one of the traditional modes of transport on the island. If George had listened to the orientation when we got here, he’d know that all he had to do was get in and it would take him wherever he wanted.

“Please, George, pay attention to the taxi…” Angelyn muttered, because it looked like George was going to run right past it in his panic. Poor guy.

But he didn’t. Right at the edge of the security camera’s range of view, George did a double take, stopped, and piled into the taxi’s backseat. The car pulled away as the two kidnappers raced down the sidewalk. They glared at it and slouched, clearly discouraged.

Well, that was exciting.

“That’s it,” Charles said. “He’s on the way back.”

Elzabeth clapped, and Angelyn turned around to hug her tight. The rest of us sighed. For not having moved for the last half hour, I was exhausted. I blamed the gravity.

I heard a soft click from the door.

“Ladhi, try the door,” I said.

She padded over, turned the handle—and the door opened. She looked back at me, holding the door open, uncertain.