Earthling Ambassador (Space Brigade 1)

"Of course, I can think of some ideas." Greta looked miffed. "Everybody always says I'm excellent at coming up with ideas."

"Okay," said Nicola. "What's your idea?"

"Give me a minute!"

"Got it!" Sean snapped his fingers. "I'll rappel down into the castle from a helicopter late at night, with, like, black stuff on my face, and dressed all in black, and I'll talk to you on the two-way radio and let you know how I'm going, and I'll just knock her out and toss her over my shoulder and then, ummmm, let's see ...Who wants to take it from there?"

Shimlara said, "Don't forget the princess is a whole lot taller than you, Sean.You'd probably have trouble tossing her over your shoulder."

"You'd be surprised at what I can do." Sean cracked his knuckles and Shimlara snorted, unimpressed.

"Shimlara, did you say something about guards around the palace?" asked Tyler.

"Yep, lots of them," said Shimlara. "I don't want to sound negative, but you're all pretty small compared to the palace guards--even I am! They wouldn't think twice about shooting us if they caught us kidnapping the princess."

"Bulletproof vests." Sean pointed at his chest as if he wore a bulletproof vest to school every day.

"We've got to find an excuse to get her out of the palace," said Tyler.

"Okay, but how do we do that?" asked Greta.

No one spoke.

"We could invite her to a party," suggested Katie tentatively. "Nicola says she's bored, so she might be happy to come."

"Like, a birthday party?" asked Shimlara. "I don't think she'd come to a commoner's birthday party. She would think it was beneath her."

"The party would have to be about her," said Greta. "It would have to be something that appealed to her ego."

"What about a Praise the Princess Pool Party?" asked Nicola. "We could have it right here in the backyard."

"Would she fall for it?" asked Tyler.

"I think she might," said Nicola. "We could say it's to pay tribute to her wonderful beauty and talent, blah, blah, blah."

"So we get her to the party," said Sean. "And then I rappel in through the roof . . ."

"Sean, I don't know if we're going to need any rappeling," said Nicola.

"Okay, so let's say we get her here to the pretend party," said Shimlara. "She'll probably bring at least one bodyguard with her."

"We'll have to distract the bodyguard, and then find a way to tie her up and tape up her mouth," said Nicola. "The problem is that if she screams, the bodyguard will come running."

"What if we hypnotized her?" said Katie. "My grandma does hypnosis--I think I could work out how to do it, at least for a few minutes.Then we could get her to tie herself up!"

"So we get her to the party, we distract the guard, we hypnotize her--then how do we get her to Earth?" asked Greta.

"We'll have to use Georgio's spaceship," said Nicola. "Do you think Plum would fly it for us, Shimlara? We could hide the princess so she wouldn't know we were doing anything illegal."

"I think so," said Shimlara. "She's pretty easygoing."

"Okay," said Nicola. "We've got a plan. Do you think it will work?"

She looked around the room.

They all shook their heads sadly.

"No."