Sona ran into the room. “I saw it from downstairs. They’re here!” She ducked under the ray as it shredded the wall paper above Rose’s chair. “We have to get Rose to safety.”

“We have to find that Pearl so we can cure Rose” demanded Dr. Mina. “It has something to do with this old thing they call a radio.”

A powerful ray broke through the west window shattering glass. Books on the table at the far end of the room exploded into confetti. It carved zigzag shapes in Susan’s beautiful carpets. When the violet ray touched the radio, it lingered for a moment feeling all over it. There was an electric flash, exploding shards of wood around the room. Lights everywhere around the farm went dark.

As we helped Rose out into the room, Java nudged me toward the end of the hallway.

“Down the back stairs, Ridley. Hurry!” he urged.

“What about Rose?”

“She’ll be safe with the others — that is, if we can lure that ship away from here.”

“What? Java are you nuts? How are we going to do that?”

Reaching the top of the stairs, Java shoved me so hard, I fell all the way down and bumped my head on the door frame at the bottom. Plenty mad at this cat who’d caused me so much trouble, I swiped at him with open claws. Java neatly bounded over me, and skidded onto the kitchen floor.

“Follow me, Ridley!” was all he said.

Spitting mad, I ran across the kitchen with murder in my eyes as Bill burst through the back door toward the basement and stepped on my tail in the dark. I let out a yowl and Bill’s flashlight went flying as he tripped across the room. Escaping through the open door, Java galloped across the lawn toward the barn with me in pursuit, now with a sore tail.

Behind us, violet beams stabbed down from the enemy ship, probing windows in the house. We heard the sound of breaking glass along with Susan’s voice urging the cats to run. A dog was barking furiously next door.

Java called out. “That’s Dilby’s dog Drake over at Dunkle’s.”

Digging in my feet, I stopped in the middle of the yard.

“Java! We’ve got to go back to help them!”

Java bounded back, wary of my claws. “Follow me to the barn,” he insisted. “This is the only way to save them.”

This was so unlike Java to ask me to help him with anything.

Of course! Sona’s ship must have returned.

A blue ray shot over our heads, hitting a poplar tree with loud crack and the hiss of leaves. A second later, a tree limb crashed to the ground.

We raced around the broken barn doors lying on the ground, and ran up the gravel ramp to the doorway. Expecting to see Sona’s saucer hovering in the rafters, I was disappointed to find only moths flitting in the moonlight with hungry bats swooping around them.

“Follow me.” Java commanded in an accented soprano voice, different from his normal alto.

At the shadowy back wall, Java beckoned me to jump up onto a box by the rear window where the cats liked to watch birds in the apple tree outside. Keeping as much distance from each another as possible, we each rubbed away spider webs and dust from the glass.

Having moved from the house, the saucer was prowling the back fields between the farm and the woods. Intense violet rays burst out from it into the neighborhood. We heard a car alarm go off at a neighbor’s house down the road. A woman screamed.

One of the window panes shattered over our heads with the tinkle of glass skittering across the floor. Hanging from a beam, Bill’s good-luck horseshoe spun off its nail into the side wall with a bang. Violet rays lit up the barn, feeling around like paws. The old cultivator up against the east wall rang out with sparks jumping across the shanks. Three milk cans over by the door boomed like drums. Anything made out of metal sang with that same musical top music as the ship passed over. With a screech and pop, the metal roof panels strained against their nails.

Java said haltingly, “See — it comes for us — now.”

“I know it’s coming for us, Java! So we should be back at the house to make sure Rose and the others get out safely.”

The side window high on the east wall shattered into a million pieces.

“That’s the same window Bill fixed last fall after the big storm,” Java whispered to me. “Now he’s going to be mad.”

It seemed to me Bill was going to be mad about a whole lot of things after the night was through. Bales of hay tumbled from the mow. Wasps, who can usually sleep through anything, circled in confusion. Coils of wire, buckets, chains, and a swarm of old nails flew around the room in a whirlwind of steel. Finally, a shelf broke, sending dozens of rusty tools, picks, chisels, hammers, wrenches and screw drivers crashing down.

We heard shouting from way over on the east side of the house. A shotgun blast broke the night.

“That must be Al Detlow,” Java whispered. “He’s the guy who tells everyone he wants to be abducted by space aliens.”

“So why’s he shooting at them?” I wondered aloud. “You’d think he’d be showing them where to land.”

Al Detlow must have scared the saucer, because the roof stopped creaking and all the nails and tools and metal things fell to the floor with a big crash, making us almost jump our of our furry suits. Even Dilby’s dog Drake stopped barking and it was quiet again.

The screen door slammed at the back of the Matthews’ house. We heard Susan’s cautious voice warning Bill to keep back.

“Just keep watching.” Java said in that strange voice.

“Watching what?” I wondered. Everyone was around the other side and all we could see was the back field. After a while, when things seemed to have settled down, the people moved closer to the barn and we could hear them talking.

Bill swore, “Darn, I forgot my phone. We should call 911 and get the fire department out here.”

“There’s no fire, Bill,” Susan said. “It’s very strange. The sewing room is covered with ICE! It’s going ruin everything when it melts.”

“Well, we’ve got to call somebody after a thing like this. I mean, we were attacked by a UFO, for Pete’s sake.”

I recognized Al Detlow’s voice. “Are you nuts! And have every news crew and tinfoil hat saucer nut trampling down your begonias!”

According to his daughter’s cat Jeffery, if there was ever a tinfoil hat saucer nut in the neighborhood it was Mr. Detlow.

“I hope he’s not trampling the catnip.” Java muttered.

We heard Susan say, “He’s got a point, Bill. Our farm might become as popular as the burning hills of Centralia if people thought a real flying saucer had attacked us. And you know how many people drive through Centralia, even though there’s not much left but smoke.”

We heard some hemming and hawing from the men.

Susan clarified her position, “Things get that way when you’re famous, even over a little thing like a UFO. And it was kind of a little thing, don’t you think, Bill? Space aliens must not be very big — not at all the way you see them on TV.”

“So what am I going to tell the insurance company tomorrow?” Bill groused.

After a pause, we heard a scuffle.

“See here Detlow,” Bill demanded. “Put that phone away! You’re not going to take any pictures of this farm to put on those wacky websites of yours.”

“I should say not Al,” Susan warned sternly. “You know what the government is like. Once they find out we saw something, they’ll drag us all off to Bethesda for tests and keep an eye on us forever to see how the shock has affected our lives. Think of what a thing like that will do to your daughter Ann, especially when it comes time for her to get married!”

As I wondered about what getting married had to do with anything, since cats don’t usually do that, I saw a whirlwind sweep out of the woods. It rushed toward us, kicking up dust and grass across the field. until we could see a golden saucer sparkling in the moonlight. When it came to a stop under the apple tree below our window, I fell off the wooden box.

Java said flatly, “It is here — we must go.” But it wasn’t Java’s voice. Looking down at me from the box, Java stammered out, “Our world is about to change.”

He pointed his paw upward. “It is looking — for — the Pearl.”

“How could you possibly know that, Java?” I asked, deeply puzzled.

“My ship speaks to me. It hears the others.”

“Your ship? Have you been into the catnip, Java?”

In a distant voice, Java said, “We must lead it — away from this place. Believe me when I tell you they will burn down this barn — the house — and blast a crater so deep there will be no one left to remember — once it finds what it searches for.”

I looked up at him. “Java, are you OK?” But he wasn’t. He had the look of fear, the way someone would look if they’d just lit a dynamite fuse they couldn’t put out. By then I knew he’d swallowed the Pearl and whoever was up there hovering over the farm would carve him apart to get it.

Outside, we heard splintering wood and more screams. A window broke in the milk shed and the stable door shattered off its hinges, cartwheeling through the garden. The enemy ship floated out to the middle of the field where it hovered, waiting.

Jumping from the box, Java tore down the back stairs. An intense violet light blasted what was left of the broken window with a smash of glass, With a last look around, I followed Java down the steps, and across the garden.

At the door of the golden ship, unsure whether to follow Java inside, a violet ray hit the ground and I jumped. Tumbling in through the open hatch, I found Java staring all around in open-mouthed wonder at the inside of the ship. Around the interior were leafy designs like a tropical rain forest, embossed throughout the cabin interior, twining across the floor, winding up the walls, and snaking across the ceiling like a magical primordial garden. Compared to this, Sona’s saucer looked like an empty cat food can.

Java opened his mouth to speak, but this time it was Raya.

“Take the pilot’s seat, Ridley. Lead the enemy away from here.”

“Me? — You’re the ace pilot. Fly it yourself.”

“You know I can’t do that. I’m trapped inside your friend.”

Although his eyes were crying for help, Java spoke with a clear voice.

“You have to do this. It is your heritage, Ridley. You’re an Orla cat.”

Whatever that was.