Optimus turned to his companions. “Autobots: fall back and cloak.”

  “And be quiet,” Sam ordered. “Keep it down.”

  One by one the visitors retreated into a copse of trees. All did so successfully—and, as Sam had requested, quietly—until the preoccupied Jazz backed into a line of wires. The top of his head brushed against a high-voltage line. Flaring in the darkness, sparks arced across his skull.

  An involuntary electronic scream erupted from deep within the robot. Convulsing, he toppled over sideways, shattering a small glass greenhouse when he fell. The overstuffed trash cans Sam had promised to haul out front for tomorrow’s pickup went flying and rolling, spilling their noisy and noisome contents all over yard, pavement, and one another.

  Unsurprisingly, this concentrated calamity did not go entirely unnoticed inside the Witwicky household. As the house shook, Ron was up out of his easy chair and on his feet quickly.

  “Earthquake! Judy, under the table!”

  She didn’t budge from her seat. “It’s just a tremor, Ron.” She gestured at their surroundings. “A few things got knocked over outside, that’s all. Probably some of the neighborhood dogs, or maybe that family of raccoons that sometimes comes up from the lake. The house is fine.” She paused for a couple of seconds, listening. “See? Not even an aftershock. We’ll check the yard in the morning.” A hand gestured at his tray table. “Sit down and finish your dessert.”

  Reluctantly, eyeing the walls as though they might cave inward at any moment, he complied with his wife’s wishes. But no matter how hard he tried to shake the feeling that something was not quite right, the defrosted brownie resting temptingly in his plastic tray did not taste as good as usual.

  Out back Jazz sat up, shook his head, and gestured upward. “Do not touch those! They carry throughout their length the potential for dangerous energy overload.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Staring out the window, Sam had been holding his breath. But no one emerged from his house, or from those of any neighbors, to seek the source of the momentary cacophony. He let out a sigh of relief and turned back to Mikaela. In the faint light of his room she looked more beautiful than ever—though at the moment decidedly nonplussed.

  Thirty seconds later the transformer mounted on the pole nearest the length of heavy-gauge transmission line Jazz had inadvertently contacted blew up in a shower of sparks and seared metal. Every house in the immediate vicinity promptly went dark.

  In the now-dark upper-floor room Sam spun a wild circle, then raced toward the only source of light: the window. The first thing he noticed was the complete absence of light in any other house visible from his room. The second was the complete absence of visiting alien robots in his backyard. In their place was a small fleet of vehicles—including a giant and thoroughly inappropriate-for-the-location eighteen-wheeler. Leaning out, he yelled downward.

  “What is it with you guys? Semitrucks parked in the backyard is not hiding.” He turned back to his room. He still had to find the backpack, and the precious glasses. “You’re gonna get me in so much—”

  In the darkness he ran into something coming the other way that was simultaneously resistant and soft: Mikaela. Both of them went down in a heap.

  Downstairs in the living room, the thud from above was clearly audible as Ron switched on a flashlight. Immediately, his gaze and attention turned upward.

  “SAM? IS THAT YOU?”

  There was no response from above. Husband and wife exchanged troubled looks.

  “Stay here,” he told her. “Stay here.”

  “No. No, I’m scared.”

  “Well then, come on, but give me room.”

  “Room?” In the circle of light provided by the flashlight, she stared back at him. “Room for what?”

  “Room for …” He deliberated a moment. “Room to maneuver.”

  She nodded and followed him, keeping a couple of arms’ lengths back. On the way toward the stairs she spied her son’s baseball gear piled in a corner. Picking up the bat and gripping it in both hands, she trailed her husband as he started cautiously up the stairs.

  Moaning softly, Sam and Mikaela picked themselves up off the floor. He was a bit dazed, and not just from the force of the collision. She had rather more to say. As she was readying her words, a pair of brilliant beams of light illuminated the interior of the room like an atomic flash. Blinking painfully, Sam tried to turn in the direction of the lights being emitted by the eyes of a helpful Optimus Prime.

  “TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!”

  Slowly making their way up the stairs, Ron and Judy heard their son’s frantic voice at the same time as they saw the incredibly intense light flare from underneath the door to his room. Taking point ahead of them, Mojo was already scratching madly at the wood.

  “Sam?” Ron asked hesitantly as he leaned close to the door and gripped the flashlight a little more tightly. “You in there?”

  Shit, Sam thought. “Uh, yeah, Dad,” he responded, as calmly as he could. “It’s me.” Whirling on the beam-casting Optimus, he hissed anxiously, “Turn it off!”

  By now Judy had also halted just outside her son’s door. Mojo had calmed down, but only because his jaws were getting tired. Leaning forward and placing her ear close to the door, Judy was sure she could hear voices whispering inside.

  “What’re you doing in there? You all right?” She glanced downward. “The power’s out all over the neighborhood. Where are you getting that light?”

  “Big flashlight!” Sam hurriedly improvised. “Borrowed it from Miles.” He waved frantically at Optimus Prime. The robot’s eyes obediently went dark. “It’s off now. I’m good, Mom, really good!” Looking toward the window, he gasped, “Hide!”

  Ron tried the knob. It didn’t turn. “Why’s the door locked?”

  It was all becoming too much to deal with. Sam felt like his brain was an old washrag that had undergone its final washing and been hung out to dry for the last time. “I’m just—uh—real good.”

  His mother considered, not only her son’s words, but his tone. She eyed her husband. “Maybe he’s m-a-s-t-u-r …”

  “Judy!” Ron exclaimed. Flustered, he tried the knob again. Definitely locked from the inside. “Sam, open the door!”

  “Be right with you!” his son replied, even as he was bugging his eyes out at the now-eye-dark-but-still-staring Optimus Prime. “Get outta here!”

  The robot replied with damnably single-minded insistence. “But you must find the glasses.”

  “Open the door now.” Ron’s voice had gone from concerned to curious to borderline angry.

  Something fumbled at the knob from the inside. There was a soft click. The door opened inward to reveal Sam retreating to stand by the single window, holding up an arm to shield his eyes against the wandering beam of his father’s flashlight.

  “Hi Dad, hi Mom,” he declared cheerily. “What’s up?”

  Having none of it, Ron swept the light around the room, searching. “Who’re you talking to?”

  Sam kept his voice carefully neutral. “Talking to you.”

  Beyond suspicious now, his father tried to see past his son. Sam kept shifting his position, as if trying to block any view of the open window. His mother started to take a step toward him, hesitated.

  “We heard noises. We thought—”

  “Doesn’t matter what we thought,” snapped Ron, interrupting her. “What was that light?” Stomping into the room, he headed for the window. Desperately trying to look not-nervous, Sam blocked his father’s path. When he replied, he spoke more loudly than normal. Loud enough, in fact, for anyone or anything lingering outside to hear.

  “Light? What light, Dad? Wasn’t any light. Oh, you mean the flashlight light. That’s gone, isn’t it? Why’re you looking outside? Don’t you trust your son? That hurts me.”

  Leaning out the window, Ron scanned the backyard. Lights were still out in the neighbors’ houses, sparks still sputtered from the ruined transformer, and dogs were starting to bark everywhere. He did not look directly downward or he might have seen several enormous bipedal metallic shapes pressing tightly against the side of the house.

  Trying to avoid being seen, they pressed hard enough to make it shudder. Pictures in Sam’s room tilted on their hangers as books spilled from their shelves. Ron and Judy stumbled while Sam managed to hold his position.

  “Whoa, aftershock,” Ron stammered. “Everybody under the door, under the door, under the door!” Arms spread wide, he hustled his wife and son to the presumed safety of the entrance to Sam’s room.

  Outside, the robots conversed in implausibly concise sonic bursts among themselves.

  “Why are we hiding?” Ironhide demanded to know.

  “Be quiet,” Ratchet commanded him.

  The other mechanoid was not placated. “But—why are we hiding?”

  Jazz proposed an explanation. “If they see us, the boy’s progenitors will become alarmed.”

  “I can neutralize them. It will remove a complication from our quest.”

  “We do not harm humans. Despite their fragile microbiotic bodies and repeated indications to the contrary, they are sentient life-forms like us,” Optimus reminded his colleague.

  Ironhide persisted. “I will do it quickly and efficiently. They will feel no pain.”

  “Ironhide!” Optimus snapped.

  Thrusting her initial hesitancy aside, Judy had stepped into her son’s room and was walking toward the window. “Sam, we heard you. You were talking to somebody. We want to know who.”

  Surprising both her and Ron, not to mention Sam, a voice emerged from the darkness. It was followed by a figure. “Yeah, uh, it’s just me.” She eyed Sam’s parents. “Hi. I’m Mikaela.”

  “Oh,” Judy mumbled. A broad smile suddenly spread across her face, completely replacing any previous suggestion of anxiety. “Oh. Sammy.”

  “Sorry to scare you,” Mikaela put in.

  Ron looked flustered squared. “Scare us, nono, it’s—we’re sorry we barged in.” He gestured inadequately with the flashlight, wishing he were somewhere else. “We just heard noises, that’s all. I mean, what with the earthquake and the power going out …” His voice trailed away, not entirely unhappy.

  Leaning toward her son, Judy whispered encouragingly, “She’s very pretty.”

  Even in the feeble light it was possible to see Sam’s face flush. “Mom, she can hear you.”

  Judy straightened. “Oh, sorry, sorry.”

  Sam took a deep breath. “By the way, you guys seen my backpack?”

  “On the kitchen table,” his mother informed him helpfully. She smiled at Mikaela. “I’ll go make some snacks.”

  The lights in the room flickered, then snapped back on. The power company, Sam speculated, must have done a work-around on the destroyed transformer. He rushed past his parents. Hurrying to recover her purse, Mikaela followed close on his heels.

  “Don’t worry ’bout it, Mom,” Sam told her.

  “Nice to meet you, seeya!” Mikaela exclaimed as she disappeared down the hallway. Behind them, Ron switched off his flashlight and eyed his wife meaningfully.

  “ ‘Snacks’?”

  She shrugged, smiling halfheartedly. “I didn’t know what else to say.”

  Tearing down the stairs, Sam raced into the kitchen and—there it was. His backpack. Just as his mom had said. It was lying on the table untouched, unopened, and, to all intents and appearances, unmessed-with. As Mikaela set her purse down on a chair and joined him, he walked over and unzipped it. The glasses case, the invaluable glasses case, was right in the inside pocket where he had put it. So intent were both of them on the battered container that neither noticed the spidery shape rising up behind them. Articulated metal fingers reached out and forward to grab—only to retreat rapidly back into the open purse as the front doorbell began to ring incessantly.

  Walking through the kitchen past Sam and his friend, Ron moved to answer the door. It was too late for casual visitors. Probably someone from the electric company, he mused as he reached for the handle, checking each house in the neighborhood to make sure that the power was back on and that there were no problems resulting from …

  The front yard was full of men and women. Some wore dark suits and busied themselves using strange instruments to scan their immediate surroundings. Others carried even more peculiar devices whose readouts occupied their full attention. Standing by himself on the porch and facing Ron was a tall, skinny, eroded-looking individual who bore an air of seriousness around him like a thick fog. The sort of man who delivered clean white envelopes secured with the presidential seal to women whose husbands and sons were serving in war zones overseas.

  “Ronald Wickity?” he asked straightforwardly. Briefly, he flashed an impressively garish badge embossed with an insignia Ron did not recognize and was not given time to study at length. “Name’s Simmons. With the government. Sector Seven.”

  Automatically a mystified Ron responded, “Never heard of it.”

  “You still haven’t,” the agent informed him meaningfully. “Your son’s the great-great-grandson of the Arctic explorer Captain Archibald Wickity, is he not?”

  “It’s Witwicky,” Ron informed the visitor, more than a little put out. Leaning forward, he looked out as the bevy of disparately clad strangers paced and tromped and peered with great intensity of purpose all over his lawn and his wife’s flower beds. “What the hell is this?”

  Simmons was patient. “Your son filed a stolen car report last night. We think it’s involved in a national security matter.”

  “The Camaro? National security?” As a man who prided himself on always being on top of things, Ron had to admit to himself that he was now completely adrift.

  His wife, however, had more prosaic concerns. Still holding the baseball bat, she came up alongside her husband in time to see agents plowing through her flowers.

  “We got massive hits,” one agent called toward the porch, indicating the distinctive instrument he was wielding. Simmons looked back at him, nodding as if the observation was no more than he had expected.

  “Get a sample and readings.”

  The agent and a companion began ripping roses out of the ground. At Ron’s feet, Mojo started growling. The dog’s reaction was subdued compared with that of an outraged Judy Witwicky.

  “Hey, you!” Sam’s mother yelled, aghast at the destruction. “Outta my garden!” She hefted the bat threateningly. “Get!”

  “Ma’am, please,” Simmons entreated her, “drop the bat.” Blinking, she turned to him. “Are you experiencing any flu-like symptoms?” he asked her politely. “Aching joints? Fever? How are your bowel movements?”

  She gawked at him. “I beg your pardon? Who gives you the right to …?”

  “Nausea?” Simmons continued without a pause. “Swollen glands?”

  “No,” she snapped. “Listen to me, you creep—” She broke off and drew back as another agent came close to pass some kind of illuminated wand across her face.

  “She’s clean.” The agent lowered the device and extended a hand. “Ma’am,” he asked courteously but firmly, “the bat?”

  Sam and Mikaela had come out of the kitchen. As soon as Sam saw the agents standing in front of his mother and father he shoved the old glasses case deeper into his right front pants pocket. The alert Simmons noticed the gesture, but saw only Sam’s moving hand.

  “You. Sam Witwicky. We need you to come with us.”

  Sam took a step backward. Reflexively, he put a protective arm across Mikaela’s back. She didn’t step away from it.

  “Dad?” he mumbled uncertainly.

  Stepping back into his house, Ron blocked the agent’s view of his son.

  “I don’t know who you are or what’s going on here, but ‘national security’ or not, this is way out of line.”

  Simmons stepped into the house. “Sir, I’m asking you respectfully, please back off.”

  Balling his hands into fists, Ron let his arms rise deliberately from his sides. “You’re not taking my son. I’m calling the cops. ‘Sector Seven’? There’s something fishy about all this.”

  “Well, sir,” Simmons informed him, “there’s something fishy about you, your son, your little Taco Bell dog, and this whole operation in here—and my job is to get to the bottom of it.”

  This statement was so outrageous that Ron could not even muster the wherewithal to stay mad. “ ‘Operation’? What operation?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.” Reaching into a pocket, Simmons withdrew a small cylindrical device. Leaning over, he passed it across the face of a snarling, slowly retreating Mojo. “Fourteen on the counter. Bingo. Tag and bag ’em.”

  Straightening, he turned and gestured. From out of nowhere, agents seemed to pour into the room from every direction. One scooped up the Chihuahua with a catcher’s noose. Strong hands came down on everyone else. Wrestled, manhandled, and hustled, Sam’s parents were shoved roughly out of the house into the front yard, out onto the street, and into a waiting black SUV. Trapped amid half a dozen other silent agents, Sam and Mikaela disappeared into the one in front of it.

  Struggling, Ron yelled toward the other vehicle. “Do not say anything, Sam! Not a word, till we get a lawyer!”

  One by one the line of cars and SUVs pulled smoothly out into the street, accelerating in the direction of the nearest freeway on-ramp. As the last sped off, the neighborhood descended once more into the calm of late-night silence.

  From behind the house and among a cluster of trees, five pairs of deeply perceptive alien lenses stared out to follow the course of the departing vehicles.

  The Pentagon intelligence center was a hive of activity, a flurry of constant motion as officers and techs and specialist noncoms hurried back and forth or worked intently over individual consoles. On the largest screen two clusters of tiny shapes shifted their position relative to each other with infinite slowness. A closer look would have revealed that each one represented a ship, none of which belonged to Carnival Cruise Lines.