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from the white-haired lady and half hidden by the family we’d seen at the stables. I wondered if we should tell our parents about the two golfers. But tell them what? They hadn’t done or even said anything creepy. Well, not very creepy. I sighed. It’d be good when this vacation ended and Ethan wasn’t around all the time making me weird.
    After dinner, the adults sat on the veranda, and we headed to a spot under the hotel’s west tower. The sun had smeared crimson behind a dark wooded ridge. That’s where the star guide said Orion could be seen in this time of year.
    Ethan babbled on about what his home planet was probably like: his pet flying cats, his mountain palace, his personal rocket scooter. I swung on a bar of the scaffolding that covered that end of the building, and thought about horses.
    “Look, you can see stars now,” Ethan said excitedly. “I wonder if that’s Orion. The pattern looks sort of right.”
    Glancing at the faint stars near the horizon, I couldn’t see any pattern at all.
    “There, just above that pointy tree. That could be home!”
    I looked, but it was just a star. Why get excited about a cold distant star when he had an OK home right here? True, I’d rather have my parents than his. But Uncle Paul and Aunt Marsha weren’t mean or anything. They were just busy and probably knew more about making money than making kids happy. Besides, who knew what life might be like on that tiny, faraway light? It could be a whole lot worse.
    Ethan babbled on. “Sure, that’s got to be . . . ”
    A grating noise came from above. Then a loud crack. I looked up, then dove for Ethan, throwing myself on top of him and a prickly bush. The air sizzled and filled with blue-white light. Then came a crashing thud. For a moment, I was too stunned to move. Ethan squirmed under me. Untangling ourselves, we peered through the fading twilight.
    A large building stone had buried itself in the ground a few feet away.

    Fearfully, I looked up. Scaffolding was silhouetted against the violet sky. I thought I saw something else, a head maybe, but then it was gone. “Guess this building does need fixing,” I said in a quavery voice. “It’s got some major loose stones.”
    “Loose stones? You’ve got loose marbles! Someone’s trying to kill me.”
    I didn’t feel like arguing. I didn’t feel like anything but being safe with our parents on the veranda. At a nervous trot, we headed back but agreed not to tell them about the stone. Otherwise they wouldn’t let us out of their sight again. Yet even with them, I didn’t quite feel safe. Someone with a rifle could pick us off easily.
    This was so dumb! My cousin’s not an alien. And nobody’s trying to kill him! The fat, bald guys are just creepy humans, and the stone fell by accident. I didn’t understand the bit with the light, though. Ethan hadn’t seen it because I’d been on top of him. Maybe I’d been hit by a small chunk of rock and “saw stars.” Yeah, that was probably it. An accident and a blow to the head.
    Once in bed, I kept telling myself the same things over and over. Creepy but human twin golfers. An accident with a building stone. A slight bump on the head—even though I didn’t actually feel one. But just the same, I didn’t sleep very soon or very well.

Covered with mud, leaf mold, and stone dust, Agent Sorn paced angrily under the concealing branches of a weeping willow. She jabbed in the sender code of Chief Agent Zythis’s message machine, not wanting to explain in real
time what had happened.
    “Agent Sorn, reporting. The Gnairt have gone too far, attempting to drop a large stone on our Agent. I managed to deflect it with my laser, causing a minor flash. But still, it was a close call. The obvious answer would be to eliminate the Gnairt, but the laws and customs on this planet would call unwanted attention to the killing of two supposed humans, compromising our mission. My only course is to stay close to our Agent and be