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out at our feet: cups, papers, boxes, CDs, rubber bands, envelopes, old magazines. Junk.
    â€œHey, Lindsey,” Jesse said, pointing to one of the papers. “Isn’t that a map of the mall?” And sure enough, there on the floor, was a half-crumpled map of the Petroglyph Mall. It must have been left over from when Leery was devising the bot B-Monsters for They Came from Planet Q . What amazing timing! How lucky we were! Even from this distance, way out in the fields, I saw how Petroglyph Mall had grown overrun with people and vehicles and a crazy, swirly storm of objects in the air. The B-Force had gone crazy with blaring sirens and blazing spotlights. The sky was bearing down, too, dark like a storm, like night coming in.
    I hated to think what would happen if we didn’t figure out how to destroy the B-Monsters before it got pitch-black out here. I could just imagine those red robot lights coming after us in the dark, dark cornfields . . .
    Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!
    I jumped into the air. Scared myself.
    â€œLook at all those security guards!” Jesse cried. “I bet your dad is over there, Lindsey.”
    I squinted and I couldn’t make out my dad, but I saw at least three times the number of guards stationed there since this morning. We’d only been away from the mall for a matter of hours! In that short time, the B-Force had escalated beyond any of our imaginations! They’d already brought in triple the reinforcements.
    Cable news crews were setting up their satellite dishes, but Jesse said transmissions probably weren’t even making it out of the parking lot. The B-Force was growing! Every metal object was becoming magnetized to every other metal object. That’s why there had been no reports of this on the news! The news cameras had all stopped working.
    As we drove, Walter struggled a little bit with the steering wheel. Something was pulling on the car! Fortunately, Oswald Leery’s vehicles come equipped with anti-lock and anti-magnet brakes.
    Leery always planned for every emergency.
    â€œIs your skin tingling?” Stella asked. “Because it feels like my skin is tingling . . .”
    â€œMe too,” I said.
    â€œWe all feel that,” Jesse said. “It’s the B-Monsters. It’s the B-Force. They’re almost here.”
    Indeed, that electric feeling in the air meant the Planet Q robots had to be only seconds away from entering Earth’s atmosphere.
    I held my breath and counted down to one.
    We didn’t have a final plan, but we were ready.
    5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .

CHAPTER 10
    MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US
    â€œMy stars!” Walter cried. “The mere presence of the B-Monster has turned the entire mall into an enormous magnetic field! Astounding! If only the crowds knew what was really going on. They think it’s some kind of strange weather pattern.”
    This B-Force was as uncontrollable as ever! Every time I went to take a new photograph, the magnetic pull threatened to rip my camera right out of my hands.
    We looked over at one of the enormous, overflowing piles of metal objects growing higher than the tallest building in Riddle. Now there was actually a red sports car hanging off it, somehow suspended from a steel girder. In fact, every steel object imaginable, big and small, had made the pile taller and taller. There were horseshoes, hubcaps, power tools, metal fences, a hunk of the divider from the road outside the mall, and a whole bunch of major household appliances.
    â€œThis is what must have happened in Spain and in Australia!” I cried. “It’s why the metal objects flew out of museums and lawnmowers shot through the sky! The bots must have flown through all those places . . .”

    â€œLooking for their firequartz!” Jesse said.
    â€œAnd magnetizing everything big and small!” I added.
    The photographers were all around us, scrambling for the best picture and scoop they could get. I knew they