Against the starry sky, we could see a sinister red light blinking atop a steel-framed communications tower.

“Listen to this.”

The minivan’s speaker system began to play a decidedly unearthly series of clicks, moans, and static.

Lucky bared his teeth and made a low growl.

“Atta boy,” said Emma, stroking his neck reassuringly. “Let’s go rid Earth of some aliens.”

Chapter 21

THE RELAY STATION’S access road was barricaded by a chain-link gate.

“Want me to make it go away?” asked Willy, already aiming his plasma cannon at it.

“It’s easier to spy on aliens when they don’t hear you coming,” I said.

So we left Lucky to guard the van, and, as stealthily as an Alien Hunter and his four imagined friends can manage, we jumped the fence. It was fifteen feet high, but we can do tall buildings in a single bound, so it really wasn’t an issue.

We snuck up the hardscrabble road on foot. At the top of the hill and inside another fence-this one topped with concertina wire-we found a pretty typical broadcast substation: a small forest of towers, satellite dishes, antennas, and transformers. The small control shack also looked to have been built by human hands.

Everything, in fact, seemed pretty normal-except that the door to the shack had been blown off its hinges, and there was an eerie blue glow emanating from within… and, of course, the air was filled with the disgusting stink of aliens.

We broke out some night-vision binoculars and long-range microphones and crept closer. There were a half dozen henchbeasts inside the shack, guzzling motor oil and laughing their ugly butts off as one of them edited video footage.

The transmissions were surreal scenes of townspeople doing dances, singing a capella, and, always at the end, getting vaporized. That especially sent the aliens into hysterics.

Next they uploaded a scene of pregnant women converging on a country farmhouse.

“That Number 5’s a stallion,” said one of them, guffawing conspiratorially.

“Yeah, especially for a fish,” replied another, causing the rest to roll on the floor with laughter.

Just then the picture on the monitors changed to the glowering image of their boss, and they quickly stood at nervous attention.

“Are you no-talent alien clowns having a good time?” asked Number 5.

“Yes, sir!-I mean no, sir!-We mean -”

“Spare me the stupidity,” said Number 5. “And see if you can’t spare yourselves and me yet another production delay. Our friend the Alien Hunter is forty-five meters away, and he’s armed to the teeth.”

“Well, so much for the element of surprise,” said Joe.

Willy cracked his knuckles and then, in his best Bruce Willis impersonation, said, “Lock and load.”

We didn’t like using guns ourselves, but I had to agree with the sentiment.

Chapter 22

NOTE TO SELF: when fighting hand-to-hand with rubber-skeletoned aliens-which some of these evidently were-remember that thing Sir Isaac Newton said about every action being met with an equal and opposite reaction.

Because no sooner had I landed a devastating roundhouse kick to the head of one of the henchbeasts than I was sailing through the night like I’d just jumped off a ten-story building onto a trampoline.

I somehow managed to land on my feet on the far side of the control shack and was ready to spring back into action, but my friends had already figured out how to deal with these overly flexible aliens. You simply tie one of their limbs to a fixed object, such as the steel girders of the broadcast tower, and then you run with their bodies in the opposite direction.

Then, when you can’t run any farther, you let go and-bang!-the creatures snap back into themselves with such force that they explode like dropped water balloons. Only they’re filled with some sort of sticky greenish syrup rather than water.

Gross but effective.

The other type of henchbeast we encountered wasn’t quite so stretchy but had its own surprise-some sort of gland on the abdomen that could spray a jet of foul black acid more than thirty feet.

We found they weren’t very good at aiming up, however. The secret was to jump into the air and then crush them from above-splat!-just like a foot squashing a bug.

But since they each weighed about a hundred fifty pounds, they left your sneakers a whole lot messier.

Chapter 23

ONCE WE’D SAFELY dispatched the last of them, we ducked into the control shack, hoping to find some clues. It was worrisome that Number 5 often seemed to know my whereabouts.

There was no sign of him, however.

“So what were they up to in here?” asked Joe.

“I think Number 5’s getting ready for a new show,” I said. “Our friends were probably uploading the footage to an extraterrestrial receiver for postproduction. Joe, can you figure out anything useful about this setup?”

He was already poring over the equipment, following wires and examining switches and displays.

“Yeah, it looks like most of the data is getting broadcast straight up into space. There’s a small signal coming back, though. Probably a guidance beacon, but it might be something else. Here, let me see if I can get it on this set here.”

He moved some wires to different jacks and threw a couple of switches. And then we saw what might have been the most sickening thing I’d ever seen.

And, yes, I’ve been on the Internet before.

Chapter 24

IMAGINE THE THEATER for American Idol during the season finale. Now make it bigger-like Madison Square Garden in New York or the Staples Center in Los Angeles. And now quadruple its seating capacity. And now replace the mostly polite, family-oriented audience of American Idol with the loud, obnoxious fans of, say, Jerry Springer or Howard Stern. And have them not be human.

Have some be three headed; have some be lobster clawed; have some wearing space suits; have some glowing with orange radiation; have some be nothing more than dense clouds of blue vapor; have some that look like huge unblinking eyeballs on mushroom stalks; have some with hammer heads, some with needle noses, some with feathers, some with frog legs, some with turtle backs, and some that look like Chinese dumplings with sea-urchin spines and metal helmets… well, that at least starts to paint the scene.

But that wasn’t the sickening part.

What made us gasp in horror was the stage, where the scenes we’d watched on the monitor were now being played for the alien horde’s viewing pleasure.

A father and his daughter getting terrified by a microphone-wielding Number 5… and then liquefied by blaster rays.

A family-and even their dog-dancing to seventies disco hits… and then melted by blaster rays.

A TV news anchor break dancing on her desk… and then, in a flash of light, getting transformed into a steaming pool of swampy liquid.

And then me, getting knocked senseless by Number 21 in S-Mart.

The audience loved every second of it. Even through all of the bits of static and fuzz, you could see the jeers, the sneers, the laughter, the pumping fists, claws, and tentacles of those assembled interplanetary creeps.

Then, I heard Number 5’s voice boom through the arena. “And that, my fellow producers, is just the trailer for the hottest new entertainment phenomenon we’re calling endertainment. Watch the skies for more episodes-and a sizzling premiere that’ll leave you dying for more.”

Without saying a word, the five of us started smashing everything in the shack.

Sparks flew, and the air filled with the scent of shorted fuses and ozone as we hurled mixing boards, editing decks, holoform display units, and a bunch of other things we didn’t bother to identify before we trashed them.