The Martians Have Landed

You won’t believe what happened one day.  In the middle of his assignment Tahlek caused an accident, all because of his inattention.  He’d been assigned to work with Professor Klem-Tuw, who specialized in wormhole research and technology.  Klem-Tuw had sent him to work on board the specially-equipped test space saucer, to enter all the professor’s equations for a working wormhole generator into the onboard computer.

We didn’t know a lot about wormholes yet, but we were all working on our designated projects. I was in another lab with Professor Kropec, working on the mechanics of the generator power conduits.  Suddenly there was a huge ZAP and a SCREAM from the lab next to us!  Kropec and I came running over to find out what happened.

Poor Professor Klem-Tuw was in shock.  He could hardly speak!  He just stood there staring in horror at the monitor overhead, stuttering, “St-st-student Tahlek!!   Here … one minute … then .. he .. the test saucer .. it … it … they … just  … DISAPPEARED!!”  

What?  How was that even possible?

Professor Kropec asked the old scientist what Tahlek had been doing on the saucer in the first place, and Klem-Tuw explained. He’d sent the student there to enter all the numbers he’d worked out, into the onboard computer.  That was all.  Just the numbers.  How could Tahlek mess that up?

I figured he just got careless and maybe entered a few numbers wrong.  It was easy to do.  So Klem-Tuw checked.  Sure enough, that’s what had happened.  But, I thought somehow, just somehow…maybe Tahlek had actually discovered the real formula to a working wormhole generator, and got sucked straight into the wormhole itself!  Well, it could happen!  

Now, Klem-Tuw had to inform Tahlek’s father, the President of the Institute, about the accident.  This meant trouble.  President Stoku was not an easy guy to talk to.

To say that President Stoku was upset was understating it.  He was furious!  He had already been unhappy with his son’s poor school reports, and another “pluf”, or mistake from his son sent his anger through the roof, especially when he heard that Tahlek may have sent himself accidentally through a wormhole! 

Poor Professor Klem-Tuw was frozen in fright as Stoku screamed at him.  I could only stand by helplessly, until I made a suggestion that we could probably reverse the equations to try to get him back.  I was willing to say anything at this point to defuse the situation, and get Stoku off Klem-Tuw’s back.

It did the trick for the moment.  Stoku calmed down long enough to get out of the professor’s face, and order us out of his office with two words, “Do it!”

Away we went back to the lab, our knees still shaking from Stoku’s fury.  The Professor was a little upset with me for making a suggestion to the President that he wasn’t sure he could make happen.  But, he thought he’d give an honest try anyway.

CHAPTER 2

Professor Kropec and I left the senior scientist to his new calculations and went back to our own lab work.  Three days later he stood in our doorway and announced he had good news and bad news.  Uh-oh, bad news?  We didn’t mind good news, but the announcement of bad news is never a good thing.

The new equations that Klem-Tuw had figured out showed two things;  One was good news, and the other equation was not-so-good news.  This not-so-good news would prove to be tricky, because up to now, it had never been done before, and we didn’t know what exactly  we were dealing with here.  

Available for pre-order in Kindle format on  www.amazon. com

Release Date July 31, 2026 in paperback and Kindle