Out of the Blue Read online

  To Eliza and Bronte, as always

  MP

  To those stargazers out there

  PH

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 Thursday night

  Chapter 2 Friday

  Chapter 3 Saturday

  Chapter 4 Saturday

  Chapter 5 Sunday

  Chapter 6 Monday

  Chapter 7 Monday

  Chapter 8 Monday

  Chapter 9 Tuesday

  Chapter 10 Tuesday

  Chapter 11 Tuesday

  Chapter 12 Tuesday late p.m.

  Chapter 13 Tuesday late p.m.

  Chapter 14 Wednesday a.m.

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Faster than Lightning

  In the Deep End

  Ghost of a Chance

  Taking the Chequered Flag

  Into the Fire

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  By Michael Panckridge

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  Thursday night

  Sean Williams woke with a start. He sat up quickly and looked around his dark bedroom. There was nothing. The house was quiet. His clock read 1.35 a.m. It was too early for the garbage men or a milk truck or any sort of delivery van, so what had woken him up?

  Sean slid out of his bed and padded over to his window, pushing the curtain aside so he could see out. Suddenly, he saw what had made him wake up like that. The sky was lit with blue flashes as if a whole heap of meteors were cascading to Earth. The bright light must have come through a crack in the curtains and hit him in the face. As Sean watched, half a dozen more flashes shot through the dark and disappeared. The sky returned to normal.

  Sean waited for another minute but nothing more happened, so he left his room and ran into his sister’s. It wasn’t until he touched her empty bed that he remembered that Hannah was on school camp. He swore under his breath. It was times like this that he really needed his level-headed, scientific sister. Instead, he went to his parents’ room and shook his father’s shoulder. ‘Dad! Wake up! The sky’s full of lights!’

  ‘Wha…?’ Mr Williams sat up and then slowly started to get out of bed. Sean pulled him over to the window and wrenched the curtains open.

  ‘What am I meant to be looking at?’ his father asked sleepily.

  ‘Lights, Dad. The sky was full of lights!’

  ‘Aeroplanes? Satellites?’

  Sean shook his head impatiently. ‘No, brighter and more of them.’ He looked outside but the sky was dark except for the faint light of some stars blinking through a haze of clouds. ‘They’ve gone.’

  Mr Williams yawned. ‘I can’t see anything, mate. Maybe it was one of those aurora things. You know, like the Southern Lights.’

  ‘No, Dad. I’ve seen photos of that. It wasn’t anything like it. These were like bright sparks, flashes. I thought it might be meteors.’

  ‘Could have been.’ Mr Williams gave another gigantic yawn. ‘They’d be burnt up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Get back to bed, son. I’m really tired.’

  Sean watched as his father crawled back into bed. He pulled the doona over his head and Sean could hear him start to snore almost immediately. Well, he thought, that’s good. And his mother was so hidden in the bedclothes that he knew she didn’t want to wake up. He went back to his room.

  Hannah would have stayed up with me all night, Sean thought, as he watched the window from the warmth of his bed.

  King had seen the lights. As they flashed across the sky, the horse raced out of his tin shed and galloped around the paddock. The younger racehorses in the next yard reared and stormed around their paddocks as well. A light went on in the house, but by the time Mr MacDonald had pulled on his coat and run outside, the sky was dark again and the horses were calm. He shone a torch around the yards. Everything was fine. He gave King a pat on his warm chestnut-coloured neck and then went back inside, making a mental note to tell Angus about the disturbance when he returned from school camp.

  Mr Mac missed his son. Even though Angus had only been away for a few days, the house felt empty without him. He had been taking extra time with the horses to make up for Angus’ absence, but it wasn’t enough. King was bored without his owner there to ride him. We’ll both be glad when Angus is home again, thought Mr Mac. He went back to bed, unaware of the strange lights that had woken his horses.

  No one in the De Lugio household had seen any lights. The family were sleeping the deep sleep of people who worked hard during the day and were exhausted at night-time.

  No one at the Hunters’ saw any lights, either. Gabby was asleep, her mind dark with her secret. It was giving her nightmares. She kept dreaming that she was on a ship by herself pulling out from the shore and leaving behind all her friends on the beach, waving at her. It was a rotten dream. She mumbled in her sleep, and even sobbed once or twice, but didn’t wake up.

  Byron Watts was awake. He was standing on the roof of his house at the edge of town, his arms stretched out towards the sky.

  He’d been there for half an hour, ever since the brilliant lights had flashed into his telescope and nearly blinded him. It wasn’t unusual for Byron to be on his roof at this time: he’d built a platform for his telescope up there and every night spent hours gazing at the sky. He wasn’t very good at it. It was hard to keep a telescope on track and things often wobbled out of his view. And his telescope wasn’t very large. He’d bought it second-hand on the Internet and it wasn’t really the one he wanted but it was the only one he could afford.

  The flashes had caught him by surprise. He’d been trying to locate Venus but the clouds had kept floating across his vision. Suddenly, the sky had lit up and he’d almost fallen off the roof in shock. At first he thought he’d seen a supernova—well, he wished he’d seen a supernova—but instead of one big blast the flashes came in a series. They were over almost as soon as they started. He lay on his back for a while to get a full view of the sky. Then he stood up. ‘Come on, lights,’ he said, waving his arms at the sky. ‘Do it again. Show me more.’

  But the sky was dark. It had finished its show for the night. Byron Watts would just have to make a guess at what those lights were.

  CHAPTER 2

  Friday

  Sean rode his bike to the dry brown oval next to the high school and then stopped. He got off, leaned his bike against the old wire fence and then walked towards the cricket pitch. There was no one around. The entire high school had gone on camp for the last week of term—including Hannah and their friends Angus and E.D. Apart from last night, it had been a pretty dull week once school was over each day—not that he’d ever tell Hannah that. The house was too quiet, and at dinner time there was only him to answer all his parents’ questions about school.

  Sean stopped and looked around. In the distance, he could just see the blackened bush that had been burnt in the summer bushfires. Under his feet, the grass was dry. It had been a hot summer and even though the weather was cooler, the ovals had stayed hard. He stamped his foot on the ground. It was as solid as a rock.

  It was obvious that no one was back from camp yet. Sean went back to his bike, climbed on it, and turned around. School was over for the term and so officially he was on holidays. I’m already bored! he thought.

  The roads were quiet. All the other primary-school kids were already at home, watching TV or playing backyard cricket. Sean pedalled around the corner, spotted the milk bar and smiled. On the last day of every term, his mother gave him some money to spend at the canteen. She’d given him extra today because Hannah was away, and he hadn’t spent it all. The thought of hot chips made him speed up, and he hurtled
onto the footpath and braked hard in front of the milk bar, leaving a black skid mark on the concrete.

  He leaned his bike against a metal stand that was displaying the local news headlines and was about to walk into the shop when some words caught his eye.

  UFO Sighting in Night Sky

  UFOs in Teasdale? Sean shook his head. Did they mean the lights in the sky last night? They were UFOs?

  He pushed the shop door open and the bell tinkled loudly but it didn’t interrupt the conversation going on at the counter.

  ‘So I said,’ a man dressed in running shorts was saying to the shopkeeper, ‘it was probably just a shooting star but Julie got really mad at me, and she said, “Shooting stars don’t flash as they go across the sky.”’

  The shopkeeper shrugged. ‘Had a bloke in this morning who said he saw lights but they weren’t flashing, they were blinking. I wonder if they were the same thing.’

  An older woman stood in line, holding a newspaper. When Sean moved closer he realised it was Mrs Evans. ‘According to the paper, the lights were mostly seen by Teasdale residents but there have been reports as far south as Brant Valley,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a long way from here,’ said running-shorts man. ‘Julie reckons that after the lights stopped flashing, she saw a cigar-shaped object coming towards her. That’s when she ran in to me. I went out and didn’t see anything.’

  ‘I heard it was cup-shaped,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘An upside-down cup.’

  ‘That sounds pretty typical of UFOs,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘They’re all shaped like cigars or upside-down cups.’

  ‘Except that one that landed in the mountains about 20 years ago. I heard that was shaped like a cross.’ Mrs Evans nodded as she spoke.

  ‘That was actually an aeroplane that had accidentally crashed into the trees,’ said running-shorts man. ‘They found the wreckage years later.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that,’ she said.

  Another customer, a younger man, shook his head. ‘Nearly every time someone thinks they’ve seen a UFO, it turns out to be something normal like a plane or a hot air balloon.’

  The shopkeeper shrugged again. ‘I guess you never know. There must be more than us, more life forms than what’s on Earth. I think there’s life on other planets.’ He suddenly noticed Sean. ‘What do you think, young man?’

  ‘Umm,’ said Sean. ‘I don’t know. I saw the lights but I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t even think they’d be UFOs. I’ve seen lots of movies with UFOs in them so maybe—’

  The younger man interrupted, frowning. ‘Those movies are full of special effects. None of them are real.’

  ‘They look real to me,’ replied Sean.

  Mrs Evans moved forwards and put her money down on the counter. ‘I had a friend who knew someone who saw an alien once.’

  Running-shorts man snorted.

  ‘It’s true!’ said the woman. ‘She said the alien appeared in her bedroom and looked like a person but with really big eyes and it floated rather than walked.’

  ‘She was probably dreaming.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Mrs Evans raised her chin. ‘And maybe not.’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ said the shopkeeper, looking at Sean and smiling. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘A bucket of chips, please.’

  ‘Coming up.’

  The man in the running shorts paid for his milk, said goodbye and left. Mrs Evans frowned as she watched him get into his car. ‘Some people,’ she said, ‘have no imagination.’

  ‘You’ve got to admit, Shirley, that he’s probably right. There are folk who do get a bit worked up and think they’ve seen things.’

  ‘Well, what do you think the lights were, Ron?’

  The shopkeeper handed Sean his chips. ‘I didn’t see them. But Beryl did. And she thinks the Martians are coming.’ He sighed. ‘I’m afraid my wife reads too many science-fiction novels.’

  Sean took his chips outside and sat on a wobbly plastic chair next to a grotty plastic table that the owner put out every day for his customers. Aliens, he thought as he chewed. No one I know has ever seen an—

  Then he remembered Byron Watts. Sean frowned. There was something about Byron that made him different from most people Sean knew. He’d arrived in Teasdale about ten years ago, setting himself up in an old run-down house that had deteriorated further since Byron’s arrival. Sean wasn’t actually sure how old Byron was: around 30, he thought. His unruly black hair covered much of his face and he paid little attention to his appearance. He kept to himself most of the time, sometimes disappearing for weeks on end before suddenly reappearing, often with strange scientific contraptions that he’d haul into the house. Sean recalled watching one day as Byron attached some sort of giant antenna to his chimney. Byron had been very excited, chatting happily to Sean and his friends. Even so, they had kept their distance, watching from the road as Byron went about his work.

  ‘Just a harmless eccentric,’ his father had called him. Sean wasn’t sure what that had meant, but his father had spoken softly and smiled at the time, so it couldn’t have been too bad.

  When Byron first came to Teasdale, he had worked for the council but one time he just didn’t turn up for work. Sean’s dad had told him that Byron came back two days later claiming he’d been abducted by aliens and taken into their spaceship. No one believed him and it wasn’t long before he lost his job. Now he worked cutting people’s lawns with an ancient ride-on mower; Sean sometimes saw him as he rode his bike to school. If Byron was having a break, Sean stopped and talked to him. Their conversation was nearly always about the stars and planets—Byron was hoping to discover a new galaxy. If anyone knew about the UFO sightings in Teasdale, it would be Byron.

  Sean finished his chips, squashed his paper bucket into the bin, and set off towards Byron’s.

  He didn’t get very far.

  On the footpath outside the community hall, a crowd had gathered around someone. The audience was quiet, listening intently to whoever was speaking. Sean slowed down and stood on his pedals to see who it was. A dark-haired man was waving his hands around and speaking loudly: Byron Watts.

  ‘Those lights were a signal, a sign to other extraterrestrial colonies that this planet of ours—planet Earth—could be a suitable site for colonisation!’ Byron declared.

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ asked a man to the person standing next to him.

  ‘I think he means that we could be invaded by aliens.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Byron, in answer to their comment. ‘Invaded! Taken over by others! Colonised by a new race of beings!’

  ‘Rubbish,’ muttered someone from the crowd as they moved off down the street.

  ‘No,’ said Byron insistently. ‘It’s only a matter of time. Surely you don’t think that we can keep Earth to ourselves, do you?’

  At this point, some people walked off but the ones who were left were starting to look very worried. They gathered around Byron more tightly and Sean couldn’t see him any longer.

  There was nothing else to do but go home and wait for Hannah. She’d have something to say about all this UFO business. Hannah didn’t believe in things unless they could be scientifically proven and she didn’t have any time for people like Byron. She might be able to explain what the lights actually were.

  Sean went the long way home, pedalling his way around houses and out to the vacant paddocks and bits of bush near the old rifle range. The scrubby range had been built during World War II for the soldiers of the Volunteer Defence Corps to practise on, and it had been used until about 20 years ago. Sean often went there. It was a good place to explore, and he’d found old bottles and cans, wheels and lumps of rusty metal. He parked his bike near the gate and pushed his way through. The gate had long ago come off its hinges and anyone could get in now.

  Sean scouted around the old buildings but he’d been through there a million times before and there was nothing left to find. He picked up a stick and idly poked among the leaf litter under a
bunch of gum trees. The sky grew darker as clouds came in, making it harder to see. Sean gave up, threw his stick into the bush, and started to walk back to his bike.

  The silver object was lying among a heap of broken branches near the gate. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been easy to spot there, but as Sean reached the gate, the sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the small tube. He saw it at once and reached down to pick it up.

  The object was only tiny, hardly thicker than a pencil, and the length of a chocolate frog. Sean turned it over in his palm. What was it? A steel pin from the gate? Not rusty enough. Part of a car? It didn’t look right. Ammunition from the rifle range?

  Sean thought about that. In the past, he’d found empty gun cartridges but they had been dirty from years of lying on the ground. This looked brand new. Puzzled, he slipped the object into his pocket and went and picked up his bike. As he made his way home, he realised that he couldn’t wait for Hannah to get back. He now had two mysteries to ask her about.

  CHAPTER 3

  Saturday

  Gabby pulled her jacket closer around her and tried to smile. She had organised a party at her house and invited Angus, Hannah and E.D. She’d missed them: her school didn’t go on camp the same week as theirs did. The banner pinned up behind her waved wildly in the wind, threatening to tear. It was hard to read the words—Welcome back!—Gabby had printed on it. Her friends sat huddled around the table, nibbling bits of party food but not talking much.

  ‘And what happened on day two?’ Gabby asked.

  Hannah was thinking about what Sean had told her of the conversation in the milk bar. It seemed that half of the town had seen the lights in the sky and about half of that number thought they were about to be invaded from Mars. The school bus had broken down on the way home from camp and had finally reached Teasdale just after nine o’clock. Sean had been in bed by the time Hannah had got home but he’d woken her this morning with the UFO news. Hannah squirmed as she remembered his excited face. She hadn’t been very nice to him at the time—I’d only had a few hours’ sleep! she told herself—and shouted at him to get out. As he stalked out of the room she got the impression that he’d had something else to tell her but she’d been too tired to care.