Free Invasion of the Dognappers by Patrick Jennings

she said, “but yes, my employer has been sending the dogs here.”
    “How is it done … precisely?” Logan asked.
    “It involves sound. High-frequency sounds. We produce, and can hear, much higher sounds than humans. Like your dolphins. And your dogs. That is one of the things my employer likes about your dogs. They can hear us.”
    “Why don’t you steal dolphins?”
    “My employer says the dolphins are too similar to us. Yet primitive.”
    “Interesting,” Logan said, and reached back for his clipboard to make some notes, when he remembered he didn’t have his backpack. It was back on Earth. With his clothes.
    “Where is your employer, ma’am?”
    “In your town. He poses as an old man.”
    “Aha!” Logan said. “So you’re not him. You’re a second alien!”
    He had assumed wrong: this was not the alien in the wheelchair. He had also assumed right, though: there was more than one.
    “You look a lot like your boss, ma’am,” he said.
    “Maybe to human eyes,” the alien said.
    “Do you go to Earth, too, and steal dogs?”
    The alien shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t do that. I stay here and take care of them.”
    She reached out and scratched the top of Pickles’s head. Pickles panted.
    “They like you, don’t they, ma’am?”
    “I like them.”
    Logan thought he detected a smile on her face. Unfortunately, the alien’s mouth, like the mouth of the creature she resembled, always seemed to be grinning.
    “Does your boss plan to take over Earth, ma’am?” Logan asked.
    “No. He just wants to take the dogs.”
    “ All of them?”
    “No. Only as many as we can carry.”
    “What about me?” Logan asked. “Are you going to take me?”
    The alien didn’t answer.
    “You’re going to send me home, aren’t you?” Logan asked, his voice starting to shake.
    It hit him that it was possible he would not see his home—his mom, his friends, his dog, his planet —ever again, that he had really been abducted by aliens and was being held prisoner in outer space. Outer space. While this was tremendously exciting to Logan, it was also absolutely terrifying.
    The alien flapped her flippers, causing her to drift away from him.
    “What are you going to do with me, ma’am?” His fear was rapidly transforming into anger.
    The alien retreated farther.
    “I want to go home !” Logan screamed. “Now!”
    With a single, mighty beat of her legs, the alien was gone.

26. Return of the Fourth Dog
    Logan paddled in the direction the alien had fled. It was slow going, but eventually he came to one of the blue, translucent, elastic walls. It was springy to the touch. He pressed his face to it, straining to see what was on the other side, but saw only a slowly churning indigo murk, like blue ink, or deep space.
    He groped about but could find no opening in the wall. Maybe the alien had opened it with high-frequency sound. Or maybe she had simply ultrasonically transported herself to another part of the ship.
    Logan punched the wall in frustration, and his fist bounced back and slugged him in the stomach. He hollered, not in pain but in fury.
    “Let me out of here! I’m seeer ious! You can’t keep me! This is kidnapping! It’s illegal! When the FBI finds out, you’ll go to jail! Probably for life !”
    The dogs responded with a mournful chorus of howling and whining, which turned his anger at his predicament into indignation.
    “How dare they steal our dogs,” he said, less wildly, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed. “How dare they!”
    As he swam back to the dogs, he realized it was his duty to thwart the aliens’ plot. He must return the dogs safely to their grieving owners, and return himself to his mother, who was surely overcome with worry. She probably had sent out mass e-mails, and put up flyers of her own, ones that read LOST BOY instead of LOST DOG . She probably cried as she stapled them to telephone poles.
    This image made Logan’s eyes tear up.
    Some of the dogs rushed to his side,