Free Galaxy Patrol by Jean Ure

Chapter One
    Last summer, I was abducted by aliens. One minute I was sitting there, in front of the television: the next minute, I’d vanished. I mean it! Completely vanished. My brain was still whizzing about, but the rest of me had gone.
    The question was, gone where? I felt like I’d been scrambled. Scattered, in a million pieces. But I could see bits of what looked like body –
my
body – floating past me. A finger, a toe. A nose.
My
nose! My
knee
. The one with the scar, where I’d come off my bike. My arm, still in its green sweater. An
eyeball
. What was going on here?
    And then it hit me… I was caught in a transporter beam!
    I’d been watching one of Dad’s old
Star Treks
when it happened. Captain Kirk had just told Scotty to beam him up – when
I
got beamed up.
    My sister had been there, supposedly doing her homework. She wasn’t meant to be there,she was meant to be up in her room. As Mum always says, ‘How can you concentrate when the television is turned on?’ The truth is, she can’t.
I
can, ’cos I have extra powers of concentration. If I was doing my homework and the television was on, I would simply blot it out. Rosie, on the other hand, has no powers of concentration. I sometimes think her mind is full of ping-pong balls, all bobbing up and down. And, unlike the television, her voice is practically
impossible
to blot out.
    Every few seconds it was, ‘I don’t know how you can watch this stuff. Honestly, it’s so stupid! Little green men?
Death
rays? Oh, please!’ And then she would go, ‘You! Jake!’ and prod me in the ribs with one of her bony fingers. ‘You listening? I said it’s stupid! Stupid
boy
stuff.’
    She can pack a whole load of scorn into her voice, can Rosie. Just because she’d rather watch stupid
girl
stuff. All pink and shrieky. I pointed out that so far not a single little green man had appeared, but she just did this impatient clicking thing with her tongue and said, ‘Aliens, then! It’s all the same. They don’t have to be green … it’s still stupid.’
    â€˜For all you know,’ I told her, ‘aliens could be all around us.’
    â€˜Oh, yeah?’ She made a scoffing sound. ‘Haven’t seen much evidence of it.’
    â€˜There,’ I said. I pointed. ‘On the screen… What’s that? You don’t think they just pluck these things out of nowhere?’
    She looked at me, like,
un-be-lievable
.
    â€˜It’s a
story
,’ she said. ‘It’s
made up
. Dumbo!’

    I was prepared to agree that the actual storyline was made up. ‘But all the other stuff,’ I said. ‘Spaceships, for instance. Spaceships exist!’
    She looked at me again. This time it was more like,
pathetic
.
    â€˜Well, they do,’ I said. I know about these things; I’ve done research. ‘Those people that have seen flying saucers … they can’t
all
be imagining it. And warp drive! Bending space. Everyone knows
that’s
possible – well, in theory. We just haven’t quite got there yet. But that’s not to say that other life forms haven’t!’
    â€˜Yeah yeah yeah,’ said Rosie, going back to her laptop. ‘Just button it, I’ve got homework to do.’
    She clicked furiously for a bit, giving me a few minutes peace and quiet; but, like I say, she has no powers of concentration. I don’t think girls do. Not most of them. That’s why they can manage about a hundred things all at once. My powers of concentration are so great that I can only do one thing at a time. And right then I was trying to watch
Star Trek
. Dad has boxes and boxes of the DVDs. I know them all practically by heart, but it is still very irritating to be constantly interrupted by ignorant remarks. Or, in this case, a sudden shriek of laughter.
    â€˜What is
that
supposed to be?’
    I gritted my teeth.