Alex sighed. He wasn't sure what to do. His science project would never work. How was he supposed to get evidence that the moon wasn't made of cheese? He needed that first prize. But he had to take things one step at a time. The only evidence he could get that would work was a piece of the moon. But how would that be possible? Then he had an idea. He ran to his computer and searched the internet for the design of the first rocket made. Then he realized something, and searched for a working rocket instead. He printed out the page and ran downstairs. The door slammed closed as he ran across the street and to his friend Luis's house. Luis was a genius at building things, so he could probably build this too. Luis looked up as Alex ran into his yard.
"Hey, what's up?" he asked. He had a blowtorch in one hand and a rivet gun in the other.
"I - have - a - job - for - you," Alex replied, struggling to catch his breath. He held up the picture and Luis grabbed it.
"Hmmm…." he said. He looked at it and frowned. "I may be good at building, but I can't make a huge amount of steel suddenly appear." Alex shook his head.
"I only need one big enough to carry me and some supplies. And also it has to have autopilot."
"Well why didn't you say that before?"
. . .
A little bit later, Luis was done. Alex climbed into the rocket and hit the launch button. He smiled. This science fair project was in the bag.
He shot through the air and got through the atmosphere. Suddenly, he saw a small ship on his monitors. It was too small to be a human ship, so only one thing was possible. They were aliens. And Alex noticed they were in between him and the moon. They were trying to stop him.
All of a sudden, his spaceship started rocking. He looked at the thermal camera that Luis had installed and saw small balls of heat hitting his ship and expanding.
They're using grenades, he realized, the balls are grenades and the expanding is the grenades exploding. Then he thought, I'd better get back to Earth. He pressed a button, and down he went.
Later, when he landed, he told Luis what had happened. Then he watched as Luis opened his toolbox and started working.
. . .
"All right, here's the 411. I've installed a grenade bouncer here. What it does is it resets the countdown clock on the grenades and sends them back where they came from," Luis explained, "This way, the more grenades the aliens throw, the more they hurt themselves."
"Great!" said Alex, "I'm going back out now." He hopped into the rocket and hit the button. As he shot through the atmosphere, he thought: Now that I have this shield, I'll finally be able to finish my project. Oh boy, here they come! He hopped out of his seat and watched the thermal camera. The circles always came close, but at the last second they bounced back and hit the aliens! Alex made a mental note to thank Luis when he got back. Suddenly, something strange happened. The thermal camera showed a navy blue light coming from the alien ship at… him!! Just then the ship started to spin. When he recovered he looked out the window. He was in a huge dome. He thought, Alex, you're not in your own universe anymore. I think.
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