Miss Hunroe nodded at them. “Don’t argue, it’s not attractive.” Then she turned to cross the road.
Miss Teriyaki sneered at Miss Suzette. “Why am I always stuck with you?”
Micky as the headwaiter put his arm under Molly’s. Once across the street, they began to walk as quickly as they could along the pavement away from the Glitz. But as they passed the bus stop, a man in a dark parka obstructed them.
“Excuse me,” he said, addressing Molly as Lady Storkhampton. “I’d like to introduce myself. I am AH2. My real name is Malcolm Tixley.” He gave a little bow. “Do not be alarmed. You can trust me. I know your secret, and I want you to confide in me. I want to be your contact on Earth.”
Molly looked at Micky, bewildered.
“I am a sympathetic human being,” AH2 insisted. “You can tell me all about your planet, your own species, your purpose here on Earth. I will keep the information confidential until a mutually agreed time when you want to talk to the other earthlings.”
“Listen,” Molly as Lady Storkhampton said. “I’m not sure what you are talking about. Please leave me alone.” But the man in front of her shook his head and put his hand on her shoulder. He was beginning to look desperate. “Get
Miss Hunroe was almost across the road when she saw the strange situation in front of her. She drew closer.
“You
Miss Hunroe heard the name and was at once absolutely alert. Her mind catapulted. Who was the man ahead? Was the rich woman the Moon girl? Was the waiter beside her the Moon boy? Had they learned how to morph into
Miss Hunroe faltered and her heartbeat quickened as she considered what to do. Amazingly, the twins had already mastered the art of morphing. And so they had the secret that she was desperate for. Miss Speal, as a child, had only learned animal morphing, and so this was all she had been able to teach Miss Hunroe. Morphing into
Micky could see that things were getting out of hand. He didn’t want this madman drawing attention to them.
“Police! Help!” he yelled, seeing a police car crawling nearby.
In a moment, two officers had jumped out of their car. They pushed past the people near the bus stop and seized AH2.
“All right, all right, what’s this all about?”
AH2 hardly saw the policemen. He clung to Lady Storkhampton as though his life depended upon it.
“GET OFF ME!” Molly shouted. “YOU’RE CRAZY! GET OFF!”
The police snapped handcuffs onto the young man’s wrists and restrained him.
“You don’t understand!” AH2 cried desperately to them. “This woman is an alien.”
“I’m sure she is,” said the first officer. “You can come and tell us all about it down at the station.” With that, they began to push AH2 toward their car.
“We’ve got to change,” Micky said to Molly. He pulled Lady Storkhampton away from the police and the people about them, and swiftly he found a gap in the traffic. Darting between cars, he and Molly crossed the road once more.
“Excuse me, you two,” called one of the policemen after them, waving a notebook at Lady Storkhampton. “You need to come back to give me a statement.”
Micky and Molly ignored him and hurried into the side street near the hat shop.
Miss Hunroe left her hiding place to follow them, but for her, negotiating the traffic was difficult, and crossing impossible.
“Ve vill have to push through,” said Miss Oakkton, returning from another secret pipe break.
Looking ahead, Molly saw the alley where she’d spotted the bins and the rats before. “Quick, Micky!” she said. “Follow me. I’ve had an idea.”
Theobald Black was now leaving the hotel. His eyes moved to the small crowd that had gathered on the other side of the street, where a police car had stopped. One of the policemen was talking to a man inside the car, who was shouting like a lunatic. Black did not feel comfortable at all. First Lady Storkhampton had disappeared, and now there was this trouble outside. He turned his attention to getting home as quickly as possible.
AH2, Malcolm Tixley, sat in the police car. He watched the woman in the fur hat and her large companion with her basket of cats as they made it across the road. Then his eyes darted across the street to look for the glamorous woman who was Molly Moon.
There she was, with her chaperone, crouching on the floor in an alley near some rubbish bins. AH2 held his breath as he expected something to happen. He watched as the fur-hatted woman and her friend trotted toward the bins. Suddenly, the gadget in his pocket began to bleep. His eyes shot toward the woman who had been eating in the Glitz and the waiter beside her. Simultaneously they both slumped onto the ground.
Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton were stopped in their tracks. They let the police rush past them toward the two people beside the bins. They could read the signs. These people weren’t of any use to them now. Molly and Micky had left them.
Ten
A rat was practically the last creature Molly would ever choose to be, so she’d forced herself to want to be the dirty, mangy, whiskered rodent by the bin.
Now she was flying in a state of nothingness toward it. Within a few seconds, Molly felt herself filtering into the rat. And then she became rat. Immediately, she was overwhelmed with ratty sensations. She felt her whiskers twitching as they read the air about her for other rats’ whisker messages. Her new skin was numb from the cold, and all over her body was the horrid sensation of itchy bites from, Molly supposed, fleas. Her ears were erect and alert, and her ratty instinct was to be almost entirely thinking about food—particularly about the overflowing rubbish bin that cascaded down above her, full of delicious, odorous things.
Molly squished the rat’s true character down under her own. It didn’t object. Molly apologized as she did it. She tried to ignore the ratty gut feeling that she had of climbing into the trash to rummage about there for old bones or thrown-away half-full Chinese takeout boxes. Then she saw Micky, who had morphed into a darker gray rat.
“Over here.” He was beckoning, his whiskers twitching. “Fast! Hurry!” he squeaked.
Molly scrunched up her nose at Micky and began to move. As she did, she realized how lithe her new body was. She was all tendon and muscle. Her scabby but svelte form moved like the wind. Molly the rat flattened her body from seven centimeters down to three, her bones dislocating into pancake mode, and she slid through a crack in the pavement. Her clawed feet gripped the underside of the paving stone, and she found herself gracefully landing upright, underneath the ground.
Black stood by an empty taxi stand, waiting for a cab. Then he noticed a scent of lavender and powder and saw Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette hovering in the shadows near him. He was at once suspicious of them, especially when he saw that the fat woman in the cream cape held a basket carrying two of the cats that had been standing by the letterbox. He gripped his bag with the hypnotism book inside it and hailed a cab.
Before climbing into the taxi, he stopped. A tall businessman in a black suit and a bowler hat was walking past, swinging his umbrella and briefcase and whistling the Seven Dwarfs tune “Whistle While You Work.” Black caught his arm and stared into the man’s eyes. At once his whistling stopped. He was hypnotized and ready to do whatever Black wanted.
“I am getting into this cab,” Black told him. “The two woman behind you—the lady in the cream cape and the Japanese woman in red—must
