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breakfast.”
    “Does that mean that there is a Stegosaurus in a hot air balloon outside?” I asked my dad.

    “There is not,” he said. “For reasons that will become apparent.”
    “I think that there should have been some nice wumpires,” said my sister, wistfully. “Nice, handsome, misunderstood wumpires.”

    “There were not,” said my father.

“W ould you like to press the button?” said Professor Steg.
    I pressed the red button. There was an ear-popping noise and a flicker of years and I was floating, in a balloon basket, above the intersection of Marshall Road and Fletcher Lane. I could see our house from above. I could see the bicycles in the back garden. I could see the rabbit hutch.
    “We’re here!” I said, and I patted Professor Steg on the back ridge-plates.
    “It was very nice, having you as a traveling compani—aargh,” said the professor, because there was a familiar sort of a thumm-thumm noise, and before I had a chance to press the red button, we were deposited, balloon and all, on the enormous metal deck of a flying saucer, with a number of very grumpy-looking green globby people staring at us with too many eyes. They did not look pleased.
    “Ha HA !” said several globby people at the same time. “You thought you had escaped us! And you were wrong! Now, you must sign the planet over to us so that we can remodel it. We will take out all the trees, for a start, and put in plastic flamingoes.”
    “Why?”
    “We like plastic flamingoes. We think they are the highest and finest art form that Earth has achieved. And they are tidier than trees.”

    “Also, we are going to replace the clouds with scented candles.”
    “We like scented candles, too,” explained a huge green globby person, who looked like he was mostly made of snot.
    “We also like decorative plates!” said another. “We will put a decorative plate up where the moon is now.”
    “A really BIG decorative plate, showing landmarks of the world.”

    “And we will then replace all of the landmarks of the world with decorative plates with pictures of landmarks on them too, so the Eiffel Tower will be replaced by a large plate with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. And Australia will be replaced by a really seriously big plate with Australia on it.”
    “Also we will replace all of your mountains with throw-cushions,” said the smallest, globbiest thing of all, with triumph in its glutinous voice.

    “We have learned a lot from our previous meeting,” said some globs that were sticking to a wall. “If you look over there, you will see that the door to the space-time continuum you used to escape through last time is now securely locked.”
    It was definitely locked. It had a huge padlock on it, and a sign saying
    KEEP OUT
    on it, in unfriendly red letters. There were also chains around it, a tape that said
    DO NOT CROSS ,
    and a handwritten notice that said
    For Your Convenience,
Please Use Another Door .

    ESCAPE WAS IMPOSSIBLE.

    “Also we have depowered your Time Machine.”
    I looked at the professor. His armored back-flaps were drooping, and his tail was—well, not actually between his legs, because stegosauruses aren’t made that way, but if they were, it would have been.
    “We have been tracking your movements through time and space,” said a large globby alien in front of a console with a screen on it.
    “Now, see what happens when I press this grundledorfer ,” said a particularly drippy alien. It was half-sticking to the wall, next to a large black, shiny button.
    “It’s called a button,” I said.
    “Nonsense. We named it after our brood-aunt, Nessie Grundledorfer,” said the globby aliens. The particularly drippy alien pressed the black button on the metal wall with something that might have been a finger and might just have been a long strand of snot.
    There was a CRACKLE .
    There was a FIZZ .

    Standing around us, in attitudes of anger and irritation, were several pirates, some of the