Body Switchers from Outer Space by R.L. Stine Read Free Book Online Page B

they used on humans? What kind of machine was it? What could it do to me? I didn’t want to find out. But I had to follow Chad-Two to the yard or he’d get suspicious.
    I flipped out of bed and put on my regular shoes. I caught up with Chad-Two as he strolled across the backyard. “First we need to collect a test specimen,” Chad-Two said.
    He led me past the mushroom shed. And into a tangle of trees behind it.
    â€œCatch anything you see,” Chad-Two told me.
    Catch anything? How?
    â€œThere!” he urged, pointing up into a tree.
    A crow sat on a low branch, glaring down at us. How was I supposed to catch a crow?
    I snuck closer, then jumped as high as I could, grabbing for the bird.
    It flew away, cawing.
    â€œYou dummy! What are you doing? Where’s your merister?” He pulled a little metal tube from his pocket.
    What was a merister? “I left it in my other pants,” I said.
    â€œYou spidunk!” He tapped the tube on a little black spot, and it got bigger. Whoa! It looked like a ray gun from those space-alien movies.
    â€œTurn over that log,” he ordered.
    I crossed to the log. I pushed it and it rolled over.
    A big black rat the size of a small cat raced out from under the log! I jumped back.
    Chad-Two aimed his merister at it, and a web shot out of the barrel. It caught the rat and yanked it back to Chad-Two. “This should do nicely,” he declared, holding up the net. I could see the rat struggling inside.
    He tapped the merister a few times, and it folded up into a little metal lump.
    Chad-Two led the way back to the silver puffball shed. Once we were inside, he set the net with the rat in it in the middle of a big yellow circle on the floor.
    He picked up a little yellow box with black patches on it.
    One of the sides of the box was fuzzy. Chad-Two turned the fuzzy side toward the rat, then he pressed the big black patches—two taps on the big square patch, three on the smaller round patch, then another two on the big square patch.
    The rat shrieked! It was a horrible, ear-piercing sound!
    When I saw what was happening, I wanted to scream, too.
    I watched as the terrified rat began to shrink.
    Shrink!
    From rat-size to mouse-size to marble-size to pea-size!
    Chad-Two chuckled to himself. It was an evil, awful sound. Then he turned to me and said, “That’s what I’ll do to any slimy human that finds out about us!”

12

    I swallowed hard. That’s what Chad-Two would do to humans like me.
    I stared at the tiny rat. Chad-Two picked it up. It was frozen as stiff as a statue and about the size of a BB pellet.
    For a second I couldn’t even move, I was so scared. This was much worse than mind-tailoring!
    I would have to be extremely careful. I could never let him know I was a human!
    I caught my breath. “P-p-perfect,” I stammered.
    He handed me the tiny rat.
    It was as hard as a rock! I held it up to look at it. It was like a teeny-tiny statue of a rat.
    Oh, man! This could be me!
    Chad-Two took the rat back and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he glared down at his human hands. “There’s only one worthwhile thing on this whole planet,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I asked.
    â€œSlinkies! I’ve never seen them anywhere else,” Chad-Two continued. “They fascinate me, the way they move, the circles, the spirals, constantly shifting. The way they compress and expand, and move down inclines by themselves. They’re so beautiful! In fact, I want to go look at Slinkies right now!”
    I followed him into the house and up to the pink room upstairs. Then we wiggled through a long tunnel into a workroom full of books. It was full of sunlight that streamed in through three oval-shaped windows.
    â€œYou forgot to write down your impressions of the school day yesterday,” Chad-Two said. He pointed toward the notebooks. I grabbed one of them.
    I picked a pen up off the table and pretended