Chapter 1

Whisper, whisper, whisper, rustle, rustle, rustle.

13 year old Melissa Harding was woken from her sound sleep by noises in her bedroom. At first she just lay in her bed and tried to peer through the darkness of her room but when she saw no one and heard nothing she thought she was just imagining things and rolled over to go back to sleep.

She was just drifting off when she heard something that made her come instantly awake. Her eyes flew open and she propped herself up in bed.

Whisper, whisper, whisper, rustle, rustle, rustle. There it was again and this time she knew she wasn’t imagining things. There was definitely somebody or something in her bedroom.

Still unable to see anything in the darkness she reached over and turned on her bedside lamp expecting to see her dad or mom, or maybe her pesky little brother trying to play some trick on her. If it was him he was certainly going to get it because she had told him hundreds of times to stay out of her room, but sometimes he would enter it anyway just to bug her.

But nobody was there, not her parents, not her little brother, nobody. The lamp illuminated every corner of her bedroom so it was impossible for anybody to be hiding. So where did the noise come from? Her bathroom? Melissa considered the idea and then got out of bed and crept into it but found nothing.

Then she had another idea and went to her window which was opened wide to keep her room cool. She cautiously peered through it, thinking maybe it was somebody outside that made the noises but again she saw nobody, and the night was silent except for the sound of trees that swayed gently in the evening breeze.

Melissa stood listening for a moment, studying the slight movements of the tree branches. It seemed to her that occasionally they did seem to rub against the eave that ran around top of the house.

That’s it, she mumbled to herself, tree branches. Mystery solved!

Feeling a little ashamed over being frightened by such a stupid thing, Melissa turned to go back to bed when she heard the noise again.

Whisper, whisper, whisper, rustle, rustle, rustle.

The sound made her jump back in surprise. It wasn’t the trees at all. The noise seemed to be coming from her closet.

Was her brother in there, trying to scare her?

She was furious as she threw open the door to the closet, prepared to deal with the little pest by grabbing a hold of him, and bodily throwing him out of her room. Melissa even pushed aside the clothes hanging from a hanger to make sure her brother wasn’t hiding in the back of it but she didn’t find him. She didn’t find anybody.

Now what? Melissa asked as she closed the closet door. Ghosts, boogeymen! She felt a tinge of fear race through her, but laughed at the idea. She was 13, a teenager and too old to believe in such things. Still, Melissa was forced to consider the possibility as she looked around her room. If there was nobody in it or the closet, then where was the noise coming from?

She remembered when she was younger and used to wake up in the middle of the night, thinking there were ghosts in her room. She recalled how it used to scare her so badly she would run crying into her parent’s room where her dad would hold her to console her and then take her by the hand, lead her back into her room and together they would search every nook and cranny until she was satisfied there were no boogeymen.

As Melissa recalled those memories she realized the only place she hadn’t looked was under the bed. When her dad did it with her, they always looked under the bed together. She quickly bent down to look hoping to use the same logic her dad used to calm her growing fears. She found nothing under the bed but a few pieces of lint. She was about to tell herself all her fears were crazy, there was absolutely nobody in her room.

Then Melissa heard the noise again.

Whisper, whisper, whisper, rustle, rustle, rustle. And IT was coming from the closet, this time she was sure of it now, so she took a few steps toward it and pulled the door open again, but this time slowly and more cautiously.

Knowing there was nothing big hiding in it, she picked up a shoe, kept her eyes glued to the floor and began to methodically search through old shoes and boxes. She carefully kicked and prodded each one with her foot, expecting a mouse to run out when its hiding place was discovered.

As Melissa moved deeper into the far corner of the closet she expected to see the mouse at any moment so she held the shoe at the ready so she could give it a good whack. Even though she was usually so scared of mice she screamed and ran at the first sight of them, this time she was fully prepared to do battle with it. That little varmint had woke her up and made so angry that she was bound and determined to stand her ground and give it a good smack right on its stupid head.

It was behind a box in the farthest corner of the closet that Melissa discovered what was making the noises and it wasn’t a mouse. It was farthest thing possible from a mouse. It was a tiny, human man she discovered crouched behind one of her old beat up sneakers and it was hard to tell who gave the biggest scream. Him or her.

Melissa gave a startled wild yell and screamed “there you are” and was fully prepared to swing her shoe at the miniature man because after all she had been through she was in no mood to back down from anybody or anything.

At the same time the three inch tall male was yelling at her, “please don’t hit me, I come in peace.”

“Peace, what do you mean peace,” Melissa demanded as she starred in disbelief at the diminutive little human who stood looking up at her.

“We will not hurt you so please, put down the shoe,” the man pleaded. It suddenly seemed very funny to Melissa. He’s three inches tall and only weighs a few pounds and I’m five foot tall and weigh 90 pounds and he promises not to hurt ME. I must look like the giant of all giants to him and he promises not to hurt Me.

“Hurt me,” Melissa snorted in derision. “I don’t know who or what you are but if you don’t come out into the light where I can see you then I’m going to hurt YOU.” She waved the shoe menacingly as she peered down at the strange little man through the dim light in the closet.

“All right, okay, we’re coming out,” the man replied as he began to walk towards Melissa who kept a wary eye on him as she stepped backwards into her room. Her eyes popped wide open in utter surprise when she saw the head of a second little man suddenly pop up from inside an old shoe. The second noise maker seemed to take forever as he laboriously climbed out of her shoe and joined his companion in the march out of the closet.

It only took Melissa two steps to be back in the bedroom but the two small men took about a dozen before they were out of closet and Melissa was able to get her first good look at them. They looked like real human guys, alright, only in a radically condensed version, and the more Melissa studied them the more they seemed to look familiar. It was only when she knelt right down on the floor to get a better look at them that it suddenly dawned on her what she was looking at.

Miniature Star Trek characters, complete with Star Fleet uniforms? Her eyes grew big and round when she recognized the Vulcan, Tuvock, and the handsome star ship pilot, Tom Paris as the two little people standing before her.

“This can’t be real, I must be still sleeping, dreaming all this,” Melissa asked the pair who up until now had remained silent. Then to prove her point she pinched herself on the arm but yelled “OUCH” at the sudden pain. “No, you are not dreaming, this is very real and yes, we are from the Star Ship Voyager. You see we do exist out there in the far reaches of space, Tuvock explained in the same logical voice that Melissa had heard countless times on TV.