Chapter 1

"Happy birthday to you," the attractive woman sang. "Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Klaatu, happy birthday to you."

Klaatu Smith opened his sleep-blurred eyes and glared at the unwelcome intruder standing at his open bedroom door holding a gift-wrapped package. A glance at the clock told him it was much too early for festivities. "It's 6:30 in the morning, Mom. I need more sleep. Come back in a couple of hours." Klaatu liked to sleep in on weekend mornings. It was Saturday.

"I've been waiting 18 years to give this gift to you, Klaatu, and I just can't wait a minute longer. I promise to leave you alone for the rest of the day if you just open this one teensy weensy package. Pretty please? It's from your father." Klaatu groaned inwardly. Whenever the topic of his father came up his mother would always tell a variation of the same story. Well, the part about the gift was new. "Your father came from another planet," Betsy Smith began.

"Really, Mom?"

"Yes, really," his mother replied. "Oh, I know you know this story but I never get tired of telling it." Klaatu knew that too. "Your father and some friends arrived on this planet while on a secret mission for a secret galactic organization and went undercover as a rock band, Nicky and the Neptunes. Get it? Nep-tunes?"

"I get it, Mom."

"Anyway, I walked into the club where your father was playing and it was love at first sight for both of us." The attractive woman blushed prettily. "You were the result." She always blushed when she told that part of the story. "Unfortunately," Betsy continued, "your father had to leave the planet just before you were born; important business on the other side of the galaxy."

Klaatu nodded as if he understood. "That's too bad, Mom." A touring rock musician knocks up an attractive teenage airhead and then suddenly has important business on the other side of the galaxy. Naturally, the airhead is so stupid she falls for his line of bullshit hook, line and sinker. "When did he say he'd be back?"

"He didn't say," Betsy replied. "The other side of the galaxy is pretty far away, you know, but he did give me this to give to you when you turned 18 years old. That's today." Klaatu's mother smiled again and said, "Open it." Klaatu looked at the package with a feeling of dread. Some guy almost 20 years in the past gives his girlfriend a package to give to their unborn child when he turns 18. The dude sure knew how to make a joke go a long way. That's probably what it was, some practical joke. Well, the young man wouldn't get any rest until he opened the package. He took the package from his mother's hands and nervously tore at the gift wrapping. The birthday boy lifted the box lid, reached in and brought out an orange metal bowl covered in ceramic and drilled with a series of small holes into a star pattern. There were two handles for lifting and a circular base for placing on a flat surface.

"Uh, thanks for the spaghetti strainer, Mom."

"It's not a spaghetti strainer, silly."

"It's a spaghetti strainer." It couldn't be anything else.

"Well, I suppose it could be used for that but it's not a spaghetti strainer."

"What is it then?"

"It's a communication helmet. You put it on and then you can talk to your father wherever he is in the galaxy." Betsy pretended to put a hat on her head as if to give her son instruction. "Isn't that exciting?"

Klaatu sighed deeply. "It's pretty exciting, Mom," he agreed.

"Well, then put it on and talk to your father. You two have a lot to catch up on."

"Maybe later, Mom. Okay? I'm still pretty tired and you did promise you'd let me get some more sleep if I opened the gift. A couple of more hours won't matter when we're talking about 18 years, right?"

"I suppose not," Betsy replied. She bent down and gave her son a kiss on the cheek. "Your father and I love you very much." She stood up and said, "We'll have cake and ice cream tonight. Would you like that?"

"I'd like that fine, Mom." He watched his mother go to the door and then turn around.

"The funny thing about it was that your father wasn't from Neptune at all. He was from Mars." She walked out and closed the door behind her but Klaatu could hear her launch into the "Happy Birthday" song again as she walked down the hall.

Klaatu lay back on his pillow and began to feel the tears well up from his eyes. Every day of his life seemed to be a constant embarrassment or humiliation all because of his mother. She always seemed to find an excuse to tell the story of meeting her Martian boyfriend. Even as a child Klaatu knew her story was even less probable than those about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

At first people thought the story was cute until they had heard it five or six times. Then they began to avoid Betsy. As a consequence they made sure their children avoided Klaatu also. It wasn't easy having a ding-a-ling mom. Eventually someone told one of the supermarket tabloids of his mother's story. A reporter came out and asked Betsy a couple of questions and then had a photographer take a picture of Betsy and Klaatu. Two weeks later there was a front page headline, "I Married a Martian" three inches high all over the country. The newspaper had altered Klaatu's image giving him antennae and bug eyes. Of course, his mom had to cut the article out of the paper and put it in a scrapbook.

Then there was the matter of Klaatu's name. He was named after the character in an old science fiction film his mother liked. It wasn't so bad at first but then some of his classmates saw the film. If he heard "Klaatu barata nikto" once he heard it ten thousand times. Every single person thought he was being witty or original when he said it. Gosh! Even the cat was named Gort after the robot in the same film. Klaatu often dreamed of having his name changed legally to something more innocuous like Joe or Mike but he knew that would hurt his mother's feelings.

If all that wasn't bad enough Klaatu had the problem of turning green at the drop of a hat. The children on the school bus always gave him a wide berth because it looked like he was going to lose his breakfast. The kids drew lots and the losers had to sit next to Klaatu in class. His condition didn't help him at all when it came to meeting girls. In fact, the young man never had any luck with girls at all. He had gone his whole life without as much as a kiss to his credit. Klaatu begged his mother to have him checked out by a doctor but Betsy assured him he looked fine and anyway, all half-Martians turned green every once in a while. Klaatu never bothered to ask her how many other half-Martians she knew. When he finally went to a clinic on his own the physician, Dr. Butler, could find nothing wrong with him. At the same time Dr. Butler wanted to describe his condition for a medical journal and call it Butler's Syndrome. Klaatu declined to cooperate.

Klaatu often wondered if his mother hadn't had that accident things might have been different. His grandmother told him his mother was quite normal up to the time someone accidentally dropped a can of cling peaches from a second floor window as she was walking by. It landed on young Betsy's head and she was never the same after waking up from her concussion. Well, that still didn't explain Klaatu's turning green all the time. Klaatu couldn't stand the sight of cling peaches after hearing that story.

The young man looked once more at the spaghetti strainer, the so-called communication helmet. Klaatu wished he had a hammer handy. He'd smash it to bits. Well, that wasn't right. He knew his mother meant well. Klaatu closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep but his rest was fitful at best.

Klaatu finally got up a little after nine o'clock and wandered into the kitchen to get some breakfast. His mother was there and looked at him expectantly. "Haven't you talked to your father yet?"

"Uh, yeah Mom. Dad told me to say hello to you. He's playing a gig near Alpha Centauri."

"Oh, I don't believe you even talked to him at all," his mother replied. "If you did you'd be jumping up and down with joy."

"I tried, Mom. I really did but I got a busy signal. Thank goodness I did because then I got to thinking about all these long distance charges we'd incur. I'll get online today and find out if any of the phone companies offer a galaxy-wide plan."

"You can stop right now, Mr. Klaatu Smith," Betsy snapped. "Don't think I don't know when I'm being teased. I'm sure I won't mention your father to you ever again." She left the kitchen in a huff.

Klaatu sighed deeply. He did that a lot. Some days he sighed so much he'd start to hyperventilate. The young man didn't like to hurt his Mom's feelings but he seemed to have a talent for it. Klaatu really worried about his mother a lot. She was beautiful yet very vulnerable. Men seemed to sense her vulnerability and were constantly trying to hit on her; right in front of Klaatu! Even as a child, Klaatu wanted to beat up those guys. Well, he did have one secret weapon. If the guy teased Klaatu, and they invariably did, he was out the door.

Betsy Smith made a good living selling cosmetics on commission as a beauty consultant with an upscale department store. In fact, she was one of their top producers. Still, she was warned a couple of times that talking about Martians was against store policy.

Klaatu often wondered what he was going to do to make a living. He really didn't have a talent or interest to speak of. Now that the young man was through high school he thought he'd better start making some plans for his future. His high school grades were nothing to brag about and Klaatu didn't think he was college material anyway. Klaatu was too busy feeling sorry for himself to pay any attention to his mom who reentered the kitchen. It was a simple matter for Betsy to walk up beside her son and slip the spaghetti strainer/communication helmet on his head. "No, Mom," Klaatu began to protest but then he started to feel weird. Betsy looked at her son and saw the trance-like state in his eyes. She nodded in satisfaction and went off to vacuum the living room floor.

What's Mom done to me? Klaatu thought. He felt dizzy and disoriented. "You'll feel all right in a minute," a stranger's voice beside him said. He did feel better after another few moments and then cautiously looked around. Standing beside him was a man he'd never seen before.

"Where am I and... who are you? Where's my mother?"

"You're still at home on Earth. I'm sure your mother is still in the house somewhere close by. As far as who I am? Well, I'm your father."

Klaatu shook his head as if trying to wake up from a deep sleep. He was outside and it was night. Countless stars blazed brightly above him. "I'm not at home. I'm not even on Earth." The man he was staring at didn't look much older than Klaatu. "You can't be my father." The young man finally decided he'd accidentally ingested some drug and was hallucinating.