Alien Crew

Aliases: none Status: Supporting

The crew of the alien ship Uncle Rob does business with: bridge officers, a security team with sleek space rifles, research staff, and an interstellar sampling of colors, shapes, and sizes. They abduct Chino and Homeboy as a prank at Rob’s request, then spend the night regretting it.

Composition

• Command: the Alien Captain, who runs the bridge and does the yelling.
• Security: an armed team that seizes the humans twice, once in the weed room and once for the airlock.
• Bridge and research staff: console officers, the pad-carrying functionary, the tinkerer. Includes Aenwyn, Hairy Alien, Grey Alien, Electronic Pad Alien, Tinkering Alien, and Bridge Console Alien.

Role in Volume 01

• Uncle Rob and the Aliens: Their only appearance. They stage the abduction, strap the boys face-down on medical gurneys, and laugh along when Rob reveals the prank. They give Rob’s tour group the run of the ship: cloning experiments behind one door, captured subjects under observation behind another (“for scientific research, like National Geographic”), and the research room where they huddle with Rob’s Mexicans over the beer-coaster time machine. When invisible Homeboy turns the bridge into a burning alarm-scape, they scramble, they fume, and one of them kicks him out of the console chair. They seize the whole party in the weed room, watch the Captain’s airlock demonstration, and howl with laughter when the vacuum spits Chino and Homeboy back onto the bridge. In the transporter room they see the group off.

Relationship with Uncle Rob

Rob hasn’t earned his own ship. He owes the crew discoveries, “and it’s getting harder and harder” to deliver, but he serves as their fixer on the ground. The arrangement is the only reason the boys leave the ship alive: by the Captain’s own account, without Rob’s help they would have been shot out an airlock for real.

Notes

• The crew’s language is never translated on the page. Everything attributed to them arrives through Uncle Rob, and nobody questions his version.
• They laugh at the boys, with the boys, and at Rob. The ship runs on camaraderie and poor decisions, much like everywhere else in this book.