Then it stopped. As if some giant hand had reached down and lowered the cosmic volume control. Max could hear only dim, muffled sounds through his hands. He slowly opened his eyes. He watched a car drive by. He could hardly hear it.

Max moved his hands a few inches away from his ears. He held them poised there, ready to slap them back in place if he needed to. But the sounds were… just normal sounds. Some louder than others, but none getting even close to the pain-inducing level.

What was that? Max thought. He glanced around the street. He spotted a woman a few houses down, working in her garden. She seemed too absorbed in her work to have experienced anything like what Max had.

Of course she hadn't. Maybe there had been a screwup at the radio station, something that made it blast out music at eardrum-popping levels. But that couldn't explain the volume on cars and birds and power lines. No, whatever that was had happened inside him.

Max let out a long, shuddering breath and lowered his hands to the wheel. He waited a few more minutes to make sure he wasn't going to get hit with another sound blast, then he pulled away from the curb.

He felt the tension in his neck and shoulders and arms as he drove. Even his fingers were curled too tightly around the wheel. Relax, he told himself. Just take a deep breath and relax. His body wouldn't obey-it was bracing itself for the next assault.

But it didn't come. Max made it to the UFO museum without even a flash of the mega-sound blast. He maneuvered the Jeep into an empty spot in the parking lot. Should I ask Ray about what happened? he wondered. Maybe it was an alien thing.

But Ray Iburg didn't like being asked questions about alien things. He said that even though Max, Isabel, and Michael were from his home planet, Earth was their home now. He didn't want them to spend their lives thinking about some other place.