Inside the beating throbbing heart of Stonehenge Ness catches a star — against the palm, between straining fingers — and loses the cap off his head when he swings around one other arm to catch one other star — between thumb and pointer — and holds both stars shaking-quaking until they fade, and they flicker, and they’re gone. The exertion leaves track marks in the purple earth where feet were and where feet slid, and every other star Ness didn’t catch leaves scorch marks that burn through to matte metallic tile. Poo is behind Ness and is vengeful, and is vindictive; and is mean, and is appropriate, and throws stars of his own that cut the whirr-click spaceman to silver ribbons.
Inside the beating throbbing heart of Stonehenge Jeff reloads a gun that fires moonbeams (and not sunbeams reflected from moons but real moonbeams, the moonlight every other scientist overlooked), and Paula stands in Ness’s shadow maintaining the glamer that makes Ness glow; that shields him, that makes it possible for him to grab stars between fingertips and negate the advantages of spacemen and their mooks or octobots. The lights flicker-fade flicker and every room whirrs in the same unintelligible language that the spacemen whirr with that leads Jeff to say, “they know where we are because they talk to their property and their property talks back, and that works for them.”
But Ness says, “It doesn’t matter whether they know we’re here or not, because we are,” which makes Ness grin his impish grin but leaves Jeff and Paula and Poo grimacing and unsatisfied. But Ness says, “It doesn’t matter, because we’re here, and soon we’re gonna rescue everyone!” and three companions tune him out because — (“this is how he leads; he leads himself first,” Jeff told Paula by the fireside) — three companions know they’re not the ones Ness is convincing, Ness is never convincing, Ness is always convincing himself.
“It’s eerie, though,” Jeff resumes in unbroken diction, “because it’s so different. They brought their purple dirt with them. This isn’t ours. We’re not even walking on Earth anymore, we’re not earthbound, we’re not grounded,” and Jeff’s eyes sink under the shadow of his hair and glasses as he turns down and downcast but the room intensifyingly whirrs in response, becomes more eerie in response, does something inexplicable in response; and then there is a mook, and four children navigating the focal point of an alien invasion have made zero progress since they defeated the last mook.
“It’s a big deal because we’re not  anywhere, Ness!” Jeff shouts as he pulls the trigger with undue emphasis and the click-slam-shudder of the mechanism outshines the moonbeam that leaves one gaping hole in a mook (which is like an octopus, that stands upright, but has its eyes on stalks, and knows the secret words that incite fire). The mook stays tall, though, and its tentacles shimmer and oscillate and four children make a wide gap because Paula taught them — (“watch , watch me do it so when they do it, you  what they are doing,”) — and it rips through; fire rips clothing with its jagged edges, leaves bleeding zig-zags and mosaics because mooks delight in making their secret fire . Ness is reactive and defensive-minded and unburns with Paula in his shadow while Poo conjures stars, and then there is one less mook, and Jeff says nothing, but rests on his haunches.
The room is momentarily less eerie, and everyone rests next to Jeff because they have a pressing need to move forward but a more pressing need to gather the strength to do so. “Let’s take a break,” Poo requests, “because better to be stronger to better move forward.” Four children sit on the purple earth, and take deep breaths. Inside three of them, something spins around; inside the fourth, something churns that makes him uneasily hold his abdomen.
“Jeff’s got a point, I’m starved enough to eat a hoarse horse,” Ness shines, Ness exclaims.
“‘A hoarse horse?’” Poo quizzically stares, whirr-click processing the idea behind his furrowed brow. “Local expression?”
“Yes!” Ness exclaims, but drops off in volume towards the end. “Yeah, means I’m hungry. That’s what my dad always says when he calls home, that he’s hungry enough to eat a hoarse horse. It’s like saying, ‘hey mom! You better cook something good!’ And so she does, yeah. He says it a lot on Fridays, —”
“What do you eat on Fridays?” is the expected question (which Paula contributes), but Ness is already expecting it and already unfurling his answer, which he removes from his backpack; the answer is covered in foil, and four children in an alien place crowd excitedly around it. The whirring of the room intensifies but recedes; becomes frantic but distant, probing but concerned. Jeff looks up from the package and scans the room, but nothing is coming; Jeff quirks an eyebrow, because that is  By now, something should have come. And Jeff’s eyes go wide, and he bursts from haunches to a position halfway between sitting and standing.
“Ness, don’t open that!” Jeff bursts, Jeff can’t contain himself, and grabs the ball of aluminum foil. He lifts it up, he holds it at neck-level; in the beating throbbing heart of Stonehenge, all of the flickering lights briefly luminesce to get a better look at what menace four children bought that could make them laugh; could make them smile, sit down; could make them relax, while beset; could make them tell jokes, could make them  that it could also make the whirrers unsure of themselves.
The lights blink off all at once, and blink on, and return to their flicker-fade-flicker pattern; Poo quirks his own eyebrows now, though, because something is different. Ness gets to his feet, grabs the parcel from Jeff’s outstretched hand, “Man, lay off my sandwich! I don’t want some octobot scrounging after it! This is bad enough as-is! My  —”
“SHUT UP!” Jeff screams, grabs the sandwich out of Ness’s hands, makes sure that the aluminum covering is still  “Listen,” Jeff pleads, and the four quietly listen.
“‘Sandwiches,’” Paula quietly murmurs. “I can understand the click-whirr-beeping. I can understand one word. They’re asking about ” and Jeff lights up; Jeff is tall, Jeff is fully erect, Jeff is earthbound and connected via the soles of his feet to a firmament that is unshakable.
“OUR SANDWICHES, YES” he exults. “They will come to fear our ” he begins, hissing with all vitriol imaginable to emphasize that word, his  four children’s war cry in the blinking whirring terror underneath Stonehenge. “The sandwiches we brought from Earth, that they can never stop,” Jeff continues, and steadily begins walking forward; leaves behind the place the eraser statue stood, where they had stood fighting for interminable hours.
Ness follows, grinning impishly. Paula follows with a smile Poo knows is not genuine, is genuinely uneasy, and Poo smiles a little because he knows Paula is scared and Poo loves secrets. Three companions walk behind Jeff who walks behind an outstretched ball of aluminum foil (“Why’re they so afraid of my sandwich? Just some tuna salad,” Ness asks Paula sheepishly). There are no mooks, or scrounging octobots, and no spacemen who throw stars. The purple earth grows thinner through the winding tunnels while the whirring grows more frantic, until there is one unadorned door in the middle of the path; Jeff stands aside to let Ness open it, and he does, because it opens like any door on Earth does, and then four children are in the  beating throbbing heart underneath Stonehenge; one square room full of glowing green tubes, where a spaceman with spiked shoulders asks a slime-coated boy in a derby:
“Sandwich, sandwich! He has a sandwich! Tell me why your friend has a !” but the interrogation is interrupted. Jeff squeaks out, Tony!, but the starman throws the boy aside like a lump, assuming battle position; Jeff drops the sandwich, and readies his moonbeams.
“Joke’s on you, starman!” Ness shouts, baring his 30-ounce alloy bat. “We’ve got something even  than that sandwich.” Ness chortles at his own pithiness; Paula, Jeff, and Poo concertedly grind their teeth.