A Visit From the Purple People

by Ben Orlando
Illustrations by Jerry Shippee

 

Little Hermee and his dog Bruno were playing checkers on Hermee’s bed one day.  Hermee was telling Bruno how much he hated green peas.

Green peas…for lunch…for dinner…every day.  The only vegetable his mother ever gave him.

“Yuck,” he said to Bruno as he heard a knocking at the window.

 Hermee opened the window and a small blue Frisbee zoomed into the room.

Except it wasn’t a Frisbee, it was a flying saucer.

The flying saucer landed on the floor and got bigger and bigger until it was the size of Hermee’s bed.

A small door opened on the side of the ship and two little purple people walked down the plank.

The purple people had big heads and four eyes and lots of yellow hair.  They wore silver space suits and their voices sounded like chipmunks.

“Excuse me,” said one of the purple people.  “Can you tell us how to get to Jupiter?”

 Hermee smiled because science was his favorite subject in fourth grade, and outer space was his favorite unit.

“Sure,” he said.  “This is Earth, and then you have Mars, and Jupiter is the next planet.”

“Do you know how far Jupiter is from here?” asked the other purple person.

 Hermee searched his brain and remembered the numbers.

“About 400 million miles,” he said.

The purple people looked at each other.

“Do you think we have enough fuel?” said the one purple person to the other purple person.

“I don’t know,” said the other purple person. “But we have to get back, to warn our people about the bad Mulars.”

“Maybe I can help,” said Hermee.  “What do you use as fuel?”

Instead of answering, one of the purple people ran back to the flying saucer.  He returned with something in his hands, something small, and round, and green.

“We call it ‘Blaxnox’,” said the purple person.

 Hermee picked up the little green ball.  He smelled it, and squeezed it and when he squeezed too hard the green ball smooshed.

“Oh no!” said the purple people. “You destroyed our fuel.”

“No wait,” Hermee said.  “I have lots of this fuel.  I eat it every night at dinner.  This is a green pea.  Wait.”

“Bruno, get the peas” Hermee said, and the dog jumped off the bed, ran out of the room and returned with a big can of peas.  Hermee dumped the peas onto the floor and the little purple people danced around and laughed and celebrated.

“Thank you so much,” the purple people told Hermee.  “We wish we could repay you for your kindness.”

“Well, I only wish I could go with you,” said Hermee.  “I’ve always wanted to see space.”

The purple people looked at each other. “We think we can help,” they said.

“Follow us,” they said, and so Hermee and Bruno followed the little purple people.

 Hermee and Bruno watched as the purple people walked back into their ship.

The ship shrank back down to its original Frisbee size and hovered out the window.

“Let’s go,” Hermee said to Bruno and they both climbed out the window and followed the spaceship into the back yard.

 Hermee and Bruno watched as the little blue ship settled on the grass and then it grew, and grew, and grew, until it was as big as Hermee’s house.

The door slowly opened and the two purple people walked out of the ship, except now they were big, as big as Hermee’s two basketball players.

“We can take you for a ride,” said one of the purple people.  “But with the extra weight of you and your dog, we’re going to need more peas.”

“No problem,” Hermee said, and tapped Bruno.  Bruno ran into the house.

The golden retriever came out dragging a plastic bag full of cans.  Eight cans of green peas.

“Excellent,” the aliens said, and they led the way back into the ship.

 Hermee and Bruno looked up and down, left and right, and everywhere they saw buttons and knobs and levers and switches and blinking lights.

They followed the purple people into a big room with a big screen in the center.

They watched the screen as one of the purple people pulled a lever and suddenly the world outside got bigger, and bigger, until they were looking out at Bruno’s dog house, which suddenly appeared as big as a regular house.

 Hermee and Bruno sat in big comfortable chairs and watched through the screen as the Frisbee spaceship flew out of the yard, into the sky and into outer space.

 Hermee watched the earth get smaller and smaller until it was only a dot.

When they neared the moon on of the purple people yelled, “more Blaxnox,” and the other purple person opened a can of peas and dumped the peas into a small hole.

 Hermee and Bruno looked out at the stars and the planets.  They saw the flag planted on the moon so long ago and they saw the red skies of Mars.

After a few hours Hermee asked the purple people, “Are we there yet?”

“It takes a long time to travel 400 million miles,” they said to Hermee.

But a long time was only three hours, so after a few more minutes they approached the planet of Jupiter.

“Wow,” said Hermee.  “It’s so big.”

“Yes,” the purple people agreed. “Over 1,000 of your Earths could fit inside of Jupiter.”

“We will show you around,” said the other purple person.  “And after we warn our people of the bad Mulars, we will take you home.”

The ship landed on the brown and white rocky surface and the door lowered and Hermee and Bruno walked out to see thousands of purple people waiting.

 Hermee opened his mouth to talk but loud screams cut him off and the sky grew dark.

“Oh no,” said one of the purple people.  “We are too late. The bad Mulars are here.”

 Hermee and Bruno followed the two purple people down to the ground.

“Who are the bad Mulars,” Hermee asked.

“They are creatures from another planet,” said one of the purple people.  “They want to take over our planet because we grow something here that they want.”

As Hermee looked around he saw fields of green, everywhere as far as the eye could see.  And he looked up into the sky and saw the hundreds of spaceships.

The ships landed all over the place, and one ship - the largest ship - floated down from the sky and landed next to the blue flying saucer.

All the thousands of purple people ran away.

“Quick, back into the ship,” said one of the two purple people.

And Hermee and Bruno followed the purple people back to the ship but Hermee fell and by the time he got back up the other ship had landed.

The door of the Mular ship opened, and out came six furry brown creatures about half the size of the purple people.

 Hermee looked at the Mulars, and he laughed.

“What are you laughing at,” said one of the purple people.

“The Mulars are cats,” said Hermee, and he tapped Bruno on the head and Bruno ran after the Mulars and the Mulars meowed and screeched and ran back into their ship.

 Hermee and Bruno ran back to the blue Frisbee ship.

“We have to back to Earth, as fast as we can,” he said to the purple people.

And so the purple people dumped all eight cans of peas into the tank and pushed the ship into overdrive and they reached Earth in one hour.

 Bruno rounded up all of his friends - a hundred dogs in all - and Hermee went back to the house to get the rest of the peas.

 His mother would be angry, but Hermee needed to help the purple people.

 Hermee and Bruno and all the dogs piled into the ship with twelve more cans of peas, and they reached Jupiter in less than an hour.

 Bruno and his friends ran out of the blue saucer and chased all the Mulars back to the ship.  The Mulars flew off and never returned to Jupiter.

After the Mulars were gone, Hermee reached down and picked up some of the green plant that grew all over the ground.  He smiled.

“This is catnip,” he said.

The planet of purple people held a celebration for Hermee and Bruno and Bruno’s friends.

“We need our green plants to live,” said the purple people from the ship.  “But we have lots of these beautiful clear shiny rocks.  We would like to give you these as a sign of our appreciation for what you did.”

 Hermee and Bruno and Bruno’s friends piled back into the ship and flew back to Earth, and that night Hermee told his mother about the peas.  She was mad.

“But you can have these,” Hermee said, handing her the clear shiny rocks from Jupiter.

And Hermee’s mother held the large pile of diamonds in her hands, and then she smiled and passed out from the shock of holding millions of dollars worth of diamonds in her hands.