is up." With that, he jammed the hat down over her
eyes and down to her shoulders and then made a beeline for the window.

CHAPTER SEVEN:

AN ALIEN PRESENCE

After Graham had escaped from the castle, he thought about the Witch
standing there for a full half-hour and thinking how beautiful she was
going to be when she took the hat off and looked at herself in her
mirror. He laughed out loud as he imagined how she would really look
with that gooey mess all over her hair and face and clothes. But he knew
that once the reality dawned on her that the spell was a fake, that she
was just as ugly as ever, and that he had escaped, she would be
absolutely beside herself with rage. The boy's elation began to change
to fear as he considered the possible repercussions of his actions. Here
he was in a strange yellow land with no idea of where he was going or
where to hide.

He had been traveling through a wooded area which, for now, offered some
measure of security, since he would be hidden from aerial surveillance,
when he came upon a clearing. Actually, it was more than just a
clearing; it was a perfectly round grassy clearing about fifty feet in
diameter, and dome-shaped. As he studied the dome, it began to slowly
rise, exposing a round house with windows and doors and a grass-covered
roof. Graham stood perfectly still, waiting to see if anyone came out.
When it was obvious that no one was coming, he cautiously walked toward
the house to see if he could see through the window. Suddenly, a loud,
mechanical-sounding voice filled the air. "WARNING! YOU ARE APPROACHING
TOO CLOSE TO THE VEHICLE. PLEASE STEP BACK."

At this point, Graham was more than a little confused. He knew that this
sort of proximity alarm system was favored by some motor vehicle owners
back home. But the device seemed very out of place in Oz. Not to mention
the fact that the sound was emanating from a house, not a car. At that
moment, the round roof slowly started to spin and rose about four feet
above the house and hovered there. The outside walls receded back into
the ground to reveal a bright, shiny spaceship shimmering in the
sunlight. A ramp unfolded to reveal two equally shimmering space beings.
They descended (or rather, floated) down the ramp and stopped less than
three feet from the boy. They were not very tall--about four feet in
height--and they were dressed in metallic-looking one-piece spacesuits
that closely followed the contour of thei