Watch the Skies

STORY SYNOPSIS:

Four kids float weightlessly through the spectacular beauty of space, drifting along with the space shuttle streaking through the heavens 150 miles above the surface of the earth.

But wait a minute – they aren't wearing any space suits.  How is this possible?

Two words – virtual reality.  The resourceful kids have hacked into the NASA mainframe and downloaded telemetry, real-time video, and full communications into their VR visors.

The kids are all brass brats, children of military officers, living on an Army base in the wilderness near Las Vegas.  Spinner's mom is chief of base security; Izzy is the daughter of base commander Colonel Willie Stockwell; RJ's dad is head techno-nerd over all R&D; and Carlye's dad is the scientist in charge of the bio division.

On board the shuttle Magellan, whose flight the kids are hacking, Mission Commander Peter Fox is supremely frustrated.  More than anything he wants to fly to the stars, to explore the great "out there."  But all his life he has been relegated to NEO – near earth orbit – round and round and round like some endless merry-go-round.  Without the merry.

But this mission, which started out like so many others, suddenly begins the adventure of a lifetime when they discover a tiny spacecraft hiding behind a satellite.  Attempting to grapple it onto the shuttle, thrusters fire, very nearly dragging them all to a fiery reentry in the atmosphere below. 

The wounded space Pod careens to earth, and the kids, tracking its progress from their souped-up hand-held computers, race to the crash site in the desert on sand skimmers pieced together from spare parts “borrowed” from the R&D lab. 

What they discover climbing from the wreckage is not some alien monster, but a young boy just like them.  In a moment of frustration and anger over the death of his father, St’aar stole the Pod and ran away – all the way to planet earth.  Now all he wants to do is get back home.

But the military is on the move, a squad of Special Forces commandos led by Spinner’s mother.  The kids take St’aar back to their hangout on the base, where he tells them that he is not the first person from his planet to visit earth – his people have been visiting the earth for hundreds of years.  In fact, there are several caches of spare parts secreted away in hiding places around the world in case one of their travelers needed to effect interstellar repairs to their craft.

St’aar is determined to get to these parts, fix his ship, and go home.  Only problem is, the parts cache, first created hundreds of years ago, is now hidden under the military base.  And his Pod is in the hands of Commander Fox, protected by Kaitlan’s commandos.

The kids agree to help their alien friend, in spite of the dangers, and sneak into the restricted areas of the base that night like mini-commandos.   Trapped by the converging soldiers, St’aar pulls them through a solid rock wall and into the cavernous parts cache, hidden in the eighth dimension. 

The kids are all enamored by their new friend, especially Izzy, arousing strong jealousy in Spinner.  Izzy is his girl.  They sneak into the armory where the Pod is being held, only to find Fox carefully poring over the craft.  He knows it was manned, knows that the pilot is somewhere nearby, and charges out of the lab dead set on finding the alien – at all costs.

St'aar frantically works at retrofitting his Pod with the parts, with an assist from RJ who is in techno heaven.  But because they are hundreds of years old, and St’aar is just hoping they will work.

The kids share a heartfelt farewell with their new friend.  St'aar activates the Pod, and it slowly rises into the air.  Then without warning, the new parts begin malfunctioning, blowing out geysers of sparks and smoke.  St'aar is in deep trouble.

The noise brings soldiers.  Spinner leads the kids out the back way while St'aar tries desperately to gain control of his craft.  The Pod is incapable of making the jump to space, and can only hover and fly about like a drunken football.  St'aar smashes through the roof of the lab and staggers through the sky in a vain attempt to escape.  But two Apache helicopters launch sidewinder missiles at the alien threat.

At the last possible moment, another chopper appears out of nowhere, sideslipping through the air, using its heat signature to decoy the missiles away from St'aar's Pod.  At the controls is Izzy, who learned to fly on the base simulators.  The kids with her in the chopper cheer with glee – until they realize that the missiles are now after them.

Izzy can't evade both missiles, and one of them explodes close at hand, taking out her tail rotor.  The chopper falls from the sky like a rock, spelling certain death for all the kids inside.  Suddenly, they find their fall slowing.  St'aar has returned and maneuvered his Pod under them, and gently lowers them to the ground.  He quickly boards them on his ship, and they lumber off through the air, hugging dangerously close to the ground to elude detection.

Fox is determined to get the kids back and capture the alien and his ship.  Stockwell gives him every resource he needs to rescue his daughter, and Kaitlan and her men deploy as his pursuit detail.

On the Pod, St'aar is grateful for Izzy's rescue, and she is grateful for his, and Spinner's jealousy and insecurity flare.  They make for Lake Juacindo on the Yucatan Peninsula, the site of the next nearest alien cache, with Fox, Kaitlan and the commandos hot on their heels. 

At the lake, St’aar is shattered to discover that hundreds of years ago when the parts depot was constructed here, this was not a lake but a dry valley.  An earthquake buried it all under 30 meters of water.

St'aar is greatly disappointed, and Izzy compassionately consoles him.  It's the last straw for Spinner, who betrays St'aar – and his friends – to Fox.

Spinner immediately realizes the error of his ways, but it is too late.  He, too, lost his father recently, and know what St’aar must be going through.  Fox interrogates St’aar, but seems more envious of the alien than fearful, and wants to know all about his Pod and space travel.

He also understands Izzy's actions a little better, and his jealousy turns to compassion.  But before he can tell her about his feelings, she steals the transport plane sent to take them back to the States, and she and St'aar escape.

While the camp is in chaos, Spinner makes a decision.  He grabs RJ and Carlye, sneaks them aboard the momentarily unguarded space Pod, and helps RJ quickly figure out how to fly the thing.  They take off after the huge transport plane. 

Communicating by live video stream on their enhanced handhelds, Spinner apologizes to Izzy, and to St'aar.  He has a plan.  In a desperate and dangerous midair maneuver, Izzy opens the gaping maw of the cargo door, and Spinner and RJ pilot the Pod inside.  Reunited once again, the kids have a renewed sense of mission.  And Spinner and Izzy reconcile.  Next stop: China.  Another parts cache is hidden in the Gobi desert.

RJ calls out that they have been painted by radar – fighters are on the way to intercept.  Time for phase two of the plan.  Putting the plane on autopilot, they all pile into the Pod and eject out the back of the plane again. It works – the fighters veer after the transport without noticing the tiny Pod plummeting toward earth. 

Plummeting?  Yeah, because the Pod still can't fly more than a few feet off the ground.   And that's exactly where they're headed – at warp speed.  The kids freak, all except for St'aar, who has a plan of his own. 

The fastest way to get to China on the other side of the earth is to simply go through the planet.  He opens another dimensional doorway beneath them, and they are swallowed up by the earth, racing through a twisting labyrinth of caves and passages at impossible speeds in a terrifying, exhilarating, breathtaking ride.

Evading lava floes, mountain-size rocks and strange and mysterious creatures from the earth's core, they pop out the other side of the planet – in the middle of the trackless Gobi desert. 

Once again time has changed the face of the earth since the parts cache was planted, and what St’aar so desperately seeks is now buried somewhere beneath the endless shifting sands of Outer Mongolia.

He is angry, frustrated, frightened, and storms off by himself.  Spinner catches up to him out in the barren expanse, and they talk.  Spinner tells St'aar that he, too, lost his father.  But for him it's worse.  How could it be worse?  His dad left he and his mother for another woman.  So now he is without a father, but knowing that he is out there somewhere and chooses to stay away is more painful than if he died.

The Earth Boy and the St'aar Child bond, twin sons of different mothers.  And both miss their fathers.  While Izzy and Carlye play a game in the sand, RJ pokes around the space pod, his curiosity insatiable.  Finding St'aar's gloves, he tentatively puts them on and tries to get them to make a picture.  All he gets is static.

Discouraged, he sits and slaps his hands on the sand.  Unseen by him, a dimple forms in the sand – then a depression – then a funnel... 

Spinner and St'aar are returning to the ship, determined to find a solution, when they hear RJ screaming.  They arrive on the scene just in time to see him sinking into a whirlpool of sand.  They all try and pull him free, but the sinking sands spread, sucking them all down into the darkness.

They disappear beneath the surface, the desert sands closing over them as if they never existed.

When he played with the gloves, RJ inadvertently opened the dimensional doorway to the parts cache, and the sand overhead ran down into it, carrying the kids with it.  They all emerge into the cavern sputtering and shouting, but otherwise none the worse for the adventure.

This depot is the motherlode – everything St'aar needs, and all in pristine condition.  He knows that this time it really will be good bye, and he wants to take a moment to share a bit of his homeworld with them.  He activates a hologram program, and suddenly they are on another planet very much like earth, but also very different.

A holographic couple steps out of the throng and walks up to the kids, posing "naturally" as if they were posing for a Land’s End catalogue.  St'aar tells the kids that this is a picture of his parents.  The father fades away, leaving only the mother.  St'aar misses her, and wants to get back to her.

The vision fades away, and they are back in the cavern.  The kids all shoulder a load of parts, and walk down a passage toward an alternate exit.

They reach the surface a hundred meters from the ship, only to discover that it is surrounded by Kaitlan and her commandos.  St'aar is crestfallen – he's so very close to his goal, and yet lightyears away.

At the pod, Kaitlan and the soldiers search for any sign of the kids.  Suddenly one of the soldiers calls out, and everyone looks up – the gigantic alien mothership descends from the sky, blotting out the sun, and disgorging rank upon rank of heavily-armed alien soldiers.

Kaitlan's soldiers are terrified, but she is wary.  Her suspicions are confirmed when she notices a section of the ship appears to "short out" as if it were an imperfect projection.  Then she spots the kids huddled in hiding.

The kids have engineered the massive hologram to scare the soldiers away.  Kaitlan decides that for her son's sake, she needs to let things play out, and withdraws her men.

The kids rush back to the pod, whooping in victory, and under St'aar's direction, begin repairing the ship.

The five of them have become a tight-knit family, and their final farewells are tearful.  Spinner, Izzy and St'aar share a special group hug.  "Will we ever see you again?"  Spinner asks.

St'aar just smiles at them through his tears.  "Watch the skies..."

This is it – time to go at last.  But just before St'aar can enter the pod and fly to freedom, Fox emerges, leveling his gun on the children.  No one is going anywhere – yet.  St'aar is crushed.

Fox then shocks them all by tossing his gun into the sand and approaching St'aar with open hands.  He explains that he has been chasing them so hard because he had to get to St'aar before anyone else did.  He fully intends to let the boy go – but Fox wants St'aar to take him along.

Fox has waited for an opportunity like this all his life.  In his heart he knows it's why he never married and had children like all his other friends.  This is Fox' chance.  His only chance.

The children are amazed.  And St'aar is actually pleased.

It is a match made in heaven.  Commander Fox gets the son he never had, and St'aar regains the father he lost.  And both have a date with destiny – in the stars.  The pod slowly lifts into the night sky, and in a heartbeat, becomes one of the zillion stars in the sky.

Kaitlan joins the children, she and her son sharing a brand new relationship.  And for one magic moment, all is right with the universe.