Tod and Billy are captured by aliens, but brattiness saves the day. The boys are hurrying home, late for lunch, when ZAP!-- WHOOSH!--they're beamed aboard an alien spaceship. Captain Zerkfield Thorst is willing to return them to earth, but only after a spaceflight of 30 years. How to escape? Easy: be such pains that the captain can't take it--e.g., teach the 300-pound purple aliens to play touch football. It works, and home they go- -late for lunch, yes, but not 30 years late. This cheerful updating of O. Henry's ``The Ransom of Red Chief,'' with a couple of wise cracking kids who never lose their cool, is spoof, romp, and tall tale, all in one. (Fiction. 10+)
