The Ancient Starship by Cerberus Jones Page B

stood beside it was, quite clearly, a crash-landed spaceship.

Charlie yelped in delight.
    Amelia stared. The spaceship was enclosed in a thick shell of rough glass, as though it had been so white-hot when it hit the Earth that it melted the sand around it. It was buried in the ground at an angle, and Amelia wondered at the total lack of control that must have led to such a violent collision.
    Where the glass had been chipped away by the archaeologists, she could see the grey-green hull of the spaceship itself. Enough had been uncovered to show the scorch marks where it had burnt its way through our atmosphere, the dents and gouges where space debris had hit it, and then – most unmistakably – writing that was nothing like any human system Amelia had ever seen before.
    She glanced sideways at Sophie T to see if she still thought it was a hoax. Her mouth sagged open and her face was quite white. Sophie F was frowning at the screen. Shani was sitting perfectly still, half-smiling.
    â€˜Well,’ muttered Ms Slaviero. ‘I’m obviously going to have to rethink my policy of listening only to disco hits in the car on the way to school.’

    When the home bell finally rang, Amelia ran out the door so fast she accidentally knocked over the bin. Charlie was right behind her, and up ahead she could see that her not-quite-a-dog Grawk was waiting in the shade of an oleander bush, his yellow eyes glowing.
    â€˜You know,’ she puffed as they ran along the beach road, ‘for a minute there, when Callan started yelling, I almost thought –’
    â€˜That it was me shooting my mouth off,’ Charlie said bluntly. But he wasn’t offended.
    Amelia shrugged. ‘Sorry.’
    â€˜No chance,’ he went on. ‘Nothing I’ve ever said or done has ever impressed anyone around here.’
    That sounded horrible to Amelia.
    Charlie wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. ‘So you know how I’m getting my revenge on them all?’
    â€˜No.’
    He grinned. ‘Now that I have the coolest, most unbelievable, most impressive news ever, in the whole universe, literally, I’ll never tell them anything. ’
    She laughed with him, but felt a little pang, too.
    Then she didn’t have enough breath for anything but running as the path started its steep climb up to the headland. By the time they reached the top of the hotel’s long driveway, Amelia was too weary to take much notice of the number of cars parked there. And when she and Charlie had chucked their bags down on the veranda and crashed through the hotel’s main doors, she didn’t stop to think before yelling out in the lobby, ‘Mum! Dad! There are aliens in Egypt!’
    As her eyes adjusted to the dim indoor light, she realised that there was a line of complete strangers standing at the reception desk.
    Ah, she thought as they all turned to stare. Those would be guests.
    A man in a black suit and bowler hat paused with his room key in his hand, his forehead wrinkled in perplexity. The woman behind him scowled at Amelia, and pulled her two little children close, as though Amelia’s bad manners might be catching. And the old lady behind her just looked too tired to be kept waiting any longer.
    Behind the desk, Mum raised her eyebrows and said nothing.
    Oops. The hotel had officially opened for business this week, which meant that for the first time, regular human tourists were coming to stay at the hotel, as well as the aliens that had been coming all along, disguised with holo-emitters. Amelia had only recently got used to the idea that the hotel really was her home, and now it had all changed again, and she had to get used to strangers living in the hotel with them.
    â€˜Dad is at Tom’s,’ said Mum pointedly. ‘Why don’t you –?’
    Amelia and Charlie were back out the door and running down the hill before Mum could even finish the sentence.
    Tom, the caretaker, lived at