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  “Maybe they are not as advanced as we first thought – when that black monster of a spaceship dropped down on the Getaway. It may be a good sign.”

  Terry nodded, and played around with the keyboard, which seemed, perversely, to prove the opposite, as it had no moving parts and functioned perfectly, no matter how far he moved it away from the screen. He had to conclude that the computer part was in the flat section beneath the strange ‘keys’, which also indicated extreme miniaturisation, and advanced technology. Unless the actual computer is back in Latt’s room, in a box the size of a small bus!

  When Ruth reappeared, Terry started talking to her about the changes that had occurred in Latt. He demonstrated the keyboard to her, making her laugh by pushing keys at random until he figured out how to do the letters of the alphabet, culminating in his first sentence, about a quick, and very brown fox. Isaac was still tentatively correlating some of the mathematical formulae from the alien system with his own knowledge, and seemed completely absorbed.

  Ruth checked the food regularly, and soon they were eating their hot breakfast. Isaac continued to work as he ate; Terry occasionally leaned over his shoulder to point out something he thought he recognized on the screen. Ruth sat on a low bench with her back to the table behind it, trying without much success to find a more comfortable position, wondering if they would get used to eating the same thing for every meal. The food was finished up in record time; they were still making up for the meals they had missed while they were incapacitated.

  A low rumbling sound grew gradually until all three of them noticed it. It intensified to a point at which one of the empty TV dinner plates started to rattle where it lay on the work surface. Terry staggered, Ruth slid sideways and Isaac grabbed the table to steady himself as the artificial gravity seemed to fail, making it seem that the room was tilting wildly. As quickly as it had started, the effect died away and they felt their normal weight return. The sound dropped off equally rapidly, until there was silence once more.

  Ruth ran over to Isaac and sat down on the table next to the monitor, unconsciously rejecting the bench where her husband was seated, and stared intently down at him. Her look clearly asked him ‘what in the world was that?’

  “I’ve an idea,” he responded aloud, “But… I think I’ll wait a few minutes before I commit myself.”

  “Ah, the mind of the genius!” Terry murmured sarcastically as he came up beside her.

  Ruth pouted and shoved him playfully away. Isaac tried to hide a grin, but could not, despite the seriousness of the situation.

  Just then, Latt walked back into the room. Ruth tapped Isaac on the shoulder and got him to turn around, as Latt was still dressed in his fluffy suit and this was the first time that any of them had seen it.

  Latt shrugged one shoulder out of the strange material as he walked quickly over to them. “You have even lessss time than I sssaid,” he began excitedly. “The Controllers have thought of an alternative method of sssubduing your planet, and they have gone to make some tesssts… to sssee if their idea will work.” He dumped the suit on the work surface behind the computer.

  Isaac noticed that the fluffy coverall seemed far too small and flimsy to have covered and, more importantly, protected their jailor, once it was crumpled and discarded.

  “What exactly are they planning?” Terry asked.

  “They do not tell me sssuch thingss,” Latt admitted, apologetically.

  “And then?” Isaac got up from the bench in front of the low table, turned around and leaned back against it, stretching his legs.

  Latt looked at him blankly.

  “What do they intend to do after the tests?” Isaac spelled out his question, eager to get information while Latt was so uncharacteristically vital and forth-coming.

  “Then they will come back; they will check to ssee if you have developed anything. If you have not, they will disssposse of you and return to our home planet, Rhaal, to tell the resst of the Narlavss that they have found a ssuitable new home. Then they will come with all of their ssshipss and hundreds of thoussands of warriors.”

  “How many ships do they have?” Isaac wondered out loud, not really expecting Latt to know or to be willing to supply the answer even if he did.

  “There are sseventeen, all like the one we came here in,” Latt’s answer was as informative as it was surprising. “But at leasst three do not function, and mosst of the otherss are probably sstill out ssearching for new planetss, too.”

  “Just how big are these ships, anyway?” Isaac continued as quickly as he could, afraid that this surprising moment of communicativeness would end before he had learned enough.

  Latt turned to one of the computers and typed rapidly, then turned back, apparently satisfied with his calculation, or more probably his conversion of the units of measurements with which he was familiar, to Earth-based units. “Eight hundred meters long and one hundred sisxty meters in diameter, not including the drive spheres.”

  “Wow!” Ruth exclaimed in almost a whisper.

  “Won’t they just recall them?” Stadt asked simply.

  Latt looked puzzled at the question, and finally shook his head to answer it.

  “So they don’t have a way of communicating other than going back home?” Terry sounded surprised as he drew the only logical conclusion he could think of.

  “Of courssse not,” Latt confirmed. “Any sssignal would only travel at the sspeed of light, taking many, many yearss to reach Rhaal. With the Ssstar Drive, the journey can be made in a matter of hourss or dayss.”

  “No ‘sub-space’ communications! You’ve been watching too much ‘Star Trek’, Terry,” Ruth ribbed him gently.

  “If these ones get back to their planet, er, Rall, was it?” Isaac began, grateful once more for his wife’s perspective-correcting humour.

  “It iss my home, alsso. It iss called Rhaal,” Latt corrected him despondently as he sat down beside his vacuum suit.

  “Yes, if they get back to Rhaal… – hey, how many of these Controllers are there on this ship, anyway?” Isaac interrupted his own question as the thought occurred to him.

  “There are two, of course. The leader is Varshak, with Harnak as pilot,” Latt responded, as if it were common knowledge.

  “Only two! I like the sound of that!” Terry murmured quietly, picturing the results of blows with a blunt instrument to two unsuspecting heads.

  “Why just two?” Isaac continued, holding off on his original question a little longer.

  “Because the Narlavs are warriors, fighting iss their life. It iss difficult to find any willing to remain inactive for long periods of time, maybe sseveral years, while a ssearch is performed. The hundreds of thoussands will only get in when they are going to battle. They would prefer to remain on Rhaal during the ssearch, where they can hunt whenever they want to.”

  Isaac wondered what they would hunt, then decided in a flash of insight that the question was more likely ‘who’. He wisely left that line of thought for another time and continued with his initial idea. “So, how long will it take them to return, collect the warriors, and attack Earth?”

  “They will wait for the other sshipss to return from their ssearch patternss. All functioning sships were ssent out about one of your years ago to ssearch for a new world for the Narlavs. Maybe it will be ass many ass five of your yearss before they are all back.”

  “What about those tests? How long does that give us before these two come back from performing their tests?” Isaac continued his line of questioning.

  “The tesst ssounded fairly bassic. I think we have three or four dayss at the mosst.”

  “Is that Narlav days, or Earth ones?” Isaac queried.

  “Your planet’s dayss.” Latt sounded very disappointed to have to clarify in such a negative manner.

  Ruth looked at him, her eyes widening with surprise as she caught the nuances of his earlier statement. “Why did you say ‘we’?”

  “Becausse either way I think I will be o
f no further ussse to them,” he stated flatly. “If the new plan is ssucessssful, they will use it. I will have proved to be… unrequired?”

  “Superfluous,” Ruth suggested, thinking to herself that he could never pronounce that word.

  “Yess,” Latt agreed, glancing at Ruth again with a hint of softening in his expression for her assistance. He turned back to Isaac. “And if it iss not, they will want ssomething from you, immediately on their return. They will not be patient. It iss not in their nature. When they do not get it, for I can ssee now that you will never do thiss thing for them, I will have proved to be unreliable.”

  “And they will kill you?” Ruth whispered. “They won’t give you another chance?”

  “They never have given any of my people anything,” Latt said simply. “Except ssometimes a quick death.”

  A feeling of extreme trepidation grew in the silence that followed Latt’s startling revelation, until finally Terry shattered the effect by coughing nervously.

  “We must stop them from returning to Rhaal, somehow,” Isaac announced to Latt, glancing at his wife and friend and seeing that they naturally were in agreement. “We must! Then the rest of the aliens, these ‘Narlavs’, will never know that Earth exists, so all of the billions of Earth’s humanity will be safe. Will you help us, Latt? “

  “You cannot defeat them.” Latt stared at the floor. “They have many weapons; you have nothing. Even without their weapons, they are much sstronger than any human. They may just decide to desstroy this collection of sstructures without even bothering to check on your progress.”

  “But you think they’ll check first,” Isaac persisted.

  “Yess.” Latt nodded reluctantly. “They would not want to miss the chance of gaining a new weapon, even if they have another workable idea to use against your planet.”

  “So they’ll come out of their ship to talk to you?”

  “Yess, I know these two – I knew thesse two for a long time;” Latt tried to correct his English, although he found it much easier to think and speak clearly since he had started to eat the wonderful food from Earth. “That iss what they will do.”

  “So when they come in, we can get them!” Isaac suggested triumphantly.

  “You have no weapons,” Latt repeated. “They have weapons with them, always. And they are five times, no, ten times stronger than you are; they will not need their weapons. They will kill you with their hands, no – with just one monstrous hand.”

  “But will you help me try?” Isaac persisted.

  “We will all die.” Latt looked up, his blue eyes bleak with his absolute conviction that they were all fated to meet their doom in just a few days.

  “From the sound of it, that’s a sure thing whatever we do,” Isaac commented, reminding Latt of his own rather depressing statement just moments before.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When the observed observe the observers, the game is on! – Penchetan

  At around ten o’clock on Thursday morning, Baynes received word that Amber and her dog had arrived without incident at the airstrip just outside Redcliff. He left Judy in charge, (much to Leroy’s annoyance), and, dressed now in some carefully selected faded coveralls, exited the observation vehicle through a door on the side facing away from Citadel. Stepping down, he breathed deeply, savouring the fresh salt air. Little white clouds floated by, and the cool breeze hinted at winter’s fury, soon to be unleashed on the rugged coast of Maine. None of that concerned Ed however, he considered himself totally committed to the present; the future was too uncertain to contemplate. He closed the door quietly and walked casually back towards the town.

  Perhaps Judy will come to realize I think highly of her, he smiled to himself, uncertain whom he was fooling, and contradicting his self-analysis. Purely on a professional basis, I suppose.

  A little way down the street, past the junction with Orchard Way and safely out of sight of Citadel, Ed met up with one of the many agents now ‘wandering’ around the town. Amber was a little way behind him, trying to maintain the distance between them, as she had been instructed. Smoke was pulling at his leash, not enjoying the slow pace. Baynes glanced at the agent as he passed, and the slightest nod indicated acknowledgment of the ‘delivery’.

  Ed walked on and stopped when he reached Amber. She was short for her age, about five foot, and had curly brown hair that waved about in front of her eyes as the breeze caught it. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with a University of Michigan insignia on it, and a blue ski-jacket to ward off the chill morning air.

  “Morning, Uncle!” Amber sounded cheerful, and Ed could detect more than a hint of excitement in her voice as he returned her smile.

  He reached down and patted Smoke. The big German Shepherd-Collie cross licked his hand and sat down, panting.

  “Didn’t get much sleep, I suppose?”

  “No, but I did get to fly in an F-One-Eleven, with Smoke on my lap!” she grinned. “Boy! Was the pilot ever nice!”

  Ed noticed that her freckles had faded almost entirely; she no longer looked like the tomboy niece he remembered from vacations with his sister and her family in past years. Now, she was almost a young woman. Shame I didn’t make it to Colorado with them this summer. He shoved his rather depressing reminiscence aside and ruffled the friendly dog’s ears as a final greeting.

  “Come and look at the view.” Ed smiled as he focused on her excitement, and pointed at a park bench overlooking the ocean. Soon they had settled on it, looking out at the white-caps beyond the calm water in the harbour. Amber dropped Smoke’s leash; he sat down obediently by the bench as she relaxed.

  “Are you awake, Amber?”

  His niece looked puzzled.

  “No, really,” he repeated. “Are you awake?”

  “I guess so, Uncle Ed, I did have kind of a late night last night. I didn’t know you were going to call me to ‘active duty’ this morning!”

  Ed grinned. “Sorry I had to wake you a bit early.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, Uncle,” she stretched and yawned, “Mom says I’m always a little sleepy-head first thing.”

  “I want you to listen carefully and do exactly as I say. I can’t tell you why, but what you do in the next few minutes may be the most important thing to happen today, anywhere on Earth.” He looked at her tired eyes and saw them widen with a hint of alarm. He knew he had her undivided attention.

  “Yes, Uncle Ed,” she said meekly.

  “Does Smoke still do that trick you showed me last summer?”

  She nodded, a slight smile on her now bewildered face.

  “I want you to walk up the road and get Smoke to ‘run off’ to a big black building that looks kind of like a castle. You can’t miss it. Then, when he’s running around it, just pretend like you did last summer, and go get him. You’ll need to take something with you.” Baynes reached over and pulled on the lapels of her jacket, causing the zipper to slide down noisily.

  She jumped slightly.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” He slipped something out of the huge pockets of his coveralls, unfolded the ‘something’, revealing an inch-thick belt which he slipped into the coat and passed around her back and out under the other arm. She looked down uncomfortably as he fixed the buckle together near the neck of her sweat-shirt. Reaching into the knee pocket of his coveralls he pulled out a small cylindrical object and attached it to the strap near the buckle, then sat back.

  “Now just tighten the straps so it sits snugly and won’t slide down.”

  Amber coloured, then fiddled with the unfamiliar mechanism until it seemed secure.

  “Sorry, it wasn’t designed with comfort as the first requirement. If you could do up your coat so that it comes to just below the camera.” Ed paused until she had completed the task, then reached over and pulled the zipper slightly to see how much slack there was in the coat. “Hmm, shame you didn’t bring a coat that fitted better.” He looked at her face, relieved to see the blush had faded and
she wasn’t looking at him strangely. “You’re not hoping to fill that space in the next year or so, are you?”

  Amber shook her head, grinning slightly.

  Ed watched her closely, then decided to take a chance on what was a somewhat personal comment, as had been his tradition with his favourite niece, since his daughter had died. “You really don’t need any more ‘development’, you know.” This was said with a crooked kind of smile.

  She blushed again and looked down for a moment. Then she looked up shyly. “Do you... notice any change in me since last summer, then?” she finally dared to whisper.

  “Let’s just say that you look like a lovely young woman now, with a figure to match; not at all like the fun-loving girl I knew last summer - but I liked her just as much!”

  Amber went to hug him but changed her mind when she remembered the camera on her chest.

  “I could never talk like that with Dad... you know, about how I look now I’ve grown up... I wouldn’t dare.”

  “I don’t suppose he’d dare either, though he may want to,” Ed said shortly. “I take more chances than most people do. It comes with the territory.” He reached into another pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a roll of what looked like masking tape. “This double-sided stuff has very strong glue; I’ll have to get you a new coat after this, as it won’t come off without ripping.” He peeled off a length and wrapped it around the end of the camera, then pressed the coat against it. “Now try and move that.”

  Ed watched as Amber tugged, tentatively at first, then quite hard. The coat stayed put.

  “I have to do that to make sure the coat doesn’t get in the way of the view the camera sees. And don’t worry! I’ll make sure the new one’s the best coat you’ve ever had,” he promised as he reached around her shoulders with one arm and hugged her sideways.

  Amber looked up at him and smiled gratefully.

  “Now, just remember to stop and stand still when you call Smoke. Otherwise the picture will be so wobbly we’ll have to watch the recording frame by frame. If you see any openings in the structure, don’t attempt to enter, just make sure you get a good shot of them by facing towards them. It’s a wide-angle lens, so you don’t have to be very precise.” He stood up.