The chase was not very long.  She found the Wolv with its back to a big oak.  She snarled and growled at the beast as the hair on her back bristled with anticipation of a fight.  The Wolv growled a much deeper and more frightening growl in return and the claws popped out of its right hand like little daggers.  Its left hand, though, stayed pressed against the wound in its belly and what is more, the creature did not rise.  Valencia quickly realized that it could not rise.  That first shot must have been a lucky one that severed the spinal cord.  It was amazing the Wolv could get this far before collapsing.  The will to survive in order to kill another day, she decided

            Valencia took her human form and her armor returned to cover her automatically.  The Wolv stopped growling at the sight and then its big eyes got bigger when Valencia spoke in the ancient Humanoid tongue.  “It is time for you to die.”  The Wolv’s eyes could not get any bigger when Valencia went away and Diogenes came to stand in her place.  It was not that Valencia could not or would not do what was necessary, but Diogenes was the warrior and his cut would be swift, clean and sure.  He drew his sword.

            The Wolv struggled a bit but managed to put its head out to expose its neck.  Curiously, the Wolv had no fear of death at all.  It is not that they possess great courage.  It is likely they do not fully understand the concept of death.  In any case, the Wolv let one word escape its lips before the end.  It said, “Kairos,” so it knew its executioner.

            When it was finished, Diogenes went to one knee and asked the Wolv’s forgiveness as was his custom.  He cleaned his sword and put it where it belonged against his back.  Then he went away once again and let Valencia return because there was one more thing to do and after Glen, of course, this adventure belonged to the woman of Rome.  Besides, flying was easier than walking.

            When Valencia landed on the grounds of the dig, she tried not to look around.  She was glad the sun was not ready to rise.  She did not really want to see the bits and pieces of bodies scattered all over the place. 

            Valencia opened the door to the escape pod and stood back just in case.  It was likely the pod was programmed on landfall to trigger the one chamber first.  The others would be triggered automatically within a day or so unless the first one opened them early or decided they should not be opened at all.  When no Wolv came bursting out of the open door, Valencia went in. 

            Even with her werewolf eyes it took a bit to touch the right spots on the wall and turn on the internal lights.  Then she had to stop and think.  At last she determined that Dimitri had to come to this time and place once again.  He was from the far future and understood the systems and what made them work or not work far better than a girl from before Rome was even built.  A Woman from before Rome, Valencia corrected herself and then she went away and Dimitri went straight to the open chamber.

            He put his finger into a bit of the amnionic-cryogenic goop.  He sniffed like a wolf or a dog, but he knew what he was looking for.  As he suspected, it had degraded over two thousand years.  The Wolv was probably half-mad when it came out of its long sleep, like anyone could tell.  He felt that might explain why it had not bothered to open the other chambers.

            Dimitri looked in the other chambers.  Three were empty.  The fourth had a female in it, but he could tell just from looking at the syrup she rested in that it had degraded worse than the other.  The readout showed that there were still signs of life, but surely this one would be a blithering idiot if she was not brain dead already.  The last chamber had an infant in it.  The fluid looked good.  The signs of life looked strong.  Dimitri felt sorry for that because he knew what Valencia had in mind.  The reason was because it was what he had in mind, too.  It was the only option.

            Before that, Dimitri spent a good hour examining the ships systems to find out exactly how things worked.  There was no telling how important that might be in the future.  Then it also gave him a chance to remove certain bits and pieces—not enough to make the pod useless, but enough to make it unusable without their return.  Those pieces went on file in Avalon.

            He also figured out what happened two thousand years ago.  He saw the burnt out relays, relays which the Wolv would not know how to fix.  The main computer must have stalled at that point and without a return signal it must have decided there were no sleepers to resuscitate.  As a safety precaution, the chambers were designed to function independently of the mainframe in case there was a complete computer shutdown.  So the sleepers slept for all of those years. When Glen turned the power and the lights back on, the sequence went straight to resuscitation and did not go through the relays.  It was like an intruder alert system or something.

            Glen felt terrible about that.  He felt like he was personally responsible for getting all of those people killed even though every other life in time told him it was not his fault and he could not have known.

            “I can do it if you like.”  Dimitri offered.

            “No.  It is my job.”  Valencia answered, and Glen had no objection. 

            Valencia spent a long time looking at the Wolv baby.  She thought about her own babies—the orphan twins Saturn brought for her to raise.  In the end, one killed the other and poor Valencia never really got over that.  In this case she wondered what it might be like to suckle a baby again.  But here she knew this baby would suckle for about sixty seconds before it tried to eat her.  She had no choice, and with that thought she drained the fluid from both chambers. 

            The mother Wolv gave up her life immediately and Valencia decided that indeed she had already been brain dead.  The baby struggled as it drowned on pure air without the resuscitation procedure to make the necessary adjustments.  It struggled for nearly ten minutes, and Valencia thought of Papa Wolv, how it dragged its paralyzed hind quarters for half a mile before the paralysis and loss of blood forced it to stop.

            Once it was over, Valencia shut down all power in the pod, sealed the door and flew back to the Calveri house.  The sun was ready to rise by then but she had no trouble landing unnoticed.   She was a bit upset to realize her friends from Washington still had not arrived, but she was less upset when Miss Watson saw her and came running.  Valencia waited and hugged the woman before she went away.  Glen came back, not dressed in the armor of the Kairos but in the same clothes he wore when he left the house that evening.

            “It’s over,” he said.  “And there won’t be a repeat.”

            “Oh my God.”  Miss Watson put her hand to her mouth.  “You said six chambers.  I never thought of that.”

            Glen nodded.  “Now I have to go.  When my friends get here, I would appreciate if you did not tell them my name.  Just say the Traveler said not to give a name.  Tell them they will find the Wolv about half a mile that way and warn them of the grisly scene at the digs.  Tell them to put the pod in a shack out behind the new building, when they build it.  Tell them I’ll be by some day to pick it up so don’t mess with it.”  Glen got in the driver’s seat of the little Triumph.

            “Will I see you again?”

            Glen smiled.  “Tell them they need to take good care of you and the Calveris.  It has been a long night.”

            “But–” 

            “Who knows if we will meet again.  I have this memory problem, you see.  By the time I get home I probably won’t remember anything about what happened here except I will probably have nightmares for a while.”  Glen shrugged and backed out of the long drive.  About a half hour later he saw a van in the early morning light.  He thought the driver looked familiar but he was not sure.  He did notice the empty flatbed that was following. 

            By the time he got home, he was right.  He did not remember anything about what happened and he could give no answer to his parents about why he had gone off in the middle of the night or where he had gone or what he had been doing.  He was not allowed to use the car for a while, and while his gut said that was not fair, his mind could not say why.

            The thing came first to the front door.  They heard the growl, but at least this time the children kept quiet.  They heard it scratch along the side of the house toward the kitchen door and heard a different, whining sound when it caught a whiff of the gas. 

            There was a stone wall on that side of the house that lined the driveway, and between the stone wall and the wall of the house there was a great stack of cut wood for the fireplace.  Glen knew the Wolv could not break through that wall without moving all the lumber first.  He felt safe in that direction until he heard the Wolv use the lumber to get up on the roof.

            “The chimney.”  The boy said before his mother quieted him.  Glen knew the chimney was much too small.

            They listened to the click, click of the Wolv claws across the roof and Glen chided himself for his oversight.  If the beast broke into the upper floor, there was nothing to prevent it coming through the ceiling at any point.  He breathed again when he heard the Wolv jump down on the other side of the house.

            There was a terrific crash and the wall buckled on that side of the house, but it did not break.  Then there was silence.

            “Is it gone?”  Mrs. Calveri dared to hope.

            “Did it hurt itself?”  Mister Calveri was also hopeful.

            Glen shook his head, though they could not see well since the lights in the sitting room were off and only a flashlight was burning behind the couch for the children.  “With their size and strength the Wolv can break through any wooden stockade, no matter how well built.  Stone, or bricks can be a bit of a problem, but they have explosives for that.”

            “Explosives?”  Miss Watson sounded surprised.  “I thought they did not understand such things.”

            “They understand explosives.  They know all about electricity, too.  It could smell the ozone which is why it did not try to break through the doors or come down the stairs.  They understand weapons and even how to fly spaceships as long as the navigation is mostly computerized.  It is sophisticated electronics they don’t understand, like how to short out a personal screen, or how to repair it once destroyed.”

            The young girl screamed.  She had been sticking her head above the couch.  The Wolv face was in the front picture window, lit up by the few red and green Christmas lights they left in the string.  It began to growl and drool and turned its head so like a bird it could watch them with one big yellow and red eye.

            “No!”  Glen pushed up Mister Calveri’s shotgun and the slug went into the ceiling.  “You shatter the glass and it will get in.  Now, reload.  The Wolv won’t risk the glass.  The screen it wears can deflect bullets, but glass shards would cut it up despite the screen.”

            Mister Calveri nodded and tried to reload with his shaky hands.

            There was a second crash against that same spot in the side wall and this time the wall collapsed.  Everyone screamed except Glen, and Miss Watson who got on her belly and brushed the plaster and wallboard off the copper plate.

            The Wolv did not show its face at first.  No doubt it wanted to be sure there were no sophisticated weapons.  When no shot came through the hole in the wall, it stuck its head around the corner.  Then it stepped into the room, stepped squarely on to the copper plate in that corner and Glen turned the knob on the transformer to full blast. 

            The beast roared and howled and shook like jelly as the electricity coursed through its body.  It appeared glued to the plate for the moment and Glen kept yelling “Shoot!  Fire!”  Poor Mister Calveri was frozen in absolute fear and panic.  “Shoot, damn it!  Fire that gun!”

            Glen had to keep the transformer knob turned, but he managed to wedge the thing with his knee and use his left hand on the knob.  That left his right hand free to scramble across the small of his back in search of his long knife—which did not want to cooperate.  He was just about to trade places through time with Diogenes when he heard, Bang!  Bang!  The shotgun fired both barrels in quick succession.  Miss Watson had grabbed it out of the man’s hands.

            One bullet hit the Wolv in the belly and the second hit the shoulder as the recoil caused the gun to rise up.  It also pushed the creature free of the metal plate where the beast let out a great, mournful howl.  It bounded back out into the dark and left a wet trail of purplish-red blood all across the carpet and splattered on the walls.

            Mrs. Calveri and the children were behind the couch, sobbing.  Mister Calveri came out of his shock enough to drop his face into his hands and sob as well.  Apparently his bowels had let loose.  Glen grabbed Miss Watson by the hand and dragged her to the hole.  He noted where the beast had torn through a bush in its escape so he felt it was safe for the moment to step out on the grass.  There he went away and Valencia came to stand in his place.

            “This is not good.”  Valencia spoke right up.  “A wounded beast is always more dangerous.”  She turned to Miss Watson.  “Debbie.  You must call Newton and let the police know there is a wounded wolf on the prowl and it would be best to get everyone off the streets until it is subdued.  Then you must call my friends and tell them what happened.  Do you remember the number?”  Miss Watson nodded.  “Then if it circles back, you must try to kill it if you can.  The screen is shorted out now so the shotgun should do the job.”

            “But where will you be?”

            “I have to track it and try to finish the job myself.”

            “Of course, you can fly.”

            Valencia shook her head exactly like Glen.  “I have been able to fly in several lifetimes.  No, I think Glen thought of me earlier because I have another virtue.  It was subconscious, if that is the right word.  I have a rather big subconscious.”

            “A virtue?”

            “Yes.  Saturn gave me the gift of flight so I could escape the men who wanted to rape me, but when I got away from my brother and his friends Saturn gave me a more permanent solution.”  Valencia turned toward the broken bush and took in a deep whiff of air.  “He gave me the were of the wolf.  Not like in the movies, but like the Were People, the shape shifters of old.”  Valencia turned back to face the woman.  “I was the wolf who suckled the two orphan boys Saturn brought me just before the founding of Rome.  You might read about me in the history books, though I guess it has become no more than a myth these days.”

            With that Valencia smiled and fell to her knees.  “If I don’t see you again, don’t look for me.”  She spoke as her armor vanished and she very quickly changed from a woman to a wolf.  She was bigger than any normal sized wolf, too, though not nearly as big as the Wolv.  With a wag of her tail and her nose to the ground she bounded through that same broken bush.

            After some twenty minutes of winding through trees, they came out in farm country and Glen turned into the long driveway of the first house where he saw some lights.  He screeched to a halt and made Miss Watson get out.  “Come on,” he said.  “We have to let people know what is happening.”

            “You’re mad,” she said.  “I wouldn’t stop between here and the city.”  But as much as she thought he was crazy, she was not about to be left alone outside in the car.  He took the keys.

            Bang, Bang!  Glen knocked and rang the bell until finally a man in his t-shirt and boxers came to the door.  “We need to use your phone.  There’s been a murder at the archeological dig up the road.”

            “Murder?”  They heard the woman’s voice before the face peered around the corner.

            “Please?”  Miss Watson begged and the woman responded.

            “Move.”  The woman punched the man in his fat belly.  He took a step back so the woman could unlock the screen door.  “Phone’s in the kitchen,” she said before they all paused.  There was a howl in the distance.  It was still far away but Glen and Miss Watson had no doubt it was on their trail.

            “What the Hell is that?”  The man asked.

            “Wolv,” Glen responded. 

            “The murderer,” Miss Watson corrected.

            “And on its way here next,”  Glen concluded as they went inside.

            “What the Hell is that thing?”  The man repeated himself while Miss Watson went to the kitchen.  “What the Hell is this all about?”

            “Hell is coming,” Glen said before he turned to shout to Miss Watson.  “You have the number I gave you?”

            “No.”

            He shouted the number and added a few words.  “Tell them the Wolv is loose.  W-O-L-V.”  He spelled it for her.  “They may have something in the database, but tell them they are going to need a bazooka if we can’t stop it.”  He turned to the man.  “What’s your name?”

            “Calveri.”  The man said.  To give him credit, the man was honestly trying to understand what was happening. 

            “Well, Mister Calveri, what is the nearest town of size?”

            “Newton, I suppose.”  Mrs. Calveri was the one who answered.

            “Lunch and dinner.”  Glen said, and Miss Watson returned even as there was a sound on the stairs.

            “Mama?”  The girl was maybe eleven and the boy behind her was perhaps seven.

            “Come here.”  The mother corralled her children even as Glen began to pace.

            “Garlic.  Have you got any garlic Mister Calveri?”

            “Eh?  Calveri.”  The man smiled.  “Werewolf?”  The man asked in all seriousness.  Glen shook his head.

            “Worse,” he said.  “This one is about eight feet tall and almost guaranteed to be wearing a personal shield—a belt or wristband or something.  It isn’t a very good shield but enough to deflect a bullet, lots of bullets.  Got a gun Mister Calveri?”

            “Shotgun,” the man answered.  “It’s in the barn.”

            “Better get it.  And any lime or fertilizer.  As much as you can carry.”

            “Garlic.”  Mrs. Calveri came back from the kitchen with a whole string of natural garlic, and everyone paused again as they heard the howl in the distance.  It was closer than before.

            Mister Calveri ran out the back door toward the barn.  Glen got the women to spread garlic all around the front door frame, the kitchen door, and especially the big picture window while he paced.  Suddenly he stopped pacing and threw his hands to the overhead light.

            “Oh!”  He shouted.  “Electricity!”  He turned to the boy.  “Has your dad got any wire, electrical wire somewhere?”

            “The basement.”  Mrs. Calveri answered for her son.

            “Come on.  Let’s get it.”

            The boy shook his head.  “It’s spooky down there.”

            “I’ll show you,” Mrs. Calveri said and she handed her garlic to her son and told him to spread it everywhere on the window.

            In the basement, Glen found a whole spool of electrical wire, two lamps that were taken apart and he yanked out the electrical cords from them because they had plugs.  He kissed the plugs.  He found two thin copper 4X4 plates.  He had no idea what they were from, but he handed them to Mrs. Calveri to carry.  Then he found something that made him shout.

            “Christmas lights!”  They were the old kind with big bulbs and hot sockets, and they were parallel so when one burnt out the whole string would not shut down.

            “My husband is a bit lazy.  He doesn’t like to change bulbs all the time,” Mrs. Calveri shifted the copper plates in her arms before she spoke again.  “Look, what is this all about, really?”  Her poor house was being ruined.

            Glen was still looking around the workbench and getting frustrated.  “If I told you, you would call me mad and make me stop and get us all killed.”

            “I wouldn’t do that.  I won’t do that,” she insisted.

            Glen whipped around “The creature is an alien, clever, cunning and hungry and it is coming here and probably to every farm around until it finds its way to Newton.”

            Mrs. Calveri let her jaw drop for a second before she scrunched up her face and shook her head.  “That isn’t true.  You’re crazy.”

            “Can I trust you?”

            “What?  Why?”  Mrs. Calveri was clearly skeptical.

            “Because what I am about to show you is top secret.  You are not allowed to scream or yell or anything of the sort, and you are not allowed to talk about it to anyone, ever, do you understand?”

            Mrs. Calveri nodded but said nothing.

            Glen returned the nod and then he called out to the ancient armor of the Kairos.  That armor and weapons escaped the second heavens and replaced Glen’s clothes faster than Mrs. Calveri could blink.  She almost screamed.  Then Glen went one further and left that place altogether.  He let Dimitri fill the armored boots with strict instructions to act more mature this time.  Mrs. Calveri dropped the copper sheets to clatter on the ground and she took a step back.

            “A train set!”  Dimitri shouted as he yanked out the transformer.  “I’ll buy your son a brand new set, I promise,” he said as he took a hammer from the workbench and cracked open the control box.  “I’m sorry for the shock.  I’ll let Glen come back now, but please believe me when I say all of our lives are in terrible danger.”  Having said that, Dimitri did go away again and Glen returned, but he kept the armor and weapons where they were.  The sword and long knife were made by his Little Ones and endowed with the strength of the god Hephaestus himself.  No simple particle screen would stop them, not to say that Glen knew what to do with them, but there were others that did.

            With the spool of wire, the two lamp cords, the Christmas lights and the broken transformer, Glen started back up the stairs.  Mrs. Calveri shut her mouth, scooped up the copper plates and followed.

            “Gum.”  Glen yelled as soon as he got back to the top of the stairs.  “Duct tape.”  That was his other option.  Mrs. Calveri juggled the plates and pulled a roll of masking tape out of a kitchen drawer.

            “I got gum!”  The young boy shouted from the other room and they heard him run up the stairs even as Mrs. Calveri spoke.

            “Will this do?”

            Glen nodded and they went back into the front sitting room even as Mister Calveri returned with a wheelbarrow full of fertilizer and a double barreled shotgun.  He raised an eyebrow at the sight of Glen in his armor, but Mrs. Calveri put him off with her words.

            “I’ll explain later.”

            “Nice outfit.”  Miss Watson noticed.

            “Where do you want the fertilizer?”

            “Here’s the gum.  I got yours, Missy.”  The young boy raced down the stairs.

            “Thanks, creep,” Missy said before they heard the howl, much closer than before.

            Everyone got gum to chew.  Glen took out most of the Christmas bulbs and had Miss Watson cut and strip little bits of electrical wire.  They attached the wire to the hot, open sockets in the Christmas string while Mrs. Calveri taped it across the picture window.

            “If it tries to come in that way it will get tangled and sting worse than a school of jellyfish,” Glen said.

            Meanwhile, Mister Calveri was busy spreading the fertilizer just this side of every door and window in the house.  It made the whole house smell bad, but that was what they wanted.

            Glen reminded Miss Watson.  “It didn’t find you in the outhouse.”  The Calveris did not exactly understand, but Miss Watson did.

            When Mister Calveri put some fertilizer in the fireplace so the smell would waft up the chimney, the young boy spoke up.  “That’s not right.  We need a fire and a big pot of water for when the wolf comes down the chimney.”

            “Sorry,” Glen responded.  “You live in a wood house, not a brick house.”

            The boy swallowed.  “Does that mean we are going to get eaten?  Will the wolf puff our house down?”

            “You won’t get eaten.”  Glen assured the boy.  “You have one thing the pigs did not have.”

            “What’s that?” 

            “You have a mom and dad who will protect you and keep you safe.”

            The Calveris heard that, and it helped a little when in the next minute they heard the howl outside.  Everyone went to the front window.  It was by Glen’s car, sniffing around.  It was hard to tell in the dark, except it looked big and agile and stood up on two feet like a bear.  Whatever doubts the Calveris may have had up to that point vanished with the sight.  When the Wolv roared and turned its head to face the house, everyone backed up and the children screamed. 

            Mama Calveri took the children behind the couch which had been pushed back toward the fireplace.  Mister Calveri took his seat and picked up his shotgun which was loaded with slugs, not buckshot.  Miss Watson, who had a place behind the couch, nevertheless chose to stay close to Glen.  Glen sat on the living room floor and waited.

            He had hot-wired the front door and the kitchen door frames with the lamp wire and gum and tape.  They were plugged in and getting hot.  He had also blown out the pilot light in the oven so the kitchen was slowly filling with gas.  It would be a while before the gas seeped into the living room.  They were safe for the present provided the kitchen door did not get hot enough to set off the gas. 

            One copper plate was shoved up the stairs like a makeshift door.  It was also hot-wired with a long line of electrical wire gummed into a table lamp.  It almost blew out the fuse when Glen first turned it on, but the fuse held.  The other plate was also wired and set in the corner of the room where there were no doors or windows.  That plate was currently not hot as Glen had turned the electric train transformer into a kind of dimmer switch.  Everyone asked why Glen put that plate in the one corner of the room where the creature could not get in.  Glen said nothing.  He just poured water on the plate.

            “Now what do we do?”  Mister Calveri was the one who asked.

            “Nothing,” Glen answered.  “It’s Wolvy’s turn.”

            Valencia quickly covered the view of the Wolv.  She popped open the full door, but Miss Watson would not stop screaming until her young man came running to hold her.

            “It was terrible, dead and staring.  Cold eyes full of evil.  It was evil.”  Miss Watson tried to explain between sobs of fear.  Valencia escorted the couple out the door, shut down the internal systems and sealed the door behind them.

            “Paper.”  Valencia tried to change the subject. 

            “Up here.”  The young man said and he escorted her to the main tent, but slowly because Miss Watson did not want to be let go.  She settled a little by the time they arrived and contented herself to sit in a chair while Valencia wrote out the phone number.

            “I’ll never be able to sleep.”  Miss Watson said.

            “So come back here tonight and keep me company,” the young man suggested.  “I have no intention of sleeping until these people come and take that thing away, whoever they are.”  It was an awkward but a sincere invitation.

            “I could come back,” Miss Watson said.  She looked at her man with hope.  “Oh, but I would be so close to that thing.”  She pointed.

            “Don’t worry.  The boy said two thousand years old.  I am sure after two thousand years it is dead.”

            “But—“

            “Besides.  I’ll stay with you.  Nothing will get you in the night.”

            “You better stay close.”

            “I will.  I promise.”

            “Ahem!”  Valencia had to cough to get their attention.  “Now no talking about this to anyone except these people.  You can talk to these people, but that’s it.  Especially don’t talk about it to Glen.”  She pointed at Miss Watson.  “Now we have to get going to get back to the city anywhere near the right time.”  She handed the phone number to the young man and went away.  Glen came back and immediately took Miss Watson by the hand.  He dragged her at first, but eventually she understood and let go of him.  The rest of the students were already loaded up in the bus, waiting.

            Glen took the seat right behind the driver and sat by the window.  Something was troubling him but he couldn’t name it.  By the time he got back to New York, he had forgotten most of what happened, but something held on and would not quite let go.  He took the A-train back down the West Side, took the Path and train home, but he was still concerned about something.  He went to bed that night with a worried look on his face.  It was not until one in the morning that the pieces came together. 

            “They might sleep for a hundred years or even a thousand years if not picked up.”  He said it himself.  “Or two thousand years.”  He said it out loud and added, “Damn!”  He got up and dressed as quietly as he could so as not to wake the family.  He went downstairs and jumped into the little Triumph convertible.  The top was already down.  The thing could not do better than fifty with a tailwind, but it was the only car he was allowed to drive.  He backed out of the driveway in the dark and turned on his headlights when he reached the street.  He hoped he could remember how to get there, and he said, “Damn, damn,” the whole way.

            Glen pulled up to the dig with his lights off.  What was he doing?  That was when he decided he was insane.  Still, he had come that far.  He had to see.  He turned the car, backed in for a quick getaway and crawled slowly into the dark, going from one bush to another as if the Wolv might not see him.  He knew the Wolv could not only see perfectly in the dark, it could hear him a mile away and smell him at an even greater distance, but being sneaky made him feel better.

            Glen found an arm near the main tent and he almost turned back.  Then he thought about throwing up but swallowed it back down.  There were pieces of people scattered everywhere around the digs.  He almost turned back again, but at last he went up into the tent and he found a survivor.  It was Miss Watson.  Her eyes were wide with madness and her fist was shoved deep into her mouth to prevent herself from screaming.

            “Come on,” Glen whispered.  The woman’s eyes did not move.  “Miss Watson.  It’s Glen.  Come on, we have to go.”  At the mention of his name, Miss Watson looked up but there was no sign in her eyes that she recognized him.  “We have to go.”  Glen spoke with more volume and like he had done the previous afternoon, he grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the tent.

            “No.”  She protested, feebly.  “If we move it may see us.”  But soon, like on the previous afternoon, she came to understand where they were headed and stopped resisting.  Glen could pick up the pace then and the woman had no trouble keeping up.

            Glen jumped into the driver’s seat as soon as they reached the car.  Miss Watson crawled up the trunk and fell into the back seat.  Glen started the engine but over top of the whine of that little four cylinder, they heard the howl.  It was close, and Glen left in as much of a cloud of dust and gravel that little Triumph could produce without stalling. 

            “I see it!”  Miss Watson screamed.  Glen checked his rearview mirror an saw it as well.  It looked to be about the size of the car and it was running on all fours and gaining.  After a short way, though, they got to some pavement and Glen revved it up from thirty-five to as near fifty as he felt was safe.  The Wolv could go across country, but Glen knew that on foot even the Wolv could not catch them at that speed.  Unfortunately, he also knew the Wolv could track them no matter how fast they went, and it would not give up no matter how long it took.

            “What is that thing?”  Miss Watson asked suddenly.  Glen glanced at her as she crawled over the seat and into the front bucket.  He imagined she must have blotted out the trauma of the dig for the moment.

            “Wolv.”  He answered as well as he could and concentrate on the road.

            “Wolf.  I can see that.”

            “No, Wolv.”  Glen shook off the correction and decided to go in a different direction.  “An alien.  Not smart.  Not sophisticated in engineering.  Probably could not fix the escape pod, but not stupid.  Clever and cunning.  The Humanoid Empire used them as front line troops in battle, and they rarely had to send in the second line.  They are warriors, hunters and absolute killers—predators.”

            “Wolv.”  Miss Watson tried to word.

            “So how did you, you know, survive?”  He asked and the woman looked at him at first as if she did not understand what he was asking, but then she did and she looked away.

            “I was in the outhouse.  I heard the screams.  I did not dare come out.”

            “All that shit probably disguised your scent.”

            “I heard it sniffing around the outside and I almost screamed myself.  But then it went away.  I waited a full hour.  When I came out, I saw…”  The woman began to cry and Glen hardly knew what to say.

            “We’ll get through this,” he said at last.  “We will survive this.”

            It was a few minutes before the lights came on in the ship and Glen’s voice echoed up from below.  “Miss Watson and the young man can come down.  Grumpy too if he promises not to yell anymore.  Be careful where you put your feet, though.  This whole thing is tipped on its side.”  Glen was glad all they could really step on was visuals, scanner arrays and the opposite door, not weapons or engine works which were on two of the walls.

            The young man came first.  Miss Watson followed with a word.  “The Professor said he can wait until it gets uncovered.”  Glen nodded as the young man stopped, stared and asked what was on his mind.

            “What happened to that other man?”

            “He went home for the present,” Glen said.

            “Oh?”

            “Yeah, roughly fourteen hundred years or so in the future.”  Both Miss Watson and the young man looked at Glen like maybe he was lying, but Glen ignored the reaction.  He took a hand from each and spoke of three things.

            “First, I am going to need you to tell the professor to get everyone back at least a hundred yards from this site.  Think football field.  Second, I never should have changed like that in front of everyone.  That is top secret and so is what you are about to see.  I will give you a phone number you can call and have this ship picked up, but first you must promise you will never speak of this to anyone, especially me.”

            “You?”  Miss Watson could not help the interjection.

            Glen nodded.  “Normally I don’t remember this stuff, like I am sleepwalking through life or something.  If you talk about it with me when I’m just normally walking around that might be like waking a sleepwalker.  That can be very dangerous, you know.”

            “And the third?”  The young man asked.

            “Promise you won’t let go.  It’s tradition.” 

            “Huh?  Sure.”

            Glen did not wait.  He vanished and a woman took his place.  She was dressed in a kind of dress that could only be described as Roman.  Miss Watson shrieked and let go.  The young man gulped but held on.

            “I better go back up and see the Professor gets everyone away from this thing,” the man said with only a little shakiness in his voice.

.            ”Good idea.”  The woman encouraged him.  “I was born around 761 BC.  No telling if I can fly this thing.”

            The man merely nodded and swallowed some more while he climbed back up the rope.

            “My name is Valencia by the way, like the orange.”  Valencia rolled her eyes at having to say that every time, but she stuck out her hand to shake with Miss Watson.

            “Debbie Watson.”  The woman put her hand out, but with some obvious reluctance.  Valencia grabbed the wrist and shook it vigorously.

            “I know who you are.  Just as well your man left it to us women, don’t you think?”

            “Oh, no.”  Miss Watson shook her head, shyly, but a little smile crept into the corners of her lips.  “He is not my man.”

            “He should be.”

            “Us women?”

            “What do I look like to you?  I know I can come across as butch sometimes but really!”

            “Oh, no.  I get it.  I just thought Glen, you, you know, he—“

            “I was born in 761 BC.  Want to know when I died?”

            “No!”  Miss Watson shouted the word.  “I mean, I don’t get it.  Why did Glen pick you?  I assume he picked you somehow.”

            Valencia smiled and took a moment to brush her long red hair straight back.  She had no bangs and no center part, either.  She picked up the rope and finally answered.  “Because I can fly,” she said, and she left the ground.  Miss Watson shut her eyes and began to mumble.

            “No, this is too much.  I can’t take this.  This is too much.”

            Valencia carried the rope up to the hatch and threw it out of the ship.  “Hey you!”  She shouted as the young man was coming back to give them the all clear.  Valencia wagged her finger to call him in close.  The young man came without hesitation.  He ignored the fact that Valencia had to be flying, like his brain simply refused to process that thought.

            “Ask her out,” Valencia said.  “She would really like that.  Now, get that Jeep out of here.”  The man nodded and ran to the jeep while Valencia closed the hatch.

            “I can’t believe you said that!”  Miss Watson came out of her mumbles long enough to yell.

            “What else are girlfriends for?”  Valencia asked and she flew to where she could stand on the actual floor of the ship.  That put her at ninety degrees to the earth.  “Ready to slide to the floor?”  She asked, but she did not wait for an answer.  She touched the necessary controls to cause the center of the ship to rotate within the hull.  It took a second, but as Miss Watson slid to the floor, exactly as prophesied, Valencia found herself standing upright.  “Now, let’s see.”

            Valencia was not sure how to work the rest of it.  There seemed to be some division of opinion in time.  At last she picked the consensus route and the whole ship shook rather vigorously.  It was like an earthquake outside the ship, but they felt little on the inside until the ship broke free of the earth and shot up about three miles into the sky in almost no time.

            “Wee-hee!”  Valencia shouted.

            “My God!”  Miss Watson had a very different reaction.  “Can we get back down?”  She ran to the hatch window and looked out on the clouds.

            “Not yet.”  Valencia said, and she moved them to an upper Earth orbit in about five minutes.

            Miss Watson said nothing at first while Valencia came to stand beside her.  At last Miss Watson shared her feelings.  “It’s beautiful.”

            “It is.”  Valencia said.  “I always wanted to see, but I didn’t dare tell Saturn.”

            “The planet?”  Miss Watson wondered.

            “The god.”  Valencia answered without batting an eye.  “But now I suppose we had better all go home.”  She returned to the controls and within another fifteen minutes, managed a relatively soft landing on the archeological site.

            “One thing I don’t understand.”  Miss Watson had apparently been thinking that whole time.  “If this is a sphere, why is it square inside?”

            “Ah!”  Valencia had already figured that out for herself and was rather proud at having done so.  “The six corner sections are cryogenic chambers.  This is an escape pod.  Normally, it is programmed to fly at near light speed to some destination.  Depending on where that is, though, they might sleep for a hundred years or even a thousand years if they aren’t picked up.  So they sleep until rescue so as not to age in the waiting time.”

            “But by the time they get rescued, everyone they know will be dead.”

            “Not human,” Valencia reminded her.  “Why it crashed to earth, I don’t know.  If there were humanoid survivors, the pod would have been picked up with the humanoids.  You may find some interesting bones on this dig, you know.”

            “You don’t mean—“  Miss Watson paused in thought while Valencia nodded.  “Sleep chambers?  You mean like, what do they call it, suspended animation?”

            “Here, let me show you.”  Valencia uncovered the view of one of the chambers and Miss Watson screamed.  There was a snarling wolf head staring at her, dead eyes open.

Exciting Scenes from Last Week: 

On Monday I blogged on the Other Earth (I invite you to click on the tab above and read all about it).  That other earth might best be called a “spatial” world as conceived by Hawkings, which is to say, a completely natural phenomenon.  Since that universe is only one notch (so to speak) from our own, the laws of physics hold true there except for one thing.  There is a strong influx of creative and variable energy there which allows for the manipulation of matter and energy – or to be more pedestrian about it, there is magic on that Other Earth.

This, however, is not what most people think of when they imagine alternate universes. 

Instead, people tend to think and the literature of Science Fiction tends to portray what I call “temporal” universes.  These are earths where, in my view, something significant or several significant events occurred differently at some point in history and thus the whole world turned out different.  In fact, that is what the Gaian people – humans from a very technologically advanced earth call these time created universes: the Worlds.

Let me first say that unless the event is significant, chances are history won’t remember.  Family history might be changed for a time; even national history in some small ways, but eventually the changes will fade or blend into the background and this universe will go on without division.  History paints with a very broad brush.

In order to create a new universe (a new timeline) the change must be historic.  Think of Alexander (the Great) being assassinated with his father and so he never conquers the Persians and never becomes “great.”  Lincoln surviving his assassination attempt, on the other hand, might not be enough by itself to change things since Johnson, his vice-president thrust into the presidency, pretty much followed Lincoln’s outline for reconstruction.  In a couple of thousand years, what will it matter?  Then again, tanks suddenly appearing on the Appian Way and rumbling into Ancient Rome would certainly change things.

In the Gaian universe, by way of comparison, the steam engine was discovered by the Greeks centuries before it was “discovered” in Alexandria.  AND, there were people back then who became aware of the steam discovery and who had some notion of what it might be good for.  As a result, Alexander the Great laid rail lines all the way up the silk road to China…

The thing about these Worlds which is important from a story perspective is first, to acknowledge that our earth is not at the pinnacle of technological advancement.  There are all sorts of earths with a technology we cannot imagine who are already traveling the worlds or just learning to travel among the worlds.  The second point is to realize that not everyone traveling the worlds will have the best interests of others at heart.  In fact, some will be downright dangerous – and some might not even be entirely human…

So, you might ask which is the real (original) timeline?  The only possible answer is they all are.  There is no reason to distinguish any line on that level, to think one is more original than another..  Of course, some do.  The Sorvee, for example, regard themselves as real and everyone else more like intelligent animals needing to be controlled and trained.  The Shinarites imagine people from other worlds as hardly more than shadows of real life.  But thus the stories…

Now, there is another form of “alternate universes” but that will have to wait until the next post.

###

At present there are no stories of the Worlds above.  In time, barring any significant historical change, there will be.

            The best thing about being seventeen and a high school graduate is having a whole summer to laze around before college.  Knowing this, Glen’s mother signed him up for a summer course.  Glen was ticked at first, but the course was in Archeology, a topic that interested Glen thanks to his Uncle, and it was being taught at the Museum of Natural History in New York City so all in all that was not so bad.  The train ride into the city, the path, and the chance to take the A-train all the way up the West Side alone made it worthwhile.

            Glen’s Uncle was an amateur archeologist in Arkansas.  He never got out of the ninth grade, and the PhDs had terrible names for a man like him, but he could read the soil better than anyone Glen ever knew, and he taught Glen to do the same.  Glen’s Uncle cherished the things he found, and he was respectful of the descendants of his digs who still lived on reservations in Oklahoma.  They were glad to see that someone was making the effort to learn and preserve their history and heritage, and so with that approval in his pocket, Glen’s Uncle did a lot of digging.  Eventually, he had several articles published in scholarly magazines, and more than once the University of Arkansas called on his help in their digs, and why?  Because Glen’s Uncle could read the dirt better than anyone Glen ever knew.

            On the last day of the class in New York, Glen and his classmates met early in the morning, piled onto a bus, and drove to a dig back in New Jersey somewhere up around High Point.  New Jersey Indians were not nearly as well heeled as the Caddo in the Southwest.  The dig was small, but interesting when they took the tour.  Then they had time to wander and watch as long as they stayed out of the roped off areas.  Most of the students watched the work in progress.  Glen knew that was like watching grass grow, so he thought to wander toward one area that was cleared of vegetation and grass but which was not roped off.

            “Excuse me.”  He stopped a man who had gone back to his jeep for a trowel and brush or something.  “Has this been cleared for future exploration?”  The whole area was dug into a pit about a foot deep, but no one was working there.

            “No,” the man responded.  “We thought there were signs there.  It looked promising, but it proved to be nothing.”

            “What do you mean nothing?”  Glen asked.  He examined the dirt.  “Look at this.  There are red, brown, and yellow specks mixed in all of this.  Somebody dug through several layers of dirt to bury something here.  Look.  There is even some charcoal here like from a ceremonial fire mixed in.”

            “That’s what I thought.”  The man swerved to join Glen.  “But we dug some test holes.  Here, here and I think here.”  He pointed to three spots along the perimeter.  “We went down about six feet but found nothing.”

            “Do the test in the middle first to see if there is something there.  That’s what my Uncle taught me.  If there is something, you can mark the perimeter after and work your way slowly to pay dirt.”

            “Your Uncle?”

            Glen looked up at the man and felt the embarrassing need to lie.  “University of Arkansas.”  It wasn’t a complete lie, he told himself.  “Got a shovel?  Mind if I dig since you folks aren’t interested?”

            The man hardly hesitated.  He took Glen to a stack of shovels and let him pick.  “I always thought there was something there only my colleagues talked me out of it.  Good luck, kid.”

            Glen dug, right in the middle, and not very far before two things happened.  First his shovel went “Clunk!”  It was not the clunk of metal shovel against stone, but the sound of metal against metal.  A few more shovelfuls and he uncovered a two-foot wide space and knew it was a sphere.  The other thing that happened was an older gentleman saw him and started a row.

            “Put that shovel down.  Get away from there this instant.”  The man made a terrific racket and got everyone’s attention as he came running.  To be sure, the poor man was terrified of being sued in case Glen got hurt; but Glen ignored him.  He continued to remove clods of dirt until he had the whole top hatch uncovered.  You see, he was driven because he recognized the symbol in the center of the hatch.  It was the symbol of the royal house of Hacharri of the seventeenth Hungdin dynasty of the Humanoid Empire.  That same voice in his head was telling him the ship, and it was a ship, had to be at least two thousand years old.

            When the man arrived, he stopped and stared.  The younger man Glen had first met was there as well, along with his teacher, Miss Watson.  They were all open mouthed and staring, so Glen thought it safe to speak.

            “Got a rope?”  He asked as he touched the external release button.  The hatch popped and there was a great whoosh of air while the two pressures equalized before the hatch opened wide to reveal a dark hole in the earth.

            “Rope.”  The younger man yelled and a University student came running.  “Flashlights.”  He added the word, but two other students had to run off to fetch them, and a lantern.

            “I might be able to get the lights on,” Glen said.  “This thing has a ten-thousand year half-life battery and it can’t have been buried here much more than two thousand years.”

            “What?”  The old man did not believe what he heard.  He looked at Miss Watson, but she could only shrug.

            When the rope arrived, someone backed up a jeep and the rope got tied to the trailer hitch.  Then Glen prepared to descend, but the old man got in his way.

            “You can’t go down there.  There is no telling what is down there or how deep it is.”  Glen dropped the rope into the hole and they clearly heard the clunk as it struck bottom.  He grinned for the old man.  “Absolutely no chance of you going down there.  Miss Watson, your class needs to leave, now.”  Miss Watson only looked disappointed, and the young man Glen met first looked equally disappointed.  But then something or someone rose up inside of Glen and he did something rarely seen in seventeen year old boys in those days.  He told off a full college professor who was used to being in charge.

            “No!  I am the only one who can go down there.  You have no idea what you are dealing with.  You touch the wrong spot and you can blow up the whole eastern seaboard.”  Then Glen left that place and Captain Dimitri Alesandros of the Solar Defense Force came from the future to stand in his place.  There were plenty of gasps and shock when Dimitri appeared, but Glen thought the military Captain would at least command respect and have the right words for the situation, him being more mature and all.

            “Move it fatso,” Dimitri said, and somewhere in time and space Glen sighed.  “Hand me the torch, er, flashlight.”  With that, he slowly lowered himself into the hole and no one dared stop him.

            Pumpkin zoomed into the barn and shouted at the top of her wee lungs.  “Brunch!”

            “Yipee!”  Martok’s excited shout interrupted everyone, and made the empathic fairy excited as well.  She flitted back and forth and did several back flips in mid-air before she finally came to land on Alice’s shoulder.  Martok was just too scary, she said.

            “This treaty is amazing.”  Alice spoke for the first time in an hour as if having a fairy land on her shoulder triggered her mouth.  “It is so detailed and there is not a flaw in it.”

            “It lasted four-hundred years,” Martok responded.  “A single species treaty lasting that long is good.  This one was interstellar, between two species, and ambitious ones at that.  The Zalanid were really that good.”

            “Remarkable.  I have to meet this Mister Smith of yours.” Alice added under her breath as Emile stood up from the back of a console and spoke.

            “That should do it.”

            “Good,” Martok replied and he switched it on.  “Hold your ears, Pumpkin.”  He tuned to the right frequency, picked up the microphone and spoke in a sound like metal garbage cans being thrown against garage doors—only louder.  When he was finished, he switched the machine off without waiting for a response.  “Hopefully that will delay any more hostilities until we can get there to meet with them.”  He then removed a small metal ball from the communicator and slipped it in his pocket.

            “Didn’t you need that magic metal circle thing?”  Alice wondered about the communication.  Alice of Avalon needed it last time to speak to the Vordan prisoner.  Martok merely smiled to reveal his teeth one last time before he vanished and let Glen return to his own time and place.

            “No,” Glen said before he took a breath as if he was still Martok speaking, which in a sense he was.  “Martok is fluent in Vordan and has the voice for it.  It is English that gives him trouble.”  He smiled a very human smile at that thought before he added, “Okay, Pumpkin.  You can stop holding your ears now.”

            “Breakfast?”  Miriam the marine suggested, and they all thought it was a good suggestion.  They were quiet as they walked up to the main building except for Mirowen and Emile who brought up the rear and were still whispering.

            Lockhart met them at the door.  “Cafeteria food.”  He apologized and escorted them to the cafeteria.  “When are we going to get some alien visitors who know how to cook?”

            “As long as they don’t try to cook us.”  Sergeant Thomas suggested what several thought.

            “No.”  Lockhart quickly pointed at Glen, but Glen just shook his head.

            “They liked their flesh raw.”  He did not explain.

            Everyone found something in the cafeteria line they wanted.  It was truly a brunch with eggs and pancakes as well as roast beef, baked ham, fried chicken and plenty of greens.  When they found a round table that could fit eight, they sat and the small talk started.  It was only a short while, though, before Bobbi and Colonel dipstick joined them and forced everyone to squeeze. 

            Pumpkin and Boston were getting along well.  The fairy sat right on the table in front of Boston’s plate and picked tiny bites of this and that.  She also had a juice glass of milk which she said was like a bucket for her.  “You try drinking a bucket of milk.”  She said that more than once, but she enjoyed it.

            Glen was made to sit with Boston on one side and Alice on the other.  Glen did his best to ignore Alice.  He knew she had questions.  He pretended to focus on Pumpkin at first, and then he trained his eyes on Mirowen and Emile.  Then he was glad when Bobbi joined them even if the Colonel, whose real name was Veber, like “Vay-ber” not Weber came with her.  Of course, Glen imagined Darth Vader when he saw the man, but in private he used the name dipstick.

            Doctor Roberts tried to hide his face.

            “Too late Doctor Roberts,” Colonel Veber pointed even as he motioned for the marines to keep their seats.  “You are already eating with an officer, isn’t that right?”  He looked squarely at Glen. 

            “Me?  Never, that I recall.  Doctor Mishka was a full Colonel, but she was soviet.  Casidy was a light Colonel, but it was more honorary than real.  He was really a Federal Marshal.  Michelle Marie had no rank.  I think George just kept her around for window dressing.  She was kind of like a team mascot for a while there.”

            “George?”  Someone had to ask.

            “Washington.”  Glen responded with an absolutely straight face and everyone hushed for a second because they knew Glen was telling the truth.

            “My buddy Lars had rank.”  Pumpkin spoke into the silence.

            “Captain.”  Glen nodded.  “But that was before there was a United States.”  He grinned for the fairy and Pumpkin giggled, just a little.

            Colonel Veber raised an eyebrow, but only one before he turned on Emile Roberts.  “You know, I still think you should be shot for stealing government property.”  Doctor Roberts merely shrugged, but Mirowen got flush.

            “That was my property,” she shot back at the man.  “It did not belong to the United States government.”

            “The mysterious accomplice I assume.”  Colonel Veber smiled and nodded to the beauty.  “But you don’t exactly sound like a patriot yourself.”

            “She’s an illegal alien,” Bobbi interjected. 

            “From further away than you can even imagine,” Lockhart added, and several people had to hide their smiles.

            Colonel Veber did not find it funny.  “I could have you arrested right now.”  He threw his napkin to the table.

            “Fake maple syrup!”  Glen yelled and distracted everyone.  “Don’t you have any real maple?  I hate the fake stuff.”  He looked up at the Colonel.  “And threats give me indigestion.” 

            Colonel Veber was not intimidated, but he took back his napkin and focused on his brunch for a bit.  There was silence around the table then until Alice picked up her steno pad and spoke.

            “So what is a Wolv?”  She grinned at Glen.  She knew that he was now trapped into answering and everyone turned to listen.

            The red shack turned out to be a small barn.  There was a woman out front in overalls and grease up to her elbows, or so it appeared.  When she greeted Glen by tipping her head down and saying “Lord,” Alice took a second look.  The woman was beautiful and Alice began to think this was a standard thing for the Traveler.  It made her feel a twinge of envy because while she knew she was pretty in her own right, she felt like nothing compared to the women she had seen so far, including the women of the Traveler.  She concentrated.

            “Mirowen.”  Glen gave the woman a name.

            The woman, Mirowen moved when a man came out of the barn to join her and Alice caught a glimpse of pointed ears under the woman’s long and straight raven black hair.

            “An elf.”  Pumpkin whispered in Alice’s ear and Alice nodded to say she had just guessed.  The man, however, looked thoroughly human.

            “Emile.”  Lockhart named the man.

            “Director,” the man responded to Lockhart.

            “What are you two doing here?”  Glen asked the obvious question.

            “Nothing,” Mirowen said, but Glen frowned because he knew it was a lie.  Mirowen turned away from her Lord to look at the man.  “I don’t know what Emile may be doing since we are not speaking to each other.”

            The man looked at the elf and nodded before he turned again to the group.  “But it should be fun later when we make up,” he said.

            Glen was not buying it.  He pushed forward and the couple only made a passing stab at trying to stop him from entering the barn.

            “What the—what did you do?  Doctor Roberts!”  Glen shouted even though the Doctor followed him in and stood at his shoulder.

            “Emile.”  Mirowen nudged the man.  He looked at her with an expression that said she was equally culpable.

            The barn contained a ship–a sphere some thirty feet in diameter, but it was presently hard to see since so much of it had been taken apart.  There were plates off the outer hull stacked in the corner, and much of the insides were scattered around on several tables and the floor.  It still had the basic shape, but it would never fly again, at least not without a great deal of work.

            “What is it?”  The woman marine asked in a quiet voice that suggested wonder.

            “The Vordan fighter?”  Alice also wondered out loud and spoke over the marine.

            “A museum piece.”  Glen responded haphazardly.  His eyes were busy making an inventory of all the pieces he could see, but his mouth went on to explain.  “This is, or was, an escape pod from an Humanoid battle cruiser, and a high ranking family at that.  I saw one in a museum once hundreds of years in the future.  We found this one in New Jersey some years ago.”  Glen ducked his head into a hole in the ship, but he kept speaking and no one interrupted.

            “I recall at the time I figured this ship had to be two-thousand years old.  It turned out there was a Wolv still on board in suspension, and that was trouble, let me tell you.”  Glen pulled his head back out and frowned at Emile and Mirowen.  “This thing could approach light speed and had a better weapons array than all the Vordan ships combined—as long as it was working.”

            “And this was just an escape pod?”  The marine sergeant stepped up.  “I would like to see the battle cruiser it came from.”

            “Two thousand years old?”  The woman marine was still in a state of wonder, but again her words were buried under Emile’s outburst.

            “But it is dead, completely.  No power.”

            Glen reached back inside the ship and touched several places on the inner wall—a portion of the wall that was still there.  Immediately there was a hum and after a moment some lights came on.  “Ten thousand year half-life batteries,” Glen said and he went back to his inventory.

            “That tears it.”  Alice huffed.  “Pumpkin, would you go visit Boston?”  Pumpkin flittered off Alice’s shoulder while Alice put down her laptop and began to write furiously on her steno pad.  Pumpkin hesitated.

            “I’m supposed to ask,” the fairy said.

            Boston grinned like the Cheshire cat at the idea.  “Yes, please.”  She spoke through that great array of teeth.  Pumpkin waited for no further invitation.  She took a seat on Boston’s shoulder and only tugged briefly on Boston’s short red hair—hair that would offer little cover.

            Lockhart watched the whole thing with a grin of his own.  He also saw Mirowen elbow Doctor Roberts in the ribs to get his eyes back on her and his mind back on topic.  They had been whispering.  He watched Alice the lawyer scribble on her pad before he sighed and wheeled his own wheelchair forward, hard as that was to do in the dirt and at his age.

            “So what now?” he asked.

            Glen pulled his head back out of the ship again, and the marines, who had been looking over his shoulder came with him.  “Now you get two more recruits.”

            “We don’t normally take grunts, as the Princess calls them.”

            Glen ignored the comment and considered the marines.  “Embassy?”  He asked the sergeant.

            “Yes, sir.  Don Thomas, and whatever you think of the President’s actions it seems to me you could use some grunts about now.  Miriam’s from the Pentegon.”

            Glen shook the sergeant’s hand and did not let go when he took a hand from the woman.  “Miriam?  Lebanese Christian?”

            “Yes, sir.”  The woman nodded.  “Very good, sir.  And I am sorry.  I just do secretarial.”

            “There, see?  Another file clerk.”  Glen spoke to Lockhart before turned to the marines and looked each in the eyes.  “Well, right now I need to change,” he said.  “Your first job for this crazy outfit is to hold on and promise not to let go.”  The marines looked at each other but said nothing.

            “Promise,” Lockhart said, sharply.

            “It’s tradition,” Glen added with a smile and a squeeze of each hand.  The marines nodded and Glen went away.  Martok the Bospori came to stand in his place.  Miriam just smiled, utterly fascinated by all of this, but Sergeant Thomas jumped back with a brief exclamation of surprise.

            “Someone always lets go,” Martok sighed in his deep Bospori voice.  The depth and tone sounded odd coming from one who was only five feet tall.  He looked human enough, though, if he did not smile and show off his canines, and if one did not get close enough to realize his hair was really black fur, and if he wore shades.  The yellow cat-like eyes were a bit of a giveaway.  Alice saw the eyes and guessed right away.

            “Martok.”

            “And pleased to meet you, too, Alice the lawyer who should be reviewing treaty clauses.”  He smiled to show her his full set of very sharp teeth.  “I’ll be a while so you have time to work.”  Alice dared not argue.  She swallowed and got her laptop.

            “Boston and I, and I guess Mrs. Pumpkin will go see about breakfast.”  Lockhart volunteered.  “I’ll try and get the limos and flatbed here as soon as I can, oh, and can we leave the three stooges out of it this time.”

            “What?  Moi?”  Martok spoke with the smile still in place.  “But watching humans hit each other over the head and pull hair and poke in the eyes is so funny.”  Lockhart was not buying it.  “Don’t worry.  This time I only see two stooges.”  Martok lost the smile and stared at Mirowen and Emile before he climbed fully into the ship.  “Roberts!”  He roared as soon as he got inside and everyone jumped.

            Glen got up early despite the fact that he had so little sleep in the night.  Pumpkin slept on the pillow on the floor next to Boston who was curled up in a ball and shivered against the cold tile.  As he rose, Glen took his hospital blanket and covered the girl, and he smiled because he managed to do it without waking her or the fairy.  Then he tip-toed towards the infirmary exit only to discover that Alice was up, waiting.

            “Don’t think you are going to get away,” she whispered.  “I have more questions now than ever.”

            Glen hushed her and took her hand to minimize the noise.  It didn’t help.  Pumpkin zoomed up to land on Glen’s shoulder before the door shut.

            “Where we going?” The fairy asked in the same kind of whisper Alice used. 

            “Apparently nowhere.”  Alice spoke out loud.  There was a soldier with a gun in the hallway.

            “Sir.  Mam.  I need to see your papers.”

            “What is this all about?”  Alice, the lawyer took the lead. 

            “Marines, Mam.  The President is taking over this operation, now I would appreciate seeing your papers.”

            “Pumpkin.  Go get our papers,” Glen said.

            “Yes, Lord,” Pumpkin responded and zoomed back into the room.  She turned the door handle with a bit of magic dust. and the poor marine got his first look at a real, live fairy.  His eyes got very big and his mouth opened wide.

            “That is very good, wouldn’t you say?”  Alice nudged Glen.  She decided to approach all of this from a different angle.  “My reaction was not nearly that photogenic.”

            “I don’t know—“ Glen hedged but Pumpkin returned before he could say more.

            “But we haven’t got any papers,” Pumpkin said as she hovered in Glen’s face.

            “Hey, hey!”  The marine caught two more marines in the hallway and waved them to join him.  The woman was instantly enchanted, but the man wanted to reach for his gun.”

            “None of that.”  Glen, Alice and the first marine, a sergeant spoke more or less together before Glen continued.

            “The director is in there, asleep.  You need to stay here and see she is not disturbed.”  He spoke to the trigger happy man before he turned to Pumpkin.  “You need to ride on Alice’s shoulder.  She has hair you can hide in.”  He turned to the sergeant.  “You are in over your head, but you are welcome to come along if you want to keep an eye on us.”  He turned to the woman marine.  “You need to tell the President he is ticking me off.  I told him we would be there this afternoon.”  He turned last to Alice who squinted as if the fairy might hurt when she  settled on her shoulder.  “And you need to be working on that treaty.”  Glen smiled.  “There, did I miss anyone?”

            The woman marine raised her hand and Glen nodded in her direction.  “Can I come, too?”

            “Sure, where are we going?”  Glen heard the words and turned around.  It was Lockhart in his wheelchair and Boston was behind him, yawning.

            “The assistant director.”  Glen identified Lockhart.  The Sergeant straightened up which caused the other two marines to come to attention.

            “Sir.  The President’s compliments.  He feels after the events of yesterday this base needs protecting.”

            Lockhart frowned.  Glen spoke up.  “Alice.  Open that laptop.  Check the Code of Establishment in the Charter, article 17, section c I think.  I believe you will find this organization was established to function independently from the three federal branches.  Neither the President nor the Congress has the right to send troops or even visit without asking first, or something to that effect.”

            “My God!”  Alice shrieked.  “This says the organization was established by the Continental Congress.  Look.  Look there.  John Adams.  Thomas Jefferson.”

            “Article 17.”  Glen interrupted and tapped the computer.  “I insisted that be in there.  Ben understood.”

            “Ben?”  Boston spoke through her yawn.

            “Ben Franklin.”  That woke her up.

            “I’ve read the Code.”  The voice came from down the hall.  All three marines snapped to serious attention and saluted.  The colonel returned their salute.  “The President figures you are so secret, who is going to know?”

            “I’ll know,” Glen said.  The Colonel was not impressed until Glen remembered where he saw this man before.  “What?  Area 51 get flattened when the Vordan brought their battleships to earth?”

            The Colonel stared at him for a second while Glen’s words sunk in  “Very perceptive,” the Colonel answered, but his words were overshadowed by the shouts.

            “What?  No!  When?”  The loudest shout was from behind the infirmary door.  Bobbi came barreling out, half-dressed.  “Are you sure?  Those battleships came to earth?”

            Glen nodded, gave Bobbi a good morning hug and started to walk at a quick pace toward the front door.  Alice jumped, closed the laptop and hurried to catch up.  Pumpkin complained about the bumpy ride.  The marine woman and the Sergeant were a step behind.  Lockhart came last, but Boston got up on the foot rests on the back of the wheelchair and Lockhart turned on the electric motor so they caught up quickly.  Glen felt bad about leaving Bobbi to deal with Colonel dipstick, but he had things to do.

            “The red shack still out back?” he asked.

            “Yep,” Lockhart answered.

            “The thing still on ice?”

            “Mostly,” Boston said.