Glen was escorted roughly to a house where he found the thing sitting in a  Lay-Z-boy.  It had a head three times normal size, designed to accommodate all the additional genetic information and enhancements, and it had no features on that face, no eyes, ears, nose or mouth.  Glen guessed all of the sensory apparatus, anything that would distract the mind had been removed.  She wore gloves on her hands, probably special gloves designed to limit contact.  He guessed she needed some nerve endings in her hands to be able to properly manipulate things, but otherwise all nerve endings were likely removed as well.  She had a terrible bruise on one leg and did not appear to be suffering from it.

            Glen paused.  Something touched at the corners of his mind and moved across the surface of his thoughts.  Alice assured him.  “Don’t worry.  The gods themselves could see no deeper than the surface of your mind.  That was one of the privileges given when you were declared to be counted among the gods.

            “Good to know.”  Glen responded out loud, but he was sorry he did not have any apparatus or special gifts of his own to throw the thing out of his head altogether.  It felt creepy, like fingers running across his brain.

            When the creepy fingers left his mind, he saw a face form on the outside of that bulbous head.  It was an illusion, it looked misshapen and the picture looked fuzzy like an old worn out photograph, but it did look like a cute little girl’s face of perhaps thirteen years.  Glen figured the girl got deposited here when she hit puberty.

            “Why can’t I touch your mind?”  The girl asked.  The mouth did not quite work in sync with the words.

            “Just lucky, I guess since you don’t touch minds, you take them.”

            “They are mine.  They all belong to me.  You belong to me.  I have looked at your insides and you are just an ordinary grub.  There is nothing special about you.  Why can’t I touch your mind?”

            “Kind of disconcerting, don’t you think?”

            The girl paused.  She had to look up the word before she said, “Oh, yes.  Very disconcerting.”

            “So there are maybe a hundred or millions like me that you can’t touch.  Maybe you should just go back to your own earth and leave this one alone.”

            “Oh, no.  Mama said there was nothing on this earth that could stop me from having my way.  I want my way.  I deserve my way.  I am Nelkorian.  You are just a grub.”

            “So maybe your mama did not know.”  Glen suggested, and he found his feet off the ground.  He shot back into the wall with enough force to crack the wallboard and it was painful.

            “Mama knows everything,” the girl said.  “You can wait with the other one while I think.”  Two men picked Glen up off the ground and dragged him to a back room.  They unlocked the door and threw him in.

            “How many of your empty shells do I have to kill before you leave me alone?”  The woman in the room stood.  He hands sparkled with some kind of electrical charge.  Glen quickly scooted his back to the wall and threw up his hands.

            “Wait, wait.  I’m not a zombie, I promise.  That thing can’t touch my mind.  I assume you are not a zombie either.”  He closed his eyes and expected to be electrocuted any second.

            “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”  The woman paused and asked.

            “Because.  Because.  I don’t know how.”

            With that the woman sat down on the couch.  “The thing would have had an answer for that easy question.”  The electrical charge vanished from her fingertips, and Glen breathed.

            “I take it you are the other one the girl mentioned.”  Glen rapidly changed the subject.

            “Don’t call it a girl.  You give all girls a bad name.”

            “Glen,” he offered.

            “Melanie,” she responded.

            “So how is it you’re not—“ they both started to ask the same question.  Both wanted answers but each was reluctant to give their own. 

            Glen studied the woman—young woman.  She was pretty, but maybe a bit too young to be out and about on her own in the city.  He finally had to break the silence.  “What are you, about fourteen?”

            “Nearly fifteen.”  She responded with an I’m all grown up attitude.

            “In high school?” 

            Melanie dropped her eyes.  “I’m a Freshman.”

            “No, that’s good.  Thinking about college?”

            Melanie shook her head.  “I have access to more information than any college graduate on this earth could ever have, or I will once I graduate.”

            “No college?”

            Melanie shook her head again.  “Well, my brother and sister-in-law are talking about the Gaian academy, but I don’t know.”

            “Why?  It could be fun.  I’m still thinking about college myself. Still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.”

            “No,  But you have to be thirty—near thirty.”

            This time Glen shook his head.  “Not that old, please.  Wait.  Gaian?”  Glen had to think and Melanie got a look on her face that suggested maybe she said too much.  “Gaian.”  Glen thought out loud.  “A technologically advanced civilization from a parallel earth that became concerned about some of the people learning how to move across the dimensions.  They started planting guardians in the worlds to defend those worlds from intrusions like this creature—oh, yes.  Now it makes sense.  You are the guardian for this world.”  He looked up at her again.  “A bit young for a guardian, aren’t you?”

            “Jillian’s sister, Diana picked me.”  Melanie defended herself.

            “Jillian, of course.  I met her, you know.  World War II in London.  She said she wasn’t supposed to interfere, but she was a great help to me at one point.”

            “Wait,  How?  You said you weren’t thirty yet.”

            “Twenty-eight,” Glen confessed.  “Well, it was Doctor Mishka who met her, but that still counts as me.”

            Melanie looked confused.  “Jillian is my sister-in-law.  She married my brother, Ethan.  She is sweet, though.  I can’t see what she sees in my doofus brother.”  Melanie paused then threw her hands to her head.  “No, no!  Get out!  Get out!”

            The Traveler walked slowly through the village.  She tried not to see but was unable to turn away.  These were not people.  They were animals, screwing in doorways, cutting themselves to feel the pain, killing animals to drink the blood and taste the raw meat, killing each other to taste that meat as well.  Kartesh walked slowly in the cold and misty morning, ignored by the locals until she reached the well.  Then everyone stopped whatever they were doing and turned their heads to look at her.  More than a hundred dead, staring eyes to haunt her dreams for centuries.

###

            The Traveler pulled the Polos behind him, not that it would make any difference.  Mafeo was already grabbing at his head.  There was a mind, a genetically enhanced alien mind reaching out to possess them and Lee could do nothing to stop it.  It had hidden from its own kind to survive, but now that the alien cyborgs had abandoned the planet, it had awakened, and it was hungry for experience.  Thirty of  its own people came staggering out of the cave.  Lee’s own battle weary troops abandoned their horses to run toward the cave.  The mind wanted to play war, and the Europeans were in the middle, helpless to resist.  If Marco Polo never arrived at the court of the Kahn, history would be irrevocably changed.

###

            The Traveler had crashed on the planet.  Well, she had taken out three enemy ships before her own had taken a fatal blow.  She got her people away on the shuttles and escape pods, but her own escape pod was damaged.  So she crashed on a planet with a small human colony.  That should have been her salvation, but a genetically designed mutant mind had reached out to possess all three hundred colonists.  Why would anyone create such a thing?  Bridget, though, was untouchable and the thing was frustrated.  She was strapped to a table and about to be drugged.  That could not happen.  She had to be conscious to stop the mind from breaking out into space, from creating a super race of super minds to possess the galaxy.

###

            Glen blinked.  Alice of Avalon stood in front of him and he was not even looking in a mirror.  She was the most intense, unattainable, untouchable beauty in the universe, he thought.  He could not help what he thought next, but it felt so weird.  She was him in another lifetime after all, and she frowned.

            “Sometimes I don’t like myself very much,” she said.

            “Me neither,” Glen said.  “I mean, me too.”  He had imbibed a bit on Saturday night and though it was Sunday morning he still felt it.  He was going to feel the hangover when he woke up, too.

            “Pay attention.”  Alice snapped her fingers in his face.  “An abomination has come into Manhattan, ninth street, your old stomping grounds.”

            Glen attempted to pull himself together but he was not altogether successful.  “Is it human?”  He asked.

            “Mostly.”  Alice gave a very unsatisfying answer.  “It does not belong in this universe.”

            “What, some alternate reality junket?”  Glen joked.

            “It is a child.  A rough guess would be twelve-years old.  Apparently the mother was strong enough to shred the fabric of reality and deposit the child here to incubate.”

            “What?”  Glen was not laughing now.  “But what can I do about it?”

            “You are the only one who can.  This is your life.  Others can help, but you must decide what is to be done.  Only you must decide quickly.  People are already possessed and some have already been discarded.”

            “Their lives drained and their bodies thrown out like empty husks.”  Glen understood. 

            “People are dying, and all of New York City is the playground.”  Glen sat up in his bed.  He was sweating yet his mouth felt bone dry and his head hurt.  He stumbled to the bathroom and managed not to throw up.  Then he could not get back to sleep.  It seemed to him that was the strangest dream he ever had.  He decided since it was Sunday morning, he might go to church.  Given the way he felt and the dream he just had he probably needed to go to church.

            Glen drove all the way down the Garden State Parkway, but when he got to the turnoff for home, he turned toward the city instead.  He drove in via the Holland tunnel and went uptown to the north end of the Village where he found parking in Chelsea.  He had a ten block walk to ninth street, but Glen did not mind walking in the city.  It was the driving that wrecked his nerves.  Besides, he needed the air.

            He started out serious, though he had no idea how he was going to find a psychic monster in the midst of so many people.  Half the people he saw could be possessed already and he would have no way of knowing.  Possessed people behaved normally enough because the abomination usually used their minds and memories in order to explore their lives.  Glen supposed it was entertaining for a while.

            After five blocks, Glen decided that it was just a dream after all.  It had to be.  He remembered a short story he wrote for a class at the New School about an abomination—his word.  It was an abominable story, but surely he made the whole thing up.  I mean, he confronted the abomination with a goddess.  Okay, so Kartesh was a lesser goddess, and forced to become one at that—she wasn’t born a goddess, but that did not make it any better.  The critiques he got all said he took the stupid, easy way out.  There was no tension.  It was no contest.  Of course Supergirl was going to defeat the cub scout, one person put it.  Honestly, Glen had to agree with them.

            By the time Glen arrived at Ninth street, all he really wanted to do was go by the Lion’s Head and have a drink and a bite of lunch, if they were open.  Still, he had come that far so he decided he might as well check things out, stupid as the whole idea seemed.

            Glen went by the New School, but it was locked up on Sunday morning.  He took a few courses there several years earlier, but they were night classes.  He supposed most of the classes at the New School were night classes.  He shrugged and moved on.

            He stopped at the eternally locked door that was the entrance to Electric Ladyland Studios.  That name was a stab from the past.  He wondered if the ghost of Jimi Hendrix was still haunting the place.  He decided he did not want to know.

            This is stupid, Glen finally objected to the whole enterprise.   Alice, if you want to stop some abomination, you do it, he thought.  He was a bit surprised when he heard her voice, just as he remembered it from the night before.  It rang loud and clear in his own mind.

            “No.  This is your lifetime.  You are the one who has to do it.”

            He shrugged it off as his imagination and turned into a side street.  It was one of those narrow streets in the village just barely big enough for one car.  The people there were all in the street and Glen imagined it was a block party going on until he got into the midst of them.  The people all stopped what they were doing and with one motion, all heads turned and all eyes stared at him.

            Glen swallowed the lump in his throat.  Maybe he would throw up after all.

            “I hate the killing part.”  Glen repeated himself.

            “I lost track,” Boston admitted.

            “That was not much of a story,” Alice said.  “You were handed the timer, like that wasn’t too easy, and the rest was pretty much just blood and killing as far as I can tell.”  She looked at Lockhart in his wheelchair.  He had something on his mind, and responded to her stare by looking up.

            “I always liked the name Cassandra, though I know better than to call the Princess that.”

            “You better not,” Glen said and a little smile touched the corners of his lips at the thought.

            Fyodor interrupted.  “I do not speak with a Russian akzent.”

            “I don’t like the killing either.”  Pumpkin shivered and shook herself like a dog shaking off water.

            “No one does.”  Sergeant Thomas spoke but it was almost too soft to hear.  The next word they heard clearly and it came from the weapons room up on the flatbed.

            “Incoming.”  Farquanded came to the door and shouted.  Bill had his eyes on the gauges. 

            “Where away?”  Glen asked.  He was thinking of Captain Hawk at the moment.

            “Thirteen from the west and another thirteen coming down from the north.” 

            “Alice.  Quick.  How many ships on a typical Vordan cruiser.”

            “Warship,” Alice corrected and she scrunched her face like she was accessing unfamiliar information, which she was.  “Thirteen attack craft, three shuttles and one or two auxiliary ships.”  She un-scrunched her face and smiled.  “One has a garbage scow.” 

            “Garbage?”  Boston sounded surprised.

            Glen nodded.  “You don’t think the human race has cornered the market on garbage, do you?”  He rubbed his hands together while he thought.  “Half of their resources and two thirds of their attack craft.”  Glen concluded.  “Sergeant Thomas.  You need to find Colonel Veber and prevent him from calling in F-15s.  Tell him he can keep them over the capitol just in case but we don’t need that bloodbath here.  Fyodor, you need to turn on the screens I installed on the Stealth and warm it up.  We will be leaving shortly, I hope.”  He looked at Alice, Boston and Pumpkin in turn.  “Pumpkin, you can get little again if you stay here for now.  I may need you to carry a message quickly at some point.”

            “Oh, thank you.  Thank you.”  Pumpkin resumed her natural fairy form and zoomed up to Alice and Lockhart before she settled on Boston’s shoulder.  It was hard for a fairy to remain in their big form for long, and Pumpkin had dutifully stayed big for long enough.

            “Lockhart, you get the women.  Sorry, but someone has to do it.” 

            Sergeant Thomas saluted and ran off.  Fyodor waved as he ran in the opposite direction.  Glen ignored them both as he crawled back up the side of the trailer and entered the room where Farquand and Bill were studying their consoles. 

            “Estimated time of arrival?” Glen asked.  Both men shrugged.  Bill, who watched the long range scanner as well as the disposition of the protective screens had no idea how to read a Kargill police chronometer.  Glen got a headache figuring it out.

            “Five minutes from the West.  Seven from the North.”  He paced a lot.

            When the western group arrived, they took up a formation where three ships attacked from each of the primary compass points while the thirteenth came in low, about six yards off the ground.  That ship crashed into the screen and exploded.  It temporarily pushed the gauge into the red zone, as Glen and Bill were calling it, but only for a second or two.  Meanwhile, the Vodan weapons were having no effect on the screen, but Farquanded was having his way with them.  Just by using the secondary weapons as instructed, he targeted and took down four Vordan attack craft before the group arrived from the North.

            With only eight craft remaining, the western group pulled back and let the northern group have a turn.  They had evidently been talking because a half dozen ships took off for the heights and came hurtling back in a tight formation, their main guns on full power, concentrated on one spot.

            “Damn!”  Glen remembered a bit late.  He jumped over to the back wall where he left his escape pod communications ball connected up to the laptop and the main system.  He switched it on and instantly every Vordan communications device on the planet got a rendition of the theme from Star Wars.  He jumped back.

            “We are hanging in the red zone,” Bill shouted.  Glen only needed a moment to target the main gun.

            “Ready to switch off.”  He yelled right back at Bill though the man was right next to him.  Bill nodded.  “Now.”  Bill switched off.  Several peripheral Vordan shots hit the ground but the concentrated shot of the group of six never came close.  Glen fired the main gun.  The beam was as wide as a skyscraper and it simply disintegrated six Vordan fighters—turned them to dust while on its way into the heavens.  Down below, humans covered their eyes against the brightness.  Some thought the shot might not stop until it knocked a hole in the moon.  In the air, the Vordan anywhere nearby had a difficult time staying aloft as the shot created a terrible vacuum.  The fighters wobbled, and two crashed.  By the time the Vordan were ready to resume the attack, Bill had the screens back up and Farquanded had resumed picking off fighters with the secondary weapons, weapons that now seemed like no big deal.

            Glen kept his eyes on the visuals.  “Damn,” he said it again.   The eight from the West must have hobbled together some sort of communication because they headed out as a group, not back the way they came, but for the secondary target, Washington.  “Hit the scrambler.”  Glen ordered, and Farquanded hit it.  Every Vordan fighter still up and in range started to trail smoke and came down.  The two out front in the group headed for the capital, however, managed to stay aloft—not to say they were undamaged.  Glen ran to the door.

            “Pumpkin.  Find Colonel Veber and tell him two Vordan fighters are headed for Washington and he can F-15 to his heart’s content.”

            “Got it,” Pumpkin said, and it almost looked like she saluted before she vanished in a flash.  If you blinked you missed her.

            Of the eleven ships that were brought down with Vordan still alive, only four Vordan were taken prisoner, and these only because they were badly wounded and did not have the means or chose not to kill themselves.  That meant twenty-four Vordan were casualties.  A dozen humans also made the list.  Two F-15s went down outside of Washington, and ten marines and Men in Black lost their lives in the roundup effort, three when a Vordan surrendered and blew himself up along with his escort.

###

            Two hours later, as the sun went down, Glen, Alice, Boston, Lockhart, Pumpkin and Sergeant Thomas stepped up the ramp and into the stealth bomber—company jet.  Josh and Wilson, the two young men Glen and Alice had met on that first day were there along with Fyodor who had the jet gassed up and ready to go.  Bobbi was mad that she had to stay behind this time, but she had work to do consoling the President, among other things, and making sure Colonel Veber got back in the hole he crawled out of.  Miriam, the marine, turned out to be a great help with that problem.

            “Where are we headed?”  Fyodor asked the obvious.  “You said Cape May.”

            “We need to go a bit further than that, but certain ears don’t need to know.”  Glen walked to the cockpit while Josh took up the co-pilot’s seat.  When Boston wheeled Lockhart aboard, Wilson welcomed her home with a stack of papers. 

            “Thanks a lot!”  Boston complained, but everyone else laughed except Pumpkin who volunteered to help.

            “No, no.”  Glen discouraged the Pumpkin helping with the paperwork idea and turned back to Fyodor.  “We need to go to Bermuda,” he said.  “Right to the heart of the triangle.”

            “You know,” Alice perked up.  “Two days ago I would have said you were out of your mind.”

            “And you would have been right,” Glen responded with a grin before he got serious.  “It has been a busy day, people.  No story tonight.  Everyone needs to get some sleep.”  Of course, no story did not prevent Glen from remembering a pressing story in his dreams.

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NOTE: To read this story from the beginning or to read any of the stories of the Traveler please click the tab “Traveler Tales.”  You can read the stories on the right independently, or just the Vordan story on the left, or the whole work in order as written.  Your choice.  –Michael.

            Martok was only out for a minute or so, and he was never completely unconscious.  He roused himself when he spied two men with shopping bags scurry out a back door.  He moved, but very stiffly, and by the time he got to the door and looked out, the men were gone.  It was a back stairs that lead down to the loading dock as he surmised.  He imagined they had a van or something down there and were already gone. 

            There were sirens in the distance and Martok decided not to try the stairs.  He hoped those men would be caught, but meanwhile there was a battle still going on in the warehouse.  He shut the door and turned to see the suitcase bomb had become so much scrap metal.  He thought, thank God they had not yet attached the conventional bomb.  If that had been there and set off by the grenade, it might not have been an atomic explosion, but the warehouse and probably the whole block would have become so much debris.

            Martok took a good whiff of air.  A natural gas pipe was leaking somewhere.  There was a hole in the floor of the room where the grenade had gone off, luckily on the door side of the trunk bomb.  He crawled over and looked through the hole.  God!  There was no crack in a gas line.  The main pipe was busted wide open.  When the enclosed space of the warehouse filled with enough of that gas, any spark would set it off.

            Martok got to his feet and went out the door and to the walkway railing as fast as he could.  He opened his lungs and roared and roared as loud as his bruised ribs would let him.  The gunfire below did not stop completely, but it stopped enough for Martok to shout at top volume.  His deep, alien voice garnered some close attention.  “Gas leak!  Get out!”  With that, he jumped off the side of the walkway.  He landed on the floor, two stories down like a cat.  Normally, that distance would not have hurt him, especially on lower gravity Earth, but in this case he said, “Ouch.”  He was pretty banged up.

            “My turn.”  Diogenes came back and Martok left that time and place.  Diogenes called to his helmet which was reminiscent of the ancient Greek style.  In his armor, with his sword in one hand and long knife in the other, he looked like someone off a Greek vase or out of Ancient Rome.  Two men ran up with guns drawn.  They pointed their guns but never got to fire them as Diogenes did quick work.

              Diogenes turned the corner and felt a rapid fire thumping in his chest.  The man had an automatic.  But while Diogenes staggered back one step, his miraculous armor repelled the bullets.  He could not roar like Martok, but he could growl, Macedonian style, and the look in his eyes, the only thing visible, must have said death.  The man dropped his rifle and ran.  Diogenes left the man to his fate and picked up his own feet.  He ran to the side of the warehouse, down the aisle against the wall, past the open window they first came in where he had to pause and kill one man, and back into the room where Fyodor and Lockhart were bleeding again.  Fyodor took another bullet, this time in his shoulder.  Lockhart just looked like all his energy was gone.

            Diogenes picked up the floor lamp and smashed it base first against the window to the sidewalk.  The glass broke on the second try, and the wood from the window snapped, but there was an iron mesh over the outside and it merely bent out.  Martok grumbled in Diogene’s mind.  “Once more into the breach, as your Shakespeare said.”  Diogenes left and Martok came back once more with a word.  “I liked that Shakespeare fellow, and the woman, too.”

            Martok threw away the floor lamp and picked up the bookcase.  He shoved it through the spot with enough force not only to open the window and tear away the iron mesh, but to take some of the building with it.  He turned and threw Fyodor over his shoulder, picked up Lockhart by the belt and leapt through the hole in the wall.

            The men went to the sidewalk as Martok fell.  But then he went away again and the Princess returned, dressed in her black suit as she had been at the beginning.  Doctor Mishka protested.  The men needed her attention.  But she was overruled.  Martok saw the police, everywhere.

            “Hold it right there.”  Two officers ran up with guns drawn.  They looked scared.

            “FBI,” the Princess shouted.  “These men are injured.  Help me get them away from the building.”

            The policemen looked at each other, holstered their guns and helped.  They had to carry Lockhart while the Princess let Fyodor lean on her.  Once behind a police car, the Princess gave Fyodor into the hands of another policeman and climbed up on the hood of the car.

            “FBI,” she shouted and started pointing at policemen.  “You, get the gas turned off in this building.  You, get the fire department here, now!  You, get these men to the hospital, stat!”  She was sure it was the right word, but no one moved until a man in plain clothes said, “Do it!”

            Policemen scurried everywhere, and that man came up to offer a hand for the Princess to get off the car.  “Your name?”  The man asked.

            “Princess,” the Princess responded.

            “Your real name.”

            “Princess.  I don’t like my real name.”

            “You have identification.”

            The Princess patted herself down which likely gave the plain clothes man some thoughts.  “Just the Princess,” she said. Her eyes were on her friends.  Lockhart was on a stretcher and being loaded into an ambulance.  Fyodor was crawling into the same vehicle.

            “You will have to come with me,” the man said.

            “Princess.”

            “Your highness.”

            Billings and Radcliff ran up.  They had survived.

            “Did everyone get out?”

            They all turned their heads toward the warehouse in time to see the fireball.  It was not really an explosion, but it was strong enough to kick out the front windows of the building.

            “Agent Billings!”  A woman came up dragging a man in spectacles who obviously did not want to be there.  “Your expert finally arrived.”

            “Yes, well.  May I see the piece in question?”

            Radcliff took it out of his jacket pocket and handed it to the man.  After a few hums and haws, the man came to a conclusion.

            “It’s a timed trigger of some kind.  I don’t suppose you know what it goes to.”

            “Time!”  the Princess checked the sun which she could tell as well as anyone with a watch.  “I have to go.”  She waved before she disappeared right in front of everyone and Glen returned in his suit, tie and disheveled shirt.  “That was interesting, but I have to go.”  He turned around and no one dared touch him.  He turned again to walk backwards for a minute.  “Oh, and you leave me alone and let me forget about all of this and sleep nights.  Oh, and if any of you says anything about what you just saw, the Princess said she will have to send Martok or someone to haunt you.”  Glen stumbled on the curb.  He was glad he did not fall before he turned and walked off, briskly.

            By the time he got back to his car it was two-thirty, going on three.  The regular commuter traffic around Atlanta was going to start soon and Glen knew he wanted to miss that.  By the time he pulled into his own driveway and his wife asked how the conference went, he said fine but he really could not remember anything about it—or about anything else.  Two days later when they heard someone set off a bomb in Olympic Park, Glen thought that was just terrible.  I mean, who would do such a thing?

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NOTE: To read this story from the beginning or to read any of the stories of the Traveler please click the tab “Traveler Tales.”  You can read the stories on the right independently, or just the Vordan story on the left, or the whole work in order as written.  Your choice.  –Michael.

            Lockhart took a bullet in the back as he dove behind some crates.  Fyodor grabbed his leg as he fell back into a tarp.  The Princess felt a bullet bounce off the shoulder pad of her armor, but all that just made her mad.  One arrow took out the man on the walkway, two stories up on the left.  A second arrow took out the man on the walkway to the right, but this one had the bad sense to behave like he was in a stupid movie.  He grabbed at the arrow in his chest, groaned and fell off the walkway, two stories to the concrete floor.

            A man came barreling out of the front office—the one by the front door with tinted boss’ windows that could look out on the warehouse floor.  He had a gun in his hand, but got the Princess’ long knife in his chest before he could fire a shot.  The Princess looked at her bleeding friends, struggling to fire at the men who arrived from some room at the back of the building.  She put the bow and arrows back in her cape, though it still appeared to be simply a free-flowing cape.

            The Princess left that place and let Martok the Bospori, her other alien life take her place—the armor adjusting automatically to his short but broad shape.  Bospori were not the swiftest runners even in Earth’s low gravity, but they were strong as a gorilla on Earth thanks to that same gravity difference. 

            Martok put one arm around Fyodor’s waist and helped him to his feet.  He practically picked Lockhart up off the floor with his other arm.  He had to drag Lockhart, but Fyodor limped and hopped and even managed a shot or two behind them as they stumbled into that front office.  Immediately Martok threw the office chair through the inside window so they could return fire on the men that poured out of the back.  Then he tipped the desk and shoved it to the window so they could have more protection against incoming bullets than just the thin fake wood wall beneath the window.

            “Prop me up.  Prop me up.”  Lockhart was on his stomach complained and tried to use his hands to get himself up to where he could fire his gun.

            “In a minute.”  Doctor Mishka’s voice made him pause.  Martok had left and let the good Doctor fill his shoes.  Lockhart felt his shirt rip and some cool ointment spread on his back where he was busy bleeding to death.  Doctor Mishka clicked her tongue but said nothing as she helped Lockhart sit up by the window.  She used a small knife from her boot to cut open Fyodor’s pants leg.  She spread some ointment on his leg even as she spoke.

            “I must go.  The bomb,” she said and she stepped up to the door and shouted in Russian.  “Colonel Nadia Illiana Kolchenkov, KGB.  Throw down your weapons and surrender.  This is madness.”

            “Very good,” Fyodor commented.  Of course, no one surrendered, but about half of the enemy stopped firing for a moment.  Mishka took advantage of that moment, but of course it was not Mishka, it was Diogenes of Pella who leapt, dove, slid to the dead body and dragged the body by the foot to keep the dead man between him and the shooters until he reached the back side of some crates near the wall where a steel girder went up to the ceiling. 

            Diogenes called, and the Princess’ knife vacated the dead man’s chest and jumped to his hand.  He wiped it clean on the tarp and put it back in its sheath while he considered his options.  The girder attached to the walkways two stories up.  There were rooms at the back of the warehouse, probably attached to the loading docks, but the little army of some twenty men had come from the downstairs rooms.  Diogenes surmised the bomb was likely  in one of the rooms above, off the walkways, and without a second thought he let Martok return.

            Martok jumped as high as he could and grabbed the steel girder.  He held himself up merely by his steel-like grip and the strength of his arms.  He reached the top quickly, but paused.  There was a man with a rifle who had come down that walkway with the hope of finding an angle to shoot down on Lockhart and Fyodor.  That, however, was not why Martok waited.  Come on!  He thought, and he was rewarded as Billings, Radcliff and a dozen agents came pouring in the front door.  Most made it to crates for cover, but two never got passed the door.  The enemy had some automatic weapons.

            Martok knew he would be exposed, but he hoped the people down below would be too occupied to look up.  He swung like an ape from the girder to the walkway rim where he hung and inched his way along to the man.  He grabbed on tight, actually bent the steel lip of the walkway with his right hand while his left hand reached up.  He grabbed the shooter by the ankle and with one good Bospori roar, he pulled the man right under the railing and off the walkway to plummet to the floor.

            Martok flipped himself up to the walkway and scurried along on his belly for a distance to get away from that spot.  No one fired on the spot, but any number of heads looked up at the roar.  Then it was Diogenes’ turn again.  He did a lot of this sort of stuff for Alexander, and he knew his job well.

            There were two men on the walkway in front of the most likely room.  The Princess wanted to come back and get out her bow.  Diogenes said, no.  Killing was his business.  He got out the bow himself.  Maybe he was not as good as her—no one was—but he was best in his class at the Academy in Pella.  From his angle, it only took two shots, and he did not even have to check  when he arrived and put his bow away.

            The door to that room was cracked open but Diogenes knew his job.  He pulled out his sword and long knife and readied himself.  He kicked the door open but stayed behind the wall.  There was a burst of automatic gunfire that stopped when the shooter saw no one in the doorway.  The instant the fire stopped, Diogenes let his long knife fly.  He caught the man in the shoulder, leapt into the room and finished him quickly.  The man in the white lab coat stood up and Diogenes cut the man’s head off with one back swing of his sword.

            The bomb was right in front of him.  It looked more like a trunk than a suitcase.  Mohammed was on the floor, dead, a monkey wrench in his hand.  He must have damaged it, but the man in the white coat said it was repairable.  Diogenes frowned.  They did not teach atomic bomb making at the Academy in Pella. 

            For the third time, Martok returned.  Even he was stymied for a minute by the bomb, not because it was so sophisticated, but because it was so primitive.  He decided there was only one insurance.  He uncoupled the radioactive material and threw it out the door as quickly as he could in an attempt to limit his exposure.  He heard it fall to the warehouse floor below, but then he noticed someone else in the doorway.  He leapt to the corner of the room behind the bomb, squatted down to his smallest size, put his face to the wall so only his cloak over his head and back faced the room.  The grenade still gave him a pretty good concussion, and he passed out where he squatted.

            Glen was woozy for an hour.  He passed in and out of consciousness and said things like, “Lockhart, where do I know you from?”  And, “I’m hearing voices in my head.  Ooo, that is not a good sign.”  And, “I need to see a doctor.  I know, Doctor Mishka.  No, that wouldn’t work.”  When he started to regain his senses, he listened for a while to the voices outside his head before he opened his eyes.

            “So, who is this guy?”  That was the red head.

            “Top secret,” Lockhart replied.

            “Hey, Billings.”  The other agent stuck his bald head in the door.  “This just came through.  Read it.”

            “So, what did the fingerprints tell you?”  Lockhart guessed.

            “Fingerprints?”  Fyodor asked.

            “I used to be a cop,” Lockhart responded.

            “All right, so who is this guy?”  The red head, Billings sat down and gave the paper to Lockhart.

            “Close the door, please.”  Fyodor asked and bald head came in and also sat.

            “Ultra top secret as in none of your business.”

            “But if Washington  says we are supposed to do what he says, I want to know who he is.”

            Glen could practically hear Lockhart shake his head.  “Don’t look at me.”  Fyodor spoke.  “I don’t know either.”

            “I know,” Glen mumbled.  “No I don’t”

            “I’ll say this.”  Lockhart sounded serious.  “He is my boss’ boss.  He runs the whole organization only sometimes he has these memory problems.”

            “Memories.”  Glen sang softly.  “In the corners of my mind…”

            “You mean, he is—“  Fyodor did not finish the sentence.

            This time Glen was sure he could hear Lockhart nodding.  “I walked right past him a couple of years ago.  I even stared at him, but he had no idea who I was.”

            “So we have to follow the orders of a mental defective?”  The bald one was unhappy.

            “No.”  Lockhart rose to the defense.  “When I say memory problems I mean something a little more complicated than that.”

            “Great!”  Billings did not really think it was great.  He got up to pace.  “Look, how long do we have to keep Mohammed locked up?  We can’t keep him forever, you know.”

            “Until the Princess gets here,” Lockhart reminded them.  “Those are the orders.”

            “Yeah, who is this Princess?”  The Bald one asked but Lockhart shook his head again.  “Okay, then where is she coming from, across town or out of town?”

            “Much further than that, I think,” Fyodor interjected.

            No, I’m sorry.”  Billings sounded determined.  “We can’t wait any longer.  As far as we know they may have some other way of setting the thing off.”

            “Okay, okay.”  Glen sat up but he did not look too healthy.

            “Robert?”  Fyodor looked at Lockhart.

            “Robert.  Roberta?  Roberta Brooks, FBI.  Is Bobbi here?”  Glen looked around the room.

            “No.  Bobbi’s not here,” Lockhart said.

            “Too bad,” Glen said.  “We did a bomb in 1973.  Of course that one needed a freight car.  Jersey Central.  That would have been a sight, Penn Station under a mushroom cloud.  Okay, Okay.”  Glen repeated himself but it did not appear that he was talking to anyone in the room.  “Sit down, Billings.  Baldy, you got a name?”

            “Radcliff,” the bald man said.

            “No offense, Radcliff.  I’m losing mine, too.”  He put his hand out.  “Radcliff.  It sounds like a Yankee name.  Fyodor, you take the other hand.”  Fyodor covered Glen’s hand and Radcliff got the idea and took the other.  “Now, I think this is silly, but Gallena says it is tradition.  Ready?  Don’t let go no matter what.  Here goes nothing, Lockhart.  Probably absolutely nothing.” 

            Lockhart grinned when Glen vanished from his spot to be replaced by a beautiful young woman with long golden brown hair and sharp blue eyes.  Fyodor jumped, but quickly grabbed the hand again.  Radcliff looked too stunned to move, and Billings sat down.

            “So how do I look?”  The Princess let go of the hands and stood.  She had on a proper black and silver trim business suit, not at all like the suit Glen had been wearing.  “Do I look FBI enough?”

            “You look fabulous.”  Lockhart said and all the men in the room nodded their heads. 

            “But will I be able to go out on the street without getting too many stares?”  That was her real question.

            “Impossible,” Fyodor said.

            “Your Highness could wear a tent and people would stare,” Lockhart said.  Billings and Radcliff could only nod.

            The Princess put her hand to her lip before she decided.  “I will take that as a compliment.”  She let out a touch of her radiant smile and turned to the FBI.  “Now, let me see this prisoner.  Gallena says she would like to have a word with him.”

            “Yes, mam.”  Billings reconciled something in his head.  Radcliff was still stuck at the jaw dropped, staring point.

###

            Mohammed was a low-level operative for Al-Qaida, an organization which at the time only one person in the office knew anything about.

            “Apparently they have been smuggling in pieces of the bomb for several months with the objective of having it ready in time for the Olympics,” Billings explained.  “My guess is they are aiming for the closing ceremonies, but if we can find the assembly point, we can shut down the whole operation before it gets that far.”

            The Princess nodded as she turned to face them all with an explanation of her own.  “Gallena needs to interview the prisoner alone, just before you release him.  You will also need to vent the room thoroughly before anyone goes in there.”

            “I don’t understand,” Radcliff said.  Only Lockhart understood from the days of his first encounter with the Traveler..

            “Gallena is Orlan.”  The Princess waited for the inevitable question.

            “What is Orlan?”

            “Not human.”  The Princess gave that thought time to sink in before she continued.  “Every Orlan secretes a scent that stimulates mating, but on humans it acts like a drug.  It saps the will and makes a person pliable to direct commands.  It is not a recommended course of action, but as you say, time may be short and it is quicker than waterboarding.”

            “Water boarding?”

            “Never mind.  It will just get you in trouble.”  With that, the Princess left and Gallena came to stand in her place, and at six foot, six inches tall, she towered over them all.  At a glance, apart from her basketball height she looked human enough—if one considered a Barbie doll shape human—including the large breasts and the super long legs.  Even her hair which was white like snow, not platinum or colorless white did not seem too out of place.  But the eyes gave her away.  They were lavender, not any color ever seen on a human being.

            “Excuse me,” she said in a human sounding voice and she stepped into the room where Mohammed was seated at a table, drumming his fingers and bored.  The man looked up and his eyes got big.

            “Mohammed,” Gallena said his name and the man fell to his knees and trembled.

            “An angel.  Allah protect me.” 

            Gallena shrugged a very human shrug.  There was no telling how humans would react on first seeing her, but in a minute, as she let her scent fill the room, it did not matter.

            “Mohammed, you must leave this place.  The bomb that has been built is very bad.”

            “Bad,” Mohammed said in a dreamy voice.

            “You must leave this place and go straight to the bomb, and you must find a way to break it without setting it off.  It is very wrong.  It must not be set off.  Do you understand?”

            “Break it.”  Mohammed nodded.  “Do not let it go off.”

            “God go with you,” Gallena said, and she escorted the man to the door.  He went out without paying any attention to who was around or who might stop him.  He had the protection of an angel.  He thought he might even be invisible.

            Gallena came out and the Princess immediately returned.  “My job is tracking and hunting,” she said.  “Lockhart and Fyodor, you are with me.  Billings and Radcliff, you follow us but keep whoever is coming well back so you are not seen by Mohammed.  He does not know us, but he knows you and that might spook him and break the spell.”

            “Spell?”  Fyodor asked.

            “Spell-like.”  The Princess smiled and took the man’s arm.  “Better than hypnosis.”

            It turned out the Princess did not need to use her tracking talent.  Mohammed went straight for a warehouse building and walked in the front door.  “Pooh!” she said as she lead the others around to the side alley to get in another way, unnoticed.

            “Let us go in first and give us time to try and find it.”  Those were Billing’s and Radcliff’s instructions.  “They may have it rigged to go off on short notice and an attack on the front door might inspire them to set it off.”

            Together, the Princess, Fyodor and Lockhart found a back window that was open and easy reach from the alley.  “Too easy,” the Princess said, and her suit vanished to be replaced by her armor and weapons.  She had her miraculous cloak on as well and she reached deep into the inside pocket of her cloak and pulled out a bow, already strung, and a handful of arrows.  Lockhart looked at his and Fyodor’s guns.  They had no silencers.

            “How does it do that?”  Fyodor fingered the cloak and watched it blow freely in the wind.  “Why do you not have a big lump in the cloak?”

            “Magic,” the Princess said with an impish grin, and she pulled herself silently up and over the lip of the window.  Lockhart and Fyodor came right behind her. 

            The warehouse was big, punctuated only by the steel girders that held up the roof and numerous piles of crates, some with tarps, that were scattered in every direction.

            “Needle in a haystack,” Lockhart whispered.

             The Princess looked up where a railing and walkways were positioned to oversee the work down on the floor.  “Minefield,” she said as the bullets started flying.

 ————————————————-

NOTE: To read this story from the beginning or to read any of the stories of the Traveler please click the tab “Traveler Tales.”  You can read the stories on the right independently, or just the Vordan story on the left, or the whole work in order as written.  Your choice.  –Michael.

            Someone bumped into Glen and was rude about it, grabbed his suit jacket and turned him in a half-circle.  The man was obviously in a big hurry and Glen had not been paying attention to where he was going.  Glen could not do much more than brush off his suit and watch as two men in gray suits caught up with the man on the corner.  The man put both hands up in the air like he was being arrested and the gray suits confirmed that impression by patting the man down.  The three then turned the corner and walked out of sight, and Glen imagined those gentlemen had some questions.

            Glen shrugged.  It was 1994 and he was in Atlanta for a two day conference for the church.  The church might have timed it better, though.  The Olympics were going on and Glen could not imagine the exorbitant rates the out-of-towners had to pay for rooms.  He was currently serving a small church in rural Georgia and while it was three hours away, he could at least sleep at home for free.  Then again, he felt lucky to find parking even if it was some blocks from the conference.  That was why he was walking.

            Glen felt the weight in his inside jacket pocket right away.  He looked up to shout to the gray suited men but they were already gone. He pulled the thing out.  It was a slim piece of electronic something.  He was not sure, but it looked familiar.  When he looked up again he saw a face that was even more familiar than the object, and this familiarity came with a name.

            “Lockhart,” he called and ran to the storefront where Lockhart and a younger gentleman were window shopping.  “What are you doing here?”  Glen paused.  He knew the man but he could not place where.  Lockhart returned Glen’s funny look before he responded.

            “Glen, good to see you.”  Lockhart’s expression changed from surprise to curious.

            “Are you in town for the Olympics?” Glen asked while his mind said, where do I know this man from?

            Lockhart nodded.  “A little vacation.”  He introduce his young friend.  “Fyodor Stoloyovich.  He just recently joined the organization.”

            Glen shook the man’s hand.  “Good for you,” he said while his mind frantically raced to remember what organization Lockhart was talking about.

            Fyodor did not know what to say, like he did not know what he was allowed to say.

            “I’m here for a church conference myself.”  Glen shook his head.  He did not know this man in a church context.  That much was certain.

            “We have some time to kill between events.”  Lockhart spoke like it was just an ordinary pleasant morning, which it was—a pleasant early morning.

            “Is he of the—organitsation?”  Fyodor used the word Lockhart had used but mispronounced it with his heavy Russian accent.

            “Yes.  No.”  Lockhart’s pleasant expression turned serious and then worried.  “He is trouble.  What is going on?”

            Glen shook his head, but found his hand go for the gadget in his pocket.  He glanced at the street corner where the gray suits had disappeared and looked back at Lockhart, confused.  “A man just bumped into me and slipped this into my pocket right before he got arrested by a couple of gray suits.  Have you ever seen anything like it?”

            Lockhart shook his head, but Fyodor’s eyes got big.  Glen and Lockhart looked at the man but he appeared to back off from whatever idea he had. 

            “What?”  Lockhart insisted.

            “Well.”  Fyodor hesitated before he blurted it out.  “It looks like a trigger—a timer of some kind.”

            “For?”  Lockhart was not going to let the man get off easily.

            “Well.  For a retro rocket, if it is former Soviet.”

            Lockhart breathed.  “Cosmonaut.”  He told Glen and pointed with his thumb.  Glen smiled but now he was really confused.  What organization employed former Cosmonauts and who on earth was Lockhart?

            “Or a bomb,” Fyodor added.  “Like a bik bomb.”  He made a face and lifted his hands.  “Boom.”

            “Maybe we should take it to the police,” Glen suggested but Lockhart was not finished.

            “How big a bomb?”

            “What is the word?  Yes, Atomic.  An atomic bomb.”

            Lockhart had a mobile phone and he made a quick call.  Glen wanted to drop the gadget from his hand but did not dare.  He was afraid it might explode on contact with the sidewalk.  He tried to hand it to Fyodor but Fyodor would not touch it.  Lockhart made several calls and Glen got more uncomfortable by the second.  At last, Lockhart returned from phone-land.

            “We have an appointment with the FBI,” he said.  “And you need to come with us.”  That was not what Glen wanted to do, but somehow he felt he was not going to get much out of the church conference. 

###

            They were met at the door by the two men in gray suits.  Glen recognized them because one had a full head of red hair and the other had no hair at all.  Lockhart flashed his billfold for the men and Fyodor did the same.  The men looked impressed at whatever was in the billfolds and the redhead immediately asked, “Is this the man who found it?”  He spoke over Glen’s head as if Glen was not even there.

            “Yes he is and lucky for you,” Lockhart said.  “Though he says there is no such thing as chance or accident in this universe.”  He went to escort Glen into the building but the bald one blocked the way.  “Of all the people on this planet and maybe in this galaxy, he is the best chance we have to find out what is going on here and stop it.”

            “May I see the detonator?”  The bald one wanted it.

            “It’s not a detonator,” Glen responded as he pulled it out.  “It is a temporal trigger as Fyodor said.  At least Martok calls it that.”  He looked at Lockhart.  “Who is Martok?”  He did not wait for an answer.  “You still have that man on ice?  The Princess says hold on to him until she can get here to follow him and see where he goes.  Lockhart?”  Glen collapsed.

            “Help me.”  Lockhart kept Glen from hitting the floor and Fyodor stepped up to help.  They pushed their way into the building and the red head found a room with some privacy.  The bald one got the trigger, but then he did not know quite what to do with it.  The FBI expert had not yet arrived.

            They were half-way back to the base before anyone dared say anything.  Glen looked out the window and brooded about the future.  The years he was living through and the next fifty to a hundred years were always fuzzy in his mind.  He figured that was because he was moving in that direction so they had not actually been written yet.  Sometimes, though, he could look back from several hundred years out and get the gist of the days, much like one might get from a history book.  He knew the Earth was in for a rough haul over the next hundred years, and the United States would be far from exempt.  In some ways, the U.S. would stand at the center of the hard times.  It was not a cheery thought.

            Sergeant Thomas sat quietly against the other window.  He did not mind the silence and was no stranger to it.  Lockhart and Boston whispered now and then, but not enough to break the spell.  Alice worked dutifully on the treaty.  She was starting to compose her thoughts and in the Vordan tongue, now that she could.  Pumpkin might have spoken, but Glen told her to keep her eyes on the ball he took from the Humanoid Escape Pod and she was watching it with all her might, but she broke the silence in the end.

            “It’s blinking,” she said, and dared to look up at Glen.  There was a light blinking on the ball.

            “Here we go,” Glen said, and the first thing he did was turn on the volume so they could hear the conversation that was being transmitted from the Vordan in New Mexico to the mysterious strangers in space.  “Pen and pad.”  Glen nudged Alice and she got her steno pad and began to transcribe the conversation that just sounded like guttural gibberish to the others.  Meanwhile, he typed furiously on the computer and gave an update as he got close. 

            “They are within our solar system.  Jupiter is interfering.  No, wait.  They are on this side of Jupiter.  Beyond Mars.  Damn!”  Glen put his hands temporarily to his head.  “They are within the asteroid belt.  That is like a needle in a hay stack.”  He vanished to be replaced by an Asian looking woman who took up the typing but almost exclusively used the number keys.

            “Jennifer.”  The woman gave her name.  “I did my doctoral thesis on navigating the gravity wells in the asteroid belt.  I got to pilot the first ship to go there.”  She paused.  “I mean, I will get to pilot the first ship some day.”  She stopped talking and typed a last flurry of numbers.  “Got ‘em,” she said, and she left so Glen could return.

            “All math.  Not my thing,” Glen explained.  “What?”  Glen looked up and got that glazed, far-away look in his eyes.  He was not talking to anyone in the limo.  “Are you sure?  Damn, I was afraid it might be that.  I can say damn if I want to.  No, no.  Being ordained has nothing to do with it.  Huh?  Yes, I suppose we must.”  He came back to the others, looked once around the car and repeated himself.  “Damn.”  And he did not explain.

###

            They got back to the office before the item on the flatbed decompressed.  That was a good thing because Glen was not entirely sure if the flatbed was big enough or if the trailer would be crushed once decompression occurred.  Glen had read the transcript translation and it sounded to him like the Vordan were planning a strike even though the ones in the asteroid belt advised against it.

            When the odd looking gun decompressed, it turned out to be a box the size of a room.  It took up two thirds of the trailer, but the trailer held it without great difficulty even though it was a wide load.  The stick on the end extended half again the distance beyond the end of the trailer.  It was not heavy enough to shift the box-room off the trailer.  That was another possibility Glen had worried about.  The stick looked like a gun, but Boston thought it might be an antenna.

            “Both, sort of,” Glen said as he climbed up and touched the outside of the box.  The door opened and he was glad to see the room still had power.  Alice, Sergeant Thomas, Colonel Weber, and Bobbi followed him in, and Glen asked Bill and Farquanded to come in as well.  They had been assigned to the truck since the Vordan fighter was gone.  Things were a little tight in that room, but it did make it easy to hear when Glen explained.

            “This is the main weapon station from a Kargill police cruiser that came to earth some years ago.  They were seeking the escaped criminals from a penal ship that crashed.  Anyway, the cruiser got destroyed, a story I won’t go into now, but I managed to salvage this section.  Farquanded and Bill, if you would please come close.  The rest of you please step back and don’t touch anything.”

            Everyone shifted positions, but it was hard not to touch anything.  There were two chairs—human enough looking chairs attached to the floor in front of consoles of some kind.  Glen got in the first and let Martok the Mathematical Engineer take his place.  He could calculate the precise needs in his head and could more easily manipulate what was to him a rather simple system.  He appeared to program the first console and then he vacated the seat and made Bill sit down. 

            “This controls the screens, particle and energy, and this is the on-off switch.  Here is the gauge you have to watch.  If it moves above this symbol and stays there, turn the switch off, count to ten and turn it back on again.”  Martok turned to speak to everyone. 

            “Every warship is screened in space, but for battle, engines, weapons, communications and sometimes escape pod areas have their own screens so they are like double screened.”

            “The Vulnerable areas,” Bobbi understood.

            “I have expanded the screens to cover the building and most of the property.  It has stretched them which means weakened them, but they should be strong enough to ward off Vordan weaponry.”  He turned again, this time to the other chair where he made Farquanded sit.

            “These are your weapon options,” he said, and touched a switch that started a hum and started the whole room vibrating.  It only lasted a second.  “The antenna-gun thing is now sticking straight up.  Leave it there.  You don’t want to accidentally blast a hole in your own building.  This button controls the targeting of secondary weapons.”  That explanation took time.  “And this button sends out a pulse that will interfere with and maybe burn out electrical systems.  I’ve set it so it will go out above the building height so any fighter coming in low will not be affected.  You got it?”

            They appeared to understand, so Martok said there were only two more things they could do.  He ran to the door and jumped out to land on the grass.  Pumpkin screamed.  Lockhart and Fyodor laughed, and Boston did not know what to do.

            “Hello, Boston dear.  I did not want you to miss out.”  Martok grinned for the gentlemen and showed off his teeth before he let Glen come home.

            “Traveler.”  Colonel Weber crawled down from the truck.  “You said there were two more things to do.”

            “Yes.”  Glen sat on the grass.  “You need to gather your marines and Bobbi, you need to get all the muscle you can.  When the Vordan fighters come down, you need to send out groups to pick up as many prisoners as possible.”

            “Why don’t we just shoot the bastards?”  Colonel Weber was serious.

            Glen shook his head.  “We need the prisoners for negotiations, but be on guard.  They will try to kill you and will not be taken easily.”

            “Kill us?  Not if we kill them first.”  He walked off and Bobbi hurried after him to argue the point.

            “What is the other thing we need to do?”  Lockhart asked.

            “Wait,” Glen said.  He sat on the grass and Alice pulled up a spot beside him.

            “What can I do?”  Fyodor asked.

            “Stay alive.  We need to fly to Cape May, after.” 

            “You know, taking prisoners won’t have any bearing on any negotiations with the Vordan.”  Alice said, drawing on the knowledge that had been implanted in her mind.

            “I know.”  Glen understood.  “I just hate the killing part.”

            Alice was the first to pick up the point.  “So what you are saying is Madam Goldman is like the Vordan and what you are really concerned about is finding out who the power is behind the throne, so to speak.

            Glen nodded.  “But the disobedient son of Lyr and Pendaron won’t be around to help with this one.”

            “That is not what I was thinking,” Boston said.  “I was thinking the Vordan  were like the sea worm, able to do some small damage but it is the Mama we really have to watch out for.”

            “I was trying not to think at all,” Pumpkin said.

            “She is afraid of Sea Serpents.  Most fairies are, though a big lumbering beast like that could not hurt a fairy in a billion years.”  Glen Patted Pumpkin’s hand to reassure her.  “So what do you think, Sergeant?”

            The Marine looked around at the faces in the limo before he answered.  “I think you are right.  I’m in over my head.”

            “Aren’t we all?”  Lockhart laughed, but by then they had arrived.

            The two limos were passed right through the White House front gate to drive up to the front door.  The flatbed had to wait on the street.  Once everyone was out of the cars, they had to pause at the front door while the secret service checked them for weapons.  Glen dragged his feet and came last in line, after Alice, but of course he had nothing on him, not even his car keys.  

            As soon as he got the all clear, the party started to follow the guide, flanked by two more Secret Service agents.  Glen only took two steps before he went away and the Princess showed up, dressed in the Traveler’s armor and bristling with all sorts of sharp weapons.

            “Hey!  Wait a minute!”  The man at the front door shouted even though the rest of the agents appeared shocked into silence. 

            The Princess turned, but as she did, all of the hardware went away to be replaced by a mini skirt and a top that was cut low and fit tight around that perfect figure.  Her face wore the saddest, cutest little pout and she put her finger to her lips.  “Did I do something wrong?”  Her hair was a very light golden brown, but a true blond could not have done it better.  The agent at the door visibly melted.

            “No, that’s fine.  Everything’s fine.”

            The Princess slowly let out her smile and the poor man at the door was helpless.  She turned again, the armor and weapons immediately came back, and she walked toward the front stairs.  Alice walked beside her.

            “You are a wicked girl.”

            “Sometimes.”  The Princess grinned.

            “I like you.”

            “I like you too.”  The Princess went away and Glen came back in his own clothes.  ‘But right now we have to be good.”  Alice grinned like the Princess.

            They stopped at the top of the stairs.  There was a man who waited until they all caught up and bunched up like a tourist group at a museum.

            “My name is Mister Johnson, special advisor to the President.  To get to the Lincoln bedroom we will be at the residence, so please be quiet and respectful of the family.”

            “Roberta Brooks, Director.”  Bobbi shook the man’s hand.  Lockhart and Boston followed suit and introduced themselves before Glen stepped forward.

            “Hi, I’m Glen.  This is Alice Summers my lawyer, Sergeant Thomas my bodyguard, Fyodor is my pilot, Darth Vader over there is the one in the Colonel suit and Pumpkin is my personal fairy.  Now, can we get on.  This won’t take long and I have a Google Galaxy report waiting in the limo.”  Glen started to walk.  He remembered the location.

            “Hold on.”  The man caught up and paced him.  “I assume you are the one.”

            “The Kairos.  The Watcher over time.  The experiment in time.  The Traveler in time.  The poor soul who isn’t allowed to die and go to heaven?  Yeah, that would be me.  But I am guessing you have something to tell me.  Spit it out, man.  God, I sound like Althea.”

            The man said nothing.  How could he?  But he indicated he might have something to say in a little bit.  First they reached the Lincoln bedroom and Glen went immediately to a corner. 

            “The room has been renovated since Lincoln’s day,” Mister Johnson said.  “Nothing has been found here.  I cannot imagine what you think you will find.”

            “A temporal and spatial pocket,” Glen responded.  “You wouldn’t find it without equipment that won’t be invented for a long, long time.”  He banged the wall a bit hard.  Mister Johnson jumped, afraid Glen might damage the room, but he did nothing to stop him.

            “Pumpkin.  How many miles to Avalon?”

            “Three score miles and ten.”

            “Can I get there by candle light?”

            “Yes and back again.”  Pumpkin clapped her hands and let out her best smile even as a white light settled temporarily in the corner.  She loved that poem; but Glen was busy, now having turned the lock.  He banged twice more on the wall and kicked it once at the base and a section of the wall disappeared to leave a space that should not have been there.

            “A-ha!”  Glen bent down and everyone else inched forward to look.  When he pulled his head back out of the hole, Glen had something in his hands.  It was metal with a box on one end and a stick on the other.  He handed it to Fyodor.  “This is compressed in time and space.  It should be preserved from the time compression, but the spatial differential will reassert itself after a couple of hours of exposure to normal space-time.  You need to put this on the flatbed, two-thirds toward the cab with the stick pointing out the back.  Got it?”

            “It’s heavy.”  Fyodor took it.

            “It will get much heavier.”

            “Now wait.”  Mister Johnson started to speak but Glen had his head back in the hole. 

            “Oh, look!  Casidy’s badge.  I was wondering what happened to that.”  He came back out with a badge that said Federal Marshall.  He blew off some dust and rubbed it on his jeans to polish it.  “Go on, Fyodor.  Sergeant, do you mind helping?  You really don’t want that thing decompressing indoors.”

            “Now wait.”  Mister Johnson got in the way.  “Whatever is here is the property of the United States.  The President insists that you go to the afternoon meeting of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.  We have several National Guard units ready to roll.  You are to supply the coordinates of the enemy and that is all.”  The secret service blocked the door.

            “Uh-oh.”  Lockhart said the word softly.  “I recommend everyone cover their eyes.”  Everyone did, except the White House staff.  Even Pumpkin played the game.  Glen might have covered his eyes too, only he was no longer there.  There was a woman standing in his place.  Her eyes were like fire, arcane power crackled all around her, and she was ticked.  She spoke in words that penetrated into the soul, far deeper than the ears.

            “This is my property.  The Vordan are my business.  As tempting as it may be, I don’t tell the President how to do his job.  DON’T tell me how to do mine.”  She snapped her fingers in Mister Johnson’s face and the company vanished from that room.  They appeared beside the flatbed and found their limos and drivers there, too.  The box and stick was already in place on the truck bed, but the woman was not finished.

            First, the words “Stand Down” appeared over and over on every fax machine, copy machine, computer and even personal cell phones available to certain National Guard units.  At the same time, a black cloud appeared over the White house.  The earth trembled with a slight earthquake and a stroke of lightening made a big hole in the White House driveway.  Then the woman spoke again in a more normal voice.

            “And I would have spanked him, too,” she said as she went away so Glen could come home and apologize.  “Sorry.”  Glen spoke generally to everyone.  “Sorry!”  Glen shouted back at the White House.  “Maybe we better go,” he suggested, and no one objected.  As they got into the limos there seemed only one more thing to say.  “Okay, Pumpkin.  You can uncover your eyes now.”

            The old woman slid down from the crates.  She spread her legs wide against the sway of the ship and the pain in her whole body.  It was the only way she could stay upright.  “You will suffer,” she said, but while she spoke Althea thought she needed a makeover.  “You have no idea who my benefactor is.”  The woman’s tight hair bun came undone, her hair frizzed out and she lost all coloring so the gray was everywhere.  “He will not be pleased.”  The woman’s fine and rich maroon velvet dress became plain black cotton.  “You will be tormented for a thousand years.”  Althea considered the teeth, but in the end she opted for one hairy wart on the woman’s nose.  “Poseidon!”  the woman bellowed.  “Neptune!”

            Althea felt the pressure inside and she did not resist.  “I’ve had my fun.”  She felt the woman’s appearance now matched the witch that she was, and with that she went away and let the Lady of the Sea return who said something no one heard above the woman’s bellows.  “My husband?”  She clapped her hands together and looked altogether like an excited young girl.

            “Poseidon!”  One more bellow, and he came, but he was not alone.  The one with the crown and plain skirt and trident was in a crumpled ball on the ground.  The one standing over him was too frightening to look at.  He was tall and lean with gray-green skin that was covered only by seaweed.  His eyes were the color of cold iron and his face wore a frown of stone.  He ignored the crumpled man at his feet and walked straight toward the Lady, and without effort despite the terrible swaying of the ship. 

            The old woman gasped in horror at the sight of her benefactor, broken and not daring to lift his head.  Simpson stopped bleeding long enough to hope this demon of a man would whip the sea Lady and drive her to the ground.  Abu became afraid for his Lady of the Sea and would have run to help her but he was paralyzed by his fear.  Madison covered his eyes.

            Everyone was surprised when this man-demon who towered over the little woman came right up to her and fell to one knee.  “Majesty.”  The man lowered his eyes.  Then he said something truly remarkable.  “Mother.”

            “Don’t you mother me!”  The Lady’s words were sharp and she threw her hands to her hips for emphasis.  “If Danna was here she would spank you, you bad boy.  You should have gone over to the other side a long time ago.”

            “Soon.”  The man said one word in his defense

            “Soon?  What is it with boys!  Soon.  I am sick of soon.”  They were interrupted by a tremendous BANG on the outer hull, and the Lady’s response was to bend down and kiss the demon man right on the top of his head.  “Fortunately for you, today is your lucky day.  Keep Mama Serpent busy and away from the ship until I can resolve things here.”

            The man stood up, tall and lean and still as frightening to look at as ever, but now there was something soft in those steel eyes.  “Majesty.”  The man bowed and disappeared while the lady turned her attention to the man on the floor.  He had gotten to his belly to plead.

             “Up.”  The lady commanded, and the man on the floor slowly rose to his feet.  He had a long neck and gills.  He had eyes that were too big and all black like they were nothing but pupil, an image that was reinforced by the man when he blinked and shaded his eyes even from the dim light in the hold.  He left the trident where it lay, but that did not matter.  While the others were taken back by the man’s alien look, the Lady of the Sea began to laugh.  She turned to Madam Goldman.  “You thought Lord Revelian was Poseidon?”  With that said she laughed nice and loud, and it was contagious so soon everyone was laughing, even Lord Revelian.

            “Humans are so easy.”  Lord Revelian used the old expression and pointed at Madam Goldman through his guffaws.  That made the Lady of the Sea stop laughing, suddenly and completely, and everyone stopped with her, no wiping the eyes, no catching the breath.  The room just became utterly quiet.

            Lord Revelian once again fell to his face to plead.  “Great and gracious majesty, I beg your mercy.  It was all just me.  My family is innocent.  Please—“

            The Lady interrupted.  “Your family has been trying to seed Earth’s oceans with every great and glorious monster of old for two thousand years with the hope that you can return and the Mere People can once again rule the Seven Seas.  It is not going to happen.  So what is it, some genetic problem?”  Lord Revelian looked up.  He did not understand what she was suggesting, but then neither did anyone else.  “You know the penalty for breaking the law.”  Lord Revelian lowered his head.  “So be it.”  The Lady waved her hand and Lord Revelian vanished.  No one dared ask where he went. 

            “Now, as for the rest of you.”  She snapped her finger and They all appeared on the Foredeck near the railing at the very front of the ship.  Madam Goldman needed a moment to catch her breath.  “Home.”  The Lady snapped at the knife in Simpson’s shoulder and it vanished.  She said, “heal,” and the shoulder healed itself instantly.  Simpson was still weak from loss of blood, but he would not die from the wound.

            “But.”  Abu nudged Madison and pointed.  The worm was with them, curled up on the deck like a sailor’s rope or maybe the biggest rattlesnake, ever.

            The Lady looked at them and both had to look away from her glorious face.  “You two will get the credit, and Abu, you will get a raise so you can bring your wife and children from Syria to America.”  The Lady turned to Madam Goldman and her accomplice.  “You two will be charged with throwing people overboard in order to rob them of their valuables, including the poor child that saw you in the act.”  The Lady clicked her tongue.  “Madison, you will find those valuables in their rooms.  It should be enough to incriminate.  But don’t worry.  You won’t get the death penalty.  But you, Madam Goldman, you will be penniless the rest of your days, and powerless.  Your magic is taken from you.”  The Lady smiled and turned to the sea.  “Mama!”

            A serpent head the size of a house rose out of the sea and stopped inches from the railing.  The tall and lean demon man was riding just behind the ears and he looked perfectly at home in that place.  The worm on the deck began to squeal — sounds that caused Mama serpent to bob her head up and down.

            “Go on, baby,” the Lady said.  “You are too young to be away from your Mama.”  With that permission, the worm uncurled and stretched out toward that tremendous jaw while the serpent mouth opened wider and wider to receive the baby.  When the worm squirted into that mouth to be lost in the dark cavern, Madam Goldman screamed.  She leapt after the worm even as that giant mouth closed and ripped off a chunk of deck, slicing easily through wood and metal alike.

            “Home!”  The man on the serpent’s back shouted and waved, and as the serpent turned away from the ship it faded.  Even as the rising sun broke above the horizon, the serpent and its passengers vanished from the world altogether.

            “There.”  The Lady turned from the sea and with a simple wave of her hand the ship, deck and all was made whole and perfect once again.  She knew the Captain would come out of his fog and behave normally, now that Madam Goldman’s spell was broken.  Madison would rationalize it all away in time and come to believe his own rationalization.  Abu would remember, but he could never tell anyone.  Simpson was already considering suicide.  With Madam Goldman and Professor Romer gone, Simpson felt it was unfair he take the whole rap for throwing those people overboard, which is what he thought he had done.  Sadly, the lady knew the man would have to make his own decision. 

            Then there was the hurricane coming up rapidly from the south on a collision course with the ship.  She turned it toward Africa instead.  Angola was very dry. “Sorry.”  She said out loud to no one in particular,  She was sorry she let her anger at this whole situation become manifest.  “One century I will learn to control my anger.  Soon,” she thought.  That word made her smile.

            She rose up into the air, and as she did, her legs vanished to be replaced by a true mermaid’s tail.  This was not human legs in a mermaid suit.  It was the real deal as she showed by making the tip of her tail slowly curl and uncurl.  She smiled for the others before she dove backwards off the deck and into the ocean where she could revel, at least for a short time, in the glorious waters of the Atlantic. 

            Poor Glen had to make up a story about Abu being lost and Officer Madison not showing up—or he missed them.  He sulked right through dinner to make it a good show.  There he heard the Chief Steward make an announcement.

            “Ladies and gentlemen.  We apologize for the rough water this morning.  There is a hurricane brewing in the South Atlantic but it has turned toward the African coast so we should be perfectly safe.  Meanwhile, if any of you were up this morning, you may have seen something off the starboard side of the ship.  It may have looked like a very long line of something following us.  Actually, one of the crew let the garbage out from the front gate prematurely.  I’m afraid what you saw was only a stream of garbage.  No Sea Serpent, sorry.”  He laughed, so everyone laughed because there were no such things as sea serpents.  Not really.

            “Darn.”  Glen was disappointed, because by then he had forgotten everything that had happened and he thought it would have been neat to see a real, live sea serpent.