Runaway with me (CC, Max/Liz I/A, Mature) Pt 21 Jun 26 2008

[Chrisken]

Part 21

"What's happeniing? You're hurting him!" Alex exclaimed as Michael let out a growl of discomfort, still caught by the tenderest part of his ear in the stranger's pncer grip. Just then, something about this reminded Alex of something - it had been a long time since he'd actually watched 'Star trek', but wasn't there a species of aliens who squeezed your ear to say hello, or to take confession, or something like that? It seemed too unlikely that anything like that would play out with REAL alien life forms, but...

"Ahh!" Michael exclaimed with a tone of relief in his voice. Yes - while Alex had been distracted in thoughts about star trek, the alien guy had let go. "Umm, Alex," he continued distractedly. "I... I know this sounds strange, but we actually may have achieved something slightly productive there."

"How - how so?" Alex asked. Only one thing seemed to be completely productive at this point, and that was... "Can you talk with him now? Try something?"

"Goo de da voo Sorlentiam vints?" Michael hazarded, without expressing too much confidence or hope of success.

"Za vee, Zha vee Corlon," the alien guy responded.

"Um, translation please?" Alex asked in a whisper. He wondered if he'd be able to get the five-second language course by submitting to an ear squeeze, or if it required an alien boy as a subject.

"I, umm, I asked if he could understand me when I said that, and he replied that yes, things were pretty clear," Michael said. "Not anything that impressive, and I'm still not sure how much vocabulary I have, but... well, what else should I try to say, or ask?"

"All the basics," Alex explained. "That we're strangers from very far away, that there's a something in their corn field that might take us back to the people who want to kill us, that we've lost friends and need to find them."

"Hoo boy," Michael said. "Can I add that I'm hungry and thirsty?"

"Oh, sure, yeah. Did you get anything to eat after... those peanut butter surprises and snapples that we made in your apartment, in the middle of last night?"

"Umm... I can't even remember," Michael admitted. "Not lately, after we ended up in that little tunnel."

"Yeah, whose idea was going there, anyway?" Alex asked ."Probably not yours - I don't think you even knew it was there, right?"

"I'll tell you about that part later," Michael said. "I think our friend is starting to get suspicious about how long we're conferring among ourselves." There was a burst of incomprehensible alien language from him. "And he's saying that he wants to know what we're doing on his land."

"Okay, go ahead. I'll help if you need any ideas for how to explain something with limited words, but without knowing any of the words at all I probably can't help too much," Alex said.

"Yeah, okay." So Michael gamely waded into conversation with the guy, and then after a few moments explained that he thought they were being invited into the kitchen, where they could try to find something to eat, and would have at least water to drink.

"Okay, good enough," Alex said. "I hope that everyone else is doing okay."

----------

"This is really very kind of you," Max said, climbing a rope ladder up the side of a building in the alien city. He'd always sort of expected that they'd use levitation rays or something, but oh well. In fact, he'd seen few signs of either advanced technology or the use of paranormal powers since arriving, finding instead that the inhabitants seemed to prefer ingeniously applied Renaissance-level devices - or maybe that was all that they could manage.

"No problem at all," his first native friend, Aaron, explained. "As I said, I've been displaced by a stray gateway or something of the sort myself, so I know how disorienting it can be to end up in a very strange place with no idea of what the rules are or if you could ever get back home. Which reminds me - at some point you'll need to learn how to talk to other people who don't know English, if you have any hope of tracking down your friends. I mean, I'd do as much as I could to go-between, but..."

Max didn't wait for the tail end of the 'but' as he reached the first open balcony, (the rope ladder continued on up,) and followed the leader off. A glance downward indicated that Maria was dealing with the moderate heights as well as he could expect considering that she seemed to be more worried that the crowds below would look up her knee-length skirt. "Okay, first round of questions, Aaron - where are we? How many language do the people here speak, in general - over the whole planet, over the area that the vortices might have dropped our friends?"

"The vortexes?"

"'Vortices' is the correct plural I think, but never mind."

"Right - I could never work out all of the plural declensions."

"It's more complicated than it needs to be, really," Maria put in, emerging from the ladder herself. "I'd have said vortexes myself, if Max hadn't given me the hint. One bonus question - do you know if you have anything that humans could eat or drink?"

"You're hungry?" Max asked.

"Yeah, well... I haven't had a bite since - since before you and Liz found me without my memory, really, and I don't think that you've eaten either."

"Hmm... you may be right," Max said, though he wasn't quite sure about it. "I didn't notice being hungry, anyway. Maybe things have just been too busy."

"Darva," Aaron offered, taking a trangular shaped stick from the hook where it was hanging in the kitchen section of his room and tossing it over to Maria. "Bread, more or less. Um - you'll need something to slice it with, or at least I'd rather you didn't just munch off of the stick. Just a second... is plain water fine to drink?"

"Since cherry coke would be asking for a lot, then probably yeah."

"Hmm... not sure about cola, but..." Aaron was rummaging through some sort of drawers that pulled up vertically out of a counter, with all the items strapped into the framework so that they didn't fall out. It seemed like a very weird design idea to Max, who couldn't see any way in which it was less trouble than horizontal drawers. "Getting to the language issue, well, Antarian is pretty well understood all over this star cluster, though there are a few 'old tongues' that don't have any real relation to the common tongue, and others that different alien species brought with them. I can probably use a touch connection technique to give either of you some familiarity with Antarian... by the way, you're not human yourself, are you Max?" He emerged from the kitchen with a normal-shaped glass full of a rose-red liquid and a small hacksaw, both of which he offered to Maria.

"I - no. I'm not sure what species I am in your terms, actually - orphan of a crash landing, or so it would seem, and nobody much to teach me about my heritage."

"Well, you could be Antarian, really," Aaron said, looking at him. "Our species aren't identical, but there's a sort of a narrow genetic overlap space where it's hard to tell the difference by a cursory observation. Or - well, there's genetic therapies where you get injected and can look more like other species, permanent unless they're countered. If your - your parents were on a survey mission, they'd have the right treatment to appear human, and if... if they thought that the little ones were the only ones who might survive the crash, then injecting you would make sense."

"Hmm." Max considered that - it seemed plausible on the surface, but left a lot of questions unanswered. Then again, there were enough questions he had wondered about that explaining them all at a stroke would be rather unlikely, especially for a random stranger. "To repeat one question that slipped through, where are we?"

"Oh, umm... translating proper names is always a bit awkward, but call this place Sarevan city on the planet Gevinor. Pretty good place to hang around I think - the natives are friendly, even if they can be a bit too curious about strangers. There are processing plants here for about a continent worth of farms, and a spaceport, but the government is strictly local. Planetary HQ is over on the other side of the world - that's where the Co-op board meets and rules us all."

"Hey, Max, seriously, you've got to try this stuff," Maria said. Max looked up irritably and then had to smile when he realized that all that was left of Maria's first slice of 'darva' bread was a tiny little corner in the fingers of her left hand. "I know, I know, you don't feel hungry, but it'll be good to eat something."

"Okay, all right," he admitted, and went over as Maria used the saw blade to quickly slice out another triangular portion. "And then, yeah, we'd better try that connection thing."

"Are you sure, Max?" Maria muttered in a whisper that was rather too loud to be anything but 'stage' in the small room. "We don't know anything about this guy - he might have his own reasons for wanting to do this. Once you're connected, he might be able to hurt you, or get at your memories or anything, right?"

"He's the only person in a city of strangers who's come up to us and offered his help, Maria," Max put in softly. "And - and we need to take action and trust SOMEBODY. Liz and Michael might be in trouble, as well as Alex, and..." Well, somehow he couldn't quite picture even this situation phasing Isabel. "I've made my choice. You can watch if you want."

"Oh, great," Maria muttered to herself. "And what do I do if I see something that seems like a bad sign while I'm watching?"

"Let me know?" Aaron said, sounding a bit blank, as if he hadn't quite absorbed the idea that Maria suspected him of nefarious motives.

"That's kind of past the point, man," Max muttered.

"Or just seperate us physically?" he offered again. "That won't be dangerous to either of us, on a relatively superficial link like this."

"Okay," Maria muttered, and looked like she was getting ready to charge into Max with a flying tackle if the need arose.

------------

"Oh my... stars above or whatever, you didn't!" Tess laughed.

Liz shook her head, trying to absorb what had gone on in the past few minutes. The alien woodsman, after a scary moment, had had the presence of mind to touch-connect with Tess, and chose to learn basic English from her rather than try to force alien vocabulary into her own brain. He'd then introduced himself as Wilgamm, and the two had somehow immediately hit it off. Liz hadn't been able to make the mental adjustment of being friends with somebody who looked like that so quickly, and even though the start of the story that Tess was busy laughing over had been in English, she hadn't really been listening and now couldn't make much sense of the punch line.

"Err, excuse me," she muttered, following as the others led the way down a forest path. "Where are you taking us?"

"In the most immediate sense, the hamlet of Muttep, where you'll be able to travel along further," Wilgamm said. "I realize that you have already travelled far through the slipstream, but the answers that you seek are not here. Diving back into the gateway unprotected would be dangerous and the chances of finding your friends that way would be slim. The tropolis of Grye is only a fifth of a day away, using the land-line and an aircraft. It is a place with many ties to other worlds and stars, as far as the portals reach. You will be able to trace those you have lost there."

"But, but..." Liz stammered, hating how clueless she seemed at this point. "We're absolute strangers here, and we don't speak the language - any language. We don't have money, or anything to trade. How would we even get onto the landline and the airplane, or whatever."

Wilgamm made a barking sound several times in a row, ending on a kittenish mew. "Is the world that you have come from quite so mercenary, little colt? That nobody helps the disfortunate without standing to make a profit? For the starlost, I am quite sure that no fare or fee of passage will be asked, and my friends in Muttep will probably offer to help you learn their language. I... I would offer myself, but I learned too many bad habits of a foreigner's speech from my father when I was young, that no tutor or mental contact can entirely erase, and I didn't want to pass it on to you."

"Oh, okay." Liz's sour mood melted a bit at the concern in that explanation, and she had to admit that she liked the idea of a planet where people would naturally help refugees from somewhere they'd never heard of without any 'what's in it for me?' response. "So, your father, did - did he come here from somewhere far away, or grow up in a... in an enclave of his own people where the language of the old... planet was mostly spoken, or what?"

He hummed softly, and Liz wondered if that was his version of a nostalgic sigh. "Both, in a way. My father would have been, oh, only a little whelp when he first game to this world, on a very cramped transport ship with his own forebears, fleeing the poverty and violence that enveloped my people's homeland after the sssha took most of our plants away. And yes, we grew up in the factoring quarter of the city, where most of the residents aren't Taliernan or of Antarian base-stock, and in his old neighborhood I expect almost all were Thali."

"Okay, sorry, what's a sssha and what did it do with your plants?" Tess asked. "Sorry if it's rude to ask, but..."

"No, that's quite alright, though it seems odd to hear somebody speak of it that way." Wilgarm hummed again, even lower and more mournfully. "The plants died - an entire planet with the only blue and growing things encased safely away in glass houses or a few faraway valleys that were untouched. It was a... a tiny lifeform, that attacked the plants, latching onto them or going inside and sucking the life out of them from within, I was never clear on which or if it was both at different times..."

"Oh, boy, I'm so sorry," Liz muttered, struck by the notion of a plague affecting an entire planet's vegetation like that. Whether it was fungal, bacterial, viral, or some other kind of organism...

"Yes, well... the Taliernans are a proud and sometimes contentious folk, but they have been very hospitable to my people," Wilgarm muttered gruffly. "My mother arrived later, on a ship that was held under quarantine for years to make sure that they hadn't accidentally brought the sssha with them. Father died years back, and as far as I know, mother is still living in the City. But me - I couldn't stay any longer amid the hurry and the bustle of the city any longer, when I grew up. Not that living as a woodsman out in the sticks is an easy life, but - it suits my character better, or something." He looked at them. "The horrible dialect I speak in Antarian is why I like to learn new languages, and try to get them better."

"You've picked up English very well," Liz had to admit.

"English," he agreed, thinking about that. (Which was a judgement Liz made based on his voice rather than his still-bizarre face.) "So is England your whole planet, or just the part that you come from?"

Liz had to laugh out loud. "Actually, neither. It's an island across the ocean from the continent where I live - or lived. England, well, they sort of half conquered, half colonized North America, and even when we became independent, we kept speaking their language, because most of us had ancestors that came from there."

"And now, more and more of the planet is starting to speak English because America is the strongest country now," Tess put in.

"Really? How interesting." Wilgarm judged the trail ahead of them. "What more can you tell me before we get to the hamlet, I wonder?"

"Hey, we've still got more questions before we leave you too," Tess put in.

"Others can answer your questions better than me. I'll probably never run into anyone else who comes from... America again."

"I'm still not sure we'll find anyone quite as friendly as you," Liz said. "How about you get to ask us each a question, and then one of us can ask you one?"

"Okay I suppose."

"Then it's your turn still," Tess pointed out.

"Hmm... what did you like best about your parents, Tess?"

She seemed very startled to be asked that. "Umm, I don't think I ever really knew my parents. I, well - I'm not a... a native of planet Earth, which is what they call the world where America and England are, and lots of other places besides. We were in a crash, and, umm..." Liz looked from Tess to Wilgarm, not sure if she should butt in on the question. "It gets a bit complicated."

"Okay, sorry. Have to be more careful with my next ask. Your turn."

"Well - if this planet is Taliernar, then why do you have to speak Antarian?"

He barked again. "Rather the same story as with England and America, actually. Antar sent out colony ships thousands of years ago to the most promising other planets in their neighborhood - when those colonies were founded, they got named Rahlicx, Breoll, Gevina - and Taliernar. The languages drifted apart for a while, but once we learned to speak to each other over the light years, and even to travel between worlds relatively quickly, the dialects became close enough to be one language again, and it's known as Antarian because that was the home world of them all."

"Good enough," Liz said. "Your turn to ask me."

"Okay, just give me a moment..."

-----------

Fighting against the thin air, Isabel struggled to search the whole... structure (space station?) for anything that might be useful. A number of controls and instrument panels here and there were labeled in an unfamiliar language that she decided not to mess with yet. The station only had five chambers, and none of them connected to a spaceship - there was one little tub that might be an escape capsule, or a garbage receptacle or an EVA pod. She wasn't about to cast it loose before finding out for sure. A rectangular plate in the wall seemed to be just a mirror, reflecting her bedraggled face and messy hair, until she decided to take a chance on the big green button next to it. First the plate lit up with a pattern of colors that danced here and there in a pretty fashion, and then showed a pattern of dark blue alien letters and symbols against a light pink background, Just as Isabel was wondering if she were brave enough to start tapping random spots on the screen, (bceause that seemed to be what it was,) the view changed into some startled alien face peering into a screen on the other end of a... a closed-circuit videophone link? Where was the camera pickup- was it in the screen itself? No, she saw a little glass-fronted knob right beside it, and looked into it and waved. Even volunteered a 'hello there.'

And of course, he asked her a question in a language that she couldn't even begin to understand.

The next span of time was incredibly frustrating. Isabel didn't want to do anything that might shut down the link, or even step away from it if that might give these people the impression that she didn't care about speaking to them anymore. But the alien questions and imperatives started to take on the impression of hectoring, badgering, a none-too-gentle interrogation. Maybe that was just her frustration at not being able to make head or tail of any of it seeping through and coloring her judgements.

They were trying, she could work out that much. Various different representatives or translators were brought in to try other dialects or tongues, not all of which were verbal - different patterns of lights and shapes that were obviously codes were put up onthe screen, including one that seemed very like morse code, but when Isabel managed to remember enough of the code that Max had taught her two years ago, it deciphered as 'Murgt', so she had to face the alternatives that either she had scrambled too much of the lesson in the far recesses of her brain, or this was a suerficially similar dot-dash code that was based off an alien alphabet and alien language none of which she knew.

She was really starting to feel cold and short of breath when somebody on the other end started broadcasting demonstrations of how to work some of the station controls, along with really simple pictographs to attempt to convey what the command sequences should accomplish. It was bydaring to leave the screen and trusting in her memory to repeat the patterns that she managed to release a stream of fresher air, start some kind of filtering device that was intended to clean up the used air that she had been breathing out since she arrived, and adjust the internal temperature to something a bit warmer. She tried doing some charades of her own for the camera, but the explanations about who she was and where she had come from were really too complicated to explain by such means.

She might have had a bit more luck in conveying her desire to go down from the station and come to where the people speaking were directy. They showed her a roughschematic page showing the same capsule that she had wondered about ejecting from the station, plummeting down and into the ocean - with one little stick aien inside. But they were clearly reluctant to show her the exact command sequence to launch the pod, or maybe they just had some logistical difficulties with that part of the show. As much as she wanted to leave this place far behind, Isabel was far from eager to go and leave Nasedo behind in his stupor...

It occurred to her at just that moment that the changes she'd made to the life support system might have a positive effect on the shape-shifter's condition, and she hurried back to the room that he'd been left in. Yes, he was tossing a bit restlessly, as if about to stir in fifteen minutes or so. She tried to shake him gently by the shoulder.

"Where... where are we?" he muttered.

"Stuck in some kind of alien space station,"she told him. "I... I was able to reach Mission control or somebody, but I can't talk their language. Could you..."

"Isabel?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Max might have chosen an unexpected way to get us away from the Unit, but I can't argue with his results. Unless... did any of them follow us through?"
"No, nobody seems to be here but you and me" she said.

"Well, then I'd better go see if I can talk these guys' language."

Isabel giggled just nervously for a moment, wondering what they would do if he couldn't. "Yeah."

"Where's the comm unit?"

"Oh, in here," she said, pointing the way into the room where she had found it. Nasedo waited for just a moment, and then led the way over when he decided that she wasn't going to go first.

-------------

"Ohmygawd... Max!" Alex explained, his eyes falling on a sort of a television or computer screen in the farmhouse kitchen. "And Maria!!"

Michael looked up from the bowl of sweet alien cereal that he was shoveling down his mouth and scoffed a little bit. "Well, of course that's Max and Maria - I mean, it could hardly be anything else," he mumbled, except not nearly so clearly.

Alex shot him a slightly dirty look for the sarcastic tone of his reply. "Can you make out any of what they're saying?"

"No, not at this volume," Michael admitted. "How do you turn the sound up?"

"Can you just use your powers on it?"

"Ehh, not quickly without an example of the right signal to send in the first place," Michael muttered. "Probably wouldn't blow it up, but it would take hours or more to hit onto the right combination."

"Oh, alright." So Alex went up to the screen to investigate, didn't find anything, and spent the next few minutes searching fruitlessly for something that seemed like an appropriate control. The farmholder, who'd introduced himself as ZZitlep, wandered back into the room then, and they made a big point of explaining to him that two of their friends were on the screen - before noticing that things had changed at that very moment, and it was now showing some plains tigers hunting.

"No, no, I think that I understand," Zzitlep said when both boys started explaining at once. "Just let me check." And he walked over to the kitchen counter, pressed a small green knob on it - and a kind of data access terminal unfolded from the countertop. It took him only about a minute of searching to find what he wanted. "These are your friends?"

Alex rushed over to look, but Michael got there first this time. "Yeah, that's them!" he said. "That's just a still picture, and the color looks a bit funky to me, but no mistaking it. Max and Maria. Can you tell - does it say where they are??"

"Over in Sarevan, about seven hundred gloks away. I didn't really expect that any of them would have landed so close to you."

"But there are still... what, four missing, besides the bad Special Unit guys," Alex said. "Including Liz, and..."

"We'll find Isabel for you, man," Michael said. "Max and Maria - how much information do we have on them? HOW did they get on that thing, and on the - television? Should we do something similar in the hopes that the others will see us? Or..."

"If they're in the city, maybe we should be making tracks to rendezvous as soon as possible," Alex suggested. "It'd be a central location, maybe with a spaceport, where ideally everyone else can converge..."

"Okay, let's see," Zzitlep said with a bit of a whistling sound under his words. "From what I can see, 'Max' and 'Maria' ran into someone friendly in the city, someone who... who might even have spent time on your planet himself?" There were exclamations of astonishment at that possibility. "He was the one who got their pictures and information on computer networks for accidental travellers through the gateways. If they were on the vid broadcast, then some local news crew may have been bored enough to do an interview. And yes, there's a spaceport at Sarevan, though it's not really a big one."

Michael and Alex traded looks. "If there's somebody in Sarevan who's lived on Earth, then that's definitely where we need to go," Michael stated. "Even the possibility is worth checking out. He can... yeah, it doesn't really matter that much if they put our pictures up along with Max's and Maria's - they'll already be working on as much exposure as they can, and the other members of the gang will head for them as soon as they see any of it."

"Including the special unit agents," Alex muttered.

"Somehow I'm not as worried about them as I was back on Earth," Michael said. "They're not the kinds to make friends with the natives around here - and without making friends quick, they're going to be in a lot of trouble I think."

"You're probably right," Zzitlep put in. "Well, the first step in getting to the city is probably driving over to the monorail station in the village. I can't really spare the time to take you, hmmm..." He pondered the issue a bit, weighing the requirements of hospitality and farm business. "Well, this may sound strange, but if I send my daughter as your guide and escort, do you promise to be on your best behaviour around her?" Michael immediately broke out laughing. "What... do you find something funny about that?"

"Umm... it's sort of a folk tale or joke around where we come from," Michael said. "Err... well, about a traveler, normally just one, and the farmer's daughter, who's beautiful, affectionate, and starved for male attention. As much as the poor guy - tries to be a gentleman, she makes it very difficult for him. In the usual telling of the story."

"Ah. Well, I don't think you'll have that problem with Alara - she may be friendly, but isn't really lacking for local boyfriends." Zzitlep whistled again, which Alex was starting to think might be his version of a weighty sigh. "I just can't help but feel overprotective of her. But she doesn't have much to do around here, and could pick up some shopping in the village after you're on your way."

"I'm sure that everything will be fine," Alex promised, cuffing Michael lightly on the shoulder. Zzitlep paused for just a moment, and then left the kitchen area to find Alara. When they returned, he was still explaining the situation to her, asking her if she already had the key-card for the ground vehicle, (which she did,) and passing over a credit tile with detailed instructions about what purchases she was required, permitted, and forbidden to use it on.

"Also, if there's no other way to get them there, charge the monorail tickets," he muttered. "But... well, see if somebody on the rail company will waive the fare for Gateway refugees. We're not made of credit, after all."

"Thank you, sir," Michael muttered. "I wish that we had something to repay your kindness with." He searched his pockets, but didn't really come up with anything that he felt right about offering over.

"Don't worry about it," Zzitlep insisted. "Just make sure to... I'll give you our communication codes, and you can message me to let me know when everything turns out alright."

"Thanks," Michael said.

"It's nice to meet you both," Alara put in. She was tall, (at least as tall as Isabel,) and sort of skinny, with bright cherry-orange colored hair. "Let me know if I'm talking too fast for you, by the way, or using too many new words. I know what it's like to have just learned a new language by contact transfer - well, actually, I haven't been through it myself. But I've had a few friends who..."

----------

"Maria!" Michael called just about the time that Alex was getting off the 'monorail' at Sarevan city station and looking around, trying to get his bearings. And then he saw Michael rushing off to embrace - yes, that was indeed Maria, and Max was standing there too, watching, and coming over to say hi to Alex himself.

"What are you guys doing here?" Alex asked, though he very nearly threw his arms around Max himself, and settled for a very enthusiastic guy-like handshake. In his other hand he looked at the information that Zzitlep had given them before they left about how to trace down their friends in the city.

"Well, we got a message from some farmer guy over the... the alien internet or something like that," Maria put in. "Telling us what train you'd be coming in on, but not how you got aboard that train in the first place.

"I, I guess that he thought we'd want to tell you that part of the story," Michael said, laughing softly. "But first, have you heard from anybody else?"

"One more cryptic note," Max said, making a face. "Something about Isabel, and... and a seldom-used space station. They don't seem to be entirely clear on how she's getting down." Alex gasped. "And no word at all about Liz, Tess, or Nasedo, though we're casting our net wider." He sighed. "Do you want something to eat? The train ride must have been pretty long - I know that it arrived nearly an hour later than it was supposed to... or as near as I can figure based on my own watch.

"We had some snacks, but that was a while ago," Michael said. "But - do you have money, or are we going to have to beg for our supper?" Max pulled up a few alien coins. "Where did you get those?"

"Aaron offered us a bit of spending cash," Max said. "And the tv networks said that there'd be a small fee paid to us for the interview that we gave them, for all that we couldn't do much of it in words that anybody here could understand, so hopefully we'll be able to pay him back some for his kindness then."

"Okay, where's the burger bar then?" Alex said with a small grin.

"It's not quite burgers, but let's try the place over here," Max replied, leading the way.

So they tried a couple of the more common dishes at the little snack bar in the station, which actually tended more to stuff with the consistency of macaroni or pizza than burgers. The stories of their adventures were exchanged, with plenty of loud acclamations of the friends that each group had made here on Gevinor. Then Maria sighed and the corners of her mouth turned down slightly.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Michael asked her.

"Oh, I'm just starting to realize some stuff. That though we'll probably be able to find each other, but that won't be nearly the same thing as finding a way home. We're stuck here, or maybe somewhere else in the area where space-ships from this planet go often. Hitching a ride back to Earth sounds like it's going to be impossible to arrange for the moment. And - and now that there are so many of us, we probably can't even all crash at Aaron's tonight. His place wasn't even very roomy with three."

"We'll work it all out," Alex assured her.

"Yeah," Max said. "Oh, I think that I did find something out about our Special unit... non-friends."

"Really?" Michael and Alex asked in unison, while Maria rolled her eyes: she'd heard this part before.

"Yep. Apparently they all landed together, over on Taliernar, and kind of freaked out a little bit when they realized that it was just the three of them, surrounded by aliens, went on a rampage. More than one person got shot with another power-suck ray, and a few people with regular bullets, but all of them got healed in time, and Agent Thompson and her men are likely going to be spending forty years at least inside little gray prison cells, or the nearest alternatives."

"Couldn't happen to a nicer lady," Michael said with a satisfied look on her face.

"Okay, so it sounds like there's plenty of work to be done in finding a place for us here," Alex said. "We need a place to stay, and money to pay for us." He considered. "I wonder if any of the little stuff that we brought from Earth with us would be valuable as strange collector's memorabilia."

"Hmm, good idea," Maria said. "We can ask Aaron."

As it turned out, when they got back to Aaron's neighborhood, he came up to meet them, with news that completely made them forget about the prospect of alien pawnshops. "The orbital authority wants to talk to you. It's about Isabel. She's going to be splashing down in a little escape capsule, but her companion had to stay up on the station."

"What... what companion?" Max said, suddenly sounding nervous. "We didn't hear that there was anyone else with her before. Why would they keep somebody up there?"

"I don't know, maybe you'd better speak with these people yourself... though I'll remain to translate in case I'm needed. I gather that the capsule was a single-person model - and that this other being is a shapeshifter who can put himself into a near-death trance and not strain the life support system while another ship is sent up to fetch him."

"Nasedo," Alex guessed. "Well, it kind of makes some sense... and if breathing air was an issue, I do feel glad that Isabel's getting to come down here first."

"I guess so, yeah," Max said. "Let's go see what's going on." He sighed. "I'm starting to get a bit worried about Liz and Tess now."

"Somebody had to be the last to get in touch," Maria told him. "I don't think it means anything serious."

-----------

The next morning, after spending a less-than-comfortable night together in a 'refuge hostel,' the four friends waited at the local air station for the arrival of a fifth, and were talking about two more. "The dryer forests of Taliernar," Max repeated, as if the very words brought Liz closer to him. "What does it mean that they're 'dryer', I wonder."

"Probably to differentiate them from rainforests, which I think Taliernar has quite a lot of," Alex put in. "Maybe they're subtropical and humid, but not quite jungle-ey."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Maria agreed. "So there was no word about when there might be a ship that would take them here?"

"No," Max said, shaking his head. "Liz said that the people there were very nice, but handing out tickets on a spaceship isn't something that they can afford to do every day, even to 'Refugees of the gateways.' They're trying to get some sort of standby deal worked out, where if somebody cancels their trip and the line can't otherwise fill the vacancy, they get it."

"Yeah, well, at least they've been found," Michael said. "They'll be here soon enough."

"I know," Max agreed. "I... I just miss her."

"That's the flight that Isabel was supposed to be on, right?" Alex said, pointing up at the board. "119 from Gegara coast?"

"Yeah, um, I think so, why..." Max looked at the board as well, and smiled when he managed to decipher the alien words that translated into 'Landed at portal 6."

"Come on, let's meet her as close to the gate as we can," Maria said. "Or whatever they call it. I think that 6 is down this way."

It was Isabel who saw them first through the crowd, saw Alex and rushed up to him to have her own joyous reunion hug. "Oh, boy, am I glad to see you guys, and talk English to somebody who understands it."

"You're going to need to learn Antarian like us," Michael teased her. "But that comes easy enough, with the connection techniques."

"Hmm," she muttered. "Do you know where Liz and Tess are?"

"Stuck over on Taliernar, but they'll be joining us as soom as they can," Maria said. "Nasedo's... going to be okay?"

"Yeah, he seemed to think so," Isabel said. "I wasn't so wild about leaving him, but - well, when they said that the stored air might not last for both of us long enough to get a proper rescue ship up, they didn't have to tell me... three times."

"Okay," Max said. "We should make sure that he knows where to find us. Another person who understands both Earth and alien planets might help us get settled."

"He said that he'd have to go back to Antar once he was able to," Isabel put in. "He was a security guard on the mission to Earth, the one that our parents were on when they... crashed. The people who sent him off in the first place want to hear a final report, and then they might have a new job for him."

"Is he still under contract, or something like that, after all this time?" Alex asked.

"Maybe he wants to get back to work, after so long as a castaway," Maria pointed out.

"Yeah, I guess."

"So, what happens now?" Isabel asked.

"Well, we got a loan just before coming out to meet you," Max said. "Surprised me more than a bit, since we've got no collateral or employable skills or anything. But now we can go looking for a place to live."

----------

When Liz and Tess finally arrived in Sarevan city, after a LOT of waiting and some tiring travelling, Liz wanted to try to find a computer terminal or communications unit at the spaceport to let everybody know that they'd landed, but Tess insisted on going out, based on the address information they had, and surprising Max. (And all their other friends.) An animal-drawn coach and some walking, (plus asking strangers for directions,) got them to what looked fairly like a three-story house that could have come from a city in America. "Hey, cool," Tess said.

"Third floor," Liz read off the directions, shrugged, and headed up to the porch. There was no lock on the front door, but just inside was another set of double doors for 'level one', with a lock and a doorbell, and a set of stairs. At the top of those were two more doors, marked 'level two' and 'level three.' Tess hit the doorbell for three.

"Why isn't there another set of stairs up?" she wondered, but only quietly. After a few seconds, they could hear some sounds, and Liz guessed that there were stairs to the third story of the house BEHIND the door before the door opened - and Max grinned at her, hardly believing his eyes. Liz lost no time in hugging her beloved and kissing him hello.

"I've had to wait MUCH too long to do that," she muttered. "Great place - how did you afford it?"

"By and large, with minority student grants," Isabel announced from further up the stairs. "Come on, weary travellers."

"So, we're students now?" Liz said breathlessly after letting Max (and herself) go. "I mean, you are?"

"Yeah, students, and sort of teaching too," Alex said. "Well, not really 'stand up in front of a class and lecture' teaching, but everybody's interested in what we have to tell them about Earth - there have been missions to study it, but not that many people who have spent sixteen-seventeen years there so recently here on Gevina."

"Yeah, everybody was really curious about us back on Taliernar, and on the space transport, too," Tess agreed. "So, can we sign up for classes too, or is the registration deadline over?"

"It doesn't seem to be that structured," Michael said. "Or maybe it is for people taking classes regularly, but we're just auditing so far or something like that. You guys can join in any time. We asked."

"The place is kind of cozy," Liz noticed, looking around. "Sure that there's room for us?" The mischievous look that she gave Max showed that she was teasing a bit.

"Yeah, you'll be fine in Max's room," Maria put in. "He didn't think that you'd mind, after your love nest trip to wherever-it-was."

"I don't remember the name of the town either," Liz admitted. "So much has happened since then."

"Yeah," Max said. "I hope that the rest of you girls will be okay, all squeezed into one bedroom."

"I'm more worried about having just two bathrooms between us," Isabel said, quite seriously.

"And we've got more news!" Michael put in without much of a segue. "About - about our parents, Tess."

"Our parents?" Tess repeated. "As in, yours and mine?"

"Well, it's a bit unclear whose parents are whose," Isabel put in. "But we've been trying to find out anything we could about the people who were on the mission that crashed, and - and we've found somebody who knew a couple who were going to be having kids on the way."

"Oooh, cool," Liz said. "Can you meet this somebody in person?"

"We're not sure. She lives on Rahlicx now. We haven't even been able to arrange a real-time video conversation, which will probably be the first step," Max told her.

"Okay, great," Tess said. "Would there be any way to get our genes tested, do you suppose?"

"I'm not sure that they had the gene patterns of everybody in the mission on file," Isabel put in.

"Hey, I'm hungry," Liz said. "Can we continue this over some snacks, or dinner, or whatever?"

"Of course, my dear," Max said. "Whatever you want, to the limits of my abilities, I will prepare for you."

"Oooh." Liz giggled as he led her over to the kitchen.

THE END.

(There might be a sequel - not sure yet.)