It Doesn't Take A Rocket Scientist, Charlie Boone! - 6. Chapter 6

Charlie sat on the roost outside the big barn, and stared around at the countryside. It could have been any farm in his own state, or one nearby. The rolling landscape was utterly familiar, pleasant and green, and lined with trees to either side. He cast a quick look to his rear. The structure at his back was a deep, weathered red, with white doors and white trim around the windows, also utterly familiar. Just like home!

Far off, he could hear the pleasant, summery sound of an engine; a tractor, perhaps, making its way back and forth across the landscape. There was a breeze, just a slight one, that ruffled Charlie's feathers, and somehow instilled within him a wish to take wing. Born on the breeze was a tantalizing array of aromas and scents, few of which he recognized, but so many of which seemed to appeal to something within him. Some were sweet, some bitter; others simply alluring for reasons he could only guess at.

His vision seemed unusually sharp - amazingly so, in fact - and there were small motions everywhere. A gray squirrel came down the bole of a tree far off at the edge of the woods, looked about nervously, and scampered across to another tree. Something inside Charlie responded...he was hungry! Farther on, the brush at the edge of the woods parted, and a fisher looked out. Charlie shuddered, somehow recognizing the animal as a predator, one he did not wish to mix with first hand. Not all movement was potential food.

Beside him, there was a rustling sound, and then Kippy's voice came to mind." Oh, Charlie! You're so beautiful!"

Charlie managed to turn his head at an odd angle, and gazed down at his colorful breast. It was blue and gray, with appealing black streaks edging the feathers. "I'm a Goshawk, I think."

He turned his head and tried to smile at his boyfriend, but found that the muscles normally used for such an action failed to respond. "You look like a Merlin." He leaned out a little and looked beyond Kippy at Adrian. "I think you're a Kestrel. You're both hot!"

Both of the birds tittered a bit, and Kippy gently flexed his wings. "This feels so strange!"

Another face leaned out further down the line, and a dark eye examined Charlie critically. "Not bad!" Ricky said. The head turned and the eye looked downward. "What am I?"

Charlie laughed, and was startled when a strange squeak issued forth form his beak instead. "You're a Peregrine Falcon. It suits you, somehow."

There was movement on Charlie's other side, and he turned his head that way. The bird there was larger than any of them, and covered in plumage of gold and gray and black. It was utterly striking, and Charlie wanted to smile again, but found that he could only clack his beak instead. "You look awesome, Max. Golden Eagle, right?"

"I guess," the elf said. "Don't have any birds like this up north. Guess the magic selected the types." A black eye surveyed Charlie calmly. "How do you feel?"

"Weird. And wonderful, all at the same time."

Max uttered a piercing cry. "Oops! Gotta watch that laughing stuff in this form."

"What this all about?" Kippy's voice asked.

"It's about dealing with unfamiliar feelings," Max told them. "And unfamiliar ways of using your mind. Anyone want to fly?"

"Oh, hell, I do!" Ricky called.

"I think we all do," Adrian added. "I always wanted to fly."

"Well, don't do it just yet," Max countered. "You guys don't know how!"

Kippy extended his wings a bit. "Don't you just kind of jump, and flap, and ...um...oh."

"Right." Max's thoughts sounded merry. "You don't know how. Much as humans have wanted to fly since the dawn of time, the only way they know how is by magic. Or, uh, with those amazing machines you guys build to fly around in."

Charlie wanted to smile at that, but couldn't. "Don't tell me you're going to teach us how to fly? Isn't that a little obvious?"

The great eagle reared back a bit. "It's another analogy, Charlie. Learning to do something that is totally unfamiliar to your mind and body is how elves learn to deal with magic. It might strike you as perfectly normal for elves to be able to do magic, but when we're born, our talents are mostly latent. What is operative actually has to be suppressed until a child is old enough to understand the import of what they're doing. Can you imagine a baby born that's instantly ready to toss gravity around, or change time, or teleport around the house? Mommies and daddies would go nuts pretty darn quickly!"

Charlie did laugh at that, and then again at the strange call that issued from his throat. "Okay, I get it. So by learning to fly, we'll be opening up some new area of our minds?"

"Sure. Have you ever flown before?"

"Um...no."

"And it's something your human body can't do. Something it's not designed to do. So you are going to both learn a new action it was previously impossible for you to do, and learn to operate inside a new body that has capabilities you've never had before. All of this will help you with your magic."

Charlie bobbed his head up and down. "Okay. What's first?"

Max's head bobbed, too. "Firstly, you need to understand how you can fly in this form. It starts with your wings. They're thicker in the front than in the back. And they're more curved across the top than underneath. The air moves faster over the longer upper surface than it does the shorter surface below. That creates lower air pressure above than below. So you get lift, which raises the wing, and because the wing is attached to the bird, the whole shebang takes off."

"I think I knew this much," Charlie decided. "It's basic physics."

"Britannica Brain!" Ricky called, a definite humorous squawk to his voice.

"You use your legs to propel yourself into motion," Max continued. "To launch yourself. And then you flap your wings to propel yourself and increase your speed and height."

"That sounds simple enough," Kippy decided.

Max belted out anther piercing cry. "Dang! I gotta watch that." He leaned forward to gaze past Charlie at Kip. "You wanna try first?"

"Sure," Kippy said confidently. "I just jump off this rail we're sitting on, and flap my wings, and go."

"Uh huh. Okay, whenever you're ready."

"Be careful, Kip," Charlie cautioned, feeling that Max was too ready to let one of them try to fly.

Kippy spread his wings, gave them a perfunctory flap, and then launched himself off the roost. He immediately flapped his wings, glided a few feet...and then let out a startled squawk as he settled heavily to the ground.

"Ouch!"

"You okay, Kip?" Charlie called.

"He can't be hurt," Max said immediately. "Well...much. Just enough to learn him not to do rash things. Kip?"

"Um...yes? Max, sir?"

Charlie wanted to laugh at the tone of his boyfriend's thoughts, but felt that another raucous call would not be indicative of the support he should be showing for his boyfriend.

"Do you know why that didn't work?" Max asked patiently.

"No. I have no idea at all."

Max made a subtle move of one foot, and Kippy lifted off the ground, floated upwards, and landed softly back on his roost.

"That happened because you were trying to fly in a bird's body, but with using your human brain. Your brain does not know how to motivate that body. Not yet, anyway. For instance...when you flapped your wings?"

Everyone was attentive now, leaned forward or backwards to gaze at Max.

"Yeah?" Kippy responded. "I moved them up and down. Was it not fast enough?"

"That's part of it," Max agreed. "A bird has a higher body temperature than a human, to allow its muscles to work better, and a higher respiratory rate, to help feed oxygen to those muscles. A bird's wings are a lot lighter in relation to its body than your arms are in relation to yours. You have to move your wings much faster than you have ever moved your arms."

"I don't know if I can."

"You can. The limitations are only in your mind. Your body and brain - the one you are wearing now - are up to the task. Another thing."

Kippy bobbed his head. "Yes?"

The golden eagle waved one wing tip. "You flapped your wings up and down, more or less. That won't work. You are motivating those wings as if you were flapping your own arms."

"I feel like I'm flapping my own arms," Kippy responded.

"But you're not. When a bird flaps his wings to fly, there is a very subtle twist to the motion that allows the wing to faintly cup the air, giving more thrust. Birds also can actually adjust some of their feathers for better aerodynamic properties, and they use their tail feathers as a kinda rudder to help with direction. If you just move the wings up and down, you'll get some lift, but no real thrust."

Kippy made a soft gasp in this thoughts. "I can't do all that!"

"Yes, you can. That body is built to do those things, and the brain inside it instinctively knows what to do. It's up to you to let down the barriers that restrict you to moving a human body only, and allow your thoughts to fill every niche of the brain you have there, and to seek out its secrets. It's the only way you will ever fly."

"This helps with magic?" Ricky asked. "How?"

"Yes," Max replied. "Using magic is about learning new ways to use your mind. In learning the ways of a new body, your mind makes the same sort of leaps it will need to do in order to grasp and use the new thought forms that come with mastering magic."

"I see," Charlie said. "We're not just learning to fly here. We're learning a new way to think."

"That's about it." Max's dark eagle eye somehow showed approval. "What all of you need to do now is explore the bodies you find yourselves in. First feel them out. Then try moving stuff that has no corresponding part on your own body. You have to fill every niche of that bird head, in order to use its body."

Charlie bobbed his head, and settled back on the roost and closed his eyes, and let his mind go exploring. The first thing he discovered was how sensitive his skin seemed to be. The breeze that played about them increased and decreased, and subtly changed direction as the air moved. Charlie found he could feel those tiny changes in direction and pressure.

His focus on his skin led to a heightened awareness of the feathers that protruded from it, and that he had muscles that allowed him to actually move some of these feathers. A little experimentation led him to decide that a certain sensation he felt to his rear were his tail feathers moving, and that he could take the direction and speed of the air moving around him from his sensitive skin and adjust the feathers a bit to cause his body to feel a slightly higher force on one side of the tail than the other. Certainly this would be used to help steer!

Charlie extended his wings and tried moving them up and down. The ease with which they did so was not lost on him. There was none of the feel of mass that his human arms had. The wings seemed amazingly light, and he was sure now that he could move them faster than he had ever moved his own arms. He moved the wings again, this time trying to rotate them, and found that the joint moved enough like his own shoulder muscles that he could get the hang of it. As a human, if he extended his arms straight out from his body, he could both move them up and down and front to back, and also rotate them an appreciable part of a circle. The bird joint didn't rotate as much, but he found a comfortable motion that employed both movements and tugged him forward on the roost, indicating thrust. So that was how it was done!

He next flexed his legs, understanding that he needed to use them to launch himself. He could easily move his body up and down, and saw that they could give him an appreciable push into motion. Birds didn't run to get going. They seemed to sort of hop into flight. That meant that the wings had to come down at the same time as the legs pushed off. To Charlie's scientific mind, that approach seemed likely to generate the most initial thrust.

Hmm. So the wings came down, and turned slightly so that they also came back. It wasn't too different from the way helicopter blades could change pitch to grab at the air to obtain lateral thrust. He moved his wings slowly, giving them both an up and down movement and also canting them forward a bit so that on each downward stroke they also moved slightly backwards. He could feel the pressure against his legs, drawing him forward. It felt like an odd motion to his human way of moving arms, but the longer he did it, the better the feel of it imprinted in his mind.

"Charlie?" Max's voice sounded pleased. "How are you doing?"

"I don't know." Charlie let his wings come to a stop. "I feel a different way of moving, maybe. I've never felt anything like it before." He laughed, and was again startled by the sharp cry that issued from his body. "I guess I can't expect to learn to fly in a just a few minutes."

"We've been here all day, Charlie."

"What?" Charlie turned his head to look at the eagle.

"I said, 'we've been here all day.' And then some, actually."

"Really? It felt like a few minutes!"

"You are there inside your mind, Charlie. There is always a certain timelessness inside one's own thoughts." The eagle gave a soft cry. "I've been watching you, and listening. Are you ready to try your wings?"

Charlie felt a flutter of fear...and then just as quickly, a sense of calm. He had gotten used to the new movements, hadn't he? And Max said they couldn't really be hurt here. So it wasn't like he could fall too hardly if he messed up.

"I'll give it a whirl, sure."

The great eagle bobbed its head. "Take your time. Get your feel. Go when you're ready."

Charlie took a deep breath. His tiny heart felt like it was racing inside his body, and nervous energy pervaded every fiber of his being. But he extended his wings, gave them a few test flaps, tested the rearward angle, and then brought them back to his side. Take off must be one, fluid movement. He thought back to the countless times he had seen birds in his yard, and saw again the way their entire bodies surged into motion at take off.

As one, Charlie leaned forward, gave a fierce spasm of energy to his legs, and unfurled his wings and beat them down and back. He launched into the air, remembered to cycle his wings, and then beat them as fast as he was able, up, down, and slightly rotated back. Air coursed over his body, feeding him the direction and speed of the wind, and he leaned slightly into it to counter the lateral thrust, beat his wings harder, and then remembered to angle his tail feathers slightly to add lift.

For a moment he swayed precariously in the air, on far from a smooth and graceful trajectory; and then the motions he was performing, the thoughts he was thinking, meshed, and he grabbed air and climbed into the sky. The speed of his retreat from the ground took his breath away. A blue sky streaked with afternoon sun rose before him, while the browns and greens of the earth dropped away. Charlie found that he could turn by adding an extra beat to one wing over the other, and by shifting that strange feeling to his rear that signaled his tail feathers.

And then, quite suddenly, he was above the world, and the barn and the farm stretched out below. He wheeled, feeling every small nuance of the air as it moved around him, as it caressed him, and talked to him, and bore him along. Charlie looked down, and smiled inside, even if he could not smile without. He parted his beak, and gave a triumphant screech into the golden afternoon air.

He was flying!

He circled the others, his confidence growing, the body of the bird sending him information he scarcely knew what to do with, but somehow which he processed well enough to stay airborne. Two, three circles about the barn, and then he angled towards the ground, opened his wings a bit for drag, and came in for a perfect landing back on the fence rail roost.

Almost. At the last second he realized he was going to overshoot his mark and tried to correct. His talons scraped across the railing and he landed hard on the ground, with enough force to make his eyes bounce up and down. But it only took a second to realize that he was not hurt, and he forced his legs under himself and turned to look up at the others.

"Watch that last step! It's a doozy!"

He heard a couple of screeing hoots of laughter, and would have smiled if he could. Instead, he gazed up at the railing, sprang, flapped his wings a couple of times, and landed again between Kippy and Max.

"Oh, Charlie!" Kippy's voice came to him. "You were wonderful!"

"Not bad," Max said, bobbing his head in agreement. "I've seen far worse first attempts, believe me." But he extended a wing and brushed the tip fondly along Charlie's side. "And what did you learn...besides the fact that landings take practice?"

Charlie considered that. "I can't believe how different it felt to be a bird, even if just for a minute. The experience was so different from being...well, being me." Charlie bobbed his head. "I think I learned that there's more than one way to think about even simple things like moving around." The thought was striking, actually. "And that, maybe, there's more than one way to thinking about everything."

The Golden Eagle somehow looked satisfied. "I think you're on your way, Charlie."

"Can I try now?" Ricky asked.

Max gave Charlie a last approving look, and then repositioned himself on the fence rail. "Whenever you're ready."

Ricky came off the fence rail all in one swift movement, dived straight towards the ground, and then pulled up at the last second and beat his wings furiously, bulleting upwards into the sky. He circled the field several times, slowed, and then drifted back down to land softly on the rail next to Adrian.

Wow!" Adrian called, and then screed loudly. "That was awesome!"

"That was impressive," Kippy agreed.

Charlie was also enthused. "You made me look like a lead weight!"

Ricky looked delighted at the praise, but then they heard a screeing laugh. "It may have looked good, but I nearly nosedived right into the dirt. That was pure screw up, believe me! And if I hadn't seen the trouble Charlie had with landing, I might have come down with a splat at the end!"

"You learned from watching Charlie," Max said. "That's great, Rick."

Kippy and Adrian each took a turn next, and were noticeably more cautious than Ricky had been. But each boy managed to get aloft, fly several circles, and then land back on the railing again without much of a problem.

"I'm impressed with the way you guys learn from each other," Max told them. "That's a gift right there. You guys share a talent for understanding each other. That is going to be important someday."

The practiced flying about some more, until they had it down fairly well, and then Max took them back to reality so that they could eat dinner.

* * * * * * *

Three relative days later, they were still at it. They had spent the morning inside their minds with Max, learning more ways to consider the all that was everything. That's the way that Charlie had come to consider it: the all. They had explored being other creatures, had explored each other's minds, and felt the moments that inspired each others hidden talents. Charlie felt as if the inside of his head had somehow gotten larger in the process, and that he had filled some of those new spaces with exciting and wonderful things.

Slowly at first, and then with more confidence later, Charlie had learned to initiate his talent at will. It was still not very strong yet, and the most he had done was to split his presence and send his other self briefly into other parts of the ship. Max did not want him to exhaust himself, because the moment they felt they had a workable path to a rescue, they needed to be ready to move. Once they had understood that they needed to make a rescue from within the Cooee, actually finding Antariluma and the wrecked ship had become secondary. They could hopefully extract their friends and worry about locating the ship later. Each brief return to normal space and time to take a scan added more seconds to Pacha's battle with the forces trying to crush their ship. To go even one second past the end of the Kift's stamina would be to fail in their mission to rescue their friends. So Murcha had paused his search for the time being, in the hope that Charlie and the others would find a way to perform the rescue with no more time passing for Pacha.

The problem so far had been that Ragal did not see the moment of initiation of Charlie's ability in a manner that could be handed to Casper and made visible. Charlie had yet to be able to pause his ability the way Max did with a teleport, and so Ragal only had a brief glimpse of the initiating moment before Charlie's other self was off somewhere within the ship. Translating that moment into a visual analog was key to Max possibly following Charlie along the path to Mike and Pacha and the others.

Max had tried to describe what it was he did to initiate a teleport and then not go through with it, thus pausing the moment of inspiration for Ragal to view; but Charlie had simply not been able to do it. It was something he would learn later, he figured, but so far, it was just beyond the capabilities of a rank newbie.

It was Ricky who came up with the answer. "What about micro time, Max?"

The elf was looking a little tired by then, and blinked at the boy a moment before suddenly smiling. "That's a good idea, but I already thought of that."

Ricky frowned. "We can't put Charlie in a micro time moment like we did with Erma and Neelie? We slowed them down so that they could search for years for a companion for Oumuamua. If we slow Charlie down like that, and let him initiate his ability, won't that give Ragal more time to observe it?"

"It would if Ragal could observe it. But micro time is isolated from the here and now, and Ragal would be unable to cross the boundary to get the sense of Charlie's ability."

Ragal suddenly smiled. "Are you sure of that?"

Max turned towards the lanky alien, and nodded. "Yeah. No elf has ever been able to --" He stopped suddenly, and looked surprised. "But you ain't an elf."

"I am also somewhat acquainted with the rules of time, from my journey to this one through Kippy's ring. I think we should try this idea of Rick's, before we discard it as unusable."

Max nodded. "You're right. That was a preconception on my part. I just didn't think it through."

Kippy leaned over and patted the elf on his shoulder. "Your humanity is showing, Max."

The elder elf laughed, and Charlie could see the delight in his eyes. "Don't remind me, huh? Okay. We'll try this. Charlie, you wanna come sit and be comfortable?"

Charlie returned to the sofa and sat beside Kippy, who immediately took his hand and squeezed it.

"No touchy stuff, Kip," Max said, smiling tolerantly. "Give him a kiss, and then back off."

Kippy made a slightly rude noise, but leaned over to Charlie and puckered up, and Charlie accepted the kiss, along with the powerful load of emotions that came with it. It gave him a lift, and he was smiling as Kippy leaned back, and then scooted over a few feet away.

"You do that so well, Kip."

Adrian grinned, and Ricky gave him a look. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. I can...I can just feel that kind of stuff in my skwish now. It's very strong."

Ricky grinned, leaned forward and puckered up. "I'll show you strong!" They kissed, and Kippy suddenly beamed, and Max sighed and rolled his eyes. "Geez, fellas, can we?"

The two boys parted, each grinning, and Charlie nodded at Max. "We're all fortified now, Max. So what do I do?"

"Just sit there. In a moment everything around you will sort of look rosy red. As soon as you see that, try to split your presence and go someplace in the ship."

"Okay. Whenever you're ready."

Max nodded, and lifted a hand. Everyone around Charlie suddenly faded, and the world turned red. He immediately closed his eyes, and allowed his other self to step forward, to leave his body, and walk around the control center. He was stunned then to suddenly be able to see everyone again, and himself sitting on the sofa, encased in a slightly rose-colored sheen that only allowed his basic features to show through.

Ragal was standing nearby, his eyes closed. "Wonderful! The progression has slowed to clarity! I've got it, I think. Casper? Are you ready?"

"Yes." The little alien also closed his eyes. "I see...really? Is it that simple?"

"It would appear to be so," Ragal returned. "Can you create the imagery?"

Casper nodded, and all the others leaned forward as one to watch.

A rounded shape appeared nearby, taller even than Ragal. Actually, it was half of an ellipse, with rounded sides curving upwards to meet above. The interior of the shape lit, took on colors of brown and green, and slowly resolved into an image of a forest path, that meandered away from them and disappeared among the underbrush. It was if they were standing within the mouth of a small cave and looking out into a forested land, with the very path that had brought them to the cave visible at their feet. Except Charlie knew instinctively that the reverse was true; the path went away from the starting point, and to step onto it would take one...where?"

Charlie looked down, and was not that surprised to imagine the path under his own feet. It was not really there at all, only a shadow provided by the power of Casper's illusion, which was strong enough that Charlie evidently could even perceive it here. But it seemed evident where that path led now: to the very spot where Charlie's other self was standing.

A visual analog had been found.

Charlie understood that this was all a matter of perception, and that the forest path had no basis in reality other than inside their minds. But moving about and treating the analog as a real place in time was apparently necessary in order for their own minds to master the difficult tasks of translating an experience occurring in one mind into something that another mind could grasp and work with. They were crossing borders now that had never been crossed by elf-kind before now. It was new territory, and what would happen next made Charlie tingle with anticipation.

"Now for the test," Max said, standing up and approaching the rounded doorway. He arrived before the forest path, took a deep breath, and tried to step onto it.

For a second Charlie could see the resistance, that same rubbery thing that had stopped him from entering the corridor analog to Max's teleport. But Max was much more powerful than Charlie. The elf leaned into it a bit...and he moved forward, onto the path.

What happened next occurred so quickly that Charlie almost missed it. As Max fully stepped into the path, he suddenly reappeared, slightly transparent, next to Charlie's other self.

"It worked!" the new Max breathed, staring at Charlie's other self. "You see me?"

"Yes!"

"Let's move about a little, Charlie."

Charlie nodded, and took a few steps. Max moved right along with him.

"You seem to be going where I'm going!"

The other Max grinned, and raised a hand.

Just as suddenly, Charlie was seated on the sofa again, the red sheen gone, the world returned to normal. Max - the real one - was standing before the forest path analog, as if he had never tried to enter it., Everyone else was watching Max, and seemed surprised when the real Charlie suddenly reappeared on the sofa.

"What happened?" Ricky asked.

"It worked!" Ragal said, looking delighted. "I feel it worked!"

"It did," Max agreed. "For a moment, I was along with Charlie's other self."

"Yay!" Casper cheered then. "Can I stop the illusion?"

Max jumped to his feet. "Can you hold it just a second, Casper?"

"Yes. I'm not even tired yet."

Max nodded. "Kip - quickly. See if you can step onto that path."

Kippy bounded to his feet, approached the forest path, and tried to step into it. His leg rebounded immediately, and try as he might, he could not enter.

"Now you, Adrian, though I suspect you'll have the same results."

Adrian also got up and made the attempt, and was also rebuffed at the invisible threshold of the forest path.

"Now you, Rick!'

Ricky nodded, got quickly to his feet, and tried to stick his foot into the garden path. Only this time, after a brief resistance, Ricky's leg suddenly moved forward, and he straddled the threshold, one foot on the deck of the ship, one on the forest path.

Charlie suddenly felt a strange, crawling sensation inside his head. It wasn't painful, or even disturbing. Just so different from anything he had ever experienced before that he immediately brought a hand to his forehead. "Whoa!"

"Come back, Rick!" Max called, waving anxiously.

Ricky backed away from the forest path, and the strange crawling sensation in Charlie's head went away.

Max nodded, and turned to Casper. "You can let it go now, Casper. Thank you."

The small alien sighed, opened his eyes, and the forest path disappeared from view.

Max turned to Charlie. "You okay?"

"Yeah. It was just this weird feeling, for a moment."

"When Ricky stepped onto the path?"

"Uh huh."

Ricky looked concerned now. "Did I step on something, Charlie?"

Max laughed. "You're more right than you know. I've been wondering what your part is in this, Rick. I can sense you growing, but I have no idea what it is that's coming to life inside of you. But now I suspect it's something we're gonna need to finish this. You can obviously go with Charlie, just like I can."

Ricky's eyes got large. "But am I supposed to?"

"That, I don't know. But I place a lot of stock in knowing that you can."

"You should at least be ready to go along," Ragal said, smiling. "We would seem to be ready to try a rescue. Charlie will send his second self back to Pacha and the others. Max will go along, and the moment he is there, he will have the location of the place, and can teleport our friends to safety."

"And what do I do?" Ricky asked. "Because I got no idea, myself."

Ragal nodded. "I suggest that you simply stand at the entrance to the forest path, and be ready to step in if you are needed. You're a wild card in all this, I suspect." The lanky alien smiled. "To employ another analogy."

"I agree," Max said. "I think we won't know what you're supposed to do, if anything, until you're needed to do it."

"Great," Rick said, looking unhappy. "I can't even practice!"

"So we're ready?" Charlie asked, a feeling of excitement coming over him. At last!

"No," Max said, firmly. "We're in no-time. We can afford to eat, relax a little, and get a good night's sleep. We've been on the go for days of relative time now. Everyone needs to be as strong as they can for what we need to do."

Kippy scooted closer to Charlie again, and leaned up against him. "Want some R & R?" He smiled, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "It's what the curtains on the beds are for."

Charlie's face warmed slightly, because he knew everyone could hear Kip despite the whisper, and they were all pretending not to watch now, while also waiting for an answer.

What the hell? If you can't step out a little among your best friends...

"Okay."

Ricky brought his hands together in a clap, and then apparently decided it was too much, and brought his hands up and pretended to cough into them. Adrian rolled his eyes, but smiled as he scooted closer to his own boyfriend. "Wanna?"

Ricky's eyes traveled about the circle of people looking everywhere but back at him, and then grinned. "Yup."

Max sighed. "I could use a nap, myself."

"Me, too," Casper said, smiling at no one in particular.

Ragal sighed. "I'm too keyed up to sleep now. I'll wait a bit." He stared up at the overhead. "Murcha? Feel like a game of chess?"

"I am not familiar with the game, Ragal."

The lanky alien laughed. "I could teach you. Only take a second, I'm certain. But...no matter. Just talk, then?"

"It would be my pleasure."

Ragal nodded, and his eyes dropped back to take in his friends. "See you all at breakfast?"