Who Was That Boogeyman I Saw You With Last Night, Charlie Boone? - 6. Chapter 6

They were able to walk right up to the exterior wall of the hive without being detected. At least, Max could find no trace of anything that might be giving their presence away. Rip seemed certain that no form of external detection gear was in use, and while he seemed sure of that, Charlie had to wonder at the sort of people so confident in their abilities that they would fail to maintain an external watch.

Maybe that's why they're aliens, he mused to himself. They see things totally differently than we do?

Up close, the alien structure was even more intimidatingly huge than it had appeared from afar. It was very much like walking right up to a very tall, very massive skyscraper, but accentuated by the fact that the hive stood all by itself among the ruins, none of which any longer reached such impressive heights. Around them, the world had darkened somewhat, perhaps indicating that the day was getting along towards evening. The dark clouds overhead had not abated, not even shown a gap where sunlight could come through. Charlie had briefly wondered if there might be an lingering radioactivity here, but then recalled that there had been no warning from their skwish before they had come here. And, the poppers walked around in the open, didn't they?

What had occurred here had seemingly happened long ago. The remains of the city were dark, depressing, and despondent, as any place made for living things would become when that life had gone.

"Don't touch the outside wall of the hive," Rip warned, as he led them closer. "They can detect that."

"Nice of you to tell us," Kippy said, sounding as unnerved as Charlie felt himself. This was certainly one of the creepiest things they had ever done!

"I just did," Rip returned, smiling. "It's best to tell you when you're right here, so that you don't forget."

"I don't think I'll forget," Charlie's boyfriend returned, sounding muted. He frowned. "I'm sorry. I'm--"

"Scared?" Rip asked. "So am I. Everyone just stay together in the group, and stay away from that wall. We'll be fine."

"There's a way in?" Robin asked.

"Yes, a fairly simple doorway. It may even be open."

"Trusting sorts," Dick mused, sounding doubtful.

"Hardly." Rip looked back at them, and shook his head. "They're just very sure of their abilities, and their technology."

Max grunted at that. "Then we're going to take away their contentment with that, forever."

"I don't understand why they don't have radar, or thermal sensing, or even some guy on the roof watching, to warn them that someone is coming," Rick said. "That just seems careless to me."

Rip stopped, and the whole group ground to a startled halt.

The former time ranger turned to them. "Poppers are not like us. Not at all. They seem to feel that using technology to do something they can do themselves is a waste of energy. Normally, they would have sensed us the moment we arrived here. But this ixt of Will's is more effective than you think. A popper doesn't just see us, it senses us, too. This is powerful and basic ability with them, one they trust. So if they can't notice us when we're standing twenty feet away from them, it isn't that they just can't see us. They can't sense us, either. So they aren't going to sense us walking up to their fortress."

"There's twelve of us," Rick reminded. "We're not exactly a small strike force."

Charlie turned to the shaman. "Is that right, Will? Your ixt keeps them from sensing our presence, too?"

"It wouldn't matter if there were a hundred of us," Will said. "I thought you fellas understood that we are hidden. They can't see us or sense us right now. We're completely safe from them sensing us, but we still need to be careful about them seein' us. Movin' up close, right in front of them, could still give us away. So, if they come close to you, stop movin' and play dead. You really have to get right in their center of attention for them to see you through the ixt."

Rip nodded. "And my feeling is that if one of them suddenly sees us but cannot sense us, the reaction is not going to be pretty."

It sounded convincing, but Charlie was aware that a leap of faith was involved here. They had to trust in what Rip knew of their foes, and what Will knew about his private skwish talents. It took some doing to put away their doubts and fears.

Rip turned back, and they resumed their approach to the alien fortress.

"Where's my undetectable suit when I need it?" Rick muttered.

"It's in the closet back on Engris," Adrian said with a nervous laugh. "Right where it belongs!"

Charlie smiled at the memory of the anti-detection suit Rick had purchased in the pirate market. It looked to have been made from a roll of tinfoil with fuzz glued to it. It was proof against every form of detection in the known universe -- except the eye.

Rick apparently recalled the suit, too, and smiled. "It would actually work here. Will's ixt would keep these guy's eyes from seeing or sensing us. The suit would have taken care of every other form of detection!"

"You only had the one suit," Kippy reminded. "And that con artist you bought it from isn't at the market anymore."

"He was a good seller," Rick countered. "It wasn't his fault that that disgruntled Emerian took a swing at him while he was wearing that emergency response suit, and the suit put the Emerian in the hospital."

Max suddenly cleared his throat. "Could we?"

Charlie grinned at that. "Nervous talk," he whispered to the elf.

"I know," Max replied. "I'm feelin' it, myself."

Rip held up a hand then and stopped them again. "Now it will be smart to be quiet. Whisper, if you need to talk. That eyebrow ridge there, up ahead? That's over the doorway. We don't want to chance them hearing us."

"Be vewy, vewy quiet," Browbeat whispered, from atop Robin's shoulder.

That brought some smiles, as visions of Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits wafted briefly through some of their minds. Browbeat loved human television, especially old movies and cartoons.

As they continued around the wall, the eyebrow ridge that Rip had mentioned came into better view. The doorway beneath it was easily twenty feet tall, and broad enough for all of them to enter standing shoulder-to-shoulder. And, it was open.

"Isn't this too easy?" Rick whispered.

Rip grunted softly. "I told you, they are counting on their own ability to sense intruders outside their walls. They're probably very sure of this planet, too. They wouldn't even be here if there was anyone around to worry them." He pointed at the entry ahead. "They want to come and go easily, because they don't ever teleport into or out of one of these hives. They come outside first to leave, and reappear outside when they return. The interior of the fortress is covered by a transaction field, that can record the minute energies of a teleport. Because we are dealing with teleporters, they are paranoid of the ability in others. You recall that the ones we followed materialized some distance from the fortress itself?"

Max looked interested in that. "But you could teleport out from the inside, if you had to do it?"

"Yes. They don't allow it because they'd have to keep track of all their own comings and goings just to ensure no one else got inside that way." He smiled then. "Though the idea that we could follow them back here from Earth would never enter their minds."

"They don't sound very imaginative," Charlie offered.

Rip frowned at that. "They are, and they aren't. They're smart, though, in a very exotic way. But they don't think at all like we do. They continually surprised me when I was in the field with Khaj, in what they seemed to overlook."

"That works in our favor," Dick said. "Unless it also gives them the capability to think of things we don't."

Rip nodded. "Sometimes, that happened. But usually, we were able to get away from them, because they seemed unable to predict what we would do."

"That is some alien thinking, then," Rick said softly.

Rip nodded. "They are not like us, remember that. Don't expect them to do anything, if they detect us, but to try to kill us."

"That's reassuring," Adrian added.

Casper looked up at Ragal. "I'm sensing stuff coming through the doorway. There's all sorts of detection gear inside."

"I feel it, too," Will announced. "Some complicated stuff. Now...how to get around that?"

"I can deal with most of it," Max said. "The electronic junk, anyway." He squinted then. "I'm just not sure about a few skwish things I'm sensing. Some of it's pretty weird."

Will nodded. "Let me see." The shaman closed his eyes, and Rip held up a hand to indicate they wait in silence while Will considered the problem.

Several minutes went by, while the Tlingit remained still.

"What if we can't get in?" Kippy finally whispered.

"We can always get in," Rip said quietly. "But not undetected, if Max can't deflect everything, and Will can't think of something for the rest."

The shaman opened his eyes and smiled. "Wow. They got some amazing stuff in there." He smiled at the doorway. "But almost all of it works the same way. Gizmos that see and hear, and others that bounce all sorts of signals around and read 'em when they come back. And other machines that sense things our bodies give off."

Rip sighed. "So...you can't do anything?'

Will chuckled. "The stuff that sees and hears is just like us. If the eye can't see it, and the ear can't hear it, it's like it isn't there."

"What about the other sensors?" the former time ranger asked, a light of hope appearing in his eyes.

Will nodded. "Those send out some kinda wave, that has to bounce back to let them know something is there. Or, they have ones that have to detect something from us, like body heat, or little bits of dust our bodies lose as we move, that contains tiny parts of us that can be detected."

"DNA?" Charlie asked.

"I guess that's what it's called." Will nodded. "So, I just make 'em not see or hear us, not be able to bounce anything off us, and not sense anything from us, like heat or those DNA things."

"What about the weird skwish stuff I'm feelin'?" Max asked. "I'm sure I can deal with it, if I have time to analyze it."

Will shook his head. "No need. What you're feelin' is a sort of magnified sense of the same thing the poppers use individually to sense us. And they already can't sense us through my ixt. So, I can do something that will take care of all of their detection junk inside."

Max grinned. "That would work."

Robin looked fascinated. "Is that actually possible?"

"Sure." Will looked confident. "We'll be like ghosts to them. I told you fellas...staying out of sight is my gift."

Robin laughed softly. "This is amazing. You can teach this to us?"

"Well, let me get it down pat for me, first. Hold on a minute."

They all went silent as the shaman closed his eyes again. Charlie felt several tingles course up and down his spine as Will worked, and some part of his mind realized that each one was to be part of a whole that Will was building. He had to just marvel at that, and images of Eseffa and Jorli came to mind as he imagined the probability discriminators their kind had placed on Earth in its deep past somehow almost magically insuring that all the right people had come together for this mission.

He had always felt that the technology of the Madracorn was about as close to magic as it got. Now, he was certain. And he could only wonder if the human race would ever stand at such a pinnacle of understanding and achievement as the creators of Engris had, in their own time.

If we can help get that done, this is all worth it, he decided.

It took almost ten minutes before Will opened his eyes again. "I think that will do it. Let me check it all works together...hmm...wait, that goes there...yep. Seems to." He smiled at them. "Gather around, gents, and I'll show it to you."

They did that. Charlie felt the tingle in his spine, a most intricate thing, and he could actually feel all the individual parts he had sensed before, now working together. The total was complex, but something he felt he could duplicate on his own. The new skwish proved easy enough for the regular skwish users to learn, and Max helped reinforce the technique for Dick and Rip -- the former because his grasp of skwish was still new; the latter because his skwish strengths in this area had never been highly developed.

And, whatever the Madracorn had built into Browbeat's artificial body in the way of skwish handling seemed more than up to the task of helping him learn, even though the flyer's body apparently had its own safeguards built in against detection.

Kippy smiled at the flyer after that. "We need to teach you some more skwish stuff, sweetheart. If you can learn Will's trick, you can learn other things."

Browbeat's small face lit up. "I'll learn!" But then he visibly forced himself to calm down. "But first, we have to take care of business here."

Charlie agreed with that. They practiced Will's skwish construct, until everyone felt confident with it.

Casper looked up at Charlie then. "Do you think my power of illusion would work on these guys?"

Charlie felt surprise at that. "Have you ever met anyone where it didn't?"

"Well, it works better on some races than others. I haven't tried it on everybody I've met." The little alien grinned. "I've always felt that would be kind of sneaky."

Kippy sighed, and rubbed Casper's shoulder. "One reason we love you, honey."

Casper looked around at the group. "I love you guys, too. I never had friends before I met you." A determined look entered his gray eyes. "I want to use everything I have to keep us safe."

"All you can do is try it if the need arises," Ragal suggested.

"I will!"

Kippy gave a little sigh, and turned to Max and Rip. "Do we have an objective in going inside this thing?"

Max frowned at that. "I've got Esmerelda looking over my shoulder, so to speak. She will know what she's looking for, even if I don't. I imagine it will be some event these poppers have been part of, that can somehow be turned against them now."

"Maybe like coming to this world?" Adrian asked.

"Maybe. But we won't know until we find it. Casper, I'm counting on you to help with that, and you, Ragal. Both you guys have really strong sensory skills. I'm hoping you two can help find the moment we need."

"I hope I can even look inside these guy's minds," Casper said. "I'll do my best!"

"As will I," Ragal said, smiling. "I already know I can sense much from these beings, just by our short encounter in the woods back on Earth. I think that Casper and I, working together, have some hope of aiding Esmerelda in finding some connection we can use."

Rip nodded, and turned back to the doorway. "Then I guess we go in."

Dick emitted a soft sigh then, and Charlie smiled at him. "Something?"

The man returned the smile, and spoke quietly. "I feel a little out of my league here. I thought I'd be helping with the Tlingit, but we have one right here among us. I don't know what I am to do."

Charlie nodded. "Join the club."

Dick's eyes widened. "You mean...you don't know what you are to do here, either?"

"Not yet. I suspect none of us really do, until it happens." He smiled at the older man. "Keep your eyes open. Be careful. And wait to see how it goes. That's what I'm doing!"

Dick nodded, but looked satisfied now. Charlie took another look at the popper fortress, and blew out a small breath.

Here we go.

 

* * * * * * *

 

There was a ramp at the actual entry port. What looked like a simple doorway from afar proved to be more like an airlock close up. The double doors, drawn back into the walls now, were eight inches thick. Beyond them was a second set, also open, of similar heroic girth. Inside, they could see a vast open area, like a plaza within a city, where the aliens moved about in a purposeful manner. None seemed to be just lazing about, doing nothing. The impression of each alien being on a mission was almost painfully clear.

There were no guards at the entry, no one to confront them. The way inside seemed clear.

"We can't touch the ramp, or the floor between the doors," Rip said then. "They'll detect us, just as if we touched the outer walls."

Max frowned at him. "You said you were inside one of these places before. How'd you get in undetected, if you couldn't touch the ramp or the deck?"

"We didn't," Rip said, smiling. "Get in undetected, I mean. They knew we were there the second we arrived. They'd brought their hive down to a place we had been before. We were able to teleport to near the open door, run inside, and then teleport out again."

"Whatever for?" Kippy asked.

Rip help up his hand, closed it into a fist. "Fusion grenade, the size of my fist. Of Kamitta manufacture. Twelve kiloton yield, set on a three second delay."

Max took that in, and his frown deepened. "That doesn't sound fun."

"It wasn't. But it did put an end to that particular hive."

Everyone stared at the ex-time ranger. He shrugged. "That hive was on its way to destroying a world full of people that didn't even know of them. It had to be done."

"We ain't blowin' this place up," Max pointed out.

"No." Charlie could see the ex-time ranger mentally shift gears. Rip turned to Max. "You said you and some of the others could fly. If we can pass over the ramp and the floor between doors, we can land safely on the floor beyond and remain undetected."

"I'm with that," Will said. "My sense of what's here tells me these physical defenses end after that second door."

"There's no other detection devices?" Rick asked in disbelief. "Nothing?"

"They don't normally need anything else," Shannon replied. "I told you: they are set up to deal with what they understand. Our group would appear to be that rare and unusual thing -- the unknown quantity."

Max absorbed that, and then nodded. "They must not have any flyers among their kind, is all I can say." He waved his hands at them. "Everyone gather around. I'll fly us inside."

They massed together, and lifted silently from the ground and moved towards the entry. Charlie could see the poppers within, moving about on their silent missions, and it was hard to believe that the many aliens would simply be unable to see or sense them. It felt very much like walking into a trap!

But Charlie had faith in Max. And, in Will Whitesaw, he found now, too. The old Tlingit shaman actually reminded Charlie of Max, a little. Both men expressed a contagious confidence in the things they knew. They were in the best hands he could imagine just now, short of Nicholaas being here, himself.

They floated over the ramp and across the threshold, through the second set of doors, and drew to a halt within. No alarms rang, none of the many poppers moving around in the plaza so much as looked their way. Nothing.

"Amazing," Rip breathed softly. He turned to smile at Max. "That was a hell of a lot easier than the last time I did this."

"What about the walls inside here? And the floor?" Max asked. "Safe to touch them?"

"Yes. None of the interior surfaces will give us away." Rip pointed at a wall off to their left. "You can set us down there."

"This just seems weird," Rick whispered. "You couldn't get into a high security place on Earth this easy!"

"Alien thinking, alien ways," Rip said. "I told you, these guys do not think like we do. They guard against what they understand, just as humans do. And, let me point out the fact that no military base on Earth is set up to guard against teleporters arriving from the past, either."

"Man has a point," Dick allowed.

"It still bugs me," Rick complained.

"Let's be quiet for a minute," Max cautioned.

They moved to the wall, and Max set them down gently on the floor. Again, there was no response, no cries of surprise followed by the sounds of running feet. The poppers continued to move about on their business, mostly silently, in an almost eerie fashion that reminded Charlie of scenes from zombie movies he had seen in the past. There was no socializing, no chit-chat, no laughter -- none of the very human sounds that one would expect to experience in a similar plaza crowded with humans. Kippy and the others also watched the big aliens move about, and Charlie could see the same disconcerted looks upon their faces.

Rip appraised them and nodded, almost as if he could divine what they were thinking. "It's the supermind, remember," he whispered. "They're all a part of it. They converse when they're under pressure, but in a relaxed setting, they simply share the mind."

"It's so---" Kippy whispered. He looked at Charlie. "I don't have a word to describe it."

Rip nodded. "It's alien to us. But to them, it's completely normal."

"Where do we go from here?" Rick asked.

Charlie looked around the vast room. The ceiling was far above them, yet even so, they knew there had to be many other floors above that. Ramps wound from the floor up around the curved walls, to deposit travelers on decks above. There were lights and what appeared to be windows above them, suggesting that many rooms looked out over the teeming plaza. The scale of the place was mesmerizing, and it was only now becoming apparent that many thousands of poppers must be operating from this one location.

Max also stared about the vast chamber, and then shook his head. "We don't know what we're looking for, is the problem. Esmerelda just wants us to explore."

Rip looked a little surprised by that. He glanced around the huge chamber, and then released an almost silent laugh. "Well, I always did want to see more of one of these places."

"Up," Max suggested, pointing at one of the nearby ramps.

They moved that way, being as quiet as they could, and stopped near the ramp. But it quickly became apparent that there was no way they could ascend by that route. The popper traffic was too heavy. They would get too close to the aliens. One of them was bound to see them.

Max shrugged, and looked upwards at the many platforms above. "I'll take us up. Come back closer, guys."

Once again they merged, and Max lifted them upwards. They passed the first of the platforms they had seen from the main floor, and Charlie could see that this one extended back into the body of the hive, and was busy with more of the aliens moving about. Too many, too closely packed, for them to risk.

Max grunted softly, and moved them up another level. More of the same.

But as they ascended the levels, the traffic began to wane.

"We're getting into head honcho territory, I imagine," Rip whispered, after they had passed the tenth level. "I guess everyone doesn't need to come up this high."

Charlie had noted that there seemed to be fast lifts spaced around the interior of the chamber -- simple squares of steel which the aliens stepped upon and were immediately whisked upwards or downwards. There were no rails, no walls -- nothing that would appear on a human transport of this sort to limit the possibility of someone falling from them. Apparently, the poppers did not consider such things necessary.

As they neared the roof of the chamber, Charlie noted that the platforms became more sparsely traveled, until at last they reached what, by Charlie's count, was the fourteenth level, where the platform was nearly empty of traffic. Far below them now, the plaza teemed with moving poppers, looking even more like a nest of ants then before.

"Looks like our best bet," Max said, taking them closer to the upper platform. None of the poppers were close by, and the elf landed them on the platform without any trouble.

Rip Shannon grinned. "Congratulations, Max. As far as I know, no non-popper has ever been this far into a hive."

The elf grimaced. "I hope none of us ever have to come this far again." He looked around, frowned, and then sniffed at the air. "Something funny over that way."

They all turned to look. "Is it something good, or something bad?" Browbeat asked.

Max squinted across the platform. "Something unusual. Let's have a look."

There were a few poppers at this level, but none near to them. Charlie felt an almost needful desire to stay close to the others, and they moved across the floor as a group, being as quiet as they could. It soon became apparent that Max was leading them towards another large door, this one closed. They could hear a faint hum of machinery of some sort now, a sound that reminded Charlie of the sounds their starship, Lollipop, made as it moved through the depths of the Cooee.

"What do you suppose that is?" Robin whispered. "It seems to be louder up here than down on the main floor."

"I don't know," Max responded. "But it's using a heck of a lot of energy. Makes my skin crawl."

Charlie looked at Rip. "Any idea how to open the doors here?"

The man shook his head. "None."

"Let me deal with that, if we decide to open it," Max said. "Everyone stop here a minute."

They did that, and the elf closed his eyes, and looked to be concentrating. A moment later, they opened. "There's no one in that room. I traced some of the power feeds, and it looks like if we open that door, it will be recorded somewhere. I can get around that, I think. Otherwise, it's just a matter of making a contact inside that doodad there by the door." He pointed at what appeared to be a diamond-shaped ornament set in the wall beside the door.

Charlie nodded, and turned to Will. "What do you sense?"

"Max is right. I don't sense anythin' in there that will give us away, save that when we open the door, it will let send out a signal of some kind."

"And I can bamboozle that," Max said again. He smiled. "Now I want to see what's in there."

They looked around the platform. The few poppers there were far off, around the bend of the wall. No one was close by.

Max led the way to the door. He raised his hands, and frowned. "There...that will open it...and...no, you don't!...there. I stepped on that signal that said the door was being opened."

Kippy pointed at the door. "But it didn't open."

Max grinned as the door slid to one side. "Shall we?"

The filed into the room beyond...and stopped.

The room showed no illumination, but the room was far from dark. In the center of the room an enormous cloud of lights hovered in the air, casting a glow against the dark walls. Charlie took one look, and knew instantly what he was seeing. "Those are stars!"

Ragal held up a hand for silence, and moved forward and leaned in to inspect the grouping. And then walked slowly around the fabulous display, disappearing behind the shining cloud, and then re-emerging on the other side. He came back to them, and stopped beside Charlie. "You're right. It looks like a representation of the local stellar neighborhood."

Kippy looked doubtful. "How can you tell? They all look the same to me."

The tall alien nodded. "There are defining features of every stellar neighborhood, Kip. Here we have stars of the classes of Aldebaran, Arcturus, Capella, Vega...all pretty much in the proper places to be the local grouping. I suspect this is a globe of space about 500 light years in diameter. I even see what I suspect is Earth's sun."

"Suspect?" Rick asked. "You're not certain?"

Ragal smiled, and indicated the floating cloud of stars. "The perspective would seem to be taken from the world we are on now. And, there is a time element here, too. If this is what I think it is, the stars are located in places they would have occupied a half-million years in your own past." He turned, and moved closer to the floating bits. "Observe."

They moved closer, and formed a semicircle so that everyone could observe what Ragal did next. He took a hand and moved it carefully between the stars, and pointed at one, before pulling his hand back. "Take a closer look at that one."

Charlie bent forward with the others to stare at the tiny yellow sun.

Kippy gasped. "It has a ring around it!"

It was true. Charlie spied a tiny ring, blue in color, circling the sun in question.

"I think that's your sun," Ragal told them.

Charlie's eyes wandered among the other stars, he saw that several had blue rings around them. And then he saw more such ringed stars...and then even more of them!

"There are dozens of stars with rings around them!" he exclaimed, though remembering to keep his voice down.

Rip was examining the stars, too. "I'll bet these are all solar systems the poppers are worried about. They all have races living there that are a possible threat to them."

"This ring is purple," Adrian said, pointing to another sun.

"I see a couple of them," Rick confirmed.

Rip sighed. "In our culture, we use the color red as a warning indicator. The poppers use blue as a warning."

Charlie's eyes widened at the revelation. "So that means they see our sun...our world, as a danger?"

"Yes." Rip licked his lips. "The purple rings almost surely indicate worlds that were once a problem, but no longer fit that description."

"You mean...they've been dealt with," Dick said, his voice sounding angry.

"Yes. The blue-ringed worlds probably have probability discriminators. The purple-ringed worlds -- obviously not."

"So, if we could see the sun of this world--" Casper began.

"--it would have a purple ring around it, yes." Rip finished.

Rick ground his teeth. "These are some rotten bastards."

"Let's kick some blue butt!" Browbeat hissed.

Rip shook his head. "I know how you feel. But to the poppers, they are not being evil. They are simply making moves, trying to protect a future they do not have, but apparently want terribly."

"I don't care," Max said, his expression grim. "I don't care if they are evil or not. They can't be allowed to kill off whole planets. It's wrong, and I ain't puttin' up with it."

"None of us are," Kippy said. "That's why we're here."

Charlie licked his lips, and pointed at the representation of stars. "This is the chessboard." He turned to Shannon. "In the game you were talking about."

The older man nodded. "You could look at it that way, I guess. All the suns you see with blue rings are threatened pieces."

"None of the others are close to Earth," Adrian observed. "I guess that's why we don't know there are people there."

"They're close enough," Robin said grimly.

Charlie managed to pull his eyes away from the threatened stars, to look around the room. "This seems to be the only thing here."

"It must be a simple representation of their goals," Ragal said. "The stars with blue rings have planets with probability discriminators protecting them. They are surely safe for the time being. But I suspect that these are also worlds where the poppers will be concentrating their efforts."

Max looked around the room once again, and then nodded. "Nothin' else to do here. Let's move on." He looked around at the others. "Stay close. I don't want nobody to wander off."

Kippy laughed. "Like that's going to happen!"

They returned to the doorway, and Max held up a hand. "There's no one outside. I'll suppress the signal again when we open the door."

They returned to the platform outside. There were a few of the aliens visible, but none near them.

"Where next?" Rip asked.

Max closed his eyes and turned his head slowly. He made a face then. "There's a lot goin' on up here. Most of it, I don't even know what I'm sensing."

Rip shrugged. "Pick something. This is an exploration, right?"

The elf nodded, and turned the other way. "Esmerelda suggests we go this way."

Robin emitted a sigh. "This not having a clear goal irks me."

"We got used to it in the time rangers," Rip said. "Every place we visited, we found some new indication that the poppers were up to no good. Often, we had to drop other plans in order to deal with new ones."

"Is there a homeworld for these blue guys?" Browbeat suddenly asked.

Rip turned to look at the flyer. "Homeworld?"

"They had to originate somewhere," Charlie agreed, his own interest suddenly spiking.

The older man looked surprised. "If there is, we never heard tell of it. We have always dealt with poppers operating out of hives. The evidence has been that the species is migratory, going where they feel they need to operate."

Kippy turned a surprised look on Charlie. "We never heard of the Madracorn homeworld, either. Engris was a place they made. But it wasn't where they originated."

That was true. And as long as they had known Eseffa and Jorli, no one had ever thought to ask them. Charlie made an amazed sound. "Wow. Bet that planet is an amazing place."

"Or was," Adrian corrected. "If the Madracorn are gone, what became of their worlds?"

Charlie was suddenly struck by how much they did not know about the two sides in this affair. They were operating solely on what the Madracorn had told them, and what Rip knew of the poppers. But the Madracorn had always been open with them...well, mostly. Charlie had come to trust them, and his instincts were seldom misled. He thought about that, and nodded.

"I trust Eseffa and Jorli. I do think they're the good guys."

Kippy smiled. "No question with me. You were having doubts?"

"Not really. I was just suddenly aware of how much we don't know." He turned to where Browbeat was now riding on Robin's shoulder. "Did you have a reason for asking that?"

The little flyer released a laugh. "I just wondered what sort of ghoulish place produced these guys. And whether they would move to defend it if it was in trouble."

"I would think the Madracorn would know where the poppers came from," Robin said quietly. "Interesting that they didn't share that with us."

Rick shook his head. "They were careful not to tell us too much, it did seem. They didn't want to set our direction. This has to be something we do on our own, I think."

"I think I agree," Max decided. "They have already been walkin' the line with tampering with the future by setting the probability gizmos on worlds like Earth. I think we're back to the idea that a little foreknowledge can be a dangerous thing."

Charlie frowned at the elf. "You say that Esmerelda just wants us to look around?"

"Yep."

"So, she doesn't know what she's looking for, either?"

Max thought about that. "That seems interesting, too, now that I think of it. Esmerelda exists in all times. She would have to already know what we're looking for."

"Then...why doesn't she?" Kippy asked.

Max closed his eyes a moment, and then looked puzzled when he reopened them. "She says just to keep doing what we're doing."

"Something is afoot," Ragal said then. "There is something we have not been told."

"Something is out of place," Casper agreed. But he shook his head. "But it's not against us."

"What do you mean by not against us?" Adrian asked.

Casper turned to look at him. "I mean, whatever is going on, it's not supposed to hurt us." He looked up at Ragal. "I think we're in the middle of one of those chess moves that Rip was talking about."

"Pieces being moved on the board," Ragal said slowly. His eyes sought out Charlie. "That would suggest a hand doing the moving, wouldn't it?"

A fierce and alarming tingle worked its way up Charlie's spine then, and invaded his brain with a sudden sense of anxiety. His mind briefly raced as facts and impressions drew together with incredible speed, and he threw up a hand for quiet and closed his eyes, while quickly drawing his other hand to his chest, where he placed it over the dragon medallion beneath his clothing, that was home to Castor. He felt a burst of warmth then, a feeling of welcome, a sense of merging, followed by a steely cloak of purpose that descended upon his thoughts. Quickly! Charlie demanded. What do you sense?

In his mind, Charlie suddenly saw himself and his friends standing there on the platform, in the same exact positions he had just seen everyone assuming. The scene turned slowly, noting the poppers walking the platform nearby, and the door to the room of stars they had just left. The scene turned further, and settled on a blank section of wall nearby...and then moved closer. The dark metal of the wall came at him then, and just when Charlie gasped at the idea they would strike it, the metal seemed to part and allow his mental view entry.

To his surprise, his vision accelerated, flowed through walls now, through other rooms, some empty, some hosting poppers, and through more walls still. The sense that he was crossing the width of the hive came to him then, as the flurry of passing walls and rooms sped up; until, quite suddenly, the movement slowed to a crawl as he emerged into a large and almost hypnotically pulsating room, and stopped with a suddenness that took his breath away. Charlie felt almost as if he bounced after the stop, and turned his mind's eye to gaze around the room.

It was an odd place, indeed, strangely proportioned and multifaceted, almost like being inside a cut and polished diamond, looking out. But it was as if this diamond breathed, for the walls seemed to expand and contract with a notable regularity, though Charlie was unable to tell if if what he was seeing was actual fact or just a kind of skwish impression of some unknown process. What could only be machines stood in unexpected places nearby, but they were also oddly proportioned, seemed unfixed in shape, and literally vibrated with a sense of power and purpose.

In front of him stood a low dais, upon which a half-dozen poppers were seated in a semicircle, motionless, their backs to him. Ahead of them, an image floated in the air, and with a gasp Charlie realized it was an image of Charlie and his friends still standing before the door into the room of stars! Lights played over the poppers as if from the walls and the machines, giving the aliens a dreamlike look that was hard to concentrate on. The room was just full of a strange skwish presence he had never encountered before!

His vision began to move again, approaching the aliens from behind, but he was scarcely halfway there when there was a flurry of motion as the poppers leaped to their feet as one, and turned to stare at him!

Just as suddenly, Charlie was back with his friends, where he opened his eyes. "We have to go!"

Even as he raised the alarm, the poppers that had been moving around the platform nearby, apparently oblivious to them, froze in their tracks; and then they turned as a group and began running towards them. Max took one look and raised a hand, and Charlie felt himself drawn into a tight grouping with his friends, where everyone touched.

But whatever Max had planned for them was suddenly thwarted as the very door they had just come through from the room of stars opened, and a popper leaped out, his hands raised to grab the elf! The suddenness of the alien's appearance caused everyone to jump, separating the group again. But all Charlie could focus upon in that fleeting instant were the alien's glittery dark eyes, that seemed filled with a sense of purpose as they focused on Max!

Something bulleted past Charlie then with a furious hum and at an astounding speed, and crashed full into the popper's chest with such force that the alien was bowled over backwards into the room of stars. Charlie felt the force of the alien's impact against the floor through his boots, and then the faint pulsations of the other poppers footfalls as they raced towards them. A second later Browbeat emerged from the room of stars, his golden eyes alight with fury, his wings a blur of frenetic motion as he settled on Max's shoulder. "Now!"

Max raised a hand again, and once more they were drawn together into a group. Just as the poppers running across the platform reached them, the scene vanished, and they were again standing amidst the ruins of the city outside the hive.

"Nobody move!" Max yelled. "Stay together!"

They heard a half-dozen pops nearby, and six poppers appeared, still in the form of a semicircle; and Charlie knew these had to be the ones he had seen in the mysterious room in the hive. The ones that had sensed him in Castor's vision, and leapt to their feet to turn on him.

The ground shook as thunder roared overhead, and Charlie blinked as a sheet of white light was deflected into the ground nearby, where it exploded into a fireball, sending molten clumps of dirt flying in every direction. But these missiles seemed to strike the very air nearby and bounce away from them, as if they were striking an invisible wall that surrounded Charlie and the others.

Adrian raised his own hands, and a mammoth arc of blue-white light responded, which impacted the ground amidst the aliens with an amazing roar and a cascade of foot-long sparks that snaked over the ground and snapped at the feet of the poppers, causing them to step back and draw together into a protective group. Max's hands flew up, and a fierce growl of wind spoke out as as a tornado of dirty air and debris fountained upwards from the ground among the poppers, pushing them apart, but failing to separate them completely as their own protections closed in around them.

And then all hell broke lose. Charlie felt Kippy grab his arm, just as a huge section of one of the collapsed buildings launched itself at the poppers, only to burst with incredible force against an invisible wall that seemed to surround them. More lightning flew as Adrian settled into his defense, and then it was as if the entire dead city had come back to life, with huge portions of debris rocketing back and forth as movement skwish was unleashed in stupendous amounts from both sides. The air buzzed and whipped around them, the ground vibrated as it transmitted the force of tremendous impacts, and flashes of harsh blue light illuminated the dark and dead city in ways it had not seen in a millennium of time.

Max waved a fist at the poppers, and the air round them bubbled with energy, and the six aliens were suddenly thrust apart, though none lost their footing, and each seemed to retain his invisible shielding. But Robin immediately pointed a finger at one the poppers, a look of grim duty on his features that Charlie had never seen in the man before. The earth lifted in huge slabs to front and rear of the popper and slammed together with such force that the slabs exploded into their constituent earth, rocks, and debris. The popper slowly became visible again, standing among a cloud of swiftly-expanding dust; but then the alien wavered, tilted forward, and crashed to the ground and lay still.

This seemed to galvanize the other five poppers, and the noise and the light and the tremors in the earth seemed to only increase in power. But whatever invisible force had been erected around their group by Max and Robin seemed to hold, and yet again Robin brought down one of the poppers with his double-slab attack. Now there were only four of the enemy remaining.

Charlie had no idea how to contribute to this fight, until the idea came to him that he might use his new teleportation talent to move things other than himself. He turned his gaze, searching, and his eyes landed upon the hefty remains of a dome of some sort that looked to be made of concrete or stone. Once the cap to some tower or minaret, perhaps, it had fallen to the ground in one piece, advertising its massiveness in that act alone.

Could he teleport it?

This seemed to be what some of both sides were doing with other debris already. Either tossing things around with movement magic, or teleporting things so that they would drop upon the enemy. Charlie closed his eyes and tried to concentrate among the noise and the pulses of light. The dome must weigh a hundred tons, he guessed, and maybe more. It would be a serious test of his skills. He reached for the dome, encompassed it in the same sort of collective mental enclosure he would use to move a group of people, and tried to teleport it into the air above the poppers.

But...he felt immediately that something was wrong. He felt that the dome should teleport, but it didn't. Instead, it moved slightly to one side.

What?

He tried again, with the same result -- only, this time, the dome moved the other way. But...why?

He tried again, but even as he did he felt a small movement of the dome, and suddenly realized what was happening. He was trying to get a lock on the dome at the same time that someone else was!

He could feel the other's skwish force now, and realized that it was not coming from within his own group.One of the poppers was trying to move or teleport the dome.

Charlie immediately wrapped the mammoth object in skwish force again, and found that after he did, he could tug upon it, and actually move the dome. He gave it a pull, and it moved one way.

And then promptly move back again!

Charlie understood what was happening now. He seized the dome and pulled, just as the unknown other pulled the other way. The dome rolled over, scattering debris every which way. Upended now, it moved easier, and Charlie immediately pulled it towards him.

The other pulled back, and the dome stopped moving.

Charlie suddenly grinned, feeling an almost manic energy come over him. Tug 'o war, huh?

"I can play that game," Charlie whispered, concentrating fully now as the battle thundered around him. He fixed his mental grip on the dome, and pulled. The massive object started sliding across the ground, its dome plowing a furrow into the rocky earth. It stopped then, and moved back a few feet, but Charlie just pulled harder, and the dome started moving towards him again. Slowly, as the battle raged around him, the dome slid across the ground until it was directly between Charlie and one of the poppers.

That had to be the one!

Now ensued the actual tug 'o war. The dome slid towards Charlie, and then stopped, and slowly drew back. Charlie applied a more steady pressure, and the dome started moving back his way, until, slowly, it drew to a halt again. The alien force was strong!

He let the dome move away from him again, and then stopped it, and pulled it back. It took some mental effort, but he understood then that he had more to offer. He gave a larger tug on the dome, and it moved back his way again...and stopped once more. The force the other was applying became steady then, and Charlie simply countered it, raise for raise, feeling it build, while countering it with an equal force, and the dome simply sat between him and the popper as if no one was touching it at all.

Charlie had played tug 'o war many times as a kid, and he knew there was only one way to win, and that was to out-pull the other side. But he remembered several times where the game had not gone as expected because--

Charlie smiled grimly.The force that he and the popper were applying to the dome was considerable now. He could keep ramping it up, trying to win the game, or he could...

...let go of the rope.

Charlie did just that.

The hundred-ton dome shot away from him, bouncing into the air as it did so, and came down and rolled over two of the poppers before they could so much as take a single step. The force of the battle around them immediately diminished, and Charlie saw the two remaining poppers race together.

What happened next was totally unexpected. The two poppers converged, but instead of stopping they seemed to flow together. Their forms expanded and merged, and in a second a new, taller and broader single popper stood across from them.

"It's time to go," Charlie heard Max say.

He felt the invisible force draw them together, and then the scene around them disappeared as they went into a teleport and time move, together.

But immediately, Charlie knew something was wrong. They seemed to bounce, and then careen wildly one way an then the next.

"I can't steer us!" Max yelled. "Something has a hold of us!"

And Charlie knew then, what it had to be.

That last, new popper.

It was after them!