Chapter 23

Under the cover of darkness, Sirren had no trouble making it back to the Carlos' cousin Luis' ranch, loping across the countryside at better than ninety miles per hour. Knowing that Luis would not appreciate her showing up completely naked, she went around to the back. The window was still open a crack, as she had told Carlos to leave it. Opening it all the way, she lightly vaulted in, her knees barely flexing to absorb the impact.

She went to the bed and stood by it, looking down, her bright blue eyes not even needing the faint moonlight that came in through the open window. Carlos was asleep, snoring slightly. He was completely naked, as was his wont, lying on his back on top of the covers. The sight of his naked body, so much younger and stronger than the officer she had had in the stone ruins had been, roused some feelings in her.

But not just yet. She had more important things to do right now. Kneeling by the bed, she retrieved a small suitcase from underneath. Standing up, she walked across the room to the small table. She didn't bother to turn on any of the lights.

She had not only survived two encounters with the Velorian Planetary Protector, three if one counted that first one in the drop shuttle, but she had actually done more than merely survive. Stars! She had done much more than merely survive the encounters.

Yes, she had done it. Yes, she had accomplished the near impossible.

She had done it! Sirren had killed the Velorian Planetary Protector! She, Senior Lieutenant Sirren, had done it! With her bare hands!

Carlos awoke as she was replacing the radio under the bed after having sent her message. But he didn't get a chance to get out of bed, as Sirren was all over him.

"Joan? Joan? What was that noise? Are you still there?"

With a start, Joan realized that she was still on the phone. Through her tears she looked at the handset in her right hand. Or rather, at the remains of the handset in her right hand. Her hand had almost completely crushed the handset, not much more than the wires still holding the earpiece to the mouthpiece.

Putting down her cooling coffee, she used both hands to carefully hold the pieces to the appropriate places. "Yes, Nancy. I'm still here. Do what you have to do, and keep in touch. I'm afraid I have to go."

"I understand. I still don't believe it myself. I don't want to believe it."

"I don't either. I can't believe it. I don't want to believe it. I mustn't, until we have proof." After a few more minutes she carefully hung up the pieces of the phone.

She could no longer control herself. Tears came pouring out of her eyes as her entire body shook with her sobs. The chair and the desk shook with her.

Just before noon, Steve came by his wife's office to invite her out to lunch. Hearing no response to his knock, he opened the door and went in. He saw her sitting behind her desk, slumped over, her face buried in her hands. At first, he thought that she was thinking, or perhaps just resting. Deciding not to disturb her, he was backing out the door when she raised her head. "Steve, is that you?" Her voice sounded weak and tired.

Very weak and very tired, he couldn't remember ever having heard her voice like this. Alarmed, he quickly went across the office and around the desk, putting an arm around her shoulders. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

As she raised her head, he saw the tears in her eyes. She put an arm around his waist and pulled him closer. "It, it's Julie," she said, her voice not much more than a whisper.

"What about Julie? I thought she was down in Mexico, looking for the 'Dark Supergirl."

"I just spoke with Nancy. Julie hasn't checked in with her for a couple of days now. Yesterday, Nancy saw where Julie and the 'Dark Supergirl' apparently fought. Some old stone ruins, with a lot of fresh damage. But no sign of either Julie, or of the Prime."

"So Julie's still pursuing the Prime. Maybe she found other Arions and went after them."

"But she hasn't checked in with Nancy and Ted. She wouldn't go off chasing them without checking in first."

By late afternoon, more proof had come in. The 'Dark Supergirl' had been spotted again, killing two Mexican policemen. A satellite had detected a very strong burst of gamma radiation at the site of the battle. But not an explosion, more like a strong signal.

And most ominous of all, there still had been no contact from Julie.

Joan could not sleep that night. Leaving Steve sleeping, she headed downstairs. Earlier that evening, she had visited her son-in-law and discussed the findings with him. Now, she curled up on the couch and thought back to the first Velorian that she had lost.

Looking down at the rapidly cooling gray ashes that until moments before had been her lover, she knelt, unmindful of the cold wet snow, crying bitterly in her grief, her thoughts chasing each other around and around in impossibly tight and convoluted circles.

"Oh, Julira, my love," she sobbed to herself. "How can I live without you? Why couldn't I have died when we were captured? Why didn't I kill myself then? You might still be alive now if I had. I wish I could end it all, right now. Once they drugged you, I wasn't a good enough a nurse to get you out of it. Oh, it's all my fault. Why couldn't I have died when we were captured? Oh, why you, my love? Oh, why not me? Why couldn't it have been me instead of you, my love? Oh, Julira, my love!" She knelt there sobbing for a long time, her tears melting into the snow. "Oh, why couldn't it have been me?"

Then the little baby awoke, mewling quietly to itself. She shook her head, pulled herself back to the here and now, and picked up the infant, cradling it gently in her arms, rocking it back and forth until it fell asleep again. She looked down at the tiny being through her grief-dulled and tear-filled eyes, and felt her heart filling with love for this precious new life, pulling her back from the brink of her despair.

"Oh, Julira! Maybe, if I hadn't been there," she told herself firmly, "you would have given up entirely. You might not have survived to give us a daughter." Her tears slowed, then stopped, as she continued to regard Julira's tiny daughter. "Yes, our daughter." she reminded herself. "You are now my daughter, my little one," she whispered to it. "I could not love you more if I had borne you myself." She looked back down at the small pile of ashes, beginning to drift away with the wind. "You never needed to make me promise that, Julira, my love," she whispered. "Your daughter is our daughter."

She looked at the little baby sleeping in her arms. "Yes, you, my little one. You are now MY daughter. You are now Juliree, since you are all that I have left of your mother."

Able to function again, although with a heavy heart, she got ready to make her way into this new and strange, but yet at the same time somehow familiar, world.

Carrying just the bare essentials, which meant not much more than Julira's newborn daughter Juliree, Joreen walked down through the snow, wearing just her robe. She knew that before her enhancement she probably would have frozen to death in the cold long before she could reach those lights she had seen earlier. Even though the sun was rising, it was an unfamiliar yellow sun, giving off more light but much less heat than the red suns she had been familiar with.

Despite minor differences, this place had many similarities to the place where she and her lover had been vacationing before the Arion raiding party had captured them. Tall, rugged, snow-covered mountains and green forests. And also quite cold.

Though she knew that she now could survive the cold, the little infant could not. Not for long. Even though natural childbirth was almost completely unheard of among Velorians, she knew enough about it to know that the infant's current near-complete invulnerability would fade about a week after the umbilical was cut. The invulnerability was needed to ensure that the baby would survive its passage through its mother's birth canal. It would not return until well into adolescence, well after puberty. Probably at about sixteen or seventeen of this small planet's years, if the measurements were right.

With the mother dead, this little girl was now her daughter. Even if Julira hadn't extracted that promise from her, she knew that she would always treat the infant as her own daughter. Never mind that she was an Arion and the infant was a Velorian, the two races long-time hereditary enemies, the infant was HER daughter now.

She wasn't sure just what she would do once she contacted the inhabitants. She had studied the language used by most of the people on this continent, the computers filtering it out and analyzing it, before feeding it directly into her mind through the hypno-teacher. But knowing the language and knowing the people, their customs and attitudes, were two different things. Would they be willing to offer sanctuary to two stranded travelers from another world? Did they even know about other worlds?

Or was she truly stranded here? What if there were Arions here already? But no, the lifeboat's sensors would have detected any Arion or Velorian signals. And the lifeboat's transponder beacon would certainly have been detected by an Arion ship long before planetfall. No, she was confident that there were no Arions here already.

What if there was a Velorian Planetary Protector here? According to Julira, a Protector would at least talk with a Beta before striking. Especially if the Beta wasn't attacking her.

At least most Protectors would. Some hardened ones would kill all Arions on sight.

She was still thinking about what she would say, either to the Protector or to the natives, when she came across a small clearing in the tall trees. In the center of the clearing stood a small building, seemingly made of the wood of the trees. After scooping out a shelter for little Juliree in the snow under a tree, she went forward quietly to investigate.

She did not see any tracks in the fresh snow around the building. There were some wires leading to the building from a wooden pole near the trees. The wires ran along a series of similar poles running alongside what was apparently a snow-covered road disappearing into the trees. Probably electrical power, she knew that these primitive locals still hadn't discovered the much more efficient methods of power generation and transmission that her people had been using for centuries.

Walking up to the isolated building, she peered through the clear windows. She saw no people inside. It looked like there had been nobody inside for quite a long time, probably not since the warmer seasons. Assuming that this wasn't the warmer season, right now.

Next to the door was a small button. Deciding that it was a signaling device to contact the people inside, she pressed it. She jerked her hand back in surprise as she heard a metallic buzzing sound coming from somewhere inside the building. But that was the only result. Listening, she heard no other sound. There was no motion of any kind.

Deciding that there wasn't going to be any response to the audible signal, she walked around the building, looking through every window she could reach. At the back of the building was another door. This one did not have a signal button beside it.

Deciding that there was no one here, she decided to try to get inside. Someplace, anyplace, to get her little Juliree out of the cold. Grasping the handle on the door, she gave it an experimental tug. She was again surprised, as the door opened, pieces of wood breaking off to land at her feet. She examined the door and the jamb. The latch was a simple mechanical device. She could find no signs of any alarm system. "Hmm," she thought, "this door wouldn't even have stopped an ordinary, unenhanced, Beta."

Cautiously, she entered, fully prepared to defend herself. But upon examining the building, obviously a small residential structure, she found that she was indeed alone. She quickly went back outside, bringing little Juliree and her other things inside. Propping the door closed to keep out the blowing snow, she continued her explorations.

There was a large central room, where the front door opened. There were two smaller rooms; the beds obviously marked them as sleeping rooms. There was another room where the door she had entered through opened. This room was apparently used for food preparation and eating. The table and chairs were obviously used for eating; the appliances were obviously used for food preparation, though she could not immediately discern how to operate them. Well, there would be time for that later, she hoped.

She quickly pulled back the covers on one of the beds, preparing a place for the little infant. No, she corrected herself. No, a place for Juliree, her daughter! She then set about continuing her exploration, concentrating on trying to discover how to operate the various appliances and machinery she found. She knew that the first two priorities were food and heat. She had enough rations from the lifeboat to last her for quite a while, but her daughter could not eat that. The infant had not had any food since the last of her mother's milk, which had disappeared with her death. The lifeboat's rations had not included anything suitable for a newborn infant, though Joreen had been able to modify a water bottle so that the baby could suck. She could survive the cold with only minor discomfort, but her daughter soon would not be able to, despite the soft bed coverings.

She quickly discovered that the little switches on the walls next to the doors controlled the lighting inside the individual rooms. The lights also gave off some heat, but not really enough to heat up the interior of the building.

In the kitchen, she discovered that one of the cabinets was a cooling device used to preserve food from spoiling. Sampling the items inside, she found a white liquid that apparently was the milk of some mammal. She set some out to warm up while she tried to discover a way to heat it up more properly for her little daughter.

Before the sun had set, she had decided that the rectangular cutout in the largest room was for burning wood. There was a lever that opened the passageway for the smoke through the roof. And there was a supply of roughly cut wood stacked up behind the building. Lacking the ability Julira had to generate heat from her eyes; she had to resort to the firestarter from the emergency kit she had brought along from the lifeboat. Not the most efficient way to heat a building, but it was certainly better than no heat at all.

Over the course of the next several days she discovered how to operate the appliances to prepare the food. Though it could probably be safely said that the electric range had never been used before to boil corn flakes. Nor had the pots and pans ever contained those particular ingredients in those particular combinations.

The large glass screen inside a wooden cabinet sitting on the floor had been puzzling her since she had first seen it. Manipulating the controls on the front of the cabinet, she eventually got a picture on the screen. Ah, a viewscreen device of some kind. A moving picture. Another control brought up the sound. Looking and listening, she discovered that the picture and the sound went together.

At first, she had thought that it was a two-way communications device. As she had fiddled with the controls on the front, she had seen various pictures, various people, various scenes. But the people she saw seemed to be totally oblivious to her actions and words. They just continued on with their various, and often unfathomable, activities.

Finally, she had accepted the fact that the device was merely a passive receiver, allowing her to see and hear a remote broadcast without being able to send a signal of its own. At least she could brush up on her understanding of the language. And she might be able to learn some things about the people, their culture, and their society.

The strange mixtures of the images and the stories they depicted had confused her also, until she realized that some of them were apparently purely for entertainment purposes, depicting stories from the past. Or apparently from the future, some of them depicted technologies even beyond that of the Arions. Some of them apparently were purely imaginary. The futuristic ones must be imaginary, she knew of no technology that could show images from the future. There were several that showed some great conflicts between armed forces. But she did not see anybody that looked like Arion Primes, let alone Velorian Planetary Protectors, engaged in the conflicts.

They must be purely for entertainment, just like the holo-vid shows back home. Except that these were in only two dimensions instead of three, that is.

Well, at least the natives had the necessary technology to build something like this. She spent much of her time observing the scenes on the viewscreen device and listening. She attempted to get a better understanding of the culture and society on this planet. A number of the shows seemed to be about family situations. Apparently the children growing up on this world had the same kinds of problems as children elsewhere. Other shows seemed to depict members of the law enforcement agencies tracking down and apprehending criminals, often accompanied by a lot of violence.

She also discovered how to use the two water basins in the small room. One seemed to be for washing hands and faces and other small items. The other was big enough for her to lie down in. In addition there was a device, which after some experimentation, she decided was intended for the sanitary disposal of body wastes. Now if only little Julira could use that device on her own, it would make Joreen's life so much easier.

She was also beginning to worry that the rightful owners of this building would return and find her here. Her and her daughter. She knew that she could not stay here forever. Though she thought that she understood the medium of exchange used, she didn't have any of it. She did have some gold with her; it was a commonly used medium of exchange on the gold-poor worlds where she had been. But how much would be appropriate for the food they had consumed, and for the use of the building?

After about ten days, she decided to move on. She had found some clothes that fit her, though she did not know that a tee shirt and a pair of blue jeans was not the usual attire for this area for this season. Those clothes revealed a little too much of her figure. Nor were sneakers the usual footwear for walking in the snow. However, they seemed not too different from what some of the people she had seen on the viewscreen device had been wearing.

But more importantly, she was almost out of the white milky liquid. She had tried to feed little Juliree some of the other things she had found in the various cabinets around the food room; she had not seemed to like any of them.

On a relatively clear day after it had stopped snowing she decided to leave. Leaving a few pieces of her gold on the table in the food preparation room, she bundled up her daughter and took along some extra clothes and food, all wrapped up in her robe.

Closing the broken door as best she could, she followed the road into the trees.

After a few miles, she came across another road. This one had been cleared of the snow, she could see that the snow had somehow been pushed to the sides of the road. It was also much wider and made of a hard stone-like substance, obviously artificial. Staying among the trees, she saw some motorized ground vehicles moving along the road. She had seen enough of them on the viewscreen device to know that although they were primitive compared to what she was accustomed to, they were a very common method of ground transport on this planet.

She emerged from the trees and began walking in the direction where the majority of the vehicles were going. Before too long a white vehicle stopped. A man opened the window and stuck his head out. "Need a ride?" he asked her.

Jackson was just coming home from a business trip. A very profitable business trip. He had gotten even more than usual for the latest shipment of heroin. All in cash. And now, he had picked up this beautiful black-haired woman. She had been walking alone along the road carrying a bundle and dressed only in a tee shirt and jeans. This would be a great way to end up this business trip.

Joreen thought that her best chance would be with the local authorities. "Could you take me to the police station?" she asked him.

"Are you in some kind of a jam?" he asked.

A jam? What did he mean by that? Wasn't a jam a fruit preserve? "No," she replied. "I just want to get in touch with the police."

"Do you have a car somewhere? Or are you just walking?"

She recalled that 'car' was what these vehicles were called. "No, I don't have a car."

He smiled at her. "Well, get in. I'll take you into town."

She walked over to the other side of the car, and realized that she didn't know how to operate the door mechanism. She was saved, however, when the man reached across and opened it for her. She got in, sat down, and fumbled with the straps before figuring out how to strap herself in, holding her daughter in her lap.

As he operated the vehicle, she studied the man. The first person she had met on this planet. A little taller than herself, light brown hair, skin fairer than her own. He didn't look as muscular as a Prime, not even as muscular as a Beta. He looked quite like the men on the last world she had been on. Well, not counting that Arion research station, that had been on an airless world, with no native life.

Still, the light brown hair took some getting used to. She had seen all hair colors from the palest yellow to the raven black of hers on the people she had seen on the viewscreen device, but to actually be with someone with light brown hair was a new experience. All of her people had black hair, while all of Julira's people had blonde hair.

Soon they came to a cluster of buildings, a small town. But the man did not stop there. "The police station?" she asked.

"Not here. A little further," he replied. Just beyond the edge of the town, he turned off the road onto a smaller road. He stopped the car in front of an isolated building and stopping the engine, got out.

It didn't look like an official building; it was only slightly larger than the one she had been staying at. "The police station?" she asked, following him out of the vehicle.

"Not quite, babe." The man pulled a metal device from somewhere inside his clothes and pointed it at her. "Now be a nice girl and come inside."

She recognized the device from the viewscreen device as a weapon. She had seen that these weapons were harmful, often fatal, to the natives. She didn't know whether her enhanced Arion body could withstand its effects. She quickly decided to not take the chance. She went into the building with the man, still clasping little Juliree to her chest.

Jackson had been surprised initially to discover that her bundle was an infant. Oh well, if she had a baby, then she would not be unfamiliar with what he wanted from her.

She had asked to be taken to the police. Hah! Maybe afterwards she would end up at the police station. But not the way she expected, the only part of the police station she would be in would be the morgue.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts about the woman that he failed to notice the green jeep that had been following him. He had failed to see it stop when he had stopped, and he did not notice that it pulled out onto the highway when he did.

As they got out at his vacation cabin, he pulled out his gun and forced her inside.

Once they were inside, the man's intentions were obvious. He motioned Joreen into the bedroom. Still unsure of the weapon's effect on her, she complied. She continued to obey him, removing her clothes and lying down on the bed. Keeping his weapon trained on her, he dropped his trousers and prepared to mount her.

He seemed to be struggling with something. Looking down, she realized that she had been holding herself too tightly. She spread her legs further and relaxed her inner muscles enough to let him enter her. She was surprised to discover that he was smaller than a typical Beta, and so much softer.

As he began his thrusting, accompanied by his grunting, she slowly tightened her inner muscles. His thrusting slowed down, and then stopped, as he was unable to move himself inside her. As she continued to tighten, she saw the look of pain on his face.

Jackson felt the tightest pussy he had ever felt in his life. Oh, this bitch knows how to please a man. Then he felt it tighten even further around his cock. Damn! This was beyond tight. That hurts! He screamed.

As he screamed, she grasped the wrist holding his weapon. She was surprised to hear some crackling noises as she twisted his wrist, forcing him to release the weapon. She relaxed herself enough to let him withdraw.

He screamed again as he felt her hand on his right wrist, twisting and breaking it. The gun fell out of his useless hand, landing on the carpeted floor with a muffled thud.

"Bitch!" he snarled at her, slapping her face with his good hand. It almost felt like slapping a rock, her head turning only slightly despite the force of the blow. Balling his hand up into a fist, he struck her again, this time on her jaw.

She felt his first blow, an open-handed slap. It didn't feel much harder than one of her former lover's gentle caresses. Then he hit her on the jaw. That wasn't a caress. Still, she felt no pain.

Pushing him off of her, she stood up. As he swung again at her, she caught his fist in her hand. Watching his face, she slowly started squeezing. The pain was apparent in his expression. As he fell to his knees, she released him.

As he knelt, gasping, she reached down and grasped his left arm and twisted it behind his back. It was surprisingly easy, much easier than it would have been with an ordinary Beta. She realized that these natives were no stronger than the natives on her last world had been. Definitely not of Supremis stock. "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked him. "Why have you struck me? What have I done to offend you?"

"Please, let me go," he gasped out.

"Is this how you treat all women who come here?"

"Please, I'll give you anything you want. Just let me go."

Anything? She knew that she would need some money if she was to provide for herself and her daughter. At least until she could find some way of earning money on her own. "Anything? Do you have some money?" she asked him.

"Yes, yes. Anything." He tried to reach inside his jacket with his free hand, but the broken wrist prevented him from grasping anything. Watching carefully, she released his arm. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a wad of paper. She had seen enough things made of a similar material, usually holding some writing in a totally unfamiliar script. He threw it on the floor at her feet. "Here, take it. Just let me go."

Still watching him, she stooped down and picked it up. It looked like what she had seen on the viewscreen device, she assumed that it was valid currency. "Thank you. You'd better have a doctor look at that wrist." She was about to start to put her clothes back on when she realized that she didn't know whether he had any more weapons. "When you wake up." She put her hands on the sides of his head and squeezed until he collapsed unconscious at her feet.

She knew that she couldn't stay here. This man may have friends coming soon. She had to leave as quickly as she could.

Hoping that she hadn't hurt him too bad, she dressed and went out into the front room. She stashed the money in her carrying bag, picked her sleeping daughter up, and headed outside.

She did not blood pooling on the floor from his crushed skull. Nor did she see the packages of white powder that fell out of his jacket. She also did not realize that she had torn her tee shirt as she had pulled it on over her head, her right side almost completely exposed to view.

As she was almost out to the bigger road, she heard somebody calling out to her. Surprised, she whirled quickly to see who it was, clutching her daughter tightly to her. She saw a man standing behind a tree, waving an arm and motioning to her.

Brian was glad to be back on the Western Slope where he had grown up, even if it was on business. The pace was so much slower than in the big city, even a western city like Denver, where he lived and worked. And the people were so much nicer and friendlier.

Well, most of them were. There always were exceptions like Jackson. He had been following Jackson all day. He and the other FBI agents had been after Jackson for nearly a year. They had somehow missed his connection in Grand Junction, where he apparently had sold the latest batch of his heroin. If they could have caught him making the sale, they could have closed up one of the biggest drug pipelines here on the Western Slope.

Shortly before reaching town, he saw Jackson stop his white Lincoln on the side of the road. Pulling over, he reached for his binoculars. He saw a young woman carrying a cloth-covered bundle walk up to the car. Looking through his high-powered binoculars, he was struck by how beautiful the woman was, her long black hair blowing freely in the wind. She was dressed simply in a tee shirt and blue jeans, but she didn't seem to be bothered by the cold. Focusing in on the bundle in her arms, he realized that it was a little baby.

"Oh shit!" He knew that Jackson was ruthless, he had killed many times before. Men and women. And children. And now it looked as if he was about to claim another victim. Rather, two victims, he didn't think that there was much of a future for the baby.

As the woman got in the car and Jackson started moving again, Brian put the binoculars down on the seat next to him and followed, cursing to himself. He followed Jackson through the town and to his vacation cabin just beyond.

Parking his jeep among the trees, he radioed for backup. He cursed again, if this goes wrong they'll lose the drug dealer, again. They've probably lost the woman and the baby anyway.

He was alternately watching the house and scanning the road for his backup when he saw the woman emerge from the house, carrying the baby. He noticed that her tee shirt was torn, exposing some nicely tanned skin. He also noticed, again, how beautiful she was. And also that she still did not seem to be bothered by the cold.

As she walked by his hidden jeep, he decided to risk his concealment. Slipping quietly out of his jeep, he walked to the edge of the trees and called softly out to her.

As Joreen was almost out to the bigger road, she heard somebody calling out to her. Surprised, she whirled quickly to see who it was, clutching her daughter tightly to her. She saw a man standing behind a tree, motioning to her. Somehow, she felt that he didn't seem to be threatening her. She slowly started walking towards him.

As she got closer, she could see his short blond hair. How could a man with the blond hair of a Velorian be a danger? Though he couldn't be a Velorian, could he be? Velorian men almost never left their home worlds; in her ten years of living and working with the Velorians she had never even seen one.

As she got even closer, she saw that he wasn't a Velorian. Not with those gray eyes, Velorians always had blue eyes. As he motioned her into the trees with him, he asked her, "Are you okay? He didn't hurt you?"

She was surprised at his words. He seemed genuinely concerned about her wellbeing. "Yes, I am okay. That man tried to, I am sorry, I do not know the right word, he tried to force me to have sex with him."

Brian was shocked. She had been raped, or nearly raped, and yet she seemed as calm as if she was merely discussing the weather. He knew from his experiences with other victims that rape was one of the most traumatic things that any woman could ever go through. And why the hell had Jackson let her go? He didn't pay much attention to her strange lilting speech.

He was further surprised as she described what had happened inside. How he had struck her after attempting to assault her. And how she had knocked him unconscious.

Was this some kind of a trap? Had Jackson somehow detected that he was being followed? Was she working with Jackson?

But no, he had picked up the woman well outside of town. Brian didn't think that Jackson could have persuaded any woman to wait for him in the cold. Not without a coat, even.

And if she was actually telling the truth? About having knocked Jackson unconscious? He decided to risk looking inside the cabin. But first, he would have to get her out of the cold.

"I'm going in. Would you wait here in my car?" He opened the door for her. Without a word she got into the jeep and sat down, holding the baby in her lap.

She didn't quite understand what was going on, but she instinctively felt that he was looking out for her. She got into his green vehicle and sat down, holding her daughter in her lap as he closed the door.

This vehicle was smaller, but taller, than the white one the other man had. The seats were not as soft, either. Well, she had seen vehicles of various sizes and shapes on the viewscreen device. A much wider variety than she was familiar with, Arion vehicles were built strictly for function.

Going in? He was going in to the building? Where the man who had tried to assault her was? Why did he want to go in there?

Going up to the door, Brian listened. Hearing nothing, he tried the door to find it unlocked. Drawing his gun, he stepped inside. He saw the bedroom door ajar. He tiptoed to it. Kicking it open, he stepped in, his gun at the ready.

The first thing he saw was the rumpled bed. Then he saw Jackson's overcoat lying on the floor.

Then he saw Jackson. He was lying on the floor, his pants down around his ankles. The rape portion of her story seemed to be collaborated. A pool of blood around his head. "Oh shit!" he thought to himself. "What have I gotten myself into?"

Holding his gun in his right hand, he reached out to Jackson's neck with his left hand. No pulse. Obviously dead. With that much blood from a head wound, he couldn't possibly be alive. Had she done that? But she had said that she had just knocked him out. But how could she have even done that?

Jackson wasn't a particularly big man, but Brian knew that he was an experienced fighter, he had served in the infantry in Vietnam. How could she have done anything like this to him, no matter how distracted he might have been?

Turning the body over, he saw that Jackson's skull had been crushed. "What the hell?" Who, or rather, what, could have done that? She couldn't have done that, no man, let alone a woman, could be strong enough to crush a human skull like that.

He picked up one of the plastic bags containing white powder that were lying on the floor next to Jackson's corpse. Opening it, he put his finger into it and tasted the powder. Jackpot! Heroin!

He quickly searched the rest of the cabin, but found no one else. Dead or alive.

Joreen sat and examined the vehicle. It didn't take her long to figure out the simple mechanical latch to unfasten and open the door. She then turned her attention to the interior of the vehicle.

She saw more electronic items in this vehicle than in the first one. The only item she had understood in the first one had been the one that produced what she had assumed to be music. The sounds and rhythms had been jarring to her ears, but the man had seemed to enjoy it, sometimes even singing along. That had been even more jarring to her ears.

Though she was careful to not touch any of the controls, she examined the instruments. At least two of them seemed to be capable of transmission; she thought that she recognized the microphones.

She picked up an item on the seat next to her. Looking at it, she saw two pieces of some clear substance on each side. She saw that the two of them on one side were spaced just the right distance apart for her eyes. Bringing the device up to her eyes, she was surprised to see that she could see much more clearly and further than normal. Taking it away from her eyes and blinking them a couple of times, she examined the device. She quickly saw that it seemed to be a purely optical device like she had seen in museums back home, not an electronic light enhancer.

She used the viewing device to look towards the building. Was this how Julira had seen things with those sparkling blue eyes of hers? Being able to bring incredibly distant objects into instant focus? She had to blink away the tears that came to her eyes at the thought of her former lover.

Looking through the viewing device she was relieved when the man came out before too long. She quickly put the viewing device away. When he got into the vehicle she noticed that he had a look of something, not quite fear, but something, in his gray eyes. Something that had not been there before. Perhaps surprise or even incredulity.

"What did you see inside? Was it not as I had described?" she asked.

After a pause he stammered out, "He, he was dead."

"What? Dead? No, he cannot be! I did not kill him!"

"His skull was completely crushed."

"Skull? I am sorry, I do not know that word."

"His skull. His head." His hands went up to the sides of his head, and pantomimed squeezing his hands together.

She couldn't have squeezed the man's head that hard! "No! I did not squeeze that hard! I squeezed his head, but I did not squeeze that hard. No! I did not kill him!"

Her reactions and words surprised him. Of course she hadn't killed Jackson. There was no way she could have done it. Sure, with a sledgehammer, maybe, but not with her bare hands. "I didn't say that you did. But he's dead, all the same."

"No!" With that, she leaped out of the car and ran towards the house, still carrying the baby in her arms.

"Wait!" he called out, getting out of the car and running after her. Shit, she was fast! He had just barely cleared the trees when he saw her disappear through the door into the house.

She saw the man's body lying in a pool of blood. Without even examining him for a pulse her medical training told her that he truly was dead. The cause of death was also obvious. No, she hadn't intended to do that. Belatedly, she realized that she had squeezed hard enough to knock an Arion Beta into unconsciousness. And these natives were so much more fragile than the Betas.

No! She was a nurse; she was supposed to working to preserve life, not to destroy it.

She fell to her knees, sobbing. The first person she had met on this planet and she had killed him. Death seemed to be following her everywhere, first Julira, and now this man.

Eventually she felt a hand on her shoulder. Blinking away her tears, she looked up to see the blond man standing over her. "No, I did not intend to kill him."

"Nobody said you did." He put his arm around her waist and helped her to her feet.

"I do not even know who he was. I had just met him, he had told me that he was bringing me into town," she told him.

"His name is Jackson. He's a drug dealer. We've been after him for a year."

"A drug dealer? What is that?"

As he explained, she gradually understood. This Jackson man was apparently selling illegal drugs. And the other man, the blond, whom she had found out was named Brian, was with a law enforcement agency who had been tracking Jackson. Though she couldn't quite grasp how somebody could make money selling such drugs. Who would want to buy drugs that were bad for you? For your own use?

She felt some of the cloud of despair lift as she realized that the man she had accidentally killed had been in fact an evil person. Apparently a very evil person, from Brian's description. In addition to selling bad drugs he had killed several people. And raped many women. Rape. She had learned that the word applied to someone forcibly engaging in sex with an unwilling partner. As Jackson had tried to do to her.

They continued to talk as he led her back to his jeep and drove her into town. She didn't have to seek out a representative of the local government. One had found her instead.

Brian realized that the woman, who gave her name as Joreen, truly believed that she had been responsible for Jackson's death. As he explained that he was an FBI agent, having to explain who the FBI was, and that Jackson was a criminal, she seemed to cheer up slightly. Or at least, not be depressed so much.

As he drove her into town after getting on the radio to have his people collect the body and the evidence, he learned that she didn't have any place to stay. She had apparently just gotten into town, and didn't know anybody. How could a woman with a young baby be traveling without any plans, without any accommodations, without any connections?

The least he could do for her after her experience was to buy her dinner. He drove to a pizzeria and they went inside. First, though, he had to lend her his spare jacket. Her tee shirt was almost completely ripped along the right side, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of her beautifully tanned skin and her right breast.

He not only had to read the menu for her, he also had to explain what the various items were. Apparently she had never had a pizza before. She ended up letting him order for her. At least she had something with her for the baby.

This woman puzzled him. She spoke English passably well, though her vocabulary was somewhat limited and she had an unusual lilting, almost musical, accent that he had never heard before. She couldn't read English though. Not just English, but she acted as though she was completely unfamiliar with the alphabet. The same alphabet that was used throughout the Western world. Was she some kind of Soviet agent? But no, they would be better trained than that. The Russkis wouldn't send over someone who couldn't read English, would they? And she certainly didn't look Chinese. And the Chinese wouldn't send over someone who couldn't read English, either.

As they talked, and he showed her how to eat the pizza, she continued to claim that she had just arrived in town. Not just the town, but the whole planet, if he was to believe her. But how could he? He couldn't believe that this beautiful black-haired woman had arrived less than a month ago in a spaceship. Shit, that kind of stuff only happened in science fiction! It didn't happen in real life.

After dinner, he took her back to the hotel where he and his fellow agents had been staying. He arranged a room for her. He was shocked when he saw her pull a roll of bills from her bag. Fortunately he was able to cover it with his hand and push it back down into her bag before the desk clerk had seen it. He paid for the room with his personal credit card, no sense in trying to explain to his boss why there was a hotel room for a woman on his expense report.

Buying a couple of bottles of baby formula at the corner store, he took her to her room and asked her to wait for him while he met with the other agents.

She felt guilty. A little. She really didn't want to accept charity from Brian. But she realized that she really didn't have much choice. She didn't know the value of the money that Jackson had given her. She wasn't even sure any more that it actually was money. From Brian's reaction when he had seen it, maybe this was something illegal, too; anything that Jackson had possessed might be illegal.

She would simply have to wait for Brian to return. First she took care of her daughter, using the bottle and the liquid that Brian had purchased for her. Exploring the rooms that he had left her in, she found another one of the viewscreen device devices. The controls were slightly different, but she quickly found something to watch and listen to.

At the meeting Brian claimed ignorance as to the cause of Jackson's demise. After all, he didn't really believe that Joreen had done it. There was no way that such a beautiful woman could be that strong. Hell, he didn't think that any of the men in this room could have done anything like that. Nonetheless, he refrained from mentioning anything at all about her to his colleagues. They chalked it up to "unexplained causes". They had found enough heroin, and Jackson's books, to have put him away for life, anyway.

Though they hadn't found much money on Jackson's corpse. They decided that Jackson must have arranged for a wire transfer of funds into some secret account. Though Brian immediately knew that the roll of bills that Joreen had briefly shown him in the hotel lobby must have been the payoff for this latest trip. However he managed to keep his mouth shut regarding the missing money.

They finally decided that they had done as much as they could. They agreed to wrap things up and head back to Denver in the morning.

She had just seen the latest batch of criminals on the viewscreen device apprehended by the efficient law enforcement agencies when Brian returned, rapping three times on the door in the prearranged pattern he had demonstrated for her before he had left.

As he entered she walked across the room to shut off the TV. He was mesmerized by the way she walked, or more accurately, glided across the room. He could see her legs moving with sinuous grace, even through her jeans. He though that he had caught a momentary glimpse of an incredible set of biceps as she had reached up to turn off the TV. But just like that, it was gone, her arm returning to its former slender state. A very tanned former state, shit, where had she gotten a tan like that? At this time of the year, in the middle of winter? Where was she from, Australia?

After reassuring her that he had no intentions of taking it from her, he asked her to show him the roll of bills that he had seen below in the lobby. He whistled as he riffed through them, all C-notes. There had to be at least a hundred one hundred dollar bills in that roll.

"Is something not correct? Is this not real money?" she asked, seeing his expression.

"N-n-no, this is real. Very real. You say that you got this from Jackson?" he asked, handing the roll back to her.

"Yes. After he struck me and I defended my self." He urged her to tell her story again. She really believed that she had killed Jackson! And unintentionally, she hadn't meant to squeeze his head that hard. Just how hard did she think that she could squeeze something?

"Well, I guess the money's yours now. Jackson doesn't need it anymore, and it would look too funny if it showed up now," he said.

She looked at the roll of C-notes in her hand. "This is not much, is it? If I could not purchase a night's lodging with it."

He was stunned. Didn't she know how much money she held? "Are you kidding? Just one of those bills would get you a week here, along with all of your meals, and plenty more. There's more money there than I make in four months!"

She looked again at the roll of thin papers in her hand. She wasn't quite sure exactly how long a 'month' was, but if it was based on the one large natural satellite, as it usually was on such worlds, she truly did have a sizable amount of money on her hands.

When Brian had pushed her hand down when she had tried to show that she had been willing to at least try to pay for her keep, she had naturally assumed that her money was nearly worthless. Now, she had discovered that it was more than a dedicated law enforcement worker was paid for over a hundred days.

And he was telling her that the money was hers now. Hers and Juliree's.

Brian knew that he needed to learn more about this mysterious, beautiful woman. Maybe she was in trouble, on the run from somebody. Or maybe she had escaped from some insane asylum. Maybe not so farfetched, he thought, if she believed that she had come here in a spaceship. And if she also believed that she had actually crushed Jackson's skull in her bare hands.

"Could I see some ID, please?" he asked her. She looked totally puzzled. "Your driver's license? A passport? Some identification?" She still looked puzzled. Pulling out his own wallet from his pocket, he removed his driver's license. He showed her the card with his photo on it. She smiled as she recognized the photo, pointing first to it and then to his face. Smiling back, he pointed at her and shrugged his shoulders. "Can I see yours?"

She looked at the small plastic card. In addition to the unfamiliar writing, she saw a flat, two-dimensional image. She quickly recognized the face as Brian's, though it wasn't a very good likeness. She realized that he was asking her for the local equivalent of the ID chips that all Arions carried. She hadn't had one since she had first defected from the Empire. And she certainly did not have anything like this local equivalent.

"No. I do not have anything like that," she replied, handing his license back to him. She was beginning to wonder if she had done the right thing, telling him about her arrival on the planet. Perhaps she should have laid low; getting more accustomed to the way things were here, before getting in touch with the authorities. But then, he had found her, not the other way around.

He looked puzzled at her lack of an ID chip or similar item. "But how did you get here? I know you're not from this town, but how did you get here? And from where?"

"I have told you that already. I came here on a small spaceship."

"I'm sorry, Joreen, but I just can't believe that. Could you, ah, take me to your spaceship and show it to me?"

"No, I am sorry, I cannot do that. It is at the bottom of a lake."

A likely story, he thought to himself. Of course she couldn't show him her spaceship because it didn't exist. But everything else about her seemed to check out. Every time she told her story, it was the same. And things inside Jackson's house had been exactly as she had described. Except for the cause of Jackson's death, of course.

Perhaps her delusion about having come on a spaceship had been caused by the trauma from the rape. Maybe she didn't want her family to find out about it. She had to have a family somewhere, right? At the least a father for the baby. Was she a hooker who had accidentally gotten pregnant, and was running from the pimp? She certainly had the looks to be a hooker. But she didn't act like one. She didn't act like anybody he had ever met!

He decided to leave off further questions until the morning. He promised to come by for breakfast, but in the meantime told her to stay in her room and to not let anybody else inside. He had to show her how to use the telephone to call him. She did seem to understand the purpose of the telephone, just not how to dial one. He not only had to tell her his room number, but also exactly which holes on the dial corresponded to each digit.

Strange. She seemed to be ignorant of many of the day-to-day things in life. As he left her room he wondered whether he should call a doctor. Perhaps Jackson had struck her in the head. He decided to wait until the morning.

Back in his own room, he could not fall asleep. He kept thinking about the strange woman. The beautiful woman. Who was she? Where was she from? Not from some crazy spaceship, that was for damn sure! Where was she REALLY from?

His thoughts soon turned from where she was from to where she could take him. Yes, a beautiful woman like that certainly could take him places. Without moving from where he was.

After Brian left her room, she lay on the bed thinking about the events of the day. When little Juliree woke up and mewled again, she fed her daughter. "Oh, how I wish your mother was here with us," she told the baby. "She had so much more experience with other worlds, with other peoples."

Eventually she drifted off to sleep. But little Juliree kept waking her up, wanting to be fed. Or cleaned. Or both.

In the morning Brian knocked on Joreen's door using the prearranged signal. When he saw her face in the door she looked remarkably refreshed, her deep blue eyes all but glowing with their own light. Not at all like other women he had seen with newborn babies. Not at all like Brenda, his older sister, when he had visited her last year, after the birth of her daughter.

When Joreen unhooked the door chain, he walked into her room. He followed her into the room before he realized that she was completely naked. He tried to avert his eyes, but discovered that he couldn't. She was just so fucking beautiful!

Seeming to not even notice his stare, she stood in the middle of the room and went through some stretching exercises. He had never seen a body move like that! He had never seen a body that beautiful! Not on a woman with a new baby. Not on any woman! God, she was built! He couldn't tear his eyes away from her body. The beautiful, fit, body that looked like that of a gymnast or a dancer.

He thought back to his college days. He had been the point guard on the basketball team. He had dated a cheerleader for a while. She had been one of the most beautiful women on campus. At the time he had thought that he would never be with anybody more beautiful than that.

But shit, the woman in front of him made the cheerleader look like a half-grown child! Her large and full breasts seemed to defy gravity as they proudly stood out from her chest. And when she moved! Oh, the motion of her breasts! He had never even seen a stripper move her body like that!

As she resumed her morning exercises, Joreen watched Brian out of the corners of her eyes. He seemed to be reacting as a normal male. Even among Arions, Joreen had been considered to be attractive. Apparently at least one native male one this planet also considered her to be attractive.

Make that two native males. Apparently Jackson had also considered her to be attractive, having tried to force himself upon her.

She was flattered by his reaction. It had been quite a while since she had been with a man. She wouldn't have been with a man at all while she had been with Julira, if it hadn't been for Julira herself. Before going away on one of her long fighting campaigns, she had all but forced Joreen to take a lover during her absence.

"I don't want you to get fat and lazy while I'm gone, Randa," Julira told her, using her favorite Velorian pet name for Joreen, a Velorian term of endearment. "I don't want you to get rusty and out of practice while I'm gone."

"But I need to conserve all of my energy for you, for when you return," she had protested.

"Nonsense," Julira had laughed, giving one of Joreen's ample energy storage reservoirs a squeeze, a gentle and playful squeeze. "You have plenty of energy, enough to keep me satisfied. And besides," she had winked, "I know that you've had an eye on that doctor. And he's certainly had his eyes on you."

"But that was before," she had continued to protest. "That was before we defected and came here. Before you took me in." The two of them had been occasional lovers while they had been at the Arion hospital, and even briefly after they had defected and joined with the Velorians against the Arions. But not after Joreen had come to be with Julira.

"We took all of you in. All of us took all of you in. Now I think that you should take HIM in," Julira had winked again. "As a doctor, I'm sure he's interested in what my enhancement had done for you."

"But you did that for you. For us," she had continued to protest. However, her arguments had failed to sway Julira. She had lost that argument, as usual. The clincher had been when Julira had simply picked Joreen up in her arms and had threatened to simply carry her over to the doctor's quarters and dump Joreen in his lap.

Though when Julira had finally put Joreen down, it was not in the doctor's lap but instead on the bed the two of them shared.

During the three months that Julira had been away, Joreen had taken the doctor in. More than once. He indeed had been interested in what a Velorian enhancement had done for her Arion Beta body. Much more than interested. His interest had gone well beyond purely clinical, as he had explored every square inch of her body.

She had been very careful with him, not wanting to hurt him with her enhanced strength. Before, as Arion Betas they had been about evenly matched in strength and stamina. But now, she had about ten times his strength, with the stamina to match. And the libido. That first night, she had almost had to carry him to the hospital. Not to work, but to be a patient. Her enthusiastic hugs had bruised his chest and threatened to crack several of his ribs.

During that campaign, and the next several, she had spent much time with him. She had learned how to hold back her strength with a lover. Much as she knew that Julira had always held back with her. After all, Julira was a Velorian, about forty times stronger than the enhanced Joreen.

But whenever Julira was home, Joreen had spent every possible minute with her. Then, once while Julira had been away fighting, the Arions had attacked their hospital. Joreen had worked with the rescue parties, going into the wreckage to pull out the survivors. The doctor had been one of the people she had pulled out from the wreckage. He had died in her arms.

Joreen had not been with a man since then. Unless she counted Jackson, and she didn't. He had only just gotten started with her.

She wondered whether she could do it with Brian. But he wasn't even a Beta, the weakest of the Supremis races. He was only a normal. One of the many related species in this part of the galaxy that the Velorians called Terrans, named after their mythological home world. She had seen one example of how fragile these Terrans were, a squeeze that would only have knocked a Beta unconscious had instead crushed a skull, killing instantly.

"Ah, how about breakfast?" Brian's words brought her mind back to the here and now. With a start, she felt the wetness between her legs; her wondering thoughts had gotten her aroused. Belatedly remembering from the viewscreen device that the natives always wore clothes, she quickly grabbed her clothes and put them on. At least she had another shirt to replace the one she had torn the day before.

Picking up the sleeping little Juliree, she walked over to Brian standing by the door. "Where do we eat? This room has no appliances for preparing food."

Brian led her downstairs to the coffee shop. He had already told the other agents that he would be staying behind a little, that they should go ahead and head for home first thing in the morning. He did not want to have to explain Joreen's presence to them. "Though anybody seeing her would immediately know what I was doing with her," he thought to himself. "And they'd be wrong. Not that I don't want to. God, she's beautiful."

Again, after describing the items on the menu, he ended up ordering for her. She acted as if she had never seen and tasted any of this stuff, sampling his eggs and sausage in addition to her pancakes. But after a single sip of her coffee she had left the remainder, sticking with her water and orange juice. Well, coffee was an acquired taste; he remembered not liking it himself until he was halfway through college.

As they talked, he discovered that she was sticking with her story. The spaceship, the killing, not one little detail had changed. She did not seem to mind talking about things. Even about the fact that she didn't have any place to go. In fact, he almost thought that she was asking for help.

The one thing she seemed reluctant to talk about was the baby. But from her actions, it was clear that she loved it. He asked her the baby's name.

"This little one is Juliree. Is she not the most beautiful little girl you have ever seen?"

"She is pretty. Ju-lee?" he tried.

"Ju - li - ree," she repeated for him.

"Ju-lee," he repeated. Somehow, he could not seem to get his mouth to form the Velorian guttural 'R' sound.

"Ju - lee will do," she answered, smiling. Perhaps 'Ju-lee' was a common native name. She made a mental note to ask him later, if she got the chance. It might be better to give her little daughter a native name. Thinking of that, she thought that she also might want to take a native name for herself. She made another mental note to ask him about that too.

As if little Juliree had known that she was being talked about, she woke up and began mewling softly. Joreen quickly got the bottle out of her bag and held it for Juliree as she eagerly began to suck.

As Joreen fed little Julie while they finished breakfast, Brian remembered that the two of them had nowhere to stay, nowhere to go. Even though she had some money now, that she had gotten from Jackson, it wouldn't last them forever. She would need somewhere to stay, someone to help her look after little Julie.

He wondered whether his sister Brenda would be willing to help out with little Julie. He didn't think that he would mind looking after Joreen himself. And maybe he could get her to teach him some of those stretching exercises that he had seen earlier this morning.

He carefully broached the subject, not wanting her to think that he was making a pass at her. He was pleased to have her accept his offer to introduce her to his sister. After checking out of their rooms they loaded their belongings into his car for the drive down to Denver. Again, he was amazed that a woman with a new baby would be traveling so light.

Joreen was delighted when Brian asked her to come with him and to meet his sister. He told her that his sister had a little daughter of her own, only a year old. After buying her another bottle of food for little Juliree, he took her out to his vehicle. Getting in, he started the vehicle moving. Before long they were out of the town and traveling through the mountains. The road seemed to be following a small stream, the forests coming down almost to the road. There didn't seem to be too many other people traveling, they only occasionally saw another vehicle, most of them going the other way.

Little Juliree had just fallen asleep, the smooth motion of the vehicle helping to rock her to sleep, when Joreen felt the vehicle start to spin and move across the road.

"Shit!" Brian felt rather than heard the tire blow. As his jeep started skidding across the road, he steered into the skid. He let up on the gas and gently started pumping the brake pedal. Fortunately they hadn't made it to the Interstate yet, there was no other traffic on this road and he hadn't been going all that fast.

He managed to keep control and slow down, pulling off the side of the road. He stopped and got out. "Shit!" The right rear tire was completely ruined; a hole big enough for him to stick his fist through was staring back at him.

"What happened?"

He turned to see Joreen standing next to him, little Julie in her arms, the bottle in Julie's mouth. "Are you okay? Is she okay?" he asked.

"Yes. I was surprised when you started spinning the vehicle. It woke up little Juliree."

"The tire is shot." He pointed to the hole in the rubber.

She bent down to look at it. Straightening up, she asked him, "You can repair this?"

"Are you kidding? I'll have to change it."

"Change it? What will you change it into?"

"No, not change it into something. Change it, replace it." He walked to the back of the jeep and started removing the spare tire. He rolled the tire beside the car, then opened the back and removed the jack and the tire iron.

Using the tire iron he loosened the four lug nuts. Positioning the jack under the support point on the frame, he started raising the jeep. "Shit!" Unfortunately, the slushy, water-saturated ground refused to bear the weight. The base of the jack sank into the mud almost as far as the top rose up. Try as he would, he could not get the jeep up high enough to remove the blown tire, let alone put the spare on.

"Something is wrong?"

She was still standing there, holding her little daughter in her arms. She bent down to get a better look.

Joreen bent down to see what was wrong. She had seen that he intended to replace the damaged wheel with another one that he had taken from the back of the vehicle. She also saw that the mechanical device, apparently intended to take the weight of the vehicle, was instead sinking into the soft ground instead of supporting the weight.

The vehicle didn't look too heavy. With her enhanced strength and the lighter gravity, she thought that she might be able to lift the vehicle high enough to let him replace the wheel. She knew that Julira could have done it with a single finger. One day, Juliree would be able to, as well. "Please, let me try." Finding a clear spot on the ground, she removed her jacket and put little Juliree down, making sure that the jacket would keep her dry and not too cold.

She pressed her back against the vehicle. She spread her legs slightly and bent down, getting her hands under the vehicle. She slowly straightened her legs, attempting to lift just this corner of the vehicle, instead of the whole vehicle, up off of the ground.

Looking down, she saw her feet sinking into the soft ground. But her two feet gave her a larger base than his mechanical device. She felt the vehicle come up, the weight transferring to her arms and legs, even as her feet sank further into the ground.

Brian couldn't believe his eyes! Shit, the woman was lifting his jeep! He could see the muscles on her legs expanding, threatening to rip apart the seams of her denim jeans. Looking higher, he saw her arms expanding to incredible dimensions as her biceps took on the weight of his jeep.

He couldn't help himself. He walked closer and put his hands on her left arm. Her arm felt as if was sculpted from warm marble, her skin silky smooth to the touch. He tried to squeeze her bicep and found that he could not make the slightest dent in the rock-hard muscle.

"Please hurry. I do not know how long I can support this weight."

Startled, he looked up at her face. He thought that he could see just the barest hint of a smile through the obvious strain on her face.

Guiltily, he returned to the task at hand. He quickly removed the lug nuts. He lifted the blown tire off and set it down, being careful not to splash the little girl as he did so. He then rolled the spare to the spot and lifted it into place. He then quickly put the lug nuts back on, tightening them with his hands as far as he could.

"Okay, you can put it down now," he told her as he stepped back.

She bent her legs, lowering the jeep back to the ground. Her feet had sunk several inches into the mud; she practically had to kneel to maintain her leverage. When the weight was back on the tire, she all but crawled out from underneath. While she brushed the mud off of her jeans, he tightened the lug nuts with the tire iron.

When he was done, he stowed the tools and put the blown tire on the rack. He turned to see that she had picked up the little girl and was feeding it again, as if nothing had happened. Other than the water stains on her jeans, it looked as if she truly had done nothing while he had changed the flat tire.

She had been just about to the limit of her endurance when he told her to let the vehicle down. Gratefully she lowered the vehicle until all of the weight was off of her. She crawled across the soft wet ground until she could get to her feet. Brushing off as much of the dirt and water as she could, she walked over to little Juliree.

The baby was beginning to fidget from the cold, crying out her protest. Making sure that she was still dry, she picked her up and gave her the bottle with the warm white liquid inside.

Turning around, she saw Brian staring at her, a look of amazement on his face. "H-how d-did you do that?" he managed to stammer out.

"It was not that heavy. And I am stronger than I appear." She knew that she had nowhere near the strength of an Arion Prime, but then she didn't look like a Prime. And she certainly was much stronger than an 'ordinary' Beta, though she didn't look any different.

"But nobody could have done that!"

"I have received some strength from my lover. My lover could have done that with one hand."

Her lover? The baby's father? Shit! What kind of man was he?

Where was he? Was he looking for her? Was that why she was traveling alone with the baby, seemingly without any plans? "Your lover? Where is he?"

The pronoun surprised her. Wasn't 'he' the masculine? But then she recalled that this language often used the masculine pronoun when the gender was indeterminate. She decided not to clarify the situation, it might be better if he thought that little Juliree was her daughter. "Dead. Died even as little Juliree was born," she replied. The thought of Julira brought tears to her eyes again.

"I'm sorry." But he was also relieved. There wasn't some incredibly strong and possibly dangerous man looking for her. And he might still have a chance to score with this incredibly beautiful, and strong, woman. But, he thought, what chance did he have with a woman like this? The tears in her eyes at the mention of her dead lover meant that she still cared for him. He had better take it slow and easy. If she could lift his jeep, she could probably toss him into the next county if he made any improper advances towards her. He took a step backwards, remembering with some guilt the way he had felt her arm when she had been lifting the jeep.

She blinked away her tears. "Sorry? It was through no fault of yours." None of the people on this planet could be even remotely connected with the events that had led to Julira's death.

And why had he backed away from her? Was he afraid of something? Afraid of her?

She remembered his reactions that morning while she had been doing her morning stretching exercises. He had seemed quite fascinated with her then. And the way he had felt her arm while she lifted the vehicle.

She remembered that she had been careful not to flex too much during her stretching exercises. She knew that she had more muscle expansion than these natives did, even more than normal for a Beta. She had seen his muscles expand a little as he had been working to repair the vehicle. Even though he had apparently been exerting himself fully, his biceps had not grown to the size that her enhanced Beta biceps could.

The Arion culture placed much emphasis on physical strength. She knew that many Beta males harbored secret fantasies regarding Prime females, those beautiful women with hundreds of times their own strength. Even though they had all known that if a man was fortunate to ever have such an encounter, he would have to be very fortunate indeed to survive unscathed. She also knew that the Prime males were drawn towards the strongest of the Prime females. Many of the Prime males even harbored secret, forbidden, fantasies about the Velorian Planetary Protectors and other Velorian women, women with even more strength than even the strongest Primes possessed. Though again, an encounter with a Velorian woman was usually fatal to the Arion.

Though not all encounters with a Velorian woman was fatal to the Arion. She herself had become the envy of the other Arions in her group, both male and female.

Maybe Brian wasn't like those men, maybe he wasn't attracted to strength, maybe he didn't like muscles on women. But the way he had felt her arm, it certainly had seemed like he was drawn to her muscles then.

As they got back into the vehicle to resume the journey to the place he called Denver, Brian did not do much talking. He didn't ask her any more questions about her lover, or about how she had gotten so strong.

As Juliree drifted off to sleep, helped by the motion of the vehicle, she looked at the scenery outside. The beautiful mountains and unspoiled forests made the Arion wars seem like a bad and distant nightmare.

As he continued to drive through the mountains to Denver, Brian thought about the woman Joreen. How had she gotten so strong? What must her lover have been like? What kind of man had it taken to father a baby on a woman like that? What was her little daughter going to grow up to be like? Could she really have killed Jackson by crushing her skull?

Fortunately he had to keep enough of his mind on his driving, or else his mind would have gone spinning completely out of control.

He again thought back to his college days, and another girlfriend. She had been an athlete, like him a basketball player. She had been the power forward. And she had definitely put the 'power' into 'power forward'. She certainly had not left her athleticism all on the court. Their one-on-one sessions had usually left him exhausted. Satisfied, but still exhausted.

But there was no way she could have lifted the jeep by herself. Maybe the entire starting five of the women's basketball team. But not just one woman by herself. Shit! None of the big football players could have done it by himself, and those guys had worked out with the weights a lot more than he had.

He pulled off the Interstate at Vail, intending to stop for lunch.

Brian pulled off of the main road and went towards a town. "Denver?" she asked.

"No. Denver is still a few hours ahead. This is Vail. Do you want lunch?"

Before she could even answer him, little Juliree woke up and began her soft mewling. "I believe that Juliree does," she laughed, reaching for the bottle and giving it to her daughter.

As he drove through the town, she saw the slopes of the nearest mountain. Great slashes had been cut through the trees. She could see colorful objects moving downwards on the snow. Looking more carefully, she saw that they were people. They had long narrow boards on their feet and were carrying sticks in their hands. She saw that they were all trying to slide down the snow-covered slopes on those boards, using their sticks to control themselves. Some were more successful than others were; she saw many of them falling, sometimes at great speeds resulting in a large cloud of snow.

"What are those people doing?" she asked Brian, pointing towards the slopes.

"Huh? Who?" He took his eyes off of the road long enough to follow her arm. "Oh, they're skiing."

"Skiing? Why do they do that? It looks dangerous." She cringed as she saw someone falling, flying head-over-heels in a cloud of snow. Incredibly, that person didn't seem to be hurt as he got back up and resumed the downward journey.

"Some people like doing that. They think that it's fun." He laughed. "I think that it's a great way to break your neck."

She was incredulous. "You have tried this? This skiing?"

"Once. That was enough for me."

"How do they get up to the top in order to slide down? Do they walk?"

"Huh? Oh no, the lifts. There, you can see one there through the trees," he pointed.

Following his finger, she saw a long line of chairs, suspended from a moving cable. The chairs going up contained people, with the boards on their feet. The chairs descending were all empty.

"So they take these, these lifts, to the top, and then they slide down on the snow?"

"Yeah, that about covers it."

"And they do this because it is fun? It looks so dangerous. I see a lot of them falling down. Does no one get hurt?"

His laughter surprised her. "Sure, a lot of them get hurt. It's almost a status symbol among them, having a skiing injury."

She couldn't understand this. These natives were really strange if they thought that getting hurt was good. "Getting hurt is good for your status? How can that be true?"

He laughed again. "I can't figure that one out myself, either."

It was late in the afternoon when he arrived at his apartment. Showing Joreen in and letting her have the kitchen while she took care of her daughter, he called his sister Brenda. No answer. He called his brother-in-law, Jeff, at his office. He was away on a business trip. He called Brenda again. Still no answer.

Giving up, he moved his folding camp cot into his den, intending to let Joreen and her daughter have his bedroom for the night. He was moving some of his clothes into the den when she came out of the kitchen. He explained his intentions.

"No, you do not have to do that. I can sleep here," she said, pointing to the cot.

"No, Joreen. You need the bedroom more than I do."

"But this is your abode. I cannot impose on you like this."

"You are my guests. You and Julie." That seemed to convince her to take the more comfortable room, if not for herself, then for her daughter.

He took them to a nearby restaurant for dinner. Again, he ordered for her. He also had to show her how to properly use the knife and fork to cut her steak. Just where did she come from? Did her people normally eat with chopsticks or something?

That night, again, he had trouble sleeping. His thoughts kept going back to the beautiful woman in his bedroom. How had she lifted his jeep? When he had seen her that morning doing her exercises, he had noticed that she seemed very fit, even slightly athletic. But no athlete, not even a champion weightlifter, should have been able to lift his jeep like that. And her graceful body had not appeared to be that of a weightlifter. A dancer perhaps, but not a weightlifter.

So beautiful, and yet so strong. What kind of a man had her lover been? What kind of a man was the father of her daughter?

As she lay in Brian's bed, Joreen could not go to sleep. It wasn't that little Juliree kept waking her up. She kept thinking about the man whose bed this was. He seemed to be genuinely attracted to her. Yet, he was also maintaining his distance.

True, Jackson had been very blunt when he had tried to force his attentions on her. From having watched the viewscreen device she knew that his behavior was unusual for this planet, as it would have been anywhere else she had been. Brian had not tried anything like that. But he hadn't even tried anything subtler. Except for one time when he had felt her arm as she had been lifting that vehicle. And he had gotten even more distant after that.

Was there something wrong with her? Something about her that he didn't like? She knew that she had the appearance to attract men, she could compare herself favorably with the women she had seen on the viewscreen device.

She thought back to the time when she had been with a man who was not of the Supremis stock. A man not unlike the men on this planet.

It had been before she had met Julira. He had been a soldier, stationed to guard the hospital. He had also been a quite capable lover, even if his strength could not match her Beta strength. She had been careful with him, not wanting to hurt him.

Thinking about the soldier brought her thoughts back to Brian. Brian was the same type of man, not of Supremis stock. But now she was not the same woman as she had been then. No, not after Julira.

Could she make love to a man such as he? She had hurt a Beta man with her enhanced strength, though not too badly. But an ordinary man? Could she truly make love to an ordinary man now?

In the morning, Brian showed her how to operate the appliances in his kitchen so that she could heat the milk for Juliree and prepare food for herself. He also showed her how to operate the signaling device so that she could reach him during the day if she needed to. He also arranged for a woman who also lived in the same building to look in on her, to make sure that everything was fine. Then he left to go to work.

Joreen made sure that little Juliree was fine. Then she sat down and watched the viewscreen device in Brian's room.

As Brian wrote up his report on the Jackson case, his mind kept drifting back to Joreen. However he kept all mention of her out of his report. He still didn't believe that she had been responsible for Jackson's death. Though a woman who could lift a jeep might be able to crush a man's skull.

After typing up his report and turning it in, he called his sister again. This time he got through. "Hi Brenda. It's me."

"Me who? Oh, hi Brian. What's up?" The sound of his sister's voice always cheered him up. Even when he wasn't depressed.

"Ah, I have a big favor to ask of you, Brenda."

"No, I'm not going undercover for you as a prostitute," she laughed. It was one of the private jokes that the two of them shared. Their father had been a policeman.

"No, not that. It's just that, ah, I've met a woman, and…."

"Oh, Brian. Shouldn't you be asking my husband? He's the one who does it to me, I'm sure he can tell you how to do it to her," she laughed again. Sisters! OLDER sisters!

"No, Brenda, it's not that. She has a little baby with her, and…."

"Oh, so my little brother does know how to do that! I was beginning to wonder." Older, MARRIED sisters! Older, married sisters with children! He could all but see her wink.

"Brenda! Will you quit trying to be Momma and listen to me? It's not my baby. I don't know exactly who she is, or where she's from. She may even be running from someone, though I doubt it. But she's not from around here, and she might have trouble looking after the baby. I was wondering if you…."

"Oh, you want me to quit being Momma and just be a mother."

"Ah, yeah, I guess something like that, Brenda."

"Sure, Brian. Jeff's gone for the week, but you can bring your lady friend and her baby by for dinner tonight. I can show both of you how to change diapers."

"I already know how. I've had to do it often enough with that little monster of yours."

"Beverly is not a little monster! You've always said that she was your favorite niece."

"She's my only niece, Brenda. Or do you have another one on the way?"

"No, not yet," she laughed. "Okay, you got me with that one. Come on by at seven. You still remember where we live, don't you?"

"I'll look it up in the department files. You're still on the Ten Most Wanted list, aren't you?" They shared a quick laugh. "Okay, we'll be by at seven. And Brenda, thanks."

After hanging up, he wandered over to the records department. He asked a friend to do a search through the missing person files, giving him a description of Joreen. Just to be on the safe side, he also asked for a search for any missing baby girls, a month old or less. Though from Joreen's behavior, he was certain that Julie was indeed her own daughter, not some baby that she had stolen from someone else.

After lunch, he went back to the records department. His friend's searches had turned up negative. In addition, nobody matching Joreen's description was wanted by any law enforcement agency anywhere in the country. And no missing babies were reported. His friend hadn't thought it necessary to check to see if the baby had been wanted in connection with any crimes. Reassured, he knocked off work early and went home.

Towards the end of the afternoon Brian came back. He told Joreen that he had arranged for the three of them to have dinner with his sister. He explained that his sister also had a baby girl of her own, not quite a year old.

Joreen liked Brian's sister, Brenda, from the very start. She had the same blonde hair that almost made her look like a Velorian, and the same gray eyes as her brother. She was very friendly and outgoing, even more talkative than Brian.

Brenda immediately took a liking to this woman, this Joreen. Never mind that she was a friend of her little brother. She was beautiful, charming, and witty. And she had a daughter, a beautiful little daughter.

Yet despite her obvious intelligence, she seemed somewhat ignorant of many routine, day-to-day things. Brenda had to explain and describe every item that went into the simple dinner she had prepared.

And she obviously knew how to take care of her little daughter; she had explained that she once used to be a nurse. But still, Brenda had to show her how to fasten the diaper on the little girl after dinner when they had changed both of their little girls. She certainly understood the concept of the diaper; she had some strange looking diapers of her own.

When Brian rejoined them after fixing himself a drink, and conveniently excusing himself from the diaper changing in the process, she asked him where Joreen was staying.

"Ah, she spent last night and all of today at my place," he replied sheepishly.

"Brian! Your place is no place for a lady!"

"I suppose so. The only other woman who ever comes there is you, Brenda."

"Like I said, it's no place for a lady. The only reason I ever go there is because I promised Momma that I would look after you. Tell you what, I'll make up the guest room while you two go back to get her things. She can stay here with Jeff and me until you can find her a place of her own."

"No, Brenda. I don't want to impose on you."

"Well, I don't want you imposing on her. You spend too much time at the office, or on the road. I just sit at home all day taking care of Beverly, it would be nice to have some company."

Brian knew that he wasn't going to win this argument with his sister. He didn't win too many arguments with her at all. He took his sister's arm and led her back to the kitchen, leaving Joreen with the two baby girls. "We don't have to go back to get anything. Everything she has is in that little bag of hers. That and little Julie."

"What? No clothes? She certainly can't stay with you then. God knows what you would do with a clothes-less woman in your apartment!"

"Brenda!"

"And you're certainly not going to take her shopping for clothes. I know your tastes in women's clothes. She definitely deserves better than that."

"Brenda, I don't want to trouble you too much."

"It's no trouble. But just how well do you know her? Is she in trouble or something?"

"I really don't know. I checked her out, she's not wanted. But I couldn't find any background on her. I rescued her from a drug dealer that we've been chasing, she wasn't connected to him, but that's all I know about her." Well, he hadn't exactly 'rescued' her, but that description would do for now.

"Doesn't she have a family or any relatives?"

"Apparently not."

"Does she have any money?"

"Don't ask how she got it, but she does have a sizable bundle of cash with her." The look on his sister's face told him that she wanted to ask.

"And you don't know where she's from? Hasn't she told you?"

If he couldn't trust his own sister, whom could he trust? "Brenda, this stays in the family, okay? I'm not even sure we should tell your husband this."

She thought about it. She didn't have a security clearance, but this wouldn't be the first time he had told her some secrets. "Okay, Brian. What's the big mystery?"

He looked around the room, seeing nobody but the two of them. He then lowered his voice conspiratorially. "She claims to have come to Earth on a spaceship."

Her eyes opened wide. "Brian! Quit joking! This is serious!"

"So is she. That's what she says."

"And you believe her? Have you seen the spaceship?"

"Ah, no, I haven't. She says that it's at the bottom of a lake." He thought back to the flat tire and how she had lifted his jeep, something that no human being should have been able to do. "But I've, ah, seen some things that tend to make me believe her."

"But if she's from someplace out there," she gestured upwards with her hands, "how could she know English so well?"

"But her accent! And the fact that she doesn't know what the food is. And she can't read English at all."

Joreen thought that it was very nice of Brian's sister Brenda to take her and little Juliree in, even preparing a room for the two of them.

Over the course of the next several days, Brenda took her shopping for clothes. Native clothes, her own size. She was amazed at the variety of styles available; Arions and Velorians only wore clothes for function.

Brenda also took her with her on her everyday errands. To the supermarket to buy foodstuffs. To what she called a 'beauty parlor' to have her face and hair made up.

That had been a totally new experience. She was familiar with some of the things that could be done with her hair, but applying pigments to various parts of her face was something that Arions and Velorians never did. Except to cover up scars, and that was usually only done among the Warriors Prime. When she saw her face in a mirror afterwards, she almost didn't recognize herself. At least she now understood how some of the women she had seen on the viewscreen device, or 'TV' as Brenda called it, looked the way they did.

They prepared dinner for Brian every night, as he came to check up on her and Juliree.

With the shopping trips, she gradually began to get a feel for the value of the money that Jackson had given her.

She discovered that Brenda had been a school teacher, and that she was taking a leave of absence to take care of her little daughter. Brenda began to teach her how to read the script used on this planet. She discovered that it wasn't that hard, once she learned the characters, though the writing wasn't completely phonetic and the spelling quite irregular.

Brian spent the week trying to discover just who Joreen was, and where she had come from. He was becoming more and more inclined to actually believe her story, that she had come to Earth aboard a spaceship.

How else to explain her lack of knowledge about everyday things, despite her knowledge of the English language? He had read enough science fiction stories to know that it might be possible for aliens to learn English from the radio and TV broadcasts that were going off into the depths of space at the speed of light.

And she had exhibited that one feat of strength, one that should have been impossible for any human being, when she had lifted his jeep off of the ground so that he could replace the flat. Perhaps she came from a world with a heavier gravity.

He also thought that it could be possible that she had actually killed Jackson by crushing his skull. But just how strong was she, if she had thought that she wasn't squeezing that hard? What could she do if she wanted to kill somebody?

He had thought that he would never meet an alien, somebody from someplace out there in space. And he certainly had never thought that the alien would like this! Joreen certainly was not a green-skinned bug-eyed monster. Instead the alien was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

The next day, he called in some favors and had a friend in the witness protection program start setting up a new identity for Joreen. The following evening he gave her a new Social Security card and a Colorado state ID, in lieu of a driver's license. There also was a birth certificate for little Julie, giving her date of birth as being a week before he had first met them. Thus Joreen became Joan, and Julie now officially existed.

That was just the start. Joan still had a lot to learn about living on this planet. Fortunately for her, Brian and Brenda were eager and willing to teach her.

She also had a lot to learn about being a mother. She knew everything about it from the medical standpoint. But she had quickly learned that putting the theory into practice was something completely different from merely knowing the theory.

Jeff was coming home after spending two weeks on a sales trip to the East Coast. It felt so good to be back home, away from the humidity of the coast. And away from the crowds. Boston, New York, DC, in one week. So many people crammed into so little land. Even downtown Denver during rush hour seemed deserted in comparison.

Driving home from Stapleton International Airport, he parked his car in the garage. Getting his suitcase from the car, he entered his house through the kitchen. As he walked towards his bedroom, he heard his wife's voice coming from their daughter's nursery. Perfect! The two most important women in his life, together. How he had missed them both during his trip!

Setting his suitcase down in the hall, he opened the door and went in. "Brenda! I'm home." Brenda was putting a diaper on a little infant. An infant that was not his daughter. Taking a quick look around, he was relieved to see little Beverly sleeping in her crib. "When did this happen? When did we have a second one?"

"Welcome home, Jeff. You've been gone longer than you thought, eh?" she laughed and winked. "Give me a second here." She had both hands busy with the diaper. "Oh, and Jeff, this little bundle is Julie. Her mother is sleeping the guest room. Joan is staying with us until Brian can find a place of her own for her."

"Brian? Then she's...." He had a vision of a car blowing up in his driveway.

She apparently read his mind. "No, no. Nobody's after her, if that's what you're worried about. She's just down on her luck right now, and Brian's helping her get back on her feet. He's coming by for dinner tonight, he can tell you everything. And no, Julie is not Brian's baby. But it's nice to have Joan here to help with Beverly. I'm finally getting some uninterrupted sleep. Though now that you're home, I guess that's going to change." She winked at him again, a totally different wink from the first one, hinting at things to come tonight, at just what she intended to do other than to sleep.

Finally, there was a man in the house, even if he wasn't her man. Joreen, no, she was now Joan, wasn't quite sure what was expected of her in this society. Brian had barely even touched her, despite all of the opportunities she had given him. Opportunities that an Arion man would have seized immediately. Even an Arion Beta man. An Arion Prime man wouldn't have needed an invitation before taking a Beta woman for his pleasure.

That was the problem, she realized. Brian wasn't an Arion Beta man. He was a native. He would behave as a native man would, not as an Arion man would.

But that was the problem. He was a native of this planet, and she wasn't. What was she supposed to do? Just how would a native woman behave? She thought that she had given him plenty of opportunities, even according to the local custom. Wasn't the man supposed to take the woman? According to what she had seen on that viewscreen device, that device they called TV, wasn't that what the man was supposed to do? Or, as a guest, was she expected to make herself available to the man of the house? What was she to do?

Or did they really pair off, as she had seen on TV? But if so, why hadn't Brian tried to claim her for his own? Did he already have a woman? He certainly hadn't acted as if he had.

Just what was she supposed to do? Whom could she ask?

She certainly couldn't ask Jeff about it. Nor could she ask his wife. Could she ask Brian?

Or was it because of who she was? Had she done the right thing by telling him her origin? That she wasn't of this planet? And then proving it, by showing him some of her enhanced Arion strength?

Was that it? Was he scared of her and her strength, easily fifty times his own? From what she had seen on TV, women on this planet weren't supposed to be strong. The only sporting events she saw involved men competing, never any women.

What would he think when her little one grew up and eclipsed her own strength by a similar margin? Would he be able to handle that?

It was nearer to dawn than midnight when Joan finally went back up the stairs to the bedroom. She climbed in next to her husband's large warm body, being careful not to wake the sleeping man. Putting her head on his broad muscular chest, she tried to go to sleep.

Carlos couldn't understand what Sirren meant. She had said something about going home. But yet, they were out here in the desert, and she was leading him even further into the wasteland. He was tired, and he was thirsty, and he was cold. "This is enough, Sirren. I'm not taking one more step until you tell me exactly where we're going."

"I told you, we're going home. To my home. Now come along." She took his hand and pulled. He tried digging in his heels, but she effortlessly pulled him along behind her. When he continued to struggle, she slung her pack over one shoulder, wrapped her arm around his waist, and lifted him up, carrying him over her other shoulder, feet forward, as if he was no more than a sack of potatoes. He continued to struggle, beating on her bare backside with his fists, but she seemed to take no further notice of him.

Finally, she set him down when she reached the top of a small hill. "Dios! Where are we, Sirren? "What are we doing here?" She didn't bother to answer him. She simply sat down and pulled him down onto her lap, putting an arm around his waist as she held him. He knew that there was no way he could possibly break her embrace.

After about a minute, she looked to the side and cocked her head, as if she was listening to something. She stood up and lifted him to his feet, keeping an arm around his waist. Looking in the direction as she was, he saw a black speck in the sky, approaching them.

He realized that it was an aircraft of some type. But it was not like any aircraft he had ever seen before. Its wings were much too small, for starters.

Then he realized that he had seen something like that before. On television. The 'Battle of the Rio Grande'. That 'Blonde Supergirl' had destroyed one of these in that battle, shortly after it had shot down a television news helicopter.

Barely making a sound, the aircraft landed on the hilltop. A door opened in the side and a man stepped out. He bowed to the two of them. No, he was bowing to Sirren, Carlos realized. He and Sirren exchanged a few words, in that same strange language he had heard back in the gym.

After the man bowed to her again, she began walking towards the door on the aircraft.

Panicking, Carlos tried to make a break for it. Sirren casually reached out and grabbed him, carrying him through the door. She set him down on a seat and strapped him in before sitting down next to him.

The man closed the outer door and walked through another door, closing that one behind him. A few moments later, he felt the vibrations through the seat. Even though there were no windows, he was certain that the aircraft had taken off.

He had no idea where it was taking him. He also had no idea whether he would ever be coming back home again.

He knew that he was completely at Sirren's mercy.