Government Men by Gary J. Davies

CHAPTER 45

  SOAP, SNAKES, AND BATS

  A snake lurks in the grass.

  - Virgil

  As the Bus flew steadily towards Guatemala, Bates and the Team were alert and busily studying Ra cubes and socializing. Steve spent a lot of time with Kay, and Elizabeth spent a lot of time with shy Dooley, Bates noticed. Bates purposely avoided Janet, as every time he thought of her his thoughts were greatly diverted away from the Dannos problem. He slipped a few times, and his thoughts returned strongly to thoughts of last night with her; which led to a few loud snorts from Krog and knowing winks from Gus and Fen.

  Bates was deep into a discussion on the Dannos problem with Johnny and others when the disturbance happened. Nobody had a solution to the Dannos problem in mind, or even a faint shred of a wild and crazy notion on how to save Earth that was thereby set back by the incident, but the occurrence was upsetting to the Team anyway.

  "Yooowww," came a high pitched scream from the bathroom, and seconds later a wet naked Indian from Brooklyn erupted screaming from the tiny room and ran through the Team. A few moments later, Goyahkla emerged through the shower wall wearing a towel and carrying a bar of Zest. He had again performed his favorite trick, for he, the towel, and the soap were perfectly dry, though the sound of the shower spray could still be heard.

  While Steve Latanna discussed the need for quiet with the ghost of the great Apache medicine man and war chief, and then discussed the need for wearing clothing with Winnebago, Bates mused about the trick. "Damn! I wonder how he does that!”

  "Why simply wonder, human?" asked Pru.

  "What do you mean?" responded Bates.

  "Why do you not simply do it?"

  "You mean walk through a wall? I can't do that!”

  "It is agreed that at this time yesterday, you could not. However now this is no longer so certain. As is well within my powers as a unicorn, I have been shielding you and others here from the sleeping power of the Great One, so that you may determine of what you are newly capable. You have discovered already within you the ability to perform what you call telepathy. To walk through a wall may indeed also be well within your new powers."

  "But I'm not a ghost like Goyahkla or an elemental like you! I'm an ordinary material being, even if my genes have been scrambled a bit!”

  "Now wait a minute Bates," said Mel. "Maybe Pru is right. How do we know what you can or can't do?"

  "You need not be an elemental to perform such feats, Bates," said Johnny Goth. "Watch." The bar of Zest flew from Goyahkla's hands, around Johnny and the ever grinning Dooley, then through a wall and back into the shower stall. Johnny could do Goyahkla's soap trick too!

  "That's amazing, Johnny, but you've probably had years to learn how to do that," said Bates. "However my main point is that it's immaterial, even if I could do it. Walking through bathroom walls isn't going to stop Dannos! So let's get back to work.” He returned his attention to his VISICOM and resumed scanning the Ra records. He hoped that everyone else was also working on the problem and that someone would soon come up with the answer to the Dannos problem. After all there were two dozen of them now; the original core B-Team of Government men and women had expanded substantially over the last few days. The small Bus was loaded with incredible talent and knowledge, both human and non-human.

  So far, they apparently still didn't have enough talent and knowledge. By the time they approached Guatemala, the Team seemed no closer to a solution for the Dannos problem than they were a week ago, before they had started. In less than two days the Earth would suffer its greatest cataclysm in hundreds of millions of years. It was a maddening prospect. Fortunately, right now the Team had something specific to do that might also lead to solving the Dannos problem. They were going to find and wake The Great One.

  "Straight ahead, you say?" Flood again asked Pru, who stood directly in back of him as he piloted the Space Bus.

  "Yes human," responded Pru, using her human-voice. "Straight ahead and not far."

  `"I concur. To a great psychic disturbance we are getting closer," said Krog. The massive Kronan stood in back of Sandra Kruger, who sat at the copilot position. Bates squeezed forward to sit in the engineer's seat between the big unicorn and the Kronan to get a better view of their final approach to the lair of the Sleeping Great One.

  They were flying slowly over the jungles of North-central Guatemala. They wanted to get as close to the impact point as possible using the Bus, to minimize jungle hiking distances. Bates for one hoped that no hiking through jungles would be required at all. Jungles were beautiful and fascinating viewed from a distance, but even nastier than a desert if you were in one.

  Bates thought that he ‘heard’ something ahead and below, psy-wise. It seemed like confused babbling to him, amongst which he could occasionally discern specific visions of various long extinct beasts and other strange objects and places. Bates was beginning to already not like this place. He felt a very strong impulse to simply turn the Bus around and fly away. Far away.

  "Steer straight ahead human!” implored Pru.

  "Hah?" responded Flood. "I am!”

  "You deviate left!”

  "I can turn even further to the right, if you wish," said Flood. Coming right from 92 degrees to 110 degrees true."

  "But you still turn left!” said Pru.

  It actually seemed to Bates that they were circling to the right, but looking down at the jungle, everything seemed to be spinning in several directions at once! He felt very disoriented, and he had a strong feeling of hideous revulsion. His stomach had also soured. What were they doing here anyway? Shouldn't they be someplace else? Where? And why? He couldn't seem to remember.

  He felt nauseated; he stood up and headed towards the back of the vehicle to find a barf bag, but was having trouble even navigating down the aisle. What the hell kind of an airline was this, anyway, he wandered? And where the hell were the flight attendants when you needed them?

  Flight attendants? He remembered that when he was a youngster undergoing the dramatic transformation of puberty he went on his first aircraft flight. One airline had long legged stewardesses in hot pink mini-skirts. Those were the days, though he couldn't afford that airline then and probably still couldn't afford it now. But right now he'd trade all the frequent-flier miles he ever had for beautiful young stewardesses in hot-pink mini-skirts. Instead of stewardesses, this flight had a talking white horse with a big glowing horn sticking out of its head, and a giant talking reptile of some sort that looked like a turtle in need of a shell. OK, he was on an airplane that definitely lacked hot stewardesses in pink but where was he going? He couldn't remember! Everything was all very confusing to him.

  He walked past other passengers that looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't remember their names. Some were using barf bags. They were shouting things at him and at each other, nutty things that didn't make any sense at all. Some seemed to be blaming all sorts of things on him, including the end of the world, and others were shouting instructions to 'Bates' and 'Flood'. Who on Earth were Bates and Flood? He couldn't seem to quite remember.

  Some of the passengers wore impossibly odd costumes. Behind the huge reptilian-looking being up-front sat a little grey-skinned guy with a huge head, muttering alien-sounding noises. Was some sort of sci-fi flick being shot here? Was he dreaming some sort of crazy nightmare?

  He just couldn't walk any further, so he sat down in the next available seat, which happened to be next to an attractive young black lady that seemed to be speaking in some sort of Native American language. Actually, she seemed to be cussing him out in some sort of American Indian language.

  But he couldn't pay much attention to what was going on around him, he was too busy trying to work out his own problems, such as remembering his own name. He closed his eyes and concentrated. It seemed to him that there was something going on in his mind that didn't belong. He experimented, 'pushing and pulling' at an elusive, noisy, difficult to identify, unwelcome presence. Suddenly, he perceiv
ed the problem clearly as a particular alien presence that he forcefully ejected from his mind.

  Immediately he was 'waking up' from what seemed like a bad dream, but reality was perhaps worse than the dream. All around him, nauseated friends in distress were babbling nonsense in panic. Milo was sitting in the isle howling; if he had also been affected or was simply lamenting over the distress of the others, it was impossible to say.

  Looking towards the front of the Bus, Bates saw that tall Dooley was standing over Flood and was grasping the Bus controls himself, while Pru was touching Flood with her horn, and Johnny Goth had his hand on Sandra's shoulder. Soon the flight crew was properly attending the controls again, and the Bus, which had been flying erratically, suddenly stabilized. "Stay calm folks," said Flood over the intercom. "We're going to safely land soon.”

  Pru and Johnny were working their way from the front to the back of the Bus, healing other Team members as they went. Dooley spoke calmly and chanted softly to each recovering person after Pru or Johnny helped them. Pru touched her glowing horn to Steve Latanna, who looked about wide-eyed as he regained his senses. It took perhaps half a minute to heal each person, however. At the rate that Pru and Johnny were progressing, it could take them several more minutes to reach everyone.

  Around Bates towards the back of the Bus, several of his frightened friends remained both very uncomfortable and/or irrational. Some of it appeared comical, like watching drunken folks make fools of themselves, but it was still very disturbing. McGregor was frantically dancing some sort of jig. Oscar was singing. Elizabeth seemed to be speaking in tongues. Bates worried that someone would get hurt.

  "Give it a try, Bates," pathed Johnny Goth. "Help them push the confusing thoughts of the alien presence away. You did it for yourself, so you should be able to help them."

  Bates put his hands gently on Kay Therman's forehead. She seemed not to notice, but kept cussing him out in Native American. Closing his eyes, he focused on Kay, her thoughts and feelings. In a few moments he located the alien thoughts, and expelled them. As he continued to focus on the disturbing thoughts, he sensed that he was in the center of a 'bubble' in which he nullified the hostile telepathic signal. So far, the 'bubble' enclosed only himself and Kay, but he decided to push the bubble larger. Slowly, it expanded, enclosing more and more of the Bus passengers as he touched each of their foreheads and spoke to them calmly.

  Looking forward, he was now able to 'see' that a similar, larger bubble surrounded Pru and Johnny, and that they gradually expanded it as they made their way slowly through the Bus. They could have expanded the bubbles much faster, he reasoned, but each victim also benefited greatly from the calming words of their rescuers. Within a couple more minutes, the protective bubble of Bates joined with theirs, and all the passengers were protected and in advanced stages of recovery.

  "Very well done, human!” pathed Pru. "You see, you do indeed have powers that you have only to discover. You need only to seek them out. You may find that there are yet more."

  "How can I possibly discover powers given to me such as this one? They are too strange! The Traveler should have explained them."

  "You and only you can and must discover them for they are your powers, not those of the Traveler," explained Pru. "They are the heritage of humanity and of Earth life that has evolved for billions of years; the Traveler's power was merely to release to you what is your Earthly heritage, and mine is to release you from the psychic damping effects of the Great One. The rest is up to you!”

  "Damn, Bates!” complained Oscar. "What the hell happened? Where are we?"

  At about that time, the Bus sank down slowly through the thick jungle canopy, and landed gently on surprisingly level ground. "We're here everyone!” announced Bates. "Not quite at our destination but as close as we dare travel by air. I believe that Pru and the Commander are about to recommend that we walk the rest of the way."

  "Yes sir,” confirmed Flood, "that's exactly what I was going to recommend. This seems something like that field that surrounds that Black Pit place back in Carolina, but much larger and stronger. Not only are Team members effected by the target, it looks like all our navigation instruments are useless in this area. Compass, inertials, ring-laser gyros, and all navigation processing associated with those sensors has all gone bonkers. And I'd be willing to bet that there's some kind of moss growing on the north, south, east, west, top, middle, and bottom of every damn tree out there in that jungle, not that moss on trees would work very good for air navigation anyway. Finally, I don't have the equipment to navigate by sun or stars, not even a working chronometer. Everyone look at your watches."

  Watch dials and digital times were static. All watches had stopped. The Black Pit had slowed watches, but this place totally stopped them.

  "OK, then we'll hike on foot from here," said Bates. "Only necessary personnel should go; a bunch of us better stay with the Bus, but I don't know yet how we can do that. I can shield a limited area, and so can Pru and Johnny, but we three should go on the hike. Yet we can't leave folks at the Bus unshielded."

  "I can't make protection bubbles around other folks, but I'm OK myself," noted Dooley.

  "You need to come with us anyway, Dooley," said Johnny.

  "I can stay and shield the Bus crew," volunteered Fen. Sure enough, it was found that multi-talented Fen could shield a very small area about three meters in diameter. The Team members who remained in the Bus were going to get to know each other very well indeed.

  Barns pulled Bates aside to speak to him quietly. "For the love of God, Bates, you've got to take Winnebago with you! He's driving some of us nuts with his insurance sales. He's a hundred times more annoying than his ghost friend. I know he'll be a useless addition to your group of misfits, but perhaps you could somehow lose him in the jungle?" He winked at Bates.

  "Alright, he'll go with us, Barns," Bates conceded. "We'll have to take a bunch of folks anyway, since most of us that can do the shielding need to go. But you owe me one."

  Bates, Oscar, Mel, Pru, Krog, Wink, Janet, Elizabeth, Don, Johnny, Dooley, Winnebago, and Gus at last set out for the lair of the Sleeping Great One. That left ten of the Team on the Bus, which was the maximum number that Fen reckoned that he could protect. Milo wanted to go with Bates, but Bates decided that this venture was too risky for his canine friend. Jungle snakes and insects could make short work of the naive inquisitive domestic pet. Not to mention dog-hungry jaguars.

  Actually, Bates feared that the jungle would also make short work of him. Suburban Washington D. C. was wilderness enough for Narbando T. Bates. Arizona or North Carolina mountains were tolerable to briefly visit, though for sure he wouldn't want to live there. Guatemala was a living hell, as far as he was concerned. Every step or so revealed a new horror that crawled, slithered, darted, or flew away, often fast enough to escape identification, but slow enough to briefly reveal terribly gruesome features such as many legs or no legs, bulging eyes, scales, and so-forth.

  Throughout the trees, vines, and loamy soil everything was alive, strange, and threatening. There were busy finger sized ants, ambling hand sized beetles, slow, slimy rainbow colored slugs, testy mosquitoes the size of dragon flies, strange squeaking rodents and other unknown small scampering mammals, annoyingly loud and opinionated though colorful parrots, goggle-eyed lizards with painted faces and tree clinging feet with stickers or claws, and slithering snakes of all sizes, colors, and dispositions. In the not-far-enough-away-to-suit-him distance Bates could hear the roars and grunts of larger creatures that he didn’t want to meet or even think about.

  Oscar, Gus, Dooley, and Elizabeth were particularly thrilled to be in a jungle. For the first hour until they began to tire, they were almost constantly commenting on this or that animal or plant, and passing around specimens that they snatched up as they went. This activity was in time hampered by Pru's strengthening shielding style, which repelled creatures away from the Team, after the unicorn finally realized that the teeming jungle wil
d life bothered several of her human companions.

  On a positive note, the jungle did serve to keep Winnebago's insurance sales efforts in check. His constant complaining about the jungle was considerably less annoying than his usual insurance drivel.

  Bates initially tried to share shielding duty with Pru, but though he experienced limited success he soon found that it was easier to just let Pru do it. Keeping up telepathic shields was a taxing exercise in concentration for Bates, but virtually automatic and effortless for Pru, who had apparently done it for all her life in the Land. The only difference was that here her shield had to be many times stronger. Also, although Bates, Krog, and even Wink, Janet, Elizabeth, and Don could sense the general bearing to take, the directional sensing abilities of Pru and Johnny were much more precise

  Though the Team carried several machetes discovered to be part of provisions thoughtfully provided by Jigs, they were not much needed. The jungle simply opened up for Pru; vines, bushes branches, snakes, insects, and everything else gently pulled to each side, creating a green tunnel through the jungle that stayed open until after the entire group had passed.

  To the astonishment of the others, the jungle also made way for Johnny and Dooley. "Dooley controls the jungle plant life and I address animal life and Great One vibes," explained Johnny. Working together Johnny and Dooley took turns with Pru in leading the group through the jungle. Whenever Johnny and Dooley led, Pru disappeared into the jungle for several minutes at a time, scouting ahead. When that happened progress slowed somewhat, as it was difficult for even talented Johnny and Dooley to simultaneously push a path through the jungle and protect the group from the mind-numbing thoughts of the Great One.

  As an added annoyance, the bad vibes coming from the Great One fluctuated in intensity, such that Johnny and Pru had to constantly adjust their protection efforts. Despite the excellent efforts of Pru, Johnny, and Dooley, the way forward was difficult. The jungle heat and humidity were almost unbearable and the footing was difficult for nearly everyone, even though the plants were laying down where they walked.

  Nevertheless, they made steady progress through the thick jungle for kilometer after tiresome kilometer, hour after tiresome hour. The hikers were becoming too weary to even complain much, though Dooley talked more and more about wanting berry pie.

  They were making particularly good progress during a period of relative Great One quiet when the first unexpected serious trouble struck. "I must return to the Bus," announced Pru, stunning the rest of the party. "Fen calls me. He tires and his shield is failing. I will return after he has rested.” In a blink, the unicorn was simply gone, leaving Johnny and Bates to hastily erect protection for the group. They weren't quick enough. Several of the group began babbling nonsense and wandering off into the jungle in all directions except forward. Bates, Johnny and Dooley had to chase them down, help them recover, and bring them all together again, losing perhaps ten minutes in the process.

  Just when everything seemed to be back to 'normal' the psychic disturbance of the Great One increased and Johnny and Bates had to together increase their shielding efforts. However, led by Dooley the group was finally beginning to set off again towards the impact point when the young Shaman abruptly stopped.

  "Something's coming." Dooley he announced. "I don't know what it is, but it ain't good. It eats everything but it ain't alive itself."

  "I don't see anything," Bates said, though his sight of what lay ahead was mostly blocked by jungle.

  Johnny floated up to several meters above the thickest man-tall jungle growth to get a better view. "Jungle animals flee whatever comes," he announced, "but I don't see it yet."

  "If it were Ra I would sense them," claimed Krog. "I sense great fear from Earth animals only."

  "The plants fear just as much." added Dooley. "They just do it more quiet than animals."

  "I still don't see it," said Johnny, from high over-head.

  "The thing that comes stays under the dirt, mostly," said Dooley. "Mostly it moves like snakes. It eats roots and eats soil and makes its own roots and it climbs up some of the trees and eats them too."

  "How do you know all this, Dooley?" asked Mel.

  "Mostly the trees tell me," Dooley responded.

  "Astonishing!" Remarked Oscar. "I thought that I knew just about everything there was to know about trees!"

  "Who gives a rat's ass how he does it?" muttered Winnebago, causing Bates to again regret that he agreed to bring the urbanized Native American along with the advance party.

  "Let's try to raise an alarm with Pru," said Bates.

  "I have already tried doing that," said Johnny, "but there is no response. The loud ranting psychic noise of the Great One drowns out our voices."

  Krog snorted, then closed his eyes in concentration and shouted Pru's name telepathically. Even Bates, standing only a few feet from Krog, barely 'heard' the telepathic outcries of the big Kronan.

  "I am linked with Pru through much stronger means than telepathy, Kronan," said Johnny enigmatically from a few meters above the big alien. "If I can't reach her nobody can, except perhaps other unicorns that are her close kin."

  Krog snorted again but said nothing.

  "It's coming towards us," said Dooley, his hands resting on the trunk of a massive nearby jungle tree.

  "I see something!" exclaimed Johnny. "Something dark, climbing up a tree trunk up ahead, covering it. Twisting around it like a great snake, and then breaking up and spreading over it like a great swarm of insects."

  "It's not bugs, Johnny," said Dooley. "I'd know if it was live bugs. These are metal, and they keep coming together and coming apart and making more or less of themselves."

  "That sounds like an army of nanites," said Wink. "Some nanites can combine to form functioning units of various sizes."

  "Yes, but those be much illegal for Galactic League members such as the Ra, unless sanctioned by the League for peaceful purposes, and used with League oversight witnesses," noted Krog.

  "The Ra are law breakers many times over," Bates remarked.

  "I better have a closer look, Bates," said Johnny from above. "In the meantime you better gather the others close around you to shield them while I'm gone."

  "Bloody hell!" Bates exclaimed, as Johnny flew ahead through the jungle a dozen meters above the densest undergrowth, dodging the taller trees and hanging vines. The others heard what Johnny said and rushed forwards to bunch themselves around Bates as the invisible protective bubble that surrounded the group shrank drastically. They all fit within what remained, barely, but the mental strain on Bates was enormous.

  "Wink is right; it's not insects, it's microscopic robots that work together," they heard Johnny shout from fifty meters away. "They're made of metal and flow over things like a thick carpet or push under the soil like snakes or roots. And great batches of them are headed straight towards you!"

  Johnny watched in fascination as what looked like dark metallic grey liquid flowed up and over a huge forest tree's trunk, the vines that covered the trunk, and the base of any branches that were encountered. A long ridge formed in the substance and a thick rope of it separated from the main flow and abruptly shot out towards Johnny, who was at the time floating only five meters from the trunk. Johnny dodged away but the attack was too swift; it would have struck him like a whip had he not with the speed of thought punched and deflected it with a mental push. The whip shattered into tiny bits but some of the bits struck Johnny's right pants leg as he flew back towards the Team.

  Halfway back to the group Johnny paused in flight and tried to wipe the nanites off his pant leg, but that only spread them to his hand, where they began to dig into his skin, eating as they went. Distracted by stinging pain, Johnny didn't see the thick tentacle that rose swiftly from the jungle below him to wrap around his leg and yank him downward. Johnny and the tentacle disappeared into the man-tall tangle of ground-level jungle growth.

  Dooley started towards his fallen friend but momen
ts later Johnny shot up from the undergrowth free of the tentacle, and was once again flying towards the group. A second tentacle shot up to grab him but it passed right through him as if he wasn't there. It was the 'soap trick' again, Bates realized; Johnny had escaped the nanobots by passing through them!

  He landed among the group, but some of them backed away from him fearfully. "No worries," he reassured them. "I'm nanite free. But they're headed for us and I can't protect everyone the way I protected myself just now; not everyone at once anyway. Time for your shaman powers, Dooley. See if you can slow them down while the rest of us try to figure something else out."

  "Ok, Johnny," said Dooley.

  Dooley pulled out a big hunting knife from where it had been hidden under his shirt. It startled some of the Team to see that soft-spoken, seemingly gentle Dooley carried such a formidable looking weapon, and it was also unclear what any such weapon could do against swarms of tiny robots. Holding the knife handle tightly in both hands, he sat down cross-legged with his back against a huge jungle tree, and the flat side of the knife blade pressed against his chest. "I need to become one with the forest," he told the others of the group. "If you see me become part of this here tree don't worry none."

  He closed his eyes, and began chanting something that was unintelligible to the others, but drew the spirit of Goyahkla to appear beside him and chant along with him. The knife blade began to pulse and glow, as if generating strange powers.

  Barely perceptible at first, the trees, vines, and other jungle growth around them began to stir, swaying and shaking their usually inanimate forms. The disturbance spread in all directions out from Dooley, including towards the jungle hidden nanobot armies. The jungle was waking.

  Beneath the soil, formerly passive victims of the advancing nanobot horde suddenly actively opposed their attackers. Tree roots twisted around and enveloped nanite roots, and tree branches swatted at the blankets and tentacles of nanites that enveloped them, crushing countless millions of insect-sized nanite units.

  Many microscopic nanites that made up the insect sized structures were also broken to bits, but most survived to rebuild those that had been broken, and to rebuild the larger structures that had been ripped apart. Caustic plant chemicals erupted from bark and fruit, and from insects and tiny microbe bodies, to chemically dissolve more countless billions of the microscopic metallic nanites themselves and encase their chemical remains in living material that slowed their reclamation by surviving nanites. It was a war of attrition, with nanites struggling to gain material and reproduce, and opposing biological agents struggling to destroy them and remove the material that they needed to grow.

  "Oh my God!" exclaimed Janet, as the jungle only fifty yards ahead of them erupted into a tangle of animate trees and vines that battled oncoming nanite tentacles. Billions of jungle termites and ants attacked their nanite counterparts, using insect mandibles to tear at nanite-formed structures, and insect created formic acid to dissolve and disrupt nanobots. On a microscopic scale, the battle was even more ferocious, as countless legions of mold, algie, bacteria, and viruses were recruited by Dooley to battle the invading scourge of robots even smaller than themselves.

  The noise of the deadly battle was deafening. It sounded most like a tornado as trees were shredded and bits of jungle and nanobots thrashed about and ripped each other apart.

  The carnage on both sides was horrific, but it was soon apparent that the durable metallic nanites had the upper hand. Biological carbon-based cells designed to live and thrive in a relatively peaceful environment were no match for the metallic robots designed to destroy them. Trees were shred to bits from top to bottom by their nanite adversaries, and living soil was likewise gradually killed and consumed. At a terrible cost the nanobots were being greatly slowed but not stopped. Despite considerable destruction they multiplied faster than they were destroyed, and they advanced slowly towards their perceived enemies, actually fed by the flow of life that gathered to try to stop them.

  But the Apprentice Shaman of Goth Mountain was not so easily defeated. Dooley's usual smiling face was transformed disturbingly by the strain as his muttered chants became shouts that grow in volume to far beyond human capability. He drew additional strength from local jungle life within hundreds of miles, and from the forests of Goth Mountain thousands of miles to the north.

  On Goth Mountain itself Great Two Bears, the great Tribal Shaman of Goth Mountain, gathered life forces from the gigantic trees that thrived there as he chanted words of shaman power in synchronization with those of his distant Apprentice Dooley. He gathered strength also from the One Tree that stretched from The Land of The People to Goth Mountain. Clutching the great unicorn-forged hunting knife that matched the knife of Dooley, he sent the gathered life forces to help fight the distant battle.

  The jungle battle raged on but once again had changed. Within the soil life renewed itself as fast as it was being consumed. Trees and vines repaired themselves and battled on. Nanites were being destroyed as fast as they were being created. For now the nanite advance was halted, mired down by the life forces that surged against it.

  "Dooley fights them to a standstill for now," Johnny concluded, "but we need to find a way to destroy them, not just slow them down. And it's not just the ones we see here; I can sense that these things stretch for many miles, ahead and to either side of us."

  "These nanites could be as destructive to Earth life as Dannos," Wink said, "if they continue to spread."

  "I can destroy local batches of them," said Johnny, "and Dooley can even more effectively have the jungle kill and fight them to a standstill for a while. But we need something more, and we need it quick. Ideas?"

  "How is Dooley doing what he's doing?" Bates asked. "Maybe we could do even more of whatever that is."

  "Unlikely," said Johnny. "Dooley is no doubt already using all the life forces that are available to us. All available biological brute force and life-generated chemicals are already being used. We need something else."

  "They self organize into structures that behave together with purpose," noted Mel. "It must take billions of them to form even an insect-sized robot, and countless trillions to form a big root or snake-like tentacle. How does that happen?"

  "They are programmed to do whatever they do," Wink explained. "These seem to be programmed to go out of their way to destroy life. Across the Galaxy nanites are used for many different purposes, but used very carefully and never to exterminate life in such a way."

  "I don't understand how they do that," admitted Oscar. "Life has a built-in proclivity to propagate and grow: these Tiny nanobots are individually much more simple than even microscopic life-forms but they apparently do many of the things that life does. How?"

  "It has to be programmed into them somehow," reasoned Bates. "And if it can be programmed in maybe it can be programmed out."

  "That's it!" exclaimed Johnny. "We're combatting them now only with brute force. We need to somehow reprogram the little buggers to self-destruct or something."

  "Some sort of computer virus?" Bates asked?

  "Something along that line," agreed Johnny, "but not exactly."

  "I concur, human," added Wink. "They are not computers as you know them, Earthlings. Collectively they do form a primitive sort of consciousness, but it is decentralized. Billions of them can form a sort of consciousness that can at most be only crudely programmed."

  "Are they programmed as such or do they merely follow dictates of their primitive structures?" Mel countered.

  "Ha!" exclaimed Oscar, "you raise the often debated nature Vs nurture question!"

  "Their basic molecular structures must contribute to effective fractal formation of larger self-organizing structures," reasoned Mel, "the way that liquid water and crystals do, but it must take many of them together to form units capable of even primitive logic, and yet larger groupings of those groupings to manage complex behavior."

  "Maybe the insect-sized structures are the smalles
t structures capable of supporting primitive behavior, and accepting instructions from larger structures," Don added.

  "Then we need at least an insect-sized colony of them to experiment with," concluded Bates.

  "And we should determine how extensively that they have established themselves also," Oscar said. "We have to devise strategy and tactics adequate to destroy them all."

  "Give me ten minutes to scout them out and capture lab specimens," proposed Johnny."

  "OK Johnny," agreed Bates. "For that long I can protect the rest of us from the Great One, and hopefully Dooley can protect us from the nanites. But stay out of their reach this time."

  "For sure," agreed Johnny, as he again lifted off the ground and flew away, this time much higher, to several meters above tree-top level.

  The next ten minutes were long ones indeed for the group. Bates shifted everyone to huddle more closely around Dooley, minimizing the area that he and Dooley needed to protect. Winnebago somehow managed to place himself in the center of the group, where he sat whimpering and cowering in fear. The others were much more composed, especially Dooley.

  The young shaman had ceased his chanting but still sat cross-legged with his eyes closed and his back pressed against a great jungle tree. He seemed to be in a self-induced trance. Bates watched him closely to make sure that he was still breathing.

  A mere thirty meters away the horrific battle raged on. Countless squirming metallic tentacles wrestled with countless great roots and vines, tearing each other apart, renewing themselves, then tearing each other apart again, over and over. One side or the other surged forward a few meters before being pushed back, neither side gaining ground. However the robotic nanites completely surrounded them now; there was no escape.

  Elizabeth sat next to Dooley. "Is he alright?" Elizabeth asked her father. "It there anything we can do to help him?"

  "I don't know," Bates replied honestly.

  As he and Elizabeth watched him, the young shaman's image began to waver and fade, to be replaced by a Dooley-sized bulge in the tree trunk and roots. Dooley was indeed one with the tree!

  Elizabeth gasped and with concern reached for what had been a Dooley hand, only to encounter a hard solid tree-root instead. A smiley face formed on the bulge of trunk where Dooley's head had been however, and one of the smiley face eyes winked whimsically at Elizabeth as a hand-shaped root sprouted and gently enveloped her own hand.

  "He's alright, Dad," Elizabeth soon reassured Bates. "He's better than alright! He's one with the forest, and it's wonderful, even though the forest fights a terrible battle." She shut her own eyes than, and sat quietly smiling with Dooley as the great battle near them raged on.

  Johnny Goth returned, gently landing next to the huddled terrified group. A glowing, apple-sized ball of light floated two meters above him. In it what looked like dozens of insect-sized nanobot colonies swarmed, trying to escape. Bates breathed a sigh of relief when he sensed his protective bubble being reinforced by one produced by Johnny. "Bad news and good news, folks. The nanobots ravage many square kilometers of jungle, centered at the impact point. Even with all our resources we are fighting only a small part of them to a standstill."

  "Hopefully that was the bad news part," Oscar remarked.

  "The good news is this," Johnny continued. "I have captured samples of them to study." He pointed at the glowing ball that floated over his head.

  "Swell," Bates remarked with sarcasm, but the others seemed encouraged as they studied the ball of glowing light that floated above Johnny.

  "Using your controlled sample we can hopefully figure out how to kill them," Oscar noted. "Good work!"

  Over the next hour Johnny, Bates, Mel, Oscar, Krog, Wink and Don worked together on the problem. It so happened that Don was seeped in knowledge of human nanite research and computer science. Mel knew much about of game theory and molecular structure. Oscar identified useful analogies with living systems. Bates excelled in the area of experimental methodologies. Most amazing of all, Johnny contained, probed and studied the captured nanites themselves, and provided observations of their behavior to the Team down to even the molecular level. How the hell he could do all of that amazed and confounded the rest of the Team. His ability to confine, observe and probe the nanobot sample seemed limitless.

  Through it all Johnny tightly held a gold pocket watch in one of his hands. It glowed like Dooley's knife, Bates noted. At one point a great nanobot tentacle reared up out of the Earth only a few meters from the huddled group and Johnny calmly pointed at it with the hand that held the watch. The watch pulsed with power as lightning struck out at the nanite tentacle, disintegrating it totally as Johnny calmly returned to his experiments as though nothing had happened.

  A breakthrough occurred with the discovery of specific electrical signals transmitted repetitively through colonies of nanites. Aided by suggestions from the others, Johnny was soon bombarding the colony with signals of his own, produced through the power of his keenly focused mind. Some of the signals appeared to alter subsequent transmissions produced by the nanite colony itself. They were on the right track, the Team soon felt.

  Meanwhile Janet monitored Elizabeth, who monitored Dooley, who kept the attacking nanobots at bay. Alarmingly, a massive fifty-meter tall nanobot with squirming two-hundred-meter long tentacles arose and stepped and slithered ponderously towards the Team, while still growing every second. The jungle border that it approached also grew dramatically. Giant trees and vines sprouted thicker and taller, and became far taller than the robot.

  "That's it!" exclaimed Johnny, as he abruptly sprang into the air and flew towards the approaching giant nanobot. The bubble that had held the captive nanobots dissolved, and a small cloud of harmless looking powder drifted away from it.

  "That's what?" asked Gus.

  "The thing that will stop the nanobots, we hope," explained Bates.

  The group watched anxiously as Johnny flew above the trees towards the approaching giant nanobot, until he hovered high above the great robot itself.

  For several long seconds nothing seemed to happen; the giant bot and the thousands of smaller bots around it continued to grow and battle the green tide that opposed it. Then a curious thing happened. The glistening metallic tentacles of the giant bot seemed to turn upon itself and the smaller bots that surrounded it. Thrashing tentacles ripped each other apart and collapsed into fine grey inanimate powder. In minutes there was only a great pile of metallic powder where once the great giant nanobot stood.

  The bots around the pile did not collapse, however, but continued to thrive and even expand themselves as they consumed the powdery remains of their fallen comrade.

  Johnny wasn't smiling when he flew back to rejoin the group. "OK, there's good news and bad news again. The good news is, my attack worked against a single gigantic colony of nanobots. The bad news is, at the last minute I had to fine-tune the self-destruct message that we devised to fit the specific colony, and my destruct message only worked for that one colony."

  "So a different destruct message has to be concocted for each large colony of nanobots?" Mel asked.

  "Yes, it appears so. That could prove to be problematic. There are many thousands of bot groupings just within sight of us here. In addition the remains of a fallen bot is perfect food for the remaining bots and is quickly recycled to grow other bots."

  "But to get back to the good news part, though it is no panacea, we have another powerful weapon to use against them," concluded Bates.

  "And perhaps with usage even better destruct messages will be found," added Johnny.

  "I suggest you attack in collaboration with Dooley, Johnny," said Bates. "Maybe the combination of Johnny power and Dooley power will work best. Give the Team safety and a clear passage towards the impact point, that's the first priority."

  Johnny knelt briefly next to the Dooley root-bulge and whispered a few words to him before marching off towards the nanobot/jungle front-lines. He was soon again lo
st from sight. Minutes later, the tornado-like sounds of battle began to slowly fade, and soon the Team could no longer see metallic tentacles and vegetation thrashing about in battle.

  This seemed to the rest of the Team to be a good sign, but that wasn't confirmed until the human form of Dooley reformed at the base of the big jungle tree and the grinning young shaman stood and spoke.

  "Thanks for keeping me company, Elizabeth," he first told the girl that still held his hand. "I was never joined one with the forest with someone else before."

  "That was the most wonderful and amazing thing that ever happened to me," she said excitedly in return, as she smiled up at him. "You're super amazing, Dooley Simple!"

  Behind hairy beard and mustache Dooley's grin was enormous as his face blushed red as he held Elizabeth's hand even more tightly.

  "Right, right," Bates intervened impatiently. This was no time for holding hands and making google-eyes. "What is happening with the nanobots?"

  "Johnny has them break up, fight each other, and die, and I have my jungle friends quickly eat what's left of them," explained Dooley. "That makes it lots harder for the remaining bots to eat them themselves, so that the jungle comes back healthy again instead of more bots. Its Johnny power and Dooley power working together. We still got us a big job ahead to destroy the rest of them little robot things, but the path ahead for the Team is open."

  "That's wonderful news Dooley!" Bates told the hairy young shaman, as he gave him a hearty hug in gratitude. Soon the others were patting him on the back and shaking his hand.

  Thankful congratulations continued when Johnny returned, and the group was further elated by the sudden appearance of Pru among them. The unicorn wasn't surprised to hear about the nanobots and the successful Johnny/Dooley war against them. "I decided to scout ahead and around the impact point before returning to you," she said. "I encountered and incinerated many of the nanobots, but many more grew back to take their place. Then the jungle surged against them and fought them to a standstill. I surmised it to be the work of a certain amazing forest shaman that I have the honor of knowing." She turned a black eye to regard the grinning Dooley.

  "Weren't nothing," Dooley remarked shyly, as what little showed of his hair-covered face blushed red again.

  "You saved us all, Dooley, along with Johnny and with help from the rest of us, and that's a fact," Bates added. "But now what?"

  "More good news and bad news," said Johnny. "What remains to us is a war of attrition that I believe that Dooley and I can win, perhaps with occasional Pru help, though it will take many hours to complete. Dooley and I can work our way through the thousands of bot colonies, acre by acre, but it will take time."

  "It has to be done though," noted Oscar. "Those things could spread to the whole Earth, like Wink said."

  "If they have time," added Bates. "Like us, they have less than two days before they get clobbered by Dannos. But before that we need to protect the Team from them so we can do our mission. As long as any of the nanobots remain, the mission will be in jeopardy. The bots must be destroyed."

  "Me and Johnny can do it," said Dooley. "With maybe some help from Pru, like Johnny says."

  "I can protect against the Great One only for a few minutes at a time," Bates noted. "So destroying the nanobots will have to be mostly Johnny and Dooley, with Pru spending most of her time with the rest of us."

  "Yes, and I also must be with you when we reach the Great One." added Pru.

  "Me and Johnny better finish off them bots before night time too," added Dooley. "Plant power will drop off when the sun's down."

  "Agreed!" said Bates. "Let's all get to it then!"

  Elizabeth reluctantly let go of Dooley's hand, and the young shaman strode off into the jungle with his friend Johnny to do more battle against the nanobots. The jungle plants opened a path before them, and then sprang closed behind them, such that very quickly the amazing pair were out of sight. Bates shook his head in wonder. That humans were capable of such powers was truly extraordinary. Maybe there was hope for humans and Earth after all! Then he glanced at his watch and realized that the Earth was due to be pulverized in less than forty hours. There was no time to simply stand around in the jungle gawking. "Let's go!" he announced.

  Pru caused the jungle to open for the Team, and protected them from the psychically noisy Great One ranting. When they were only a few dozen meters along, they entered devastated jungle that had been razed to the ground by nanobots for as far as they could see, though life was already recovering rapidly. Plants erupted from the scarred soil all around the hikers, growing so fast that their growth was perceptible to the Team, though it was still less than a meter tall and hardly needed to be pushed aside by the unicorn. In terms of obstructing plant life they had relatively easy time for the next several kilometers, though it was still almost unbearably hot and humid.

  "Dooley is doing this, I can feel him!" Elizabeth said, as she watched the jungle recover. "Dooley is all around us!"

  "He remains one with the forest to heal it," confirmed Pru. "He has a very special connection with life. I sense that he has a special connection with you also, young Elizabeth; one that you have welcomed."

  "Is he married?" Janet asked. It was a very timely mother question, Bates thought.

  The unicorn whinnied shrilly with what had to be unicorn laughter, the Team realized, before she replied. "He is not paired with a wife; he has only his father and many good friends at Goth Mountain and a nearby human town." She turned a dark eye towards Janet. "Dooley is a wonderful and amazing man, in the view of all who know him, both human and non-human."

  "But he does seem to be a bit simple minded," Janet noted.

  "Some would say such," said Gus. "Simple in some ways perhaps, but not in the ways that matter most. There is no better man that ever lived than Dooley Simple."

  The trees seemed to sprout more quickly right along their path; several great trees were already half grown, and the astonished Team watched them sprouting new leaves in a matter of seconds. That Dooley was directly involved in the rapid rejuvenation of the jungle was further confirmed when it was noted that each new tree that they passed was covered with bark that formed thousands of silly smiley faces. "That's Dooley's touch again," Elizabeth exclaimed.

  "Yes, Dooley is nearly as fond of smiley faces as he is of berry pie," confirmed Gus.

  Further along the group left recovering jungle and again plunged into virgin jungle. "The nanobots are positioned in a ring around the impact point that we've moved inside of now," explained Pru. "We might not encounter more nanobots , but I should search the area to further confirm that to be the case, and assess the progress of Johnny and Dooley."

  Bates hastily constructed a protective field around the Team as the unicorn left them. But he hadn't yet mastered the trick of clearing the way of plant and animal life, so machete work was needed. Krog, with his psychic prowess to determine proper direction and his great strength first led the way using his machete. Despite his powerful efforts, the progress of the group was far slower compared to what it had been with Pru. After an hour, even Krog's great strength was waning, and Oscar took a turn at point. For half an hour, he did nearly as well as the Kronan. Finally Don, strengthened significantly through the encounter with the Traveler, gave a good account of himself for a quarter of an hour before he too was exhausted. When Mel, Gus, Winnebago and the women had to take turns, progress slowed to a mere crawl.

  The sudden appearance at eye level of a huge snake caused Bates to lose concentration on his telepathic shield . As he tried to reassure himself that the creature was harmless and more scared of him than he was of it, the snake, which was only about two feet from his face, struck out at Bates with amazing speed. As if it were in slow motion, Bates watched in terror as the snake's mouth opened impossibly wide, revealing enormous poisonous fangs that flashed towards him, fangs that were already dripping with venom. Even with his improved agility, it was evident at once to Bates that the snake's f
angs would in an instant strike him in the face, that deadly venom would quickly reach his brain, and he would very soon be dead.

  Then a strange thing happened. The snake's head just seemed to pass right through Bates harmlessly, as though either he or it wasn't real at all! The rebuffed and probably confused snake then slithered away harmlessly. "Damn!” thought Bates. "The ghost Indian's soap trick comes in handy after all!” In the heat of the moment, Bates had somehow caused himself and/or the snake to 'fade', just as Goyahkla had done with himself, the towel, and the Zest, and as Johnny had also demonstrated. Bates would have explored his newly discovered talent further, but he noticed that the rest of his Team was wandering off into the jungle in all different directions muttering to themselves in confusion while under the influence of The Great One. It took twenty minutes for Bates to gather and treat them all.

  Just when they were ready to set off again Pru returned to again lead the reassembled group, much to their relief. The unicorn reported that Johnny and Dooley were making good progress against the nanobots, though occasionally a unicorn-powered attack on the nanobots was also very helpful.

  For several minutes the group again made steady progress, but after what seemed like too short a time to Bates and the others, the unicorn again set off to help Johnny and Dooley battle nanobots, leaving the remainder of the Team to fend for themselves. Then Pru returned again. As the day wore on this cycle was repeated several times.

  The Team's struggle through the jungle seemed endless. Whenever Pru was gone, Krog, Oscar, and Don ended up alternating the lead position for shorter and shorter periods, while Bates struggled to shield them all. The heat and humidity and every step forward sapped their strength, and their short breaks to drink water and eat snacks became longer, more frequent, and less effective.

  Finally, a long twenty minutes after Pru last left them, Krog paused for a breather while he and Bates got their bearings. The interference was much stronger than when they started, particularly in the direction of a huge mound just ahead. "This could be it," said Bates, with a smile. "Perhaps we should wait here for Pru."

  Suddenly from out of nowhere a breadbox-sized bolder came crashing down on Krog, instantly knocking him to the ground either dead or unconscious.

  "This is indeed 'it' Bates!” said a familiar, mocking voice. "It's the end of the line for you and your friends!” Grinning Renson stepped out of the shadow of a huge vine shrouded tree, holding what appeared to be a rifle of some sort that he pointed at the Team.

  "Renson, why are you doing this?" asked Bates. "What have humans done to harm the Ra?"

  "Nothing yet, and you won't either, because there won't be any humans!”

  What happened next seemed to be in slow motion to Bates. Renson took aim with the laser cannon and was about to incinerate him when the Ca' Ra detected sound as well as movement out of the corner of his eye. Oscar had ducked into the overgrowth at Renson's appearance and was now attacking the Ca' Ra with an immensely powerful blow of his machete.

  It was a blow that no human could have avoided or survived, but Renson's reflexes were Ca'Ra fast and his strength was super-human as he blocked the blow with the laser cannon barrel. The blow, though blocked from harming Renson, badly bent the cannon and broke the machete in half. Moving so fast that he could barely be seen, Renson struck Oscar's jaw with a stronger than steel fist, knocking him out instantly. The big biologist hit the ground about the same time as the mangled Ra cannon.

  Janet, Elizabeth, Wink, and Winnebago instinctively backed further away from Renson, while the others ran towards the fray. Bates was already rushing at Renson with his own machete when he saw Oscar's attack. He too was hoping to also catch the Ca' Ra off guard, but the Ca' Ra had disposed of Oscar so quickly that by the time Bates' own blow struck, it was easily stopped by a steel clawed hand that caught the machete by its blade and twisted it away from Bates, while the other hand grasped the human by the neck and lifted him effortlessly off the ground.

  Renson stood motionless, staring at the struggling figure that he held at arm's length, while Bates struck at the Ca’Ra repeatedly with fists and feet, without the slightest effect. Bates tensed his new powerful neck muscles as much as possible to both support his weight and resist Renson's grip. Despite the excruciating pain Bates struck out strongly at Renson again and again. The blows would have struck down any human, but Renson hasn't human or even an ordinary Ra, but a Ca'Ra of the First Order, and much stronger than a dozen men.

  "Strange, you seem much stronger and faster than the Bates that we Ra made Head of DOD, but it will do you no good human, nor will your cowardly Galactic League friends!” Ren'Ca showed his bat fangs to Bates in an evil smile. He had only to close his powerful hand then, and Bates would be destroyed.

  Bates wandered if this was one of the futures that Jigs had seen. What was next? Was this alien monster now going to tear him limb from limb and eat his still living flesh, as he had nearly done to Barns? But then, if the Ca’Ra simply wanted to kill him, he would be dead already.

  "I have decided to kill you last and very slowly Bates, as you have been the one to lead this pathetic band. I'll just break both of your legs now, and then you can helplessly watch me butcher your companions. In the meantime you can explain to me just how you evaded our Mother Ship and how you have been able to function in this zone of mental anguish and evade my nanobots. If you are extremely cooperative, perhaps some of your friends will die quickly with a minimum or suffering."

  A heavy wood branch suddenly broke over Renson's head, and another solidly struck the arm holding Bates. Neither appeared to harm the Ca' Ra Master, and his free hand darted out with impossible speed to place a second struggling human in his deadly grip.

  "What is this? A second, younger Narbando Bates? A son perhaps? You are indeed a human of many surprises, Bates!” He held Don by an arm, while an enraged Janet continued to beat on Renson with the remnants of her club. Gus, Mel, and Elizabeth were now also rushing into the fray, followed by tiny Wink and even cowardly Winnebago. If they hoped to overpower Renson with their numbers they were badly mistaken, as the alerted Ca' Ra swung poor Don like a great club to mow them down! Soon they lay unconscious or moaning in pain all around the Ca' Ra.

  "You're pitifully weak, humans, but you'll taste good. I may save a few of you for my ship-mates to dine on, but most of you are going to start to die now!” hissed Renson.

  "What shipmates are you expecting, Ra criminal?" asked Wink from where he lay. "Your Mother Ship is destroyed! You are alone!”

  "You lie, Haspa! I have just contacted the Mother Ship to tell them of your arrival! I don't know how you escaped them, but you will not escape me!”

  "You know that Haspa do not lie, Ra!” retorted little Wink. "The humans have out-fought and out-smarted you! Your Mother Ship was destroyed days ago! Whatever you contacted isn't your Mother Ship.”

  Ren'Ca's expression was terrible to behold then, for it was clear that he knew the truth in Wink's words. Earlier, he sensed something odd about his communications with the Mother Ship. Dow seemed too mechanical in his responses. It all fit. It was a computer simulation that he had been speaking with, not the real Dow! Up until then, the Ca' Ra had been clinically dispassionate; even his deadly looking snarls were actually well practiced and controlled. Now he was truly enraged! He swung Don again, striking the tiny Haspa hard enough to send him flying several meters and strike a nearby tree with a deadly thud. The little gray skinned space alien sank lifeless to ground.

  "You will die next, son of Bates!” snarled Renson. He threw Don's battered body to the ground and held Bates' face down next to his son. Don was still alive and moaning weakly as Renson held a steel clawed hand above the young man's bare, blood stained chest. "I'm going to eat your son's beating heart now, Bates, while you watch!” With that, he drew back those deadly claws and plunged them deep into Don's heaving chest! He drew out in his clawed hand, which held . . . nothing! Don was unharmed! Renson stared dumbly at
his empty hand, not comprehending what had just happened.

  Remembering how he saved himself from the snake earlier, Bates had finally learned to control Goyahkla's soap trick, and saved his son.

  Renson found that his other hand was empty also; Bates was on the ground next to him and crawling away! With a shout he reached out with both hands to grasp and shatter both of the scientist's shoulders, only to reach right through him!

  "What trick is this, human?" demanded the Ca' Ra.

  "No trick at all," replied Bates, as he stood up painfully and dusted himself off nonchalantly, then slowly backed away from Renson, seeming to pay no attention at all to the Ca' Ra. "Simply an alteration in quantum coupling probabilities, I should think. Basic quantum mechanics; I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner."

  "Well let's see you de-couple this!” shouted Renson, and he pointed both arms at Bates, from which issued thunderous twin plasma blasts so brilliant that onlookers shielded their eyes and cried out in dismay, for nothing that lived could possibly survive such power. Green jungle in the direction of Bates disappeared in a vortex of fire and smoke that obscured the scientist for long seconds after the blast, but when the smoke cleared, there stood Bates, or rather there he floated, for he appeared to be suspended at ground level above the two meter deep, smoking pit that had resulted from the Ca'Ra's blast!

  "Is that the best you can do?" asked Bates." No wonder you hide yourselves as humans!”

  The enraged Ca' Ra reached up to his head with both hands and ripped his human face away, revealing a red eyed, white fanged, bat/pig like face covered in black fir! A moment later, the steel clawed hands reached down to rip away human clothing also. In seconds instead of the thin human Renson, an apparition from out of a horror movie stood snarling before the Team. It was even thinner than the human Renson, with bat-like wings that sprouted out from its back to a five meter width!

  "Ca!” it screamed, as it sprang towards Bates. Bates felt a sudden shooting pain in his head, and tumbled unceremoniously down into the smoking pit. Dimly Bates realized that he had been stunned by a powerful empathic mental blast from the Ca' Ra; likely this was the primitive hunting method of the Ra!

  Hardly had Bates landed at the bottom of the pit when the Ca' Ra dove down on him with ripping steel claws! Barely conscious, Bates could no longer fade or fly. He watched helplessly as Ren'Ca's fangs approached his exposed neck.

  Ren'Ca suddenly stood up and turned, as though responding to an attack from behind. His head still groggy from the Ca' Ra mind blast, Bates didn't understand for a moment what he was seeing. A growling, furry beast of some sort seemed to have attached itself indelicately to the Ca'Ra's hind quarters! Bates blinked, but still he saw what he saw. It was Milo! The plucky little dog must have escaped from the group at the Bus and followed Bates all those miles through the jungle!

  The tactic that had worked so well against Barns almost a week earlier worked only for a few short seconds against Ren'Ca. The enraged Ca' Ra spun around so swiftly that Milo was flung away and high up into the air! As Bates still fought to fully regain his senses, he watched amazed as the dog's rapid flight slowed to a smooth floating motion that ended when the dog landed gently in the arms of a grinning Goyahkla. At the same time, Ren'Ca himself floated up and away from Bates, until he hung suspended three meters above ground level, before a magnificent, white, horse-like creature.

  "You are a being without honor," said Pru. "Your terror will end now!”

  From his position above, the Ca' Ra let loose another powerful plasma blast, this time directed at Pru. The unicorn never even blinked as she was enveloped in blue/white flame. When the blast ended, the unicorn still stood untouched; impossibly white and magnificent. This time however, there was no damage at all to the surrounding jungle. A huge green moth still fluttered unharmed over the unicorn. Bates, now rising from the smoking pit, took note of the feat. He had the feeling that he could learn a lot from the unicorn!

  Pru was staring intently at the struggling Ca' Ra with her infinitely dark, deep eyes. "It was this flame that your kind directed against the One Tree and The People. Do you deny it?"

  "I don't know of any such attack, and I don't know of your People!” spat Ren'Ca.

  "In this you speak truth Ca'Ra, but it is also true that you hide many dark secrets. Why do you seek Earth's destruction?"

  "The humans must die! They are too much like us!”

  "In this you speak part truth only, Ca' Ra. There is a deeper, darker truth that you would try to hide even from me! Do you know what lies sleeping here in harm's way of Dannos, Ca'Ra? Is not the Great One your true target? Why? Who is your true master, pawn of evil?"

  Ren'Ca struggled to point a plasma blasting arm at Pru again, but found that could not move either of his arms in that direction. But he managed to point an arm at Mel and let loose a horrific blast. Old Gus sprang in front of Mel, and though Bates and Pru both tried to block the hot plasma mentally, some of it got through. It was only a tiny fraction of the original blast, but it was more than enough to blacken the two men and send them tumbling lifelessly to the ground.

  Bates cried out in impotent anguish and rage, and Pru's white body glowed brightly, while her horn throbbed brighter than the sun. The Ca' Ra now faced the wrath of both the elemental unicorn and the human apprentice Guardian. A brilliant white light erupted from the unicorn's horn then, and swept up and through the spot where the Ca' Ra had been. The Ca' Ra was not there because the Ca' Ra no longer existed, for apprentice Guardian Bates had done something terrible to him. Just exactly what, even Bates didn't know, but several witnesses thought that they saw the snarling image of the evil Ca' Ra rapidly expand to gigantic proportions, becoming more and more insubstantial as it did so, until it simply dissipated and disappeared.

  ****