That Tella was in action was little immediate help to Madhar and Jim, face-to-face with an armed missile.
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire froze the moment. Halfway down the field, two fast-moving vehicles were racing along the track. Madhar’s bodyguards were shooting into the air.
The combination of Tella’s courage and initial success and the arrival of help from the guards gave Jim a brief hope of victory. He grabbed the scientist’s arm and pushed her into a run across the face of the control building. There was a hiss from the flier as the missile launched. The control building erupted in a ball of orange fire. Jim and Madhar were thrown head over heels across the grass.
Jim scrambled to his feet and dragged the Turcanian up into a staggering run. Debris was raining down on them as they tried to close the distance between themselves and the approaching vehicles.
Behind them, Sopha turned his flier and pressed the engines into high gear. The TV tower was crumbling into its own base. The transmission had ceased. He was free to return to his sacred mission. As he turned over the games field, the flier was rising steadily.
The flock of birds had panicked at the explosion and the sudden motion of the black craft.
For every landing on his landing strip, Sopha Luca had followed the correct procedure; he was meticulous in doing so. But this time, he had not intended to land. This time, he had not closed the intakes for the heat exchangers when he entered the atmosphere. In his haste and anger, he had not done as the flier’s instruction manual had told him he always must.
The birds swarmed up in a cloud of wings and distressed cries only to be sucked hard into the intakes. The first Sopha knew of his mistake was the sound of small explosions from inside the flier’s outstretched wings as several birds were incinerated.
The flier’s nose dipped suddenly and plowed into the ground of the athletics track beside the games field. The remaining missiles, ripped open by the impact, detonated with a muffled rumble. The automatic ejection system fired the pilot into the air. When the cockpit module hit its apogee, the parachute opened immediately.
A sudden silence fell over the games field. The bodyguards had piled Madhar into a vehicle and surrounded her. They were looking askance at Jim, in awe at the grounded flier, and incredulously at the burning TV tower. They waited for the scientist to give them instructions.
Jim was shouting, “Tella! Tella! Are you there?”
Madhar swung around to Jim. “Where is it? Where’s the gallassid?”
“Under the flier! Tella had gotten up onto the underside of it.”
“Then it may still be there...”
The scientist looked in horror at the smoking wreck.
“We have to find Tella. If it fell, it may be unconscious...hurt...”
“Find it? You can’t see it!”
Jim shook his head, his ears still ringing from the blast.
“Get a line of people out here, shoulder to shoulder. From where it was hovering...across...to there.” He pointed at the growing pall of smoke.
“Finding people won’t be a problem.”
A huge crowd of students and faculty was running toward them and toward the flier.
Madhar pointed at the supervisor of her guards. “You! Get them organized. They’re to search the ground from here, right across the field. Pick up every piece of debris. Call if they find a gallassid.”
“A what?”
Madhar took her fellow Turcanian’s arm and led him a step away from Jim. “You think a gallassid any stranger than that?”
The guard was silent a moment, looking from her to Jim and back.
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll call with whatever we find.”
“And I want you, personally, to secure the Regdenir from the flier.”
“That was a Regdenir? I thought it was another...alien.”
“You’ll soon see. Make sure he doesn’t get away.”
“At once, ma’am.”
***
Jim walked slowly behind the line of students. Occasionally one would stoop and pick up a bit of debris from the explosion. The nearer they got to the edge of the field, the sicker he felt. Already he was blaming himself for not keeping Sopha talking longer. Tella had only needed a few more seconds—perhaps. A few more seconds that might have meant the difference between a life continued and a life curtailed.
Suddenly the line broke. A female student had screamed. Jim was there in an instant. There was something green and grasslike that was obviously not grass.
“Tella! Can you hear me?”
Jim was kneeling, trying to work out which way Tella was lying. He ripped off his shirt and laid it over the body. The gray color washed over Tella’s limbs. A student fainted.
The vehicle arrived with Nect and a bodyguard.
“Put it in the back!” instructed Madhar.
Jim took the feet and the guard, the shoulders. Tella groaned as they picked it up and, again, as they slid it onto the seat.
“It’s okay, fella. You’re okay now.”
Madhar grabbed Jim’s arm.
“I hope you can help Tella. We don’t have the medical skill to deal with something like this!”
“No...Nor do I. At least we have to get it somewhere warm and comfortable. We’ll take it step by step from there.”
“Medical room!” she called. Jim climbed into the vehicle beside Tella.
***
They loaded their patient onto a bed in the medical room, Tella’s body turning as white as the surrounding sheets.
“It looks like he’s cut there,” said a nurse to Jim, pointing at Tella’s shoulder.
“I guess so.” Jim didn’t think it was the time to correct Tella’s gender.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Thank you. And thank you for being so...accepting of us.”
The nurse smiled and said, “We all watch Professor Nect’s show. I’m really glad to get a close look at you.”
Jim nodded and went out into the air. He looked up and remembered the flier. He felt instinctively for the control unit. His pocket was empty.
“Oh shit!”
Chapter Three
He looked around for Madhar. She was nowhere to be seen. A gaggle of students was standing in the corridor to the medical room. Jim saw two of the three who had been with him in the tower control
