Chapter 9: Plan For Action

"Here you go," Steve told his neighbor, "All we agreed on and fifty more for a job well done." The Storms nodded their appreciation as a happy neighbor drove off. Linda looked at her supposed frugal husband and wondered what had happened to him. She decided she had better keep a close watch on him.

"Come out into the barn. We got three more of those bad guys out there and more new stuff as well." Steve led the way while the dazed Storms followed behind.

Linda told them, "You got great kids. The twins sure know how to get rough when it counts and Vikki is a perfect little lady."

"Thank you," Henry Storm said as a single barn door opened. "We are ... By the Silent Star." His voice broke as he saw the slab of purple on the floor in front of him. "Is ... is it real? It can't be. It was all was destroyed except for one small shard at the time of the Great Cataclysm. It is real, isn't it?" His eyes were wide open in near unbelief.

"Oh, it's real all right and our son Greg can do tricks with it."

"What - sort – of – tricks?" Henry asked carefully, spacing his words.

"Well, he took Vikki for a ride on the thing. I couldn't believe my eyes."

"Who are you?" Henry hissed as he instinctively backed up. "All sensitives and adepts were killed when the transporter exploded during the Cataclysm. That is one of the reasons why we were stranded here." How can this boy do what none of us have been able to do after three thousand years of trying? Who are you?" He looked close to a breakdown.

"Henry, just calm down now," Steve tried to sooth his new friend's emotions. "It looks to me like a lot of your so-called wisdom and knowledge just turned out to be a little off here and there." He smiled at the distraught man and tried to reassure him as he added, "Besides, we got a secret weapon."

"Ah, what weapon?" Ellen Storm asked nervously.

"Haw. There's an easy one to answer." Ralph laughed as parts of his own questions were answered. "They have Dog. Am I right or am I right?"

"Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back, warrior boy," Peg cautioned her husband. "After all, this young lady figured it out a lot faster." She smiled at Vikki.

"Your dog is your secret weapon?" Henry stared hard at Steve. He didn't believing a word of it.

Steve looked at Greg and asked, "Dog was part of one group which came through the portal at some time or other, as they call it. Right?"

"Well?" Greg asked, "Is Dad right?"

"Yes, I believe I was part of the team which did the navigating. My memory is a bit hazy, but essentially your father is correct. He is much more perceptive than I gave him credit."

"Dog had something to do with the navigation through the portals. He's smarter than your average dog." He grinned affectionately at Dog and received a mental picture of Dog snapping at his butt as Greg ran away in wild-eyed fear.

"Would you show us what else you can do?" Ellen asked.

"Aw, it's not much, but it's a start." Greg concentrated on the slab and asked it to come to him. Like an obedient pet, it rose slightly off the floor and settled down in front of him at his feet.

Everyone gasped at the sight. "Wait," Dog ordered. I remember something from the past. If my memory serves me right, you can attach things to the targ by ordering it to hold onto whatever you desire to be attached to it." He looked around and added, "The old car seat with the seat belts still on it might be a good start."

"Dad, would you help me bring the old car seat over here and set it on the slab? I want to try and fasten it so I got something to sit on."

Steve brought it over and was careful to be gentle as possible as he placed it in the middle of the slab. Greg mentally asked the targ to attach the installation brackets on the bottom of the seat so it couldn't fall off. It was done without the need for tools. The purple material seemed to flow around the seat base. He called to Vikki, "You want to go for a ride?"

Before he could finish the question, she was seated beside him. "Fasten your seat belt," she told him.

Greg frowned at her. "You're bossy, you know?" He sat still and asked, "Would somebody open one of the big doors?" The twins jumped forward and opened both doors wide.

"Go" Greg ordered and nothing happened.

"Be more specific," Dog suggested. "Tell it specifically what you want it to do."

"Come up six inches above the floor and go outside." His mental image was of the slab flying high in the air. Once outside they ascended to an approximation of Greg's idea of "high in the air." Geg felt the thrill of excitement that he had accomplished something far beyond "marvelous." His throat quivered as he let out a long pent up breath.

"This is great," Vikki told Greg. "We have our own purple square flying saucer." She looked at the world below.

"Naw, it's more like a flying carpet, a purple flying carpet," Greg countered. "Let's go way up." He gave the mental order and they rose to over ten thousand feet. It became more difficult to breath and the wind was cold.

"Let's go back down, please. I'm getting chilled," Vikki requested. Her voice sounded thin in the lesser atmosphere. She had started to shiver.

"Go back down slow like," Greg ordered. He imagined the desired rate of descent and the slab obeyed.

When they returned to the barn, Henry asked, "Where did you go?"

"Way high," Vikki answered. "Way, way high. It was cold and I had trouble breathing."

"Put your toy up, Greg and let's see what else is in the hole." Steve got back on the Case tractor and backed down in the hole. He set the bucket low and scraped up another load of dirt. As fast as he could, he removed yet another bucket load of what looked like rubble. It was the remains of a second box full of gold. The wood was mostly rotted away and the small ingots scattered when he dumped the load on the floor in the barn.

As he dropped the load on the floor in the barn, Steve said, "We better separate the dirt from the gold. We need to wash it and count it. I have a hunch this is all there is." To make certain though, he dug around a little more with the backhoe. He rummaged through the dirt and found nothing more even after digging two feet deeper.

Greg took the rolled up hose inside the door of the barn, uncoiled it and turned the water on. Even at the low forty pounds of pressure their well pump supplied, he was able to give their treasure a thorough washing. In minutes the gold was wet, shiny and free of all mud. Greg sprayed the detritus out the side door and raked the bits of wood into a pile to dry to be used to start fires in the fireplace.

Linda returned to the house and brought back their bathroom scales. "Let's see how much the old lost Swede left us," She told her husband.

"What is this talk about a Lost Swede and his mine?" Henry looked bewildered.

"It's a joke," Steve answered.

"I don't get it," Henry said.

"It's because you're not Swede." Steve grinned at him.

"But you're not Swedish, are you?" Ellen asked.

"No, it's all part of the joke," he told her.

"Well, I don't get it," she complained.

"I already told you it's because you're not a Swede." Steve's face cracked into a great big grin.

"Hey, I get it," Vikki exclaimed. "There's no point to the joke except to keep people trying to get the point of a joke when it doesn't have one." She smiled at Steve, "Am I right?"

"Yah, you got me. It's all a put on. Pretty good isn't it?" He laughed while the others stared at him and still tried to understand how a joke could have no point and was still supposed to be funny.

"Actually your father happens to be more correct than he knows. The people who buried this were all from what is now Sweden and they were lost." Greg heard the humor in Dog's mental voice.

"Is there anything else in there, do you know." Greg looked at his friend.

Dog hesitated before he answered, "I am not certain, but I believe there might be another rune stone in there."

"Dad," Greg interrupted his father as he was talking to Henry. "Dog says there may be another rune stone down there. I get the feeling it's the most important one of all. I'm not sure yet, but I somehow get the feeling that rune stone is more important than all the gold we found." Greg also had the feeling Dod had held something back he was not ready to share yet.

"One of you boys feel like getting dirty? I'm about all dug out. Somebody else better take over for a while." Steve was tired and showed it. Greg was too excited.

"We have about ninety-six pounds of gold here," Linda announced. "What are we going to do with it?" She had a big grin on her face. "I never imagined there was this much gold in the whole world."

The Storms and the Ryans looked around at the others present and had no answer. "I would suggest you sell it in small amounts in other states. Accept only large bills and be discreet in all your dealings," Ralph suggested. "Perhaps you might make a quiet trip to Jamaica and deposit some of it there in a dollar account." He shrugged, "This is just a suggestion. Also, you do know if word gets around you have all this gold you'll find more trouble."

Sounds good to me," Steve said. "I want to change some of it for ready cash. I hear jewelers buy gold, no questions asked."

"Yes, you're right about that; some of them use the gold to trade for the gems they use in their trade," Ralph answered, "They will discount it pretty much around ten to fifteen percent."

Steve shrugged. "Well, it didn't cost us anything so I'll go for it."

He frowned, as if in deep thought. I got a feeling like I had when I found our little hobby farm here. I want to buy the farm across the road. We can get it cheap. Since it's mostly bog and small ponds we'll get it for a little over a hundred dollars an acre."

Linda nodded her agreement. "When we were first going together, Steve found this place and bought it and never told me. Oh I was some mad at him for that, let me tell you. All he ever told me was he had to buy it and couldn't give me one good reason why. We almost didn't get married over that. I already had plans for his savings, even before we got engaged." Linda laughed at the memory.

"She wanted a house in town and not ten miles out in the boonies." Steve smiled at his wife.

"Any way, why you want to buy that place across the road, Honey?" Linda cocked her head to one side and waited for an answer.

"Well, if we put a new house on the higher ground, then we can move in there and let the Storm family have this one. I have a hunch we're all going to become real close in the next few days."

Henry Storm looked at Steve, disbelief showing on his face. To be handed a home with no strings attached was hard to believe. "Why are you doing this?" he asked.

"You been getting some real harebrained ideas some times, Steve, but this is extreme even for you." Linda looked at her husband as if she couldn't believe her ears.

"Now Linda, just relax and stop and think. First, it seems when we need money we get it rained on us and not just drizzled out in bits and spurts. Ever since our desert vacation we seem to get into one thing after another. Dog there could probably come up with a Lost Norwegian Mine and even a Lost Martian Mine." He looked at dog and said, "Bark once if I'm right."

Amused, Dog went "Wuff." "Your father is funny," he told Greg

"Steve, most times you're so tight usually you wear a hole in a dollar bill by stretching it while you spend it. You don't sound like you." Linda gave a worried look at the man she had married and thought she knew so well.

"Oh, I don't think we'll be going naked or hungry, unless we have to keep feeding so much meat to Dog all the time." Dog gave a good-natured bark and listened.

"I still don't understand why you are in essence just handing us a home. Why are you doing this?"

"Somehow we are two families who didn't know each other existed last month. Yet everything we had happen since Greg met Dog and cheated at chess seems to bring us all closer together. It's like we were meant to somehow be together. Even our two kids, Greg and Vikki, have come to depend on each other in ways that seem almost unnatural. They're like a team only closer. " He smiled at Vikki and Greg huddled together on the old car seat.

"I really do believe they're going to end up married to each other in a few years. I been getting feelings and those feelings say we got to stay together or we'll be dead." Steve seemed serious and worried. No one present doubted he meant every word he just said.

He looked at Henry Storm and added, "You are a smart man, Henry and work at a job where brains count more than muscle don't you?" Henry nodded.

"I been lucky so far because I'm a lead mechanic over at the Thousand Lakes Pump And Compressor Company and have job security like you wouldn't believe. I saved the owner's life when a pump casing got dropped from an overhead crane. He only got a bruise and I got a broken leg."

Steve stood up to his full five feet eight inches and asked, "What do you do for a living?"

"When my health permits it I'm an international investments analyst."

"Okay, you and Ellen rest up and then you take our motor home and head out with the gold. You have a better idea on how to turn it into cash without being noticed than I do. When you get it turned into money we can start to use it to find out what we really have going here. Whatever it is, I bet it's something big. Shoot, I know it is."

"We must inform the rest of the People about all of this," Ellen said. "With the knowledge we have in our archives and the other artifacts we already have, we all definitely must work together. The Raak are not going to give up."

"Which brings us to an area I'm familiar with, security." Ralph stood his full six and a half feet tall and smiled at the others. "Until I got side tracked by pro wrestling, I studied criminology and electronics in college.

"I've had a fun ten years and I built up my own string of fierce wrestling clowns. Pro wrestling has made me a wealthy man, with Peg's help managing things. However I've given it some serious thought and decided that it's coming up on time for me to retire. I figure sometime in the coming year. I want to open a full service security agency. It would offer across the board protection, surveillance, the works."

Then he added, "Have you noticed how we all seem to have been placed in positions where we could not help but run into each other? We, all of us, each have different talents and they all fit together. This might sound off the wall to you, but there must be some sort of reason for this." He looked around at everybody.

Peg looked troubled as she asked, "Honey, what can a big old clumsy broad like me do? The rest of you all have talents. All I have is a college degree in anthropology and a couple of black belts in Northern Tai Chi and Korean karate. I sure can't make things fly or find some lost whoever's gold mine. Everyone seems to have more to offer than me." Peg gave Vikki a wistful look and shrugged self-consciously.

By unspoken agreement, they all headed toward the house. Steve locked the barn doors behind him. "I don't know for sure what he means, Dog says you are cru ... crucial to our endeavor," Greg told Peg Milton. He turned to Dog and said aloud, "Why don't you stop using big words?" Dog didn't respond, he grinned at his friend.

Ellen told Peg, "I don't know about Linda, but I feel, well, safer when you're around. You and Ralph both seem so competent. I feel we won't get hurt so easy if the Miltons are around."

"Thank you," the big woman said. "You know, there's a funny thing about this all. Ralph and I talked about it and we both feel we were somehow drawn to the Ryans first, and now to the rest of you as well. It is not a case of misplaced gratitude either."

Dog entered the house first and sniffed the air. "There are forces at work here, that draw us together which are beyond my understanding. Tell them just those words." Dog conveyed the urgency of the message to Greg.

Greg told the others what Dog told him. "I think he sort of also means we just don't know enough and had better be careful."

Henry Storm looked first at Steve and then at the rest of the small group. "Do you think it would be a good idea to start a headquarters building here? It should be large enough to suit our needs and yet hidden from sight as much as possible."

"What do you have in mind, Henry?" Steve asked and eased down into his recliner. He sighed and stretched.

Ellen led Henry over to the couch. He sat and answered, "I have a feeling when we tell the People about our discoveries there is going to be a split in the Inner Council. The tradition bound ones on the council are going to demand we turn everything over to them and the more forward thinking of the People will want to cast their lot with us. We'll probably split the whole Council itself."

Henry Storm lowered his voice a little and looked around, "More has been discovered here in such a very short time than in the past thirty or so centuries as we have clung to the past until we became afraid of any future changes."

He looked embarrassed when he added, "I was one of the most rigid of the conservatives. Yet now I see the need for progress and change. We spent centuries hiding from the Raak. We were more worried about preserving our precious heritage. I can now see we were the keepers of an empty chest filled with nonexistent treasures that had little or no value."

"Well, you call whoever you think you should and if you're rested up enough tomorrow maybe you can get busy selling gold. I bet there's a lot of people who want some gold at a good price." Steve smiled and handed Henry the keys to the big motor home.

Greg came running into the house with two coins in his hand. "Guess what these are!" he shouted. "I found 'em in with the Lost Swede gold."