Chapter 4

After spending several hours with the Praetor at University, Elaine felt she understood everything she needed to know. The strange teleportation device she'd discovered in the Arcadian youth's quarters was an adaptation of an earlier species' technology. The Arcadians had never been able to develop it into a usable device (read 'offensive weaponry'), so it remained a toy to teach their children.

The Praetor also helped Elaine recover wisps of memories from the Arcadian child that were left over from her psychic attack on its mind, and together they learned a great deal about the Arcadian civilization in present time.

As far as the child knew, the Arcadians were currently at peace, having wiped out or enslaved every civilization it came in contact with. Of course, the Arcadian empire encompassed several hundred planets, and events often occurred along one edge of their inhabited worlds that would remain unknown, often for long periods of time, in other parts of their civilization.

Another thing the child knew was that his terrarium, along with its automatic food gathering device, was a 'one-of-a-kind' deal, given to him by his father, who was a fleet admiral, or something important. The device had been discovered a few decades ago on the planet of a now-extinct species and sent back for reverse-engineering as a possible weapon. The Arcadian scientists couldn't figure it out, so it was simply handed off to a high-ranking officer who had expressed an interest in it as a learning device to be given to his offspring.

There weren't any others devices like it, and Elaine was going to steal it from them before someone figured out how it worked. In fact, she'd coveted the device ever since she'd determined what it was. As she teleported away from University and returned to the location where she and her daughters had been abducted, she couldn't help the jaw-clenching grin of revenge as she considered what she was about to attempt.

If she was correct, she had set the controls of the alien device to collect a food specimen at the exact location of its last deportation. She needed to be at that location to be collected. Then, she intended to bring the entire terrarium back with her, from whatever distant part of space they were located. The problem with that was, her body mass was insufficient to fuel the teleportation of both herself and the alien terrarium across interstellar space without killing her. That was why she'd visited the Praetor at University. Once Elaine had shared her memories of the terrarium's control panel, the Praetor had coached her on how to 'drive' the thing.

Well, she sure hoped the Praetor had gotten it right, because as she rematerialized in the center of the scorched circle in the meadow where the most recent wormhole had occurred, the alien terrarium was already opening up its preprogrammed wormhole. She allowed herself to be sucked from the reality of New Eden and across the universe to feed an omnivorous plant that was no longer there.

The terrarium was empty, as expected, but the room wasn't. There were several adult Arcadians crowded into the tiny living quarters, all arguing in their guttural tongue. Elaine had an idea regarding what they discussed, but all she was interested in was remaining unseen until she was alone with the terrarium in which she currently resided.

The best way to remain invisible was to teleport. She did, and watched the strange beings from the safety of the teleportation zone. She knew it was possible to travel in time using this strange dimension in which she hid, but the few times she'd tried it herself ... Well, the worst that had happened was somehow getting most of her skin burnt off when she had managed to teleport into a reality that no longer existed. Being from a different future, and being immediately rejected by the reality in which she found herself, she was forced to flee or be completely incinerated. Later she discovered that Béla knew what had happened, and found that she had prevented a disruption of the events that led to the very existence of she, and Béla, and all of her sister goddesses here in New Eden.

But that had occurred when she had attempted to see just how far she could travel back through time. What she wanted to do now was simply move forward until the room was unoccupied, then program the terrarium to transport it and herself to New Eden. Even as the thought occurred, she felt herself moving. The image she had was of an empty room. When she materialized, she nervously looked around. The room was indeed empty of Arcadians.

It was also empty of everything else. Including the terrarium.

'Fuck!' Elaine thought, then teleported again, traveling backwards in time. She was already feeling half-starved from her brief movement into the future, and now she had to go back – at least far enough to find where those alien monsters had taken the terrarium.

Finding the room occupied again (still), Elaine held herself in the teleportation zone and watched as the aliens began removing the possessions of the missing Arcadian child. Evidently individual children weren't important to them, as there didn't seem to be much upset or concern radiating from any of them. Of course, hiding in the teleportation zone, and the fact that these were members of an alien species, may have muted any emotions Elaine might discern. That wasn't important. What was important was...

'There! They're moving it now. All I have to do is follow them, and then... '

She followed, finding she had to create a separate image in her mind of what she was looking at in order to 'move'. 'This is kind of like dream walking, only with a double image of everything – including me, walking along behind them. Weird.'

The aliens carried the device outside, and Elaine looked around, surprised. She had surmised that they were all on a space ship, somewhere, but this cavern was much too large to be a ship. Even the arborium on Father's ship was smaller than this. She could feel that this was an artificial environment, mostly because of the inconsistencies of the gravity as she walked, but it had to be near the size of... 'Deimos! This is an artificial planetoid – like New Eden, only smaller! Even after all these centuries, they still haven't got the technology of artificial gravity they stole from us down pat. Not that these hell-spawned slugs could actually make an improvement on anything left behind by all the species they've slaughtered.'

'Crap! I lost them. Gotta travel backwards again to ... ah, there they are!' Determined to not let her emotions distract her from her objective again, she followed the aliens and their precious cargo to a storage unit, where they callously dropped it into a corner. 'Good God! The way they treat that ... It's a good thing they aren't inventive enough to figure out what this really does or they could've conquered the entire universe by now.'

Alone once again with the terrarium, Elaine materialized into the storage room, only to grimace and double over in pain as hunger ravaged her body. 'Holy fuck! How does Tabatha manage this when she time travels?' Of course, she didn't know that Tabatha's travels were usually assisted by the Hurrahs.

Staggering over to the device, she leaned against it, gasping in pain as muscles were depleted of mass and cramps ate away at her insides. Barely able to see through the tears and almost unable to control her trembling hands, she managed to set the controls to what she believed would take the device to New Eden.

A door opened behind her, and Elaine pressed 'Transmit'.

The device vanished.

She didn't.

Almost instantly, she was enveloped in a stasis field created by a device in the Arcadian's hand. Elaine was trapped. Twisting around, she watched the wormhole fade, realizing only now that she should have leaped into it when she had the chance. In one last desperate effort, she cried out mentally, trying to reach the mind of someone in New Eden who might be able to rescue her. 'Help me!'

The wormhole faded, leaving only a slight circle in the floor. Elaine collapsed, half starved and unable to resist as the Arcadian proceeded to bind her. Even as she passed out from starvation and exhaustion, she realized her mistake. No one from New Eden would be coming to rescue her. In her mind, she knew that there was only one person powerful enough to rescue her, and that was who she'd called out to. Only that person wasn't in New Eden, and it wasn't likely that she'd come to her rescue even if she knew Elaine was in danger. That person was... 'Lisa! Please help me...