Chapter 6

Terisa grabbed Talina's hand and teleported, not wanting to be left behind. An instand later, the twins surprised Darla, Dawn and Marla in a sunlit patch of wild grasses. "This is the point where we arrived after we were trapped in the arborium where we found that plant."

"You don't suppose Mother went back there, do you?" Terisa asked, worry evident in her voice.

"Why would she go back?" Dawn wanted to know.

"How, would be a better question," Darla replied.

"There was a machine," Talina explained. "Some kind of teleportation device. That's what opened the wormhole and allowed us to escape."

"A teleportation machine would definitely be high on her list of acquisitions," Darla said. "She's spent hundreds of hours at University with her Jeff and Jacob trying to develop a space drive that could move this entire moon to another solar system."

"Why would she wanna do that?" Terisa wanted to know. "We have everything we need right here."

"In case you haven't noticed, darling," Marla sniped, "the 'humans' are starting to overrun this little paradise of ours. They multiply like bugs, and there're no planets in this solar system capable of sustaining them – unless we want to send everyone back into the past to when Earth was actually livable. We need to go out into the stars and find another planet for them to contaminate."

"Contaminate? Don't forget you're half human, too," Darla grinned. "The human part of us is where all those lovely sexy bits come from."

"Leave it to you to think of sex at a time like..." Dawn stopped talking, and stared out across the wide meadow. Unnoticed until just now, a small round dome sat nearly hidden in the tall grass. "What the..."

"What?" Terisa asked, looking in the same direction as Dawn. "Oh! Hey! That's the arbit ... arborium thing! That's what Mother used to send us back here!"

"What's it doing here?" Talina asked, not understanding what was going on.

"Well, evidently Elaine caused it to come here, somehow," Darla guessed. "But this doesn't explain why she isn't here along with it."

"We should get it to University," Dawn decided. "The Praetor might know how to get it to work."

"Yeah," Terisa agreed. "I felt the distance when we teleported – both times – and it's way farther than anyone I know could ever attempt by themselves, or even with a group like this. We were galaxies away!"

"Not likely," Darla smirked. "Maybe a few solar systems, but..."

"Still, that's farther than any one of us has ever attempted," Dawn stated.

"Yeah," Talina agreed. "Trying that's a good way to end up in deep space with no air and nowhere to land."

"Ugh!" Terisa added. "And I'll bet you'd be really hungry, too."

Talina simply looked at her twin.

"Don't give me that look!" Terisa griped. "I get starved just going home from Northern!"

Darla smirked, "I don't think you'd have time to notice you were hungry if you didn't have any air to breathe..."

"Okay, girls," Marla interrupted. "Just so none of us get too hungry," she looked directly at Terisa, who glared back with a hurt expression on her face, "let's all do a 'hands-on' and teleport this thing to University. Jacob'll know what to do with it."

The five girls all put their hands on the object, then they all immediately disappeared, their original search for dead bodies forgotten for the moment. An instant later, they were in the laboratory at University.

She jerked awake to the sound of two metal objects striking against each other. 'Is somebody in the kitchen?' she wondered. Elaine stretched, suppressing a groan as sore, cold muscles silently shrieked in protest at lying on unyielding metal deck plating. 'I must have fallen asleep, ' she realized. 'Gods, I could've been captured in my sleep and served up for dinner to these slime balls.'

It really wasn't likely that; even if she was captured, no one could keep her locked up – unless they were aware of her ability to teleport. If so, they would have to keep her drugged or unconscious. 'Unlikely, ' she thought. 'These demons like to listen to their food as they gnaw it into itty-bitty pieces... '

Whoever or whatever, somewhere across the room, was making more noise now, moving metal pots and utensils. 'Definitely sounds like cooking is about to commence, ' Elaine thought as she slowly sat up and looked around.

The Arcadian was turned away from her, intent on its task as its arms moved back and forth on the stainless steel counter before it. Elaine could smell yeast, something sugary, and blood. 'Everywhere I go, I smell blood, ' she realized. 'That doesn't mean that creature is preparing peaches and meat pie... ' Her stomach began to feel a bit queasy at the thought. She was hungry, but she was pretty sure she didn't want whatever that alien chef was preparing.

The Arcadian began to turn around and Elaine froze for a second, then vanished into the teleportation zone. From her invisible vantage point, she continued to watch until she noticed she was getting hungrier by the minute. Remembering the room with the edible, smoked meat, she concentrated, then materialized there. When the Arcadian opened the door, she was gnawing on a large piece of smoked meat she'd torn off an alien carcass with her bare, greasy hands.

They stared at each other for an instant, then Elaine vanished, taking her prized meal with her.

The other goddesses had departed, leaving Terisa and Talina at University lab with Jason, Jacob and the alien transportation device. The four of them were mentally linked with the Praetor, which was guiding them through the process of figuring out what it was and what they could do with it, with the main intent of recovering the twin's mother.

'I viewed the images of this machine with The Seeker before she departed this world, ' the Praetor spoke into their minds. 'The Seeker had already, perhaps intuitively, determined several of the settings and what performance could be expected from each one. I suspect that she may have seen one of these devices before she joined Alana's crew. In any event, she knew something of how it worked, otherwise she would not have been able to operate it.'

"That makes sense," Jacob replied. "Praetor, were you able to view her memories of how this thing works?"

'I did not, ' the Praetor replied. 'I was allowing The Seeker to proceed at her own pace, as you humans seem to resent interference or demonstration of superior intellect.'

"Way to go, first dad," Talina remarked, "Give machine-head an opportunity to gloat over us meatheads." Talina called Jacob 'first dad' because he was her mother's first husband. Her actual father, however, was Geoffrey. Jacob was Jason's father, which made Jason half-brother to the twins. In addition, the Great Bard Geoffrey had other children of his own with Terri, his own life-mate. They were now grown, and this large, somewhat confusing family constituted most of the staff at University, performing their services between studies, of course.

'Do not disrespect your elder, child, ' the Praetor gently admonished Talina. 'Your family consists of the smartest 'meatheads' in New Eden. I was simply pointing out your limited ability to retain and access vast amounts of data.'

"Huh!" Talina grumbled, not really talking to anyone present. "Storing data on a computer chip doesn't have anything to do with 'intellect'. My 'intellect' is just fine!"

"Let us remind ourselves," Jason interjected, "that we are primarily here to find our mother, and only thirdly interested in proving who or what life form should be voted most likely to survive."

"Only thirdly?" Teresa asked, grinning, pleased that the Praetor had included her in its assessment of smart people. "What's secondly?"

"Second," Jason replied, correcting his half-sister's malignment of the word, "would be to incorporate this device, or perhaps a larger version, into the power plant at Northern."

"You mean we could teleport this entire world to another solar system?" Talina asked, her eyes wide with astonishment.

"That's what your mother's been working on," Jacob supplied, "for many years – trying to find a way to escape from this remote, dying star. It's likely that she somehow caused this machine to seek her out and make her aware of its existence."

"How in the world could she've done that?" Teresa asked.

'Eliannai is a Seeker, child, ' the Praetor informed her. 'Her abilities registered higher than any other tested on Elyria. It is unknown what she can actually accomplish, limited perhaps by her ability to consider events. More than once, the universe had bent to her will.'