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  Joe and a stranger stood next to each other. Joe was frowning. The other man was a little taller than Joe but with thick, black hair. His hand was clamped around Joe’s wrist.

  The other man smiled. “You must be Mike.” A blue haze sprang up around Mike.

  “Use your communicator,” Joe managed to say before he collapsed to the floor screaming in agony. Mike pulled out his communicator.

  The other man said, “We can make this easy or hard.”

  The blue haze around Mike flashed into a pulsing blue aura.

  “My name is Frab. I’m from Joe’s planet. I’ve come to take him back, and you as well, I’m afraid.” He pulled a communicator out that looked like Mike and Joe’s. His fingers raced across the face of it with the blinding speed Mike had seen only Joe achieve.

  “What kind of name is Frab for an alien?” Mike asked.

  “We got word the inhabitants of this planet were hypercritical. Who cares at this point? You’ll hear a lot of strange names in a very short while.”

  “How come you speak English?”

  “One of the first things Joe sent back to our planet from here was a language program. This planet is a mess. You guys have got to get together on one language.”

  “Talk about being critical,” Mike said then asked, “Why aren’t I writhing in pain?”

  “I’m not sure. You should be. You will be soon enough. You aren’t supposed to have a personal energy field.”

  “Communicator,” Joe gasped, screamed again, and passed out.

  Mike tried what he could remember of the combination on the communicator he used on Jack’s dad. After only a few seconds of trying this, Mike’s blue aura expanded to fill the entire room. Both aliens screamed. Frab froze for an instant then crashed unconscious to the floor.

  Mike’s blue glow pulsed throughout the room. He rushed to Joe and knelt next to him. Mike muttered, “What have I done?” For a second he thought he might have killed his husband, but he saw Joe’s chest rise and fall. He leaned back and rested his butt on his heels and calves.

  Mike glanced at the one who’d called himself Frab. He too was breathing but showed no signs of consciousness. Mike wondered if he should tie him up. Mike had no idea what, if any, physical Earth things would contain these people.

  He figured at the moment his implant was protecting them and was strong enough to stop whatever this new guy might try.

  He leaned over to Joe and pulled his husband into his arms and held him close. “Come on, wake up, please. I’m kind of lost here. I killed a guy a few hours ago. I love you. Please wake up.”

  After painful minutes of acute anxiety, Joe’s eyes fluttered open. He met Mike’s gaze. Joe stated the obvious, “We’re both alive.”

  Mike nodded toward the still unconscious Frab. “He hasn’t come around. What the hell happened?”

  Joe staggered to his feet. They held each other for a moment in a fierce embrace. When Joe broke their contact, he said, “Gimme a second.” He rushed to the interloper and searched his pockets, found nothing he needed then pried the communicator out of Frab’s clutched fingers.

  Joe examined the new device, ran his fingers over the outside, took his own, and pressed at the front for a few moments then smiled in satisfaction.

  “What did I do?” Mike asked.

  Joe spoke as his fingers alternated running back and forth over the two devices. “He couldn’t break through your defenses, probably for several reasons. One, you are human, and your physiology caused him several seconds of problems. Two, he underestimated you, considering you an inferior species. Three, that little implant behind your ear automatically activated your defenses. He was trying to compensate. Whatever you just did with your communicator worked. It also might make a difference that I had to use Earth materials in reconstructing your communicator, or maybe that implant Vov created was stronger than I expected, or as I modified them I added materials that made it more powerful, or I screwed it up. Vov was experimenting on humans and got it to work. We only used it for protection for you and never harmed anybody. Maybe it was a combination of some or all of the above. Personally, I think it was the implant.”

  “Is he going to wake up?”

  “Eventually. According to my readings, he’s deeply unconscious. Your energy thrust broke his mental hold on me. If it hadn’t, I might have gotten hurt in the backwash. How’d you know how to do that?”

  “I used it to kill Jack’s dad.”

  Joe paused in his tapping on the alien’s communicator and gaped at Mike. “Hold that thought. I must finish this. I’ve got to do what I can.”

  Mike watched in silence as Joe worked. After several minutes, Mike’s aura faded to just encompass Joe and himself. He finally had time to look around the warehouse. The interior was nearly fifty-by-fifty feet. Metal pillars reached the ceiling at regular intervals. It looked as if everything had been smashed, turned over, or thrown about. What was left of the probe sat on the table next to Joe. It had been split in half, one side of which had been squashed nearly flat. The remnants of the interior looked like someone had turned a tool box into a dog’s breakfast.

  “This looks like a hurricane hit it,” Mike said.

  “We fought. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “What are you doing?” Mike asked.

  “In the simplest terms, tying him up.”

  “This is no time to play superior alien to the poor dumb human who can’t understand.”

  “I’m trying to interrupt enough of the neural paths and synapses in his brain without killing him. I think it’s working. Even unconscious, his brain is fighting. His implants are unbelievably powerful and complex. Without his communicator, I couldn’t possibly succeed. It would help if I’d been trained on this kind. Obviously, I was not given implants this advanced or even knowledge of their existence. I hate being reminded of what a low-level cop I was.” He finished tapping. “That should do it for now. He won’t wake up until I want him to. What happened with Jack’s dad?”

  Mike told him. He finished, “I’ve never killed somebody. I feel strange. I haven’t even been in a fight since junior high school.”

  “You helped me four years ago.”

  “That was different. You handled all the violence. I helped, but I didn’t hurt anybody.”

  Joe asked, “Is Jack okay?”

  “As far as I could tell. He saw it happen. He must be torn, lots of anger with his dead dad, but still it’s his father who died.”

  Joe said, “Jack’s dad was one of the most vile people I’ve ever heard of on any planet. On my world his head would have been filled with implants to change or stop his behavior. If they couldn’t control him, ultimately they’d have removed all the implants and then started removing bits and chunks of his brain until the behavior stopped or he was dead.”

  “I took complete power over someone’s life. I don’t like it. It wasn’t really a choice. It was inadvertent. While I didn’t mean to, way inside it feels good. A threat to someone I love is gone forever, but deeper inside it feels awful. I killed somebody. I didn’t have time to think or plan or try to reason with him or cajole him out of using the gun. He had the damn thing pointed at Jack.”

  “You did what any father would do to protect his son.”

  Joe’s comment gave him a warm glow all over. Mike had always hoped he would be a good father. He said, “What I did was more instinct. I know I had no other options. I feel awful and noble and weird and scared.”

  Joe walked over and hugged Mike. They held each other. Mike let the warmth, comfort, and closeness wash over him.

  “I sent Jack to Meganvilia’s before the cops showed up. After I dealt with them, I came looking for you. I got worried.” He leaned his head back and nodded toward Frab. “Then there’s him. What happened?”

  “I would have called. We fought for over an hour. I’ve got powers, but he is good.” He took a step away from Mike and swung his arm around to encompass the destruction in the shop. “Most everythin
g is destroyed. It wasn’t pretty.”

  Mike drew in a sharp breath. “Am I supposed to panic or what? I thought the probe was our only problem. I thought we’d have a warning of someone showing up.”

  “I thought so too. We should have. I think the probe was a diversion, and he snuck through while we were chasing it.”

  “I thought neither of those was supposed to happen.”

  “They’re not. Frab must have managed to combine doing both simultaneously. Quite a trick.”

  Mike shuddered. “I’m frightened.”

  “Me too.”

  Mike thought that was perhaps the most frightening thing Joe could have said.

  Joe continued, “While we chased after the probe, or before, or after he replaced one of my signal buoys with a fake that I did not detect. I still can’t figure out how he did that. But he’s here, and we’re in trouble, huge, great, big, a massive pile, a galactic-style shit load of trouble.” Abruptly Joe sat down on a three-foot-high stool.

  “You okay?”

  “It was a hell of a fight.”

  Mike pointed at Frab. “Who is this guy?”

  “I don’t think he’s from the government. The probe, as far as I’ve been able to tell was from the government.”

  Mike pulled up a stool and sat down next to him. “What does that mean?”

  “Most likely more than one group is looking for us.”

  “Other groups have as much money and the same wherewithal as your central government?”

  Frab opened his eyes. “It won’t work,” he said.

  “What won’t work?” Mike asked.

  “His controls on me,” Frab answered.

  “If it won’t work, why are you still under my control?” Joe asked.

  “Not for long.”

  Again the blue energy field filled the warehouse.

  “Now what?” Mike asked.

  “That’s you,” Joe said. “Protecting both of us. He shouldn’t have woken up, not with the controls I placed on him.” He examined the front of his communicator then got a startled look on his face. He glanced at Frab. “You didn’t come alone. There’s two of you.”

  “How do you know there’s two?” Mike asked.

  “This one is still under control and can’t harm us for now. That vast increase in your energy field that is surrounding us both means you and/or we are under attack, which means there’s more than one of them.”

  “But I’m not doing anything,” Mike said.

  “You don’t need to. That little deal behind your left ear is all that is necessary. The other alien can’t get in because of the power you have, but Frab’s buddy has enough power to help unbind the chains I placed in his brain.”

  “I don’t want technical explanation,” Mike said. “I just want to be safe.”

  “You want simple, basic terms?” Joe continued without waiting for Mike to answer. “Our pile of shit just grew exponentially.”

  “Just what I’ve always dreamed of,” Mike said, “an infinite supply of shit.”

  Joe said, “Well, not infinite but more than anybody else in your solar system has.”

  “That’s a comfort, although I didn’t know it was a competition. Should I be wildly gesticulating in a mad, blind panic?”

  “We’ve got a little time. No one is going to be doing anything to us until they can figure out a way to beat your implant.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I wish you gave more definitive answers.”

  Joe smiled at him. “I wish I could too.”

  “Why didn’t my implant protect us from the probe?”

  “I guessed right in the snow outside the arena in Champaign-Urbana. The thing only recognized me.” He pointed toward the door. “But there’s at least one of these guys outside and one in here, and,” he drew a deep breath, “there could be more.”

  “Aliens to right of them, aliens to left of them, aliens in front of them, volleyed and thundered.”

  “What’s that?” Joe asked.

  “A feeble attempt at humor at a desperate moment, a slight rearrangement of a famous old Earthling poem or…”

  Joe interrupted. “We better get out of here.”

  “And go where?” Mike asked.

  Frab laughed. “Good question. Where on this planet do you think you can get away from us, or in the universe for that matter?”

  Joe didn’t move.

  Mike asked Frab, “How did you find this place?”

  “We followed the probe.”

  Mike said to Joe, “I thought you shut it down.”

  Frab laughed. “Not the all-powerful alien you thought he was?”

  Mike asked, “What took you guys so long to find us or to get here?”

  “Financing, infighting, warring factions? I’m not into politics and don’t care. I’m here to do a job.”

  Mike asked, “What do you guys care if Joe’s here? Why can’t you just leave us alone? What good does it do to take us away?”

  “The people I represent don’t like random explanations that don’t make sense.” Frab remained prone while he turned his head toward them and talked. “We received data about goings on down here. Some were obviously false. Very cleverly done but fake. It involved Vov. We care very much about him, or really, about the knowledge he had. We suspected someone was experimenting illegally. Inhabitants of our star systems can’t rush off at random and start tinkering with the cosmos. There are rules. I’ve confirmed it here. This is an impossible situation.”

  Joe said, “Vov is dead. He killed people here. One truly crazed scientist was here, and you didn’t care.”

  “We suspect that may be true. On the other hand, tampering with technology had become evident to us, and there were other star systems that were concerned.”

  Mike asked, “Other star systems? I thought you were one government.”

  Frab explained. “There’s the central government. There are factions that encompass several star systems. Then there are factions within some factions. We’ve been closer than you thought and more interested than you thought.”

  “Obviously,” Mike said. He turned to Joe. “Factions within factions?”

  Joe said, “There is a central government, but it is loose-knit. As near as I can figure, our government is sort of like your Articles of Confederation in the early years after your Revolution. There are about fifteen star systems which include from five to fifteen solar systems each. Any of them could afford some kind of chase. That doesn’t count the bunches of smaller systems that don’t have the technology or ability to mount an operation like this but who could join in alliances to finance them.”

  Frab waved a hand at Joe. “And against all training and implants and instinct, you could have been teaming up with Vov. He could have corrupted a cop, or killed you and gotten your ship, or the reports of Vov’s death were lies, sent by Vov. It took a long time to sort out the information and to get new data.”

  “That took years?” Mike asked.

  “It’s not like just picking up the phone. We had to know what was going on. We had to know what Vov had created or destroyed and what plans he had left behind. Why don’t you just give up? You know you can’t kill me. Even if you somehow managed it, others would come. You can’t fight an entire universe.”

  “Could you kill him or them?” Mike asked Joe.

  Joe shook his head. “I believe I have the will to do so. I’m no longer sure I physically could if I wanted to. You might be able to. If all else fails, we could run in my ship.”

  “Ours are faster,” Frab said.

  “I can at least cripple yours and get a head start. I know there isn’t a fleet up there. No one could hide that much firepower.” Joe turned to Mike. “Let’s go. We don’t have time to pack.”

  Frab said, “You’ll never find our ship.”

  “I can try.” They hustled toward the door.

  “How long is the energy field going to keep this
guy from chasing us?” Mike asked.

  Joe increased it, and once again Frab fell unconscious.

  Mike asked, “Can you read his memories?”

  “No, he’s blocked to me as is his buddy outside. For now, that guy can’t get in. I’ve got to destroy this place and everything in it. We’ve got to move Frab outside, fight off the other guy, and then run like hell.”

  They set up the lab for destruction using methods from Joe’s planet that Mike didn’t begin to understand. Fifteen minutes later, after tossing a few of the smaller bits of technology hardware into Joe’s gym bag, the destruction was set. They carried the unconscious Frab to the door.