i e4a5a8edf2d8eda0 (4 page)

word.”

If only that were so… If slans were as powerful as people imagined them to be, neither he

nor Kathleen would ever have been captured. Jommy was still reeling from the whole swirl of

events.

The young girl had been raised in Kier Gray’s palace, a slan specimen to be poked and

prodded and analyzed so that the secret police could find ways to fight against a slan

insurgency. Though she’d been scheduled for execution when she turned the age of eleven, the

President had managed to keep her alive under various pretexts.

No one had guessed that Kathleen was actually Gray’s own daughter. After discovering

records of a hidden slan settlement, Kathleen had escaped from the palace, running for her life.

Though the base was abandoned and empty, Kathleen had taken refuge there while Petty and

his secret police launched a large manhunt.

Jommy had found her there in the protected redoubt. With the telepathic bonding of true

slans, both he and Kathleen had instantly known each other, loved each other. That short time

together in the underground hideaway had been the most perfect time of Jommy’s life.

Everything had seemed possible.

But Petty’s slan hunters had attacked the hidden base, and Kathleen was shot in the head.

Jommy barely escaped with his own life. Hardened by grief, sure she was dead, he had gone on

a determined quest to find other slans, to understand the strange and ruthless “tendrilless”

ones who hated both slans and humans, as well as to bring down the hated Petty. When he

finally broke into Kier Gray’s palace to warn of the imminent tendrilless attack, Jommy was

astonished to find that Kathleen had been healed by ultra-advanced slan medical equipment.

Alive again!

She and Jommy had spent a tense but glorious day with Gray and his advisors, working out

ways to face the coming crisis. When Jommy had first slipped into the palace, he had parked

his high-tech armored vehicle in the forest on the other side of the river near the palace, and he

had also left his father’s disintegrator weapon there.

Once he knew the President accepted his help, Jommy and Kathleen had returned together

to his car to retrieve the disintegrator, which would be invaluable during the fight against the

tendrilless. He had hardly believed that she was back, that she was with him again. Even with

the brooding danger all around them, they had been swept up in each other’s presence.

Jommy and Kathleen barely had a moment to experience the joy of their reunion before

everything crashed around them…

All the while, John Petty had been eavesdropping on Gray, setting up a trap. When Jommy

and Kathleen returned, his secret police had charged in, arresting all of them, dragging them

away. Petty had confiscated the disintegrator, killed the other slan advisors, and then took over

the government. No one would listen to them about the real imminent threat…

As she struggled against the guards trying to push her into the cell, Jommy could tell the

thugs were on the verge of violence. “Don’t fight them, Kathleen. I don’t want you to get hurt

again.” His voice was quiet and gentle, but it carried clearly in the enclosed corridors of the

prison level; he wanted the guards to hear as well. “These men don’t matter. We have greater

enemies.”

After she let them shove her inside, her own cell door rolled shut with a crash. She went to

the bars, but their cells were on the same side of the hall, and he couldn’t see her. “We will get

out of here,” Kathleen said. It was a promise.

“That’s up to Mr. Petty and the law, Miss,” a guard said. “And right now neither one

appears to be on your side.”

Jommy longed to stretch his arm through the bars to touch her fingers, but the separation

was too great. That was a crueler punishment than the imprisonment itself.

The guard captain stood in front of the bars, glaring in at Jommy. “Don’t try anything.

We’ll have two men stationed here on this level, and these cells were designed to hold the worst

political criminals.”

Jommy sat down on his cot, looking defeated. The secret police probably had hidden

cameras somewhere. “Then obviously, it’s useless for us to try to escape.”

“Glad you figured that out, Cross.” The guard walked briskly away, eager to break eye

contact.

Jommy had not given up, though. He wished he knew where his disintegrator weapon had

been taken. That invention had saved Jommy’s life more than once; no doubt the secret police

would disassemble it, analyze it, try to figure out how the weapon worked … but even Jommy

had never been able to decipher his father’s intricate invention.

Jommy suspected President Gray was in dire straits of his own right now, facing John Petty.

But the arrest of the President wasn’t the worst crisis—the attack from the tendrilless slans was

imminent. Jommy had risked everything to come to Gray’s palace in the first place, to deliver a

warning. While humans wasted time and energy hunting down true slans, fearing the wrong

enemy, the tendrilless ones moved freely in society, preparing for a complete and violent

takeover. The attack would occur very soon. Pleased with his little victory, Petty would not be

watching for another danger coming from the skies. Earth would be completely unprepared.

Therefore, he and Kathleen would have to do something about it.

He closed his eyes and felt his golden tendrils move at the back of his head, rising into the

air. He concentrated, broadcasting his thoughts like radio signals.
Kathleen, can you hear me
?

He waited, felt a tingle, then a familiar presence.

Yes, Jommy. I’m here. I’m close. But I can’t see you or touch you
.

Jommy felt the urgency build within him.
We’ve got to get out of here. We have to find

President Gray, and we have to alert the Earth defenses about the tendrilless attack
.

Kathleen’s mind was also in turmoil.
We can’t do anything trapped in these cells
.

Kathleen’s presence in his mind strengthened him. He looked around his cell, saw nothing

he could use as a weapon. He had only a cot, a sink, and a hygiene station; no mirror, no table,

nothing else. Though his body was stronger than an average human’s, Jommy could not break

his way out. The cell was impregnable. Therefore, the weakest point was the human factor.

Jommy would have to “encourage” the two guards to open the door.

He sent a thought message, summarizing what he wanted to do.
Kathleen, follow my lead

and transmit the same image. It’s got to be convincing
.

Together, separated by thick block walls, Jommy and Kathleen sent the same thunderous

idea. It struck the two already frightened and suspicious guards. It took Jommy a moment to

find their muddled centers of thought. The brains of the two guards were so closed off by walls

of paranoia that he could barely get inside. But finally he played upon that irrational fear,

sending an image of Jommy Cross using slan strength to tear a hole in the cell wall, ready to

escape.

The guards came running. “Open the door! We have to stop him.”

“I told you slans were dangerous!”

The lock clicked. The two men pulled the rattling bars aside, expecting to see a gaping hole

and the prisoner escaping. Before the deceptive image could fade, Jommy launched himself

forward like a boulder from a medieval catapult. He was not a brutal fighter, but he did have

great physical strength and the element of surprise. He knocked the guards aside. As they

squawked and tried to reconcile what they saw with what they’d been
sure
was happening,

Jommy punched them both.

He grabbed one man’s arm and yanked him inside the cell. He punched the other guard in

the ear and then swung him into a heap atop his partner inside the small cell. Shouting, the

two guards tried to disentangle themselves, but Jommy pulled the rattling cell door shut on

them, and the lock dutifully clicked home.

He sprinted partway down the corridor. From behind the bars, the guards had pulled out

their large-caliber pistols and fired at him, but they could not aim well because of the extreme

angle. Out of view, Jommy pressed himself against the bars of Kathleen’s cell, and the bullets

simply struck the walls, whining and ricocheting. She rushed forward, and he put his hands

through the bars to clasp hers.

“I told you I’d get us out of here.” Using the outside controls, he worked the simple cell

lock, and in moments, Kathleen was free beside him. “Come on. We’ve got to figure out a way

through these levels.”

The two began to run, still hugging the walls, out of range of the guards. The locked-up

men continued to shout after them, firing their guns several more times, but the bullets hit

nothing.

At the end of the hall Jommy and Kathleen found a door that led to a steep set of concrete

stairs. Before they could open it, loud alarm klaxons rang out inside the palace, sounding a

Level One emergency.

“How could they have discovered we’ve escaped?” Kathleen said, waiting for another surge

of guards to come charging after them. “It’s only been a few minutes.”

Jommy froze. “The emergency’s not because of us. Not us at all.” Next, the alarms were

accompanied by the bone-grating sound of an air-raid siren. “It’s the tendrilless slans. Their

attack has begun.”

«
^
»

Jem Lorry had lived among humans for most of his life, pretending to be one of them. His

mind shields were perfect. Strategically placed in the Earth government, working his way up

by way of his own intelligence (and the occasional necessary assassination), he became the

closest, most influential advisor to Kier Gray. In the sure progress of the tendrilless plans, he

should soon have been the President himself.

Now, from Mars, Jem was engineering the downfall of Earth.

Here on the red planet, the tendrilless had created more than just a strategic base and a

hideout. The third breed of humanity had forged an entire civilization with outposts,

settlements, and industrial complexes ringing the central canyon city of Cimmerium. From

where Jem stood inside the large vaulted chamber, the distant sun streamed through the glass

ceiling that covered the whole, expansive canyon. A large armored city crowded the habitable

flatlands on the edge of the deep gorge, but the highest-ranked and richest tendrilless had built

a warren of structures into the stark cliff wall, beneath the transparent canopy.

His people had superior mental capacity to humans, though greatly limited telepathic

abilities compared with true slans. No one—not Jem Lorry, not the Tendrilless Authority,

probably not even the slans themselves—knew where or how the tendrilless ones had

originated. The true slans had turned against them, launching what amounted to a genocide to

eradicate their genetic stepbrothers. Jem didn’t know why true slans hated them so much, but

the feeling was certainly mutual. He didn’t need explanations.

Pleased that the full-fledged attack on Earth was finally about to commence, Jem stood

before the seven members of the Tendrilless Authority, expecting to receive well-deserved

applause. This entire attack had been his brainchild. He had sacrificed much to reach this

point, and he intended to get what he had earned. The council members peered down at him

with stony faces.

The Authority chamber was like an ancient Roman arena. When all the tendrilless citizens

gathered for primary meetings, thousands would sit on ringed seats staring down at the main

podium, listening to petitions and plans, watching the Authority issue its judgment.

Today, though, Jem was by himself in the vast room, staring up at the seven men. He

would have preferred a cheering audience; after his guaranteed victory, the tendrilless would

certainly applaud his dreams and ambitions. They had waited, lurked, and planned for far too

long. Only a few, like the stodgy Authority members, bled away that enthusiasm with

“caution” and “patience”—thinly disguised words for “cowardice.”

“The initial attack has commenced,” Jem announced. “Our heavily armed vanguard ships

have arrived at Earth in the past hour. At this very moment, our warriors should be