"Antareans Shed Tears Too"

"Ghorbidfael"

Chapter 6

VI

Three men stepped out of the portal and into the nighttime darkness of a back street on Ghorbidfael, home planet of the Ghors. Max and Michael had used their powers to increase the height of each of them to about nine feet and to give them something that looked like the clothes the Ghors had been wearing the only time they had seen them before.

"Max! …Hey, Max!"

"Yeah? What is it, Michael?"

"Maybe you ought to change our smell, too. The Ghors have an animal-like sense of smell. They might recognize us."

"I won't be able to stand being around you if you smell like a Ghor, Michael!"

Shaqor snickered.

"Yeah, well, you better do something with our smell," Michael insisted.

"Alright, alright…" Max passed his hand over each of them.

Michael lifted his hand and sniffed his underarm. "Holy…! Yeah, I think that'll do it!"

'Shag' suppressed a laugh as he lifted his shirt and smelled it. "I may not look like I'm ten thousand years old," Shag said with a grin, "but now I damn well smell like it!"

Max grinned. "Glad you guys approve. Now let's get going. Liz is never gonna sleep with me again!"

The three new "Ghors" walked down the street, sticking to the shadows. A few blocks down the road and around a corner, they came to a local drinking establishment. Shaqor motioned them in. Fortunately, it was dark inside, the way the Ghors liked it. Many of them carried out business in this type of place, and they liked to keep their identities private. The three friends sat in a corner and hid their faces. The secretiveness actually worked in their favor; they were acting exactly like most of the Ghors in the room.

"Ja-Grrr ah sli toh!"

"Huh?"

Max glanced up. Fortunately, his face was in the dark.

"Ja-grrr ah sli toh!" the Ghor intoned more insistently.

"Kor lis na glon jat," Shag said without raising his head. "Fut nar tov grrr… Jya!"

The Ghor walked away.

"What was that all about?" Max whispered to Shag. "You guys get in a growling match?"

"He just said, 'Order or get out!'" Shag snickered. "I told him to bring us the cheapest thing."

"What… you hurtin' for money, Shag? I didn't know," Max said with some friendly sarcasm in his voice.

"We don't know what they drink, so I'm afraid that's the best I could do," Shag explained.

"You did fine!" Max grinned.

Two and a half hours later, the three left the "bar" and walked down the street into the shadows.

"Portal," Shag said quietly. The portal appeared and the three stepped through it and back into the palace conference room.

"Alright, Shag," said Max, "I know you were listening to the conversations around us back there, and you know I didn't understand a word -or should I say, a 'growl'- of it! So spill it! What'd you hear? Anything useful?"

"Maybe," Shag said. "I know that Hosk is back and has been for at least five years."

"That means he had to have used the Krolians' ion drive in his ship," Michael said. "That pretty much confirms that he was there."

"I'd say so," Shag agreed. "I also learned that the supreme Ghor commander, Garg Jerkov…"

Max and Michael both broke out laughing.

"What?" Shag asked. "Did I say something funny?"

"I really don't see what's so funny."

"Go ahead, Shag… Finish," Max said.

"The Ghor Commander, Garg Jerkov, is going to visit their main slave facility tomorrow."

Max and Michael became sober again.

"Where is it?"

"They didn't say," Shag said. "They just said that Hosk runs the facility."

"Figures," Michael groaned. "He would!"

At that moment, Liz and Maria walked into the conference room with MayaSabriena. Liz let out an involuntary yelp, and Maria immediately assumed a defensive posture. Maya laughed,

"Don't you girls recognize your husbands?"

Liz looked carefully at Max then sniffed,

"Oh, good Lord! Max, what have you done!"

Maria looked at Michael as though he had fallen into a sewer and just climbed out… which, to tell the truth, might actually have smelled better.

Max passed his hand over the three of them and removed the smell. Then he changed their clothes back. Michael reduced their size back down to around six feet instead of nine.

"I am soooo not going to be able to forget that," Maria lamented! She sniffed Michael's breath… "What did you have in your mouth?"

"Oh…" Michael snickered, "just some cheap Ghor beer or something."

"I thought you guys couldn't drink alcohol."

"I told you it was cheap!" Michael laughed. Max began to laugh, too. "Probably Ghor tap water!"

"Mmmm… no, I think it had a little something in it," Maria said. Liz nodded. "…the way you guys are acting. Not as bad as that time on Earth… The Ghors probably watered it down."

Maya sniffed the air and sprayed a couple of puffs of air freshener into the room from a small bottle.

"You get used to it," she said. "When your guys have traveled the universe as much as my Shag has, you'll recognize them no matter how they look…"

"…Or smell, for that matter," she added with a giggle.

"What's our next plan?" Michael asked.

Max looked at Shag.

"Well," Shag said, "I think it's time to go see Hosk again… as ourselves this time."

                                      ----------

On Gadyslar, the screeching howls of the yarols could be heard in the night, as the Ghors searched for the two escaped Antareans. But for the moment, they were safe, twenty nauts away, in a small wood. The coming morning would be the first time in many years that they hadn't felt the sting of the Ghors' prod waking them up before the sun had even risen to begin their labors… and to wait… to wait to be sold to some perverse being or creature from another galaxy somewhere far, far away… a being or creature that would buy them perhaps as a pet… but more likely as a slave… or an exotic food.

-------------------------End of Chapter 6