Chapter 9: A new Team
About three weeks after Trunks and Vegeta had left the earth, Son Gohan, Videl and Urian came back. Of course Gohan had fully recovered from the poison of the scorpions. The doctors on Pital had given him an antidote and his strong body did not need a lot of healing. Also Urian was well again, his ribs were mended with a bone-glue and there were almost no scars visible, where the pincers scratched him. The boy had tried to protest, but his parents had answered in unison, that it was better for him to stay on earth. They did not make an extra detour, they had to come back to get the space-ship fixed again; because the one landing foot was still missing and during the flight some asteroids and solar storms had hit them. From radio transmissions they already knew that Vegeta and Trunks had left for Namek, and that a young Saiyan woman was on earth now.
Gohan was ready to go again in the moment that they had touched ground. As soon as Bulma was ready with the repairs, he planned to take off again, but Videl also decided to stay behind. She was worried for the fate of her daughter, but during the fight she had not been a real help for her husband – on the contrary. When they got in real trouble, he had tried to protect her and got hurt himself. So she wanted to stay with her son on earth.
When they finally got off the ship, Bulma was already waiting for them. She had a grim face, and looked at the ship with a skeptical gaze: »Gohan, I must tell you that you surely won´t leave earlier than in a week or so… The ship is much more damaged than you told me on the radio. I need to check it all over; and Bulla can´t really help me. She´s the current president of the Capsule Corporation, and there is so much to do that she can hardly breathe. But please come in, the others and I have prepared a welcome dinner…«
But she was interrupted by Chichi, who ran down the corridor like a whirlwind to hug her son: »Gohan! Gohan!« she cried. »You are back!« but then her voice got hard: »I heard what happened to Urian, how could you ever let that happen?« She changed her mind again: »Oh, well, never mind, I am so happy to have you back. Hello Videl… oh, my little Urian, you still look sick, this trip must have been very exhausting. You need to rest… come!«
Also Satan, Videls father, waited for them at the end of the corridor. He had stopped running like Chichi, because he wanted to look cool. But then he also burst into tears and could hardly stop sobbing. Videl hugged him and said: »I am also glad that I see you, dad.«
When they reached the dining room, they were surprised to find Bulla, the twins, Valese, Merve and little Goku there; and also Kori, the young Saiyan woman that the space-ship-crew did not know. But exactly Kori gave them all something to think. When she looked at the new arrivals, she seemed not to know Urian and Gohan; but she cast a longer and more inquiring look at Videl.
»What is it?« Pans mother wanted to know. »You are Kori, right? I am Videl, Pan´s mother. Have we ever met before? I don´t think so, but I can see in your face that I seem to remember you of somebody…«
Kori shook her head: »Oh, I am sorry. I did not want to stare at you. This must be a mistake, I think, some kind of déjà-vu. I only just thought, that I´ve seen your face on a very old; ripped and torn piece of photographs I have had as a child. It was made of a sort of paper and I lost it someday, long ago. But that is surely wrong… It must be a bad coincidence.«
»I do not mind.« Videl answered, and smiled. Then she turned to the others: »Now please tell me, what Trunks did… Bulma, you were so angry at the radio when you told us what happened, that we hardly understood a word. He´s ok, is he?«
Gohan added: »It must have been awful. We had a short talk with Dende, and he still is furious. I think it would be better for Trunks not to set foot in god´s palace for a while.«
Bulma, Bulla and Chichi started to tell everything that had happened, inclusive the horrifying last contact, that they had with Pan and her kidnapper. Sometimes little Vegeta and Kaya also had to say something, and they also told about the fight in the kindergarten. And that seemed to worry the grown-ups more than the kids; because the boy, Tommy, who had attacked Kaya, was known as a nice, lovely kid that was a good friend of the twins. They were invited at his birthday party and Tommy seemed to like Kaya. Why should that small boy attack Bullas daughter so suddenly and without warning? That fact left an uneasy feeling in them all. Maybe it had not been the boy´s choice to be so violent…
»But there is something else, that is strange.« Kori added in that moment. »I almost forgot about it, because it was not very important to me… but now that I had that odd feeling when I first met you, Videl, I remember another weird thing. My uncle gave me a bunch of keys when I left my home planet. He said, they must belong to a house on earth, in the Western Capital. There was an address tag on those keys, so I found the house easily. I opened the door, and entered, but there was no one. The house seemed to be left alone for days, or even weeks. At first I thought that my uncle somehow rented or bought that house for me; in case that I would have needed a longer time to find the other Saiyans. Therefore I decided to spend the first night there, as if it was some kind of hotel. But the strangest of all was, that I found pictures of all of you in this house. Of course I could not tell from the photos that you actually were the Saiyans that I was looking for, so I left them where they were… but now, talking about all this strange happenings, that might be important too.«
Bulma explained: »We offered her a room to stay when we first met her. The house is big enough, so…« She turned to Kori. »You never told me about this other house before.«
»No, because when I met you, the house did not interest me anymore. Maybe my uncle left me the photos of the Saiyans – I mean, of you – there on purpose, to make it easier for me to find you. And maybe I had all the déjà-vu – like memory when I met Videl, because I saw her photo in that house. At least she belongs to your family doesn´t she?«
Right in that moment, the shrill emergency-alarm of the radio in the control station interrupted the dinner. They all were at their feet in an instant, but Bulla was the fastest one to be in the control station. All space-ship-crews had agreed that they would only send that kind of signal, when something very bad had happened… a ship breakdown, a bad hurt, or… something worse.
»Who is calling in? Trunks and Vegeta, or Goten and Shane?« Videl asked.
Bulla answered: »Goten and Shane…« she tried to reach them twice via the audio-video-signal they used to communicate with, but to her shock the sending station could not make contact, as if they were phoning into a dead end. The ship seemed to be lost.
»But why!« Valese asked. She was afraid that something very bad had happened to Goten, and her panicked voice made her children feel very uneasy; even the little baby Goku in her arms started to cry.
Bulma said to her daughter: »Let me try…« they changed places.
In the meantime Chichi turned to Valese: »Give me little Goku, and let Merve also come with me. Urian, and you, twins, come too, please. We are no help here, but we need to clean up the dinner room. This is not nice, I know; but if there is real trouble, we might have to have everything ready to… yes, even to leave the house or earth. And I definitely do not want that the uneaten food rots down at the table. I am sure we will know what happened, as soon as they made contact.«
The children growled, because they had to go; but they all had promised to be helpful when they were needed. So they left the control room. Chichi was the last and whispered to Gohan: »Please tell me immediately if something is wrong with Goten, will you?«
»Yes, mom.« Gohan answered. »But we still hope that we can get a signal through. I won´t believe that the ship is gone… or that they can´t answer because they are…« He watched his mother leave the room, and close the door.
That second, Bulma turned to him: »Gohan, please help me with the signal transmitter. We need to recalibrate it. There are so many possibilities why we cannot reach them. We have to check one after another. Maybe they have simply lost their receiving-antenna, maybe one of our own satellites is out of order, maybe the computer of the space-ship – or ours – has some fault, we need to check all the cables and interfaces…«
Kori said, with an asking undertone: »Maybe they are moving so fast that the sending station cannot find their exact position?«
Bulma stopped dead: »Repeat that, Kori.«
»Well, it was only an idea. Let´s say, the radio-station sends the signal out to a point in the universe where it has detected the answering signal of the ship, but when the outgoing signal from us reaches that point, the ship has already moved so far away from that point, that it cannot pick up the signal. And they send a new position-signal back, but it's the same again. My uncle and I had that problem once, when we started our travelling experiments… the receiver of the signals was always at another place than expected, because it was too fast.«
Gohan nodded: »Yes, I understand. It´s like trying to shoot a Ki-Ball at a moving target. You have to respect the velocity of the thing that you aim at… Bulla, Bulma, let´s try that. Let us find out where their last position signals came from, and let us try to predict the course. We´ll fire our contact-signal directly into their course, so that they "collide" somehow, maybe then the sending-station will be able to fix the connection with the ship.«
They tried about ten times to send the signal at a point somewhere at the expected flight route that Goten and Shane would possibly take, and then, finally, they got a positive answer. It was no video-signal, only a small, very bad audio signal, but it was at least some kind of contact.
It was Goten speaking; Valese was relieved to hear his voice; but still Goten did not sound very calm: »Somethin… happen!« he had to yell into the microphone, because the hiss and the crackle in the signal were so loud that it covered his voice. »We… on Planet Hu… everybody sick there, a virus… I am ok but Shane thinks that… he got it… so he locked himself up in the airlock and wears his space-suit so that I don't get sick. I think he only got a cold but we… not close enough to Pital, we coming home at highest speed. Tell… the hospital… Bulma? You still there…« there was a lot of cracking and his, and a long beep, that indicated the loss of the signal, but it came back again: »Bulma, Bulla, prepare… hospital transport. Shane wants isolation chamber so he might not be carrying the virus to earth. We´re coming home. Ships engines are at the outer limit, sorry Bulma…«
Bulla answered: »It is ok, Goten, we got that. Please come home safely, and do not worry about the ship. Keep an eye on Shane, will you, he must try to eat and drink enough, even if he has put himself under quarantine.«
»Understood.« Goten answered. »Will do… Have to speed up now.«
Then they lost the signal again.
:-:
Finally they had arrived on New Namek. The ship was fast, but not fast enough; and it offered not many rooms that were strong enough to withstand Vegeta´s training. He still used at least one half of the day to do some exercise, and on this trip he had forced Trunks to do the same. The younger man had not trained for a longer time now and needed a while to restart his fighting abilities. He was still far from being as good as when he was younger, but it was better than three weeks before.
Son Goku could hardly wait to see the ship´s landing. He saw the space-ship touch ground in a small, stony desert, where the fire from the engines could not damage the planet too much. Using Instant Transmission it was not difficult to be there in the same second.
As soon as the outer door of the ship had opened, Vegeta rushed forward to meet with Goku, but instead of saying a quite simple "Hello" after all that time, they at once started to argue again. Maybe that was the kind of conversation they needed to put into words that they in fact had been missing each other somehow.
Vegeta asked: »As I see, Kakarott, you are dead – or somewhat close to it. You can´t deny that, with that halo over your head! Wouldn't it have been possible for you to fly in our direction? That would have saved time… we could have met in the orbit of Namek or somewhere close by. Or you could have used Instant Transmission to wait in Outer Space.«
Goku answered: »Well, I do not know. I never tried flying though the vacuum, not alive, nor dead, nor… something else. Maybe it would have made some effect to me. What if I would have suffocated? There´s no air out there. And it is very cold…«
»But you are dead, man! You do not need to breathe!« Vegeta sighed.
Goku replied: »I think you are right, wise old man… I must say, that grey in your hair fits you well. I´ve heard that you are grandpa now, like me?« he laughed.
»You call me grandpa, Kakarott? Let us fight and I will show you how good I am! I have never stopped training… I still manage the Super-Saiyan-Four, even without Bulmas special waves now, and you?«
»Me too… and it would be a pleasure for me to have a little fight with you. The last ten years have been very quiet.«
Immediately after that they flew to an even emptier space, the great southern desert of New Namek, to have their little fight.
Trunks did not follow them. He had enough to do to get all the technical controls ready that were needed after landing and before take-off. He listed all the food- fuel- and water-supplies that they would need from Namek ere they could start again, and prepared a few empty capsules that he wanted to take with him to the shopping. When he was ready to go, he pushed up his glasses into the right position and looked out of the space-ship door. His father and his grandfather-in-law were nowhere to be seen, but in the far distant some light flashes lit up the sky. That was definitely no thunderstorm, so they must be still fighting. Sighing, he went to buy all the things that they needed alone.
When he came to the space-ship a few hours later, Vegeta and Goku also had returned, but they were still outside the ship performing some kind of flight-race: »I´m ready with the checks, whenever you are ok with it, we can go!« Trunks yelled to the other two Saiyans.
They stopped their "who is the better flyer" battle a hundred meters away from the space ship and Goku said: »Well, then let´s get started.«
Vegeta smiled: »If you are already so tired that you need a rest, then we will stop our little competition.« He turned back to his normal status and wanted to go to the ship, but Goku held him back. »What is it, Kakarott, have you changed your mind?«
»No.« Goku answered. »But let me talk to Trunks alone for a few minutes. I still have a bone to pick with him, he really scared me when he showed up in that Nowhere-place.«
Vegeta nodded: »I´m ok with that, but please do not hit him too hard, will you?«
Goku smiled: »Wow, you really care for him… no, don´t worry, I only want to ask him some questions, and they don´t hurt. I think five minutes are enough.«
Trunks who had not understood a word of the talk, was suddenly afraid that something very bad would happen. He put the capsules that contained the food- and fuel-supplies away and waited for Goku to enter the ship. »I am wearing glasses!« he cried out, when Goku was close enough to hit him; only in case if his grandfather-in-law was up to that.
Goku stopped dead and looked at Trunks in surprise, but then he burst into heavy laughs, that forced him to kneel down for a while. When Goku looked up again, Trunks had put away his glasses and seemed to be ready to take the blow as a kind of punishment.
»Stop it, Trunks.« Goku shook his head. »I won´t hit you again… why should I, by all means? You know perfectly well that I was very worried when I met you there. I am happy that you are back. But please don´t do anything like that ever again. So…« and now his eyes and the undertone of his voice got a lot sterner than before: »Now tell me how it comes, that you ended up married with my granddaughter.«
Trunks explained: »That is a longer story, not easy to tell within a few minutes. I will tell you everything when we are flying. We´ll have enough time then.«
Goku asked, now smiling, so he could not be too serious: »Did Gohan hit you when you asked him for her hand? I remember when Goten came back from one of his dates with a black eye… the father of the girl punched him one without warning…«
Trunks closed his eyes for a moment and clenched his hands to fists so hard, that his arms started to tremble; then he answered: »No. Gohan only looked back at me and demanded that I should always take good care of her… as you can see, I broke my promise. I am so sorry, Goku.«
»Don´t say that, Trunks.« Goku replied, slightly wondering himself. »Some things one can´t change or foresee. I am sure that she is in good hands, when she is with you, and in the end you did everything one could do for her. You even nearly sacrificed your life.« He sighed. He could almost sense the great love that Trunks felt for Pan. »And this is where I warn you again. Don´t do anything like that once more. Think, before you act like an idiot. You are Bulmas and Vegetas son, by all means! Use your brilliant brain to make better plans, Trunks. Pan is strong and she will be with us again… I am sure of that. What do you think, she would say, if that awful story wouldn´t have had a good end? What if you were dead? Imagine that.«
»I do.« Trunks answered. »Sorry about that.«
»But it was not entirely stupid… at least I am back and can help you.« Goku continued. »But now you must help me. Tell me where the fridge is, and tell me that you have still got some food supplies from earth... the food on Namek is disgusting.«
Trunks started to laugh and pointed one floor upwards.
Vegeta also came back and when he and his son finally arrived in the kitchen, Goku had already eaten half of the food supplies that were available. Vegeta asked: »You are dead and need food… our food! I also hate the Namekian meals, so leave something to me!« he rushed forward to the fridge and started to eat too, as if this was a new kind of competition.
Trunks sighed, and sat down on the pilot´s place in the cockpit. The other two hardly noticed that he launched and were still fighting over the best parts of the food supplies when Namek was only a small bluish dot behind them. This would not be an easy flight.
:-:
Two weeks had passed since the tormentor had punished Tomam with the whip, and some of the streaks still were visible, but finally the old man did not feel pain anymore. In the meantime Adan had been successful in making some contact with the Rebels, but they were still cautious and did not really trust the stranger from outside the planet. They were all younger people and hardly one of them still spoke a foreign language; so they had difficulties to understand Pan. Adan had been there as a translator, but still there was this big gap between the Rebels and the stranger. Pan was not really afraid, but all of the Rebels seemed to know what they had to expect when they were caught or when their plans got wrong.
One evening, Adan brought a block of bee-wax with her from the market: »This is a message from you from the leader of the Rebels in the eastern continent – where we live on. The leader wants to meet you personally. They want to meet you tonight and gave me the coordinates of a meeting point on this block of wax. Read it and try to remember it. Do not write it anywhere else. As soon as you are sure to remember the place, burn the wax.«
Pan nodded. It was not difficult to remember the meeting point; it was at the small lake in the woods where she used to swim for training. Maybe the Rebels had noticed that she went there twice a week. She threw the wax into the fire and was ready to go.
Tomam joined them, smiled and turned without hesitating to Pan´s tummy, although there was still not much to see from her pregnancy: »And you in there keep an eye on your Mama, will you? If you have as much from your dad as I hope, then this must be easy for you.« This was his kind of saying goodbye.
Pan smiled, thanked him and then she left the house. Dusk was almost over, and she did not want to come too late. It was the first possibility to prove the Rebels that she really was reliable and that she used to keep her promises.
She was at the little lake way before the last light disappeared from the sky, but there was no other person. She was all alone, and she knew that it would make no sense to call or search. So she sat down in the shadow of a small rock and waited for someone to show up.
Hours passed, and all night-stars were in the sky. Still no one had approached her, and all around it was almost deadly quiet. This was a situation Pan had tried to avoid over the last weeks. Whenever she was alone there were thoughts coming up about her family. In this moment she would have preferred to be in the house on the planet Senicar, the TV, the spy cameras, even without audio transmission. She only wanted to see that they were alright. Only for one second, only for the part of a second… It was so hard to be alone. To her absolute horror she could not clearly remember how Trunks´ face looked like when he was smiling; or what he said at the day about two years ago, when they met out there in the rain…
A muffled noise forced her to come back to the reality, maybe this was the best in this situation, but she still was longing for nothing more than to go home.
A young Thaioshtian man came out of the lake. He was shivering a little bit and carried a stick of bamboo or something like that with him. He must have been hiding between the lake-plants until now. »I am Rukal.« he said. »I came here to take you to my boss.« He offered Pan a new, black and brown cloak, that made her look like a heap of earth when she stopped moving. They crossed the small wood and at the other end they met a farmer and his big hay-wagon which was drawn by two horse-like creatures. Instead of fur they had a leathery skin, and their mane and tail were short and bushy. Underneath the high heap of hay there was a hole, which was made of an old tent. Rukal and Pan sat down in that absolute dark hole and soon after that the farmer started to move his wagon.
When they were moving, Rukal asked Pan: »So you are the warrior from the other planet?« his language was medium good, maybe he had learnt it from his grandparents some day. »I will stay with you and translate.«
»No, this must be a mistake.« Pan answered. »I am not a warrior, but I may be able to help you. But my grandfather taught me never to start a fight without knowing the enemy. Because of that I´d like to know some more details about the "Tribe" people. Like how they are organized, what weapons they have… and so on.«
Rukal nodded: »Yes, this is good. My boss will tell you what you want to know when we are at our Headquarter. We will need more hours until we are there. We need to go to the main city of our continent. I will leave you alone now and take a faster horse to inform them that I have found you. When I did that I come back, and take you there also by horse. Try to sleep. If you have to go out, knock three times at the floor of the wagon. My friend, the driver, cannot understand your words, but we agreed on that signs.«
Pan answered: »Okay, thank you.«
Rukal gave her a bottle of water and some fruits, then he left. Pan tried to sleep at first, but she had nightmares in which she saw her family members fight against that Tsuyan; and all of them lost. No one could withstand the immense powers of that mutant´s heir; they all died, all of them. And then the Tsuyan only stretched out his hand and half of the earth was ripped away, the other part collapsed more slowly. And the Tsuyan laughed, and somewhat in his face was so familiar to Pan that she knew… that the creator of that creature had succeeded at last… She sat up with a small cry, and wondered why it was so dark. For the first moment she hardly knew where she was, but then she remembered, and sighed. She decided to stay awake, because she was afraid that the dream would return.
She had no watch and all around was dark, so she had lost the sense for time somehow, but once she had to beg the wagon to stop, and when she went outside, she could see that it was already bright daylight and that she was in an unknown area. A big old wood surrounded them. This wood was dark and somewhat creepy; compared with the open meadows and the small patches of woods in the area around Relenni, the village where she had been the last time. There was not much time to stay, she crept into the wagon again and waited; but fortunately Rukal returned not a long time later. He had two of those horse-like creatures with him.
»Sit here. We will go through the shrub-land now.« the young Rebel said, and Pan took her place in the saddle of one of the horses. They immediately left the street and followed a hardly visible track through an area in which only bushes grew. They were thick and thorny, and no one of them higher than three meters. It was enough to shield them from sight, but it was no wood. In the middle of that Macchia they found an old temple. Rukal hid the horses under woven ivy and they entered the temple. A small stair led one floor down.
An older woman was waiting there. Her skin was also slightly rose like all the women´s and her hair started to get grey. »Welcome, Pan from earth. My name is Huryn.« she said with some effort. »I do not much remember your language. Rukal will translate.«
Pan answered: »I know, he told me before.«
Huryn asked, translated by Rukal: »What do you want to know?«
Pan said: »Tell me the most important facts about those "Tribe" people. I need to know my enemy, so that I can fight him properly.«
Huryn agreed: »Well yes. The "Tribe" arrived on this planet about fifty years ago in three space-ships. There are not many of them. About one half of them are civilians, the other half of them warriors. They started to destroy the space-ships of our planet immediately; then they cut down every possibility to talk to other planets. They forbid us cars and machines, and so on, and in every big city they have a soldier-camp. They control every part of the planet. If we start a revolution at one place only, they will immediately punish our people at all the other continents. They also destroyed cities and villages; so that there are only so many villages, that they can control with their army. No one is allowed to marry without permission and there are only so many children allowed in a village, that the number of people stays constant. If there are too many in one village, they take some people to elsewhere, no matter if they have a family in their old home or not. They take us so much food that we can survive, but no one is really powerful enough to raise his hand against the "Tribe" people. We Rebels try to help our people, the Thaioshtians… but we can only try to get some more food supplies for the hungry, sometimes we hide people who have not enough to pay the taxes, or things like that. We are some kind of helpless.«
»But this can´t be.« Pan said. »To live like this is not fair… we need to do something about that, but we need to have a good plan, I do not want to risk that the wrath of those "Tribe" people comes down on the Thaioshtians ten times worse than it is now, as soon as I am gone. We need to show them that they must never do this to your people again.« She was silent for a few minutes. »At first we need to know if those "Tribe" folk have some allies on other planets, that may come and assist them, if we fight them to free you. Then you should try to coordinate the Rebels. They have to attack the soldier-camps all around the planet in the same moment, when some of us attack the main palace and the king of that "Tribe", so that he cannot order them to seek revenge on the civilians. But whatever we do, we will have to fight for your freedom.«
Huryn said: »The plan sounds good. If you want my friends in the main town, Saliki, can help you to get in the king´s palace to spy the leaders of the "Tribe". Maybe you can find out if they are alone in the universe or if they have some allies that would attack us too. And in the meantime I will try to coordinate all the other Rebel-groups that we can strike together. But it will need time, we will need two months to get that all ready.«
Pan smiled: »I am sorry, but I think you need to hurry up a little bit. I don´t think that I´ve got two months left. We need to fight as soon as possible, or we will have to wait until my child is born and I am fit to fight again. But of course I will travel to the capital city of your planet to have a look at the king´s palace.«
Huryn nodded: »Then we will start immediately. This is maybe one of the last chances for us to be free again. I will give you a letter for my Rebel-friend in Saliki, and Rukal will also come with you. If you start tomorrow, you can reach the king´s town in four days. Fortunately Saliki is at the eastern coast of our continent… but the letters to the other Rebels will need a longer time. Give me at least one month, Pan – maybe we need one week more. We are ready to fight, but we have to prepare the real thing.«
»Yes.« the young Saiyan woman answered. »Then let us get started.«
:-:
When Pan reached the town of Saliki, she was surprised. It was a nice place, a lot nicer than she had expected. The city was built in five circles around a center, and every inner circle was a little bit higher than the outer one. It looked like as if the city was built on a big hill, and on the top plateau there was the palace and the most impressive villas of the rich "Tribe" people. Also the second inner circle had big houses and they belonged to the "Tribe" then a city wall separated them from the three other rounds, which were the living-place for the Thaioshtians. Not far away there was the vanilla-colored beach and the lilac-colored sea.
Rukal and two other Rebels, one male, one female; who worked undercover in the king´s house, helped Pan to get in the big palace. She wore a disguise, and no one seemed to take notice of her. The "Tribe"- King felt superior and secure in his palace. He did not believe that any stranger would ever dare it to enter his place. Therefore Pan could easily mix up with all the servants and cleaning-slaves.
The king himself was a well built "Tribe"-man who was arrogant and bigheaded. His face looked like the mangled pairing of a warthog and a dried apricot, and his body was massive. He was the opinion that it was his right to treat the Thaioshtians, who worked in the palace, like slaves. Whenever he wanted it he insulted them, and he thought himself to be much too good to cast any closer look at his servants. His house soldiers acted exactly like the king, and so they were blind for the spies, that had entered the palace. Pan could easily find out that the "Tribe" people had no other friends or allies in the universe. They were like parasites. When the natural resources of a planet were used up, all of their folk went to the ships and left the planet, to take over a new one. The "Tribe"-folk were some sort of outcasts in the universe, and no one really liked them – except them themselves, of course. These were good news, so the Rebels really had a chance to win the fight against the occupying forces.
Pan was almost ready to leave, when she suddenly got aware that there were dungeons in the palace, where the king used to keep his prisoners. Of course she wanted to have a look; maybe she could help the people that he held there. Her Rebel-friends tried to warn her that it was a bad idea to go down there, but Pan had decided that she wanted to see this… maybe she needed that sight to be really convinced that a fight was unavoidable.
But the rebels were right; it was not a good idea to go down to the ugly dungeons. She found many devices for torture and very small, disgusting prison cells. Fortunately all were empty except two; in one she saw the skin covered skeleton of a Thaioshtian, in the other one there was… she stepped back and had to fight that she would not cry out.
It was the mangled, but still living body of the host, that the mutant, Baby – or Furyon – had used; and he was in great, maybe measureless pain. One of his arms was half missing, and it was obvious that he had been tortured. »Hey.« she said to him, after she had found the strength to speak. »Hey, you! Are you the host, or are you still the mutant?«
With great effort the person in the cell looked at her. It was not clear to see if the mutant was still in this body or not, but then he spoke, and he had the voice of the Tsufurian. So he was still there. He whispered: »Please… help me, Pan.«
