Jackie, somewhat cross, sat down on her bed. Wondering what to do next, she moved closer to Phrropox. "What can you tell us about the hitmen who were chasing you?"
"I ca-ca-can't say. They-they-they just-just killed all my friends."
"But there's something not right about them. I mean, over and above them shooting at you on crowded city streets."
"I ca-ca-can't remember." Phrropox whimpered.
"They're clearly alien to the planet," the Doctor said, reappearing once more. "Where's Nyusi?"
"He went to get some paper." Jackie replied. "But you're right. They're squatter and larger than the….Abercrombies?'
"Abelards, but yes."
"Let's see. If I can guess their rough size and weight…" and Jackie typed in some figures and several species appeared. Unfortunately the Doctor had vanished again. "Let's see. The Pheragon are militant pacifists, so they seem a bit of a stretch. The Alanon went extinct six centuries ago. The Judoon are distinctly taller. The Theguthugee are from the Andromeda galaxy. Oh wait! This one seems close!"
"Wh-whaat?"
"The Kraal! A millennia or so they were hot stuff. They even tried to conquer Earth back in the 20th century. I didn't know that. Then they fell on hard times. Most of them were killed by one of their biological weapons. Many had to flee the planet and become mercenaries. That sounds like our guys."
"But wh-what can we do about them?'
"Hold on. Let me read this article. Oh! Oh that's very interesting! Let me check up on this." Jackie quickly looked up some other webpages. "Oh this is great! I should get started on this right now!"
"Whe-whe-where are you going?"
"I'm going to get some things." And she dashed out the door. Phrropox looked for an obscure corner of the room so he could crawl up into a mewling little ball. As it happened the sun had set and nobody had to worry about the ultra-violet radiation. As Jackie left the inn, she did not notice an Al-Zephani nearby spying the hotel. He watched her dash into the streets, and then ran off in the opposite direction to warn the Joelamosia.
Meanwhile Nyusi returned to his hotel room and started writing down numbers. He furiously completed several complex mathematical equations, and had managed to fill two pages with them when the Doctor appeared again.
"Hello! Ah you're still here! I was just thinking it was odd that the two species are called the Abelards and the Eloise, since it sounds like one of the great couples in European history."
"I wouldn't really know. I've never heard of them." Nyusi replied.
"You haven't? From the Middle Ages?"
"I'm a physicist, not a historian."
"Oh that is a pity. I mean I go through history and actual historians are always cross with me. 'I have Neville Chamberlain, right here, saying exactly what he pushed for appeasement,' and they say that's not good enough. You need the private papers. And I said, 'what he said shows that all you historians are wrong' and they said, one stray comment isn't good enough, and then I went back and got some letters that had been mysteriously destroyed when Chamberlain died, and now the historians were just cross with me…" but then the Doctor vanished.
Nyusi quickly returned to his work and managed to fill half a page with numbers when the Doctor reappeared again.
"You know what I think? I think it would be best for Phrropox to hide here. He's the only one of us the enemies have really seen, so it would be best for him to keep out of sight. Maybe lock him in the bathroom, until we can think of something better. Oh yes, I've got some clues about the hitmen who chased you. Been able to detect some super weapons and space travel thingamajiggies. They're the Kraal. Not a very pleasant species, but there is a very useful trick about them, if you're near an Abelard restaurant and…" But then the Doctor stopped.
"Is something wrong?" Nyusi asked, getting out of this chair.
"Oh no. It's here. Why did they bring it here? But of course, it makes sense. It must be how they found me in the first place. But that means…AGGH!" The Doctor grasped her temple in great pain, then fell to the floor, only to vanish again.
"Damn it, Phrropox we've got to do something." Phrropox instead looked for a chair to crawl under. It was at this point that Nyusi realized that Jackie was not here. "Phrropox, where the hell is Jackie?"
"She said, she found something about the Kraal."
"She's not here?! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Was a-a-afraid." And Phrropox whimpered to even greater heights than before.
As it happened, Jackie was quickly racing around the markets trying to get to them before they closed. Notwithstanding the ultraviolet radiation, the Abelard were not nocturnal animals, and the Joelamosia and the Al-Zephani had little patience for night life. Jackie had been able to get some flour, or the Abelard equivalent of flour, as well as some peculiar smelling cooking oil, and the local equivalent of a bottle of wine. But she needed some spices and now the stalls were all closing. The lights were also dimming, and Jackie was running out of options.
Wandering around Jackie noticed a stall where the owners had gone in for the night. The children of the family who owned it had started their ethereal singing, while the adults started playing their games of chance and skill. Jackie noticed the three spices she needed hanging nearby. She faced a choice. She could try to rouse the people inside and try desperately to haggle with them, even though it was late, and she didn't know the language, and she was both a foreigner and an alien. Or she could simply swipe it.
"Well I am fighting for my life," she rationalized to herself and quickly grabbed it. Then realizing she needed something to conveniently carry all her supplies, she snagged an empty sack and took it all with her. She started to make her way back to the inn, but before she realized she had lost her way, she saw something that brought her up short.
It was the four assassins who, now that it was night, were no longer covering their faces. They were, in fact, Kraal, and at this point they were drinking and complaining about their life.
"So here I am complaining to my girlfriend, and I'm talking about the importance of honor through domination, and she complains if we hadn't been fighting so many wars we'd still have a planet to live on. Can you beat that?"
"I know!" said the second Kraal. "My sister says the same thing to me."
A third one agreed, the largest of the three who happened to be their leader. "Women all say that. Not just girlfriends and sisters. Wives, mothers, daughters, grandmothers. Even great aunts. Even the secretary back on Mantua-5. We point out the absolute imperative of honor through domination, and they keep going on and on about we ruined the planet because of our wars. They've always said this."
The four Kraal all took a swig. "I've read it's genetic," said the first Kraal. "On their part not ours. Ours is a matter of ineffable free choice."
The others all agreed, when the head Kraal noticed something. "One of the two humans is nearby." He got up, and starting preparing his weapon for easy fire.
The first Kraal objected. "Our leader told us specifically to wait for instructions."
"Then our glorious leader should have got Orgons or Judoon who are too stupid to show any initiative. Let's move!" And they quickly got up and headed in Jackie's direction.
Jackie quickly darted away, doing so on tiptoe to minimize the noise, lugging her somewhat ill-gotten gains on her back, and snatching a stray bowl and pestle. Despite the precautions she took the four Kraal had no trouble in following her. She quickly dashed down one side street and then another, but could not shake them. As she dashed down another street she realized too late that she had gone down the Manethysian equivalent of a cul-de-sac. And very shortly, the four Kraal were at the end of it.
"Where is the human? I can't see her," one of the Kraal complained.
"The human clearly is here," the leader correctly pointed out. "The sensors detect her. Obviously that human is hiding." And indeed Jackie had desperately climbed on the top a building, and was looking down on them from the roof.
"I wish the Abelard wouldn't keep singing so much. It's so difficult to hear through them," another Kraal complained.
"Focus your hearing. The human is very close," the Leader ordered. And above them, Jackie nervously dumped the flour, the sort of wine, the cooking oil and the spices into the bowl and mixed it desperately with the pestle. She quickly made a short, fatuous New Age prayer, and then dumped the whole mixture on the four Kraal below.
The result was highly gratifying. "It burns! It burns!" one Kraal shrieked. The mixture did not in fact burn, or cause any serious physical injury. But it was extremely uncomfortable in a variety of ways. Not only was the scent very objectionable to the Kraal, but it was also extremely itchy. And to make it even worse, the Kraal were allergic to the goop plopped on their heads, and there were soon prostrate with violent sneezing. Jackie quickly climbed down with the sack and dashed away. But she could not resist a look back and when she did so, she burst into laughing at the Kraal, now pathetically helpless. But then a hand grabbed her and yanked her into the shadows.