Chapter 16

Blue looked at the young lady with deep suspicion, while DeGroot looked at her with confused familiarity.

"Why were you looking for me?" Blue asked abruptly.

"I've come to take you home" she smiled broadly.

"Ah so you're working for Gran; well you can tell her I am not coming back" Blue sneered "Did she offer some kind of reward for me?"

"Um... Gran?"

The girl looked confused at first but then she smiled again. To the surprise of everyone in the room, she then leant forward, undid some buckles around her knee, and placed her right leg upon the table.

"Take a look at that; a close look" she suggested.

Blue looked over the artificial leg hesitantly at first, but a few details caught his eye so he reached out and picked it up. In his travels Blue had met people with artificial limbs before, but none of them had been of this high quality. The main structure appeared to be made of titanium, with strong flexible joints at the ankle and toe area. The design would clearly make walking and running feel quite natural. Its makers were certainly very experienced designers, engineers and crafters. He suddenly realised how right he was when he noticed two script letters engraved below the inside ankle.

"W.P." he read out loud and then the penny dropped "WILLOW PASCAL; YOU'VE COME FROM..."

Blue caught himself in time and lowered his voice"

"You've come from Sumatra."

"Surprise!" the young lady proclaimed quietly.

"I... I'm sorry but I don't remember you" Blue admitted "Were you one of the people in Captain Branson's refugee fleet?"

"No but I did know the good captain; my name is Haley Robinson. I met your friends when they came to America."

"OH!" DeGroot exclaimed "I remember you... from that town... El Centro... but you had..."

"Two legs?" she smiled "Yes I did but I caught a bullet in a fire fight; it was during a supposed truce with the raiders from northern California. Things went sour for us thanks to a guy I believe you're familiar with; Neville Sage."

"Oh yes... we know him" Blue nodded "So how did you know to find me here?"

"We didn't" Haley said with a shrug "The last report we got was that the Bull Ant was sighted by your Dad from orbit over one hundred kilometres west of here. Ever since we arrived in the area, the One and All has been sailing up and down the coast looking for any sign of you guys. I was dropped off in this town a few days ago, searching the area and letting people know there would be a reward to the first person who could tell me where you were."

"So that's why those guys in the corner were staring at us" Blue realised.

"Yup; so all we have to do now is pay them off, grab the girls and call the ship back to pick us up" Haley said with satisfaction.

"Ah..." Blue suddenly looked very guilty.

"So where are the girls?" Haley asked.

"They're um... not with us" Blue admitted.

"What? Why?"

It did not take long for Blue to explain the trouble they'd had with the survivalists town deep in the mountains, and tell of Calla's plan to ensure Blue's escape so he could get help. Haley looked like her world had just fallen apart.

"Hmm... before coming here, I called Captain Sumner on the radio to tell him you'd been spotted, but now I wish I'd waited. Everyone will be so disappointed to hear about Calla and Abigail. One thing for sure, there are not enough crew members on the One and All to mount a rescue raid; we'll have to send for reinforcements."

"You can do that?" Blue gasped.

"Sure can" Haley smiled broadly "That Doc Spencer is really smart and the people that work for her can do anything. Well... it seems to me like they can do anything. After spending my entire life in a farming community on the edge of a desert, I thought that Railgun complex was amazing. I still get excited about it every time I look at the leg they built me."

"Yeah... they are pretty cool" Blue agreed "So how long before the ship gets back?"

"Captain Sumner says about mid morning tomorrow; we'll contact Doctor Spencer as soon as they arrive. But in the mean time, I've got enough coin to get us a good meal and a bed for the night; I just have to pay off my informants."

Haley rose from the table and went over to the three men sitting in the corner, who had been watching the proceedings rather impatiently.

"It's them isn't it?" one of them said quietly "You got our money?"

"I got your money" Haley smirked "But two of the people I'm looking for are still missing so maybe I should only give you half."

Two of the men stayed seated and just looked disappointed, but the biggest of the three stood up in order to look as intimidating as he truly was.

"I saw how long you were talking to those two and I heard a little of what they said. That kid told you where the others are so we still deserve the full amount!"

To everyone's surprise, Haley threw back her head and laughed. Then she dragged another chair over from a nearby table and sat down on it backwards.

"Calm down gents, it's just my weird sense of humour."

Reaching into the leather satchel hanging over her shoulder, Haley removed a small pouch. As she dropped it on the table, the men could all here the jingle of coins inside.

"Here you go; count 'em if you want but you'll find there is a little bit extra in there."

One of them did proceed to count the coins from various Pacific countries, while the large man looked at Haley with suspicion.

"You're giving us extra? I don't get it; why?"

Haley lent in closer and suddenly looked serious.

"We're leaving soon but we will be back. If others come here before me, people from Sumatra, you give them any help they need. When I get back and they tell me how helpful you were, there'll be another bag of coins in it for you. Does that sound acceptable?"

The big man looked to the one who had done the counting.

"Is there extra there?" he asked.

"More than double" came the reply.

The large man looked quite surprised; he smiled at Haley and nodded.

"If any friends of yours show up, you will be very pleased with the way we treat them."

"That's what I wanted to hear" Haley nodded as she removed a special coin from her vest pocket "And here is a bonus for telling me what I wanted to hear."

She tossed the coin into the air and the large man grabbed at it as it bounced off the table. Considering what they had just earned, one more tiny coin seemed rather petty, but when the man looked at it closely though, his eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"What is it Joe?" one of the others asked.

All the coins in the bag were of small denominations, and from many different countries. But when Joe passed the coin over for the others to see, they gasped at the sight of something they had never seen before. It bore the image of a dolphin on one side, and the side view of an elderly lady wearing a crown on the other. The words engraved on it stated the coin was one ounce of 99.99% fine gold. The men smiled at each other while trying to keep their composure. Eventually they all got up to leave and on their way out, they all gave a respectful nod to Blue and DeGroot. Joe lent over to Haley and spoke softly in her ear.

"Rest assured Miss, anyone who turns up here from Sumatra will be very pleased with our hospitality."

"Nice to know favours can still be bought with a little bit of gold" Haley said to Blue with an obvious smirk n her face.

'

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With the evening work shift now complete, Abigail and Calla were escorted back into the tunnel system and to the mess area for dinner; after which they would be locked in their room for the night. Gran insisted that two members of the community stay with the girls at all times even though there was really no chance they could ever succeed in escaping again. Calla assumed the guards were partly to make Gran feel superior, and partly to make the punishment seem more severe than it really was.

There was one unforseen side effect of having the girl's constantly monitored, and Gran was only now becoming aware of it. As she sat at a nearby table eating her own dinner, Gran could hear Abigail answering questions some of the people had about Mars. And it was not just those acting as guards; a small crowd soon gathered around to hear the young girl's stories.

"Even though some of the small, fast Mars Surface Vehicles could easily drive into these tunnels, the main transports would be far too wide" Abigail informed the eager crowd gathered around her.

"These tunnels were made for freight trains; are you saying the Mars Transports are bigger than that? Why'd they have to be so huge?" one of the listeners gasped.

"Everything on the surface has to be totally self sustaining with air scrubbers, water supplies, stores and equipment. Anything we'd need to survive on a long journey, we had to take with us. The biggest transports really were like trains with no tracks and even had science labs and medical facilities onboard."

"You said before you had those special gardens... um... hydroponics and stuff like that; did you grow food on the big transports too?"

The eager young man who asked that question soon wished he hadn't when some of the others at the table laughed at him.

"No but you guys shouldn't laugh; we did have special systems on board for moving large numbers of seedlings and small plants from section to section as well as base to base. The health of our plants was very important so if one crop showed any signs of disease, we had to be sure it was well isolated from all other food sources."

The small crowd actually gasped at the thought of being so isolated on an alien planet. On Earth if the tomato crop failed, there were many other sources of food but the Martians could not go fishing or hunting like they could.

"So how did you come to return to Earth; how did it happen?" someone asked.

This appeared to be a very important question for everyone as they all encouraged Abigail to tell the tale. Having been a witness to almost everything that had happened, Calla leant back in her chair with her hands behind her head and smiled knowingly.

"Okay but it's a long story so I'll tell you the first bit now and we'll continue another day; Scheherazade style."

"She-whozy-what?" someone sneered.

"The famed storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights" Abigail informed them.

"One thousand and one? That's almost three years; the story can't be that long" someone else complained.

"No no..." Abigail tried to calm the agitated bunch "I just mean I'll continue it tomorrow."

The whole crowd gave an 'ah' of understanding, allowing Abigail to finally begin.

"I was on my first space flight as an official cadet in the Mars Space Corps with my dad Major Luis Dias, and our Commander, Neville Sage. Our main mission was to pick up more supply capsules, sent from Earth by the only remaining members of the Mars Project still operating on this planet; but our secondary mission was to do some imaging scans of the Sumatra Railgun launch site itself. Something had happened down there and the leaders of Mars Colony wanted to know what it was. What my father and I did not know, was Commander Sage had special orders. If everything looked normal in Sumatra, then all would have been okay; but if anything was different, he had to keep my father and I from finding out so nobody else on Mars would find out either. We didn't know it at the time, but there were a lot of secrets being kept on Mars. Needless to say when the images were taken, something very unexpected was found down on Earth."

Everyone leant forward even more, and the only thing to be heard was the quite sound of breathing as everyone waited for Abigail to continue the story.

"What was it?

"What did you see?" everyone wanted to know.

"It was a ship" Abigail revealed.

"A space ship?" someone asked.

"No, an oil tanker."

"But there was no oil in it" Calla interrupted "It was full of supplies, machinery and technology."

"Yes and it was this technology that got us into trouble at first, and then got us out of trouble again" Abigail nodded.

"ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH!" Gran got up "You've all heard enough stories for one day, now get those prisoners locked up for the night."

Nobody dared argue with Gran and a few minutes later, the girls were listening to the bolts being locked on the outside of their room.

"I was surprised at how interested everyone was" Abigail said as she prepared for bed.

"I was surprised Gran let us go as far as we did" Calla replied.

Back in her own room, Phyllis 'Gran' Lindstrom took a deep breath and tried to still her rapidly beating heart. She would not have admitted to anyone, but she too had been fascinated while listening to Abigail's version of events, considering how much she too knew about the Mars Project. But hearing the name Neville Sage mentioned so many times had made her extremely nervous and so Gran was sure tonight would be a night of disturbing nightmares.

'

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Before the earthquake and before it had emerged from the fissure, the small dragon had lived amongst a very vibrant little community of similar dragons. He had always assumed he would not be the last of his kind to take advantage of the newly formed exit to the outside world, and today this was proven to be true.

While exploring to the northeast of his island, the dragon had located another small piece of land and found several more small fire breathing winged lizards. He noticed three of them as he approached the island and two more as he landed on the beach. The one closest to him took an aggressive stance and gave a hiss of warning as soon as he touched down, but the newcomer quickly made it very clear of his good intentions. Keeping his distance, the dragon did not return the look of anger, but instead simply say down on his back haunches, gave a light growl of greeting and a single bow of his head.

The change in the other dragon's mood was so instantaneous; it was as if there had never been any aggression in the first place. The other dragon trotted joyfully up to the newcomer and looked him over while checking his scent as well. The small dragon then realised he knew these others so they too must have found their way to surface through the same fissure as he had.

The dragon spent a few hours with his new friends playing and eating fish, but eventually the time came for him to leave so he could get back to his home island before nightfall. Taking to the air, the dragon flew once around the tiny island calling out to the others before heading off towards the southwest. They may not follow the dragon today, but just like him they would explore the sea around their island and would one day visit him. Maybe some of them would like his island better and decide to stay.

'

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I sometimes find the coincidences of life can be truly astounding. In the past I had decided that characters like Dylan the Psychic Spider and the Mystical Birds of the Mind, would only be single story gags. But two weeks ago I finished Act 2 of Blue Sky Falling and started working on this year's Snoggletog story. Long before I got to the end of chapter one, two of the birds had put in an appearance, and thoughts of including the grandson of Dylan had begun to form in my tiny mind. I started to tell myself this may be a bad idea because everyone would have forgotten him by now, but then Vin and Draco38 proved me wrong a few days later and made me think again.

I also wasn't sure if last year's crossover with the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett was good move or not, but it's part of the canon of my stories now so I intend to work with it, without overdoing it. Another good reason to bring back the Psychic Spider is the name Dylan the Third appeals to me because of its similarity to Luptin the Third, from the anime movie Castle of Cagliostro.

Thanks again for reading guys and gals, Marty :D