Chapter Eight

Ralph landed in the middle of the desert outside Palmdale, sand, cactus and low, spindly plants the only witnesses to his touchdown. Leaning back a little Ralph came down on his feet, slowing himself in a dwindling run. A trip over an errant root sent him to his knees, leaving twin parallel divots imbedded in the wet dirt as his progress diminished to a stop, his tight grip of Bill against his chest never wavering.

He lowered the fully unconscious Bill to the ground, arranging his fractured body in what he hoped was the best position on his back. He stood up looking up into a gloomy grey sky, cumulonimbus clouds covering up all the blue and the sun, turning the world darker than it naturally was at 5 p.m. in August. As tiny dots of rain fell onto Ralph he knew the storm was quickly approaching.

The four times he and Bill had seen the space ship it had always been late at night, under the cover of dark, keeping the secret hidden from prying eyes. Ralph looked down at his partner. His skin had assumed a pale and dusky pallor, his breaths increasing. Bill didn't have four more hours to wait until the blackness of night asserted itself. The green guys would have to come down now, and allow the murkiness of the thunderstorm to protect their clandestine existence.

"Come down!" Ralph bellowed, loudly aiming his voice up to the clouds "We need you! Come down!"

Nothing happened. No ship appeared. He called out again, his cry hopelessly dissipated into the beginning of an intense downpour, lost to peels of devastatingly loud thunder. Ralph felt such intense despair he almost burst into tears. But Bill had taught him to act, that pressure makes diamonds. Ignoring his partner being soaked to the skin, the rain washing dried blood off his cheeks, Ralph leapt into the air circling ever higher, his demands the ship appear becoming more and more frantic.

The lowering circle of lights made him shout with joy, and he descended back to Bill, his landing this time an awkward crash. He ran to his friend and scooped him up, again covering him with his cape. Bill seemed even more flaccid and lifeless than before.

The super brilliant lights on the bottom of the ship illuminated a blinding ten foot diameter around the two of them. "Hurry up!" Ralph urged. "Hurry up!"

The transporting beam was odd. There was no sensation of anything—one moment he was on the ground holding Bill, the next, a blink of an eye later, he was in the bare and sterile recovery room, the large metal table in it taking up most of the space. Bill was gone. His arms were empty.

Ralph dashed to the doors of the room and they slid open with a smooth "whoosh" as he approached. Not even stopping to say hello to the levitating robot or the head Green Guy, he ran to the little window of the healing chamber. Bill was in there, clothed, surrounded by various colored lights, bobbing gently above the thin table underneath his body. Ralph touched the window separating them, resting his head against the wall, his eyes closed.

The floating robot came by and nudging Ralph gently handed him the ear translator. Ralph put it in his right ear. The green alien approached him.

"He has numerous broken bones, a serious concussion, and his spleen and liver are bleeding," the green guy said.

Ralph turned to look at the alien. "He fell off a moving train."

"Yes, we know."

Instead of being comforted, there was something eerily spooky about the aliens so closely following the lives of them.

Ralph turned back to Bill. "I need to go back down to Earth and find the criminals who did this to him. You don't need me here to heal him up, do you?"

"No."

"How long will it take?"

"It's hard to gauge. Perhaps five to seven hours, if things progress normally."

"I'll be back here by then."

"Very well."

For a brief moment Ralph was tempted to ask for a third instruction book, but the alien wasn't offering one and it seemed a losing cause.

They both stood watching the lights encircling Bill. "You should learn to aim better when landing on train roofs," the green guy said. "That way you will not distract Agent Maxwell from protecting himself."

Ralph seemed to shrink down to three feet tall. He felt like a child being righteously chided by a parent for breaking a window with an ill hit baseball. Then he realized he hadn't asked for the suit, he hadn't asked to be chosen, he didn't have the damn instruction book, and the last thing he would ever want would be to cause Bill to be gravely wounded. He grew angry.

"I'm doing the best I can," he said huffily.

"You must do better," the alien replied, speaking softly as a simple matter of fact. "Much depends on it." He moved away to the control panel and motioned to the amiable robot to take Ralph back to the recovery room. From there it was another blink of an eye and Ralph was once more back on the tempestuous earth, pelted by enormous drops of rain.

Ralph stood still, lightning and thunder crackling and booming around him, as he watched the ship soar far out into space taking his friend and partner with it. He had never felt lonelier in his life.