The first time someone had thrown me off of an alien tree, I had a group of ET's friends standing by to help me. At the tree of my enemy, I couldn't hope to have such luck again.

In a moment of calm, pondering what Roger Moore would do in my situation, I wished for a parachute, then, as I thought about it a second more, I came to the sudden realization that Norenio had actually shown me a parachute-like feature on my outfit.

I pulled the rings and the glider cape popped out. Unfortunately, being untrained in the art of skydiving, it caused me to go into a tailspin, flipping my body end over and end like a quarter. I threw up in my mouth a little.

I somersaulted, struck the roof of a hut. Not the comfortable thatched grass you'd expect.

I rolled, fell through a glass roof.

Below me lay one of those jacuzzi things that Qulpari love so much. Steam and weird musky scents filled the humid air, streams of condensation dripping down the walls into the thick sod flooring.

I flipped over again, splashing down in oozing glop the color and consistency of pea soup.

I struggled to the surface, trying not to think about the squirming caviar like...objects beneath my feet.

I snatched air, the slime burning my eyes when I opened them.

Once my vision cleared, I found my nose practically touching the face of a Qulpari with a mouthful of eggs.

Worse, I recognized him: My zookeeper, the one who had examined me during my imprisonment. Well, I suppose he deserved this.

I bet he would have yelled at me had his mouth not been busy with baby making activities. Presently, he could only sputter a little and glare at me. I think he swallowed an egg or two.

His companions, though...

The Navnadbu that had captured me in a bubble when I first arrived on Jufuceri...she growled and yelled about how I were more disgusting than what she'd heard.

Little wonder how she got that news: Izrigma the yernar representative happened to be the third person in their sogwuba. I raised a pair of sticky hands, apologizing profusely as I accidentally crushed a few of their eggs beneath my feet. "I'm really sorry. It wasn't my idea, I didn't mean to interrupt, sorry."

I quickly scrambled out of their egg tub, dripping slime into the grass flooring. As the aliens continued voicing their upset, I thought about Meazquad and broke into sobs.

None of the aliens knew what to do with that. If I'd merely been apologetic, or angry, or laughing at the situation, they probably would have kept yelling, but crying? I think they couldn't decide whether to feel sorry for me or dismiss me as a weird kid being petulant about them not including me in their little bath party.

Plus, well, they may have thought I felt remorse about smooshing their eggs.

In a hurry to save myself some embarrassment, I flung open the nearest door, but it turned out to be a storage closet containing pool cleaning supplies, egg warming pads and the type of mystifying bedroom objects I'd seen in paintings at the Nisweku center. I opened another door, but, like a bad dream, it didn't take me outside, just a bedroom where the goose-like lab helper from the zoo dozed, head nuzzled in its downy body. Its eyes opened drowsily as I crept in for a fruitless search for an exit, then crept back out.

The aliens, still very much upset, pointed to a third door, and that one actually proved to be the exit.

Outside, a smiling one eyed winged porpoise flitted past the balcony, clicking at me, darted off on its merry way.

Although overgrown with ivy, the place looked nicer than ET's neighborhood, the railings decorated with ornate stained glass and elegant pillars standing along every doorway. Even the ivy seemed like an accent. Over the rail lay a building reminding me of something out of Mister Roger's puppet land, stereo-like design, with a circular rotating piece resembling the Jefferson memorial, lit by changing colored lights.

In search of a way back to my friends, I followed the balcony to my left, wandering along for several yards until I spotted a section of the tree. Seeing it made me think I'd neared the flying pods. I quickened my pace.

"Elliott!" a voice hissed.

A wriggling piscine shape flew down from a section higher on the tree. I rushed to meet him. "Charlie!"

I'd been too loud. He visibly cringed.

A moment after, a flood of black water came pouring down the wooden bark, then gallons of foul smelling clumpy liquid the consistency of pancake syrup.

The substance moved quickly, in a way that hinted at intelligence. Tentacles and worm like...lifeforms came reaching for me.

"Run, Elliott!" Charlie yelled.

I did what he said.

When I glanced back, the black ooze quickly consolidated into a large, Qulpari shaped figure that slurmed along with surprising speed.

As you can probably guess, my winged costume, with the additional weight of um, alien pea soup, provided a lot of drag. I tried to cinch the thing back up, but that only slowed me down further, gave the abominable thing behind me opportunity to close the gap between us.

...Whatever it was, it had flesh cow splotched a solid black and sickly gray, and wore a large mushroom-like 'Coolie hat' that would have been comical, had the monstrosity possessed actual eyes in its dripping eye sockets. Although slightly winded, I forced myself to run faster.

I raced past the hut with the broken skylight, nearly trampling Izrigma in my haste to escape. I didn't have time to investigate the gargling scream.

I paused to catch my breath, having gained a fair distance on the monster, but then I heard a low growling sound, and that motorcycle thing from Sovirox's prison came rumbling down through the air after me, spouting clouds of smog so thick and oily that my eyes watered and I couldn't breathe without coughing.

I ran away from the thing and its malevolent, zombie like pilot, but of course that's when 'Mushroom Man' came for me.

I froze in the middle of the balcony, stared out at the rotating Jefferson memorial, mentally prepared myself to jump off the side.

The moment I climbed up on the rail, Sovirox slowly descended from above like Superman, but radiating an unfriendly red glow.

The floating Qulpari waved his hands, and red energy yanked me forcefully off the edge.

I hovered before his face in midair as he drained the life out of me.

The alien's glow burned brighter and brighter, like charcoal on a fire, but I only felt weak, like a vampire sucking all the strength and vitality out of my soul.

Once Sovirox had weakened me to the point of passing out, he used his power to hurl me back into the balcony, smashing through stained glass, into the waiting arms of the fungus creature. The nasty black and white thing reached out to me with its tendrils, slowly engulfing me. Rot ate into my skin.

The last thing I saw before completely blacking out: A giant bird leg stomping down in front of me, flattening broken bits of balcony railing beneath its massive scaly claw.

I awoke to the wind blowing through my hair, and downy feathers tickling my face. Someone had slung me, like a sack of potatoes, over the back of an enormous bird with broad pig's ears and a turkey's wattle.

"No-ey baby, you are a bird ninja, and a chef. I'm glad I decided to marry you!"

I lay sprawled along the thing's neck, above the horn of a saddle, a strange two seater that looked like it belonged on a motorcycle, but fit around bird wings. Roy took the secondary seat because Norenio had the reigns, and me.

I gasped in horror. The ground lay hundreds of feet below us, only the bird's huge wings keeping us airborne. I fixed my eyes on the creature's fuzzy down. "Gertie!"

"She's...safe." Roy's tone of voice hinted that all was not well.

I would have probed deeper, but this wasn't a great time for full conversation. "Where are we going?"

Roy glanced over his shoulder. "Away from those things. You need a doctor to check you out. I think you've got some broken bones, and I don't like what Mister Funguy did to your skin."

"Elliott!" Charlie flitted down, nuzzling me in the face.

"Thanks. Sorry I treated you like crap."

"Careful, Charlie," Roy warned. "He might have something contagious, we're going to see a doctor."

"Hmm," the flying Qulpari replied.

"Jamie..." I moaned.

"She's fine. Colgate took her somewhere safe."

"What about those things? Are we far enough away from them yet?"

Roy glanced back again. "Sort of. There's an anemone forest—"

I sucked in my breath as a mass of anemone the thickness of tree branches battered us on all sides like brushes in an automatic car wash.

I felt like a clownfish. I nearly fell off the bird as it shoved its way through.

I probably would have enjoyed the dazzling rainbow of blues reds and purples, had they not been slapping against me, trying to throw me from my ride.

These 'anemone trees' made music when their limbs brushed each other, in the same way wind chimes make music-just barely. They sounded like violins, but only did three notes: low C, D and E. In other words, `Frere jaque, jaque ere fre, jaque Frere.' I got struck again, came dangerously close to sliding off.

"You might want to sit up on Vadful's neck," Roy suggested. "The anemone below us might soften your fall, but it might not."

"Gee, thanks for the pep talk!" I grumbled, shakily adjusting my position. The bird mooed in protest, acting like it wanted to shake me off, but Norenio spoke to it in soothing tones until it calmed down.

The macrodactyla gave way to regular looking forests, well, regular-ish, again, huge trees with buildings on them, and the trees smelled strongly of new car interiors, some kind of unusual chemicals secreted by bark and leaves, like a pine tree does. Large clusters of lianas hung down from some of the boughs, reminding me of Sovirox's prison.

We descended on a big structure resembling half a seahorse stuck to an upside down chandelier. "What's that place?"

"It's like a hospital. Your sister's there, but I want you to get a checkup before you go to visit. That mold stuff doesn't look very good for your health."

Noting how our 'winged steed' foamed at the mouth, I remarked, "Maybe Vadful should get a checkup too. She looks sick."

"It's a he, Elliott. And that's how it sweats. He's, well, healthy as a horse."

The bird flapped down on the hospital grounds, shaking its feathers and wiggling its crocodile tail.

As Roy and Norenio helped me to the ground, the creature barked like a dog, prompting Norenio to give it bits of fruit and squeezes from a water bottle. It licked her in the face.

"Cmon, kid," Roy urged, leading me toward the building.

Although shaky, I felt secure in my footing, so Roy let me walk ahead.

I expected a crowd around this `hospital' comparable to the one at the Nisweku center, or an earth hospital, but aliens did things a little differently.

As we walked, a group of Qulpari floated a stretcher ahead of us, the patient an Abreya with a swollen belly.

"The hospitals here are great. No crowded parking lots, no hypochondriacs in the waiting room, no ambulances blocking the drive, they float the accident victims over your head with their magic powers!" Roy pointed to the stretcher. "You rarely see something like that here because everybody lays eggs. Unless it's a dud or you can't lay eggs, you don't need much help pushing the baby out...I bet her egg just got stuck. It happens from time to time."

The aliens we passed glanced at the stretcher with concern, but, upon seeing who carried it, their reaction seemed to be `Oh well, they got it.'

"That's another thing. Nobody rubbernecks around here. You either help, or you get out of the way."

A couple Qulpari called me boofsuru, but I ignored it.

We neared an `arm' of the `chandelier,' a tower covered in round windows. Dozens of Qulpari medics worked around the entrance, examining visitors, talking to them, from time to time healing up cuts and whatnot, both with powers and with ordinary methods.

"They're called Axuwabe," Roy explained. "Triage nurses, essentially."

"That's...triage?"

"Say you got a gunshot wound or something instead of a common cold. You got top priority. If you're crazy and fake illnesses all the time, you get sent to the psychology nennop place. Not quite the same as what they do on earth, but Qulpari like to save money. Got the sniffles? They send you to the ring of smaller family practice clinics around the perimeter."

I saw an Axuwabe place hands on a visitor's head and immediately point to a building in the distance. "I'm guessing that guy's got a stress headache or something."

Other patients sat with counselors in different spots around the building, or the counselors would walk up to someone looking depressed, start talking, and both would sit down together for a chat. Counselors generally tended to wear yellow robes and beaded necklaces, most were Abreya, but I saw Qulpari here and there.

"It's a little hard for patients to steal drugs from the hospital when the patients get help before going in."

"Do they have surgeons?"

"Yeah, kinda...They use their magic powers to heal a lot of it. Emergency workers in the field really have to do more of the work, just stabilizing the patient until they can get to the healer. They got guys to stabilize the patient while the patient recharges, too. That's where the careers are, if you're into that sort of thing."

I fainted and fell on the pavement.

I didn't get to see the lobby or anything, I awoke naked in a sort of tanning bed, with an "IV" stuck in my arm. Well, not exactly stuck, they somehow had a method of giving me fluids intravenously without breaking the skin with needles. They also didn't need IV stands to drip things in, a small device next to me pumped it in. It would have worked in zero gravity.

Someone had coated me in foaming chemicals, probably the same kind of stuff they put in athlete's foot spray. My ear had been treated too.

"How much longer will he have to be in there?" Roy asked someone.

"It could be a few hours. The fungus has to dry out of its system." By 'it' the doctor meant me. "The infection went very deep. If the heat and wixrigar does its job correctly, it should come to a quick recovery and leave in the morning. I expect it will be very thirsty when it gets out."

I glanced down and discovered they were drying me out in more ways than one. I had equipment attached so I could...'evacuate' without making a mess.

I slept out of a lack of anything else to do in there.

I awoke parched and had to lay like that for about a half hour before the 'tanning bed' opened up.

To my surprise, I found Jamie leaning over me, and looking rather happy to see me.

"Jamie! You're all right!"

"Yeah. Glad to see you're okay." She shoved a cup of water into my hands. "Here. Drink this." With a look of embarrassment, Jamie quickly turned her back to me. I thought I saw her chest glowing. Colzest, who watched nearby, grinned at us. Both he and Charlie seemed pleased that I'd made a fair recovery. It seemed, despite everything I'd done, they still cared for me...and maybe thought I'd learned my lesson.

"I was worried about you," Jamie said. "I seriously thought you died."

The water kinda tasted like lime Gatorade with broccoli and celery mixed in it. Out of thirst, I guzzled it. "How'd you get away from those guys? They almost killed me."

"I'm good at hiding. It sounds like Soversocks and his buddies were too busy trying to kill you to bother about me." She sighed. "I'm sorry, I probably should've tried to help you. I guess I'm just a big chicken."

"Better than being a big jerk. I don't blame you, considering how I've been acting. I wish I could blame it all on Sovirox. I mean, he was messing with my mind, but I don't know..."

Still not looking at me, she passed my clothes back to me. Someone had, apparently, dry cleaned them. "Put these on. They've been sterilized."

"Thanks..." I frowned at my toilet equipment. "So I'm done? I can get out?"

"Yeah. I think so. Get dressed."

The IV thing had been removed, so I did what she said. As I zipped up my outfit, she remarked, "You look nice with a tan. You needed some color."

My face colored a little at her comment.

I climbed out of the machine. The round room resembled a home rather than a hospital ward. Decorations, jamassi, plants. Kind of like ET's place but fancier.

I stumbled, nearly pitched onto the floor, but Jamie caught me.

I ended up awkwardly in a swooning pose like a woman would do during the Tango. She giggled a little, helping me to walk.

"What happened to your ear?"

I told her what happened.

"I overheard someone talking about that. Elliott, I think that thing has become part of your brain!"

I shivered in horror. "Now they'll really want to cut me open when I get home!"

Jamie stared at the floor, probably contemplating what this meant for her.

"Let's find my sister," I sighed.

Rilquza greeted me at my sister's ward. "Pabyeba wanted to come, but she is brooding." He bowed his head. "They are sad about Meazquad...and Gertie."

Gertie didn't look good at all. The parts of her body not badly scarred looked pale, rotten with mold, or had an unusually greenish cast. Her breathing was shallow, her pupils milky white.

She lay on a translucent jamassi, IV tubes feeding her nutrients and medication. A secondary system performed a sort of dialysis. The expressions on the healers' faces told us there was nothing more they could do.

I didn't see Tolmina. I guess he still nursed a broken heart from our previous insults.

ET and Colzest looked at me sadly. Rilquza sat down next to Norenio, tail twining around hers, both gazing with worriment at my sister.

Roy put a hand on my shoulder. "Like I said, kid. She's safe. Wish I had better news than that."

My sister shivered, despite the mild temperature in the room. "Elliott, is that you?"

I felt so emotional, I could barely get the words out.

She reached for me with a shaking pale green hand, gave me a faint smile. That stupid Ridvucha bracelet still hung from her wrist. "I saved you."

"Y-yes you did."

My sister closed her eyes, her face going slack. Her arm dropped limply to her side.

I clutched her hand. "Gertie!"

She didn't respond.

"Gertie! Speak to me!"

She didn't.

A light flashed on her bracelet. She'd actually found someone.

Sadly, she wouldn't be able to enjoy the company.