"What! You can’t be serious," exclaimed Will.

"I am absolutely serious, Will," replied Drykr.

"No. You’re wrong - - it’s not possible," said Will. "There’s no way this could have been a Ghelan attack! Robot, you’re familiar with Ghelan bio-patterns. Were the intruders Ghelan?"

"Negative," replied the Robot. "The armed alien intruders who boarded the Jupiter 2 were of unknown origin to my sensors."

"Oh come on, Will," countered Drykr. "You know as well as I do that they have the technology to disguise their bio-patterns."

"Had they been using technology to do as you suggest," stated the Robot, "I would have easily detected it."

"You give yourself too much credit, robot," replied Drykr dryly.

"No, he’s actually right," said Will. "I helped perfect that particular technology on Ghela, and recently built certain enhancements into the Robot so he’d be able to detect the use of stealth technology. If he says they weren’t Ghelan, I don’t think they were."

"Why would they go to the trouble to make us believe they were, then?" asked Drykr.

Why, indeed, thought Will, mentally scrutinizing the events Drykr had just relay to him upon their return to the Jupiter 2.

Drykr told Will that he had just returned to the upper deck of the ship prior to the alien attack. He and Verda had just completed an "electronic sleep" period in their regenerator chambers on the lower deck. The Robot was giving Professor Robinson a report on some radio transmissions that Major West was now tracking.

As the Robot had already reported, the Professor became suspicious and had just ordered the Major to turn the ship around when they were hit by the vehicle stasis net and then fired upon. Drykr grabbed a nearby intercom microphone to alert the others below of the situation. As he had just come up from the lower deck, he knew that Penny and Verda were already in the tactical control room, while Judy and Maureen were in the galley with young J.D.

After alerting those below, he and Professor Robinson managed to get a single cyclo-disrupter blast fired at the alien ship, which disabled the stasis net. It was at this point that the Jupiter 2 was boarded. The armed intruders wore plain black armored uniforms with no distinctive characteristics, and darkly visored helmets that hid their facial features. This was typical of a "dark raid" by space smugglers or privateers. The Robot had already gone below, and the Major and Professor hadn’t had time to secure hand weapons.

The four intruders were materializing in a circular attack formation in the center of the control room with their backs facing each other. Drykr’s android reflexes and senses being quicker than human, knew what was happening as soon as they started to materialize. A micro-second before they were fully cohesive, he launched himself at the four armed aliens and effectively tackled them to the deck as they completely materialized. One of their disrupters fired, the shot being deflected into what must have been the freezing tube stasis control panel.

The Professor and Major West had been given the few seconds respite they needed to react and make their way to the weapons locker to arm themselves and Drykr. The aliens were slightly dazed after being hit so hard by the android’s massive catapult, and quick as they were to reconnoiter, the tables had been turned on them. They found themselves staring down the blast barrels of some very serious artillery.

Suddenly, the sound of laser fire could be heard coming from below, accompanied by the familiar sound of the Robot’s defensive electronic blasts. Fearing for the safety of the others below, Drykr fired four rapid shots at the now-helpless would-be assailants. He knew the Professor would object to his killing these scum, even if they did deserve it, so he’d set his weapon on its lowest setting, which merely stunned them into unconsciousness.

Quickly taking to the back corridor to descend down to the lower level, the three of them heard what must’ve been a laser cannon, followed shortly by the concussion of the incendiary grenade in the Robot Bay.

When they arrived on the lower deck, the common area was deserted. Flames were licking out of the barely opened hatch of the Robot Bay, but other than that, all was now quiet. A small thud-like sound came from inside the adjacent tactical control room.

The two men and Drykr approached the hatch carefully and activated the opening mechanism. Inside, lying on the floor on the other side of the room were the unconscious forms of Maureen, Judy and Penny. Verda and J.D., however, were nowhere to be seen. John and Don rushed across the room to the women, while Drykr remained in a cautiously defensive position at the doorway. He attempted sending Verda a digital signal, but something in very close proximity was disrupting his field of transmission. So, he tried to triangulate the direction from which the jamming signals were emanating.

Just as he did this, a young voice rang out from an area of the room behind the Professor and Major, but obscured from Drykr’s line of vision in the doorway.

"Dad, Grandpa! Look out! It’s a trap!" shouted 11 year-old J.D. West.

The warning from the lad came too late. Drykr swung himself into the room, weapon ready to fire as Don and John spun around to see the three aliens, identically garbed to those on the upper deck, holding the boy and Verda in front of them at gunpoint.

The intruders had the upper hand. John, Don and Drykr had no choice but to drop their weapons. Professor Robinson, still on his knees, glanced back at the unmoving forms of his wife and daughters, then turned to the aliens again.

"If they’re harmed…," he said in a coarse, threatening tone.

"You’ll what, Professor Robinson?" spoke one of the assailants. "I really don’t think you’re in a position to be handing out threats."

"They are unharmed, merely stunned," interrupted a second alien, who then turned to the first alien and said something in a hushed, angry tone.

"I see you know who I am," noted John suspiciously. "Then you must also know that this ship was granted diplomatic status by Earth and Ghela under the laws of the Intergalactic Tribunal of Planets over three years ago when we left Ghela. We are an exploratory, scientific vessel and your actions are in violation of the law."

The intruders laughed.

"ITP ‘laws’ mean nothing to us," jeered one of the aliens.

At that moment, the ship pitched sharply and went out of control. Drykr figured the stray laser blast that hit the stasis control panel must have been deflected and caused more damage than they had realized. The aliens lost their grip on their two captives as everyone was thrown starboard. J.D. grabbed Verda and the two of them scrambled over by Don and John while Drykr made his way to the auxiliary controls.

The aliens were slow to recover, giving John and Don just enough time to retrieve their weapons. The ship stabilized somewhat and the Major fired a warning shot at one of the fallen alien weapons as its owner sought to reclaim it. The balance of power had turned, but that made sorry little difference, as the ship’s guidance control was offline, at the lower deck console anyway, and they had no way to regain helm control from where they were. Worse yet, they had just entered the atmosphere of a planet and were being sucked in rapidly by its gravitational pull.

The Major dashed for the door, saying he’d go topside to try to regain control. As he exited, however, his body began to dematerialize. Looking around the room, Drykr noted that everyone, except himself, was in the same "ghostly" state. The aliens had obviously reactivated their trans-spatial boarding beam, and were attempting to bring their boarding party and intended prisoners back to either their ship or some other destination. Drykr felt an internal fluctuation in his own circuitry. They were attempting to "lock on" to his form as well. He quickly reacted by activating a pattern disrupter sub-routine that would randomize his own energy signature. The others were now gone, however. He was alone and the ship was still plummeting toward the surface of the planet.

He wondered what had happened to Will during the raid, but that would have to wait. Quickly making his way to the upper deck, he found the navigational controls and landing gear completely unresponsive. The only thing he could do was to fire the retro rockets to lessen the severity of the impact when the ship hit the planet’s surface. Just as he did so, the alien trans-spatial beam adapted to his internal randomization program and he found himself being teleported away from the Jupiter 2.

Drykr materialized in the middle of a large, oval-domed room, which house several banks of high tech equipment. The ceiling dome was softly illuminated indirectly, which gave the room a soft, twilight effect. He guessed it was the alien’s transporter chamber. A dozen or so armed individuals surrounded him in silence - - all identically dressed in the plain black armored uniforms and visored helmets. A few nearby aliens spoke in hushed tones.

He could see the rest of the Jupiter’s occupants, all except Will, being guarded by another group about 20 yards away.

"Thought you were pretty tricky, eh android?" jeered one of the aliens, stepping forward and pronouncing the word ‘android’ with an air of disgust, as if it were a filthy term. "But not tricky enough, it seems, because here you are."

"Captain," interrupted another, calling out as he entered the chamber, and directing this title to the one that was speaking to Drykr. "The reconnaissance team has located the humans’ ship. It has crash-landed approximately four dropaths from here. They are awaiting your instructions."

"So, you’re Ghelan," surmised Drykr out loud, knowing full well that a "dropath" was a Ghelan unit of measurement

"What we are, or are not, is none of your concern . . . android," curtly replied the "captain."

The "captain" went on to instruct his subordinate to have the recon team check the interior of the ship for the missing members of their boarding party. He was aware that one fool had accidentally incinerated himself while destroying the ship’s robot, but the trans-spatial boarding beam apparently missed four of their numbers on the upper deck due to Drykr’s pattern disrupter.

One of the aliens began running scans on Drykr as the other alien left the chamber to relay the instructions to their field team. He returned a few minutes later and reported he’d received word back that the missing members of the boarding party had been recovered from the crash-site and that they were all awaiting transport back to base.

The "captain" also learned that these four had failed in their part of the mission, being overcome by two humans and the android. Incensed at this disgrace, he ordered one of his men to arm a ground missile and annihilate the entire recon party as an example to the others of the consequences of failure under his command.

Drykr surmised that this was the explosion Will had heard outside the ship while he was still trapped down in the Power Core.

Once he had been thoroughly scanned by his captors, Drykr was led over to join the rest of his party. The women were now conscious and no one seemed hurt. Seeing Drykr arrive alone with no subsequent transports, they all realized that Will had somehow not been found, but no one had dared speak of this fact for fear of the aliens learning they had missed someone.

Maureen’s eyes widened and lips parted slightly as if she was going to say something, but instead gave Drykr only a non-verbal expression of motherly concern, which he acknowledged by lowering his eyelids and slightly motioning his head in the negative. He had no idea if her son were even still alive. He theorized to himself that either the heavy radioactive shielding that surrounded the Power Core had been impervious to the aliens’ scanning and transport technology, or that Will was dead.

The "captain" was called away and took a few of the others with him. In his absence, the remaining aliens decided to have some fun and began touching and taunting the women. Professor Robinson asked them in a firm, civil tone to subside, and was answered with a violent blow to the head from the butt of an alien’s rifle. Drykr and Judy held back an enraged Don, while Maureen and J.D. rushed to help the downed Professor. Penny, however, lost her temper and started shouting at the guards, which only seemed to amuse them. Finally, one of the aliens grabbed Penny roughly by the arm, threatening her to "keep her lowly female place," which just added fuel to the fire. Making an off-color remark about his sexual preference, the guard threw her violently to the ground and drew his weapon.

Before he could be restrained by any of his comrades, he fired his disrupter at her, but not before Verda could hurl herself in front of the beam, taking the full force of the blast. Mass confusion ensnared the scene as the other guards grabbed the attacker. The skirmish brought the "captain" and the rest of the aliens rushing back into the room. Some of the guards had grabbed Drykr, fearing the android’s retaliation, while the Maureen, Judy and Don went to Penny’s aid. J.D. dashed over to Verda’s side. Apparently, the aliens felt the boy posed no threat, so they made no attempt to stop him, focussing their attention on the actions of the adults. Finally looking up at Drykr and then his family, all he could say was, "She’s gone." His voice choked as Judy came over and wrapped her arms around her son.

The captain was shouting at his men, attempting to regain control, which he eventually did and the group settled down. He reprimanded his guards and said he’d deal with them later, as they had just received orders from the High Council to move the prisoners to detention and interrogation blocks.

Turning to Drykr, the captain chuckled, "Was that your ‘girlfriend,’ android? Too bad. But then, I always say, the only good android is a dead one. That little mishap just sped up the inevitable anyway."

The "captain" then called for one of his technicians and ordered him to deactivate Drykr and teleport his worthless android shell and that of the female android out into the desert for the space scavengers to pick apart. Maybe Drykr would get lucky, the "captain" laughed, and his parts would be retrieved by a space pirate in need of replacement parts for his electronic parrot.

As it turned out the "technician" was not as "technically" adept as he might have liked his "captain" to believe. He fumbled around clumsily, finally locating one of Drykr’s auxiliary battery ports. Thinking it to be the main power grid, he started yanking wires and pulling on circuit boards. Taking advantage of the "technician’s" ineptness, Drykr decided to give them a little fireworks show by shorting out the battery pack himself, which sent sparks flying and caused some surrounding circuits to overload. While doing this, he activated an emergency 60-minute timeout circuit, which temporarily shuts down all power to everything except his main motherboard, making him seem lifeless.

Apparently, his "death performance" was convincing, as an hour later when his systems automatically reactivated, he was somewhere outside, alone and abandoned, except for the nearby lifeless form that had once been Verda. He quickly repaired the minor damage that had been inflicted on him from shorting out the battery pack, and hid what was left of Verda in a nearby cave. Scanning the perimeter of his surroundings, his short-range sensors located the Jupiter, and he set out for the crash-site in hopes that Will and the Robot had somehow survived the ordeal.

"Okay, so these aliens throw out Ghelan units of measurement lingo and mention the High Council," said Will. "You said they also balked at our diplomatic status. Ghelans wouldn’t do that."

"Unless they were an anti-H’rlaxian faction," replied Drykr.

"Well, there’s any number of ways someone could get information on us," surmised Will. "But if they were Ghelan - - and I don’t mean to sound puffed up, but - - if they were Ghelan, why didn’t they mention me or know that I was missing? I mean, come on, I’m kind of well-known there - - at least politically."

"Exactly my thought," replied Drykr. "Perhaps there’s been a shift in power on Ghela again, and they assume you’re back with your H’rlaxian buddies causing trouble. It would reason then, that your family would be valuable hostages for them to keep you in check."

"No, I don’t think so," said Will. "I just spoke with a H’rlaxian transport commander I know last week. He said things were fine on Ghela." This is all speculation anyway. Right now, it doesn’t matter who they are or what their motive was for the attack. We’ve got to act. . ."

"I disagree," interrupted Drykr. "Besides, you’re the one who’s always preaching that the more you know about your enemy, the better chance you stand in formulating effective strategy."

"I hate it when you do that," grumbled Will.