Fast Cars and Intergalactic Speed Dating

23: Suspicious Shooting Stars

The extraction of the Chorodonian bullet from Garth's body was not an easy or pleasant experience for anyone involved.

Richard was so worried that he felt sick.

Garth was in so much pain that he actually vomited.

But Kincade—Dr. Hanover, it turned out—suffered more than any of them. Imagine being called to help out the man you'd been on a single date with and being swept up into...whatever this was.

During the extraction and the stitching-up that followed, Kin was calm and steady. When it was over and Garth was settled with a blanket draped over his body, Richard and Kin left him to rest. Kin peeled off his blue procedure gloves and washed his hands, and then Pey-Daika led them out of the medical bay and took them back to the quiet, private room where Richard had been invited to rest earlier in the day.

When they were alone, Kin slumped into a chair, as pale and shaky now as Garth had been during the procedure. He hung his head down between his knees for a few minutes.

Richard gave him space for a minute or two. Then, he sat next to him. "Kin? Are you okay?"

"A good question," Kin mumbled in response.

In a moment like this, Richard would typically offer coffee or tea. There was nothing like a mug of something hot to steady the nerves and calm the mind. But he wasn't in his own place, and he didn't know where or how to acquire more of the ooros tea.

So, instead, he put a hand on Kin's shoulder. "I can't tell you how grateful we are for this," he said quietly. "I tried to drag him to hospital. Believe me."

Kin straightened, rolling his head back on his neck to stare up at the ceiling for a couple of seconds. Then he sighed and looked across the room toward the door. "What is the first one's name? Ayalel?"

"Aialo-El. They're the one who brought us here."

"They said it was too dangerous to take him anywhere. That this place is hidden, somehow. I guess you said that, too. The bad guys—they might be watching for you?"

"Yeah. I guess this is the long part of the long story." Richard saw no reason to keep Kincade in the dark about what was happening because, well, here he was. He brought the man up to speed on everything Aialo-El had told him, from their people's flight from their homeland to their theft of his solar cells to the terror of the Chorodonian attack.

"Wait, so this happened the night of the race?" Kin asked.

"That's when it started, yeah."

"Huh." He frowned. "You know, Garth said he saw something that night. A shooting star."

Richard remembered. He hadn't thought about it until now because it hadn't seemed important, but he recalled Garth mentioning a lucky green shooting star. He frowned, shaking his head. His impression from Aialo-El had been that they and their people had been hiding here for some time. "Maybe it was the bad guys touching down," he said.

"I will be a lot more suspicious about shooting stars in the future." Kin ran his hand through his hair. "I hope he sleeps for a while. I can't imagine how much pain he's in."

Richard nodded. When they'd left Garth asleep, he'd still been quite pale, but his features were relaxed in repose. "It's been off and on all evening. He really scared me for a while there."

"As long as the wound doesn't get infected, I hope he'll be alright. That was a nasty bullet. I've never seen anything like it. Not that I treat a lot of gunshot wounds, or anything—I mean, you know. I haven't seen anything like it in general."