Alienne Mine, A Prequel to Dragon Dawn

Alienne Mine Part 2

ALIENNE MINE

A Prequel to Dragon Dawn

by

Deborah O'Neill Cordes

Copyright © 2015 by Deborah O'Neill Cordes

Chapter 2

When I saw you I fell in love,

And you smiled because you knew.

Arrigo Boito, Falstaff, an opera based on the Shakespearean play

Alienne teleported with Edward to her ship. He'd lost consciousness at the start of the transfer and was still out as she left space-time to get away from the asteroid. She gave the order to travel beyond Mars, the asteroid belt, and Jupiter, to Saturn's frigid moon, Titan. She hid the ship beneath Titan's thick atmosphere, on an island surrounded by a liquid methane lake.

The landing was uneventful. Alienne sat in her pilot chair, watching Ed sleep. He was a tall human, so large he entirely filled her bed. She almost laughed at her next thought, but caught herself, not wishing to wake him. He was now, truly, an abductee, she his alien abductor.

What would he think of her?

When he stirred, she braced herself. Teleportation was usually rough on first-timers. Ed might feel dizzy and nauseous. She grabbed a regurgitation bag, just in case.

He groaned and rubbed his forehead, then opened his eyes. "What happened?" he muttered as his gaze focused on her face.

"How are you?" she asked.

He rose from the bed and scrubbed his face with his right hand. "Pretty hungry."

Relieved, yet surprised by this, she put the regurg bag down. "I do have food. I will share it with you. It is human."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I teleport supplies from Earth from time to time, without anyone's knowledge, of course. It is not stealing, however, for although I have no bank account to pay for my needs I always leave something in exchange. The last time I left a pearl, which I teleported from a shipwreck." She touched her head. "I must be creative in order to find payment for what I take. Now please join me, because I'm hungry, too. I have what you call vegetarian fare."

"You know, when you said human food...for a minute I thought..."

"I know what you thought," she said, smiling.

He glanced at the window. "Where are we?"

"Our present location is on the moon you call Titan."

"What!"

She watched him go to the window. The orange atmosphere of Titan was foggy, but she knew he could see the shoreline through the haze, with its breakers of liquid methane. A stiff wind whipped the waves into orange froth.

Edward whistled. "Teleportation is still a dream for us." He looked at her ship's console. "What is your method of propulsion?"

"It is machashli, the method of folding space and traveling in its wake in what could be described as a slipstream. With this method, I have the ability to move outside the fabric of space-time, and for all intents and purposes, travel instantaneously from one part of the universe to another."

Ed shook his head in amazement. "How far did you come to reach this solar system?"

"That is difficult to say, because I folded space to reach you. To put it in the perspective of your method of calculating distance, my home planet is 577 million of your light years away from Earth."