Escape 3: Defeat the Aliens Read Online Free PDF Page A

recalling a brief visit there by a few of his Team Seven members. Keeping his hands free, he waved.
    “Thank you for your help,” he spoke, then heard his words translated by a shoulder tab into the hissing speech of the Slinkeroo. He reached the end of the rampway. He moved to the left, not wishing to be too close to the greeter, whose own yellow nimbus reached out two feet from its skin.
    The critter’s neck fringe of six tentacles stretched out, then curled at their tips. Blue eyes scanned him, then looked beyond to where Jane, Chester and Time Marker were descending the ramp. “So high above the ground are you Humans,” hissed Swift Lightning. “Yes! Our wandering clansman returns home!”
    Bill watched as his crewmate rushed up to the greeter and laid his triangular head alongside the greeter’s head. Their electrical nimbuses briefly became one at that point. His crewmate sighed, then stepped away, breaking nimbus contact.
    “So good to feel the charge of another Slinkeroo!” Time Marker hissed.
    Jane stepped forward. “I am Captain Jane Yamaguchi, leader of our group. I admire the red marks on your skin, Swift Lightning. Do they have a special meaning?”
    Their greeter blinked blue eyes, then turned and headed for a triangular door that lay ahead of them, where the landing pad met the spire’s wall. “They do. They indicate my clan, my education level and my work assignment.”
    He followed after their crewmate, who had scampered ahead to lead the way, his four-legged gait causing a sideways swaying of his sinuous body. Behind him Jane and Chester followed. Bill looked up at the hundred feet of silvery steel wall that stretched above the pad, noticing the round windows that dotted the wall. Clusters of windows indicated there were at least ten more floors above them. As their greeter neared the closed entry door, a yellow streak of lightning speared out and touched the right side of the entry door. It landed at a spot colored pale red. Clearly the opening control. The metal door hissed to one side. A well-lighted hallway stretched before them. In the distance other Slinkeroo moved along the wide hallway, some of them turning into side hallways. A few stopped before triangular doors, spat out a thin lightning bolt, then entered the room beyond. The air smelled of electricity. Enough to make the hair on the back of his neck rise up.
    “Thank you,” Jane said as she moved ahead of Bill to walk along the left side of their greeter. “I look forward to meeting your Council of Seven and its Prime Elder. Uh, did you lose many people to the collector pods sent down by the Collector ship?”
    The nimbus about the greeter grew slightly larger. “Eleven people were lost before we received your message. After that, our ground lasers killed every pod that descended. Perhaps that is why the Collector craft departed six hours ago. As reported by the neutrino sensors on our orbital station.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Jane said softly. “Be assured, we will search for them as we travel the stars.”
    The yellow glow about their greeter grew smaller. “As we know from your contact with us, it is a spacious universe. But you have brought home one of us. Perhaps more will return.”
    Bill walked alongside Chester as the two of them followed behind Jane, Swift Lightning and Time Marker. Earlier, on their way in, he’d seen the purple dot of the enemy ship leave orbit well before the Blue Sky arrived. That had been six hours ago. The mention of the neutrino detection of the enemy ship’s fusion reactors was a tribute to the swift engineering done by the Slinkeroo scientists on the station. Once they heard from Time Marker how a Collector ship could be detected, the snake people had built neutrino detectors. They had fired several laser strikes at the orbital track of the enemy ship, causing it to move out toward the world’s moon. The ground-based lasers were carbon dioxide gas lasers like those on his ship and