GHEHT Ch. 02

Silently they shuffled down the dirt passage, for what seemed like an hour. There were tunnels going off to the side that could get a person lost quickly, but even an idiot like Bones could follow a tunnel where the roof had literally been painted in long white arrows and a 'do not enter' sign above the tunnel branches they should not follow.

If she wasn't so afraid of what was coming next, she would have laughed.

At last they arrived at another door and Bones knocked, immediately the door was opened from the outside by Abect.

Outside, might not be the best way to describe it. They shuffled from the passage into the lobby of a hotel. A very nice hotel.

They were greeted by an elderly human woman with silver hair, styled elegantly. How deep did this conspiracy go? Charmaine wondered.

Nate and Bones unshackled them, Abect stood at the door leading back to the passage. The old lady retrieved a briefcase and handed it to Nate. He immediately opened it and Charmaine could see stacks of some type of currency. He reached in and pulled out a small metal box. He opened it and pulled out a handful of tiny little white seeds.

He nodded at Bones and Abect before packing away the seeds and the box in his shirt pocket. He nodded at the old woman and began walking to the door.

"I don't understand." Denise blurted.

"What don't you understand dear?" Grandma asked.

"Everything," she was at a loss to describe what everything was.

"I will answer your questions when we are on our way."

"Oh, there's one - on our way where?" Now she was angry.

"When we are on our way." The old woman's voice brooked no argument.

Charmaine looked at the three men about to go through the door, back into the passage, asking them with her eyes.

"Money." Nate replied, then as last man to leave, closed the door behind him.

Immediately two parts of the wall, previously acting like a wall and not moving, moved and came together in front of the door, and it was gone.

"Elevator doors." Whispered Denise. At least she still made sense.

The old lady bustled them into seats and straps grew out of the seats and locked them in.

Her strength and agility for her age surprised Charmaine.

"Eyes closed." Grandma ordered and there was a blinding flash.

When they could see again they saw alien beings making strange noises. They were all too shocked to say anything. They were still in the same seats but everything else was different. And hot. And grandma wasn't grandma anymore.

Three of the aliens approached the women strapped into their seats like victims for a sacrifice.

The first woman started to scream immediately, a large alien put a hand over her mouth and then carried her off.

"No!" Charmaine and Denise shouted at him. They had wanted to keep their group together.

More aliens poured into the room and each woman was dragged off by a different alien. Denise held on to Charmaine like death but then suddenly she was gone too and Charmaine was being carried upside down over some alien shoulder.

The alien stopped outside a room and made a noise and the door opened. It was dark inside. Charmaine was softly crying now. He put her down on the floor none too softly and seconds later something stabbed into her arm. She cried out, and then passed out.

TRAVELLING

Charmaine sat in the darkness, listening to them breathing.

"I-I come fro-from earth." Charmaine surprised herself by stuttering, it wasn't something she normally did, but then again, nothing about this was normal.

"And you are from?" She pushed past her fear and asked anyway, even though nobody had said anything to her.

"Doesn't matter." A low, rough, but definitely female voice replied.

"Sorry about the female that they killed, I was biting my lip, she smelled the blood."

"Suggest you keep quiet now. Everything is being recorded."

Shit.

"Excuse me. Why would they do that? Please answer me"

"If somebody tries to escape, they have proof."

"What about the female they shot?"

"Don't attack them, don't attack others. It will be in your program pack."

"My- my what?"

"You will receive it when the star shines on us again. It will explain everything. I will no longer respond to you; for now."

Charmaine put her head on her knees and felt like crying. She vowed to herself to find the other women from earth and together they would go home. Then she reversed her vow, thinking that earth was no safer, and finally she didn't vow or promise but made a strong choice in the direction of earth. What she did promise is that she would find Denise, and Helen, and the others. She fell asleep making up names for them.

The bar at the top of the wall clicked softly and slid down and a faint light trickled in. Just like before she could make out lumps and then the lumps began to move.

Within ten minutes dawn had broken and they were all eyeing each other, looking at differences and similarities.

"You look like them." Wolf woman said in her husky (yet fitting) voice.

"I assure you, I am an earthling from earth. I was kidnapped with seven other earth women, I'm not them. Besides, they are giants compared to earthlings."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Because I can say with pride that earthlings do not have the capability to travel in space, we don't have spaceships."

Wolf woman looked as if she did not believe this and they sat in silence until a while later the men who had come before, came to them again.

It was a rinse and repeat, somebody pulled her up, somebody slapped her face, something jabbed her in her arm and mercifully this time ; she passed out.

When she finally became conscious again, the other women were eating. Some ate like Charmaine, with utensils, others feasted with their teeth. Like bear lady and wolf woman.

Bear lady looked at Charmaine as if she was desert and Charmaine quickly looked away.

"Say you want food." Bear lady told her. She didn't want to, but she was more afraid of bear lady.

"I want food please." She whispered.

The wall disappeared and a small machine drove itself into the room and straight to her. There was a silver dish lid on top. She lifted the lid, it was earth food. Good food. At least, it looked like normal earth food.

"Thank you." She whispered to the machine, not knowing if she should or not, as she picked up the tray and lid and set it on the floor in front of her.

No sooner had she eaten than several little machines came into the room and collected all the plates, and all the bones.

Then the dark came and the daylight was gone. The darkness and light flowed into each other and the silence continued.

The next time light came wolf woman coughed and everyone looked at her. She pointed at the bar of light and said, " The dark lengthens."

Wherever they were going, they were moving further from the star. Charmaine wished she knew where Denise and the others were. She knew they must be aboard this vessel, but where?

When the darkness came so soon again, they were all astonished to see the bar click on with artificial light. The knowledge packs they had received proudly stated that the Stygiopians were aware of space pollution and every effort had been taken to minimize their "emissions", something Charmaine understood thanks to her knowledge pack but didn't want to know because it brought the end of this galaxy closer all the time.

Bear lady laughed, "Ha! So much for your emissions!"

Nobody said anything else.

REUNION

Charmaine had no idea how long they had been traveling, could be an earth week or an earth month for all she knew. They kept moving away from the light of the star so darkness was longer but she didn't know how much light and dark made twenty four hours. She sat in the dark and listened to the ships engines humming.

Something began to beep urgently and then several things happened. The bar of light shut closed, hidden lighting behind panels came on and they were all bathed in light. Belts popped out from the panels, she knew what they meant. They were approaching an asteroid belt. It was time to buckle up for the ride.

The little machines drove in carrying packages, one for each woman, a helmet, suit, gloves, boots and oxygen.

There was no playing around, they put the suits on immediately, they could already hear smallish outlier asteroids hitting the spaceship. It was very much like flying through turbulence on a plane, Charmaine thought, having suited herself to the gills.

The turbulence became much worse and the women held on the panels as the ship pitched and rolled. Bear lady got sick in her suit and yanked off her helmet, the purple woman with enormous breasts flipped the emergency ring behind bear lady.

Seconds later three man sized robots walked through the wall. The one in the lead looked where the panel was flashing and all three started resusitating bear lady.

It was all so quick, Charmaine could barely see, she was trying to hold on and hold her food down too. The little roller coaster ride had become too much. The ship rolled again and she let go of the panel.

A robot caught her, they seemed to make a decision and more robots came in, they carried all the women out. Not a moment too soon, as they left and flew up a shaft they heard a loud boom behind them.

Charmaine was dangling over the robot's shoulder, she could see a fireball at the bottom of the shaft. She began to scream but nobody heard her in that helmet. The fireball rushed towards them and at the last second they flew through an enormous hole out of the ship into space.

The ball of fire reached the hole and was blown into space where it sucked up it's own oxygen and disappeared all in the blink of an eye.

Charmaine blinked and they were right next to the hole again, then inside and someone closed the hole which turned out to be a large door of some kind.

Now she was hanging around the robot's neck. It had magnetized its feet and they were walking back into the spaceship along the side of the inner wall. Charmaine gave up and hurled.

The robot immediately detected distress and with all the robots right there they cleaned her and put a clean helmet on her head in less time than it took her to blink. A robot stabbed it's needle-like finger into her arm, she cried out.

"For nausea." It said. It was mercifully correct, the nausea began subsiding immediately and she continued to hang around the robot carrying her's neck like a rag doll - in a space suit.

They arrived at a series of airlocks, each airlock took them away from the battered outer shell and further inside the ship. Thankfully the robots were walking on the floor now, she was hanging like a proper rag doll again.

They were all set down onto the floor in front of another huge airlock you could parallel park a London bus in.

Seeing as the previous enormous airlock led to space, she looked at this one with a bit of trepidation. The robot gave a code to something and the door opened.

She felt like she'd stepped into sci-fi movie. There were robots everywhere and they were all busy doing things.