Rosamund shrugged. “Hey, you’ve got laser pointer fingers, it’s not as if I could force you. So I guess you’ll just stay here. With a chaperone for a few more years. Then you can do whatever you want. Travel to another galaxy, even.”
“Another galaxy?” Dot-R looked at her in alarm. “I wonder if my parental units would be safe with me so far away.”
“Who knows? Who cares? The important thing is that you’d be totally independent and you’d never even have to see them again. Right?”
“Yes,” Dot-R replied uncertainly. “That is the important thing. I think.”
Rosamund stifled a secret smile.
She began pacing around the flattened-out area where the ship had landed, but she found no clues. Finally, she found a felled tree and sat down on it. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I thought if I found out the truth on my own, I could reassure myself that Kodran wasn’t really collaborating with cyborgs. Then Kodran wouldn’t have broken whatever vow of secrecy he made, and I could stay here.”
“What will you do now?” Dot-R asked.
“Good question.”
“If only you had asked me to scan the area for sentient life forms, we might have solved this mystery,” Dot-R said, sitting down next to her.
“You can do that?” Rosamund said in surprise.
“Of course. I assumed you knew.”
“Can you scan the area now, then?”
Dot-R gave her an annoyed look. “Yes. I just told you I can.”
Rosamund stifled the urge to groan in frustration. “Dot-R, scan the area for sentient life forms,” she ordered her.
“Good heavens. I thought you would never ask,” Dot-R said, shaking her head in bemusement at the foolishness of humans.
Dot-R stood up, and her eyes began to glow. After about thirty seconds, she nodded.
“There are sentient life forms underground. They appear to be Draell, although I sense some kind of genetic anomaly. Since I have been stuck here with that stupid chaperone, I have accessed the Draell’s computers and I have been studying the species. I believe the genetic signature indicates they are an offshoot of the Draell called the Draell-nar, believed to be inferior by the Draell leaders because they cannot shift. Accessing my data banks… A report on the Galactic News Network reported that the Draell-nar were believed to be extinct, but then it was discovered that there was a group of them living on a mining moon. It was only discovered after they sent a signal for help several months ago, right before they were all wiped out by a cyborg attack.”
A thought occurred to Rosamund. “What color scales do they have?”
“Blue scales.”
Aha. The woman and child on the ship must have been Draell-nar, then.
“They appear to be in some kind of tunnel system underground,” Dot-R said. “There are seventy-six of them.”
“The more answers I’m getting, the more questions I have,” Rosamund said, exasperated. So…there was a whole group of Draell-nar, hiding underground. Why did they have to hide? They hadn’t done anything wrong, from what Dot-R was saying.
And what did this have to do with cyborg-repairing equipment?
“You could ask Kodran,” Dot-R said. “He is about to land.”
“What?” Rosamund cried. She leaped to her feet.
Damn those silent skimmers. Dot-R was right. One of them was settling into the vegetation nearby, and she hadn’t even heard it.
A door opened in the side of the skimmer, and Kodran, Prenzal, and several other Draell came running over. Kodran looked worried and Prenzal looked furious.
They ran over to Rosamund and Dot-R.
“You should not have come here!” Prenzal yelled, his face red with anger. Smoke streamed from his nostrils, and his pupils turned into vertical slits.
Before Rosamund could answer him, there was a whistling sound.
“Incoming!” Kodran shouted, and hurled himself on top of Rosamund, covering her with his body.
Something exploded near them. “Dot-R!” Rosamund cried.
The air smelled funny. It tasted funny. Waves of dizziness rolled over her, and Rosamund felt Kodran go limp on top of her, right before everything winked out and went dark.
