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She snorted. “It could have been valuable. I always intended to sell it, but I wasn’t sure how

much it was worth. I didn’t want to be cheated. Everybody wants to cheat Granny.” She

narrowed her eyes. “And what’s it worth to you now, Jommy? Take a look around.”

She led him into a chamber where she had stacked a pile of singed lab notebooks along

with some of his personal inventions, instruments he used for testing circuits and improvising

power sources. With a flourish, she opened a metal cabinet full of small components, valuable

micro-generators, and a host of other devices the world had never seen before.

Jommy was grinning. “It’s a starting point for me to rebuild everything, Granny. But it’s

still missing a great many of my records and notes. Most of those were burned, I’m sure.”

“Oh, they burned all right. But Granny has more. Not everything was lost.” Her expression

was very devious. “During our four peaceful years here, when everybody liked each other in

the whole valley, I used to sneak into your laboratories at night. I copied many of your

notebooks—and you didn’t suspect a thing!” She cackled. “It was just a precaution. Common

sense, actually. You would have done it yourself. Maybe old Granny’s figured out how to block

your slan mind probing, eh?”

“Very risky, Granny. If the tendrilless got their hands on this information—”

She pointed a scolding finger at him. “Don’t you get all high and mighty, Jommy Cross. It

was a bit of insurance, and if you were to leave me—which you
did
—then I had something I

could sell. I was sure there’d be many buyers for these notes and blueprints.”

“So why didn’t you sell them?”

Now the old woman looked away. “I was afraid to. What would I say? ‘A slan criminal left

me these designs because I sheltered him for so long?’ I would have been arrested by people

like that John Petty you brought into this house.”

Jommy knew the old woman was right.

“So now you owe it to Granny. I’m an old woman with modest needs. I don’t have to be

filthy rich, but I wouldn’t mind a little wealth here and there.”

He knew Granny would never be satisfied. Only her constant, greedy dreams of having

more
kept her going.

She took him through several of his old laboratory rooms, which were cluttered and dark.

The walls bore serious burn and smoke marks, and half of the lights didn’t work. She’d used

his precision testing room to store canned vegetables and sacks of sugar, flour, and beans. It

would take him quite a while to clean and set up his lab again, but it was quite a head start.

Granny led him with her stiff-legged gait down the tunnel that went under the ranch house

to one of the outbuildings. “This way. One last thing. Extremely impressive. And

valuable—very valuable.” Her chuckle turned into a dry cough.

They climbed a set of metal stairs. Granny flicked a switch to activate the lights, then raised

a hatch to the small hangar shed Jommy had built. He climbed out onto the sealed concrete

floor and just stared. “It’s still intact!” His fast rocket-plane, which he had built for his special

explorations.

“Not just intact, young man—it’s fully fueled and ready to launch, just the way you left it.”

He startled the old woman by throwing his arms around her in a hug. She felt like a sack of

sharp elbows and ribs and shoulder blades. “Granny, you may well have helped save the

world. That must be worth a very large reward. I am very impressed.”

*

*

*

The next day, with Kathleen sitting beside him in the well-lit laboratory chamber, Jommy

carefully cracked open the first of his father’s notebooks in the stack on the table. He didn’t

want Petty close to him while he looked at the papers, and President Gray had left the two of

them alone, preoccupied with possible plans to draw up a defense of what remained of

civilization on Earth.

Jommy had slept for only a few hours the night before, too excited to lie around in bed.

Kathleen also got up at dawn, looking refreshed and beautiful. Granny brought them a pot of

strong coffee, and the bitter roasted scent drifted into the air. She had also cooked a big

breakfast of fried eggs and potatoes, which Gray and Petty gladly devoured, but Jommy was

too anxious to get to work in the laboratories.

“This is very interesting stuff,” Kathleen said, scanning the records as she sat beside him.

Granny had copied many of the documents onto fresh paper, but they devoted their initial

efforts to the original records. “Your father’s conclusions are … remarkable.”

“He was killed when I was only six, but he placed these volumes in storage for me, to help

me reach my potential. But they weren’t just gifts—they were clues, his way of showing me

what I could become. I wish I’d known him better.” He heaved a sigh.

Kathleen picked up the bottom journal on the stack, the one most severely singed around

the edges. Granny must have pulled it directly from the flames. She turned the brittle, brown

pages, looking at Peter Cross’s tight, neat handwriting. As she flipped from one page to the

other, she frowned, then held one page up to the light. “Jommy, look! There’s something more

here. I thought it was just a stain, but…”

Leaning close, he saw faint lines and scrawls, diagrams and symbols that might have been

shadows of letters etched into the paper. “Thermal-response ink. The heat from the fire must

have activated it.”

“It’s all just gibberish. Can you decipher it?”

“If my father created the code, then I can translate it. It just might take a little while.”

“And help,” Kathleen added, “which I’m glad to provide.”

Jommy picked up the other notebooks, carefully warmed some of the pages over a small

flame, and saw that many of the pages did bear secondary messages. Messages for
him
. Peter

Cross’s notebooks were already so full of unexpected details and incredible revelations that he

would never have thought to look for additional information.

But the information he found between the lines were even more amazing.

Jommy and Kathleen worked intensely for hours, transcribing the symbols onto clean

sheets of paper. Jommy set up graphs to decode the messages, while Kathleen scrutinized

them, remembering all the intensive schooling Kier Gray had given her at the grand palace.

Back then, many detractors had complained about the waste of time and energy in educating a

slan girl who was due to be executed on her eleventh birthday. But the President had insisted.

She knew a great deal about encryption and secret messages, more than the palace workers

ever suspected.

Jommy finally discovered a connection, figuring out that one of the symbols indicated a

letter in his mother’s name and another in Jommy’s own name. From that point, they

possessed a key to part of the alphabet, and by translating bit by bit, unfolding incomplete

words and filling in blanks, they picked up speed. Jommy and Kathleen vigorously cracked the

code, both of them grinning, their slan tendrils waving as they shared telepathic excitement.

They laid out the real message Peter Cross had hidden in his journals.

Jommy read the lines of text, barely daring to breathe. “It’s directions to my father’s main

laboratory. A major slan base containing technology far beyond anything I’ve ever invented. It

was there that he did his greatest work.”

“The diagrams are a map, and these numbers are geographical coordinates.” Kathleen

eagerly leaned over his shoulder, reading. Jommy felt her nearness, smelled the faint perfume

of soap on her skin, and a great warmth filled him. She picked up on his thoughts and let her

fingers trail down his shoulder as she kept reading. “It sounds like the greatest repository of

slan knowledge in the world. Look here.” She pointed. “He says it includes machinery and

stored energy sources dating all the way back to the time of Samuel Lann himself.”

“Maybe that’s where the other slans are hiding. We could sure use their help. That place

could be the key!” He looked up at her, suddenly frowning. “But now I’ve lost my father’s

disintegrator weapon, thanks to Petty. My father left it for me. He considered it his greatest,

most dangerous weapon. With the tendrilless taking over the Earth, we have a huge fight ahead

of us. We’ll need every advantage we can get.”

“Can you build another one? I’ll help—”

“The technology is beyond even me, and my father didn’t leave the designs. He considered

the weapon to be too deadly for anyone but his own son. It could have been our greatest

advantage.” He squeezed her hand.

“No, Jommy.
We ourselves
are the greatest advantage. The disintegrator was destroyed along

with the palace. You’ll have to learn to do without it.”

He caught his breath as an idea occurred to him. “Not necessarily. I placed a locator tag on

the weapon.” He gestured to the metal cabinet against the wall. “I can modify some of this

equipment to pick up the signal. I could easily trace it, even if it’s buried in the rubble of the

palace. If I find the disintegrator, then we can hold our own—and take back the world.”

She looked at him puzzled, not sure what he meant. Her tendrils waved in the air.

“I’m going back to the city. I intend to retrieve it, no matter what it takes.”

«
^
»

The last of the Samuel Lann records were a hodge-podge of media reports and news items.

Wanting to know more, to know
everything
, Anthea viewed them all, drinking in the

horrifying details.

One clip blared that the dangerous Dr. Lann had escaped from custody and interrogation.

A squat, angry-looking man spoke to the reporter, “Our security is tight, but his mutants

possess abilities against which we have no defenses. It’s clear to me that Dr. Lann’s own

corrupted children were involved in the breakout. They twisted our minds, hypnotized us so

they could free their father.” He sounded quite indignant.

“This proves two things. First, this implies that Dr. Lann is indeed guilty of everything we

suspect him of doing. If he had nothing to hide, as he insists, why would he escape? Second,”

the man pointed now at the camera, “it proves that these slans are a genuine threat. Look what

happened here! With such mind powers, they could walk into any home, rob our families,

assault our wives, kidnap—or even
mutate
—our children! Be afraid of them. We should all be

very afraid.”

The next clip showed a large building completely engulfed in flames. Fire vehicles and

army troops had surrounded the structure, but did nothing to quench the blaze. The

emergency personnel stood back and watched, waited, like predators. They didn’t seem to be

there to help.

Finally, a lone man broke out of the doors and ran away from the blazing laboratory. His

clothes were on fire. He waved his hands, screaming. Anthea recognized Dr. Lann himself.

Instead of helping him, though, the soldiers raised their rifles and shot him in full view of

everyone. Lann’s body jittered as a dozen bullets struck him full in the chest. Then he collapsed

to the pavement.

“Do not approach!” a military commander shouted through a bullhorn. “There could still

be some danger.” The cordon remained in place as the uncontrolled fire raged through the

laboratory. No one came within twenty feet of Dr. Lann’s still-smoldering body.

Watching the records, Anthea felt sick.

“His three children are in there,” bellowed the incident commander. “They’re a bigger

threat than the doctor is. If they come out, your orders are to shoot to kill. Don’t give them a

chance to twist your minds. Remember, these are
slans
we’re talking about. They could

hypnotize you into opening fire on a comrade. We can’t risk that. Slans are a danger to all

humanity, and they must be wiped out.”

But the laboratory building continued to be consumed by flames; the roof collapsed,

timbers fell, but no one else emerged. Having seen what had happened to their father, Anthea

couldn’t blame them. The son and daughters of Dr. Lann were doomed, either way.

The brittle tape footage jumped. Anthea could feel her baby’s agitation as he drank in the