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Gelda fiddled with her aide to get some light. Before she found it, the area behind where the bioportal had been lit up brightly. She looked up to see one of the four strangers pointing his aide light at the ground between them. He was tall and thin, wearing a yellow cap and bow tie, and stood a step ahead of the others.
‘Tawawa!’ He delivered the greeting with sincerity and respect. ‘I’m curious about how you came to possess my Universe.’ He seemed simultaneously tired and wired.
Gelda stepped forward. ‘Tawawa! Your Universe?’
‘It was stolen.’
‘How awful!’ Gelda gasped and expressed her consternation with a shake of her head. ‘And now it’s been stolen again!’
‘Tawawa!’ greeted a shorter man with thick lips and pudgy hands. ‘We think it’s the one you had that the Gorgons just took. It’s all very confusing.’
‘It is,’ Gelda agreed. ‘And odd.’
‘Tawawa!’ A lithe, pale short-haired woman stepped into the light next to the tall man. ‘Did you buy it from them and they stole it back?’
‘I absolutely did not buy it from them!’ Gelda assured them. ‘I bought it from the Marvellus Amusements Exchange.’
‘Tawawa!’ Bryll greeted. ‘Were you in that town van?’
‘Tawawa!’ Hazzy said. ‘Or the hovermobile?’
‘Tawawa! There was a hovermobile?’ The petite woman projected dormant energy, as though she was ready for adventure at any given moment. ‘Oh, I’d love to ride in one!’
‘Me, too!’ Gelda said, and the others murmured in agreement. ‘It would be most helpful to know who you are. We are locals. Are you?’
‘We are,’ said the tall man with the cap and bowtie. His darting eyes could be mistaken for nervousness or an expectation that something unexpected was about to happen, but the lips that curled up on the ends indicated a person who liked to be prepared.
‘Tawawa! We’re wasting time.’ The short man tapped the pudgy fingers of both hands together while he spoke, giving the impression of a deep thinker shuffling ideas around in his head as his brain raced towards solutions. ‘We should be on our way to Gorgonia by now.’
‘Tawawa! We don’t know their destination.’ The fourth stranger, a man in a long pink-and-green coat and purple boots emerged from willowy smoke. It dispersed as quickly as it appeared from a long and narrow pipe held with two fingers to the side of his face. ‘And how? We don’t have a portal.’
That caused another round of debating.
‘Evidently we all want to get the Universe back, so how about we work together?’ said the smoker in the coat and boots.
‘You mean form an allegiance?’ Hazzy asked.
‘We should at least discuss the matter,’ said the thinker.
They all agreed a collaboration was just what they needed.
Lanseth introduced himself with a tip of his yellow cap, then introduced his group. Prinn was the petite and upbeat woman, Renoy was the one in the coloured coat smoking the pipe, and Alrick was the fidgeting thinker.
After the Leffels introduced themselves, Gelda realised Tolbert was missing. She turned and spotted him standing between them and the vehicle with his head down. As the two groups got acquainted, Gelda left to find out why he hadn’t joined them and found him caught up tinkering with his tracking device and talking to himself or someone she couldn’t see again. He didn’t even notice her until she spoke. ‘Is something wrong?’
Frowning, he shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. I’m just checking the operating system. The thing is, I set it to maximum distance which should cover Gorgonia, but it’s not moving from here. I can’t find a fault.’
‘Maybe the Gorgons hacked your system?’
‘I doubt they’d have the smarts for that.’ He glanced over at the strangers. ‘The Domers could help.’
‘Who?’
‘The group you’re talking with are massive Cosmo Dome fans who would do anything to protect them. I don’t know them personally, but I know all about them.’
Gelda noticed that he looked at the same spot again. She saw nothing and wondered what he saw or didn’t see.
He put the cover back on the tracker and held it up. ‘It seems I can’t get this working, so we need a Plan B.’
‘Then let’s talk with them.’
When they got there, Renoy stared intently at Tolbert. He puffed at his pipe, blew out blue smoke. The pungent herbs dispersed so that everyone breathed in their pungent aroma. ‘You’re familiar. What’s your name?’
‘I invented Cosmo Dome,’ Tolbert admitted. Before the oohh’s and aahh’s that followed turned into words that would distract all from the task, he added, ‘We clearly have a lot to discuss but not here.’
‘Somewhere safe,’ agreed the one called Prinn.
‘What about that restaurant?’ suggested Gelda who still craved something more than a light snack to appease her growing hunger.
Lanseth’s aide pinged. He consulted it then looked up white-faced. ‘We need to go to the club,’ he said then added, ‘all of us.’
Renoy put the pipe in a metal case and dropped it into his coat pocket. ‘She’s back?’
‘On her way over.’
‘She’s got some explaining to do.’
‘Who’s on her way over to explain what?’ Hazzy enquired.
‘We have intel at our clubhouse. It’s not too far from here,’ was all Lanseth would say.
Tolbert looked up from the tracking device. ‘Does this intel have something to do with the Universe?’
‘I would imagine so,’ said Lanseth.
Prinn gave Gelda the clubhouse address, then the two parties split up back to their vehicles.
‘What the heck is going on?’ Bryll wondered as they piled back in the car.
‘I don’t know, but I guess we’re about to find out,’ said Gelda.
‘Have you got your tracker working again?’ Gelda asked Tolbert as they got in the car.
He shook his head. ‘It’s still giving a local reading.’
‘Then let’s hope this leads somewhere.’
She drove at top speed away from the field.