Oh Rapture, Oh Joy!!
by 
Katherine Bracuti-Jurgens

             “No, too close, Will!” Major Donald West skipped backwards several paces, pointing with his throwing arm, directing the boy he played catch with to field deep.

            Will Robinson danced backwards in the same way, glancing over his shoulder, skirting a large rock, shouting, “This far?”

            “Farther!” Don laughed.

            The boy’s oldest sister, Judy,  rolled her eyes. “Don, he can’t throw that far.”

            They were playing in a natural stone arena, sandy bottomed, littered with scrub brush and the occasional boulder. Don measured the distance with his eyes, “I’m the one who’s throwing.”

            “Yeah, but if he catches it how’ll he throw it back?” She laughed, knowing the Jupiter II’s pilot was showing off for her.

            Don pulled his arm back, “So, he’ll run it in,” and lobbed the ball high in the air, “Pop fly!” He flashed a grin at the girl, “Good exercise. Tire him out.” He bounced his eyebrows up and down.

            The ball sailed high, in a perfect arc, following a trajectory that would find Will ready a good thirty meters distant. “I got it! I got it!” And he did, triumphantly. He stood there, tossing the baseball up and down in his hand, peering at Major West chatting with his sister Judy in the infield. He wrinkled his nose distastefully.

            Judy shook her head, laughing brightly, murmuring, “And you think he’ll go to bed early and we’ll get out of sitting? Why, Major West, did you have other plans for this evening?”

            He flashed a grin and ran in for the returning ball, running past another boulder upon which sat four unseen figures, unseen because they employed a molecular phase shift device, a technology which effectively rendered them invisible to Judy, Will and West. The smallest, slimmest of the four, watched Don intently, noting his playful shoulder roll, easy bare-handed catch, his coordinated reflexes and graceful return pitch. She reached a decision.

            Will loped in as Don threw him a grounder. He imitated Don’s roll, at first snagging the baseball but then bobbling it. The scuffed ball bounced out of his glove, up and away from him. It audibly smacked hard against something unseen before ricocheting back at him. Startled, Will jumped to his feet and looked up over his shoulder as Don appeared beside him. He squinted up at the major, puzzled. “Did you see that?”

            Judy joined them. “See what?”

            Don and Will each looked to her, Don saying, “It looked like the ball hit something.” He pointed to an empty area of sand and grit just a meter away as Will added, “But there’s nothing there.” The boy tilted his head and tossed the ball at the “spot”.

            Smack! Bounce.

            “See?!” cried Will. The baseball rolled back to his dusty boots.

            Judy’s blue eyes widened with faint alarm. She and the rest of her family - including its honorary members; Major West, Doctor Smith and The Robot -  had yet to encounter a cosmic mystery incapable of instigating some audacious fracas if not outright peril to life and limb. “Be careful, Don,” she cautioned as he stepped forward, one hand groping the air. She put her own hands on Will’s shoulders, drawing him to her just as the boy took a step to follow Don. “Aw, Judy,” he complained. She tightened her grip. Frowning.

            Don’s boot kicked up against something and he caught himself before overbalancing forward. He put both hands out, looking like a mime, patting something none of them could see. “There is something here!” he exclaimed, voice rising. The major worked his hands all along the something’s shape, trying to form a picture in his mind. “It’s hard. It’s smooth. Here- there’s a strut here!” His hand closed round the air, palm following up a back swept curve. He stretched but couldn’t reach high enough to follow to its tapered tip. He turned sideways and his hip barked up against another barrier. “And here?” He patted along a horizontal plane. “Bet there’s another on the other side.” His hands followed along the supple lines of a large, porpoise-shaped something. His mouth parted in wonder as he reported, “It feels like a ship!”

            “Boy!” shouted Will, straining forward. He succeeded in breaking free, immediately joining Don in his mime act. Judy stepped closer, still wary. “It couldn’t be. Could it?” She reached a tentative hand, then joined their patting. “Oh! Here’s the tail fin.” She closed her eyes to picture it. “Flat. Triangle shaped.”

            “Let’s try something,” said Don and he choreographed the others, placing everyone at various places so they could measure the ‘ship’s’ dimensions.

            “Will,” Don flipped his hand, “the ball!” Will tossed the baseball. Don caught it and dropped it at what he now marked as the mid-port side, just aft of a ‘wing’. He skirted the area they’d defined, moving to the other side. “Now your glove.” Will chucked the glove up and over and Don dropped it at mid-starboard. “Now you.” Will smiled wide as Don jogged back around and hefted him.

            “Don!” warned Judy as the major boosted  her little brother onto the invisible hull, just forward of the invisible dorsal fin.

            Will crossed his arms and legs yogi style, as he appeared to be floating in mid-air. He laughed, tipping his chin at them in regal fashion.

            Biting his bottom lip happily, Don snagged a stick off a dead bush and quickly traced lines in the sand, following the outline of the ‘wings’. Next he positioned Judy gracefully at the bow, then ran around to take up the stern, holding his arms out wide to mark the tail. “All right!”

            Judy turned to look round; at Don, the glove, the ball and her brother, now  ‘floating’ with his arms stretched like wings. “About seven meters long and almost two wide?” she guessed.

            Don nodded enthusiastically. “With a ten meter delta-wing span and,” he tilted his head, eyes narrowing to where Will hovered, “fuselage, oh... two meters high.” He clapped his hands together. “Wish I could see what this looks like!”

            Judy was eyeing the space dubiously. “I wonder whose it is and how do we know they’re not in there right now? Watching us?”

            Will hastily scrabbled and slid off and the other two reflexively hopped backwards. They caught each others expressions and laughed. “But it is serious,” insisted Judy. “I mean, we don’t know who they are or why they’re here.”

            “Then let us introduce ourselves.”

            They spun at the unfamiliar voice,  female by the tone and timbre.

            She was humanoid, quite fair but with raven hair. She was just a head taller than Will, but obviously adult. She was flanked by two much larger males who were followed by an even bigger third. She wore a space black, curve hugging flightsuit, spangled with tiny diamonds, like stars. The men wore plain black jumpsuits. Looking from the group to  Don, Judy saw the muscles in his jaw immediately tense, saw him assessing the approaching strangers, quietly sizing up the other men, no doubt calculating the distance to their waiting chariot.

            The foursome reached them as Judy and Don drew together in front of Will, who immediately popped back out at Don’s elbow, curiously eyeing the strangers. “Is that your ship?” Will asked.

            The woman smiled approvingly, nodding at him. “Yes, very clever of you to recognize it as such.”

            “Don figured it out,” admitted Will, both curious and disconcerted for the woman’s eyes were vivid blue where they should be white, and deepest black where they might ordinarily be blue. He looked away, flustered.

            Though her frame was diminutive, it harbored a smoky contralto. She pitched it at Don, “Very clever.”

            He fumbled for a reply. Judy tensed, folding her arms. “Why have you hidden it? Who are you and where did you come from?” Her pinched inflection caused both Don and Will to look round at her but Judy’s eyes were on the slinky stranger.

            The alien woman smiled slyly and walked by Don so that her hip bumped him as she passed. She walked round her invisible craft till she stood at its bow, then nonchalantly aimed an index finger at it. She cocked her thumb as though she were  a child pointing a pretend gun - made a soft popping sound with her lips - and the invisible ship became visible.

            Don drew in his breath, “Sweet.” He forgot all about the honor guard.

            “Wow!” cried Will. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she Don?”

            Don blushed,  not sure where to look.

            Judy’s jaw ground and her stormy blue eyes followed the woman who was sashaying round the scarlet rocket, sliding one finger along its racy lines, showing off her prize and joy. “Yes, my rapture, my beautiful- ” she opened her hand to the ship, introducing them, “ -Lamia.”

            Judy watched the performance, and persisted, “You still haven’t answered my question.”

            The woman continued circling her ship, face slanting, eyelashes drooping in a seductive way. “Which one?”

            Judy’s tone brooked no nonsense. “Why are you here?”

            The woman paused, straightening her head,  looking at Don. “Ah, the unspoken question.”

            Judy called nervously, “Don.”

            He prized his eyes from the trim little craft. “Huh? Ah, yeah,” he blinked at the alien woman. “Why are you here?”

            Will was taking everything in with great curiosity. Unlike Don, he hadn’t forgotten the large men. He watched them take a step up behind the major as Don repeated Judy’s question. “Uh, Don?” he stuttered, but no one was paying attention to him.

            Don covetously admired the firecracker. “It’s for reconnaissance, isn’t it? Where’s your main ship?”

            Judy glared at him. That wasn’t the course she wanted the questioning to take.

            “In orbit.” The woman supplied coordinates. “We’ve been here for several days. Conducting analyses, scouting possibilities.”

            Don frowned suddenly. “Then your mother-ship’s cloaked, too.” He looked a little more concerned, to Judy’s relief. “Or we would have picked you up on radar.”

            The woman conceded that. “We prefer to make unobtrusive observations.” She held out her hand, “My name is Mahreeda.”

            Don nodded shortly, taking her hand. “Don.” Will gave a little wave, “Will.” Judy didn’t offer her name, or her hand, instead she tipped her chin, indicating Mahreeda’s escort. “And who are they?”

            Mahreeda smiled, “They don’t have names.”

            The three men nodded back at Judy. Will shifted uncomfortably. Don’s eyes still followed the lines of the beautiful gig, sparkling in the afternoon sun, as he reluctantly withdrew, “Well, we should be getting back to-”

            “To your flying saucer.” Mahreeda languorously lounged back against a red wing, voice laced with a trace of pity? Or condescension? Judy couldn’t decide which but bristled either way. Her gut-level enmity curled tighter as she noticed a shadow of discomfort cross Don’s face. “It’s a good ship,” he said.

            “Yeah, the Jupiter’s a good ship.” repeated Will. His mouth twisted as he held his hands out, “But it’s nothing like this.”

            Mahreeda straightened, as though an idea had just now occurred. “I would like to see your ship. It’s only fair. I’ve shown you mine.”

            “You’ve shown us your dingy,” rejoined Judy.

            Mahreeda ignored her, slipping her arm round Don’s, guiding him toward her cockpit. “So much can be taken from another’s interpretation of flight.” She reached up and stroked the cockpit’s bulging hatch until it opened, spreading like a rose.

            “I thought the laws of flight are universal,” cut in Will.

            Mahreeda gifted him with another of her cryptic smiles. “The dynamics, the physics, perhaps.” She watched Don unsuccessfully peering into the Lamia’s darkened cockpit. “It’s what each does with flight, how each takes wing,” she dug one scarlet tipped fingernail along the line of the major’s shoulder, effectively turning him toward her again,  “that interests me.”

            Judy coughed. “Obvious-lee.”

            Mahreeda employed Don to boost her into her cockpit. She leaned out a moment, wiggling her finger in a beckoning way. It was all Don could do to stop himself from stepping forward and just as he might have committed that grave embarrassment he heard the three men approaching from behind. Judy tensed - certain all her suspicions were about to prove true - and watched another hatch dilate behind the craft’s port wing. The men filed into the cargo area and the hatch sealed without incident.

            Mahreeda laughed, “See you there,”  and closed up her ship.

            Don grabbed Judy and Will, all three back peddling, ready to duck from a blast of heat, sound and sand.  But Mahreeda’s craft lifted as though it were a feather lofted by a whisper. Both Don and Will’s mouths slid open as the ship hovered, pointed her nose sunward, seemed to compress for a moment, then sprang upwards like a courser. “wow.” breathed Will. Don simply nodded, mouth hanging open.

            “Don, slow down!” warned Judy, hanging onto the edge of her seat for dear life.

            “Look!” cried Will, “There she is!” and he pushed his face between Don’s and Judy’s. He was straddling the chariot’s center scope, baseball in gloved hand, excitedly following Mahreeda’s aerobatics through their windshield.

            “Look!” cried Judy, as Don momentarily veered toward a rock, his eyes trained on the sky instead of their well worn path. “Don.” she growled through gritted teeth.

            “Oh, boy, that is so sweet,” crowed Will. Mahreeda was hot-dogging between a series of rusty-hued mesas. She tipped on a wing, rocketing sideways through a narrow pass.

            Don licked his bottom lip, then almost bit down through it as he jounced them over a series of ruts.

            Judy regained her seat, eyeing him coldly. “You do know father will kill you if you crack the drive shaft. And you do know she’s only flying that way to - Don!”

            “I see it,” he complained, swerving round a pot hole.

            A comet streaked high over the humble disk that was the Jupiter II. Penny Robinson wonderingly pointed it out to her parents, John and Maureen, as all three finished loading their gear into overstuffed backpacks. The parents had intended to take their youngest daughter, a budding naturalist, on a moonlight hike. Now as the sun began to set in the south, they sighed at each other, wondering what new chaos the comet might portend.

            As though on cue, Dr. Zachary Smith came rushing down the Jupiter II’s gangway, covering his gray head and crying, “Meteors and asteroids! Fire up that infernal force field before we all perish!”

            Penny burst out laughing. “Doctor Smith!”

            Maureen rolled her eyes and hopefully continued packing.

            John shook his head, “Really Doctor, I didn’t know one spark constituted a meteor barrage.”

            Penny pointed past her father’s broad shoulder. “It isn’t a spark, Dad.” He started to turn as she exhaled the words, “It’s a ship.” She clasped her hands together, “It’s beautiful. Oh look at it!”

            Maureen took a step closer to Penny and Smith took a step backwards up the ramp. John shifted and peered as the tightest, tautest, neatest little sloop he had ever seen in his life loop the looped high in the sky. All four watched, mesmerized, as it performed a final barrel roll, then settled into a glide path. They took yet another step back, Maureen murmuring, “John?”, as the path was leading straight toward their camp.

            “What’s that?” asked Penny, turning her head toward a rumbling in the east. “Oh, the chariot.”  Her head snapped back round in time to see the ‘comet’ touch down just 20 meters away.

            All eyes were ahead, though their ears registered the sound of the chariot’s doors rolling open - one slamming shut, then hurried footfalls as Don and Will loped over. Judy approached more slowly, shaking out the aches of their bone jarring race.

            Maureen took in her eldest daughter’s stony expression, noticed she chose to stand next to her and well away from Don. Then she found herself chastising, “Will, please.” He’d just stepped on her foot, dancing and bouncing excitedly like a boy who’d found pirate’s treasure, hanging onto Don’s elbow one minute, pointing the ship out to his dad the next. Maureen was also aware of Smith taking a tentative step back down the ramp, drawing closer to them, obviously intrigued by the flashy ship, or more likely whatever secrets it held.

            John called over his shoulder, “Get the robot, Doctor.”

            Smith sniffed at the order, but as the ship popped a hatch and deployed three of the burliest looking chaps he’d ever seen, he decided he might prefer the robot’s company after all. He quickly scampered back into the ship.

            The three men stood all in a row, folding their arms across their massive chests. The Robinsons shifted, peering. Judy’s eyes slipped to Don, who stood, silently watching. And then the cockpit blossomed.

            First one shapely leg and then another can-canned over the side as Mahreeda flipped like an acrobat out of her ship.

            Maureen’s mouth quirked into a crooked smirk, “Oh, I see.” Judy looked quickly to her. “Mother?” Maureen slowly shook her head, then tipped her face up as Mahreeda stalked toward them.

            Mahreeda leaned against the Jupiter’s astrogator, sliding one hand along its rim. “Nice dome.” It was the only nice thing she could think to say.  “But cables? Diodes and hand controls?” She spilled a bubbly laugh. “Oh, I see. Going for the retro look.”  She pulled her hand away, rubbing thumb and index finger together before flicking something invisible. She pushed completely away from the astrogator, pacing among the Robinsons, Dr. Smith and West. “Such a-” she searched for just the right word, wrinkled her nose at Maureen, “snug little saucer. A domestic dromond.”

            John and Don stiffened. A tight smile played round Maureen’s mouth, but she withheld comment.

            “‘Drum-end’?” asked Penny.

            Smith tipped his chin up. He’d been watching, everything and everyone, intently, standing not too far from the control room’s lift. The robot,  processing, chittering and occasionally beeping, rested reassuringly close by. “Dromond, dear,” supplied Smith. “A sort of ship. Byzantine.”

            Penny blinked at him. “Bizz?”

            Smith clucked and shook his head, seeking consensus with their lovely visitor. “Mediaeval.”

            Mahreeda batted a veil of eyelashes at the doctor and walked on to John. “Delightful tour,” she said, then added, “How long have you been grounded?” as she stopped in front of Don.

            John Robinson answered succinctly, increasingly impatient with their imperious visitor, but still holding out hope that she, or perhaps the people she claimed to have stationed aboard her orbiting ship, might provide some useful navigational data, instrument upgrades, or at the least, share whatever information they’d gained while conducting their orbital surveys. He explained the manner of their arrival on this less than hospitable world, the challenges they’d overcome, the obstacles they continued to contend with.

            “That long,” grieved Mahreeda. She brushed past Don, only to stop again, this time in front of Will and Penny.

            They had sequestered themselves near the comm unit. Mahreeda did not smile at them, in fact, her expression, only for the children, was rather cold and dead. Penny fidgeted, feeling odd to stand eye level to a grown up. For once Will stood at a loss for words.

            Mahreeda turned on her pointed heel ending up by the Jupiter’s flight controls. If looks could kill, Judy’s would have slayed the alien for the way she dismissed the cheerfully blinking consoles with one contemptuous sniff.

            Mahreeda swiped her palms together, as though wiping away a wasted hour. “Now, who would like to see my ship?”

            John looked her dead in the eye. “The one out there?” He gave her a charming smile. “Or the one cloaked in orbit?”

            Mahreeda pouted and pointed out a green blip which had just appeared on the flight panel’s radar screen. “Oh, I’ve de-cloaked it. No need for secret keeping, now that we’ve introduced ourselves.”

            John leaned over the scope and sure enough it pinged and marked the coordinates she had already given the major. Don confirmed the readings, adding, “Looks big.”

            “Yes.” She offered no further details, simply proceeded toward her objective. “I meant, would you like a closer look at my,” her eyes pinned Judy, “dingy.”

            “Not particularly,” said Judy and Maureen together.

            “Well I would,” affirmed Don. “Me, too!” piped up Will, pushing past Penny who sneered at him distastefully. John considered a moment, “So would I.” Smith stepped forward as well, being sure the robot followed. As they exited the hatch, Don remarked in ironic deadpan, “Since when are you interested in alien technology, Doctor?”

            “When it presents itself in such provocative little packages, Major.”

            Don snorted, “Dream on, Smith,” and jogged off to catch up with John.

            Smith watched him go, contemptuously. “Oh, I do, Major. All the time. Of Earth. And of pretty little ships that just might take me there.” He smacked the robot’s casing. “Out of the way, Ninny!” And hurried to catch up with the others.

            Judy slammed a large sauce pot onto the outdoor cooktop. “Do you know what the truly infuriating thing about this outdoor galley is?”

            Penny was sitting where she shouldn’t be, on the end of the picnic table, swinging her legs beneath her and munching on a purple carrot. “No, what?”

            Judy stirred the pot with enough force to slosh its contents. Sauce and girl sizzled, “Not enough pots to bang around!”

            “Looks like you’re doing all right to me,” Penny crunched around a noisy mouthful. “Besides,” she bit her carrot savagely, “I’m the one who should be mad.”

            Judy paused in her churning, eyes narrowing on her younger sister. “Oh yes, and why is that, Penny?”

            Penny glared to where their father was inspecting Mahreeda’s ship. “I was supposed to go hiking tonight, just me and mom and dad.” She held her carrot-free hand out, “Until that showed uP.” She popped her “p” and made a point of flicking an invisible something from between her thumb and index finger.

            Judy muttered, “Yes, well I had other plans for this evening, too.”

            “joo-dee’s-jea-lous,” Penny sing-songed in a low voice. Not low enough for her arriving mother to miss.

            Maureen set a large salad bowl on the table, pushing it forward to send Penny over the edge. “Off!” To Judy, she said, “Donald sees right through that -” she glanced at Penny and continued, “-that woman. Don’s eyes are only for her ship, dear.”

            All three turned, watching the men ogling the courser’s tidy aft.

            “Well, I think he wants to give it go,” said Penny, speculatively and loudly snapping off the last bite of her carrot.

            Maureen and Judy turned, staring at her.

            “Well isn’t that what pilots do?” She rolled her eyes and shook her head at their continued stares. “Fly ships?”

            Judy sighed, considering the truth of that. She dropped her gaze to the pot, allowing a small measure of guilt.

            Maureen said to the air, “Of course it is, dear.”

            Judy tipped the spoon toward her mother’s side of the pot. “Mother? Would you mind?”

            Maureen smiled, “Go on,” and accepted the spoon. She collared  Penny before the younger girl could trot after her sister. “And you go on and set the table.”

            Penny heaved another eye rolling, eternal sigh.

            Judy slowed her pace as she approached, listening to the murmuring of the duly impressed men. Don was kneeling on a wing and bent half inside the cockpit. Her father was leaning in from the other side while Will and Smith tilted and popped up on tip-toes, eager for their turn. Judy noted the three odd men had yet to stir from their posts.

            Except for their eyes. In contrast to Mahreeda’s, their eyes were blue on black. Six blue orbs shifted, following Judy as she kept the robot between herself and their position.

            She came up tentatively beside Don, thought twice about knocking on the hull, then settled for leaning against the wing. ‘Harlot-red,’ she thought. ‘Scarlet-harlot red, like cheap lipstick.’ She stared off into the pinking horizon, listening to Don’s voice echoing in Mahreeda’s cockpit, commenting on its design, its ‘interface’ systems. She straightened a little, listening closer, hearing that edge creep into his voice, the one that told her he was having doubts about something.

            “But what’s wrong with that, Don?” Will’s voice now, ringing with disappointment. He stood on the other wing, squeezed in between his father and the cockpit’s open hatch.

            Don pulled out, straightening, “Oh, hi, Judy. I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with it, Will.” He casually hopped down and scratched the back of his head, looking back up at the boy. “I said I’m not sure it’s for me.”

            “What isn’t?” asked Judy, feeling lighter by the minute.

            Smith scoffed from the ground. “All this marvelous new technology, Miss Judy. Your Major West isn’t up to it.”

            Don made a sour face at him, but directed his clarification at the reemerging Mahreeda. He held his arm out to her, helping her dismount.

            “I mean - it seems to interface directly into your nervous system? Your reactions and reflexes. Where you look is where you fly?”

            Dr. Smith huffed, “Oh, well that is a simplistic way of putting it.”

            Don ignored him, peering into Mahreeda’s disarming, gimlet eyes. “Are you flying the ship or is the ship flying you?”

            “A little of each.” She opened her hand to the cockpit. “You won’t know until you give it a try.”

            Will’s eyes brightened. “yesss.” John, Smith and Judy watched Don who had - until it was actually handed to him - been clearly lusting for such an offer.

            He chewed his lip, stroking the ship’s sanguine hull. ‘Lamia ?’  He didn’t like the name. “I -” he pursed his lips. He wanted to, but his instincts were warning him off.

            Heavy footsteps started toward the group but Mahreeda halted them with an inconspicuous wave. That same hand continued in a circle, until it had slipped up under Don’s arm, squeezing ever so slightly, with a lifting movement. “Oh, you know you want to.”

            “He said he isn’t interested,” answered Judy, touching Don’s other arm.

            “No I didn’t,” said Don. “I said I wasn’t sure.” He shrugged out of both their grasps but before he knew it, found himself centering his boot in the middle of Mahreeda’s clasped hands - and very startled to be boosted with enough strength by the compact alien to clear her cockpit’s petaled lip, and now descend into its soft, dark seat.

            ‘And here I am.’ Don’s eyes skittered over the cockpit’s utterly alien displays, its liquidy forward screen. There was a complete absence of buttons, toggles and dials, only a pair of needles, situated starboard and port, their tips poised temple-level to his head. He just sat there, thoroughly at a loss, not sure where to put his hands. There wasn’t anywhere to put them. “But,” he called upwards, “isn’t the interface specific to your physiology?”

            “Neurophysiology,” Smith’s voice floated in, dry, lazy.

            Don shifted in the luxurious seat, still looking up. Open sky poured down on him. The first stars of the evening were twinkling through high cirrus clouds. It would be something to shred those clouds, shoot past the moon, in a ship like this. “But -” he’d caught site of those needles again, waiting near the corners of his eyes.

            He heard John come to the rescue, recruiting the robot’s input.

            The robot scanned the ship, the pilot-interface - and ran a comparative analysis of its mechanisms and human neurophysiological makeup. He processed the data in a matter of seconds, during which time Mahreeda’s stance grew rigid.

            Dr. Smith could grow very impatient in a matter of seconds. “Have you completed your analysis you lubberly lout?!”

            The robot answered, “Yes.”

            “Then report it you dilatory dunderhead!”

            “Results inconclusive.”

            “Explain.” Smith and Will plied.

            John, Mahreeda and Judy looked to the robot and Don listened intently as his mellow voice continued, “The interface-mechanism poses no immediate risk to human neurophysiology.”

            Don heard John’s voice lead, “No immediate risk?”

            “After an indeterminate period the interface will...”

            The words that mattered to Don dropped in like bombletts, “- progressive inversion - cyberkinetic reflux - subsume instincts - eventual permanent impairment of pilot’s -”

            Don hoisted himself up and out of the cockpit before the robot finished his report. He backed away from the Lamia as though it were a cobra poised to strike him. He shook his head at Mahreeda, dryly refusing, “Thanks anyway.”

            For someone so short, Mahreeda still managed to look down her nose at them all. “Perhaps your robot’s analysis holds true,” she pointedly looked Don up and down, “for less accomplished pilots.”

            Dr. Smith broke into a beatific grin, which faded as he saw the major was not put out by the haughty put down.

            Will was. “Don’s an awesome pilot!” he protested. “He landed us all in one piece without retro rockets or a landing strip or anything!”

            Smith found somewhere else to look. John took Mahreeda by the elbow, pointedly suggesting, “It’s been an interesting visit. But I’m sure you’ll need to head back to your mother-ship before you miss your launch window.”

            There was a tense moment as Mahreeda stared up at him. Those men were there for something after all. Whatever it was, she seemed willing to bide her time. She turned on Don again, all voluptitudeness tempter - “Perhaps after you’ve slept on it.” She patted his chest. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

            Don shook his head, sneering at her now, “I wouldn’t bother.”

            “But you’re worth the bother, my rapture.” And she bade him to boost her aboard once more. Her guard advanced, prepared to embark, but Mahreeda turned to them before sealing her cockpit, “I said, I’ll be back.”

            The three took one step back in unison, folding their arms, slitting their eyes and seeming to shut down for the evening.

            Judy whispered to Don, “Are they men or machines?”

            “A little of each,” Don bet, and he and the Robinsons, Smith and the Robot, watched Mahreeda launch into the night.

* * *

            Don’s face clouded and he smacked his fist on the dinner table. “Look, I understand why Will’s disappointed, but why do you care so much? What do you care if I fly it or not?”

            “Because the interface may work both ways, Major.” Smith daintily drained his tea cup. “‘A little of each’, that’s what that intriguing minx Mahreeda said. While it’s tapping into your animal reflexes,” he waited out Don’s predictable glare, “you may be able to infiltrate its data base.” The others gaped at him and he continued, buoyed by their attention, “You may be able to access their navigational records -”

            Don took a deep, ‘here-we-go-again’ breath, lifting his face to the stars. Judy smiled, incredulous, and shook her head beside him.

            Dr. Smith forged ahead, appealing to them all, “- and chart a course for Earth!”

            Don tossed his chin at John, opening a ‘can you believe this idiot?’ hand toward Smith. “You’re always one step ahead, aren’t you, Doctor?” He tapped his own head. “You’ve got it all planned out.”

            Will fidgeted. “Sounds like a good plan.”

            Don blinked at him. Maureen did, too. Sometimes it really did worry her, how much her young son and the ‘good’ doctor thought alike. “Time for bed, Will.”

            He made a face but didn’t move, because Don was leaning across the table again, jabbing his finger toward Smith. “A plan that just might fry my- ”

            “Inconclusive!” rallied Smith.

            “No, a matter of time,” corrected John. “An ‘indeterminate’ amount of time. Why, it could take hold within minutes!”

            “Minutes, hours or days,” interjected Dr. Smith. “Really, I was standing quite near the robot, you know.”

            “Then you also know it’s a risk that isn’t worth taking,” snapped John. And then to his son, “Go to bed, Will!”

            The boy harrumphed, but did as he was told, shooting a look at Don as he left.

            Smith intercepted it, off course, and now patted Penny’s shoulder. “Think of the children, Major. Any useable information you gather- tut-” he held his hand up, forestalling Don’s impending explosion, “may lead to a safer harbor, whether it be Earth,” his voice scathed and dropped an octave, “ -or your beloved Alpha Centauri.” Don shifted, going red in the face, but settled back down again.

            Maureen watched him for a thoughtful moment, then, “Penny, you too. Off to bed.”

            Penny wriggled out from under Dr. Smith’s hand and turned her kind brown eyes on Don, melting him on the spot. “I don’t think you should fly the alien ship, Don. Not if you don’t think you should.”

            He swallowed and looked down, paying a good deal of attention to folding his napkin, but listening to her say, “Goodnight, everybody,” as she skipped away.

            “Yes, have a ‘good’ night, Penny dear,” called Smith, then with calculated softness, “as a poor little castaway,” he gave up a sigh for the ages, “destined ,” his voice hardened, “to spend another dreary night on this desolate, desert isle in space -”

            Don glowered. John warned, “Smith...”

            Smith continued unrepentant, “- all because our ordinarily intrepid pilot here,” he sighted on Don through narrowed eyes, “-has come down with a nasty case of pre-flight -”

            “And a good night to you, Doctor Smith!” insisted John, summarily dismissing the doctor from the table.

            “-jitters!” Smith harrumphed much as Will had, and like Will, knew when not to call John Robinson’s bluff. “Bah!” He stomped off.

            Don flipped his napkin in the air, blowing a long suffering sigh.

            Maureen absently scraped the plates, watching Don and Judy walk off, Judy slipping her hand into his as they rounded the saucer. She handed the stack to her husband, murmuring, “He’s considering it, you know. Did you see his face?”

            John piled the dinner service onto a tray. “I did.” He hefted the tray with a decisive air. “But he’s not going to fly that ship.”

            Maureen nodded, but she didn’t look very reassured. Her blue eyes slipped to Mahreeda’s associates. “And what are they going to do come morning? Are you sure they’re standing behind the force field?”

            John looked at the solemn trio, and then to the humming deflector array. “Yes, darling.” He turned back to his wife, kissed her tenderly, “but I’ll sleep better knowing the robot’s on guard.”

            And he was, dome lights blinking and chittering, stolidly monitoring the aliens from his post near the deflector. During his previous scans he had discovered biomechanical markers which indicated the three had once served as pilots aboard Mahreeda’s vessel. Nevertheless , until one of his humans prompted him to share the information, it would stay locked within his processors.

* * *

            “Morning,” Will mumbled to Dr. Smith, trodding sleepily to the galley’s stocks of cereal and milk substitutes.

            “Yes, it is,” acknowledged the doctor, gazing through the lower deck’s viewshields, scanning the dawn horizon for redemption and rocket ships. He picked up the previous evening’s debate as though in the middle of a testy sentence. “You’d think with that intractable, hard head of his he would be the ideal candidate. Able to hold out for days.”

            Will paused in his bowl filling, “You mean Don? Against the alien ship’s systems?”

            Smith half turned, “Who else?” then added in a low growl, “That inflexible ingrate.” He looked once more to the sky. And after a time, startled Will with an explosive “Bah!” When he saw the boy was looking more properly alert, he repeated, “Bah, I say. And who needs him. Why I could fly that bottle rocket with my hands tied behind my back.” His voice dropped to a conspiring, patronizing drawl, “It isn’t rocket science you know.”

            Will looked at him for a steady ten seconds. “Yes, it is.” He took his seat, toying with his spoon, indifferently poking the same old “space flakes” floating in the same old yellowish “space milk”.  “And Don says that’s how you fly it, without any hands.” He talked around a soggy mouthful. “That’s why he doesn’t want to.”

            “Talk-” Dr. Smith tisked at himself, “I mean chew with your mouth shut, William.”

            Will chewed and gulped. “Yes, sir.”

            Smith continued, “He doesn’t want to because he’s afraid.”

            Will scowled and thumped his spoon against his pajamaed chest. “Well I’m not afraid. I bet I could fly it without -” he tried to remember what Don had tried to explain to him, “without that inverse reflex destroying stuff.”

            Smith sniffed. “Maybe you could maybe you couldn’t; someday perhaps, but not today. Your feet wouldn’t reach the pedals. Or whatever it uses. Nor your moppet head its interface unit.”

            Will bridled at the term moppet, but conceded Smith’s point. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.” A new expression followed on his resignation, half taunt half suggestion. “Say, why don’t you fly it then?” He dipped his spoon in his bowl, gave it a twist, “If you’re not afraid.” He tilted his head, blinking innocently.

            Smith stiffened, then looked quickly left to right, “Afraid?” He dropped his voice to a more manly timbre, “I’m not afraid.” He tipped his chin at the boy. “I’ll have none of that inverse ratio nonsense. Cyberkinetic subsumption, indeed!” He tapped his head, assuring, “A will as powerful as mine is sure to swamp that vixen’s craft, not the other way around. Minutes, hours, days? Hah! Days, months, years in my case.” He nodded, the epitome of self-delusion. “I assure you, young William, time enough to access Mahreeda’s systems and tap our course for Earth!”

            Will gave him a smart nod, pleased and determined to see one of their number fly that red ship. “Then why don’t you? Why don’t you right now?” His eyes had shifted to the window. “Mahreeda’s back.”

            “She is!?” Smith twisted to look, just in time to see a streak of scarlet tear the sky. He swallowed dryly. “She is.” Will dropped his spoon with a clatter and scrabbled away from the breakfast table, snatching Smith’s hand and leading the foot dragging doctor to the lift.  “Come on Dr. Smith!”

            “Come on, Dr. Smith!” Will was still pulling Smith by the hand, the doctor’s pace slowing with each reluctant step down the Jupiter’s  ramp. Another tug and they found themselves coming up short against John Robinson’s back. Maureen was there, too, her hands on Penny’s shoulders. Penny half turned, scoffing at Will, “Knew you stayed up too late. Look at you, still in your pajamas.”

            Will scrunched up his face. “Who could sleep with Judy and Don arguing all night?” He grunted and resumed pushing Smith forward from behind. “Look, Dr. Smith, she’s only just landed.”

            Smith withstood Will’s buffeting, rocking slightly, smiling weakly as John briefly acknowledged him-

            -but only long enough to say to all of them, “Stay here.” He walked to the end of the ramp, watching Mahreeda’s cockpit open.

            “Dr. Smith!” Will leaned his meager weight unsuccessfully into the doctor’s back as Smith swatted backwards, insisting, “William, your father ordered us to stay put.”

            Maureen hissed at both of them. She peeked over her shoulder, into the ship. She glanced about, scanning their camp. Still no sign of Judy or Don. She looked ahead again, beyond the deflector array, and suppressed a gasp as the three men finally unfolded their arms. The robot’s dome rose on its stalk and she heard his claws clack open and shut.

            Dr. Smith swatted Will once more. “William, stop at once. On your toes now.” The boy gave in, gave up and dejectedly stepped forward, squeezing in between Smith and Penny. He frowned, more appropriately concerned as he watched the men walk forward in unison. They stopped just a meter from the deflector. His eyes widened as they took one more step forward, halting centimeters from his robot. “Mom?” He craned his neck, staring up at her.

            But she was staring ahead, beyond her husband, the robot and the men, watching Mahreeda now perched on the lip of her cockpit, one knee drawn up against her breasts, the other leg stretched out in front of her, booted foot drawing circles in the air.

            Mahreeda spread her hands behind her and tipped her face to the sky, laughing. Then she looked straight ahead at them all, and said, “Fine morning. Perfect flying weather.” She brought one hand up and snapped her fingers with a wrist twisting flourish.

            The men stepped forward and on through the force field, which flared, flashed green, then died along with the humming of its deflector. Two of the men continued advancing while the third paused only long enough to push the fingers of his right hand into the robot’s ventral slot. At the same time, his left hand reached through the protective electrostatic net the robot had drawn around himself, grabbed his stalk, and popped his dome like a cork. A frenzy of electricity outlined both their forms, alien and robot, but when it died the poor robot stood at a sad tilt, concertina arms hanging flaccidly toward the ground.

            “NO!” Will cried but was caught by his mother and Smith, each grabbing one of his arms, pulling him firmly against their bodies, Smith trying to hold the boy and hide behind him at the same time. Penny stood a little apart from their struggles, rigid with fear, shaking her head as the third man caught up to the first two - all three now closing on her father. “Dad?!”

            John took a hasty step backwards, calling over his shoulder, “Everybody into the ship!” But they froze as he said it, for the men had lifted their right arms toward the family, pointing their thick fingers in that mindless and menacing way which experience told John Robinson laser bolts were about to let fly.

            “I’ll fly it.” Don came up behind Mahreeda’s ship, from the other side of the ruined deflector array. Judy followed a short distance behind, looking tense, furious and frightened.

            Mahreeda unceremoniously hopped down from her ship. “I knew you would.”

            Don took both of Judy’s hands in his, squeezed them lightly, kissed her, then tipped his head toward the Jupiter. “Go on. I’ll be okay.”

            Judy’s eyes were glistening. She searched his face and urged, “Keep your wits about you.”

            He smiled then laughed and promised he would. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He shrugged. “Might even be fun.” But he looked very young and scared as he looked to the red ship, then back at her once more. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of anything more to say. She nodded bravely, kissed him once more, then turned and ran to join her parents.

            ‘Progressive inversion - cyberkinetic reflux - subsume instincts - eventual permanent impairment of pilot’s ability to -’ “Fly,” breathed Don. He swallowed nervously as he stared wide-eyed at the cockpit’s aqueous blue screen. Its cold light bathed his face, tinted his hands, which rested heavily on his thighs. He tipped his face up as the hatch contracted above him, sealing him in with a quiet, disconcerting thunk. He was aware of breathing too rapidly, sitting in the eerie blue light, feeling his heart knocking through his chest. He winced as a high-pitched whine assailed his ears, pierced right through his skull. He gritted his teeth as the whine attained a higher pitch, its tempo increasing in harmonic tandem with the rotation of the two needles drilling toward his temples. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his fists, as he felt a cold sensation, like ice cubes, burning - then melting instantly as the needles did not after all penetrate, yet stopped a hair’s breath from his skin. He believed.

            Judy melted into her parents, against her father’s chest, feeling his arms encircle her shoulders. She turned, though, determined to see this through. Penny stood very close by, tugging her sleeve. Will stood beside Smith, sniffling occasionally and raggedly sighing. That’s when Judy noticed the robot’s wretched state, though she’d just skirted past him to reach her family. She noticed the men as well, still standing with their arms leveled on the Robinsons and Dr. Smith. She searched through her tears, to where Mahreeda waited against a boulder, crossing her arms over her breasts, casually bending one knee so that her boot rested against the rock behind her.

            Mahreeda looked in Judy’s direction. Judy stiffened, standing straight and away from her father, crossing her own arms and returning Mahreeda’s chin toss with one of her own. Mahreeda laughed at her. She stepped forward from the rock and lifted one hand, palm to the sun, and as she lifted it, the red ship rose up from the sand. It hovered for a moment, then pulled back on its haunches and rocketed skyward.

            Will pointed excitedly at the sky. “Look! He’s doing it! Don’s flying the Lamia ! Wow! Look at that! Look at him go! I knew he could do it!”

            As the family followed the major’s aerobatics, Dr. Smith’s expression gradually changed. The name had registered and lodged in his defense mechanisms, nearly tripping his panic circuit. He gulped, seeking to keep his voice level. “The what, boy?”

            “Mahreeda’s ship.” Will looked up at Smith. “That’s what she called it. ‘LAMIA.’”

            Penny considered, wrinkling her nose. “Not a very good name, is it.”             Smith’s face blanched. “No. It isn’t.”

            Maureen recognized the symptoms and pressed him, “What’s wrong Dr. Smith?”

            “Perhaps nothing, for what’s in a name?” ‘Everything,’ he knew. He turned to the waiting Judy. “‘LAMIA’, from Greek and Roman mythology, a blood-sucking witch. A female- ” and his voice did now crack, “ -vampire.” He tisk tisked at the family. “I’m afraid our poor major is doomed. Doomed.”

            She almost connected.

            Judy came within an inch of delivering the sweet satisfaction Don had dreamed of since first laying eyes on the stowaway saboteur, but her fist was caught in mid-flight, trapped by her father’s hand, as surely as Don was snared in a witch’s nightmare.

            “Judy,” exclaimed John and Maureen together.

            “Child!” Smith hastily backed against Maureen as Judy pushed her face, if not her fist, right up to the doctor’s nose.

            “You! You baited him for her.”

            Smith protested, “I never!”

            Judy was spluttering with anger, “You might as well have.” She managed to yank her fist out of her father’s grasp, but only shook her finger at the doctor now. “You baited him. The poor little children and Earth and Alpha Centauri - you -”

            Smith shook his head helplessly, appealing to John and Maureen, appealing to reason, “But if I had known...”

            Judy’s eyes were blue steel. “You would have suggested it anyway.”

            He had no answer for that.

            Maureen looked to the Lamia, watching Don bank her sharply, zoom into a power dive, pull up only to roll out into a long, lazy barrel roll. “Judy. You don’t mean he’s planning to-”

            Judy nodded sharply. “Yes he is.” She took a shakey breath. “I tried talking him out of it all last night. Now that she has him, now that he’s flying it anyway, I know he won’t stop at interfacing with her systems. He’ll try to penetrate her data base. He’ll figure he has nothing to lose. Now that she’s got him this far-”

            And far above their heads...

            “It’s so quiet,” whispered Penny.

            “Dead quiet,” intoned Smith.

            “It looks like it should go screaming by,” continued Penny, “but there’s no sound.”

            “Lots of colors, though,” quavered Will. He’d been looking at his robot again, and stood dragging his sleeve under his nose. “Why’s it changing colors, Dad?”

            John shook his head. “I don’t know, son.” He pursed his lips, watching the porpoising ship pulse through a color shift. “Don’s interfacing with it? It’s drawing its cues from him now? Instead of Mahreeda?”

            And it was true. A myriad of swift colors was sweeping the ship tail fins to nose cone, draining it of red, washing it ocean green-gray, desert ochre; splashing it with fiery sunset hues, now slatey thunderstorm blue.

            Penny sighed wondrously, “It’s so pretty.”

Will tipped his face sideways, following a wicked inverted spin. “How could anything that beautiful be bad for you?”

            Penny  answered, “Dragon-lilies are beautiful, but their nectar can burn you.”

Will agreed absently, “Gotcha-weed is pretty. Pretty dangerous.” He watched the Lamia loop the loop, then flatten out belly up. “But lookit him go.”

            Don rolled wing over wing, intensely exhilarated, awash in spatial awareness. He spiraled, pushing as fast and as high as he could, fearless, utterly absent from his body, unaware of the cockpit or the blue screen or especially the glittering needles, only aware of flying, not of the ship but as the ship. The Lamia’s sensory systems were married to his senses, his instincts and his reflexes - and ship and pilot were enhanced by the union. His sense of time, space and self expanded. Flight control fine tuned into a ruthless ecstasy of precision, a powerful and seductive pleasure.

            Mahreeda advanced on the Jupiter, smiling as she watched their uptipped faces following Lamia’s paces. They reminded her of a clutch of baby-birds, heads uniformly tracking. Except for Judy.

            Something warned Judy to look ahead as Mahreeda walked toward them. She watched the alien step around the robot’s dome as though avoiding treading in something foul.

            “He’s coming in,” said Will, pointing, and sure enough, the closer Mahreeda approached, the lower Lamia flew until Don was volplaning. The ship, scarlet red again, headed straight for them as it had the day before.

            Judy pulled away from the group, running toward the settling ship but not reaching it before its cockpit cycled open. Don vaulted out of the thing, landing just a bit unsteadily but running through his stumble, nearly dashing past Judy in his excitement. He managed to snag her and whirl her back into him with a jarring slam. Boisterously greeting her, he wrapped her in a passionate, breath-steeling hug then dragged her along as he rushed them back to the Jupiter.

            “That was incredible!”

            Mahreeda nodded at him, smiling a very smug, self-satisfied smile of deepest amusement.

            “John!” Don threw his arms up, sending Judy spinning. “It’s not like anything you can imagine!”

            John and Maureen looked to one another, then John chuckled lightly despite the gravity of their doubts because Don’s utterly uncharacteristic and extravagant enthusiasm was that infectious. “Help me imagine it,” he coaxed, and then more seriously, “What happened up there?”

            Don fired off an answer, managing to communicate none of the details but all of the joy.

            Judy was horrified. “No. No, you liked it?”

            Don loosed a euphoric war-whoop.

            “Boiled as an owl,” Dr. Smith commented to the gaping Maureen. He started circling Don. “Well oiled and wired.” He tugged on the major’s lower eyelids and the major didn’t even notice, just kept babbling on, as Smith noted aloud, “Pupils dilated. Face flushed. Respiration’s rapid.” He caught one of Don’s wrists long enough to add, “as is heart rate.” The doctor ducked another expansive arm wave. Mildly entertained but also troubled, he bet that if he took the major’s blood pressure he’d burst the cuff.

            “What’s wrong with him?” Judy whispered tensely. Penny and Will simply watched with their mouths hanging open.

            Smith was certain a thorough scan of Major West’s hypothalamus would find it ‘bathed in norepinephrine, awash in dopamine, agog with phenylethylamine.’  “Flush with pleasure - how soon the crash?” He watched Mahreeda watching Don, captivated, and said, half to himself, “Such sweet treachery. First hyperstimulate the brain’s pleasure center, then bleed it dry of its own neurotransmitters.”

            Maureen stared at the doctor, thoroughly alarmed. But Smith had something on his mind besides the makings of an addiction.

            “Ah, yes, Major,” Dr. Smith laughed along, brightly humoring Don and slapping him on the back. “What a merry flight.” Don beamed at him. “How nice for you,” Smith continued through a gritted smile.

            Lowering his voice and speaking through that same, stiff-lipped grin, the doctor squeezed Don’s shoulder and asked tightly, “But did you manage to infiltrate her systems?” He urged a sober answer with his eyes, nodding slightly.

            “Hell no!” Don said loudly and out of all proportion to Smith’s surreptition. “Totally slipped my mind.” He was beginning to list.

            “You’ve slipped your mind,” Smith grumbled.

            Mahreeda removed Dr. Smith’s hand from Don’s shoulder, snaking her own arm around his waist and giving a little squeeze. “Yes, nicely executed, Major West. A successful qualifying run.”

            Judy’s eyes widened and darted from her father to Mahreeda and Don.

            John stood straighter and demanded, “Qualified for what?”

            Don was shaking his head, looking bewildered and trying unsuccessfully to pry away whatever was caught round his waist. He blinked, dazed, squinting through a fog and watching Mahreeda’s arm blurring into a constricting, black tentacle. “No,” he mumbled, seeking to twist out of the alien’s grasp but only managing to turn them both down the ramp. His eyes met the blank stares of the three men, still pointing. “Don’t your arms ever get tired?” he inquired giddily, causing Penny to stifle a giggle which petered, as Don’s mood swung another ninety degrees.

            “No!” He broke free, but only because she let him.

            ‘Ah,’ thought Smith, ‘now all the “fun”’s washing out of his synapses.’

            Don staggered back up the ramp, looking for Judy, John and Maureen. They caught and steadied him, peering into his paling face, wanting to understand.           “I -” he vigorously shook his head, desperate to clear it. “I flew echoes - their echoes.”

            Dr. Smith watched his wobbly struggles, ‘Prepare for landing- ’ and  chided, “You’re not making any sense, Major.”

            Don appealed to Will, of all people. “They’re still in there.”

            Will, looking uncomfortable, squinted back at Don, also trying to understand. He nodded in sympathy, matching the major’s head movements. “Who is? I don’t get it?”

            “It gets you.” His knees buckled. “Don’t let it get you, Will,” Don warned gravely, frightening Maureen. She looked at her son and her scalp pringled. Was Will plotting to fly the Lamia  ? She wouldn’t put it past him.

            Nor would Mahreeda, who followed the exchange with aborning interest. Which she temporarily aborted. “Your ship’s waiting, Major.”

            “The echoes of the others who flew before,” Don blurted. He pointed out the first man in the row. “That one - he was the barrel roll.” He used John for a ladder, pulling himself up and tipping his chin at the middle man: “Immelmann turn.” He straightened further, clearing his throat, beginning to sound more like himself, “and the third, collided with a deep space probe.”

            Dr. Smith nodded in a detached way. ‘And we have touch down. Yet- natural neurotransmitter functions still blocked?’ He frowned. ‘Or restoring to normal? With West it’s so hard to tell. Unless he flies again. In which case normal functions should dry up and degrade toward psychosis.’

            Don stood shivering violently, racked with adrenaline but fighting off the effects of Mahreeda’s turbulence. “I won’t do it again, Mahreeda.” Judy stepped up behind him, protectively slipping her arms around his shoulders. “I won’t fly the Lamia for you.”

            “But you won’t need to, pet. Here’s your new posting.”

            Judy tightened her grip, stiffening as something blocked out the sun. Everybody looked up. Penny screamed and Smith wailed at the sight of a city come crashing down on them.

            The ship, as big and bustling with lights as any metropolis, markedly slowed its descent, but the air its hovering displaced whooshed and pressed down on the Robinson’s camp, flattening their garden, tossing about their chairs and picnic table and outdoor cook and clean units. The dining area’s cheerful marquee billowed until it tore and the robot finally toppled and rolled like a tin can. The Robinsons themselves and Don and Smith, were knocked flat and sent sprawling, desperately shielding their eyes from the wicked sands, calling out to one another through the chaos, nearly suffocating as the very atmosphere was pressed away.

            As the air cleared and most everything settled down, the castaways came to and found the Lamia, Mahreeda and her henchmen ... and three of their number missing.

* * *

            She had installed him in the heart of the vast ship, in an aqueous blue calyx flowering at its center. Immersed in some substance - he couldn’t tell if it were gaseous or a liquid -  Don felt himself floating, unable to touch or kick out at the surrounding interior. He couldn’t see anything but blue - but he could hear, with great effort, the protests - teasing his ears, soft as whispers - of Judy and Will. They were somewhere nearby, he felt them. Held hostage? As incentive? He tried calling out to them but his voice wouldn’t carry beyond the thought of forming their names. So he thought about their names, their names the only shapes he could hold onto.

            Judy held onto Will’s hand, her other arm drawn protectively across his chest. She held him close as Mahreeda strutted in front of a large, misty blue bud, or cupped flower, she couldn’t decide which but saw that it was closed at the top and just big enough to hold Don without letting any part of him touch its insides. She could see through its cloudy exterior and just make out that he was floating, suspended in something, not moving, eyes squeezed shut, holding his breath, head bowed. “Fight it,” she exhorted.

            Mahreeda smiled. “He can’t.” She nipped at a chipped fingernail, reconsidering, “Well, maybe at first.” She looked up again. “But not for long. Nobody ever has.” She opened her hand to the blue calyx, “How to hold out against the traps set by ones own mind?”

            Mahreeda’s thoughts, seductive tentacles wriggling, came at him through the mists - tempting, “Fly this ship. This ship flies for you, no second guessing...”

            A long suppressed thought flirted with hers. ‘No more complying with half-baked orders.’ He nearly surrendered to frustration. ‘No one fouling up critical systems for their own greedy, cowardly, sneaky, self-gratifying...’

            John and Dr. Smith stood in a pile of robot. ‘Can you fix him, Dad?’ A memory of Will’s eager, tearful voice wafted through John’s mind. He quelled an urge to kick the silver torso at his feet, despairing of ever repairing the “poor benighted booby,” as Smith now mourned, wondering if they did, what contribution the robot’s analysis might make toward solving their awful dilemma: Will, Judy and Don held captive by a sadistic and immeasurably powerful alien, sailing god knows where through god knew which solar system? Don hostage to a guidance system no doubt, Judy taken for ransom and Will as insurance?

            “-as Don’s spare apparent.” Maureen sat muttering to herself, frantically scanning the control room’s radar screen.

            Penny peeked at her twitching mother from the Jupiter’s transmitter console. She’d called herself hoarse into the mike, trying without success to hail the departed Mahreeda but what for? If the witch’s great huge ship was long gone, surely their signal couldn’t carry the distance?

            Maureen caught her daughter spying at her and nailed her with a glare. “Penny! Did Will say anything, anything at all about flying Mahreeda’s ship himself?”

            Penny blushed for eavesdropping, an indiscretion she’d been scolded for on many a memorable occasion. “Ah -”

            “Penny!”

            “Well,” she informed eagerly, “I heard him pestering Don late last night. After he, Don I mean, and Judy, finished arguing. Will butted in, right into Don’s cabin!” She remembered herself and blushed again. “I couldn’t hear everything they said but...”

            Maureen cut in with mock sympathy, “After all,  the bulkheads are fairly thick.”

            Penny considered that observation suspiciously but helpfully continued, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what he said to Don. It would be just like Will, to think he could fly a ship nobody else could. But Don did fly it, so why -” She studied her mother’s face and realized they weren’t talking about the Lamia. “Oh.” Her chin quivered after a moment and she looked to the ceiling, willing herself to look through it, her mind’s eye searching for a ship as big as a city, able to hide in open space.

            Will leaned back against Judy, craning his neck to look above his head, peering into the intricacies of the high, convoluted ceiling, studying a network of glittering, translucent pipes, all pumping something like the stuff surrounding Don. Many of the pipes connected to the base of the major’s holding cell, others penetrated the surrounding deck, ceiling and bulkheads, disappearing out of sight. Will imagined that the mist carried Don’s thoughts, which he vaguely understood were somehow piloting the great ship. But how in blue mist? Unable to see where he was going?

            Don saw it all through a curtain of mist - the mist itself this ship’s interface. Floating in the calyx he saw a tumble of galaxies take shape, pulsars begining to rotate, propelling light with every spin, star factories seething to life, all around him the elements of life now accelerating in every direction, through every space-time continuum. The experience manifested tenfold relative to that which had claimed him aboard the Lamia. Yet, in the calyx there was a difference.

            This time he wasn’t scared, he was angry. Deeply angry. Chewing circuits and busting up spaceships angry. Don used his anger as a wedge, bracing against the lure of the interface, grabbing onto a trailing thought ... ‘No one to complain - to. To talk to - to fly-’ ... His mind veered toward the provocative notion of flying as this ship through the vast reaches of the uncharted cosmos, as pure, unhindered exploration, soaring, sailing, a ... ‘ball sailing in a perfect arc, following a trajectory ... ’

            Mahreeda frowned at the figure in the mist. She didn’t like the direction her pilot’s thoughts were taking. “No one to play catch with?” She gave voice to Don’s exhausted meanderings, looking uncertain. “No one to laugh with?”

            “Huh?” Will looked at the confused alien, and then up at Judy. They peered into the cloudy calyx, just making out Don as he-

            -thrashed, rebelling, suddenly opening his eyes and finding Mahreeda’s. ‘No one to make love to!’

            Mahreeda’s eyes narrowed fiercely and she dipped her head, pressing one palm flat to the calyx’s shell.

            Judy and Will saw Don corkscrew in the mist, clutching his head. An air bubble floated up from his mouth. ‘Walking with Judy! Drop-kicking Smith into the nearest spatial anomaly! Hiking with John and setting up observation posts-’

            Mahreeda parried, eyes sparking, “Your new posting...”

            Judy also pressed her palms to the calyx, but then jerked them back with a startled yelp. Will grabbed at her hands, making her uncurl them, turning them over, looking - “They’re burned. Oh, Judy, they’re burned.”

            She shook her head distractedly, tears squeezing out the corners of her eyes. “You’re posted on the Jupiter, Don. She’s a good ship. Don, remember? You said that. Remember you have a name. Don. Major Donald West, Pilot of the Jupiter II. Don, Judy, Maureen, John, Peh-” her voice trailed away and she doubled over, curling her hands again. “Will, try.”

            It was a naming game. A memory sticker. Will understood what his sister was up to. He shouted, “Tooling around in the chariot, Don!” He bounced up on the balls of his feet and bellowed, “Goofing on Dr. Smith!” He scissored his hands over his head, waving to catch Don’s attention: “Penny! The robot! Space Pie!” Will had almost secured a life line, had almost anchored him. “Me and Judy and - and Mom and Dad and-” then he miscalculated - “Alpha Centauri!”

            “No, Will!” Judy gasped.

            Mahreeda pressed her advantage, thinking aloud, but in Dr. Smith’s wheedling voice: “You may be able to infiltrate its data base.”

            Will’s mouth popped open. Judy sensed disaster. Mahreeda cajoled as only Smith could, “You may be able to access their navigational records -”

            “No,” Judy whimpered.

            And Mahreeda launched Don with these words, “ -and find you beloved Alpha Centauri.”

            “You bitch!” Judy threw herself at the alien, and if she thought her hands had hurt when she’d pressed up against the calyx, that was nothing to the explosion of pain she felt as she plowed into Mahreeda’s middle.

            Stars exploded in Don’s head. The mist evaporated, just as the blue screen had vanished aboard the Lamia.  Mahreeda  punched through space at ever doubling speeds, in every direction simultaneously, through multiple continuums.

            ‘Don, slow down!’ ‘Look!’ Mahreeda’s aerobatics sent him spinning. He was straddling a galaxy, a boot on either spiral - barnstorming the metropolis of a ship, Mahreeda, through a churning nebula.

            He was losing himself to the maneuvers, losing a little piece of himself with each sector spanned, immediately charting the next course yet finding it harder to feel that jolt of joy, looking for it in a wormhole, already plotting the next jump, graying with each jaunt past a star, dying through every region of space-time - flying Mahreeda - and simultaneously running countless subroutines, automatically working the problem the ship herself - or was it Smith? Who’s Smith? - had planted in his system. He tapped into a data hoard, accessing records, nurturing a seed of information until it blossomed in one direction: ‘Alpha Centauri.’

            Of course Mahreeda expected the tap, and let her pilot get on with it. What harm to her? He was nearly depleted. He couldn’t take enough pleasure in his discovery to pursue the course. If he pursued it anyway, and succeeded in finding the planet, she would consume his victory as boodle, pushing herself to new heights. A win either way. Swelling with gratification, utterly transported, Mahreeda left her guidance system to his subroutines and focused on her main function; rapture. Growing fatter by the femto-second, gorging herself on the space her pilot charted, Mahreeda found herself calculating, ‘How long before I need to install a new unit?’

            The current unit attended his functions. As one level of his systems guided Mahreeda’s flight - another split off and tasked her sensors to sifting through cosmic dust, searching for that pearl of a planet...

            Absorbed with her computations, busy estimating the chances of maintaining her guidance system until Jupiter’s  child matured enough to sustain even the briefest flight, Mahreeda’s processors were sluggish to acknowledge a tiny bloom of light that signaled:

‘Found it.’ Proceeding undetected, the twinkling light routed a path round the ship’s primary attention and Mahreeda was not alerted to the surge of triumph - ‘Alpha Centauri!’ - that restored a loose connection: ‘Gotta tell Will and Judy. Judy?’

            “Judy??” Will dropped to his knees, shaking her shoulder with both hands. Tears were streaming down his face. ‘How could everything go so wrong so quickly?’ he wondered not for the first time in his young life, and all because he’d wanted to see somebody fly that ‘stupid, red ship.’

            “Judy please wake up.” He sniffled, looking up, looking all around for help. Where was Mahreeda? Where were the grown ups? For a city this ship was pretty empty. He hadn’t seen another person, not even the strange mechanical-men, hadn’t heard another voice nor echoing footfall, nor any sign that there were any other people aboard at all, save Don in the blue thing and Judy - He shuddered. “Judy?”

            She lay curled on her side, her face perilously pale, her features lax. She wasn’t moving at all, barely breathing as far as he could see. “Don’t worry, Judy.” He patted her shoulder then curled his legs under himself and pushed up off the floor.

            Will approached the calyx slowly, his little boy frame silhouetted by its glimmering light. He tilted his head, trying to see if Don was still in it. “There.” The pilot looked like he was standing on nothing, suspended very straight, his arms half raised from his sides, palms out, fingers spread wide. His face was tipped up. He looked dead. At least as still as Judy. Will frowned, wondering if that’s how Don had looked aboard the Lamia, wondering if that’s how he himself would look were he in there flying this ship right now. “Is it flying?” Will turned, eyes searching all around, peering about the expansive, silent deck, looking for a porthole, a view screen, anything. “Or is it all in Don’s head? Is he the viewscreen?”

            Don’s eyes snapped open. ‘Judy?’ The connection held. Calling her name had called him back.

            Will stumbled forward as the deck rocked beneath his feet. He gasped, realizing he’d caught himself against the calyx - hands pressed flat to its shell. It took a moment to fully register. “My hands aren’t burned.” He frowned in confusion and shifted his weight from foot to foot, peering through the cloudy prison. “Don?” He pounded his fist against it. “Don?!” The overhead lights flickered. A vibration was running through the deck. He looked over his shoulder, at his sister on the floor. “Don! You’ve got to come out!” He stopped pounding and pressed his palms and forehead to the shell. “please. I can’t help her by myself.”

            Don couldn’t find Judy’s face through the translucent shell. She wasn’t there anymore. He couldn’t feel her presence, not anywhere aboard Mahreeda, not anywhere in this universe. He began to panic. ‘Judy?’ Searching sharpened him, made him listen - to the murmur of a child’s crying - a heartbroken sound swimming to him through the mist, carrying all the knowledge that could fit in a tear.

            Will’s nostrils flared. His tear-beaded eyes widened and he took a hasty step back for the calyx had begun to smoke. Lacy wisps of blue smoke, flaring now like a corona, advanced as tendrils, searching outward. The boy froze as a hand of mist played over his face, moved on. He watched the tendril glide, reaching out like a ghost’s arm, now playing over his sister’s still form. A smoky hand lifted one of her limp hands, entwining its filaments between her fingers. “ah... okay,” Will marveled shakily.

            Will suddenly fell back on his butt, landing hard as the ship rocked again, more furiously than before, and for much longer.

            Don knew there was only one thing to do. He had to land this monster of a ship, had to take it back to their adoptive planet, right down through the searing atmosphere, to the Jupiter, where John and Maureen might still save Judy. But Mahreeda was fighting him for every parsec, trying to wrest control from her pilot, realizing too late she had invested too much of herself in his functions. The inversion, the cyberkinetic reflux, was washing back through her own systems... swamping her... drowning her commands.

            The ship keened and groaned beneath Will. Terrified, he scrabbled backwards on feet and hands, bumping up against Judy. Her body slid away from him as the deck tilted. He cried out, crawling toward her, grabbing her arms to keep her from rolling across the floor. The lighting dipped then failed completely, momentarily plunging them into darkness, until his eyes adjusted to the gloaming mist, churning in the connective pipes, phosphorescent and curling, flowing backwards toward the calyx instead of outward from it. Will’s eyes grew very wide, waiting to see what might happen next.

            Something flashed in the corner of John’s eye. He looked up from where he and Dr. Smith were settling the robot’s dome back on its stalk. Smith straightened from fiddling with the power pack. Both men shielded their brows, trying to see past the glare of the sun. They turned as Maureen and Penny ran breathlessly out of the ship, Penny shouting, “There’s something on the radar screen!”

            Will had his hands pressed firmly to his ears. He gritted his teeth against the scream of an uncontrolled re-entry, but refused to close his eyes to the sight of the calyx jittering and bouncing on its base. He couldn’t see inside it anymore. The mist flared red, then violet-blue, now a churning mix of muddy colors, no longer colors just a chaos of ferment.

            “It’s her ship, Dad!” Penny was pulling on her father’s arm, bouncing up and down. Maureen stood very quietly, praying. Smith was ducking against the robot, now gulping and taking a step back as a red meteorite flew at them, expanding very rapidly, growing exponentially... “It’s -” He took another step back. “The fool! Couldn’t he find someplace else to land??”

            “Holy cow,” Will whispered. He knew it was going to happen a split second before it did. He threw himself across Judy, watching the calyx fissure with cracks - and suddenly shatter.

            Penny screamed. Maureen couldn’t shut her eyes. She just stared, feeling John’s weight sag against her, hearing Smith cry, “Oh, my,” as the ship hurtled toward them only to burst like a puff ball, showering from the sky as cascading blue mist.

            Mahreeda spread out from under and away from Will, Judy and Don - shooting away from them in every direction even as blue powder continued to explode outwards from the shattering calyx. The velocity of each blue particle traveled at an inflation rate that expanded until Judy, Will and now Don’s bodies were completely coated in the stuff.

            Penny cried out, instinctively throwing her arms over her head, ducking away from Smith who was toppling past her, aware of her parents also folding, aware of powdery blue snow coating her, all of them, the stirring robot, their camp, the surrounding desert. Hearing it sifting down, muffling every impulse but one; to stand up and look around. She did. “Oh wow.” She stood in shock, not really taking in that she had just seen Mahreeda’s ship, and possibly her brother, sister and Don, explode into nothing.

            John and Maureen straightened beside her, hauling a very unsteady Dr. Smith up between them. Maureen swallowed, “John?”

            John Robinson scanned the blue sands, trying to make sense of what had just occurred. His brows drew together and he tugged at Maureen’s hand, pulling her with him toward a curl of blue. His heart raced as he pulled her along faster, both of them dropping to their knees in the blue sand, swiping the powder from a small, still shape, grabbing at its limbs now and pulling Will into a sitting position against John’s chest.

            “Will?!” John rubbed and patted his son’s face, feeling more than seeing Maureen scrabble to the next outline, hearing Penny join her in swiping, now crying with relief, “And Judy! Oh, but she isn’t breathing! Dr. Smith, she isn’t breathing!”

            “Penny?” Will wriggled against his dad and opened his eyes, searching about. “Dad! How?” He registered the blur of Smith move past him and shifted to see the doctor and his mother leaning over Judy, rubbing circulation back into her arms, helping her to sit between them.

            “Yes she is, dear,” Smith assured Penny kindly. He tapped Judy’s cheek. “Just a bit stunned. Aren’t you? Child?”

            Maureen laughed and cried as Judy opened her eyes, staring wide eyed, utterly surprised to be staring back at her mother. “Mom?” If possible, her eyes grew wider. “Don?!”

            A groan sounded his location and another blue hump emerged, stretching up from the desert. “Shit. Does my head hurt.”

            Smith pulled the stethoscope away from Don’s chest, satisfied. He shined an optical scanner into his eyes, enduring the major’s frustrated wince.

            “Cut it out, Smith.” Don blew a sigh, intentionally directing it upwards, so that a puff of blue silt blew up from his hair. “I’m fine.”

            “Fine as a blunt headed hammer.” Smith pulled back, blinking the powder out of his eyes. He suspiciously looked the major up and down. “How did you do it?”

            Don hopped off Smith’s diagnostic couch, and regretted it. But he covered well, pretending he meant to lean against its edge. “Do what?”

            John shook his head at his pilot’s stubborn reticence. Folding his arms, he took it as incontrovertible evidence Don was back to normal.

            Maureen smiled beside her husband, translating, “I think Dr. Smith wants to know how you managed to overpower Mahreeda’s interface unit, dear. And return everybody safely home. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

            Judy, Penny and Will were beaming at Don. Smith wasn’t about to allow him that much credit. “Overpowered is such an - overwrought description.”

            Will found a better one. “Don turned Mahreeda’s interface back in on itself and blew her ship right out of the sky.”

            “Will, Mahreeda was the ship,” Don offered uncomfortably.

            “Yeah!” agreed Will. “And you totally obliterated her!”

            Maureen looked uneasy. “And everyone aboard her?”

            Don licked his lips, shaking his head at her. “There wasn’t anybody else aboard her.” He continued to John, “Everyone who  crewed it, including those other - pilots - was only her memory of them.” He looked to Judy, her gentle hands unscathed, smiling at him, fully whole and glowing with health. “Everything aboard it and everything that happened was a figment of Mahreeda’s function.”

            Smith watched Don’s face redden with a clinical eye. Heard the major’s voice grow rough as he protested, “None of it was real.” Don nodded to himself. “Except the flying and that’s still inside of me. That’s how I did it.” He returned Smith’s gaze now. “If you want to know. That’s how I got us all home. Enough of her was smeared through me to think us home. Enough’s still in here,” he tapped his head, “to tell me she’ll be back.”

            “And now you’re raving again,” scoffed Smith. “William is correct. You did obliterate her, whether as Mahreeda or ship or both, we saw it with our own eyes.”

            The robot’s dome rose and his chest plate lit up. “Confirmed.”

            But Don wasn’t raving. He was very calm. He smiled sadly. “Wrong again, Smith.” He turned to the restored robot. “And you, too.” His gaze gathered them all in, now. “There’s enough of her residual in me to tell me she’s still out there. Obliterated sure, existing only as particles, with elements of her consciousness, eventually, over time, clumping back together again.”

            “Regrouping?” continued John.

            “As surely as a mote of dust aggregates into a star. Eventually a black hole.” Don folded his arms, leaving it at that. Not wanting to talk about it anymore.

            Smith still wouldn’t let him off. “And what of our plan?” he badgered.

            Don curled his lip at him. “Our plan?”

            “If you did what you describe,” Smith said more eagerly, “then you managed to infiltrate her systems!” He nodded excitedly.

            Don’s mouth popped open and he laughed. “Oh, our plan.” His turn to offer a humoring slap on the back. “Yeah, Smith. I found it.” He continued before the gasping doctor could clap his hands together - “Alpha Centauri.”

            Smith was crestfallen. “Oh. That plan.”

            But Maureen did clasp her hands together, looking to Penny who asked, “Did you really find it, Don?”

            “Yeah, actually.”  He looked at Judy and fell into her blue eyes. “But, then I lost it, again.”

            Smith harrumphed. “How typical of you, Major.”

            Judy pressed, “You lost it?”

            Don smiled at her. “Let’s just say I found something more important to focus on.” He extended his hands and she took them in hers. Each swung their arms slightly then broke into silly, bashful smiles.

            “Oh, rapture, oh joy.” moaned Smith, packing away his medical equipment. “I’m threw with you, Major. Try to take it easy for a few days. And don’t fly any strange ships.”

            The others laughed, filing out, wandering on into what was left of the day. Will tagged along behind Don, pulling at his sleeve until he turned.

            Don looked at the boy questioningly, “Yeah, Will?”

            Will made sure his parents, and especially Penny, had moved on out of ear shot. Then, urgently, he asked,  “Is she really coming back, Don?”

            Don realized he’d frightened the kid. He hadn’t meant to, but maybe it was a good thing. He answered matter-of-factly, as he always did. “I think so, Will.”

            They looked at one another, solemnly, knowing that if she ever did, each of them had better be ready. Don broke the tension by smacking the back of his hand against Will’s shoulder. “Play some catch?”

            Will grinned from ear to ear. “Sure.” And followed him out the hatch.

Ends

* * *