Chapter 4
Carmen crawled across the cold steel floor to Penelope Ann. “Are you all right?”
Penelope Ann coughed and wiped slime off her face. “I’m fine. I don’t think we can say the same thing for...what’s his name.”
Aria cackled with glee. “You really showed him, girl. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Penelope Ann smiled at her, but said nothing.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Carmen asked.
Penelope Ann cocked her head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“I saw you out there,” Carmen replied. “I saw the way you chopped at his neck with your hands and the way you headlocked him. You’ve got hand-to-hand combat training.”
Penelope Ann shrugged. “What if I have?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Carmen asked.
“What good would it have done?” Penelope Ann returned. “You wanted to believe you were the big, strong police officer who would get us out of this situation and the rest of us were weak, helpless maidens in distress.”
Carmen blushed. “I didn’t think that.”
Penelope Ann shifted her weight to one side. “Call it what you want. You didn’t believe any of us could be any good in a fight, but you didn’t bother to find out if you were right or wrong. Well, now you know you were wrong.”
“What training do you have?” Carmen asked.
Penelope Ann looked the other way.
“If you’d spent any time in our neighborhood at all,” Aria told her, “you would know Penelope Ann is a national champion jujitsu competitor. She brought home the grand title the last four years running.”
Carmen stared at Penelope Ann with new eyes. Penelope Ann was right. Carmen never considered any of these women would offer anything that could help them escape. Now her whole concept of their situation rearranged itself. They still couldn’t fight back against the aliens’ psychic power, but Penelope Ann’s combat skill changed everything.
A glimmer of hope entered in Carmen’s mind. She wasn’t alone in this the way she thought she was. She could count on at least one of these women when the hammer came down. Maybe the others had skills she could count on, too.
“Did you see the black spots on his neck when you hit him?” Marissa asked. “And the way his tentacles withdrew into his face when he was hurt. Those spots must be the source of their telekinetic power.”
Carmen rounded on her. “What are you talking about?”
Marissa faced her. “You saw the same things I did. They manipulated and controlled us with their tentacles. They never touched us until Rotnim decided to help himself to Penelope Ann, but they held us still and moved us around with their power. That power is called telekinesis. It means they can act from a distance with their minds. In their case, their tentacles must direct that power, but it’s the glands in their necks that produce it.”
“And did you notice how Rotnim’s tentacles are longer than the others’?” Penelope Ann asked. “He must be the strongest of the bunch.”
“That explains why he’s their leader,” Aria added. “He must be some sort of captain on board their space ship.”
Carmen threw up her hands. “This is nuts! You’re talking about aliens and space ships and telekinesis. This isn’t Star Trek, you know.”
Aria rolled her eyes and turned her back on Carmen. “Shut your face, fool. If you can’t talk sense, then stick a sock in it. I’m not talking to you anymore.”
Penelope Ann got to her feet. Slime stuck her golden tresses to her face and neck. “Aria’s right. You’ve done nothing but antagonize the rest of us since you first walked into my bakery this morning. If you can’t stop getting in our way, then move over and let us do our own thing. We’re trying to have a conversation here about the creatures who abducted us. This information will help us when it comes time to escape.”
“No one is escaping with those....those things around,” Carmen replied. “You saw the way they controlled our every move. If we’re going to escape at all, we’ll have to do it when they aren’t around.”
Penelope Ann whirled around. “You saw me put that piece of trash on the ground in two seconds. I would have smashed his head to smithereens if his friends hadn’t saved him. These creatures maybe have some kind of telekinetic power, but they aren’t invincible. We can defeat them if we fight back, so stop making excuses to sit on your backside and wring your hands. We’ve got a battle to plan here, and you aren’t helping at all.”
Carmen started to say something, but Marissa stepped between them. “Everybody cool your jets. We have no reason to call Carmen a coward just because she thinks we should take a careful approach to planning our escape. She’s right that the aliens’ telekinetic power puts our escape in a whole new light. If we can plan to avoid them, we should do it. That only makes sense.”
Carmen looked up at her face. “Thank you, Marissa.”
Marissa nodded at her. “You have to admit, though, Carmen, Penelope Ann proved these aliens can be overpowered by strength. They held us with their telekinetic power, but only Rotnim dared to come anywhere near us. They must understand they’re fundamentally weaker than we are. Now we know they can be defeated, we might try fighting back a little harder when the time comes.”
“As long as we wait until the time comes,” Carmen replied, “I’m willing to go along with that. But I don’t want anybody throwing themselves at a brick wall, busting their heads and breaking bones.”
“I understand,” Marissa replied.
Aria spun around. “We’ll bust their heads and break their bones.”
Marissa held up her hand. “Carmen has a point. We should save our strength for a time when we’ll have the best chance of success.”
“Not necessarily,” Penelope Ann countered. “They plan to sell us, so they won’t want us bashed up or damaged. Rotnim said so himself. Maybe if we fought back harder now, they’ll back down.”
“You can’t tell me Rotnim will back down on anything,” Carmen argued. “He’s ruthless and bloodthirsty. If he thinks we would rather damage ourselves than cooperate, he won’t waste his time on us. He’ll kill us.”
Marissa placed herself between Carmen and Penelope Ann. “Okay, okay. Enough arguing. There are four of us and four of them, and we have a common enemy. If we’re going to get out of here, we have to work together, not fight amongst ourselves. Now I’m making a decision that we’re going to stop talking about this right now. We need rest before they come back for us again.”
“If they have telekinetic power,” Carmen pointed out, “they can probably read our thoughts, too. They’ve probably been listening to every word we’ve said.”
Marissa chopped the air with her hand. “Enough! I’m ordering all of you to rest before they come back. We can talk about this again when we know more about our situation.”
Penelope Ann stiffened. “You’re ordering us?”
“That’s right,” Marissa replied. “Somebody’s got to take control around here, and it just happens to be me. Now go sit down in that corner over there, Penelope Ann. You go over there, Aria, and Carmen, you sit down over there.”
“We’re not children you can order around,” Aria grumbled.
“If you act like children,” Marissa replied, “you can expect to be treated like children. I spent the last five years running the reading sessions for children at the library, and I learned a thing or two. Now go sit down and don’t make me have to tell you again.”
Aria glared at her. Then she wilted and slunk off to her corner, where she slid down the wall onto the floor. She bent her knees up to her chest, crossed her arms on her knees, and cradled her head on her arms.
Penelope Ann stared at Marissa for a moment. Then she nodded and went to her own corner. She sat cross-legged on the floor and folded her hands in her lap.
Carmen retreated to her corner, but she didn’t sit down. Nervous energy kept her pacing in circles for a few minutes. Then she leaned against the wall. What would happen when one of them needed to go to the bathroom? Their prison cell was a padded room without the padding. Bare white walls surrounded them on all sides. She couldn’t even tell where air got in. Maybe air didn’t get in and they would suffocate in here.
In the end, she sat down with her back against the wall. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. No more than a couple of hours could have passed since she walked into Penelope Ann’s bakery, but overpowering exhaustion threatened to swallow her and drag her down into sleep. Maybe this was the space equivalent of jet lag.