By RD Rivero

April 19, 2001
 

[Part One]

From morning to evening it had been a cold, miserable day on Third Earth.

At sunrise torrents of ice and rain fell from the battered heavens to the winter-shriveled forests below. Once the ground had completely soaked large pools of freezing water formed out of indentations and low basins until even those damns and reservoirs were past capacity. Streams of the runoff drained across the land into foamy rivers, carrying in its currents masses of dead, brittle leaves entangled around the limbs of trees that had not stood up to furious howling of the winds and the numerous, uncountable corpses of animals -- new and old alike -- that had not survived the unexpected blizzard.

A morbid silence had descended upon the scene amid the pangs of thunder, pulses of lightning. Birds had fled in their yearly migration, an act that dated back before the dawning of the humanoid species. Animals were in caves or hidden deep below ground in dens in slumbered hibernation. What life remained prowled stealthily about the wilderness or clung desperately to nooks in trees that served as shelter.

By midday the omnipresent chill had frozen the waters solid and the rain that continued to fall had become snow. Soon the rocky shores and swampy banks, the abandoned clearings and primordial forests everywhere were carpeted in the steady and unending progression of inches, feet and yards of those seemingly-innocent flakes. Trees were overwhelmed by the frost's great weight and bent or stooped, their mighty peaks arched down toward the earth. Some bark-less trunks swayed in the harsh gale, some snapped and tumbled without fanfare. Everything was covered in that frigid, fluffy dew and even the sky evolved from a stormy, dull, gray to a blinding, bright white.

Cat's Lair had been built to withstand the harshest, most uninviting climate. Internal heaters made its rooms and passages comfortable for its inhabitants. The warmth that leaked and radiated from the gaps of the insulators did much to keep the external features clear of snow. The large head roamed about the sky right to left, back and forth in endless vigil -- the red eyes cast beams that slanted through the violent clouds in the air. The bridge remained extended out of concern for emergencies. Tygra feared that if retracted it might stay stuck in place and thus be a danger if someone had to come in or go out.

The outer walkways had to be cleared by hand and to help the Thundercats shovel the snow Panthro built a special machine. It was a riding mower that collected piles of the slush through suction and expelled the softened clumps out of a nozzle on the side of the gray vehicle. The job took less time to complete but the machine still had its bugs to iron out. Getting it started was a labor in itself but no one complained -- the regular shovels were, after all, time-tested and easier to use.

Two hours before sunset, WileyKat, WileyKit and Snarf stepped out of the lair, covered from head to toe in heavy, warm coats, scarves, mittens and boots. It was their turn to clear off the front steps and the drawbridge again. Slowly, the tight group waddled over to a green tent in which the equipment was kept.

"Snarf, snarf," the small creature blurted out through the muffled folds of his scarf. He had nothing else to say when he saw what awaited them.

The twins fell to their knees and with their gloved hands they dug back the two feet of snow that had dropped since Liono and Tygra were last out that covered the tent's entrance. For just a brief moment WileyKat removed his mitten and with his bare, exposed hand he touched the snow he had come to loath. The cold stung his fingertips and whatever mischief he had planned died at that moment when he put his glove back on.

"This is the worst winter ever," he said firmly defeated.

"Stop belly aching," his sister chided him, helping him up from the slippery ground, "Tygra said the blizzard would e over tomorrow."

Snarf stepped into the path the two had cleared and stood before the green hut's flapping entrance. The various sides of the canvas structure fretted in the strong gales that accompanied the snow. The kittens grabbed the zipper and with a little effort -- for the teeth were jammed in place and their dexterity was lost through their gloves -- the slit of the door was slowly peeled open.

Inside the shack was lightless but enough illumination came from outside that the three were able to locate what they needed. Snarf took a small shovel and bucket, WileyKit got herself a bag of rock salt that one of the adults had already opened. WileyKat grabbed the snow mower -- it was his chance to ride it once more.

The clunky machine started with no less difficulty that time than it had before. The fuel line required some extra pumping and the engine needed a few more forceful pulls until it sputtered to life. The juvenile cat hopped on board and, steering the vehicle, it began to move on its black, treaded wheels.

"Be careful, Kat," his sister said but her words were lost to the furry of the wind and the purring hum of the cart's engine.

"What is it with kids and wheels anyway," snarf, snarf, "the small creature grunted as he shoveled. His body shivered, his teeth chattered loudly.

"Why does everyone always tell me to be careful? Don't they think I know what I'm doing?"

WileyKat had formed a simple plan of action, one that had worked just fine the last time he was out ridding the mower. The field that had to be cleared was a narrow rectangle that jutted out into a wide triangle at the base of Cat's Lair. He decided to start with the triangle by working his way around the perimeter, then attacking the snow in long, parallel cuts until he reached the start of the thin path. That sliver could be cleared in three, long runs, leaving only the bridge uncleared. The extended crossing was something he was terrified of but he told no one, fearing that he would not be allowed to use the cart if the adults were aware of his trepidation. He decided he would give that last part just two quick runs.

Looking off to the distance, he saw the forests in a way he had never seen before. Only a few of its mighty trees remained green -- their spiny, needlepoint leaves stood out vibrantly from the froth that surrounded them. He could not tell where their tops ended for white, gray clouds hung low over the ground, obscuring the details in a swirling fog. The rest of the woodlands remained imperceptible, invisible behind thick, flowing walls of that misty, opaque smoke -- a smoke that oozed up from the tufts of snow that covered the earth, up from the chasm that the bridge spanned -- a smoke that clung onto and surrounded everything, everywhere in a cold, lifeless aura.

"WileyKat!" his sister shouted.

Instinctively he turned his eyes away from that spot where they had pointed to the immediate scene about him. He was headed to the edge of the cliff. His heart pounding. He slammed on the brakes.

"WileyKat!" her voice was much closer and more painful that time and it occurred to him that both she and snarf were running to his side.

"Snarf, snarf!"

"What is it? What's the matter?" WileyKit asked him.

"Look!" he pointed forward, weakly, "Look!" he gasped.

Snarf stood on his tail and squinted over at what the youth had indicated.

"I don't remember those rocks being there before."

"Those aren't rocks -- I don't know what they are but, can't you see just to the right where someone's crawling in the snow?"

"Someone?" Snarf clamored, more than the cold made him shiver at that point.

"Should we go help?" his sister asked.

"Snarf, snarf. We have to get the others, hurry!"
 

[Part Two]

"Snarf, snarf!" the small creature turned back, away from the huddled group and began to run to the partly-open doors of Cat's Lair. "Snarf, snarf!" He was well within the safety of the building before the echoes of his words died out.

WileyKat and WileyKit were left alone by the side of the snow mower. The boy had turned off the machine and was crouched down by the warmth of its engine, holding onto his shivering sister. Snow continued to fall in large clumps that bit and stung the exposed parts of their fur painfully. The winds still howled but the feverish gales had tempered and lopped into a single current started from behind the lair, swept down across the surrounding countryside and ended in spreading, diverging currents.

She broke away from his arms for a moment and popped her head up over the front of the vehicle. She saw the bridge, covered in two feet of flat, virginal snow -- it was hazardous but not entirely uncrossable. The wall of smoky haze that emanated up from the chasm had dissipated to let her better see the objects of their terror.

Several hundred feet from them were the large boulders -- charred and smoldering -- to her memory those rocks had certainly never been there before. Limping around the flame-licked mounds was a silhouetted figure -- its gait awkward, its arms flailing in the air. After a minute or so it collapsed on the snow -- snow that had attained a glowing, red illumination.

She ducked back down.

"What is it? What did you see?" he pleader with her, drawing her closer if only to make her stop shivering. He had never known her to be so scared.

"I, I --" she glanced up. The roving head of Cat's Lair had stopped moving. Its eyes pointed down pointed down to the unfamiliar scene with wide, casted beams. She was about to answer him when the adults rushed out of the fortress.

Panthro, Liono and Tygra, each wearing only their normal clothes, ran up to the start of the bridge. Snarf remained inside, snug in the open door frame, the bright, warm lights behind him. Liono stood before the bridge, sword in hand. The eye was not warning of danger but he was intent on being prepared for anything.

"What are you two doing?" Panthro growled, annoyed by the twin's cowardice.

WileyKat and WileyKit arose nervously, clumsily.

"And why did you turn it off?!" He sprinted to the helm of the snow blower and began the process of starting it up. He pulled on the cord violently, the sputtering engine muffled his obscenities.

"Why don't you kids get back to the lair," Tygra said, trying his best to cool an already frigid situation. He lay his hand on the boy's shoulder and pointed him to the way home. His sister followed in tow.

"Sometimes I fear they forget they are Thundercats," the panther shouted.

"That doesn't mean you have to be so hard on them," Tygra answered, his eyes following the pair as they scurried into the building. "They're only children."

Panthro was ready to say more, much more but the engine started and his sense of responsibility overtook his desire to continue the discussion. He maneuvered the cart up to the draw bridge -- Liono moved out of the way. Although the snow was packed and thickened to ice in several places, with only one swipe he was able to clear a decent path for the others to follow. The red glow from Cat's Lair's eyes marked the spot of the crash -- but there was too much snow and it was impossible for him to go on and break a trail for his friends. He parked the vehicle, its humming engine still on and together the three continued onwards on foot.

"I suppose this means we'll have to work on improving the sensors," the tiger remarked.

"How can a ship that size crash so close to the lair without setting off an alarm or without someone noticing it?" Liono asked. He had rehilted his shrunken sword so he could maneuver with both hands over the mounds of snow.

"We were all in the control room, we were all looking at the monitors and yet our eyes deceived us," Panthro said, his irrational temper having somewhat subsided. "The snow is too think and its shine severely affects the sensors."

The three Thundercats stopped at the edge of a shallow crater that had been formed in more than two hours ago. Extending deep into the woodlands and terminating fifty feet before them was a set of parallel tracks scorched and carved into the frozen earth. The snow that had not melted in or along the scars had turned black with soot. Debris of every size and type were scattered about the violent scene -- fragments of hull, mangled, metal shrapnel and other, smaller items that could be seen in flames for nearly a mile in land.

Liono directed them to the center of the gorge, where the largest segments of the ship remained. At last they had a clear view of the 'boulders' that Snarf and the kittens had spotted earlier. The rolling action of the crash had deformed those heaving slabs of bulkhead into smooth, oval shapes but enough detail remained to show that this parts had come from the nose-cone of a space-faring vessel.

They treaded forward slowly. The ground around them glowed red -- those back at Cat's Lair were watching them. From the control room they, too, had seen the aerial view of the site -- they knew what they would find, but what to expect was a different story.

Panthro and Tygra found the body. The man was evidently a tall figure, six feet in height and clothed by a loose-fitting white robe. The panther turned the unknown figure over -- the stranger's wild, uncut hair was stuck in the impacted ice. The tiger felt the neck and found that the flesh was still warm.

"Is he alive?" Liono asked?

Turning the man's bearded face side to side Tygra answered: "Yes, but barely. He has only the faintest pulse." He continued to examine the figure by hand and with his eye. Miraculously the survivor was unhurt. His body was covered in bruises and scars but the wounds were old and unrelated to the crash.

Liono stepped away and crawled about the wreckage. He reasoned that within he would find clues about the ship and its passenger. But the crash had destroyed most of the vehicle, leaving little intact.

Curiously, the man taken a couple of seats and fastened them together to form a makeshift shelter. Liono reasoned that the stranger must have been hiding there until he saw the activity at the lair -- Snarf and the Thunder kittens, the sputtering of the snow mower. In area around the seats he saw a green box, partly buried in the snow. Carefully he dug it free from the icy froth. Picking it up he stood amidst the battered remains.

Overhead and across the field the massive trees of the forest sprouted up five hundred feet, reaching up to the darkening gray skies. The branches of those towering evergreens began fifty feet above the ground. The limbs that formed the bases the arboreal profiles were twenty or thirty feet long, curling and twisting into one another in tight braids. Above them slightly smaller branches were parted to the side both from the weight of the snow upon them and by the currents of cold, dense air that vented through them and through the rest of the wilderness.

Much of the lengths of the trees were packed in that day's unyielding accumulation. Few, if any, sharp, green leaves were visible under that cover. Stepping backward for a better vantage he saw that above the wide middles that trees thinned gradually. Sections alternated with clear and unclear branches. Arching his head back all the way, wiping the stray clumps of frost that fell into his face, around his eyes he saw that the tops and mighty peaks of the forest faded and melted away into the ethereal substance of the clouds that hung low in the heavens.

"Ahhh!" a forceful, unexpected scream brought Liono back to earth. Several feet to his side his friends were struggling to restrain the man, the mysterious stranger who had suddenly regained consciousness. He rushed to them to help.

"Stop resisting," Panthro grunted -- he had not expected that someone in that deprived condition could fight so easily. "We're only trying to help you!"

"Our prodding must have awoken him, Liono," Tygra said.

"I told you should have waited until we were in the sickbay," Panthro chided, his words came out no better than the man's persistent screaming.

"I'll try to knock him out," Liono said.

He jumped on the scantily-clad survivor, tackling him on the snow. Tygra and Panthro fell back, too. Liono struggled to keep the stranger under him but the screams and the strange animalistic sounds the man was making were quite intimidating. He tried roaring in return but that accomplished little.

Panthro, who had recovered quickly, came upon the writhing pair and pinned down the man with his knees. "Feisty, isn't he?"

Safely on his back, the two Thundercats eased up a bit. The strangers head turned wildly side to side, his eyes protruded in horror and did not blink. His mouth was wide open, salivating, sharp teeth shimmering in the dying daylight. He continued to scream -- yet in his shrieks there could clearly be heard a laughter, a morbid giggling just under the guttural hysterics.

Tygra came upon the scene and maneuvered himself about the entangled mess that Liono and Panthro had made of their arms and legs. He grabbed the stranger's hands and wrapped his whip about their wrists, tying them together with a few loops. The feet and ankles followed. Although the man continued to resist he could now be easily carried to Cat's Lair.

"Good work there, Tygra," Panthro said, getting up.

"Thanks."

"Still think that was a dumb idea --"

"Thanks." He turned to Liono: "Did you find anything in the wreck?"

"Just a small box," he answered, helping the tiger pick up the man.

"Here, let me do that," said Panthro, switching places with the young lion. "You go on ahead with the box." Seeing his leader dash away he turned to the side: "You rascal, one of these days your curiosity will get the better of you, you know that?"

Tygra looked down with a wry smile and did not answer.

"What does this guy have that you and I don't or that you haven't seen already a dozen times?"

Liono found it easy to walk through the snow even with the box in hand. He found himself stopping often to let his friends catch up. In that manner it took him about ten minutes to reach the snow mower. The machine had died while they had been away and oddly enough Panthro had nothing to say about it. Tygra looked at the panther nervously.

The bridge was again covered in snow but enough of the trail was left that they could get across it with little difficulty.

"Something tells me our stranger's a bit more than what we bargained for," the tiger commented -- he was holding up the by the shoulders.

Panthro did not respond, he just looked to the side and tightened his grip. It had taken him his every ounce of self-control to keep from exploding when he found that the snow mower -- a machine he had built -- had given out and right then he was not in the mood for talking lest he made an already delicate situation worse -- he wanted to be a decent model for the main who was only then tranquil again -- so a low grunt was all he could muster.
 

[Part Three]

Sickbay in Cat's Lair consisted of a series of rooms connected by a common hallway. The tiny complex was set apart from the rest of the building by a set of thick, metal doors. The various room were well stocked with the latest advances in medical technology and were designed by Tygra such that in the event of an emergency the entire area could be sealed off.

The mysterious stranger -- who by then was known to all the Thundercats -- was fast asleep in a bed in one of the cramped private chambers. The lights were on but kept low, barely above the level of candles. The tile walls were adorned with buttons, dials, nozzles and other types of gadgetry. No windows connected that room's somber isolation to the reality of the world outside its impersonal confines.

The faint hiss of overhead ventilators and the pungent smell of ammonia filled the warm air.

Officer Mandora had been called the night before by a concerned Liono once the contents of that green box had been examined. She promised to arrive early that morning as soon as the blizzard subsided to see to the matter personally. True to her word, on time and without prompt, the CONTROL representative arrived on the scene in her vehicle.

Panthro was there to greet her -- Tygra had opted to stay in his lab. Silently he wondered if the stripped one would ever turn up near that woman's presence. Especially after the 'incident' that had happened between them.

"Come this way," he said, helping her out of her cruiser.

He wondered, too, how long she could keep up that 'law and order' act around the tiger -- assuming, of course, that he would have the guts to show himself to her. He resolved to keep his eyes open, wide open, around the two. Walking along with the woman of the law, the stiff and even puritanical do-gooder, he tried to think of what his friend could have ever seen in her -- other than her overt masculinity. Was she even a 'she'? But then he knew enough not to ask.

Mandora had landed in the immediate vicinity of the lair's bridge. The crater and the battered remains of the crash were still partly visible in the distance despite extra two feet of snow that had been added through the night.

"Those mangled stones are all that's left of the ship?" she stopped and pointed to the wreck. She seemed to be adjusting her visor while waiting for the panther's reply.

"Yes. From over here they do look like rocks. At first we thought it was just a meteor until we spotted him." Earlier Panthro had returned to the scene to fix the snow mower -- with the device repaired he had been able to clear the very trail they were on and, as usual, he was very proud of his work. He was idling time walking and talking in the tranquil scene -- it was rare so peaceful on Third Earth.

"Are you sure there were no other survivors?" She looked back at him while she gripped her fingers about a blue, book-like object.

Sprinting to catch up to her: "I myself came back this morning and found nothing -- nothing new, nothing important."
 

Inside Cat's Lair, Liono showed her to the room in the sickbay where the stranger was being held. He turned up the lights so that they could all see better. The intense glare and the commotion startled the man awake. She walked up to him and pulled back the sheets that covered his chest just a tad. A thick goo of saliva and mucus coated the edge where the blanket had once met his lips.

"What is your name, sir?" Mandora asked sternly.

The man, who had been reduced by unknown traumas to an animal, only looked up at her, eyes wide open and glaring, head shaking.

"You have him restrained." His wrists were clamped down with leather straps and she could only assume that his ankles were similarly cuffed.

She peeled back the coverings some more, exposing his lower chest, revealing a series of burns and scars.

"When we first took him out of the snow he was hysterical. It took all of us to restrain him," Panthro said.

"You all? You and Liono?"

"And Tygra," Liono added, hopelessly unaware of what that word, that name meant in Mandora's context. From a drawer near the bedside he brought out the box and showed it to the officer.

She set it on the bed and opened it. Inside she found an ID card and several slips of paper along with three pills. She read as much of the documents as she could. "This is the registration of a ship called the 'OPEA-12.' This card is an identification for a certain Johaness Simbacca."

"That's the name I gave you when I called you last night," the young lord said.

She arched her eyebrows and looked down on the mysterious figure -- he was shaking his head violently, almost to tears. "Hmmm, that doesn't make sense. I arrested Simbacca once and this man is no Simbacca." She paused for a moment and turned her attention to her blue, book-shaped item. "OPEA is an institution for the criminally insane so that ship could have been either a transport or an emergency ambulance -- if indeed what crashed here was the 'OPEA-12'. I find it odd, in any case, it shouldn't be missing its registration papers so no matter what this is worth a look." She unfolded the object she had brought along with her -- it was a small computer. She entered a serial number she found on the green box's inner lid. "Yes, this could have only come from the 'OPEA-12,' it's the ship's strong box, able to withstand even annihilation." She skimmed the data that appeared on the screen: "The twelve was issued five years ago and according to the logs she had about three point fifty-one parsecs on her odometer at her last upgrade. Hardly used by any standards. Still, that only deepens the mystery. Why hasn't OPEA reported her missing?" She looked at the man whose expression had not changed.

"You said you arrested this, Simbacca?" Liono asked, stepping to her side.

Mandora typed in a few commands while he spoke: "He was a serial killer who liked to torture his victims with fire."

At that very moment Tygra entered the room and when he saw Mandora inside he gulped loudly, too loudly. Immediately turned back but he had already caused too much of a disturbance to have gone unnoticed. Desperately he tried to look innocent, he walked forward to the huddled group on the side of the bed, waving, smiling coyly.

Mandora looked up at him -- she seemed to want to say something but could only manage a slight smile under her helmet.

"This is not Simbacca, see --" she showed the Thundercats the monitor. The image displayed on its bright screen was that of a fuzzy, green humanoid figure. According to the chart he was less than four feet.

The man on the bed was in excess of six feet.

"Is there no way to identify our stranger?" Tygra asked in a slight lisp.

"There's always a way."

Mandora took the man's right index finger and pressed the tip against a side scanner. He was visibly tense but allowed her to have her way -- it was as if he was used to submission. In a few seconds an image appeared on display.

"JT Marsh," she announced. "His last employer was OPEA -- he's been working there as an orderly for -- for five years?"

Suddenly and unexpectedly the man on the bed -- Marsh -- began to squirm and fret. He screamed like an animal, like an injured animal. Tygra rushed to his side with a syringe and -- while Panthro did his best to subdue the restrained figure -- carefully injected a tranquilizer into his blood stream.

In a matter of seconds he was asleep again.

"Orderlies are the lowest rung in the mental health system. It's unusually that he would remain one for so long without promotion."

"Maybe he's not a good orderly?" Liono theorized.

"Not according to his -- not one demerit, although for some reason the record hasn't been updated at all in six months." She continued to type while she talked.

"Red tape, bureaucracy," Tygra added.

"Maybe he went mad, too and became a patient?" Liono reasoned.

"Hardly -- unless he did something illegal. Like I said, that madhouse is for those who have broken the law and this man has no criminal record."

"I think this man has been much abused," Tygra said, pulling back the blanket, unaware that the officer had already taken note of the man's scars and marks. "Perhaps he was tortured?"

Pointing along abdominal scars she said: "Perhaps he's the result of an evil doctor's experiment that went horribly, horribly wrong?" She giggled, the levity in her tone lost to no one. She recovered the resting man and folded up her notebook. "Liono, I need to talk to you alone."

The lord of the Thundercats agreed and was the first out of the room. Panthro followed after him. Mandora and Tygra left last.

The officer smiled slyly and while no one was watching she patted the tiger gingerly, growling in an elongated purr. "I, missed you," she said under her breath.

He looked back at her, wild-eyed, taken aback. He said nothing and let the momentary intimacy pass unchecked. He had no one to blame but himself.

The panther's ears perked up right then and there and safely in the corridor he pulled the striped one to the side. Smiling harshly: "See -- that's what happens when you lead a woman on," he chided.

"I didn't know she would take it so seriously," he said, making sure Liono and Mandora were well out of earshot.

Panthro wrapped his arms around the tiger, nudging their bodies gently unto each other. "It's different for girls," he spoke, his lips just touching, brushing up against the tiger's. "It means something else to them."

Tygra kissed the panther's lips and sighed, caressing the Thundercat's exposed fur with wide, circular strokes of the hand -- rounding his chest, his back, moving down slowly, steadily.

"You're going to have to tell her the truth."

"She already knows," he answered Panthro in a voice teeming with unrestrained passion. "She touched me just to tease me." Nibbling on the gray one's ear he mumbled: "It's Liono she's in love with."

"Liono?" Panthro shrieked in disbelief. "Are you serious?"

Their voiced commingled in a sea of unstiffled laughter.
 

In the large, empty conference room Liono and Mandora discussed the matter privately. Standing in front of him she studied his well-built, almost totally exposed body. She remembered hearing once that Thunderians did not often wear clothes and bit her lip wondering if she would ever catch the object of her desires in disposed. She wondered, too, if perhaps he was shy, or if perhaps he shared the same feelings for her.

"I agree, we have to get to the bottom of this," he concluded.

She had not paid attention to what he was saying but caught up quickly. "Yes, we must go see what's happening at OPEA."

"We?" A faint smile came to his lips.

"We," she slapped a hand on his shoulder, feeling his flesh with eager fingers, letting her paw linger. "I'd like you to come with me. I'll need your, sword, if there are any problems."

Liono moved a hand atop of hers and leaned in closer.

"We'll figure out what going on down there -- over there, I mean" -- she felt lucky just then that she had a visor over her face, covering her eyes, hiding what she was looking at -- "while Tygra and Panthro stay here and see what they can get out of our friend Marsh."

"Yes, that does make sense," he said, breaking away, turning around -- not that she minded.

"OPEA is full of the galaxy's most dangerous madmen. If there's something wrong then there's no telling what might happen."

He reached around her waist, drawing her close to his growing warmth, letting -- no -- wanting her to feel him. "Come, let's go at once."
 

[Part Four]

"Snarf, snarf, what do you mean you're going alone?" the small, furry creature complained as it circled around Liono's legs.

That means you're staying here," he answered lightly as he walked along side Mandora. The trio headed to the front door. "I need you here to take care of things while I'm away," he said, reassuring the nanny.

Snarf stopped and stood on his tail while the other two just kept on walking away. He folded his arms -- an angered, annoyed look painted his face. "Well," he scoffed, whiskers bristling, "you could at least put on a jacket. It gets cold in space."

Mandora turned her head back and said: "That's all right, Snarf, I'll keep him warm," in her mind.

"I'll be OK, Snarf, I'll be safe."

"I'll keep him safe," at last she uttered gruffly.

The door opened with a slight click -- bright, white light and a biting, cold air seeped into the lair through the slight crack.

"Bye, Snarf," Liono said without a second glance. "I'll be back soon, I promise."

Mandora brushed up against him as she stepped out. In a perfectly-timed move she reached out and let her hand fall on his back, right over his shorts. Turning around once more she added: "I'll bring him back in one piece. I'll take good care of him."

"Snarf, snarf!" He crawled back down on all fours.

Again with a soft hiss the door closed behind the adult pair and the two vanished into the world outside. With no one left to talk to or pester, the small creature returned to his room to nap. Cat's Lair was just fine and would not need his services for another few hours.
 

Treading across the bridge, Mandora let her hand rise up to the lion's shoulder. He did not seem to mind her newfound closeness but at the same time he did not seem to do anything to encourage it. She wanted more but was content in the little things because they offered ample room to grow on. She fantasized about how close she could get.

"No, no!" she screamed aloud in her mind. "My mission, my duty. That's what's important." She was not like her male counterparts -- she was inherently uncomfortable with the idea of using her position of power to get 'cozy' with Liono but it was the only way she knew and understood. Her friends and coworkers had been 'great' examples and she had learned well from them. It had worked for her all the other times before, even on Tygra -- and she knew full well what he was.

Sexuality was a part of her life that disturbed her because she always taught she was above such base and carnal desires. But still there were times when her lust or need for companionship overruled her sensibilities. At least in Liono she saw someone who was like herself in many ways -- perhaps it would be different with him.

The wild-haired youth stopped next to her cruiser. Leaning into her slowly he gave her a nervous kiss on the lips. Cutting himself off quickly he drew back. "I'm sorry, Mandora, I --"

She pressed her fingers up to his lips silencing him softly.. She had misjudged the effects of her otherwise innocent flirting on his sensitive boyish body. She drew herself up to the heat of his body, his heaving chest and kissed his back. She kissed him long and deeply, letting her hands roam and wander as he pleased without hesitation. When she sensed that his excitement was too intense she stopped and stepped back.

"See, you don't have to be sorry. I like it, too." He responded with a bright smile. She in turned comforted him, rubbing up and down his massive, built chest. She knew then that she had him -- she was relieved because now the charade did not have to go on. "Let's just hold off on more until this mission is over."

He nodded in understanding.

"You don't have to be embarrassed at all, Liono. Oh, Liono," she hugged him once more and again he offered no resistance to her liberties with his body.

"Let's get going, then," he said at last in a passive stammer. He had his arms around her back. With slightly more authority he withdrew his hold: "Let's get to the bottom of this."

She smiled, letting go herself and showed him into the vehicle. Oddly, it seemed that her voice had changed. Gone was her monotonous timber -- it was replaced by something far more feminine, emotional. He had never known such dulcet tones come from her before.

She sat up front and he boarded right behind her, wrapping his arms tightly about her waist. "Hold on," she said. Her gruff and forceful accent had returned.

Mandora's standard-issue space cruiser blasted up to the muffled roar of its heaving engines -- its nonpolluting exhaust gathered about its occupants, providing the passengers with a blanket of warmth.

As soon as the air pressure dropped below a certain, critical level, a protective shield enveloped the vehicle. It was a localized electromagnetic barrier that freed them from the vacuum of space and from the dangers of cosmic rays, antimatter and microasteroids that engulfed the otherwise barren and featureless expanse. The hot gasses no longer surrounded them and in that abrupt temperature loss they felt cold, chilly.

The two huddled closely in a way that was more innocent than it appeared.

Liono had always enjoyed space trips -- except for that one right before Thundera's demise. But that was long ago and far away. He look avidly side to side, taking in the colorful displays that seemed to pass him by at ever-increasing speeds. The most impressive sites were the giant planets of the outer solar system. Yet, they appeared odd, disfigured. They looked like misshapen rocks clobbered together randomly with sparks of white light pluming out of the dark rifts of their cracked facades.

"It's the space shield and the time warp bubble," Mandora said, knowing as if by instinct what was on his mind, "they make the stars and planets look funny."

He nodded silently.

Neptune swished past them. The large orb seemed to get so close he thought he could reach out and grab it. Of all the planets it alone retained its normal characteristics -- although it was brighter and rotated faster than usual. In the blink of an eye it receded -- he turned to snatch one last look but it had vanished into a pinpoint of light indiscernible from the rest of the stars.

Even the sun had shrunk abnormally yet its arching rays were still too bright to look at.

A thin, misty trail of exhaust marked the path of the vehicle's route. In the bluish conglomeration floated shinny bits of solids. He thought the debris was metal or crystal but could not tell for sure.

"Hold on tight!" she commanded. The cruiser shook, jarring its occupants. The random jostling continued for a tense eternity. "I have to adjust the struts." She turned a series of blinking dials. Slowly the vessel's rocking motion smoothed out to a low, damped vibration. "Better. We're in the outer asteroid belt," she said.

Surrounding them were large, floating rocks, cratered and mangled. The massive stones sat still and motionless. The smaller one drifted together at greater velocities.

"It'll take us a while to get out of it but we'll make it," she reassured him.

The trek through the solar system was not yet complete. Past the outer asteroid system there was a great deal of nothing -- but up ahead was what appeared to be a 'wall,' a barrier that alternated between denser and looser parts. It curved around, enveloping the sun entirely. The 'wall' itself was formed from rocks even larger than the asteroids, some were so larger that they were surrounded by pockets of shimmering gas.

"The Oort Cloud," Mandora was beginning to sound more and more like a cosmic tour guide. "It's made from what you might call comets. Almost every solar system has one."

Into the delicate web-work and out of it the next moment the haloic cloud was exceedingly thin -- at least from the vehicle's perspective.

The absolute emptiness of interstellar space was an omnipotent darkness colored by untold numbers of distant sparks. Below their line of sight the great, central disk of the galaxy was clearly visible to them. Its side-winding arms were deceptively motionless.

The engines were on full speed but had stopped accelerating. Nestled in a bubble of subspace, superluminal speeds were easy to duplicate in effect. Soon, very soon, they would be rearing the Chandra Nebula, where the OPEA institution was safely protected.

After a staggering silence Liono asked: "Um?" he stammered.

"Yes, Liono?" Mandora angled her head back gently.

"Why do you like me?" he managed to get the words out quickly before rethinking them.

She was momentarily stunned but recovered shortly. "I -- I like you because, in certain ways we are the same. All my life I've been looking for someone who understands me and knows where I'm coming from. Most people who meet me think I'm a monotone, Broomhilda, a butch man-woman with no life outside the law."

He squeezed her tightly. "I don't think you're any of that." He rubbed his hands along the exposed flesh of her shoulder. He let his fingers roam about the sides of her chest. "I think you're very beautiful," he whispered, his words echoing with the timbers lust, "and so sensual." He purred.

"Sensual?" She held one of his hands in her own. "I, sensual?"

"I've had a crush on you since we first met."

"Oh, Liono!"

She giggled. He reached under her chin.

"We better be careful," Mandora pleaded without resistance.

"What I'd do to snuggled up next to you and keep you warm in bed."

Again she giggled and blushed. "We'd get naked and explore each other. I'd lie back and you'd be my blanket, my cuddly lion."

He giggled, too and kissed her on the neck. "Any thing you want, Mandora, my sweet. I belong to you completely."

She could feel his growing excitement and she enjoyed it immensely. She enjoyed teasing him, letting him on and giving him only so much. She enjoyed knowing she was driving him wild -- and for the first time in the longest time she was getting excited, too. Her mind was filled with images and ideas, steamy and explicit with every kiss and nibble and grope her studly youth was giving her from behind. She did not want to stop -- she let out a pent-up moan. The sound of it, her cries of pleasure hitting her ears alarmed her and set her back to reality.

She was on duty and she had to stop.

The darkness of space was abruptly replaced by a dull, red-orange. It was a gas cloud, thousands of parsecs across. The swirling mass had bands of colors and pinpoints of light deep in its incomprehensible structure. The cruiser was rocked about once again -- the nebula was surrounded by streaks of asteroids and the ship was dodging them. She broke away from his attention and refocused her mind on steering the vessel.

Something about the way she handled the stick shift suggested a plethora of impure thoughts in the lion's oversensitive mind.

Into the cloud they went without hesitation.

"The hospital's around here," she said, peering about the microcosm.

"Rocks, rocks -- is that all there is to the universe?"

"It sure seems that way. The facility is built into one of the planetoid." The engines slowed to a crawl and with a slight flash the subspace bubble they had ridden in popped and was no more. "There," she pointed up the effective horizon.

Liono squinted at the sight that only gradually came into view. Mandora steered the vehicle toward a long, tubular asteroid. The cigar-shaped object rotated about its major axis. It was a third of a parsec away and using the short-range hyper-drive the pair arrived at the location of the OPEA correction facility in half a second.

"Are you sure this is it?" Liono looked at the place in shock. "Is there any one home?"

Below the cruiser the rock tumbled at a comfortable rate that let them see the surface once every ten minutes. Liono's concern was not unfounded. The initial impression was obvious from the appearance of the institution whose external structures grew out of the substance of the rock. It was dark, lifeless, decrepit and woefully unkept. Windows were smashed or missing. Facades of buildings were torn off or gutted. The landing pad was in shadows but every so often little ships or large transports could be seen. The control tower and the mail building showed no signs of activity.

"There's not even a night light on," she commented. "I'll move in closer." She set her vehicle over a particular spot and entered into a slow orbit around the complex. Again, no visible response was given to her advances. "Something's wrong, something's very wrong."

Mandora sped the cruiser past the control tower to the landing zone and as soon as she was over the platform the lights -- the entire facility itself -- turned on and came to life at once. The effect was immediate and extraordinary and did nothing to curb their already mounting suspicions.

Liono checked his sword. It was not growling and the Eye of Thundera remained shut.

The vehicle landed in an empty spot between to transports, on an area marked '12' in yellow stencil. On their sides they saw that ships '11' and '13' had scorch marks and bullet scars. A battle or skirmish had taken place there and recently from the looks of it.

Liono and Mandora got off the vehicle and stood fast against any oncoming unforeseen danger. It was disorienting standing there while overhead the cosmos spun round and round -- but it was that very rotating motion that provided the 'gravity' that kept their feet and a descent atmosphere down on the rock. As long as he kept his eyes low on the ground he did not feel overpowered by vertigo and nausea.

The landing platform was still and deadly silent and when no one came over to great them the two began to roam about and explore the desolate scene. The surrounding vehicles were a series of about twenty medium-sized transports arranged in a sling row from one end of the pad to the other.

Parallel to that group were four ships. They were of immense proportions -- Liono and Mandora were simply lost, indistinct and formless amidst the supports of those space vehicles. Even the omnipresent control tower was dwarfed by those massive structures.

"Everything's here," she said. "This place hasn't been evacuated or anything."

"How many inmates does the facility hold?"

"Twenty-thousand."

His eyes widened and after an audible gulp he stepped back, running his hands through his mane, trying to comprehend a figure so vast.

She screamed and he turned to see. He hand covered her mouth in shame of her reaction. She had been caught off guard and would never forgive herself for it.

Standing ten feet before them was a short figure, cloaked in a brown robe that covered its head and obscured its face in shadows. The figure had just suddenly appeared but it could have been following them, spying them from the moment they had touched down.

It did not utter a word -- it had not reacted to Mandora's shriek. It only stood there for half a minute. Liono and Mandora approached cautiously, nervously -- a puff of gray haze evolved from the folds of its shoal and vanished into nothing.
 

[Part Five]

The strange figure, that had remained silent throughout, merely stood in place, unmoved until at last it raised its right arm forward. Loose robes dangled around shadowed flesh, thin fingers scarcely protruded out of what passed for a sleeve. It pointed to the control tower but it took the shocked pair more than a few moments to realize that -- the two turned around to see that a set of horizontal doors were open along the base.

"What do you think, Liono?" Mandora asked. She spoke but her eyes did not waver from the spot upon which she looked attentively.

Liono took notice of her consternation and saw for himself why the officer was so concerned. Red and yellow lights marked the outer edges of the wide-open entrances. As far as his space-accustomed eyes could tell, beyond the doors the interior of the tower was cast in a bright glow, dulled only by distance and complete with shadows that by their motion indicated frenzied activity within. He looked at his sword -- he took it into his hands out of disbelief. "It's not working," he said with a heavy tone.

"The gravity generators," the Evil-Chaser replied, rubbing her chin. "They might be creating fields so strong that they overpower your sword."

"That could be it," the lion answered, rehilting his blade. "What's a warrior without his weapon?" he commented dryly.

"A warrior still." She reached out to touch his arm as if to console him.

"Hmmm!" The pair turned around at once. The cue had come from the mysterious stranger. The figure still stood as it had earlier -- not even the slightest fold in its robes was out of place.

Mandora looked into Liono's eyes: "Let's be extra-careful," she said.

Slowly and deliberately they walked forward. Neither Liono nor Mandora could hear the interloper walk behind them so it occurred to them that they were alone. Passing a tall light post, no more than a few feet from the red-trimmed entrance, the officer turned around and gasped.

"What is it? Mandora?" Liono tried to shake her out of the shock that had then befallen her. Immediately behind them was the same robbed figure. It looked just like it had earlier. Its arm was still raised, it still pointed to the base of the tower -- to the doors. Liono's heart skipped a beat. "Don't look at it," he said, shaking her. She fluttered her eyes and turned forward again, her hand over her lips. He gave the stranger one last, glaring stare.

The light from the post revealed at last what the darkness had hidden from the beginning. A faint, gray smoke evolved from the sides of the figure's deformed lips. A band of flesh, trimmed by ancient scars of surgery, connected the central parts of the mouth and left only the two extreme ends unblocked -- a light drool oozed from those chaffed corners. Wires and segmented tubes drooped from the nostrils. Two little pipes jetted out of the lids of the eyes -- lids that like the lips had been sewn shut.

It poked the tip of its tongue onto the back of the connective flesh that worked so well to silence it -- the skin deformed around the protruding organ and again the 'hmmm' was uttered.

"By Jagga!"

Mandora promptly regained her strength. "Someone around here's got a lot of explaining to do."

He smiled, happy to hear her familiar drone again if only because it was something normal.

When they reached the doors and entered the spacious garage, they found that the hurried haste that had been hinted at earlier outside had come to an end. The immense facility was again quiet and still -- no one and no thing lurked either in the open or in the shadows. The chamber was a hundred feet high and circled around the base of the tower -- only the central stem stood out like a pillar, a single, solitary pillar. The walls were white and made from slabs of concrete. The roof was a grid of iron bars and thin catwalks. The floor was covered with the remains of an engine, piles of burnt scrap and other garbage neatly collected.

"There's something wrong, Mandora," the young lord said at last. "This place is too neat --"

"Yes," she said, adjusting her helmet, "I'd say someone was trying to hide something." She picked up a small section of fuselage. It was titanium, warped and distorted by the blast that had almost melted it and riddled it with tiny, uncountable holes. "This was not an accident."

"Welcome," a voice boomed from overhead. "Welcome, welcome all," a man appeared from the central column, clapping softly. "Forgive the mess," he said as he walked to the pair, "we've been doing some, renovations, yes? Some of which seemed to have failed, miserably." He smiled. His eyes barely glanced at the panel Mandora was holding -- an effect that was conspicuously noticeable. "My name is Hal, I am the superintendent of this facility." He removed his hat and cradled it in his left arm as he bowed his head to the two.

"Are you in charge of this place?" Mandora asked.

Hal shook his head as he raised it to look at her. He was dressed in blue and white garbs, the manner and style of which was popular once, innumerable millennia ago. Yellow ribbons adorned his padded shoulders. Something about the uniform was familiar to Liono, something about it made him think the man was a member of an army, a captain, or general, or --

"No," he seemed to twiddle his fingers under his hat. "Mrs. Lincoln controls the facility, I merely coordinate activities and such."

The garage doors then suddenly and unexpectedly shut. The pair whisked around in surprise. The strange, mysterious figure stood beside a blinking control panel.

"I see you've met Galileo," Hal said. "A very useful fellow, no? No? No?"

Mandora took out her badge and flailed it at the coordinator. "I am Officer Mandora, Evil-Chaser, First Class and this is my, deputy, Liono." The Thundercat smiled coyly, unsure of what to say. "We need to have a talk with Mrs. Lincoln," the officer continued, prodding the diminutive Hal with her extended forefinger. "There's been some funny business around here we have to get to the bottom of right away."

"Yes, yes," the man from a long time past said in compliance. "Yes. Funny business, funny business! Hehehe." He motioned them to the door from which he had emerged. "Come this way, I'll take you to her -- we wouldn't want to keep you from doing your job officer. I'm sure whatever concerns you have Mrs. Lincoln will quickly alleviate them." The pair walked toward the door to Hal's lead. "Perhaps you'd like some dinner, too -- it's very late around here. Very late. Late."

"I suppose -- why not?" Liono said. He quickly received a sharp elbow from his colleague in crime fighting.

"Diner. Late, very late -- we're not usually up here at this hour." The door opened to reveal the car of a steel-framed elevator.

"Is that why your lights were off?" Liono asked.

After a brief pause to let Galileo into the lift Hal answered: "Of course, yes -- to conserve power, I suppose. Yes, yes. To conserve power, for our renovation. Oh, it all comes together so nicely, doesn't it? Doesn't it? Yes." He nodded.

"You must feel proud," Mandora goaded, "after all, you are in charge of coordinating things around here."

"In charge, no, Mrs. Lincoln is in charge -- wait, wait, of course, yes, yes, I do coordinate things around here, don't I?" He put his hat back on, back straight, chest forward. "I coordinate things well, don't I, Galileo?"

A stunned silence befell Liono and Mandora. The fourth person in the car was also unresponsive -- but for other reasons.

"Going down," he said as the doors slid shut, his hands on the dial. "Down, down, down."
 

[Part Six]

The motors that ran the elevators hummed softly in the distance and echoed unceasingly in the silence of the car. The lights reflected brightly, vibrantly on the white metal and plastic walls of the circular enclosure. The car plummeted at almost breakneck speeds whipping up strong, cold currents of air that flapped their clothes and whisked their hair.

She stood silent and reserved, trying desperately to regain her sense of duty. From the moment the whole adventure began she had been painfully aware of just how out-of-character she was acting. In the past her personal desires and unwomanly excess were few and far-between, always kept absolutely private, always repressed by her more masculine, authoritative will. Her sudden loss of control, her wanton flirting, her unseemly innuendoes, once safely under the surface, were now very much open and it disturbed her like nothing else ever had. She wanted to stop, worrying that it was too late, hoping that her resilience, built up from her many years as a cop, would save her mind, torn apart by her conflicting desires.

He looked down at his feet. Vague and distorted reflections passed over the shiny fabric of his uniform's boots. He saw what appeared to be the sources of the ambient light -- long, rectangles, framed in black -- and letterings scrolling by, leaking onto the floor, snaking to the outer edge of the elevator. Not really knowing what to expect, he looked up to see that the car had no roof. Vertical slits of fluorescent tubes adorned the concave walls. Large, numbers were stenciled along side the dark outlines of metal that surrounded the portals of light. The upper part of the shaft was open overhead, converging by a trick of eye, into a point, a single, shadowy point.

The unseen mechanism of the elevator slowly came to an end. A series of harsh, jerky motions announced the car's arrival at the intended level. What sounded like a bell chimed the sliding doors opening. A dark hall awaited the pair. Neither did they speak neither did they move. They waited for what was their most awkward moment yet to pass.

"So where's this Mrs. Lincoln, buddy?" she asked, bellowing in her patented monotonic voice.

Hal again twiddled his fingers. "This way, yes, this way. Follow this way." He extended a hand into the shadows of the hall and walked slowly out of the elevator. "Follow me."

Liono and Mandora looked at each other nervously. Behind them Galileo, the robed and hooded figure stood by the blinking control panels. Thankfully his face was well hidden from their eyes even in that bright light.

She took the lead at once, venturing purposefully into the unknown void that awaited them. She heard the patter of his footsteps approach from behind but she did not turn around. The glaring lights of the elevator slanted out of its wide opening and cast itself upon the floor next to her -- she could see his shadow as he walked to her side. Further into the passage way another, softer timber of light poured out of a set of wooden double doors before which Hal stood, his arm still extended as if to indicate to them to enter into that chamber.

"Come, this way," he said.

The elevator doors slid shut with another bell tone, its motors hummed and the ground rumbled as the car passed, descending into deeper, untold levels.

"Don't mind him," the man dressed in the outfits of the past continued, "he has other places to go, other people to see. Come, come this way." The two clamored through the hall silently, anxious that any noise, no matter how slight, was a prelude to an ambush attack.

The room that Hal implored them to enter was a stately, lofty dinning area. The walls were made of carved, wooden panels ten feet high. Above that décor was a plane plaster that ran another ten feet and that was adorned only by brass fixtures upon which hung flaming torches that were not really flames but an optical illusion designed to lend the place an air of antiquity. The ceiling was boxed in with alternating square and oval tiles of wood. The floor was carpeted but the color and nature of the fabric remained unfathomable in the dim light. A large table set complete with chairs was placed in a far corner were open doors led to halls as equally, dimly lit as the main chamber.

Before each seat was a metal dish, beside it were utensils wrapped in a white cloth. Three cups were supplied for each mat, one of which was always kept full of fresh, icy water. The smell of freshly-cooked food evolved from one of the open doors along with certain other rushed sounds. Incoherent and muffled, Liono and Mandora were not able to tell just what the din was but it seemed to go on and on. Even Hal was visibly disturbed by it -- without telling them why he rushed into one of the doors, leaving them alone in the dinning room.

"I guess we're supposed to take our seats," Liono said.

"Not until I have a word with this Mrs. Lincoln," Mandora scoffed. "If she exists at all."

Four, small dwarfs entered the room. The men were almost naked except for the tight, blue cloths that covered their loins. Upon their shoulders they carried covered plates that, when they reached the table, the set at the head and middle sections. Mandora grabbed Liono to the side -- the young lord was having trouble controlling his laughter -- for the little men walked around shot, stubby, unbendable legs in the most comical way possible.

Once finished with their tasks they stood in a line next to the door from which they had entered. The two do-gooders looked on in a sort of delayed horror. It had occurred to them that the dwarfs had unusually large bodies and that their arms were also very long -- too long -- but it was not until they saw them there, all next to each other so neatly aligned that they realized why those men really where. No, they were not midgets at all, indeed, at one time they had been tall people, just like Liono and Mandora -- but sometime, somehow, during the course of their lives, they had had their thighs removed and the lower parts of their legs, from the knees down, were connected back to their pelvises in a sort of medical experiment gone horribly wrong.

Mandora grunted.

"Maybe it's not what we think," Liono said, trying not panic. "Maybe these men are prisoners here." Mandora raised an eyebrow. "I mean -- model inmates, whose good behavior --"

"I understand the concept," she butted in, "still." Up and down she studied them but besides what appeared to be a few scars and burns around their nipples she could see any real or definite signs of abuse or torture.

She was about to say more when yet another figure appeared from the open doors. It was another man, tall and slender and dressed even more scantily that the manufactured midgets encountered earlier. That new stranger had no arms, just hands that jetted out of the carved stumps at the end of his shoulders. He was moving his fingers about, cracking his knuckles in a most unusual way that employed the use of his still dexterous thumb.

"This is Mrs. Lincoln," Hal said, he pointed to the woman who stood next to him -- the pair had entered the dinning room immediately after the man with no arms had made his appearance.

Mrs. Lincoln stepped under the umbrella of light that a nearby torch emitted and removed from her head a dark veil and bonnet combination. The ornate, flowing fabric fell to the floor with scarcely a second look. One of the dwarfs rushed forward on stilt-like legs to grab it. She petted his wild mane of black hair lightly, sending him back to stand on the wall with the others. Oddly, he kept the bonnet and held it nervously between his legs.

Mrs. Lincoln smiled and turned to the others -- Mandora's eyes widened. The woman who ran the OPEA facility looked exactly like Hal. Every feature, every line and wrinkle was identical down even to the sex and yet the pair were obviously two separate beings and not just one pretending to be the other.

Liono gulped as the cross-dressing Mrs. Lincoln approached him with a wry look in his eyes. The officer stepped in between them just in time.

"M -- a'am, I am Officer --"

"Yes," 'Mrs.' Lincoln butted in, "Hal has told me who you are."

"We're here to investigate certain --

"Hush, hush, my dear," Mrs. Lincoln again interrupted her, flailing her arms in an exaggerated, grandiose manner. "First we must eat."

"Yes," Hal said, imploring them to sit upon chairs that the man with no arms drew out for them with two, swift kicks, "sit, sit, eat, eat."

Liono and Mandora looked at each other for a second then in unison accepted their host's offer. Three or four dwarfs came to their sides, setting their cups and plates, unfurling spoons and knives. Hal and Mrs. Lincoln sat themselves not at the head of the table but at the adjacent corners.

"Jesus," Mrs. Lincoln called, the man with no arms looked to him, her, "make sure that our guests are well served."

He nodded and stepped out of the chamber.

A wine bottle popped and sparkling wine poured into the cups of the two table-masters. The dwarfs went over to the law-enforcing duo but Liono shook his hand no and Mandora glared at the small men until the went away. The aroma of freshly-cooked food emanated into the room before Jesus arrived with the wheeled platter-tray. The midgets swarmed the contraption and handed out the plates to the awaiting eaters.

Liono's stomach growled when he saw the steaming antipasto -- the taste was unusual, an odd mix of spice and apple. Mandora's reaction was less revealing. Hal and Mrs. Lincoln began to eat quickly, their movements and mannerisms uncannily mirroring one another. The man dressed as a man supped clumsily while the man dressed as woman was more prim and proper.

Amidst the clamor of their metal utensils hitting their porcelain plates Mandora spoke up: "Where's is your transport ship, 'OPEA-12'?"

The unusual pair stopped eating at once and looked at each other.

"It's being re --" Hal began.

"It's been stolen," Mrs. Lincoln ended.

"Stolen," the Evil-Chaser said with a hint of levity in her tone, "then why hasn't it been reported stolen."

"We," Hal looked nervously side to side as if he was being watched. "We, we, we, have been busy. Very busy."

"Yes, we just haven't had the time."

"That vessel was property of CONTROL -- and it would have only taken you a five minute call to report the theft."

"We've been having, technical difficulties," Mrs. Lincoln said in a shrill, dry tone, her lips terse, her nose pointed upward.

"And where is your orderly, JT Marsh?"

"Orderly? Oh, yes, yes, the men with the white robes," Mrs. Lincoln said amused with herself. Hal laughed along too while Mandora's eyebrow arched under her helmet.

"Like I asked, where is JT Marsh?"

"Marsh was an inmate, he escaped with the ship," Hal answered. The room shook as a loud bang was heard coming up from the table. "Why'd you do that for, for, do that?" He pulled his foot up, massaging its throbbing flesh in his hands.

Mandora stopped eating -- even Liono had begun to feel suspicious.

"Marsh couldn't have been a --"

"Jesus!" Mrs. Lincoln called, clapping her hands. The armless man walked from the shadows of the wall behind her to her side. She looked up at his face while she smeared his loincloth with her fingers, seeming, as it were, to be feeling up certain parts. "We'll have the chef start dessert now."

The tall man nodded and moved back -- but not before Mrs. Lincoln reached out for another peak.

Mandora's eyes rolled: "Like I was saying --"

"Are you done yet with your dinner, my dear?" Without bothering to wait for the steamed officer's stormy reply: "Because dessert will be served shortly."

"We sure do eat dinner quickly here, don't we?" Hal asked rhetorically -- but we did not face the pair at the other end of the table, rather he looked at the back of the room where there was no one. "We sure do, we sure do, yes!"

"MARSH was an orderly, he couldn't have been a patient because this place is for the insane -- the criminally insane and his record was clean." She shouted above her host's persistent intrusions.

"That does seem to be a problem --" one of then said, she could not tell or care for that matter.

"And just what kind of lousy, two-bit operation is this? The OPEA is a CONTROL facility, it's structured and organized, it has protocols and procedures that must be followed to the letter. This is the worst run correction institution I've ever that the displeasure of knowing -- just because you're in the backwoods of this galaxy doesn't give you the right to go about as you see fit, ruling like emperors without heeding to the codes set forth by CONTROL." At that point she carried on her self-serving lecture standing. "If a ship gets stolen you report it. It a 'prisoner' escapes you report it. And as for these improvements you say you're making, where are the permits?" She did not give the time to answer. "You're a disgrace, Lincoln, whatever your are -- I have as good a mind to turn the whole lot of you in."

Liono, who had remained observant throughout, got on his feet and inched toward her back when he saw a procession of moving shadows stir behind the swinging, double doors that led to the kitchen.

"What is it?" she whispered to him.

"Look," he pointed weakly at the site.

The officer reached for her holster, wrapping her fingers around her weapon.

Mrs. Lincoln began to sob -- her flailing head replete with overemotional exaggerations. Hal came over to her side and began to pet her head. Looking at the officer and Thundercat he sobbed: "Now look at what you've done!"

"This is a madhouse, a madhouse!" Mandora growled. "Who's in charge? I demand to know who's in charge --"

"I am, all right, you blond bitch," Mrs. Lincoln scowled. "So I'm not any good, so I'm in over my head -- but god damn it I'm new at this and I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn."
 

[Part Seven]

"Shut up! Shut them up!" a loud voice boomed -- everyone in the dimming hall turned to see.

A small band of armed men invaded the dinning room, long, obscenely long guns ablaze and aimed. A tall, sleek, square-jawed man, whose eyes were kept under the cover of dark glasses and whose face betrayed no hint of emotion, cut through the still mob and walked up to the silent and still crime-fighting pair. He spoke -- rather, he barked orders with lips that barely parted. He commanded his men to circle the table, actively pointing them where to go.

Hal and Mrs. Lincoln were seized at once. The white-robed marksmen shoved them to the floor, breaking the chairs under them and, despite the bizarre duo's incessant wails, they were led away in handcuffs. At the same time, however, Jesus and another man in a hat entered from the kitchen. The new stranger was horribly disfigured. His skin was bloated and scarred with pink, oozing sores that flaked green dander. His face, too, was bloated. Cheeks, exceedingly puffy, blocked off the eyes and buried the nose. Lips, wet and throbbing, poked through engorged red with blood. Behind them the elves paraded in two straight lines and behind that procession were more well-armed troopers.

"Good work, men," the loud leader cooed, raising a hand up in the air -- Mandora noticed its grotesque deformity and looked away. Liono kept squinting at it, desperately trying not to seem rude. "That's the last of them, I think -- yes, the main building is now ours!"

"Excuse me, sir?" Liono squeaked by comparison, "but just what's going on?"

The tall man glared at the lion and lean forward annoyed that the cub had not moved out of his way. He turned his attention to the officer, adjusting his glasses with the fat, pusy stump that was his right hand. It was full in view, swishing as though it was a flesh-bag of blood, the fingers poking out widely apart, no more than small, oily stubs.

"I am Officer Mandora --"

"Yes, I know, I've been watching you since you arrived. Nice job telling that, thing, whatever it was, off like that. I know I couldn't have given that tongue lashing any better. Sorry," he allowed himself a devious, almost flirtatious smile, "I didn't introduce myself. I am General Frank, fifth class. I am here to liberate this facility."

"Liberate?" Liono asked.

The general again glared at the well-built youth. "Not too recently this place was taken over by a select group of inmates. We've been fighting them for more than six months -- that's when it all began. We were getting close but it wasn't until your well-timed arrival threw them for a loop -- they never saw that coming and didn't know how to handle it. Now the main buildings and control tower is ours, the lower levels are at our mercy."

"General," Mandora began, diverting the tall figure's looming stare, "I'm still a tad confused, can you be more specific? You are a CONTROL general, couldn't you have called for back up?"

He flashed his badge -- the Evil-Chaser's eyes widened in shock but she held her tongue. "As for radioing for help, well no -- the first thing those two did," he said, pointing at Hal and Mrs. Lincoln, "was bust the radio. We were also deep in the complex at the time and our signals couldn't have made it too far. Anyway, as I'm sure you know the OPEA is the last resort for this galaxy's hard-core super criminals. The crazies," he added a few, twirling gesticulations with his mangled hand. "We, my men and I, were stationed here to make sure that the facilities are well-protected. We are at the edge of the galaxy and anything could happen, you know. To make a long story short, the doctors who were in charge here were performing, shall we say, experiments on the inmates. Personally, I couldn't have cared less until the prisoners rebelled and took the doctor's hostage. That pair you see, the brothers Hanson," Mandora nodded, " were the leaders of that rebellion."

"Do you know a man named JT Marsh?"

He paused for a moment to reflect. An officer next to him, shook his head slowly. "No, I can't say that I do."

"I wouldn't suppose so -- Marsh was an orderly --" at the sound of that word the general's nostrils flared in a sort of restrained ire. "He managed to escape a few days ago," she finished her statement reeling with the sense of terror that exuded from the tall man in charge.

"That man was lucky, I'd say -- the inmates have a special grudge against orderlies if you know what I mean. He escaped, ah, I guess that's what brought you here. It does explain the little skirmish at the control tower almost a week ago." He rubbed his chin.

"Were all those men inmates?" Liono asked, pointing to the dwarfs and mutilated cripples who stared into the room from the hall outside.

Without looking aside he answered: "Yes, yes, they all were, all of them. They are some of the doctor's failures"

"Just what were the experiments about?"

"Lord only knows. Gibberish's all I understood. I tell you, after a while the docs must have become as loony as their patients."

The general turned from the pair and quickly sprinted over to the double doors of the kitchen where one of his men was standing, waving him over. Both vanished behind the swinging covers. Violent shouts and banging noises emanated from the shifty darkness. The gun totting guard who had remained at the commander's side looked on at Liono and Mandora with devious suspicion. He directed the other, armed men in the dining room to follow the general into the kitchen and the ordered the rest to take their prisoners into the will-lit hall.

Mandora turned to Liono. "I don't like this, it's all wrong, Liono."

"Why? I think the general's --"

She shushed him and turned him around. The two walked to a corner of the room beyond the carpet. Whispering into his ear: "That's not his badge -- it belongs to someone named Lieutenant Lanpet."

Liono was stunned: "What the hell's going on here, by Jagga?"

The double doors, still swinging from their last use, came crashing down along with another pair of dwarfs. The little men clamored back up on their feet and tried to run away -- it was pathetic how they limbered about on mangled limbs. Although Mandora had no sympathy for the criminals, Liono felt a sort of benevolent pity at their plight. They were insane, after all and not entirely cognizant of their evils.

"Come," the Lion said, holding onto Mandora's arm, dragging her back. The armed man who had eyed them incessantly had had his attention diverted by the ruckus and was totally unaware of the two's covert actions. He as well as his white-robed officers were too bust trying to tackle the fleeting midgets to notice as the pair quietly slipped into the recesses of the chamber, to a back doorway that led to a darker, warmer hall.

Shots were fired and they looked back to see that the armed guards had shot the miniature men. The captives were still not dead but bleed badly and wailed as their bodies were stomped on and kicked about the chamber. Screams and wails then filled the air.

For the first time even Mandora felt sorry for them but the emotion did not last -- there was a bigger problem to deal with, one whose particulars were only then becoming both clear and indistinct.

The two were running down the hallway, unsure of where to go, what to do or who to trust. Doubtless the OPEA was a most dangerous place to be in but judging by what they had seen from both sides it was hard to tell who was worse. The doctors or their patients.

In their mad rush to escape, in their mad dash through unfamiliar territory they found themselves near the head of a set of winding, concrete steps that lead down, down deep into the hell of that rotating asteroid. They found an alcove along the corridor's right wall was large enough for them to crawl into -- and just in time.

Liono and Mandora squeezed in, tightly pressed onto one another. They stopped their breathing and were absolutely silent. The garbled statistic of a two way communicator announced the presence of an armed guard in the passage.

"The Cheezey goddess rules eternal," the man in the shadows said.

"Long live weirdness," his radio partner answered.

The patter of footsteps followed and after a few, tense moments the stealthy pair thought themselves alone.

"We'll whisper," he meowed.

"We have to go up," she answered, "the cruiser is up."

"But they said they controlled the upper floors, the main buildings."

"This was not the smartest thing to do," she lamented, "oh, Liono, I only wanted you to come along so that I could, that I could --"

He kissed the nape of her neck, picking the oddest time to be so passionate.

"Men," she sighed.

"Mandora," he purred. "If we never make it out of here --"

"Quiet, your squeezing will alert them. Ah, that's not how it's done." She turned around and wrapped her arms about him tightly. "Sorry, I got you into this mess."

"Don't be, I was only being silly when I said we might not make it. Besides, I have a plan."

"You do?"

"Yeah, I don't always need the sword, you know. I figure that we can make it out of here unnoticed if we can make it difficult for them to follow us."

"How?"

"By causing as much trouble and chaos as we can."

"Chaos -- yes, they'd be too busy trying to keep order. That Frank, who ever he thinks he is, is such a CONTROL freak that it would really tick him off."

The sound of the footsteps returned, faster and louder.

"He heard us!"

"Run to the stairs."

Liono jumped out of the cramped hiding spot and picked up the officer in his thick, tensed arms. He carried her across the hall almost at cheetah speed -- a feat he had to restrain when Mandora was on foot because he did not want to leave her behind. Free from that worry, he was able to reach the stairwell in half a second -- long before the unseen guard could fire off a shot.

The steps would in a tight spiral. Once he had passed enough turned he stopped and let her go. They sat on a wide landing quietly -- or as quietly as they could for their hearts raced and they were painfully out of breath. Next to them was a gray, metal door with what appeared to be a number stenciled to it. Mandora kept her eye on it as she asked:

"So, let's get to this plan."

"We'll have to start at the bottom," they stood, looking up the spiral stairs in caution, "we'll work our way up. We'll free the doctors and as many of the patients as we can and have them duke it out. The havoc that will ensue would be tremendous. And they'd be too busy fighting among themselves to notice us."

She nodded and stood: "Let's get to it, deputy."
 

[Part Eight]

Running down the spiral stairwell they passed another seven doors -- all of them were on wide landings, all of them were placed at ever decreasing depths. A set of rudimentary Roman numerals were drawn on their gray, metal frames with black ink that shined in the dim, fluorescent lights that emanated from far above. It took them an embarrassingly long time to understand the numbers but eventually they realized that the dots and diamonds represented ones and fives respectively.

Mandora stopped at the eighth door and looked up the elongated, elliptical structure of the stairs. Although the upper lighting hurt her eyes and kept from seeing the finer details she did manage to notice the vague shadows and silhouetted outlines of a small band of armed men that was coming down, too, to great them as it were. She darted back into the safety of the inner wall just as soon as that advancing troop stopped, seeming to notice her, aiming long barrels in her direction.

A series of shots followed -- the bullets struck the concrete of the steps, embedding themselves in the solid aggregate or bounced off the thick, metal pipes that served as banisters, ricocheting back but only to drop limply and deformed to the stairway's floor fifty feet below.

"There's only one more door," Liono shouted.

Mandora looked to her side, peering down. Although she had stopped he had continued to run and had made halfway around the turn. She sprinted toward him as fast as she could, carefully dodging the bullets that continued to be fired from above. "Idiots," she growled, "at least we can give thanks for their lousy aim."

Reaching him he drew her forward and together again they continued on their run.

One of the white-robed men barked orders that echoed throughout the stairwell. The men at his command stopped shooting and, with another series of shouts, they continued to run toward the elusive pair.

"This is it, this is it," he said. "Were at the ninth level of OPEA."

The stairs came to an end on a circular platform that was cast in perpetual dusk. A large, red letter was engraved into the floor but no one stopped to admire it. The last of the series of doors was missing its knob not because age or abuse had disfigured it, but because it was designed that way. But then, none of the doors they had passed had had knobs. Like many things they just never stopped to pay attention.

"They're gaining on us!" she wailed.

Instinctively he went for his sword but that time he was going to use his brains -- or at least brute force -- and not rely on its supernatural powers to get him out of the problem. No, he was counting on one of its mystical properties to remain even though the others were being suppressed. He rammed the weapon in between the crack of the door and its outer frame. With great strain he needled it in as far as he could and quickly began to pry it open.

Mandora took out her weapon and began firing at the troopers above who were continuing to advance, continuing to come closer and closer. "Hurry it up," she said, giving out orders of her own until the end.

"It's almost free," the lion answered back, his face grossly contorted in superhuman effort.

None of her shots were helping so she decided wisely to conserve her ammunition. She put the gun away and stepped back to Liono's side. She saw that indeed the door was almost free of its hinges and, realizing that it needed only the slightest extra push, she threw her weight upon him. The sword, which had remained in its unexpended form throughout, had just the slightest hint of bend but at no time did it crack. The door, on the other hand, was sent flying back and crashed upon long, vertical pipes, a deformed piece of scrap metal.

A gapping darkness was revealed and without thinking twice she ran in. He looked at his weapon one last time before he returned it to his claw shield. Whatever bend it might have seemed to have it was gone and he was thankful to Jagga for that. He followed her in and found her, despite the deplorable lighting condition.

Quietly the stumbled out of the corridor and into a bare, featureless rectangular room with three walls. Where the fourth was should have been there was an empty space that led out into a vast chamber. Liono and Mandora looked on aghast at the macabre scene. A glowing, red heat emanated from a circular hole carved on floor. Surrounding it were moaning, wailing bodies, barely alive, chained by rustling, clamoring restrains to the surrounding stonework. They were naked and emaciated. They called out to a distant part of the room still unseen by the pair.

The two jumped off the edge about ten feet, landing upright in the middle of the horror. The heat coming out of the central pit was intense and created a current of air so strong it was blowing their hair all about, making them look terrifying to the already deprived captives whose wailing on intensified. Liono extended his sword silently and immediately began to chop the chains left and right. Mandora explored around the room, keeping a careful eye at the spot where they had entered from to make sure they would not be surprised by the storm troopers in an unexpected ambush. She treaded over a vile conglomeration of stray, feces, urine and sort of runny, lumpy goo that could only have passed for a kind of gruel. The vomit was apparently the only form of nourishment the hostages received -- eagerly and shamelessly they lapped it up from the floor.

In the pace of a minute he had managed to free about ten prisoners. About another ten or so remained but before he could reach them he stopped. Those who he had released remained prostrate on the floor, cowering in the excesses of their own waste. They did not realize that they were free now, indeed, they did not understand anything at all except those untamed, animalistic urges that control the day to day activities of their lives: eat, drink, sleep. They had at last been reduced to their lowest, basest forms, their humanity lost, torn out and stomped to death by their cruel oppressors.

"I don't think these were prisoners, Liono," Mandora whispered into his ear. She clung on to him near the center of the room -- the red halo that came out of the deep pit shone on them in an eerie, ethereal manner. "Look," she pulled up from the stench what was left of a white uniform. The words 'Dr. Reduf' were still embroidered above the front, left pocket.

"Let's just get out of here," he said, trying to hold back his heaving stomach.

She let the tattered, stained cloth drop. "They seemed only to be interested in what goes on over there," she said, pointing to that part of the chamber that had been hidden from them earlier.

Liono and Mandora sprinted across the obstacle course that was the floor, over puddles of putrefaction that reeked of spicy, sour apples and through the huddled men and women to the distant wall. Around it were two, long light fixtures that hung along side the stone masonry. The floor curved down gently until it terminated before a wide door.

"It's open," he announced. He poked his head in -- a flood of light greeted his eyes on the other side. "It leads to a long hall."

"It's the only way to go." She reached out and pulled the door aside -- the light made the prisoners behind them howl and bay like animals -- they rattled their chains like babies and stomped on the floor violently like children with tantrums.

They closed the door behind them once they passed through it. The hall they were now in was low and decorated in much the same way as the hall they had passed through in the main building, the one that led to the dinning room. They walked into a square-framed section, the only part of the passage that deviated from the straight and narrow.

In that eerily silent partition there were two doors, one on each side, open to dim, shadowed rooms behind them. A scream suddenly came from the room to the left -- Liono and Mandora rushed to it, weapons drawn. Instinctively cautious, they peeked inside before they went any further.

A large, burly man was strapped down on a table that looked like a butchers block. Its wood was marked by deep, long cuts that had through time and use been filled in by a noxious mixture of flesh and fungi. Blood that browned with age stained the sides of the six by four feet table. The man was awake and struggling against the leather restraints. He was dressed in the same white robes that Marsh had been found in on Third Earth.

Liono was about to enter when suddenly a second character appeared from the woodwork. He was a tall, lean figure, with long, white hair that reached down his back, almost to his knees. He was dressed in a leather outfit that conformed to his anatomy. He smiled widely, his teeth almost jutting out of his lips, tongue wagging, saliva dripping. His eyes that started out of his skull did not blink. He raised his hands, revealing the ax he was holding.

"No!" Liono shouted -- Mandora held back the youth and fired at the menacing man with her weapon. With two shots the skull was shattered. A cloud of blood and rain splattered across the walls, falling onto everything. He had to turn his face away -- the inexperienced cub found the display too violent to watch.

She put her gun down and was quick to enter the room. He followed right behind her, but he was clumsy and unsteady. He almost tripped over the large, slim body -- blood continued to pour from the holes blown out of the head, the arms were stretched up over the head, the sharp ax embedded in the concrete.

The officer was trying to undo the leather restraints but acting too fast caused her fingers to lose dexterity. He helped by hacking at the hide with the sword. The captive on the block looked on with a wild expression of terror. Once the gag had been removed over his lips the screams coming out of him were bone-chilling, terrifying. The white-robbed man thrashed about, a stream of urine leaking from his pants.

"He's acting like a caged animal," Mandora said, struggling to find the words while at the same time holding him down so he would not interfere with Liono's cutting.

When the right leg was freed the man gained enough leverage to simultaneously throw Mandora off him, sit up and kick Liono out of the way. Growling and snarling, he tried to get on the ground but his left ankle was still attached to the chopping board. The result was stupendous: the whole table tipped over to its side. Taken aback by the incredibly loud bang, the two evil-fighters could not help but watch as the events unfolded. The man limped toward the door, dragging the large, heavy wooden table with such force and speed impossible for a man of his deprived, tortured condition. He reached the door and could go no further -- the weight attached to him was too large to fit through. He pulled and tugged and with a great roar something, something wet and slobbery snapped and he fell to the floor out in the hall face-down.

Liono and Mandora rushed to the door and stuck their head out. The man was flailing down the hall at top speed despite a pronounced limp. Blood splattered the floor and they looked down. A single, left foot, from the ankle down, remained in the leather restraint that the Sword of Omens had hardly scratched.

Together they forced the yellow, worn table from under the doorway. When the path was clear they slipped into the hall. The door to the other room before them opened with a click -- its rusted hinges squeaked as it drew back. Darkness stared at them while a persistent, jackal-like laugh echoed out from within. They stared into the bleak horror that thankfully remained in shadow. They wanted to look away but were frozen by a morbid fear and then two things happened, or seemed to have happened at once.

Booming, shouting voices along with wailing and chain-rattling came from the vast chamber to their left. Rushed and heavy footsteps reverberated from behind the wide door that separated them from the hell they had seen but a few minutes before. "They found us, they found us," Mandora said, "they must have heard my shots or --"

Liono did not answer, he did not even hear her -- he was too focused on that second room. And then a hand came out of the darkness, gnarled and covered with brown fur. The digits were long and thin and curved except for the index finger that swayed in rhythmic titillation, coaxing, luring him to enter amidst that infernal cackle.

He looked at her, eye wide and expressionless: "Run, run," he said in a restrained whisper.

Down the hall they sped, following the trail of blood that the footless man had left behind. The well-lit passage they were in seemed to have no end and at the same time it had no features. Gone were doors, passages or alcoves. Gone were the places to sneak or hide in. At the extreme terminus they found a skeletal elevator -- the trail of blood stopped right then and there.

"Great, where's the car?" Liono asked rhetorically. "There must be a button or control switch --"

"Got it," she shouted and immediately the air was filled with the drone of the elevator's motors. The car was dropping. Mandora peered up the shaft -- her eyes sore from the minute particles falling into them -- she saw that it was taking too long to come to them.

Liono smashed the wire frame door out of its hinges, throwing it back with a crackling din. He folded it in half and set it on its side before them. "It's not much but it's the only cover we have."

"Get them! Get them, they're not cleared to be down here!" the stern voice of General Frank's personal guard echoed up the passage.

Mandora readied her weapon. Liono peeled back more wire mesh, creating a makeshift wall. The two crouched behind it. No shots were fired, or at least if there were they never hit their targets.

In the deafening advance of the unstable, armed troops, no one noticed until it was too late that the elevator had arrived.

"Did something change here?" he turned to her and asked.

She looked back at the empty shaft and squinted not realizing it at first that it was the empty and waiting elevator cab. She saw a blood splatter -- the same sort of size and shape that dotted the hall. "It's here," she announced, pointing at the iron platform. She scrawled into the car on hands and knees and squeezed into a corner.

Liono stood up a bit -- not all the way but enough that his head and shoulders arose above the protection of the wire mesh he himself had formed. It was just for a moment, the mere passing of but a few seconds but it was enough for one of the stray, misfired, random bullets to strike the back of his arm.

"Ahhh!" he screamed as the boiling hot missile burned itself into his flesh. He slipped onto the metal platform and lumbered forward on his unhurt shoulder.

Mandora reached out and dragged his legs into the car. "Keep low," she said.

"I've been shot --"

"I know," she pulled the protective mesh in as well. She pushed the first button she could get her fingers on. The elevator began to rise.

In the relative safety of the shaft she turned her attention to the injured lion. She propped him up and examined the wounds. "It's all right if you have to scream," she said, her voice tinted by that feminine tone she worked so hard repress. She rubbed her hands about his contorted face, tears formed from the corner of his eyes, drops of frothy spit squirted from his lips, his clenched teeth chattered. "You'll be all right, all right." She kissed his cheek.

"Did it go through?"

"Yes," she answered as she tore off her one, long sleeve. "It's a clean would -- I'm sure back home Tygra'll be able to fix it." She wrapped the cloth about his upper, right arm -- he gasped, letting out a loud, shattering scream.

"And it's my sword arm, too," his shriek turned from the guttural to the more expressive.

"Oh, I'd say you're done pretty well so far without it," she said, tightening the knot that held the bandage together. "It wasn't bleeding badly," she squeezed the cloth, feeling that it was mostly dry. "Try not to use it for much, though."

He smiled weakly and tried to get up on his own. She had to help him to his feet. Taking her advice he kept his right arm slack and still. Because of the awkwardness of having the claw shield on his left leg he had to move it to the right if he was going to use his left arm for sword-fighting.

Mandora watched as the shiny, metal holder snapped in place and when Liono withdrew his hands she put her palm down on the inside of his thighs, rubbing his soft fur, feeling his tensing, flexing muscles.

"I bet you've had better deputies," he said, letting her have her way with his body.

"None as brave as you," she purred into his ear, her lips only millimeters from his face.

"What a great plan I had, what was I thinking?" he lamented.

The officer stopped the moving of his lips with the pressing of hers upon them. She held him close and hard because of the weakness of his arms. She massaged his lips as she rubbed his chest -- the elevator continued to rise all the time.

When they parted he felt more spent than ever before. He kept his arm about her waist, his fingers stroking her flesh. The feel of her body, her voluptuous curves so tightly pressed upon his was a pleasure beyond all bearing.

"I wonder what Snarf will say when he sees that bullet hole."

"Snarf worried about me too much. He doesn't understand that I'm grown up now -- well, almost grown up."

Mandora laughed: "Oh, Liono, you're grown up enough for me."

The elevator stopped suddenly and abruptly, jolting the two passengers within. A slight, dull ping sounded and with it the mechanism that opened the side panel doors came to life. The Evil-Chaser and the Thundercat stood at guard -- their weapons pointed at the swiftly-parting doors and the bright light that casted down upon their faces.
 

[Part Nine]

First it was the intense glare of the fluorescent lights that hit their eyes, then it was the raring sound of a thousand voices that stabbed their eardrums. Mandora and her itchy trigger finger thought the worst was about to befall them. Liono arched his sword down gently atop her weapon, angling it down, out of aim. He realized by instinct that there was no immediate danger as long as they did nothing to make themselves stand out.

"Let's not attract any unwanted attention," he said assuredly, "they're too busy with what they're doing to notice us."

She nodded and hid her weapon back in its holster. He shrunk his sword and rehilted it at once. Holding her hand with his uninjured arm the pair stepped out from the elevator to the swirling chaos before them.

It was apparent by the size of the room and by the kind of furnishings in it that it was a cafeteria, perhaps once used by well-behaved inmates and attending orderlies, perhaps once but not any more. Tables had been brought into misshapen circles, stacked atop each other, tipped on their sides or turned over up-side-down -- at least the lucky ones remained intact. The more mutilated tables had been clearly but not cleanly shattered, torn or outright ripped to pieces.

Blazing fires shot out of metal trash bins -- their licking flames scorching the once white tiles of the walls. Supporting columns had been stripped to the underlying steel with claws and teeth, whose telltale marks were visible even from afar. Doors lay lifeless on the floor, blown out of their hinges. The ceiling was infested by innumerable, crumpled swabs of wetted paper towels. Some dried and became parts of the roofing material. Some were too wet to stick and fell, dropping onto the littered, unwashed, sticky floor.

At that point more than ever they realized that the line between the doctors, staff and inmates was blurred beyond all distinction. There was, literally, no way to tell the convicted from those whose job it had been to take care of them. The population of that room, who or what they were, entertained themselves with their wild, unfettered urges. Little mobs of ten or twenty roamed about the center of the cafeteria between supporting pillars. They shouted random obscenities at one another or boasted loudly about the crimes that had gotten them into OPEA. They fought with others who were unlucky enough to step too far into their circular territory.

Surrounding the brawling brutes was what passed for the middle tier of the asylum's hierarchy. No gangs or other internal structures were evident in them, rather they were just several hundred men and women who were loud and no less violent. They enacted and recreated traumatic moments from childhood to maturity. They yelled and taunted, seduced and fondled, groped and raped one another in an orgy of the fierce and the erotic.

At the very edge, sitting on clean, spotless tables, eating perversely repulsive gruel, was the last gradation of the madhouse's society. Unlike the vast majority, they were quiet, preferring to communicate with their eyes and posture. On closer examination Liono and Mandora came to the conclusion that those, silent observers were the true leaders of the sanitarium. They were the ones who had retained enough of their earlier, evil incarnation to be the brains behind the chaos. From their ranks came Hal, Mrs. Lincoln and the general -- and in the six months since the prisoners usurped power it was any one's guess how many other such figures had come and gone.

"Don't worry," Liono said. He shielded her with his body. "As long as we don't do anything stupid --"

"Over to that door," Mandora pointed with her elbow in an attempt to seem inconspicuous.

She directed him to an open doorways that led out into a smoke-filled hall lit with dimmer lights. The only problem was one table of the quiet ones that stood in the way. To get around that they decided to take a detour by the wall where the space was clear. Keeping his eyes close to the ground and his face partly away from the silent eyes that stared and followed, he and the officer in tow maneuvered as though no one and nothing else in the room existed.

A loud rush of voices assaulted them from the right.

"Don't stop, what ever you do don't stop," Mandora whispered, "it's just a bunch of mutants duking it out."

Liono peeked for a moment just out of curiosity. Two, naked and scar-covered mutant jackals wrestled on the ground, tumbling to and fro. A small number of avian onlookers with long, bloodstained beaks and green feathers cheered and jeered the fighting caninoids.

Secure in that there was no apparent danger he moved on, past the wall and behind the dreaded table. But one of the more determined and less reserved sitters suddenly stood and walked swiftly to the lion. He was a cross between a human and a scaly mutant with red and green across the face. Wearing nothing but thick, black robes, he reached out and grabbed the youth's right arm -- his weakened arm for he had sensed and craved the blood that continued to drip down its length from the bandage Mandora had placed over the wound.

The two stopped more irrationally afraid then than ever before. The strange man opened his mouth to reveal rows of long, thin teeth. His lips curled and his jaws protruded from the skull. The officer wanted to kick him away at that very moment but she was unsure of that might lead to. The Thundercat was being held in place by his injured limb and even though he and the lizard man were both still for the most part the intense pressure on his flesh was incredibly painful.

"We have to do something, anything. We can't just stand here!" she shouted.

The strange man directed his attention to her. His double-pointed tongue flicked the air, his red, black eyes glowed under his brow. He snarled, unaccustomed to having people scream at him so closely. Liono took advantage of the distraction and kicked him on the shin. The hybrid human, reptile fell down with a slight thump -- his colleagues back at the table, whose eyes were transfixed upon them, arose in defiance. A minor stand off was quickly brewing but then --

A crashing snare alarmed through the room like a pang of thunder. Everyone everywhere except Liono and Mandora looked toward the back of the cafeteria. A loud, stern voice boomed and spouted orders. The cocking of unseen, unnumbered guns then scorched the air at once like one, long, pronounced clap.

"Get down!" she shouted, falling to the floor. Liono complied at once -- and on their hands and knees they continued to crawl to the unblocked doors that had been their aim all along. The lizard man, meanwhile, had gotten back up on his feet. He and the his fellow silent ones moved steadily to the front of the room to meet the new, more conspicuous intruders that had invaded the cafeteria.

Streams of bullets gave the air a certain tint of black as they scorched through the air. Screams and wails of terror followed but instead of running away the insane rushed forward blindly into the line of fire. General Frank's men continued to march forward and were well past the first rows of stripped columns by the time the crime fighting pair had made it to the hall.

Determined to evade the out-of-control, white-robed militia of the general's, Liono and Mandora raced across the passage in the opposite direction. The hall was dim but not excessively dark. It was tall, the walls glossy white and covered with open lockers. The small, thin closets had at one time been used by the orderlies and staff but that had recently been broken into and ransacked. Doors upon doors, crossways and adjacent doors passed them left and right. The entire level, it seemed, was full of cafeterias, everyone an exact duplicate, mirroring each other.

A small, four-foot man greeted them behind one of the corners in the hall -- it was quite unexpected. He was a doctor, or had been a doctor once -- a stethoscope was wrapped around his neck and drooped over the dirty, yellow lab coat that covered his body very loosely. "Have you taken your meds today?" he asked in a taunting voice, his face contorted in a grotesque grimace. He had a needle in his left hand, the metal tip pointed up at the pair. He squeezed it and a vile, urine-stanched liquid streamed out.

The two did not stop for long -- although it seemed to them that he was following. After not too long awhile they thought they were alone and stopped. Out of breath, they looked back to see that the hall was empty, still and silent.

"In here," Liono said, pointing to a doorway the led to another cafeteria-type room. "It's different," he implored her -- Mandora was still looking up and down the passage, gun in hand.

The room the lion was leading them into was dark except for the wavy, swirling lights that reflected upon the glossy tiles from unseen pools of water. Ten feet into the chamber they were alarmed by the cackle of laughter. Up before a row of columns -- concrete pillars that were still intact -- were three, wooden chairs. Two of them were occupied by thin, skeletal bodies, the other was burned and its armrests mangled.

They approached back to back, sweeping with their eyes a complete, three hundred and sixty degree view of the vast chamber. The nude bodies on the chairs were still alive despite an extreme level of emaciation. Shrunken and shriveled, the man and woman sat deliriously unaware of their surroundings -- their wrists and ankles were so thin that they could almost slide free from the leather straps.

"HAHAHAHAHA!" the horrific laughter exploded from the darkness behind the chairs. A hooded figure stood, strutting a long, thick wand, obscenely-shaped and attached to a cord that wound on off into the darkness. The fur-covered figure pressed the want on the female's breasts -- arcs of blue and streams of sparks erupted from the point of contact, leaving behind a patch of red, smoldering skin. The want was moved about aimlessly, wantonly but no matter where it touched or what damage it did no screams or other responses ensued from the victim.

The bizarre figure turned its attention to the man. The wand was poked about the genitals that had reduced to infant-sized protrusions of skin characteristic of the latter stages of extreme starvation. That time, though, as the wand was forced up his chest, that victim did respond. He screamed, or seemed to scream but no sound came out of his open mouth beyond a low, prolonged moan. The wide, open jaw came loose of its joint -- it hung low, still connected by exceedingly thin flesh to the face, drooping, drooling pathetically.

Mandora fired one shot, striking the hooded torturer in the head and knocked him back to the floor, lifeless. Liono rushed to the site of three chairs -- it was clear to him that there was nothing he could do about the victims aside from freeing them from their restraints. They did not have enough function left in their minds to realize that they were not prisoners any more -- whatever that meant.

"Forget about it, Liono," she implored, a slight hint of pity echoed in her stern, monotonic voice.

"How can this happen?" he lamented, shaking his head in his hands. "How could this be allowed to happen?"

"I don't know -- but I do know this couldn't have just happened over night, it must have been brewing in the place for years unchecked and unnoticed. These are criminals and, I guess, no one particularly cared if experiments were being done to them of if the staff was less than humane."

Looking at the wooden, electric chairs and what was left of their occupants he roared: "These were people once! I don't care who did what when, how, there should have been some, small level of decency --"

"We can't afford decency --"

"What kind of organization is this CONTROL? What kind of higher morality does it claim to have when it can get away with this?"

She pressed a warm hand on his free shoulder and whispered: "We don't have the time now to discuss this but I assure you, one way or another we will get to the bottom of this. The guilty will be sought out and no crime will go unwhipped." He looked at her, trying to peer into her helmet. "Remember, we do have a witness."

"Marsh." He nodded, relenting and, looking around he continued: "Let's get out this hell hole."

They turned around and gasped. A lone figure stood in the doorway from which they had entered. Silent and still they recognized it immediately -- it was Galileo.

"What do you think this mean?" Liono asked.

"I'm not sure."

The mysterious, robed man stepped out of the room and hummed in his usual way. Liono and Mandora rushed out and followed him into the passage. The figure hobbled through a side hallway that was not as bright as the others. It ended abruptly amidst torn and mangled scraps of iron. Galileo did not enter the mess directly but again in his own, particular way he seemed to indicate to them to waddle through the junk.

"Do you see anything there, Liono?"

The young lord squinted. "Just more darkness." He turned to his left, to the hooded man. "What do you mean?"

The only response was the resonant echo of bullets firing from cafeterias nearby. It was the only answer the pair needed. At once they crawled through the remains of looted lockers and abused tables to the back end of the hall. They were completely enveloped in shadow and had to explore the walls with their hands alone.

Behind false panels of wooden veneers was a hole cut right into the rock of the asteroid.

"It's a vent," Mandora said, "see, it leads straight up."

Liono peered in -- his eyes were especially sensitive at low light. "I can see a pin point of light. We must be deep in the facility."

They looked back. Galileo was gone. The pounding of armed troops came closer and closer. Liono and Mandora entered the cool, dark hole and eased back the false wooden front behind them to cover their tracks. At once they began to scale the length of the shaft.

"Are you OK down there?" Mandora stopped and asked.

"I'm doing good," Liono answered. "The shaft's on its side so it's easier for me to climb. It's almost like crawling."

"Just take your time," she said, worriedly, "don't put too much weight on that shoulder or we might never get out of here."

Liono bit his lip and tried harder. It took him all his might to keep from wailing in pain. He had not lied to her but he had not been entirely truthful either. But it wasn't just his injured arm -- it was his whole body that was sore and overworked. He did not want to admit that weakness because he did not want to slow her down in any way.

In no less than three hours they found themselves at last upon the surface of the asteroid, free from the horror that remained buried in its bowels. Mandora was the first to crawl out of the uncapped vent -- it had been kicked out, they presumed by Marsh himself when he escaped the facility. Liono came out second and only with her help. Standing away from that hole in the ground he looked at her and she looked at him. They shared a long, deep hug -- she rubbed his beaten, bruised arms, he ran his hands down her back.

The pair broke from each other's hold, relieved and in some way revived. They inched up to outer wall of the control tower. The landing pad with its rows of ship was only a simple hundred foot dash away. They were ready to run when a certain sound stopped them in their tracks. Up above, peering out of the top of the tower, were Hal and Mrs. Lincoln along with the skinny, armless Jesus. The insane pair seemed to be engaged in a heated discussion but their words were muffled, meaningless.

"I thought they had been captured?"

"When General Frank decided to invade the core of the facility those guys might have overpowered the troops that remained to guard them -- that's if any of his men were left behind."

"Hmmm, like a seesaw battle," Liono pondered.

"God only knows for how long it's been going back and forth."

"Come on," he said, "while they're distracted."

Sirens and alarms sounded -- they had barely reached the landing pad when the eyes and the control tower saw them. Immediately after that shots began to fire -- their source unknown but their aim toward them. The hard rock about them vibrated painfully with the ricocheting of the oversized ammunition. One of the shots hit the side fin of a transport, knocking the metal shard down.

"Ahhh!" Mandora screamed as the block hit her in the back of the head, knocking her helmet off.

"That's how you treat that bitch," Mrs. Lincoln shouted above the spray of hot lead.

Liono spun around without thought. "I'm coming for you," he shouted, dodging the spray of fire with his extended sword. He dragged the fallen officer into the space between ships -- the gun fight ended, as if the shooters were afraid to damage the vessels any further.

Mandora was unconscious -- her head was bleeding but not badly and it did not seem to him that she had broken bones or fractures. Carefully, he lifted her up with his left arm and held her over his injured shoulder with his weakened right. He screamed aloud, stopping only to gasp for breath. The pain was murder -- he was seeing red, he was not thinking rationally. The only impulse he had left was that of surviving. He did not want to die or worse, to end up like all the others in that hopeless asylum. Worse still was the possibility that something else might happen to his -- to his -- to Mandora.

Tightly squeezing onto her despite the intense, flesh-tearing pain, he rushed into an adjacent path and again began to run. The blaze of the armed fire returned but that time it remained far behind him. He stopped once only to turn when he found Mandora's cruiser.

It was just as they had left it, unscaved and unmolested. He lay her on the front seat and got up close to her. Remembering how she started the engine back when their misadventure begun on Third Earth, he got the cruiser to rise. With the space shield up the bullets could not hit them or even knock them off target. All he needed was to get the ship as far away from the asteroid's gravity generators as possible.

Beyond the upper, turbulent atmosphere his the Sword of Omens growled for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. He aimed it at the injured officer and commanded it to heal her -- a sparkling burst of blue plasma emanated from the tip of the blade and hit her back, shoving her forward. He looked on, afraid that he might have damaged her but, no, she was groggy but all right again.

She moaned. "What, what happened, Liono?" She felt her head, pulling her yellow hair back.

"You got hit on the head -- I think that helmet of yours saved your life, Mandora. I'm sorry I forgot it."

She turned around. "You did OK, Liono." She buried the side of her face on his chest. "You're my hero."

He arched her head up and he looked into her eyes for the first time. Her dark, warm eyes. "You are so beautiful," he whispered loudly. "I love you, Mandora."

She smiled and kissed him on the lips gently. Gently nudging her nose up to his. "Let's get you home."
 

[Part Ten]

Third Earth had not changed considerably in the short time that they had been away. The woods around the imposing Cat's Lair remained covered with a layer of snow ranging from three to twelve feet thick. Only the area around the fortress had been adequately cleared with Panthro inventive use of the Thunder Tank.

As the cruiser descended through the streaming clouds, the round, marked landing pad next to the extended bridge steadily grew larger and larger. Snarf and WileyKat stood around the edge of the flat platform patiently waiting. It seemed that their approach had been detected by the sensors long before they could have been clearly seen in the sky because Liono had not had the time or opportunity to communicate with the Lair. Mandora was too busy sending her initial reports about the conditions of the OPEA back to CONTROL.

"They'll be sending a fleet to the OPEA by this afternoon," she said, looking back to him. Without her helmet the upsurging currents blew her hair violently. She was not used to that and found it quite uncomfortable. She ran the letter of the law through her mind: "It is a violation of safety regulations for operators of open-carriage space vehicles to operate said vehicles without proper, formfitting helmets, etc., etc."

Liono grunted in understanding.

The officer's vehicle touched down perfectly and even before she had cut off the engine Snarf was already strutting up to the lion.

"An investigator will arrive shortly to talk to Marsh," Mandora said, getting out. She helped Liono to his feet.

"What happened?" Snarf wailed. "What have you done to my boy! Snarf, snarf."

"It's nothing Snarf, really --"

"He was shot. The bullet passed right through," she explained. "Tygra has to look at it right away."

WileyKat helped Liono walk out onto the bridge. Mandora and the small, strange creature were left behind to exchange dirty looks between themselves. Their fierce scowls lasted less than a minute before Snarf fell back from his tail and began to walk to Cat's Lair.

"All this happened because no one decided to take my advice, no one decided to listen to old Snarf. Snarf, snarf." The nanny growled: "Don't pay attention to him," he said in a mocking voice, "he's old and doesn't know what he's talking about! Snarf, snarf, he's never gotten shot before in any of our adventures!" He turned back to her -- the officer had followed him closely.

"You complain too much, small one -- besides, you don't know what happened but wait, just wait until we tell you. You'll never have a decent night's sleep again."

"Hmmm," he turned his nose up and continued to walk on four legs over the cold, hard concrete. She picked him up suddenly and cradled him in her arms with only a slight word or two of resistance. "I know you two have something going," he said at last, "I've sensed it for a long time and I've tried to stop it. Snarf, snarf. Snarf! A boy of his age shouldn't be wasting his time -- oh, I give up! But I swear to Jagga if you get another hole into him you're going to suffer the wrath of Snarf and I GUARANTEE that you'll never take a nap again, let alone sleep!"

She laughed, letting him climb up her neck and stand over her head. "Agreed."
 

"Just hold on tight," Tygra said as he began to untie the bandage around Liono's right shoulder. The cloth was sticky and as it crumpled it shed flakes of red, brown crusty blood. "We're almost through -- this was very nicely wrapped," the striped one commented.

"Thank you," Mandora said. She stood before an open, bare window. The white snow on the ground intensified the sunlight of that clear, cloudless day. The sky was so blue it was perfect.

On a table next to the door Panthro sat poured himself a glass of water. Amidst deep gulps he asked: "Where did you learn to tie a knot like that?"

"Experience," she sighed, her mind reeling back to her earlier days. "I've been in the line of fire on many occasions."

"You've been shot at?" He looked past the bench where Liono sat and Tygra worked to the far wall where the officer stood, half in and out of the shadows.

"I've been hit twice. Nothing to write home about, though."

Tygra looked over at her for a brief moment -- he saw fragments of her face reflected off the glass. It had been such a long time since he had seen her whole head un-helmeted that he thought he would never see it again. Back to the work at hand. The wound was at last visible. A dark clot had formed within the slit-like holes, its corners had been torn several times before the mass could set properly. Dry, streams adhered to the fur.

He swabbed hydrogen peroxide over the area, cleaning it out as best he could.

Liono did not flinch. "Mandora and I had quite an adventure," he said, a smile on his face.

She turned away from the window of the sickbay and the view of the trees and shrubs that were dusted in a snow that made for a brilliant paradox of vibrant colors. She helped dry Liono's fur and held his shoulder still as the holes were swiftly stitched together by a square-shaped, vibrating contraption Tygra had removed from a surgical instrument panel.

"So how did it go here?" the young Thundercat lord asked.

"I made excellent progress. Our guest, JT, is doing much better now that I found out what was wrong with him."

Mandora looked at him quizzically. "What do you mean? What was wrong with him?"

"I thought he was just crazy," Liono added.

"Well, he certainly appeared insane but that wasn't his fault, well, Cheetara's still trying to determine that. No, I did some blood tests on him and discovered a high concentration of an opiate derivative."

"A narcotic? Which kind?" the officer asked, her ears perched.

"It's similar to a substance I discovered on this planet," the red tiger said, his eyes about the floor. "The natives call it Silky Fruit. But you'd know it better as PHQ. The particular version of it, PHQ-PR is very different from the usual strands found in illegal market."

"Indeed," Mandora said, "that form of the drug is very much legal. Of course, how could I have been so stupid. PHQ-PR is used as a behavioral modifier in psychiatric institutions."

"It tastes like spicy apples," Tygra said, authoritatively. Panthro rolled his eyes silently wondering how the architect had come to know that particular fact.

She looked at Liono: "And it has not smell unless there's an extremely high concentration of it."

His stomach growled again but for different reasons. "Tygra, we ate food that might have been tainted with it."

"Yes," Mandora continued, "in it's liquid form it can be produced in bulk."

"I'll get you a dose of antidote right away," Tygra said, turning to a nearby cabinet. He took out from rows of bottles a canister half-full of pills. He twisted the cap off and handed them each a yellow, green dose.

Panthro let them drink from his cup -- he emptied it into the sink once they were done.

"I'd like to talk to our witness," she said, standing. "I've got some questions for him."

"Cheetara's with him in the other room," Panthro said, signaling to a door nearby.

Liono knocked on the door softly and a familiar, female voice answered. He let Mandora in first the followed behind her. They walked hand in hand and the effect was not lost on the two men left behind.

"I guess they're not telling us everything that happened," Panthro said, wrapping his arms around Tygra's waist. "You're not jealous, are you?"

The tiger sighed, letting his hands wander freely about the mechanic's back: "No, I'm just happy in my own way, for Liono."

Kissing his neck the panther spoke intermittently: "I'm happy, too, now that you're all mine, all mine. That blond Broomhilda as nothing on you anymore."
 

Cheetara saw Liono and Mandora walk into the room together. She did her best to hide her immediate reaction, not wanting to give a jealous impression. She was not jealous, she told herself, she was just surprised how quickly things had developed between the two. Liono had never expressed an interest in the officer and she always thought Mandora preferred the company of women.

"Is he awake?" the Evil-Chaser asked. "I'd like to ask him a few questions if you don't mind."

"Sure, he's been awake for a few hours, but he's still a bit groggy."

The cheetah stepped back to let Mandora kneel by the head of the bed. The man -- Marsh -- was wrapped in the sheets, shivering, his head buried in the soft, loose pillows. He was awake and his eyes roamed about the room nervously.

"I, I," he said, weakly, "I seem to remember you two."

"I found you in near the crash site and helped bring you to Cat's Lair," Liono reassured him. He stood behind Mandora. "What do you remember about the crash?"

"Very little. Cheetara," he said, arching his arm toward the tall, feline woman, "she's been telling me about it. And that tiger man, too."

"Yes," the lion smiled.

"I recall seeing the planet from space and something about crawling through snow but the rest is --"

"The narcotics and the traumas he's suffered has affected his memory," Cheetara said.

"His short-term memory, but what about the OPEA? What about the things that happened there? We know that it all began with a group of doctors conducting strange and unusual experiments."

The man on the bed shook his head slowly, rubbing his temples. "Not exactly. It began -- it was an accident but no one noticed it, no one understood until it until it was too late." He seemed to struggle with his words, his thoughts. "A vat of waste chemicals, drugs I suppose, was accidentally flushed into the water system but we wouldn't come to know that until later." His face turned to his hands. "We began to hear rumors about orderlies going mad for no reason but I never believed the stories. And then, one by one, my friends began to act weird, going crazy. Everyone, everywhere was going crazy." He sat up, Mandora helped him lie back down. "That's when the doctors began to do things. It was just to the prisoners at first, but when they started to experiment on the staff --"

"And no one thought to report any of this?" Mandora asked abruptly. Liono patted her gently on the shoulder.

"No one in charge did, I guess and there was little we -- my friends and I could do -- we were lowly orderlies." Again he shook his head. "It happened so quickly, so quickly. When it was revealed that chemicals had been dumped into the water and that some of those crazy doctors were putting more PHQs into the system, General Lanpet tried to take over from the civilian controllers but it was already too late. He was mad too and his men rebelled against him, shooting him dead. In the chaos the inmates rioted and I was captured."

"That's as much as he knows," Cheetara said, letting the man rest. "I'm sure with therapy he'll have more to say." She pulled the sheets up to his face and tucked the blanket around his arms. "He's suffering through withdrawal. Tygra said he had a lot of narcotics in his blood, enough to cause serious liver damage."

"CONTROL will take good care of this man," the officer said, standing up. "He's the only witness we have to what happened at OPEA."
 

In the main hall of Cat's Lair, Liono and Mandora waited by the stairs for the investigator and his staff to arrive. They had cleaned themselves up and changed into more presentable clothes. They had many things on their minds.

"So when do you think we should tell the others?" Liono asked.

She smiled back. "Oh, I think they already know."

"Is it that obvious?" He kissed her hand, her arm, neck, lips. Gently he held her in his arms as they reclined on the steps. "Will you come back soon?"

"Very soon my kitty cat, my feisty lion."

Liono tickled her lightly, letting her fall onto him. "If I had a tail I'd wrap it around you my sweetness."

Mandora giggled and twiddled his fingers on the tight flesh of his leg. "And if I had a tail --"

"Ahhh!" Snarf shouted, rushing through the room, failing his arms. "Snarf, snarf! And if I had a jackhammer I'd blast my ears off!" The small, impish creature stood on his tail, arms folded, face contorted in the look of annoyance.

"Oh, Snarf!" Liono scoffed, amused by his nanny's exaggerated posture.

The amorous pair tumbled into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.