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Klinn’s arm shot out in front of me like a roller coaster safety bar. "Easy on the acceleration, Gravix. Humans go squish a lot easier than we do."
"Sorry, boss."
I shook off the dizziness to see who Klinn recruited to be his lackey. The Velnik male I saw in the marketplace, the one with the large eyes and neutral clothes, sat in the driver's seat of the hovercar. The seven-foot Lorgan sat in the passenger seat, knees practically up to his shoulders, cradling the orb in his big hands.
In keeping with treating me like a tantrum-throwing two-year-old, Klinn buckled my seat belt. I adjusted my gaze to the driver when I saw he was seated on a crate that came from one of the food stalls in the marketplace. "Are your feet reaching the pedals?"
He turned around and focused his softball-size eyes at me. "Don’t need ‘em. Controls all up here." He patted the dashboard. "Zorbluk’s my copilot."
I screamed as an incoming hovercar came into view.
"Look out." Klinn shouted at Gravix before throwing his arms around me. I felt the hovercar swerve into the correct lane right as the driver of the other vehicle laid on the horn.
Klinn’s arm blocked my view of the street, which was probably a good thing. The scent of bergamot and light vetiver, along with some unknown spice I couldn’t pinpoint filled my nostrils. What scent was he wearing? Did he pick up a bottle of expensive cologne in the same mall where he got the Cubs hoodie?
"You changed your hair color."
I lowered Klinn’s arm so I could glare at him. "Excuse me?"
"It used to be dark. Now it’s a ginger brown." He touched one of the curls I let hang free from the Afro puff piled on top of my head. "It’s nice."
"Don’t touch my hair."
He reached for my ear instead. I felt a light tickle as he removed the earpiece of my com link device. "I’d let you keep this, but I can’t risk it." He rolled down the window and tossed the earpiece out onto the street of Kajal’s manufacturing district. "Not this, either." He pulled the com link off my wrist and launched it out the window as well. My badge went next. "How far do you think that would’ve gone if we were in Wrigley Field?"
We shot past the city limits. I watched Kajal grow smaller in the rear window. "I wouldn’t know, Klinn. The team pitchers throw balls, not expensive government-issued communication devices."
He rolled up the window on his side. "I can’t risk you being tracked while you help me."
"I’ll do no such thing."
"Everybody strap in." The alien named Gravix hollered.
Now he tells us? I tensed as he steered the hovercar towards a medium-sized spacecraft parked on the side of the road. He punched buttons on the dash. The hovercar’s engine revved as he sped up in what I thought was sure to be a head-on collision with the ship. "My god, what is he doing?"
Klinn settled in his seat as though we were about to head out on a relaxing road trip. "Say hello to intergalactic beaming."
I cringed as the hatch of the ship yawned open. "I'm not sure I want to be reassembled in a pile of atoms."
What I felt was a perfectly reasonable opposition to dubious transportation styles was rewarded with Klinn’s chuckle. "I've used this baby a hundred times since I installed it."
I looked at him.
"Maybe closer to fifty."
I kept staring at his lying, handsome face.
"Alright, five."
My glare won out.
"Okay, this is my first time," he finally admitted. "I have a good feeling about it."
The hovercar revved again before Gravix got it under the ship’s hatch. I felt a force like a magnetic pull as the hovercar lifted higher off the ground. We had an exponential slowdown as it centered below the hatch and the magnetic beam of energy enveloped and carried us up into the spacecraft.
"It’s working." Klinn beamed just about as much as his ship’s feature. "See, Faye. Your atoms didn’t scramble to give you three arms and a tail."
"Yet." I gripped the seat with my still human hands, refusing to look at the vanishing ground beneath us. "Klinn, if I get through this, I’m going to make sure the entire book is thrown at you and your little friends."
