Planet of the Titans

Chapter 23

Melissa collected Leo and Mason, and got in her shuttle cruiser and flew to the University where Darian and Zima went to school. She parked and waited for eight o'clock to roll around, when she would meet Adonis, who would unlock the door of the lab. Melissa felt a surge of excitement course through her body thinking that she would be instrumental in setting the first group of captives free and returning them to Earth. Even if she went to prison for treason, Melissa knew she would go down in the history books. Although she would be considered infamous in certain circles, she would be forever loved by the underground resistance and to supporters of the resistance.

Adonis arrived on campus, but before he met with Melissa, he went to Zima's dorm. He had a bottle in his hand and two wine glasses. He knocked on Zima's door. At that moment, Zima was busy watching two of her captives play tennis on a small tennis court she had recently purchased. Brody and Anthony were playing a good game of tennis. When Zima let Adonis in, the game continued.

"I wanted to share a glass of wine with you!" said Adonis after Zima let him in. He set the two glasses down on the table, and opened the bottle of wine.

"It's not like you to let me drink wine," said Zima, "I'm only eighteen!"

"Maybe it's one of the little sacrifices I'm making for you!" said Adonis with a smile, as he poured wine in both glasses. "I brought back your mind control device!" Adonis handed it to Zima, and she took it to her bedroom. While she was in the room for a few seconds, Adonis took a small vial and uncapped it, and poured it into the glass that had been poured for Zima. When she returned, he held the other glass and sipped from it, and used body language to indicate that Zima should take the other glass. Brody and Anthony saw what Adonis did, but said nothing out of fear that he might harm them if they said anything.

"Cheers!" said Adonis, and the two of them drank their glasses of wine.

"I've got to go!" said Adonis. "I've got something going on right now!"

Adonis turned and left, leaving Zima feeling woozy. When he was gone, Brody shouted to Zima: "He spiked your drink!"

Zima stumbled over to Brody, but passed out and hit the floor. Luckily for Zima, the area where she fell was carpeted.

"We've got to do something!" said Brody. "Adonis is going to allow Nolan and his friends to get back to Earth right now! We've got to wake Zima back up!"

Brody knew where Zima kept her medical equipment, because she sometimes used it to monitor the activity of captives she had recently swallowed. One of the devices in her medical kit was a scanning device that should tell him what kind of drug Adonis spiked her drink with.

"Do you see that black bag with the zipper on the couch over there?" Brody asked Anthony.

"Yeah!" said Anthony.

"There's a scanner in there that we can use to test her breath to see what kind of drug she just took! We have to get over onto the couch!"

Brody and his student Anthony helped each other make the trek across the room to the couch, a formidable task for men who stood roughly one inch tall in comparison with their environment. Getting from the table to the floor was difficult enough, but the problem of getting up onto the couch was solved when they realized there was a window behind the couch with a curtain they could climb. It took about ten minutes from the time Adonis left to the time they reached the medical kit. Anthony helped Brody unzip it, and Brody pulled out an instrument he recognized. The two of them shoved it off the couch onto the floor, then climbed down the curtain to the floor and pushed it over to Zima's mouth, where she was inhaling and exhaling loudly.

Brody was pretty sure he knew how to operate the device, and after a few tries, he managed to turn it on. At first, the device wouldn't obey them because they weren't 'titans.'

"This thing must have an over-ride in place!" Brody said to Anthony. "This is an emergency!" Brody shouted into the device. "A titan has been rendered unconscious by a drug, you need to analyze it and find out what drug it was!"

A green light went on, and the device complied with Brody. Words appeared on the screen indicating what type of drug was administered to Zima.

"Now we're getting somewhere!" said Brody.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Adonis opened the door to the lab and took the dome off of the habitation module. He also opened the window that was behind the space-warp cannon, so it would be clear for the Thunderbolt to fly through when it got ready for takeoff. Adonis ran to the parking lot and left the door to the lab open. He found Melissa's shuttle cruiser and knocked on the window.

Melissa disembarked, and Adonis said, "The coast is clear! The lab is open, just don't let yourself get caught!" Adonis took off after that, leaving Melissa alone in the parking lot with Logan and Mason in her hands.

Melissa carried the two men in her hands and found her way to the lab. The Thunderbolt was on one table, while the captives were outside of their habitation module on another table with their luggage. Adonis hadn't bothered to pick them up and carry them to their space plane. In addition to the four passengers who originally arrived on the Thunderbolt, there were about a dozen other captives that had been won on Arcadia, and Melissa couldn't tell them apart.

"Leo," Melissa asked. "Point out the original passengers of the Thunderbolt!"

Leo pointed out Tyler, Carmen, Nolan, and Natalie. Melissa picked them up and placed them with Mason near the Thunderbolt.

"I'm not going to be able to stay here!" said Melissa. "Leo, you're going to have to stay behind and operate the space-warp cannon! Once the Thunderbolt is in the sky, you can turn that space-warp cannon on, Leo. But be careful, You'll only have about a minute before the detection systems of Thanatar will be onto you!"

"I have no problem staying behind!" said Leo.

"Another thing!" said Melissa. "How many people came over in the space-warp?"

"There were six of us!" said Leo.

"If six of you came through, six of you will have to go back!" said Melissa. "Not one less person, nor one more person can go back with you, or the space-warp device will malfunction!"

"We only have five of our original people without Leo!" said Mason.

"I'll grab another captive from the pile, and he should compensate!" said Melissa, and she did just that. With the addition of the additional man, they had six people again. Melissa also put a small device inside the Thunderbolt. "This is a transponder that will allow me to track whether or not you returned to Earth safely. Don't let this get damaged!"

"We'll take care of it!" said Mason.

Melissa set Leo on top of the space warp cannon, while the rest of them, with the exception of Nolan, got into the Thunderbolt. Melissa hurried and left the lab to return to her shuttle cruiser, so she wouldn't get caught.

"Nolan!" said Mason. "This is no time for games! Get on board!"

"I'm not getting on board!" said Nolan. "I'm staying behind with Zima!"

"I was afraid this would happen!" said Tyler. "We should just knock his ass out and tie him up and take him with us!"

"Good idea!" said Mason. The two men grabbed Nolan against his will and dragged him toward the space plane.

"Carmen!" said Tyler. "Get that rope from my duffel bag!"

Carmen ran in and got the rope and carried it to her husband. Tyler and Mason hog-tied Nolan. Though Nolan was strong and muscular, Tyler and Mason were strong, also. Nolan was kicking and yelling, but the two men managed to drag him onto the space plane.

The space plane was positioned in such a way that it could fly directly out the window once it was launched. Mason did the final countdown preparations. The passengers were all in their seats, and someone had tied a gag in Nolan's mouth so he couldn't yell. Just as Mason began the countdown, Zima appeared in the doorway, with Brody and Anthony in her hands.

"Give Nolan back to me!" said Zima. "I'm giving you two of my captives to take back with you to Earth, but I want my Nolan back! Nolan wanted these two guys to go back to Earth with you!"

"What are we gonna do?" Tyler asked Mason. "If we don't give him back, she could rip the door hatch off!"

"Then let's give him back!" said Mason. "I don't know about you, but I'm going back to Earth today! If Nolan wants to stay with that crazy bitch, he can stay here as far as I'm concerned!"

They dragged Nolan out the door hatch and dropped him on the table top. Zima responded by setting Brody and Anthony inside the door.

"This means that we have to make that extra captive stay here!" said Mason. They both shoved the extra captive out of the door hatch, and closed it. The abandoned captive banged on the door hatch, to no avail.

Mason strapped himself into the pilot seat and blasted off without doing a countdown. The space plane shot through the open window and out into the open sky. Zima carried Nolan back to her dorm, so she wouldn't be seen as an accomplice. Meanwhile, the space plane rocketed up through the sky, eventually entering outer space.

Leo turned on the space-warp cannon and aimed it in the general direction of the Thunderbolt. He saw the Thunderbolt on the screen. He put his hand in the scanner device, and it picked up the metal in his wedding ring. This allowed the space-warp cannon to open a space warp into the same alternate quantum reality that he had come from.

As the Thunderbolt headed through space, the tracking systems of Thanatar were able to home in on it. They opened a channel on a frequency the Thunderbolt could pick up.

"You must return to the surface immediately, or you will be shot down!" said a voice over the radio.

"I hope Leo is quick with the space-warp cannon!" said Mason.

At that instant, the space-warp cannon back in Darian's lab sent a quantum pulse that tore an inter-dimensional space warp open right in front of the Thunderbolt. The warships from Thanatar were now alone in space. Back in Melissa's condominium, she had scanning equipment that could show her whether or not the Thunderbolt had made it home safely.

"They're away!" said Melissa. Even Morgan had stayed behind at Melissa's place to see this spectacle. The transponder Melissa had planted inside the Thunderbolt showed when the Thunderbolt glided back for a landing in the Mojave desert, and Melissa and Morgan jumped for joy a second time.

"For the first time in the history of Thanatar, humans have escaped back to Earth!" said Melissa.

Back at Zima's dorm, Zima set Nolan on her dresser and enlarged him and turned on the news. A reporter described that people from Earth had escaped in a space plane and had gotten back to Earth. There was a knock at the door, and Zima answered it. Adonis had arrived.

"You drugged me!" said Zima.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Adonis asked, pointing at Nolan. "He was back at the lab, I made sure of it!"

"Trying to go behind my back and send Nolan home?" said Zima. "Well, the Thunderbolt is back on Earth thanks to you, and Nolan won the competition because he made the greater sacrifice for me!" Zima kissed Nolan on the lips.

"But I risked my freedom for you!" said Adonis.

"By committing treason?" said Zima. "Are you willing to tell my parents what you tried to do for me? And that you drugged me to try to make sure I wouldn't be awake when the Thunderbolt blasted off?"

"Zima, I can't tell anyone anything about any of this!" said Adonis.

"I know!" said Zima, putting her arms around Nolan. "I'm getting married to Nolan!"

Adonis stormed out of the dorm, defeated. Zima pressed the button on the control console next to the door, and the door slid shut.

"I'm never shrinking you again!" said Zima. "Well, except when we're having foreplay. And I'm getting baptized, and then we're getting married!"

"Cool!" said Nolan, hugging his fiance.

"But you do realize, you're still going to be my slave, don't you?" said Zima. "That's just the way it's done on Thanatar when a man from Earth is enlarged and marries a woman from our world!"

"Who am I to argue with tradition?" said Nolan, and he kissed Zima on the lips.