“Where are you taking me?”

“I would have thought you would have had enough of men making decisions for you.” They dived abruptly, using the warehouses that lined the Jersey coast as a screen from both visual and radar sighting. “I’m doing you the courtesy of treating you as a fully realized woman with the capability to make decisions for yourself.”

“I am not a woman.”

Starshine looked down at her in disgust. “How typical. You have been given this chance to explore the life-affirming power of the female, and you reject it. I’ve done a poem on this very subject.” He sucked in a breath, opened his mouth, Tach cut in.

“Before you start quoting yourself, could you please direct us to Hook Road in Bayonne? There’s an abandoned junkyard there. Right on New York Bay. We’ll be safe there.”

“Incredible. I wonder what psychological problems this reveals, comparing your female state to garbage.”

“Fly,” Tach said wearily. She was even too tired to remonstrate as Starshine declaimed his latest ode.

Thomas Tudbury was an overweight man in his forties, and Tachyon and Starshine were standing in his kitchen. Thomas Tudbury was also supposedly dead. His alter ego, the Great and Powerful Turtle, lived on, and thus far his secret hiding place was known only to Tachyon and Joey Di Angelis. Which explained his present fury and consternation. Starshine had folded his arms across his chest and was eyeing Tom with Olympian disdain. Tach knew that was part of the problem. It wasn’t helping Tom to have this Adonis in his face.

“Jesus, Tachy, why did you have to come here?”

“If you’re scared, you don’t have to worry. We weren’t traced,” Starshine said. “I saw to that.”

“Hey, dumbshit -” Tom began.

Tach quickly interrupted. “Where else could I go? They’ll be watching the clinic, my friends. They locked me up, Tommy. I can’t take being locked up anymore!” Her voice had gone all ragged and stretched.

Tom slumped into a chair. “Christ, Tach, you just tumble from one crisis to another.” He scrubbed at his face with a hand, took a pull on his beer. “Anybody want anything?”

“Do you have any Perrier?” Starshine asked.

Tom rolled an eye, grabbed Tach by the wrist, and pulled her out of the room.

Hurriedly Tach said, “He’ll only be here for, oh, maybe another twenty minutes.”

“If he’s going to leave, couldn’t he do it now?”

“He’d have to become somebody else, and I’d rather have him become the person he truly is -”

Hands on her shoulders, he halted her nervous pacing. “Are you okay?”

“Yes… no. I’ve got to get to Manhattan. Please, Tommy, just let Mark stay here. As soon as I’m back, we’ll both go away, and you can be comfortable again.”

Tommy scrubbed his face with both hands, sighed, said, “You want somebody to go with you?”

“No, alone is better.”

“You’re not going to the clinic, are you?”

“No. I need to break into someone’s house. And for that I need Jay Ackroyd.”

“The dame entered my office. She moved with an aggressive waddle that let me know right away she was trouble. I waited. How would she come on to me? The ever-popular ploy of the pregnant woman – the flood of tears? The premature labor -”

Tachyon had a feeling that Jay Ackroyd was going to continue in this irritating vein for a good long while. So she poured his coffee in his lap. The stream of bad prose became a stream of invective. Ackroyd yanked tissue from the box on his desk and mopped at his crotch.

“Motherfucker! I just got these back from the cleaners.” Jay looked up, aggrieved. “And you could have burned my willie off.”

“A small loss,” said Tachyon, and she carefully settled into a chair. It was apparent from the banner headline – TACHYON’S TORMENT: WHO’S THE FATHER? – and the photo on the cover of Aces magazine why Jay was so sanguine about her appearance. Also piled on the desk were five newspapers. CIVIL WAR? queried one headline. WAR IN THE BAY? asked another. Tach shivered and looked away.

“Is there some reason why you’re here, or did you just feel an overwhelming need to take it out on a convenient man for the predicament you’re in?”

“I wish to hire you.”

“First, a question. How’d you get off Governor’s Island?”

“I escaped,” Tachyon replied.

“Great.” Jay swiveled around in his chair and peered through the venetian blinds at the street below. “Is there an army of goons right behind you?”

“No. I was careful.”

“So what’s the job? Look for a runaway father?”

The only thing that kept her from going down the detective’s throat was the knowledge that wisecracking was as natural to Jay Ackroyd as breathing. Even when it would result in a lot less pain, the private investigator couldn’t resist shooting his mouth. It usually ended with a fist in said mouth, but Jay persevered. He was either very brave or very stupid. Tachyon still hadn’t decided which.

“I want you to teleport me into Jube’s apartment.”

“When he’s not there?”

“Of course when he’s not there,” snapped Tach, exasperated. “If he was there, I would just knock on the door.”

“So why don’t you do that?”

“It would be rude to search a house with the owner present.”

That boosted Ackroyd out of his chair. He took a nervous turn about the small office. “I’ve never been in Jube’s apartment. I can’t teleport if I haven’t been there.”

“Liar.” It was a moment that called for succinctness. “You were busy entertaining Finn and Dutton with tales of Jube’s exotic sculptures.”

“Jesus, is nothing private in this crappy town?”

“No. Now will you do as I ask?”

“Look, do this much for me. At least give me a fucking reason. I like Jube.”

Tachyon unconsciously massaged the peak of her belly with her palm. The bigger she got, the better it felt. It was Jay’s fascinated stare that made her aware of what she was doing. Flushing, she quickly dropped both hands into her lap and gripped them tightly.

“I have reason to believe that Jube is not a joker.”

Ackroyd goggled at her. “Meaning?”

“Well, if he’s not a joker, and he’s not a nat… you’re the detective, figure it out.”

“Alien?”

Tach nodded.

“That’s crazy. They don’t make aliens that look like that.”

“How would you know?” pointed out Tach logically.

“Well, you should know.”

“It’s a big universe out there.”

The detective ran a hand through his brown hair. He looked distracted.

“Will you help me, Jay?” asked Tach, for the first time allowing a little of her desperation to creep into her voice. “Jube may be my last hope.”

“Oh, shit.”

The stench of rotting meat was overpowering. Tach clapped a hand over her mouth, ran for the john, and vomited up the contents of her stomach. After rinsing her mouth, she plucked several tissues from a box. Holding them over her nose, she cautiously reentered the bedroom.

A bare mattress covered the floor, and a hot tub filled with icy water occupied one corner. A window air conditioner was set on high, and it had obviously been blowing for a long time. The temperature in the room was arctic.

Breathing through her mouth in quick pants, Tachyon stepped into the living room of the basement apartment. The source of the stench was pans filled with steaks, all cheerfully turning green on the top of a battered old card table. But all this strangeness paled before the fantastic device that occupied the center of the room.

Jay had described it as a sculpture, modern art created by a demented mind. But it was actually future technology, built by an inventive alien mind. Tachyon watched in fascination as the tachyon transmitter seemed to shiver, and a flare of St. Elmo’s fire ran the length of it.

She now had a pretty good idea what she was looking for.