Cosmic Rift by James Axler Page B

one blond and one black haired.
    The pilots led the way, escorting a man in what Kane took at first to be a single-person conveyance. The chair had no discernible means of propulsion yet moved across the airstrip with remarkable grace. A line of lights ran up its exterior in a pattern of bright white circlets, and the vehicle was colored a reflective red like tinted metal. It featured two great struts running above it like an elephant’s tusks, towering over the heads of its lone rider’s standing companions. The rider wore a pair of dark goggles over his eyes and a skullcap that entirely hid his hair—assuming he had any—along with an indigo uniform that buttoned up tight to his neck and covered his seated body in one piece.
    Besides the man in the conveyance and the pilots, there were two other figures, a man and woman. Both were young and wore armorlike suits similar to the pilots but with their heads uncovered. They carried boxed equipment belted to their hips. Although they didn’t have helmets on, both of them wore headbands that encircled their foreheads with narrow metal strips. The strips were of a multicolored, mirrored material, glinting as they caught the swirling sky.
    “Looks like the party’s starting,” Kane muttered as the strange figures neared.
    The others held back while the man and woman approached. They first stood before Grant’s Manta and touched their fingertips to their headbands, closing their eyes. In the cockpit, Grant was overcome by a strange sensation, a feeling of vertigo, and the inside of his skull seemed to itch. He reached down for the handgrip of the Copperhead subgun where it waited in the foot well, but after a few seconds the vertiginous sensation passed.
    He watched through the viewport as the man and woman turned away and reported to the man in the strange conveyance. Once they had, they strode across to Kane’s Manta farther down the landing strip. Grant could not hear what was being said, but reading the strangers’ expressions he detected no hostility or alarm.
    The two strangely garbed figures halted before Kane’s Manta and performed the same routine. Sitting in the pilot’s seat, Kane grumbled something to Brigid, expressing his loathing for mind readers.
    “I think we have to trust them,” Brigid told him. “At least for now.”
    In a moment, the weird sensation had passed, and once the two had reported to the rider of the red chairlike conveyance, they took up positions behind him while he approached the Mantas.
    The seated man motioned, his fingers spread wide. Grant took this to be a signal to open up, and he popped the canopy of the Manta and let it glide back on its runners, his free hand grasping the Copperhead subgun.
    “Welcome, traveler,” the seated man announced in a loud voice. “There’s no need to be shy.”
    Grant raised himself in his seat until he could be clearly seen over the lip of the open cockpit. “Howdy,” he said.
    “Let me introduce myself,” the seated spokesman said as his companions waited at his side. “My name is Ronald and I’m here to welcome you to Authentiville. I must apologize for the manner in which you and your companions arrived—our scouts had not realized that your conveyance was occupied when we snagged it, and once they were made aware of the error it seemed prudent to bring you here to explain their oversight.
    “Is there just one of you in that craft?”
    “Yes, sir,” Grant confirmed.
    “And the other one? Your companion? Two inside, I am told.”
    “Yeah, two,” Grant confirmed. “Pilot and, um, teammate.” He didn’t like giving information so freely, but these people seemed to be a step ahead of them right now. He guessed that the itchy experience he had felt in his skull had been some kind of mental scan—he had experienced similar before, most recently at the hands of a group of deranged immortals known as Dorians. He didn’t like it. However, Grant had detected no outward signs of