Page 99 of Hot Zone

He turned the idea over in his head, then answered regretfully, “My kind are a long way from accepting the idea of humans in the galactic community. They still subscribe firmly to the theory that all human females with star navigator talent must be eliminated. I am hopeful that Tessa can begin to change their point of view.”

She gulped beside him. “I’m not sure I’m up to something like that, Rustam.”

“Of course you are. You won me over, did you not?”

“Yes, but I was able to…”

Sleep with me?

You’re a bad man—stop making me blush!

That is what you were going to say, isn’t it?

Well, yes.

Aloud he said, “I have complete confidence in you, my dear. You’ll do fine.”

Athena Carswell looked back and forth between them. “Although this lab is shielded, I am not entirely certain that it is proof against your race’s mental powers. The two of you should probably leave as soon as possible. Before more of your kind track this place down by tracking you.”

He caught the faint frown that passed over Tessa’s brow and probed her aura questioningly with his mind. Ahh. Goodbyes. She wanted to say a few before she zoomed off across the galaxy.

He murmured, “Dr. Carswell, I’ll need to align the new set of crystals to my vibrational field before we leave. That will take me a little while.” He turned to Tessa. “Perhaps you would like to take care of a few last-minute matters while the professor and I see to the crystals?”

Tessa shot him a grateful look. His own heart swelled in response.

“Are you sure you want to make this journey with me?” he asked gently.

She nodded without hesitation. “Absolutely. I just need to make a few phone calls and then I’ll be ready to go.”

Worried by the wistfulness in her voice, he commented lightly, “If I make you mad enough, you can always activate your crystal and come back home.”

She sent back silently, Must be the baby hormones kicking in. I’m just feeling a little weepy at the idea of leaving behind my friends and family.

You can still come back to visit.

True.

But not for too long. I’ll never let you go, you know. You’re mine forever.

I love you, too.

They exchanged affectionate glances that were heating up fast toward him excusing himself and his consort for a few minutes of privacy when Professor Carswell cleared her throat pointedly and shooed Tessa out of the lab.

He spent the next several hours refining the rather crude crystals the humans were using to better fit his specifications. He hated to think of how many years he was advancing their time- and space-travel program by showing them how to align the vibrational frequencies of the crystals more precisely. But he damned well wasn’t risking his family’s lives with substandard crystals in the first cross-galaxy jump where their bodies came along for the ride.

Tessa announced that she had one last phone call to make from the lab’s conference room—to a woman named Alexandra Patton, a friend who, Tessa casually informed him, was also a powerful psychic. He bit back an impulse to ask for more information on how to locate this Alexandra person, who no doubt also carried the star navigator gene, so his kind could find and destroy her. Tessa didn’t understand yet how strongly committed the Centaurian Federation was to stopping humans from acquiring space travel. But she would learn soon enough once they got to Centauri Prime.

The road ahead was going to be hard for both of them. Were it not for the fact that their children were guaranteed to be star navigators, he would never dream of taking Tessa back to Centauri Prime with him. She would have been dead before she set foot on the Centaurian home world. But with the double protection of being his consort and their ability to turn out lots of little star navigators, they should be all right. They had to be.

At the end of the day, he believed in the power of their love. He and Tessa were meant to be together, and neither time nor space was enough to keep them apart. Surely a little thing like politics couldn’t destroy them.

He waited impatiently while Tessa completed the call to her friend.

And then it was time.

They stepped into the time-travel booth. As the door closed behind them, Athena asked, “Do you two need a power boost from me?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? Between the two of us, we can leap across the galaxy and back and hardly be fatigued. A single jump to Centauri Prime will be child’s play for us.”

He wrapped his arms around Tessa, and she did the same, her warm palms caressing his ribs lovingly.

He murmured, “Ahh, my love, this is going to be a grand adventure.”

She smiled up at him with all the love in both of their worlds shining in her gaze. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

And the familiar indigo vortex began to whirl around them, lifting them and their unborn child up and out of themselves and flinging them forward into their future. Together…

The End

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