Chapter Forty Five - Stonehenge

It felt good to be alive. The scars still throbbed occasionally but otherwise it was okay. His body was in one piece. He had never known healing like it. It was like concentrated super-deep sleep. Time had been compressed - an hour contained a month of physical healing, or so it felt. The transport beam had taken Danny and Jodie to a highly charged space within the ship’s energy drive. Aleya and Orb had overseen their healing.

After their psychic communication in the strange desert realm within the Elif's mind, Danny had become slightly embarrassed around Jodie. She still threw him the occasional warm glance though.

One thing was nice. He no longer had to share his mind with those mind-entities. The ship's mind storage system was hosting them. It beamed them out as realograms into the internal space of the ship. A realogram was like a hologram but you could touch it. They needed feeding as well. He wished he could tell Sarah they were safe. What if something had happened to her?

Hevel was a strange fellow but was growing on Danny. He'd never met anyone whose main relationship was with a living vehicle. Aleya and Hevel didn't talk much. And when they did it was mainly to slate each other. They were a delightful couple.

The ships had been fusing for two days. The fusing process took time. Jodie had helped the process by transferring the ruro from her chest into the Urnie device within the lower disc.

No one was quite sure what the Urnie really did, or why the hidden disc had been left there, but giving it the ruro had seemed the right thing to do.

They had spent the last two days cloaked in a cloud above Liverpool. Danny wanted to go and look for Sarah but Ben had said she had got away safely with the carers. They couldn't do too much while Aleya, and the other disc, the one that contained Urnie, began the fusing process. Hevel said they would have the most advanced ship in the entire galaxy when the process was complete. Although if the truth were known, he was a little jealous that her attention was elsewhere. She said that no ship that contained Hevel could ever be considered advanced. Danny tended to agree.

‘Where shall we go then crew?’ said Aleya in her beautiful, soft tones.

‘I always fancied having a look at Stonehenge,’ replied Danny.

‘It would make a good backdrop for my video too,’ added Hevel.

‘Good. Then let us go!’ said Aleya.

‘Shouldn’t we check no-one’s monitoring us first?’ chimed the Orb. This new environment seemed to have made her voice even sweeter.

‘Yeah, you never know, the agency might still be looking for us. I vote we get straight out of Earth space,’ Golf added.

‘Aleya has the most advanced cloaking in the known galaxy,’ Hevel stated confidently.

‘Perhaps Hevel, but I think Orb is right. The new systems are not fully fused as yet so we cannot leave Earth space yet. We can visit Stonehenge in the meantime. I could use some of that energy vortex that collects there to speed up the transformation. We can be out of this system within 3 Earth days then.’

‘That’s decided then I guess,’ said Danny.

The two connected discs flashed blue, green and yellow then back to blue. A brief glow of red passed like a spark of fire through the connected discs before they returned to the original strobe of blue. The colour was now more intense. The accumulated energy was released. The discs accelerated. Aleya made her way soundlessly to high above Stonehenge.