-----

	It was quiet; too quiet.

	Kasumi didn't like it. Of course, she didn't say as much, as it
would upset the others, but it was true nonetheless. It just wasn't
natural. Kasumi imagined that, if not for the view outside, anyone would
think that they were a hundred feet below the earth, instead of a
thousand miles above it. The ship they were in had no engines, made no
noise, and the blackness outside was empty vacuum.

	Kasumi looked around, for something to do.

	Work always helped to clear her mind, and calm her nerves. She
tried to imagine that this was little different from when they had been
stranded on that island, a year ago. Back then; people had panicked at
first, before settling into a familiar routine. Ryouga and Cologne had
helped them find food and water in the jungle, and in a few days
everything had been just fine. Akane and Ranma went back to arguing,
Ryouga went back to pining, and Ukyou and Shampoo even picked up where
they had left off.

	She just had to relax a bit.

	Things would work out.

	Of course, back then; strange men, who were also half animals,
had abducted them all. That had been unusual, but not life threatening.
This was different. Kasumi looked away from the window behind her, where
one of Them still lay, apparently dead. It had obviously been beaten
very badly, probably by Ryouga (because it, and she, were on the lower
deck of the ship), but the face of the little iseijin still sent a cold
shiver down her spine.

	It was like some evil deformed child.

	She looked away quickly, and winced, closing her eyes tightly.
It was dead. Dead. Dead. There was no need to worry about it. No need to
be afraid of it. Kasumi chided herself for being so silly, so childish,
but she couldn't help it. Plus, the bodies Ranma and Ryouga had left in
their wake had made a mess of things. They smelled bad, and they looked
hideous.

	Resolved in her course of action, Kasumi faced the body, and
took a few tentative steps towards it. Gulping loudly, she kneeled down,
reached out, and touched it lightly with the tips of her fingers. It was
cold and clammy, like a fish after it had been scaled. Or like an eel,
but without the slime.

	She wanted to move it.

	Get rid of it.

	Settling both her hands on its crushed torso, Kasumi tried to
get a grip on it, as the soft flesh moved under her hands. Her eyebrows
turned in worry and disgust, as she tried a little harder, pushing it
back a bit towards the wall. It didn't move easily. The body was already
getting stiff, though the flesh had become almost jelly-like. Green and
purple blood trickled down from its wounds and mouth, and Kasumi heard a
sudden gurgle from inside it.

	She immediately jumped back and covered her mouth to keep from
screaming.

	Except that left a dead alien taste on her lips, which she
quickly wiped away with the back of her hand. It wasn't just disgusting,
it was horrible! Just horrible! She couldn't do it, and for some reason
she wanted to cry. Why? They were alive. They were safe. There was
nothing to worry about. Footsteps came her way, and Kasumi turned, eyes
wide.

	It was just Akane.

	The younger girl looked at her sister with concern as she
approached. She had stretched out Ryouga's undershirt pretty well, but
Akane had complained about not having clothes numerous times in the
hours since they had been freed. Which brought up another question: how
long had they been out? Was it night or day?

	It was all so confusing!

	"Kasumi-neechan?" Akane asked, cocking her head to the side.
"Are you ok?"

	Kasumi remained outwardly calm and composed. She blinked, to
make sure her eyes were clear, and quickly got to her feet. She smoothed
out Ryouga's tunic, and faced Akane with her usual small smile.

	Kasumi answered with a tiny nod and added, "I'm fine, thank you.
Just startled."

	"Can't say I blame you," Akane responded. "This place creepy."

	"How are things upstairs?" Kasumi asked. The ship was incredibly
creepy, and the more one thought about what went on within it, the worse
it became.

	"Dad's looking for any hidden compartments in the weapon locker.
Ranma and Nabiki are still wrestling with the ship controls. They found
some kind of projector in the table or something, but no way to turn off
the voice it makes." Akane shuddered. "I hate that sound."

	"I know." Kasumi felt the same way. The shrill sound of the
computer, the same language the iseijin probably spoke, didn't make
anyone very comfortable. It simply wasn't a sort of sound human beings
could make. It was truly alien, and it almost hurt to listen to it for
too long.

	Kasumi looked back out the window at the earth.

	"I want to go home, too," Akane said, accurately guessing
Kasumi's thoughts. The two watched the world below, all blue and white,
move almost imperceptibly.

	"I hope the fish are doing well," Kasumi said, the topic
unexpected. "The baby koi. I think it is morning now... If we were home,
I'd be fixing breakfast. But before that, I'd feed the fish. The baby
fish all come to the surface when they see my shadow."

	Akane nodded, but didn't have anything to say.

	Her stomach spoke instead, growling hungrily.

	"I guess my body knows what time it is," Akane admitted, with a
smile. Kasumi smiled back, a genuine one, not forced. For a minute, the
two sisters stood and shared the mutual company, before Akane looked to
her side and grimaced.

	"Ugh." She was obviously looking at the alien corpse. "We really
should do something about those ... things lying around. Being here is
bad enough without having those vacant eyes staring at you."

	"And the smell... like rotten cabbage." Kasumi agreed. "What do
you think we should do?"

	"Did you try moving one of them?" Akane asked, suspecting.

	Kasumi frowned just a bit at being found out. "They're just
so..."

	Akane seemed to understand. "Yeah."

	Then the youngest Tendo got an idea. "We should have Ryouga get
rid of them. He didn't seem to mind bashing their heads in; he shouldn't
mind picking them up."

	"Is he busy?" Kasumi queried, not wanting to both the boy they
already owed their freedom (and clothes) to.

	"He's sulking around upstairs," as Akane said it, she found the
notion of calling the upper half of the ship 'upstairs' both weird and
somehow distasteful. Then the younger Tendo girl sighed. "I tried to
talk to him, but he's depressed about something. Besides, you know how
he gets around... me."

	Kasumi did.

	Still, by unspoken agreement, the two girls decided to ask him
to help. Kasumi understood perfectly well how work helped keep one from
falling into a funk. And she sensed that the lost boy had a lot on his
mind. The ship was not so large that it was hard to find him. He was on
the side of the ship facing away from the earth, looking out into the
sea of stars.

	"Ryouga-kun?" Akane asked, as they approached. The lost boy
looked in their direction, and offered a weak smile.

	"Akane-san? Kasumi-san?"

	"Ah, we were wondering if you could help us with something?"
Akane spoke for the two of them.

	"Of... of course, Akane-san," Ryouga answered, with just a small
nervous stammer. "I'll do what I can."

	"All the... bodies lying around. Can you find someplace to put
them? Somewhere out of sight?" Akane continued.

	"Um. Sure. No problem, Akane-san," he said, and she bowed in
thanks. Kasumi followed a heartbeat later. The younger girl gave him a
happy grin, touched his shoulder, and went back to the control room
where the others were.

	Ryouga's eyes watched her go, but his smile didn't quite reach
his eyes.

	Which struck Kasumi as strange. Usually, the lost boy went into
convulsions of joy everything Akane talked to him, much less touched
him. A second later, he went back to looking at the stars, expecting
Kasumi to also leave. When she didn't, he gave her another look.

	"Kasumi-san?" he asked, this time.

	"What are you looking at, Ryouga-kun?" she asked, concerned by
his unusual behavior. She had seen him on the porch before, just staring
up at the night sky. Sometimes, she heard him on the roof, and often
Ranma joined him. But this seemed different.

	"What am I looking at?" He repeated her question, and he scowled
at the window, and at the majestic sight before him. "I'm looking for
something."

	"A... ship?" Kasumi guessed.

	"Yeah. Or maybe just some kind of sign," he admitted. "I don't
want to look at the earth anymore. I don't want to look back."

	"Back?"

	"Out there, Kasumi-san... out there, on some world, these
creatures are planning another attack. Planning on taking more lives.
Damn them all to hell." He grunted, his emotions mixed. "At least when I
was after Ranma, I had some idea of where he was. He was in China, or he
was in Japan. Then I found out he was going to Furinkan, and my revenge
seemed within reach. Now... now I don't know where my enemy is, and I
don't know how to get there."

	"Don't you want to go home?" Kasumi asked, not fully
understanding his motivations.

	"Home?" He scoffed, this time his anger was easily heard in his
tone. "No. No I don't."

	"Oh." Kasumi didn't know how to respond to that. She tried to
sound nice and helpful, like always. "You're always welcome to visit us,
Ryouga-kun."

	He lowered his gaze, and closed his eyes. "T...thank you, Kasumi-
san. I don't deserve it. I've done things... things you wouldn't approve
of. And now this..."

	Do you mean killing those iseijin?" Kasumi gave him a bow, which
he turned to face. "Ryouga-kun, even if you did kill them, it was to
save us. I would never hold it against you."

	"No, that's not..." he started to say, but instead bowed,
stiffly and deeply. "Kasumi-san, you have always treated me with
kindness. It is I who should thank you."

	Kasumi smiled at this, and looked at him directly. "Ano, Ryouga-
kun, if anything is wrong; if you want to talk about..."

	He cut in, quickly. "Thank you, but I don't think so. I don't
have anything I want to talk about.  Please excuse me. I'll find some
way to dispose of the bodies."

	Kasumi watched him go, but felt that she hadn't helped him
nearly as much as she had intended. Something was very wrong. Then
again, men were strange sometimes. Dr. Tofu also didn't open up to her
very much. Maybe there was something wrong with her approach? She would
have to think of something else to get him to talk.

	A thousand miles from home, it wasn't as if she had anything
better to do.

-----

	"Try that one."

	"Ok."

	Nabiki pursed her lips in thought, but eventually shook her
head. "No. No. Go back, and try the other one."

	Ranma sighed loudly. He squirmed uncomfortably in the too-small
seat, and looked up at the green themed graphics that virtually
surrounded him. He didn't particularly like computers. He hadn't in
school, and he didn't here. Still, he was only one of two people who
seemed able to operate them on the ship. Reaching up to one of the
bracketed displays, he moved it with his index finger to the left,
directing it to slide away into a tabulated form almost out of sight.

	With his pointer finger, and his focused mind, he picked out
another display piece. It expanded into a new set of brackets, revealing
several lines of alien code, and some strange graphs and charts. Ranma
sighed again. He was bored, and he wanted Nabiki to know it.

	Instead, she hummed to herself, and looked over the data.

	"You can close this one," she finally said. "But... open that
one from before. The one with all those spikes. I want to see that
again."

	Ranma grumbled under his breath, but did what she wanted.
Another graphic appeared in green brackets against the projected black
background. In it, a spiky looking line went all over the place, in
three directions. It looked like a big, angry, pulsing sea urchin (and
thinking of uni sushi made him hungry). Off to the side, lines and more
alien scribbles popped up, and scrolled down.

	"Ok. I think this is the wrong directory." Nabiki tapped him on
the shoulder to make sure she had his undivided attention. She paced
around, behind him. "Let's try going back again. To this one, right
here!"

	She pointed to one of the tabulated displays from before, on the
left. They were lined up on both sides, instead of on the bottom, like
they were on the computers Ranma had used before in school. He was also
starting to get a bit of a headache from mentally pushing things around.
Still, he was silently amazed it worked at all, given that he was human,
and not some freak alien.

	"Ok. Ok." Ranma did what Nabiki asked, and pulled up the other
directory. It had several lines of alien script, attached to what looked
like a tree, or some sort of diagram. Nabiki stared at it, and Ranma
waited. After almost a minute, his patience wore out.

	"Well?" he asked, a little crossly.

	"Try... that one." Nabiki pointed to one of the scripts. Ranma
did the same, thought about where his finger was, and the system barked
at him. An alien voice sounded, making shrill insect noises. Nabiki
clucked her tongue, making a 'tsk' sound, and went back to staring.

	"We're not getting anywhere," Ranma complained. He didn't like
being stuck helping Nabiki with the computer. Better to have Mr. Tendo's
job, trying to find a way to get the doors open on the other stasis
tubes. Or Akane's job of trying to find their damn clothes. Or Kasumi's
job of looking for water.

	Or better yet, get Ryouga back in the Small Seat!

	How long had the lost boy been at it with Nabiki here? A couple
hours? Ranma was sure he'd beaten that time by now. It felt like an
eternity, and he was HUNGRY.

	"Ah!" Nabiki clapped her hands together excitedly. "There. That
root right there!"

	"Yare yare..." Ranma poked at the spot, and the system
translated his thoughts. He could do it without the hand motions, but it
was much harder to concentrate properly. In front of him, a display
appeared in the same brackets as usual. There was a small flashing alien
ideogram, and then a graphic appeared.

	This one was, at least, more impressive than usual.

	"That's us. The ship, I mean," Nabiki said, and pointed to the
small, two layered pancake in the middle of the animation. It had a
small halo around it, along with some more nonsense alien words. There
were also some squiggles that headed out from the bottom of the picture.
The ones that intercepted the little ship and its halo didn't continue
through to the top. A side bar indicated more information.

	Akane choose that moment to pop in.

	"Hey!" she greeted, relatively chipper, given the situation.
"Any luck?"

	"Perfect timing, actually. I think I've found something
important." Nabiki motioned her sister over, and mage a gesture at the
little ship in the picture. "A lot of the systems seem to be coded or
something. We can't access them, and when we try, we get yelled at."

	"So you still don't have a way to move the ship?" Akane asked.

	"No. Not yet," Nabiki admitted. "But we're making progress. This
is some sort of energy field, I think. I was hoping it had to do with
movement. I think that there's a good bet that we were just initializing
things out of order. Like trying to start a car before putting in the
keys."

	"If you say so..." The younger Tendo wasn't about to argue.

	"We'll find out in a second." Nabiki pointed at the side tab.
"Let's see what this is."

	"Fine. Here goes." Ranma opened it, revealing another bracketed
display, this one with a huge long list of strange names, and a red dot
in front of each. At the top of the display, another line curved, like
an upside down cup, and next to it, a right-side-up cup. He waited a few
seconds for his partner to say something.

	"See anything you like?" he asked, when Nabiki didn't respond.

	"Actually... I do. That look familiar, Akane?" her finger
touched the holographic line at the top of the display.

	"That's a..." Akane squinted a bit, remembering. "A sine curve,
right?"

	"Sine curve?" Ranma thought about that. "I... I remember
something about that. Some geometry thing. It had to do with circles."

	"Yes, that's one thing it relates to," Nabiki admitted. "But
more importantly, for us, so are radio waves."

	"That's a radio?" Akane asked, walking closer. She was curious,
now.

	"No. I don't think so." Nabiki pointed to a small bar. "That
should scroll the data. Move it up, Ranma."

	"Yes, ma'am." Ranma did as asked, feeling like a dumb third
wheel. He decided to listen carefully to what Nabiki and Akane said.
Ranma Saotome did not have thick skin, and he disliked being in the dark
about what was going on. Geometry and stuff had seemed useless before,
but here it suddenly took on a greater apparent importance.

	"See how it changes?" Nabiki smiled, and pointed to the wave as
it moved and grew narrower. "Look? See?"

	"I see it," Akane responded. "But what does all this mean?"

	"Just hold on a second... Go back in the other direction now,
Ranma. I want to be sure..." Nabiki laughed, and spun around happily, as
Ranma scrolled the data ever downward. She never saw Ryouga walk in, or
leave. "Yes. I'm right. I'm right!"

	"What?" Akane pressed. "What is it?"

	"What we're looking at is the electromagnetic spectrum. Just
like we all learned about in Junior High. These!" The middle Tendo
daughter pointed to the long list of alien gibberish. "Are frequencies.
They're numbers. Look how many of them are the same, and how simple
looking they are compared to the other stuff we've seen. They're
definitely numbers, and they're definitely frequencies. Don't you see
the pattern in them?"

	Akane and Ranma looked closely at them. Sure enough, many shared
the same squiggles, except for a different one at the end. The more they
looked, the more they saw what Nabiki had seen.

	"This isn't just a radio. It doesn't pick up just radio waves.
This seems to be picking up everything in the electromagnetic spectrum.
If you go down far enough, or if we had some way to skip to another
point, I'm sure we'd come across the frequencies for visible light,
too." Nabiki motioned for Ranma to move the bracketed graphic aside for
the moment, and he did so, without tabulating it. They saw the screen
from before.

	"The ship," Nabiki lectured. "This ship... has some kind of
shield or system. I don't know what exactly. But I think it is picking
up all these frequencies, and absorbing them, or deflecting them, or
something. None of them are being reflected back. That's what this is
showing us. This is some sort of stealth system, keeping the ship from
showing up on radar. Maybe making it invisible, too."

	"I see." Akane then added. "But how does this help us?"

	Nabiki hesitated before answering that. "Well... if we shut it
down, then someone might see us."

	"Yeah. And blow us out of the sky," Ranma said, leaning back in
the chair. "You want to take bets on whether it'll be the Russians or
Americans who nuke us?"

	"Probably both," Nabiki acknowledged grimly. "But if we could
also get the communications system working..."

	"And we'll know when we've found that, how exactly?" Ranma's
head lolled around on his shoulders, making loud cracking sounds. "My
head is about to fall off. I need a break."

	"Just five more minutes, ok?" Nabiki asked, using her 'I-know-
what's-best so-do-what-I-say' tone of voice.

	"What?" Ranma groaned.

	"Just try and get some of the radio channels. They're... ah..."
Nabiki sucked in a sharp breath, and wracked her brain. "Megahertz. Or
is it Kilohertz?"

	Ranma raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "Hurtz what now? How am I
supposed to find this on here, much less know what you're even talking
about?"

	"Radio frequencies." Nabiki briefly looked over her shoulder and
saw Ryouga walk in. He collected one of the alien bodies in the room
without a word, and walked out. In fact, there were no bodies left. At
some point, he had walked in and taken one, and Nabiki hadn't even
noticed.

	"Radio frequencies," Nabiki said again. "Just kind of skim
around. When you find one, see if another option comes up. Some kind of
audio. Anything!"

	Ranma relented. "Five minutes. Five."

	"Thank you." Nabiki headed for the door, sensing something was
going on behind her back. "Akane. Help him out. Make sure he doesn't
miss anything."

	Akane nodded. "Sure. Where are you going?"

	"I'm going to see what the lost boy is up to with our billion
dollar alien bodies." Nabiki put her hand to the door, pulled back, and
opened it. The motion had already become second nature. With Nabiki
gone, the two remaining Nerimites exchanged looks. Both of them suddenly
became aware that, for the first time, they had been left alone
together, and that fact slowly but surely began to make them feel
nervous.

	Ranma, who had just started to be comfortable in his lack of
clothes, quickly became very self-conscious. Coughing, he lowered one
hand to his lap, and went to work looking through the different
frequencies. It was better than thinking that he was alone, in a room
with his (preferred) fiancee, naked. And that she was wearing only a
relatively thin white shirt. A top that didn't do much to conceal her
womanly attributes.

	Ranma bit his lip. 'Oh man...'

	Akane was leaning forward slightly, just to his right, looking
at something in the alien display. Was she teasing him, or were the gods
just trying to embarrass him?! He cursed his lack of control, and tried
to keep his tone of voice casual. "Ah. Akane... could you maybe move
back a bit? You're kind of crowding me."

	Akane seemed surprised by this. "You didn't complain when
Nabiki..."

	Ranma saw her eyes go down, and then up very quickly. She bushed
bright red, stammered something unintelligible, and backed off. Ranma
shifted again in the little seat, but had no intention to stand up. Not
at the moment. For a few seconds, the two didn't know what to say, and
settled for a pregnant silence.

	Ranma went back to work.

	"It... it ain't like ya never seen me before," he felt compelled
to say, so he did. A second later, he regretted it.

	"Never quite like that," Akane replied, and laughed softly. "You
pervert."

	"I ain't a pervert. Its natural!" Ranma snapped, defensively. He
hadn't fully understood Akane's somewhat playful tone.

	Then, he just had to add: "And it ain't like I'm attracted to ya
or nothin'!"

	He hadn't called her flat chested, or an uncute tomboy, so it
was hardly the worst thing he'd ever said to her, but he could feel
Akane seethe behind him. For a few seconds, Ranma cringed, ready for the
inevitable.

	"Well, you could've fooled me!" Akane yelled, and stormed off.

	"Damn it!" Ranma slammed his head into the metal panel in front
of him with a groan. Why did he always blurt these things out? He'd just
wanted to explain himself, and before he'd known it, he'd said the wrong
things. On land, sea, or in space, Ranma Saotome inserts foot in mouth.

	And he sure as hell wasn't going to chase after her with a
boner.

	"Damn it all!!" Ranma yelled, more loudly this time, and swiped
randomly at all the green alien madness floating in the air around him,
frustration coming out all at once. An alien voice chided him, and then
something beeped. And it kept beeping. Looking up, Ranma saw something
new in front of him: a new graphic, in a set of brackets. And as
generally computer-illiterate as he was, its meaning was obvious.

	In front of him, a little animated spaceship slowly circled the
earth, fell out of orbit, and crashed.

	"Well, this is just terrific!"


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