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X-9 the robot led the way up the cliff's face, easily grabbing hold the pitons which days ago he had slammed into the rock face for Albert Zoeniga’s convenience. Next came Nina McCleer, with Albert bringing up the rear. Albert kept his eye on Mrs. McCleer and watched for any signs of her faltering from weakness or becgoming unsteady. X-9 also glanced down at her from time to time, but the robot did not fret as much as Albert Zoeniga, because Mrs. McCleer had at least consented to wear a safety rope about her waist, and the other end was tied around X-9. If she did slip off the cliff, and Albert couldn't catch her in time, she still would not be able to fall to the bottom of the gorge, where the stream limped along over stones and rocks.

Before the group had left the cave, Nina McCleer had reassured Albert and X-9 of her returned health, and, after arguing with X-9, and then also Albert (who joined in and had taken X-9's side of the debate, thinking X-9 made sense), she finally consented and put on the rope.

None of them carried up any supplies. Albert Zoeniga and X-9 had already loaded all they planned to bring with their journey into the truck, which awaited them in a nearby hidden spot.

Once the robot climbed over the edge of the gorge and stood on the surface above, he bent over to extend his mechanical hand to Nina to help her up. She insisted, "I am fine, X-9. I am not an invalid anymore," as she took his hand. Afterward, she removed the rope. X-9 coiled it up and carried it on his robot shoulder, quietly hurrying to where they had left the truck.

Meanwhile, Albert Zoeniga also scrambled up the ravine’s side. He struggled over the top and hustled to catch up with X-9 and Nina McCleer as they headed toward the truck. "Hey, don't worry about me. No need to wait for me, I'll get there, too," he said, hurrying to keep pace with the other two.

X-9 said, "Mr. Zoeniga, time is short. Soon the morning sun will make us very noticeable, and more people will be awake and alert. There will be increased activity at the nearby rocketport, and maybe some deliveries coming and going over the rickety bridge connecting the city outskirts with the farms. We want to get to our truck and out of the city before all that, so that there are no problems.”

Albert Zoeniga nodded, thinking about it. "Yeah, I see your point. The truck is hot, as we humans call stolen stuff."

Nina wondered, "So, if we are trying to keep from being noticed, why didn't we just leave at night, when it's dark and almost everybody's asleep?"

Albert figured he could explain that one. "You see, Mrs. McCleer- Sis Nina, if we did that, and drove at night without headlights to avoid detection, we could end up crashing. If we did use the lights, then surely some security guard or watchman from the nearby farms or from the rocketport would see our lights as we drove out. They might find it suspicious and send some Agents to investigate us."

X-9 took the lead along the edge of Abyss Gorge, then turned away from it, toward a rocky field ahead. The trio walked over the uneven land, and at last reached the truck, hidden from view behind some gigantic boulders. Nina asked, "Albert, how did you ever manage to park it in there, and can you get the truck back out again?”

Albert replied, "I doubt that I could have parked it so well. But X-9 managed to somehow pull it off. I guess driving monster trucks is his talent."

X-9 added, still trudging speedily over to the truck, "It seems that over time, many robots discover something at which they are good, better than the average robot. I guess my talent is driving."

Albert Zoeniga chuckled and told Nina, "Just watch what this truck can do when X-9 is at the wheel. But, hey, X-9, if we wanted to be less conspicuous, maybe we should have repainted this monstrosity of a color scheme. In the dawn's early light, I think the paint job is blinding me!"

X-9 opened the passenger door in the front for Nina McCleer. She saw bags and boxes of supplies crammed into the back of the truck, with just a bit of room also in the back for Albert to squeeze himself into the tiny space. As the robot held the door for Mrs. McCleer, X-9 asked Albert, "Do you really think we should have painted the truck? Don't you want to travel in style?"

Albert Zoeniga pondered the robot's answer. Was the robot serious? Or, had X-9 made a joke? A robot joking...? But, if not, then, if X-9 spoke seriously, that meant the robot seemed to have a sense of aesthetics, and a bad sense at that. A robot with aesthetics? Albert Zoeniga shrugged. He didn't understand robots, and especially one probably with Seymour's Syndrome Disease.

Once the two humans sat in their seats, X-9 hopped in the driver's side and backed out, over a shaky ridge of rocks.

Nina held onto the armrest, hoping the robot's skills were as good as Albert bragged them to be. The truck swayed on its shocks, and she prayed X-9 managed to keep the truck from pitching onto its side.

When X-9 succeeded in driving out of their hiding spot in the cluster of boulders, Nina McCleer told Albert Zoeniga, "I am certainly glad we had took the time to ask the Lord to bless our mission with success back at the cave. To be honest, I expected hardship along the way, but I had no idea it would start so soon- with X-9's pulling us out of the parking spot!"

Albert laughed. "Be sure to belt yourself in. I can't promise his driving gets any less hair-raising.”

“The truck traveled parallel to the gorge, on its left. To the south, as the gorge approached Sparkle City proper, the land abutting the gorge dropped and became even with the gorge's stream, which emptied into the sea near the resort section. To the north, the direction they headed, the stream bed instead raised above sea level, and the notable gorge became a mere gulley fed by springs out in the wilds, once far past the rocketport.

They soon were on the official undeveloped road from the city. Nina made out a dull mountain outline popping up from the far horizon. At this early hour of the day, she could barely make it out from the grey sky, but she thought she knew what it was. "X-9, that's it, isn't it? That is the mining mountain, where my husband might be enslaved. Am I correct?"

X-9 kept his eyes on the road. He had no need to even look to see where she pointed. "Yes, Ma'm, that is the mountain." But the robot kept on his preplanned course. He soon deviated from the very rough road heading to that place.

Albert Zoeniga sighed, concerned for what heart pain Mrs. McCleer must be experiencing. "I hope we can help Mr. McCleer, if he is stuck there, as well as all those others there who don't belong at the mines."

Nina McCleer gazed longingly into the distance, barely able to see the far away blue-grey peak in this dim light no matter how hard she strained her eyes. Inside that mountain, her husband might be digging out fuel ore at this very moment. She forced herself to look away. "Oh, George..." she whispered. She wiped a tiny tear from her eye.

Not far from the city, as the truck wound around a hill, they found some robots with blasters strolling back and forth across their path. "Halt, please,” one of the robots ordered, and X-9 obeyed, stopping.

The patrol robot who ordered their halt walked over to the truck. "Where are you driving your Masters? And, I cannot sense an active tracking device in you or in the truck. May I see your ID tags, please, and if your passengers they tourists, can you show me the proper permits?"

Uh oh, thought Nina and Albert both. Now what? What would they do? They did not want the patrol robots alerting any authorities about them no sooner than the journey began!

Albert Zoeniga decided to speak. "Excuse me, are you daring to question us? Aren't you here to protect the city from threats like the wild beasts, to keep them from coming into town? We are not even coming into town; we are leaving it. So, what do you care, if we are leaving?"

"I am following proper procedures, Sir. Please do not take offense," the border patrol robot answered.

"And, you are doing a very good job, robot," X-9 congratulated the other robot. X-9 turned to speak with Albert Zoeniga sitting in the back of the truck. "See that, this robot and his fellow robot patrols are on the job. Very alert and diligent to follow the proper course of action.” Then, X-9 once again faced the security robot who had stopped them. "You have passed the test."

"We did?"

"But say nothing to anyone about the matter," Nina McCleer instructed.

Another robot came over and inquired, "This was a test to see how well we do our duty? As you know, we robots are very dutiful."

"Yes, we do know," said Albert Zoeniga.

The first patrol robot remarked, "Are you then with that other group that passed by here two months ago, also testing our competence?"

But then the second robot reminded, "Please don't discuss the other group. Remember, we are instructed to not discuss them, as well."

"You are correct," X-9 affirmed the lie to the second robot. "But it is strange that you should be so curious and asking. Is it possible you have Seymour's Syndrome?"

The second robot replied, "I merely wanted to help you find the others, in case you are looking for them, but, as Z-89 has said, I should not have said anything."

The patrol robots moved aside and let their truck pass. Without another glance at the departing vehicle, the robots went back to vigilantly patrolling the perimeter of Sparkle City, keeping its citizens safe and making certain any who passed by them did so only under the closest scrutiny. Nothing slipped past their alert attention.

Continuing along their way, X-9 commented, "I used to be so gullible, too, before I got this Seymour's Syndrome.”

Nina McCleer wondered, "Who could they mean- They said something about another group that passed by their patrol."

"Good question, but I guess we don't have time to worry about that now," Albert Zoeniga said.

Sparkle City shrank on the southern horizon and soon disappeared below the line of the landscape. After a few hours of trucking north, the air became a bit colder, but still no big deal. To the west, a small forest peeked out of the dull ground in the distance. The sparse vegetation sprouting here and there along the trickling stream began the thicken in the leftward direction, until, all at once, it became the forest seen in the distance.

X-9 had been following the stream since they started. He now said, “At this point, the stream shifts to the west, towards the forest. We will leave it, and head for the north. I will park, first, and we will top off all the water bottles we have. I know we can use the snow when we get further north, but we are not there yet. You two can take care of bodily functions which I as a robot need not do during this stop.”

Nina and Albert gladly left the truck for a few minutes, and Albert wished out loud, "If only we had time to visit the woodlands over there. I used to like the nature parks on Earth... Osmo and I never got around to seeing this forest here during our stay. I wish we had."

Nina nodded. "Yes, it does look inviting. Years ago, Gov. Bright and Earth Leader Bigges and Gunther Martin- your friend Osmo's father- had helped to develop that forest project. Its purpose was for growing timber with a growth accelerant for housing needs in Sparkle City, and also to help take the load off the Evniro Gens. And most of the original trees had actually come from the crashlanded Peace Lab. if I remember my husband's stories correctly. The trees grew very quickly due to the accelerants that had escaped the space station when it crashed on this planet."

"Well, it looks like the trees can be harvested now," observed Albert Zoeniga.

Nina nodded. "At first the citizens built with stone, since it's so plentiful around the city. At one time, a stone quarry had even been in operation, in the beginning of the city. But wood seemed like it’d be easier to harvest. And when people began to settle the World of Hope in greater numbers, wood for building was brought from Earth, or, more often, they used other, cheaper things from Earth, like what the ramshackle original miners' building had been made of. Like most newer buildings in the city use cheap materials. Wood was, at that time, very expensive, but the stone was very hard work. And- - Hey, look- do you see that?"

"See what?" asked Albert.

X-9 also saw it.

Nina told Albert, "Down there, by the forest edges- I think somebody sees us and is coming from there, but trying to keep out of our sight, taking cover in the scrub along the stream-"

Albert now saw it, too.

The person, whoever it was, who snuck about, was so far away, Albert couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. He and X-9 quickly grabbed their bottles of water and hurried back to the truck.

Albert Zoeniga, although with heavy water bottles in his arms, nudged Nina's shoulder as she stood there trying to make out the oncoming, slinking figure. "Let's go, Sis Nina. I don't know who he is, or what he wants-”

“Maybe he's a Forest Ranger, or maybe someone who was a part of that group that passed by before us, which the robots mentioned- but I don't think we should take any chances. Perhaps the stranger means well, or perhaps not- Why is he hiding?"

Albert said, "Maybe he also wonders who we are, and if he can take a chance with us, and so is being careful to stay out of sight. Not as careful as he thinks he- or she- is, however. Anyway, let's get going."

The three returned to the truck and peeled out, splashing through the stream as they crossed it, leaving the mysterious forest person far behind to his or her own business, and not letting that person's business get mixed up with theirs.

(c) drk 2012