Chapter 10

     “Helicopters!?” Strufis exclaimed as everyone rushed out of the portable room before he imploded it to stuff hurriedly back into his knapsack. “How could they be using helicopters? The Naturals never even use graphing calculators without getting upset with themselves!”
     “So those Naturals are the ones that are after us?”
     “I thought they were, seeing as how they welcomed us this afternoon!” he huffed. “All right, change of plans. We’ll need to high tail it to the Professor’s brother’s mansion pronto. If we run, I think we can get there in time.”
     Heather frowned. “Why didn’t we do this before?”
     “Were you planning on running around all night?”
     “…”
     Without another word, they set off in a rush.

     Across a crackly intercom, a man’s voice intoned, “Well, they’ve got to be around this area still, Kersta. Otherwise we wouldn’t be searching frantically like this. I just don’t know why we haven’t gotten a signal yet. You know that with the D. T. the targets could transport themselves to anywhere around here or even elsewhere, and with us being so close they’d have no reason to stick around here.”
     “They probably suspect that we can detect their transmissions and are refraining to keep in the background,” Kersta replied. “You know as well as I do, Mr. Templehill, once they use it, we’ll be able to follow them, so stop worrying about it.”
     A sigh came from the other side. “I’ve known Roose for a long time. I really don’t understand what suddenly made him clam up about this invention of his. We both support the progression of technology, so I just can’t get why this is happening in the first place.”
     Another pilot reported in. “We’ve detected some movement about a thousand meters away, but it’s within heavy forestry, and we can’t confirm its source or where its current location is.”
     Mr. Templehill grimaced. “For all we know, it could be the Naturals having a midnight hunting party or whatever. We can’t make ourselves conspicuous; the press would have a field day if they found out there was a searching raid on the nearby reserve. Send a skirmish party over there and see if you can pinpoint and confirm any anomalies.”
     “Yes sir.”