Troy and I, being the 'invisible' beings would scout ahead and check that the way was clear before ushering Midas and Luke out from their safe havens and escorting them into the next. Luke, all the while, dictated the direction we should take.
Suddenly, things started to heat up. Luke had led us down another shaft and stopped by an exit panel. He pointed through the grill at a door opposite us.
"That's it," whispered Troy loudly. "That's AL3!"
"Don't sound so surprised," I hissed in annoyance.
I had never doubted Luke's ability to bring us here. Luke picked up my hand and kissed the back of it before giving me a cheeky wink. With his lack of verbal communication, it was a lovely way for him to say thank you. I smiled reassuringly at him.
As I had so many times before, I crawled out into the corridor to check that the way was clear, but no sooner was I out than the door to AL3 opened and five Dancers burst out. They had already started to melt from their humanoid form into balls of light and were rolling towards me at phenomenal speed. They almost filled the width of the corridor and I had to spread myself against the wall to avoid one of them touching me, sucking in my stomach hard; as if that would help!
No sooner were they gone though than another door opened a little further down the corridor and four more Dancers came out, and then another three from another doorway ... and then it was quiet again.
I waited for a few moments and then approached the door to AL3.
This was it. I wondered how many Dancers were inside. I hoped none because once I opened the door, their attention would surely be on it. They might see me, but even if they didn't, how would we be able to do what we needed to if they were there?
I wished we had a real plan.
I stepped up to the door expecting it to shush open as the ones on the Earhart do, but it remained stubbornly closed. I glared at it in annoyance, but still nothing. I looked around the frame but could see no mechanism either.
I turned back to the access panel from where Troy was emerging. He clambered out of the hole, pulling himself free like a huge, black beetle escaping its cocoon. Despite his size and horns, he had such grace.
He came and pushed me to one side of the door while he stood on the other and waved his hand over, well nothing that I could see, but there was obviously a sensor there. The door shushed open and I realised what he had done. By moving us to either side of the door, if anybody was inside and they looked out, we were out of their immediate line of sight. Within a moment though, Troy had ducked down to peer through the open doorway and then darted inside. I followed.
AL3 turned out to be much smaller than I had anticipated. Approximately eight meters square, one end was concaved and formed a viewscreen, not unlike the one we had on our own bridge in the Earhart. On it were displayed star charts, no doubt of this region of space judging by the way it faded at the edges, but there was a lot more information annotated on it in a foreign hand.
In front of that, a bank of computer stations stood with a rack of spheres lined up along its top. About the size of a football, they glittered and glowed like giant Christmas baubles but were even more beautiful. They shimmered like the Dancers in their naked form, but lacked the feeling of malevolence that the Dancers emanated.
There were also two Dancers in the room busily working at the stations. I bit my lip anxiously.
Troy and I may be beyond the Dancer's perception but we weren't the ones that needed to be in here with the equipment. We needed Midas for that, and Midas was most certainly not invisible.
Troy was also aware of that and I could see him looking around for something with which to disable or distract the Dancers.
A small, wry smile broke out across his face spreading his wide slit of a mouth even wider. Silently he picked something up from a counter top.
About the size of a tricorder and shaped like a big tear, he held it like a remote control for a model aeroplane, pointing its tip away from him. Its smooth surface was flattened on the upper side and illuminated with touch sensitive controls. Troy tapped at it for a while, looked up and pointed. My eyes followed his direction until I spotted a similar device which I claimed, but what I was supposed to do with it, I had no idea.
Troy concentrated on his device for a second longer and then came over to me. I held mine as he tapped at it, duplicating the settings he had made on the first one, but I wasn't really paying any attention. I was more concerned about the Dancers. They had their backs to us, but if they turned around? Would these devices floating in midair give us away, or would the devices become imperceivable like us?
Troy's hand on my shoulder broke me from my reverie. He had set my machine up for me and was showing me what I needed to do to operate it. Then he directed me towards one of the Dancers and indicated that I should copy him. Dumbly, I did as I was bid.
Under his direction, I walked up behind the nearest of the two Dancers and waited. On the count of three, we touched the tips of our machines against our respective Dancers and horror filled me as I realised what was happening.
The machine worked silently and as I touched it against the Dancer's skin; it seemed oblivious to it. The machine though, lit up like a Christmas tree. Red, yellow, green and blue lights skipped across its display and the whole apparatus glowed brightly, but not the Dancer.
While it remained quite oblivious to me, it was obvious that it was becoming distressed. It slumped forward, leaning onto the console in front of it in an unnervingly humanlike way. I think I even heard it sigh as its pearlescent glow dulled to a shabby grey, and then it shrank like a balloon deflating. The Dancer lost its form and became old and wrinkled. It slumped onto its knees in a flabby lump and lingered for a moment and then, like one of those really old fashioned TV sets from the 1970s, it imploded into nothing more than a small, white dot of light.
I gasped in horror and stared at it, and then the dot winked out and was gone.
Shocked, I looked to Troy for an answer. He looked back at me and smiled.
"Problem solved," he beamed.
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