Reaching the door, I opened the elevator, and stepped inside. The alarm continued sounding off as the doors snapped shut. I pressed the '1' on the pad...and it started descending. I stood to the left of the door with the rifles raised when it came to a stop. As the doors opened, I watched as two blobs of black tar like substance hit the back of the elevator and covered the whole wall. I fired both rifles when I saw someone's elbow, and the blobs hit the person and he went spinning out of sight.. They entered the shadow of the sparse canopy, the leafy fronds waving in the breeze above their heads, the carpet of ferns rising to Caden’s knees. “When we understand and apply those principles, we can-”As they emerged from the cover of the palms, they stopped dead in their tracks. Crouched at the opposite bank of the oasis was a massive shape, an armored head rising to peer at them as water sloughed from its tusked maw. It was a Borophage, just as alive as they were, its thick layers of. She trembled in a moment of post-coital relaxation, mumbled something about ‘Barnard….’ and then was sound asleep. I understood why she was trying to think of that name. It was a name out of our past, our past shared with a woman named Karen and her special ring, a past which was being drawn back into the present by Dean’s unwitting revelations as he probed Maria’s Diary. And then I was hard asleep, too. * Today * In the next chapter of ‘At the Summit’ we will rejoin Dean as Maria shares more.. Good thing my tongue didn’t have to inflate to be useful. The last time, in late afternoon, made me request a nap while she went back out on deck.Some indeterminate time later she was waking me up with a blow-job. “I just had some fun,” she crowed. “A really young guy hit on me. Haven’t had one his age since I helped a girlfriend’s son learn about pussy. Anyway he maneuvered me into a secluded place and I didn’t object to his fooling around until his pecker was poking at my pussy lips. Told him.