Sari looked gratefully in the direction of the chopper, but suddenly remembered that they had a problem on their hands.

"So good of you to stick around, buddy" she muttered defiantly, "but we have got to do something about those three temporarily disabled nymphs. Prime Directive and all that, don't you know. We can't just leave them there for the Roman legionaires to find. If they were discovered by the local troops, there is no telling how much debauchery would ensue, and then word would get back to Rome, and playwrights and poets would have grist for their literary mills, and historians would whack out, and pretty soon the whole history of the northern frontier would be altered. Think of all the dusty tomes in obscure libraries that would, by dint of a changed history, crumble into dust."

Aulus thought about that for a minute, and then replied: "Well, can't I keep at least one for, uh, comfort or something? It gets pretty lonely being a time traveler." What he meant, of course, was that if he took on a nymph and dumped his capable but troublesome current co-pilot, he would have a much better time between assignments.

Sari gave him a look of pure disgust. "Sure, flyboy, make the big blonde one your personal concubine! Dolt! How do you think that would play at TO HQ?"

"Yeah, you're right. But what in Hades can we do with them?"

"Well, first of all, get that chopper out of sight before some of the Wall garrison spot it. Then we can toss the girls back through the portal."

Aulus glumly re-started the engine, and using his remote, put it back in whisper mode, fully concealed of course, a few hundred feet above their position. "But won't we endanger them" he asked plaintivly, "if we just tip them unconcious over the edge?"

"No worries" sari replied. "It looks like a long drop from here, but on the other side it is but a soft landing. Let's get on with it."

So they picked up the naked nymphs and tossed them through the portal, each disappearing in a puff of unnaturally generated air that wafted back against their faces.

"OK, captain," sari continued, "Now we can get out of here and discuss the situation in the comfort of the cockpit."

Just then another draft of air, this time more forceful, burst forth from the portal, and a looming presence soared past them. Aulus was knocked to the ground, a large hoofprint clearly embossed upon the shoulder of his flight suit that, providently, protected him from the injury that a lesser garment could not have prevented.

"What the hell was that?" he cried out. In the next instant they heard a sickening thud! as something hit the silently rotating blades of the chopper, followed by a whoosh, whoosh, whooshing sound. The looked skyward, and saw what appeared to be a brief diaphanous garment caught by one of the helicopter's otherwise invisible rotor blades circling above them, and in the following instant Aulus was decked by a falling body.

Actually, it was a most attractive, youthful, and well formed female body entirely bereft of clothing, and totally unconcious. Aulus freed himself from the body whose fall he had broken, and swore.

"What the f...? Did one of those bimbettes fly back?" Then he examined the female more closely, and recalibrated his judgement. This was no common nymph. She was more beautiful than any creature he had ever beheld. If only, he wished longingly, he had not picked up sari outside a Swiss tavern, he could be on the brink of something really good.

"Who" he asked nobody in particular "Is she?"

Sari hesitated for a moment, then told him.

"That is Diana, hunter of the night. She was riding out under the full Moon so that the Romans would see her, and perhaps renew their worship of the Gods. Unfortunately, she was unseated by our chopper blades, so the mount is out there somewhere, but she is here."

"Do we have to throw her back, too?" Aulus asked sadly. He was already getting some non-pc notions.

"I think we had better not" sari replied. "With the horse loose, and her missing, there could be some undesireable consequences. Why don't we get the chopper down, pull her dress off the rotors, and pull up out of here so we can figure out our next move."

"Right" Aulus agreed, thinking 'maybe I can ditch this troublesome broad and go off to the sun coast with Diana.'

"Don't even think about it, Lothario" sari said, reading his not particularly obscure thoughts. "Get her dressed, and see if we can find her horse."