rescue, just like you say!” the teenager explained.

 The man looked around at them, hardly looking surprised.  “I figured he’d send you,” he said, as if waking up to a group of canine superheroes were the most natural thing in the world.  “When I woke up in the yetis’ cave for a second or two, I knew he’d send you.”

 The Road Rovers stared at him.  “You know him?” asked Blitz.

 Alan nodded.  “I ought to.”  He was silent for a long moment, as if he were about to tell them a long-kept secret.  “My name is Alan Shepherd.  Professor Shepherd is my father.”

“He’s your dad?” asked Hunter in complete amazement.

 “Blimey!” interjected Colleen.  “They do sort of resemble one another, don’t they?”

 There was no denying that.  Aside from the fact that Alan’s face had fewer wrinkles and his hair was blonde instead of white, he looked almost exactly like the Master.

 “But he never talked about you,” Blitz pointed out.

 Alan hung his head.  “Until recently, he didn’t know I was alive.”

 The Rovers moved Alan over to the fire and sat around Indian-style to hear his tale.  “I was just a kid when it happened.  Dad was working on his machine, the transdogmafier.  He told us it was going to help mankind.  Then someone kidnapped our dog, Scout, and not long after that Dad’s lab blew up.  I found out about it when some men in suits came to the door and told Mom that Dad had been killed.”  His voice was heavy with the pain of his loss years ago.  “She tried not to let on, but I heard her crying at night when she thought my sister and I were asleep.  She cried every night and most of the day every day for the next three days.”

 In the long moment of silence, Shag uttered a long string of dog-sounds.

 “Then what happened?” translated Hunter.

 Alan hung his head.  “I… I went to play at a friend’s house, and heard an explosion at mine.  When I ran to see what had happened, my house was gone.  All that was left was a pile of burning rubble.  Mom and my big sister Sarah were dead.”  He clenched a fist.  “There were a man and a woman standing outside, looking at the wreckage and laughing.  The man had a yellow mustache and wore a metal helmet.  The woman was in a black-and-red jumpsuit, and wore a helmet just like his.”

 “Parvo,” growled Colleen, clenching a fist.

 “And Groomer,” added Hunter, every bit as angry.

 Sonam had been listening wide-eyed to the tale.  “You get justice?” he asked.  “You make bad man and bad woman pay?”

 Alan spread his hands.  “How could I?” he asked.  “I was only five years old, I didn’t know what to do.”

 “So what did you do-ski?” asked Exile.

Alan’s voice was filled with shame as the pain of that long-ago tragedy came back to him.  “I ran.  I ran away from the carnage, and I never looked back.  And I’ve been on the run ever since.”  He looked up.  “I felt so upset about failing to do anything that I began to travel the world looking for some way to make a difference.  When I found the monks, they said they wanted someone to convey their knowledge to the outside world.  So I took the job.  I know it’s helped, but…” he hung his head.  “I’ll never be able to do anything for my mom, or my sister.  I was too scared to even try to get in touch with my dad when I realized he was still alive.  I couldn’t face him after I ran away like that, and I knew if he was still around then those two who blew up our house must be too.”

Hunter glared.  “Now it’s personal.”

 Just then Shag began to twitch and scratch himself.  “Rrr-rr,” he complained.

 “What is wrong, comrade?” asked Exile.

 Shag thrust a paw into his fur and a moment later extracted what at first resembled a very large hairball.  But it wasn’t a hairball.  It was…

 “Yeti!” cried Sonam.

 The small ape squirmed in Shag’s grasp, prompting the dog to drop it.  Terrified, the yeti ran to Shag and clung to his leg, uttering small whimpering sounds.

 “Where did he come from?” asked Hunter.

 “He must have tagged along when we escaped,” Alan replied.

 Sonam was worried.  “We make yeti leave!” he cried, grabbing the creature and trying in vain to pry it off Shag.  “Other yeti be mad we take!”

 Colleen separated the boy from the ape and pointed outside.  “We can’t do that,” she insisted.  “The little bloke would never survive out there.”

 “So what do we do?” asked Blitz.

 Hunter furrowed his brow.  “We have to find some way to get him back to his, uh…” he turned to Alan.  “What do you call a group of them anyway?”

 Alan shrugged.  “The monks call it a tribe.  But we’d better move as soon as we can.  This storm should be bad enough to keep them at bay for now, but once it lets up they’ll be after us.”

 “We’d better take five until then,” Hunter decided.  “Everybody make yourselves comfy.”

 Blitz smiled at Colleen.  “Sounds like a plan to me,” he said.  “What do you say?”

 Shag and Exile covered their heads.

 “Flying Dutchman!” Colleen shouted, lashing out with a foot.  Blitz flew across the cave, crashing into the far wall.

 “Sorry,” said Colleen, walking up to him.  “I didn’t see you standing there.  “I’m Colleen.  Have we been introduced?”

 Blitz just groaned.

 “Do they do this a lot?” Alan whispered to Exile.

 “Not enough for me-ski,” chuckled the husky.  The baby yeti, who had been watching the proceedings, merely tilted his head to one side in confusion.

Three hours later found them on the go again.  Sonam had fashioned a crutch for Alan, but Shag carried the man in his arms to keep him off his leg as much as possible.  The baby yeti, cheated of that spot, had opted to climb onto Colleen’s backpack.

 “Maybe you remind him of his mom?” suggested Hunter in response to the collie’s confused expression.

 Colleen’s face twisted into one of those irked looks only women ever seem to perfect.  “Thanks,” she quipped.  “There’s a compliment I’ll treasure forever.”

 “Ah, don’t mention it,” Hunter beamed, apparently missing Colleen’s annoyance.

 Just then, the earth began to rumble.  “Avalanche!” cried Alan.

 They looked up the mountain, but didn’t see anything coming down.  Then with an explosion of rock and snow, a massive object burst from the ground beneath them and sent them flying.

 From where they landed, they looked up at a huge vehicle.  It looked like an army tank, but it had two massive drills on the front, still whirring.  The drills stopped after a moment, and a massive gun extended from the top, pointing in their direction.

 “Well, well, well,” came an oh-so-familiar voice from a speaker on the outside of the tank as the Rovers got to their feet.  “So nice of you dogs to drop by, and to find that little pipsqueak for me too.”

 Alan’s eyes narrowed.  “You,” he growled, leaning on his crutch.  “I remember your voice.  You killed my family!”

 “Yes, so I did,” Parvo replied.  “Now I’ve finally caught up with you, and the Road Rovers as well.”  The gun on top of the tank swiveled until it was pointed directly at Alan in the center of the group.  “And once that’s done, I believe your hairy little playmate will prove very profitable.  You managed to slip away before, but nobody can hide from me forever.  Say goodbye, Alan Shepherd!”

 “You know, it’s too bad we left Muzzle back at headquarters,” Hunter mused.  “He loves this kind of stuff.”

 “So what do we do now?” asked Colleen.

 Hunter shrugged.  “Well, there’s always the old standby.  RUN!”

 The group beat a hasty retreat, with Shag carrying the crippled Alan and Colleen toting the yeti on her back as one blast after another fired from the tank’s massive gun, some shots coming so close the Rovers could feel the force of the blasts when they hit.  They were almost to a spot where the ledge curved around and got too narrow for the tank to navigate when a shot whizzed by Hunter’s head so close that the wind from its passing almost knocked him over, reducing the path to impassable rubble.  “Now what?” asked Blitz.

 Alan looked around.  “There!” he cried, pointing to a narrow side-path winding its way up the mountain.  It looked like tricky going, but it was their only option.  Besides, there was no way the tank could follow them up that.

 “What are we waiting for?  Let’s move!”  the group hustled up to a small ledge where the mountainside projected overhead, leaving a depression about six feet deep.

“Well, at least he can’t get us here,” Hunter smiled.  Just then a blast from the tank’s cannon hit the mountainside ten feet away, reducing the path to a shallow dent in the rocks.  Another shot cut off their escape, before the gun swung around to point directly at them.  “Huh.  I would not have predicted this.”

 “Can’t you make an accurate prediction just once?” asked Colleen as the baby yeti clung to her leg.

 Hunter shrugged.  “Well sure, but this makes it more fun.”

 “Say goodbye, Rovers!” shouted Parvo’s voice as a screaming projectile hurtled in their direction.

 But before the shell could hit, a massive wall of snow poured down from the cliff edge immediately above the team’s heads.  The rocks above them deflected the onslaught from above, but they had hardly any distance between them and the frozen fall.  Meanwhile, the avalanche had