SYNOPSIS:

An intergalactic vessel has to make an emergency landing high in the mountains of Colorado. A number of Sentinels are sent out to protect the perimeter. The Sentinel is an intelligence-gathering device grown for this purpose. He stands up right on huge, clawed hind legs. His upper body is humanoid. He has a serrated upper and lower jaw allowing him to eat most anything he finds. One of the Sentinels has an accident that tears his control device away. The electrical shock renders him unconscious. Being an older generation, he has been slated to be recycled. This being the case, the device is detonated. It is far enough away to leave him unharmed. The next morning he comes to and returns to the landing site. They will not be back. The forest service begins to investigate sightings, and when alien DNA, taken from bullets recovered from the Sentinel’s first encounter with a human, shows up in a federal lab matching samples from years earlier, the government decides to throw a net over it. Elizabeth Claywell is a blind, thirteen year old girl spending her summer vacation with her family in those same mountains. While riding with a guest their horses are spooked by a Timber Rattler. The horse her friend is on takes off and Elizabeth is nearly killed when she is thrown from hers. With his capacity to pass along to another his internal healing energy, the Sentinel prevents her death, and then forced by imprinted protection protocols, he starts, with her, back to the only place he knows, the landing site. With several factions looking for the Sentinel and the child, a confrontation is brewing on top of the mountain The Sentinel doesn’t know the good guys from the bad guys. What he does know is nothing is going to harm his small human charge, nothing. As the story unfolds, a bond begins to form between the Sentinel and Elizabeth. So begins the adventure of a lifetime for this blind, thirteen year old girl. She will become his only hope for survival.