INTO THIN AIR "A "porteur"? Never heard of it." Robert Prestin was just an ordinary aviation journalist who had never heard of such things as porteurs, nor of other dimensions that supplied jewels to the Earth, nor of the metamorphic Borgia-like countess who ran the show with the aid of her scarlet-scaled "Thrugs." And certainly he had never heard of a "Lombok" vine that could grow faster than a man could run. No, Robert Prestin was just an ordinary man who sometimes lost things. That is until he sat next to a beautiful girl on a plane headed for Rome - and lost her somewhere in mid-air At that point he knew he had a lot to learn, because somehow he had - or was - the key to Irunium.