Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  “Agreed. We will also send your clothes for analysis, and some of the shards of that ‘Transplyous’ you mentioned earlier.”

  “How long will thiss take?” Latt suddenly realized the implications of all this verification.

  “We should be able to complete the initial work in a few weeks, after that, it may take–”

  “NO!” Latt jumped up and leaned across the desk. “The Controllers may already have sstarted to assemble their invasion fleet. There is no time!” He shouted at Bayard, thumping his right fist with frustration on the desk.

  The door burst open and a soldier brandishing an M-16 rifle crashed into the first of a long line of filing cabinets, his weapon aimed at Latt’s midriff from a distance of about six feet. Latt froze instinctively, waiting for his inevitable death.

  “It’s all right, Kearns,” Colonel Bayard said calmly. “I can handle this; return to your post.”

  Latt watched in disbelief as the weapon was returned promptly to the shoulder of Private Kearns. The young man saluted and stepped smartly out of the room, closing the door with a faint click behind him.

  “Mr. Justinals,” Bayard began gently, giving the name a strange, Anglicised pronunciation, “I appreciate your sense of urgency, and will do everything I can to expedite the process of investigation. However, I cannot, and indeed am not authorized to proceed along the lines you are suggesting without further and most comprehensive testing. Until then, I suggest you curb your impatience, or I will be forced to confine you.” He stared at Latt, intending to win a battle of wills with him.

  Latt stared back until he felt his head spinning once again; this time the effect was far greater than before, and he collapsed unconscious across the desk, inadvertently knocking the recording device onto the floor.

  The Colonel reached over and raised one eyelid; he found only the white visible.

  “Private Kearns!” He summoned the guard loudly across the motionless body. “Get the duty doctor over here. On the double!”

  ***

  Ruth Hardy got up from her chair by Terry’s hospital bed and touched his hand once more where it lay on the sheet. So hot, he’s just burning up! She looked across at Captain Osgood, her face revealing her concern, so clearly.

  “The doctor said it will take some time to stabilize him,” she reminded her new-found friend. “There’s nothing else to be done.”

  “Perhaps I should stay with him,” Ruth wondered aloud.

  “It would be what I would want to do, if I were you.” Sylvia squirmed uncomfortably. “I don’t have the authority to let you do that, though,” she stated reluctantly.

  Ruth nodded, miserable. She walked out of the room and past the guard, (as if he’s going anywhere!) and down towards the emergency entrance and the parking lot beyond. As they stepped out into the cool night air, an ambulance pulled up with a slight squeal of brakes. An army jeep pulled up behind it and one of the two soldiers in it got out. Ruth stopped and watched the doors of the ambulance open and the paramedics jump out.

  “Let’s go and get some hot food for your husband and friend on the way back; it sounds like you guys haven’t had a decent meal in weeks,” Captain Osgood suggested brightly. “There are a couple of places in town where the food isn’t too–”

  “Latt!” squeaked Ruth, as she saw the body on the stretcher being carried out of the ambulance. She followed the paramedics back in. Sylvia went with her uncertainly. “What’s the matter with him?” Ruth asked the stocky uniformed lady holding the rear end of the stretcher.

  “Are you a relative?” she replied as she walked towards one of the emergency booths.

  “Yes!” Ruth lied hastily. “What happened?”

  “Looks like a case of extreme exhaustion,” the paramedic said as a doctor walked up to her partner and began to examine the unconscious form while listening to the case history. “He passed out and hasn’t regained consciousness yet.” She turned as Captain Osgood and the other soldier caught her attention. “Look, I can’t have you all in here; the doctor needs room to move.”

  Sylvia nodded. “Stay with him, Ruth, I’ll call the base and see what I can wangle,” she said gently as she led the other soldier across the room and out of the way.

  ***

  Isaac Hardy took another deep breath and let it out slowly, he tried to keep calm despite the incredibly irritating attitudes and mannerisms of Major Gregor Ulrique. “There isn’t time to wait for the opinions of your experts; you must involve higher levels of government immediately.”

  Ulrique sat perfectly still and said nothing.

  “If you do not initiate such actions as I have laid out tonight, I must ask for my right to a lawyer, I will not be imprisoned without cause,” Isaac said defiantly.

  “The matter is out of my hands,” the Major smiled unpleasantly. “In fact, it was never in my hands.” He laughed affectedly at his little joke. “You will have to wait until the Base Commander makes his decision.” He stood up, indicating that the interview was over. “Now, if you will accompany me, I will show you to your quarters for the night.”

  Isaac remained seated.

  “Come now, Professor Hardy! I can arrange to have you carried there, if you prefer; what do you think would be more dignified?” He looked down at Isaac with a supercilious sneer until the Professor got reluctantly to his feet. “I thought you would soon decide to accept our hospitality.”

  Isaac struggled to contain an irrational urge to strangle him, reminding himself that the survival of the human race might depend on how he conducted himself. He’s probably trained in the martial arts, anyway. Isaac looked at the odious Ulrique and noted his rather rounded shoulders and somewhat corpulent body doubtfully.

  They walked out past the guard and down one of the narrow roads to another old building with bars across the windows. Once Isaac was locked into his small room, Major Gregor walked back out with his clipboard under his arm, and looked up at the stars. Despite himself, he shivered with apprehension as the cold light from millions of years past faintly illuminated his face. A shooting star crossed his field of vision like an omen, and he turned away hastily and walked back to the familiar and comfortingly secure surroundings of the Commander’s Office to give his report and opinion of Professor Isaac Hardy’s tale to Colonel Bayard. He already knew what he would say to summarize the tale, but his previous incredulity had been replaced with a sinking feeling of uncertainty and horror at the idea that perhaps it was, after all, tragically and impossibly, the truth.

  Chapter Eleven

  The boldest move since Idahnian days of legend – Villiat, first Arshonnan on Foruna

  Richard nervously took the yellow and black ball which floated in front of him and pulled it back towards himself slightly; vectors on the display before him rotated and extended, but the ring which he had hoped for did not materialize around the brown disk which represented the planet looming larger and larger before him on the forward viewscreen. He punched up a reduction in the deceleration power and let go of the floating sphere.

  “I think you need to cut power completely,” Karen said quietly. “We are still quite a long way from that planet, you know.”

  “You’re probably right,” Richard nodded, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve. “It’s just that I’d rather err on the side of caution; I don’t want us to end up smeared across the surface of the planet like some kind of kamikaze space-bugs!”

  “No,” Karen smiled at his mental picture. “We certainly don’t want to end up like that!” She sat back and watched as Richard slowly adjusted their course until finally, over half an hour later, he had them placed in a near-circular orbit around the planet, approximately in the plane of the system. To their right, filling half of the field of view, was a mottled greyish-brown ball liberally sprinkled with craters. A slight tinge of atmosphere could be detected along the edge of the dead-looking planet. There did not appear to be any natural satellites.

  “Well,” Richard wiped
the palms of his hands on his pant-legs. “I think that will do it,” he said with relief. “This planet doesn’t seem to be endowed with any moons, nothing big enough to damage our ship, anyway. And that automatic activation of the Shell Field was a great idea, Karen! It only came on a couple of times during the entire trip, which saved us a lot of power.”

  “I don’t want any more Star Drive failures,” Karen said in easy concurrence. “And running that Shell Field constantly could well have overloaded our merely ‘average’ repairs! As for my ‘top gun’ reputation, I don’t want it spoiled by missing one of those flying rocks on a second engagement. It would damage far more than my ego.” She grinned at Richard, pleased that he was starting to relax once more, after struggling with the unfamiliar and complex job of piloting their Scout Craft.

  “Your reputation is safe with me! Now… let’s see what we can learn about this planet – let’s call it ‘Dee-two’,” Richard suggested. He turned to Karen and waited while she caught the gist of his thought.

  “Yes, a good name for the system: ‘Desolation’.” How it looks and how we felt, when we learned that Tutor was gone forever, and we thought we were, too. Karen stared at the barren world displayed before her, deep in thought.

  Richard leaned over and activated a short-range scanner. It indicated that the atmosphere was mainly nitrogen, with traces of oxygen and noble gases. The atmospheric pressure was about equivalent to that on Earth’s highest mountaintops, and the gravity was about point eight of Earth’s. He looked at Karen, concerned about her feelings for Tutor. “When we get to Arshonna we’ll be able to find your relatives, I’m sure; I think that’s what your Dad had in mind when he created Tutor, even though his thought processes were blocked off by that creep of a Commander, Vochan. Tutor would want you to carry on.” He touched her hand lightly; suppressed emotions flowed, and the tears followed.

  Some minutes later, Karen raised her head from Richard’s shoulder and wiped her tears away. Her gratitude for his quiet support and understanding remained unspoken. She reached out and adjusted the display control for the scanner.

  “There’s a lot of interesting elements in those rocks down there, some good metals, lots of oxides, that sort of thing. It’s a bit cold for humans right now, but the right processes could release everything you’d need to build enclosed dome-cities; perhaps even to inhabit the entire world! They might even warm it up a little, too.” Karen dreamed of the things her people must have achieved as they travelled the Galaxy.

  “Perhaps that’s what we’ll find at Outpost Twenty Seven; a barren world brought to life by the Arshonnans. At any rate, we’ll be one step nearer to getting home.” Richard studied the pilot displays with nervousness. “I want to do a test landing down there,” he announced finally. “I don’t want to accidentally crash into the ‘head-honcho’s’ house when we get to Outpost Twenty Seven!”

  “All right!” Karen laughed, trying to lift herself out of the depression she had just experienced. “Let’s see what else we can find out first, before you try it; besides, I’d like to eat one last, good meal before we descend into ‘Desolation’!”

  Richard grinned back. “Okay, I’ll scan for moving objects; theoretically we can detect anything bigger than a cat from this altitude. It wouldn’t do to mash the resident lifeforms flat with the super-smooth bulk of an intruding alien Scout Craft.” He adjusted the equipment. “Of course, unless something does move I have no way of knowing if it works!”

  “I’m not volunteering to run around down there while you try to find me!” Karen picked up his mental image once more. “I’ve no desire to be any thinner than I am. I’ll scan for complex molecules; that’s supposed to be a good indicator.”

  A few hours later, after encircling the planet several times, Richard and Karen were satisfied that the world below them was devoid of life and that it would be safe to land on it, as a trial to ascertain the status of Richard’s slowly developing ability as a pilot.

  They had discovered that the temperature was currently about fifteen degrees in one particular late afternoon location on the equator which Richard considered suitable for a landing, and that the planet rotated every twenty-three hours, ten minutes, and took three hundred and eighty-three days to complete its year. As the star was very similar to the sun, Richard felt a little more confident that he would be able to interpret what he saw correctly, and thus avoid landing on top of a rock or on the edge of a crater. Neither the complex molecule scan nor the motion detection scan had produced any positive results, so both he and Karen felt confident that their presence would not disturb any primitive lifeforms.

  “Well, Richard, let’s see what it looks like from the ground upwards!” Karen touched his arm and tried to instil more confidence in her cautious fiancé. “Take it as slowly as you like; we can always pull up if it doesn’t look good. Scout Craft don’t stall!”

  Except out of Grey Space! Richard thought grimly. He rechecked all of his monitors and found that the Drive and other components of the pilot’s equipment were still reading ‘average’, so he reached out and pulled back on the control ball and waited for an indication, either from the viewscreen or from his instruments, that the orbit was decaying. Sure enough, the ring around the brown disk reformed into a spiral as he watched it, and the curve of the planet started to flatten out on their right.

  Suddenly it felt wrong to be flying sideways over the surface, so he twisted the ball and brought the Scout Craft around until the mountain ranges and craters lay below them. Immediately the scene reminded him of an Imax film of the Earth that he had seen a few months before the car crash which had ended his average life and led, somewhat circuitously, to his unique new relationship and exciting new career as a Star pilot. Only here, nothing below me is blue.

  The surface seemed to be rushing up to meet them, and Richard found himself automatically pulling up on the ball to slow their descent, as well as back, to reduce their incredible forward velocity. Moments later he realized that they were now only a few miles up, as the stars faded out to be replaced by a violet-blue atmosphere complete with thin wisps of cloud. Below, the panorama unfolded as they flew along slowly; he saw the near side of the large crater he had picked from orbit, its walls now towering thousands of feet into the air. With a start he realized that he had allowed the Scout Craft to descend below the height of these massive and rugged cliffs, so he pulled back up slightly until the far side cliffs could be seen once more. The ship slipped over the rim at about a hundred miles an hour and descended gradually into the interior. Far from being flat, as he had assumed from orbit, the plain within was scattered with loose rocks, and the surface rose and fell abruptly where great sheets of rock had cracked and fallen or pushed up over their neighbours, creating massive chasms and rifts.

  “Look, there’s an area where the rocks are smaller, and yes!” Karen exclaimed as they neared the spot, catching Richard’s memories of lake-side and sea-side holidays with ease. “There’s even some sand dunes!”

  Richard slowed the flying Citadel as the rolling sand fell below them, until he held the craft stationary above it; then he eased off slightly the upward pressure he had been maintaining on the control-ball, and the dunes came up around them like a dirty version of the Sahara desert. Finally there was no more movement, and he shut off the Drive with a sigh of relief.

  Karen clapped. “Bravo! I’ll have to make you a uniform to celebrate this momentous occasion, now you’re a qualified, tried and tested Space pilot!”

  Richard grinned, his confidence greatly improved by the experience.

  “It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be,” he admitted. He looked out at the dark brown sand dunes all around their craft, and up at the purplish-blue sky, where thin white streaks of cloud could just be seen, curling around lazily, high above. “I wonder. Would it be possible to go out there?”

  “Out?” Karen looked startled, then she became more pensive. “Why not? Let me just check for any poisonous gases firs
t, to make sure we didn’t miss anything from orbit, then all we’ll need will be an air supply.” She caught hold of his next idea and laughed. “I’ll even make a flag to leave here – no, two flags, one Arshonnan and one from Earth.”

  They got up and hurried down to the Moss Room, where Karen set to work at a keyboard she summoned up.

  “I’d like a flag to represent the united people of Earth, but as they aren’t united and I don’t know exactly what the U.N. flag looks like, I guess I’ll make the Stars and Stripes. At least it’s bright and cheerful.”

  Richard nodded, resisting the compulsion he had felt to point out that it represented the best country in the world. She knows I feel that way about it! He looked over at his future wife and noticed the tiny smile lines around her eyes. Teasing again! He collected the small spheres of compressed air that they required, and the straps to hold them, harness-like, on their backs.

  “What does the Arshonnan flag look like?”

  “See if you can get the picture from my mind.” Karen looked at him and grinned.

  “One flag, coming up!” Richard started optimistically. He concentrated a little harder, and for a second he thought he saw something fluttering. “I can’t quite…” He wiped the moisture from his brow as he gave up on the attempt.

  “Sorry, I should have laid it out flat instead of imagining it in the breeze.”

  “Let me just check the conditions locally,” Richard said as her words reminded him of the pending mini-expedition. “Ah-ha! It’s about seventeen down here in the crater; I think we are below ‘sea level’, if there were any seas here to be below. Also the atmospheric pressure is a little higher, and the wind is blowing from the east at about five miles per hour. It should be quite nice!”