Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  “I always knew that it would happen one day; Major Baynes said it would.”

  “Just wait until you see the power of their lasers,” Terry warned, as he saw her sneak a swift look at his bandaged stump. “This is nothing compared to what they did to the laboratory they had Latt equip for Isaac.”

  She looked away guiltily. “I think I know well enough what they can do; I examined the hole they made in your boat–”

  “Cruiser, please!” Terry interrupted in mock horror.

  “Yes, cruiser – excuse me,” Judy missed his attempt at humour and continued blandly. “I saw the damage to the Chicago, too.” In contrast she caught his inquiring expression without difficulty, confirming to him how stifled her character had somehow become. “That’s the submarine that found the Getaway sinking slowly, and kept it afloat. I think we can find ways to protect against such an attack.”

  “Maybe,” Terry said. “If we have enough time. But they won’t use that weapon to destroy our civilisation, they’ll use something cleaner, so they won’t end up with another planet like Rhaal. Latt says it’s so bad there that there are no animals left, except bugs, and almost all plant life has been killed also. You should hear him; it really makes you stop and think.”

  “Yes.” Judy saw Ruth returning and excused herself rapidly. “I shall ask him about it when I have an opportunity to do so.” And she walked away.

  Ruth bent over the wheelchair and spoke quietly into Terry’s ear.

  “No one seems willing to be the first to act like they believe us. Even Professor Conroy wants to spend a few months merely testing the equipment we brought back, before he authorises any further work, and he is probably the most positive of them all. Then there’s this problem of working together with the Canadians. It will probably take months to get a workable agreement set up between our government and theirs. It might be easier to do a deal with the Controllers!”

  “The wheels of government turn slowly.” Terry raised his eyebrows a couple of times. “Unless we stage something even more convincing.”

  “No, Terry,” Ruth urged him. “Let’s not do anything hasty.” She put a cautioning hand on his good shoulder. “Not ‘til we know a bit more about the dynamics of this motley crew.”

  Terry looked up and they made eye contact for several seconds before he nodded his agreement. Even as he did so, he watched with a feeling of unease as many of the visitors refrained from approaching him or his fellow-survivors, preferring, he guessed, to discuss their pet theories amongst themselves.

  Ed persisted in his conversation with the man from another world, sure that Latt knew more than he could get him to say. “So you are convinced that none of these Narlavs could disguise themselves as humans?”

  Latt nodded. “I have worked around them for years, so I know their sshape well. The legs are sshort, but more importantly they bend the wrong way, sso they would be discovered as soon as they started to move. Their arms have two… joints…”

  “Elbows,” Baynes supplied the word helpfully.

  “Yess, elbows. They reach way down their legs, and they have only four…” He waved his fingers until Ed provided the word once more. “Fingers, yes. But two on each hand work like thiss.” He held his thumb and mimed another where his little finger was.

  “Thumbs, yes. Very different indeed,” Ed agreed as the picture built up in his mind.

  “Finally, there is the head.” Latt finished with what he felt was the most alien of the Narlavs’ features. “It is much bigger than a human head, and there is no hair and no neck. Also, the eyes are sset much further apart, and they are like a cat’s. Ruth showed me pictures of one. She says they make good ‘pets’, which I understand means an animal kept in your dwelling place for companionship, but those eyes…” He shuddered. “I don’t know that I would feel safe around one.”

  “I’ll get a commercial artist to draw one from your descriptions,” Ed promised. “I’d like to see the result.”

  “The important thing, which no one sseems to want to listen to, is that the Narlavs on Rhaal will be getting prepared to return here, and when they come, they will not sstop to talk to us. We must be ready for them.”

  “After the damage they did to the cruiser, the submarine, the road and the food truck, I can understand your concern,” Ed said in what he hoped was a comforting, reassuring voice as he considered but refrained from mentioning the amount of destruction caused by the other ‘strangers’ and their Citadel.

  “And remember, there were only two, and their actions were not seriously directed against anyone. They were here only to obsserve, and report back.”

  “One man I know, who is still laid up in hospital, knows only too well what they can do with that laser.”

  “As does my good friend Terry Sstadt.” Latt turned and looked across at the wealthy industrialist as he sat, looking intensely weary in his wheelchair, watching the conversations going on around him.

  Ed looked also, and thought how much his vision of the future meshed with Latt’s. If only I could convince the government, then we could stop this dithering and start work.

  Latt watched the Chief of NUIT as the American regarded the wealthy industrialist. He recalled what Judy had told him, and realized with some surprise that her boss, Ed Baynes, was not going to tell him about it. These humans, they are all so secretive!

  Leroy Fraser wandered away from the randomly scattered groups chatting around the hangar, and found himself drawn to the Wonderloaf, or Railcar. He walked in, checking out the storage spaces, boxes of supplies, and the makeshift beds – their coverings still lying, crumpled, making it seem as if the occupants would return at any moment. He looked next at the fabulous Gravity Inducers, quiescent, but to him a powerful symbol of the world-changing events of the past few weeks. They really are the ultimate ‘little engines that could’! He paused for a while, then carried on, down to the front end, and tried out the middle chair. He realised his retreat into the seclusion of the battered vessel was an attempt to get away from the inconsequential questions being asked by the ‘brass’ outside. As he settled into the seat, he stretched, banging his knee against the instrument panel located in front of the three seats. That should keep me connected with the reality of the situation. He adjusted the scratch-built radio and picked up military air traffic control.

  “Not bad,” he said to himself, his professional opinion displacing the depressing thoughts that had led to his retreat into the utility room that had so recently rested on the Red Planet. “Eric will be hopping mad when he learns what he missed while he was in Redcliff, searching for more ancient artefacts in the mud.” He smiled as he bent down and examined some of the alien components visible through the open panels removed to allow for the construction of the flying chair. Nifty! How do they build them so small? He saw Harry Morton through the open front end and called him over. “What do you think of all this alien business?”

  Harry climbed nimbly in through the shattered Transplyous, his expression guarded.

  “If you had seen this Wonderloaf thing flying over the Province, after dropping out of the heavens,” he pointed upwards. “Cruised under it, wondering how it could fly, like a sort of beefed-up, leaden ‘Herc’ without wings, without any visible means of propulsion, and thinking more significantly, what kind of threat it represented to the people of Canada, of North America, and of the whole planet. If you had then felt yourself dropping, like you were in an immense downdraft – of course I tried to compensate, that may have helped me collide, though I don’t think there was enough time – and a moment later been thrown against your harness and been a witness and almost a casualty as your beautiful and deadly ‘plane crumpled like so much soggy cardboard around this ungainly and impossible-looking aircraft, you might begin to understand how worried you should be.

  “If you then consider that this equipment was designed as an immovable base for hostile environments, a storage unit for supplies, with its own power generator for life support, not a
s a spacecraft, yet despite this it was used to travel over hundreds of millions of miles – not in a period of months, as NASA is contemplating doing in a few years’ time, but days, and land safely – I don’t think that the damage to this building or the real ‘Herc’ counts – you might be pretty agitated.” Here Harry leaned on the panel before Leroy and stared into his eyes.

  “But if you consider that the hole on the concrete out there with the fence around it was created in less than two minutes, and the damage was done with a portable laser smaller than a military pistol, you would be crazy not to be terrified by the prospect of hundreds of thousands of aliens, armed with similar weapons, coming here in over a dozen ships the size of aircraft carriers, and armed with lasers hundreds, if not thousands of times more powerful.”

  Harry stood up straight and walked slowly back through the strange craft that – capriciously – had almost ended his life, and then – contrarily – saved it, checking the mounts for the Gravity Inducers casually as if he were about to embark on another flight.

  Leroy Fraser stared out at the damaged four-engined Hercules, crumpled unintentionally by the force applied to stop this unlikeliest of crafts. A picture of the huge ship described by Captain Stuart of the USS Chicago came into his mind. He saw the blinding beams of light strike out at the defending aircraft, much as the compact portable unit from Bradley Hawk’s helicopter had, and he saw a Harrier jump-jet falling from the sky in flames, followed by the premature explosion of a whole series of missiles. Then he saw cities on fire as the huge black craft cruised calmly through uncontested skies. We would lose. He got up and followed Flying Officer Morton to the rear end of the Railcar.

  “I’m with you.” He cried out. “I’m with you all the way!”

  “I didn’t think you were crazy.” Harry turned and smiled as he neared the open airlock.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Appropriate dress can help you get on in life - Antoinette (old ‘daily’ Agony Aunt)

  Richard and Karen re-entered the Control Centre. It was almost two months since they had left ‘Dee-Two’, months that had been filled with mind-boggling study, fast-paced sports, brain-straining training and ceaseless speculation.

  “Just a few more days,” Karen remarked excitedly. “And we’ll be there! Let’s see what we can see…” She sat down in the centre chair and manipulated the controls on the upper left of the panel before her. “I can just make out the Outpost planet with the long range scanner; it sure is bleak. There’s hardly any water present, and the temperature seems to vary between minus forty and plus seventy-three centigrade. Also there’s a lot of nasty gases in the atmosphere; that must be why they used a Shell Field enclosure, to protect the base from the environment. Of course, we aren’t close enough to get a reading on the base itself, yet.”

  “Sounds like you could almost fry eggs on the rocks down there! I guess I’ll start signalling them now; perhaps they’ll prepare a welcome-home party?” Richard looked at Karen and winked. He recorded a repeating message and set the system to broadcast it every ten minutes. “It will take several hours for the message to reach the planet, so we may as well play another game.”

  “First, I think I should scan for asteroids; I don’t want to overload the Star Drive by using the Shell Field any more than is necessary, but I’d rather go straight there than bypass the most direct route, if there’s no need to,” Karen explained.

  Richard agreed silently.

  “There aren’t any asteroids of any real consequence,” she announced as she finished the scan a few moments later, sounding quite surprised. “I doubt we’ll have to rely on the Shell Field more than once or twice.”

  “Then we’ll take the most direct route; that’ll knock a few hours off our E.T.A.” Richard adjusted their course slightly and checked it on the display before him. “Let’s see if my new strategy will win me my first game!”

  Some time later, Richard dived to return another scorching service, and missed the ball as a buzzer sounded abruptly for a full five seconds.

  “You would have got it!” Karen cried enthusiastically. “What did you program that alarm to mean?”

  “Can’t remember,” Richard gasped, dropping his racket. “There were so many different possibilities. Let’s check!”

  They turned and clasped hands automatically as they moved back into the Control Centre. The pilot’s panel showed a flashing orange light, and as Richard slipped into his seat, he saw that the Star Drive had failed again.

  “Could you check the short range scanner? Now that the Drive has failed, we’re down to the S P Field again.”

  Karen started to search their forward path for asteroids; her heart rate increased, and she eyed the Negatruction Controls briefly, wondering if she would find herself playing another game of instant destruction. Ours or the rocks’. “There don’t seem to be any big ones out there at all – not near enough to detect, anyway,” she reported finally. “Oh, and the long range scanner is out of action again.”

  “Must be a ripple effect. As for the lack of an obstacle course, well, I guess we just got lucky this time,” Richard said with a smile. “Let’s track down the fault and fix it; I should be able to squeeze a little higher rate of deceleration so we don’t overshoot… as long as we fix it quickly. The scanner will have to wait.”

  Karen nodded her agreement as she activated her diagnostic system and checked out the Star Drive. A few minutes later the two amateur space mechanics sat back in frustration.

  “There’s nothing wrong,” Richard concluded, summarising their findings. “But it doesn’t work!”

  “Perhaps it’s like the power coupling we replaced; it has to be fixed from the outside?” Karen suggested.

  “I guess there’s – no!” Richard interrupted himself, stabbing at another part of the diagnostics display. “This might just indicate a possible fault within the Drive Chamber.” He got up. “I didn’t realise you could even get in there! Let’s go and check it out.”

  Karen followed Richard to the back of the Control Centre, and both of them thought of their destination as they stepped through the rear wall. A moment later they found themselves within a dimly lit room about four feet deep and twenty feet across. In front of them there was a bank of instruments similar to those found in the Control Centre, but noticeably larger. Several of the displays were illuminated by yellow flashing borders. Richard turned and glanced behind; much as he expected, the back wall was dotted with other instruments, but directly behind him was the outline of the door – similar to the one portrayed at the back of the Control Centre.

  “At least we know the way back!” he quipped.

  Karen smiled as she stepped up to the instrument panel and started to activate the diagnostic routine locally. “Ah-ha!” she exclaimed in triumph a few seconds later. “It indicates that a ‘Thurgidern’ needs replacing; it’s up in one of these recesses above.” Karen pointed upwards and Richard followed her gesture, noticing the darker squares in the blank surface above the instruments, about eight feet up.

  “I wonder what a Thurgidern does,” he mused as he stepped up beside her, wiped the perspiration from his forehead absently with the absorbent band around his wrist, and looked at the schematic diagram carefully. “The third one from the left.” He stepped up to the panel and reached up, grasping the edge of the recess with both hands. Heaving and jumping at the same time, he found himself resting on his elbows at the start of a long, dark rectangular tunnel, his head aching from the collision with the upper surface of the entrance. He muttered something unintelligible, as his head was now jammed in the small space.

  “What’s that?” Karen grinned as she picked up the gist of his thoughts easily enough.

  “I said, ‘I can’t get into this access-way’,” Richard repeated as he dropped back down. “My shoulders wouldn’t fit. I tried taking my head off first, but that didn’t help.”

  “Please look after that body,” Karen touched his chin, taking the ache away with her
usual prowess, and winking with a sparkle in her eye. “It belongs to my fiancé, you should know, and I don’t want it broken.”

  Richard coloured, and his eyes widened at the implications. “I promise… I promise!” …was his only verbal comment.

  Karen looked up at the opening and gauged the space available. “Let me try.”

  Richard bent down to provide a platform for her, and Karen climbed up and balanced somewhat precariously on his back. She leaned her head into the hole and slipped one shoulder in, then the other. Jumping back down, much to Richard’s relief, she indicated that she found the accessway almost impossible to fit into.

  “Perhaps if I took this stuff off…” she said matter-of-factly, indicating the shorts and tee-shirt. She looked at Richard and blushed as she caught his thoughts once more. “That’s not what I meant.” She shook her head in mock despair. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Richard chuckled as she shimmered through the simulated door. He leaned over the instruments once more and checked through the replacement procedure. Opening a small panel as directed, he removed the spare Thurgidern. The Thurgidern was about fifteen centimetres long, and seemed to be composed of a series of overlapping spheres varying in size from one to four centimetres in diameter. The entire series of spheres was composed of a luminescent yellow substance that felt to him like ordinary polyethylene, but it was strangely cold, and he found his hands becoming numbed by the contact, so he put it back in its storage compartment and took out the insertion tool instead. This reminded him of some craft tools his mother had used to make Christmas decorations, and was composed of a scissor-like mechanism with hemispherical appendages instead of blades. Unlike the Thurgidern, it was constructed of something akin to mild steel, and did not affect his hands in any way. It was about the same size as the spare part, but glinted in a reassuringly familiar way as he quickly picked up the yellow device and slid them both into the opening above his head. He turned towards the ‘door’ and waited in anticipation for his fiancée’s return.