Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  Karen came back in a moment later, wearing what to him looked like exercise leotards. They were made of a shiny blue fabric, and were very close-fitting, covering her from the tips of her toes to her wrists. The outfit had a wide, round neckline, and the fabric was almost infinitely stretchable, allowing her ample room to move freely.

  Richard could not resist whistling his opinion of her appearance. “Fashion-ware for the space-mechanic,” he said, and bowed to her.

  Karen grinned and blushed once more. “So I was right to wear my jump-suits oversize whenever I went to the school.” She put her hands on her hips and wiggled them.

  “Wow!” Richard responded theatrically, not able to think of anything more intelligible that seemed safe to say. “Just a minute.” He ran through the door and out of sight.

  Karen reached up, but found she could not quite stretch high enough to make contact with the edge of the access way. Richard returned moments later with a cube about three feet on each side, and placed it below the point of interest. He stepped up on it and gestured Karen to climb up beside him.

  “Okay, the insertion tool and the new Thurgidern are in the opening; use the tool to manipulate the Thurgi-thingy – it’s strangely cold to the touch. Climb onto my back again and see if you can slide into it.” Richard bent over at the waist and leaned against the wall.

  Karen climbed onto the block with some difficulty, and then tried to get on his back. “Bend your knees,” she gasped. “You’re too high up.”

  Richard obliged, and Karen finally made it onto his back. Her shoe-less shiny blue feet felt a lot more comfortable on his back than the squash court runners. The weight suddenly disappeared from his back, and Richard heard a muffled voice.

  “Say it again, please,” he said quietly as he twisted his neck to look up at the hole, finding that her torso was almost entirely inside it. This time he concentrated, and got Karen’s message, though she did not communicate vocally. He slipped out from under her feet and grasped her legs just above the knees, then he raised them up, leaned towards the access-way and gently eased Karen further in. Once he had managed to get her completely into the access-way, he stood up straight again and watched her feet move up and down as she slid herself in until she appeared to be at the far end, as she had stopped her wiggling. The thought: ‘that’s great’ came to him in confirmation. A few muffled sounds reverberated through the surface panels as Karen worked to remove the damaged unit.

  He waited.

  Karen’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and she started to ease the old Thurgidern out of its tight mount. The air in the enclosed space rapidly became hot and laden with carbon dioxide; she found her lungs were working harder and harder to compensate. The back of her neck started to ache as she continued to hold her head up to allow the best possible view of the problem, but the insertion tool seemed to work best when it was jammed back against her chin. This is almost impossible!

  Suddenly Richard was thrown from his perch on the box by a tremendous lurching of their Scout Craft. He crashed to the floor and slid across to the end wall, hitting it with a dull thud. He got slowly to his feet and shook his head to clear it. I’m going to check that out… are you okay?

  Sure, came the reply. I’m in so tight all that happened is I lost my grip on the insertion tool for a moment. What could have caused Citadel to rock like that? Karen touched her chin, finding that at least the impact had not caused any external bleeding. She swallowed involuntarily as the taste of blood overwhelmed her, and ran her tongue over the damaged skin in front of her lower incisors.

  It might have been anything. Richard had picked up on her injury, and for a brief moment her reaction to the unfamiliar taste made him think it was serious. His anxiety level and his heart rate increased in unison.

  Perhaps we were hit by an asteroid that didn’t show up on the scanner. It’s real hard to do anything in here; there’s no light, but I’ll keep trying.

  Good, we might need to change course. Richard hurried through the fake door, intending to go directly to the Control Centre, but he found himself in the still active squash court of the Moss Room instead. Quickly he requested access once more, but there was no shimmering effect and he remained irritatingly immobile. He activated a terminal as he felt frustration start to build within him, and requested access to the Control Centre manually. The screen glowed to life and a message formed before him: “Access denied. Control Centre life support failure due to structural breach.”

  Richard hurriedly requested a visual display of space surrounding the Scout Craft, and his heart rate jumped even higher as the walls of the court dissolved to reveal the stars – and another ship, shaped like a huge arrowhead, floating alongside and somewhat below them, about thirty yards away! Richard requested a view of the forward sphere of Scout Craft Seven, and was rewarded with an oblique shot of the curved surface. He felt suddenly cold as he realised that part of the structure was missing, like a bite taken out of an ebony representation of an apple.

  His attention was drawn back to the panoramic view by some movement at the periphery of his vision. A smaller vessel had separated from the larger craft and was drifting across to the shattered Control Centre as he watched in horror. Richard’s mind recoiled as the truth finally hit him.

  “We’ve been attacked!” He turned to run and tell Karen, then changed his mind and punched up the Negatruction controls, his fists clenched. Nothing happened. He cried out, vocally and mentally: “Karen, I need power now!”

  Then, as if in answer to Richard’s plea, the display showed nominal, and he powered up the weapons system and grabbed the purple sphere that materialised in front of him. Several purple bolts shot wildly in the general direction of the arrowhead craft, and then he got the hang of the director and kept the weapon trained on the easy target, the purple beams pulsating and writhing like frantic fluorescent serpents. Defensive screens of some kind flared up briefly, and then the vessel disappeared in a flash of light beyond all imagination.

  Long seconds later, Richard’s vision returned after an agonising delay, and he saw that the smaller craft, which looked hemispherical in shape, did not appear to have been damaged, and was gliding towards their ship in a manner which suggested it would soon engulf the gaping hole. He was reminded of the seaside shellfish he had played with in his early youth; attached to the rocky surface they were incredibly hard to remove, unless the attempt was made with skill, confidence and sufficient force to accomplish the desired result in the first blow. Now the attackers’ vessel was almost touching the remains of the Control Centre. Silhouettes of several figures could be seen moving across the dimly lit interior through its mainly transparent shell, and Richard realised that they had not been harmed by the blast when their mother ship had been annihilated, and that they still intended to board.

  The Negatruction weapon failed to respond as he grabbed the control once more, so he selected laser power as the purple sphere faded into oblivion. Manipulating the blue sphere as it formed before him, he aimed the significantly less powerful but still potent weapon with grim determination at the bubble-like structure and punched a series of holes across the nearest surface. Fragments broke off and floated away in all directions, as the escaping air carried them off. There was no further movement within the tiny craft, but it continued its slow drift until it collided with the front end of Scout Craft Seven and stuck there.

  Richard sighed with relief and leaned against the panel before him, wiping sweat from his brow once more with the absorbent material on his other wrist. Then he fell backwards as the controls in front of him exploded, cutting him with flying debris and causing a searing flash of pain in his right eye. He pushed himself up from the sprawled position on the floor in which he found himself. He stared in horror through his remaining good eye at the short, incredibly stocky figure, dressed in a strangely fluffy vacuum suit and standing just a few feet away on the smooth floor of the squash court. He watched, frozen by indecision as the figure reached up with a
n impossibly long arm and pulled off its facemask to reveal a broad, grey face with yellow, wide-spaced, cat-like eyes. The left arm came forward, seemingly folded in a zig-zag shape, swinging a long black weapon upwards until it was pointed directly at Richard.

  The staccato of a semi-automatic handgun filled the air, and the invader, jerked off balance by the unexpected and brutal impact of the bullets, staggered backwards on weirdly jointed legs, dropping the long black weapon and finally disappearing through the far wall of the Moss Room squash court, whereupon it fell with a huge splash into the pool.

  Richard slowly turned his head to see Karen, stunning in her silky blue leotards, standing with her legs wide apart and her back braced against the wall behind her, holding Ed Baynes’ still smoking weapon with both hands, and pointing it towards the last visible position of their now-vanquished enemy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thanksgiving

  “Hey, Latt!” Professor Isaac Hardy called out from the corridor, through the open door to his industrious friend, who was still working in the brightly illuminated laboratory. Isaac already had his thick winter coat on. “Put that down and get on over here; if we don’t hurry, we’ll be late for the reservation. We still have to get changed, remember?”

  Latt smiled at his chosen leader as he placed the printed circuit board gently down on the laboratory bench and walked over. “There’ss a space limitation inherent in the design of your large sscale integrated circuits,” he began as they walked down the corridor side by side. “I don’t think it will be easy to duplicate the instrumentation for a sspacecraft within the traditional confines of a small aircraft like you and Terry envisage.”

  “We’ll have to make it a bit bigger then, I suppose,” Isaac suggested simply as he put his arm around Latt’s shoulders. “But for now, I want you to forget about all that and relax. It’s a known fact that people are more productive after a good break.”

  “Okay, I’ll try. I think I’m sstill subconsciously expecting one of my gorilla-shaped directors from time past to reappear and tell me I’ve taken too long and my sservices are no longer required.” He looked meaningfully at Isaac.

  Isaac caught the terrifying implications easily enough. “We don’t use quite the same techniques here.” He smiled as he thought about the nature program that he had showed to Latt the previous day. Clearly the creatures in it had made an impression.

  “I know… but it’s hard not to act the way I have all my life, especially as I know the Controllers are ssoon going to be here.”

  Isaac nodded as he helped his friend into his coat and got the keys ready.

  “This idea of special clothes for eating is strange to me, too,” Latt admitted freely.

  “Well, they aren’t usually a requirement, but both Ruth and I think they enhance a fine meal in a classy restaurant.”

  Latt stepped outside, startled as always by the coldness of the winter air, and held the door open for the Professor.

  Isaac switched on the alarm, locked the outer door, pushed it shut and shook it gently to check that the mechanism had engaged. He nodded and winked to his wife in the front passenger seat as they climbed into the seven-seater van that was waiting outside with the engine running. Ruth smiled as she encouraged her husband to hurry, and Latt found himself sitting in the window seat behind the driver’s seat, as he habitually did.

  “I’m afraid Terry couldn’t make it tonight,” she explained as Isaac drove off from the innocuous grey building in one of the light industrial areas in Edmonton, Alberta. “He’s been having some more trouble with that artificial arm.”

  “What, the new one?” Isaac sounded surprised.

  “Yes, it doesn’t quite function the way they thought it would. He’s flying down to visit the manufacturer himself to see if he can speed things up.”

  “Terry! He’s good at sspeeding things up.” Latt commented loudly to compensate for the noise of the engine and the heater-fans.

  “Yeah, I’d hate to think where we would be without his enthusiasm, and the money that he seems to pull out of the air sometimes,” Ruth said with genuine admiration in her voice.

  “Don’t tell him I told you anything about this,” Isaac warned, mainly for Latt’s benefit. “But his stocks have been sliding for some time now. That means his companies are not making as much money as people expected them to,” he explained for his friend from afar in the simplest and shortest way he could.

  Latt nodded, still trying to understand the complex financial machinations of what he thought of as a wonderfully diverse and breathtakingly alive planet of humans. “Does that mean he will not be able to continue to support our development efforts?”

  “It might, if we don’t succeed in getting some significant commitment from the government,” Isaac sighed. “Sometimes I think the Canadians have a better appreciation for our dire predicament than our own leaders do.”

  “They probably do, my dear,” Ruth agreed sadly. “They haven’t developed this, this… impregnability syndrome like our country has.”

  “Well, the meeting next Wednesday might be the big breakthrough we need,” Isaac said, trying to sound like he believed it. “Ed Baynes assured me that all the big-wigs have finally read the reams of documents relating to this threat, as well as the information on the Citadel incident that Judy was instrumental in getting released for us, so we can hope that they finally appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

  Latt smiled uncertainly. “Was that another one of those jokes?”

  Isaac glanced at him in the rear-view mirror and replayed his words in his mind. He smiled as he thought of the induced gravity devices that featured so prominently in their research and development efforts, both in the Cold Lake area, and more recently in the more cosmopolitan and slightly warmer environment of Edmonton, Alberta’s Provincial capital. “Yes, my friend, but that one was quite unintentional. Terry is much better at making that kind of double-meaning than I am.”

  “Talking of Judy,” Ruth began, knowing that her husband’s complimentary comment moments before on the strange girl was the best opening she would get. “I invited her to join us tonight, so we would still be a foursome. Is that okay with you, Latt?”

  The still subtly different refugee from Rhaal sat silently and considered what he knew of the observation officer of the organisation everyone called NUIT. He scratched at his now fully brown hair as he remembered their first meeting, and the several times they had conversed on technical matters since then.

  “Well, I hope I didn’t do something wrong.” Ruth looked around anxiously at the still silent Latt.

  “No, not at all,” he said hastily as he realised Ruth still wanted an answer. “I think I will be pleased to have time to ask her more about the findings of the team that studied the fragment from the Citadel ball. There may still be some clues that have not been recognised. Perhaps the two who escaped were some of the humans talked about in a legend I heard back on Rhaal; I wish it were so.”

  “They sure had Judy’s boss worried for a while,” Ruth said reluctantly. “He seemed mighty relieved that they left. I don’t think they could have cared much at all for our little planet here.”

  “You are right, of course.” Latt sighed. “But I still wonder; the timing of their appearance and departure, just when the Controllers were also in your system.” He paused for a moment, then put that mystery aside again, for later contemplation. “Also, I will appreciate talking to Judy as she might have some suggestions on how Earth technology can be modified to provide a suitable interface with the equipment we are working on from the Railcar.” He looked out the side window at the wide, well-lit streets, picturing the tall, slim, short-haired woman as he had last seen her, bending over one of the Gravity Inducers as Latt disassembled it for her closer examination.

  Ruth grinned despite her best efforts and murmured across at Isaac. “The funny thing is, she probably wants to do the same things!”

  Isaac glanced in the rear-view mirror once
more, noticing Latt’s introspective demeanour, and told himself that the evening might turn out more interesting than he had first thought.

  ***

  “I hope she arrives soon,” Ruth said with a touch of irritation in her voice. “We can’t put off ordering for much longer.” She fingered her pearl necklace idly as she studied the menu one more time.

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” Isaac patted her hand gently, admiring once again the deep blue satin evening gown she wore with typical relaxed grace. “This is about the nicest place in town; I don’t think they’ll throw us out because we’re a little slow ordering!”

  Ruth sipped her wine and looked across at Latt’s empty wine glass with a feeling of incomprehension at his refusal to drink even this mild concoction.

  Latt was still watching the locals with interest. His collar felt slightly less tight than when Isaac had first buttoned it for him, but it was still totally strange to him. The rest of the outfit felt quite comfortable, and he grinned slightly as he thought how much he had done, and how much he had changed in the couple of Earth-months since he had arrived on the exciting and breathtakingly beautiful planet. He watched the maître d’hôtel walking across the plush carpet beside a tall and elegant lady in a sparkling pale blue gown with an unusually long hemline and a lacy, close-fitting bodice. Before he recognised who it was, he noticed that Isaac was standing, and so Latt scrambled hastily to his feet, remembering that this was another of the customs that seemed so important to his friends.

  “Hi,” Judy said so quietly that Latt hardly noticed she had spoken. He watched as the tall, dark-haired man – who was the head of the restaurant staff – helped get her seated, then Latt sank back into his chair with a feeling of relief that the ceremony was over.

  Isaac and Ruth started to involve the tall and unexpectedly changed lady in some small-talk, and Latt wondered if it would be right to talk about such down-to-earth matters as controls and power systems with someone who looked so much like one of the flowers in the heated, pyramid-shaped glass houses that he had visited a few days before.