by Lynne Murray
A blue minivan at the curb with Kirby behind the wheel. The van made sense, the man had five children.
“Wow, quick response time,” I said when he opened the doors.
“I live on 30th and Geary,” Kirby explained as we all got in. “Sit up front with me, Angie.”
Chad and Sophie took the seats behind us and Grandmother scuttled into the seat behind them.
“Feeney said the Rutban ship is docked in the big portal near the Beach Chalet.”
“Good, we’re close,” Kirby said. “Feeney has maintained a fixed portal in that area since before there was a city here.”
“Are you saying these fixed portals can hide a spaceship?” I asked.
“There are several large scale portals in the Bay Area that can handle alien ships.” Kirby said. “The transport floor of this portal is bigger than an aircraft carrier but most of the acreage is hidden in another dimension.”
“Wouldn’t they attract a lot of attention?” I tried to envision an aircraft carrier-sized space ship popping into view just over the ocean.
“A medium-sized vessel can open the portal quickly over the ocean and immediately cloak. They’re invisible to our level of technology and the naked eye would only register a meteor-like flash for a fraction of a second. That’s probably how the Harvester got his ship in. We’ll go to the service entrance. Here we are.”
He pulled into the parking lot at the Beach Chalet. Soccer fields and Golden Gate Park loomed in the darkness behind it. The building itself was Spanish revival style with low-pitched red tile roofs, white stucco walls with eight pairs of pillars on the first floor. The second floor bank of windows looked out over the ocean just across the street. It had been through many incarnations—as changing rooms for ocean bathers in the 1920s, a barracks for soldiers in World War II and then as a Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting room with a raucous biker bar on the first floor. Now the place was a brewpub and restaurant with diners flowing in and out of the front door while art lovers and history buffs stopped to stare at the WPA murals of Depression-era San Francisco.
Kirby parked at the edge of the small lot and put a card on the dashboard that read: Official Business—SF ETPA.
“Only a few travelers have a license to use fixed portals like this. The Reptile Planet group scientists have permission to finish research projects that were started before treaty. They didn’t have any restrictions at all. Now under the Forbidden Zone Treaty, they’re allowed to take human tissue samples, but not to injure or kidnap residents. Clearly, they decided to ignore the new rules.”
Kirby got out of the car and we followed him behind the building to a small shed painted dark green. He entered a code in an electronic keypad. The door unlocked with a click. “We’ve got 90 seconds to enter. Let’s go,” he said.
On the other side of the door a short, darkened passageway opened up into a huge space. The ceiling was high above us. A long, reed-like structure hovered a few feet off the floor. Unlike the rounded disk I’d seen floating next to Isabel’s cliffside house, this ship had no visible markings. I recognized it as the craft the Ekrot had shown me hovering near Dennis’s house. The low-pitched, mechanical pulsing from its engines vibrated in my chest. The air around it shimmered like the air over a hot road in the summer. The metallic smell of ozone surrounded us.
A ramp on one side reaching down to the floor was still open.
A human guard in a gray Portal Authority jumpsuit came over to confer with Kirby.
“I got your message,” he said. “The loading sequence is almost complete. It’s irreversible at this point,” he said. “The ramp is scheduled to retract in about fifteen minutes. If you want to talk to anyone onboard or bring anyone out, do it in a hurry. In twenty minutes they’ll be in Reptile space. The portal on that end is unstaffed and we can’t promise passage back from there.”
“I hope it won’t be necessary,” Kirby set off at a run toward the ramp. Grandmother kept pace with him easily. Chad, Sophie and I fell into step behind them.
Chapter 17
At the top of the ramp, a door slid open automatically. We entered a brightly lit space that was divided into two levels. Only a few crew members were visible. Some walked upright but not one wore a human disguise. A transparent bin by the door held the human disguises that had been removed, like ill-fitting clothes. They must have shed them the minute they entered the ship.
The upper level was lined with rows of what looked like upright coffins about seven feet tall and four feet wide, filled with gelatinous goo.
“Kirby! Up here!” At the end of the row of containers, Wade struggled against two lizard men. All three were bleeding. One had an arm around Wade’s neck, trying for a sleeper hold. Wade’s chin was down protecting his throat and he was gripping the lizard man’s elbow with both hands. The second lizard man grabbed at Wade’s legs and earned a kick in the face that knocked him down.
Dennis was already contained in the chamber next door.
The three containers next to Dennis held an older man and woman both gray-haired, and a much younger woman. Alive but held motionless, their eyes followed us, their expressions frozen in terror. A waking nightmare. Cold fear seized me.
“Rutban Citizens!” Kirby yelled. “Your license to study humans has expired. Under the Earth-Galactic Forbidden Zone Treaty, you have no right to detain these humans.”
“The Rutban?” I asked. My glasses readout told me as much.
Rutban, from Reptile Planet Group. License for Research on Earth expired. Conditional access to human subjects revoked.
I jumped when a downy spider arm tapped my shoulder.
“Focus, nestling. Questions later,” Grandmother said.
The Rutban nearest us stopped and looked to another lizard man who wore a lanyard holding a flat metal key around his scaly neck. He padded on bare feet down the ramp toward us. Behind him a hulking crew member opened his mouth to hiss a warning, displaying double rows of sharp teeth, a long tongue flickering out threateningly. The big one must be the head lizard’s bodyguard.
“This is my ship, what is your authority to make such a demand?” The lizard captain bellowed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chad and Sophie making their way up the ramp to the second level. The lizards who had been wrestling with Wade took up defensive postures. No other crew members moved to back them up.
“I am the Treaty Administrator of this sector,” Kirby said. “Under the current treaty, your research contract gives you no right to abduct Earth citizens.”
“The old contract had no such limits. Our study began thirty years before the so-called Forbidden Zone Treaty.” The lizard captain hissed in disgust. “We dispute the new contract.”
“If you release your human subjects and allow us to leave,” Kirby said sternly. I will report that you followed the terms of the treaty. The local Guardians have been dispatched and they will protect our citizens and enforce the treaty by confiscating your ship if necessary.”
“One detachment of Guardians, over-extended to cover this sector. Many of them are old enough to remember the time when our research projects took human specimens at will.” The Captain didn’t smirk, but he didn’t seem worried either. “Even now, a few humans being taken will not cause them to rush here. By the time they arrive here, we will be disembarked in Reptile Space. They may even be glad to get rid of you, Mr. Kirby. Your replacement might serve everyone’s needs better. This is not a prestige assignment.”
I sneaked a glance at the upper level. The lizards up there were watching and waiting. Sophie leaned close to one of them and he leaned down to listen to whatever she was saying. Chad said a few words to the other who hissed in reply, but it was a soft-throated hiss. Ward leaned a little too casually on the coffin where Dennis was stowed.
I instantly returned my gaze to the lizard captain and his security detail in front of us. Was I the only one who saw how vastly outnumbered we few humans were?
“Don’t lose your ship
over this,” Kirby said sternly. “Release those humans immediately,”
“More research subjects walking right into our facility and volunteering.” The lizard in charge let out a soft hiss. “Our study groups have been taking research subjects since your ancestors began to walk on two legs. Every project until ours has removed our subjects for dissection afterward. Your new rules have driven most of our long-term research subjects into hiding. We prefer the subjects we have been testing for a few generations, but we will accept your bodies as a poor compensation for the data we have lost.” He called up to the lizards near the tanks, “Assistants, prepare five new stasis tanks.”
“Too bad, I forgot my #AlienLabRatGirl T-shirt,” I said.
Grandmother sidled in front of me, opened her mouth and let out an ear-shattering squeal. Her disguise cracked open, the chin strap around her jaws popped off.
The lizard captain examined her form with interest. “You are not an Earth native. Your data will be useless.” He approached flanked, by another crew member. “I will, however, accept you as something to eat on the journey,” he said with a breathy chuckle.
Instinctively, I moved up to stand beside Grandmother and began to focus on the leader.
She nudged me to one side, ‘Move a few steps sideways, nestling. Deal with the crewmember behind him,” she said softly.
Stepping toward the lizard captain Grandmother called out, “As a scientist, you are amazingly ill-informed. I question your qualifications.”
“I cannot deny that we are low-level researchers. Our team was assigned to this obscure planet simply to take samples and bring back experimental subjects. But we take on new food sources when they present themselves.”
The lizard captain unhinged his jaw and shot out a long tongue that connected with Grandmother just as she unleashed a stream of silk from her mouth, wrapping around the leader’s tongue. He struggled in alarm, trying to retract his tongue, his feet scrabbling on the floor. Small as she was, Grandmother pulled the Rutban close as if he were as light as a leaf. She embraced him with her forelegs, pinning him with huge black claws and twining her silk strands around his limbs.
The lizard just behind the leader froze for just a second. I saw a swarm of black dots around him and threw a bolt of energy. It stopped his heart. He crumpled to the deck.
“My team member can restart that person’s heart if you let go of our people immediately,” Kirby said.
All the lizards looked at the fallen one, but no one volunteered to cooperate.
“Your leader offered himself to me as nourishment,” Grandmother announced to the stunned crew of lizards in a voice that whined like a drill bit. “That signal you heard from me was my personal emergency alarm. I have contacted an Arachne ship in the vicinity. The young adults of my species are not as polite and gentle as I am. They will not ask for your consent. They will be delighted to swarm onto your ship and to dispose of your crew and many citizens of your planet if you are intent on breaking the contract that gives you access to Earth. Only the elderly females of our species are allowed to settle on planets that agree to the treaty. If you break the treaty, I cannot be responsible for what the youngsters will do in Reptile Space. I say again, are you breaking the treaty by holding these humans against their will?”
Grandmother released the binding on the lizard captain’s tongue. He wasn’t going anywhere, trapped in the web she had spun around him.
He retracted his tongue but spoke in a strained voice
“We’re only scientists trying to finish out our contract. If we return to our planet without data and tissue samples, our careers are finished.
“Everything has to end sometime, including your lives,” grandmother said. “There’s always the question of how you die. Do you know how Arachne eat lizards like you?”
The lizard captain was silent, but from the glassy look his eye took on I guessed he had some ideas and they weren’t good.
“I’ll explain while your crew is releasing any humans you are holding in your stasis lockers. You see, I’ve just recently fed and my relatives might want to take you on one of their ships as fresh food. So my best recipe to preserve you for their consumption would involve paralyzing you with this venom.” She opened her mouth to display a curving set of fangs nearly as large as her face. A drop of venom glowed at the tip of each fang. “We would not want you to move as they eat you alive,”
The lizard captain called up to the crew members next to Wade. “Let the humans go.” He painfully twisted his head in Grandmother’s web. “They’re free now. Release me.”
“I will. As soon as when safe passage out of your ship and back to our point of origin is accomplished.”
“Too late the portal transport sequence is unavoidable,” the lizard holding Wade yelled. “The ship rocked and the screen showing the portal blanked out for a minute. An indecipherable burst of sound filled the air.
“Welcome to Reptile space. We are now entering our Central Planetary Clearance area.” The lizard captain sounded smug
Grandmother released another piercing shriek. “Thank you for the coordinates,” she shrilled. “Just making sure they can track me,” she said.
“Even if you kill us, your bodies will be claimed as research specimens now that we are in Reptile Space.” Weariness had crept into the lizard captain’s sibilant voice and he seemed to slump in Grandmother’s grip. “Our sacrifice and yours will enrich our database.”
Monitors displayed a desert-like landscape with a long, broad platform. Another Rutban ship was moored on the other side, but no other lizards came to meet them.
“It looks like your defense forces aren’t rushing to your aid,” I said. I immediately regretted it when a troop of lizard men, wearing armor and carrying weapons exited the other lizard ship and approached ours.
Before they reached us, another portal opened and a giant white, oval ship that floated out of the portal gate and bumped up to cast a shadow over both lizard ships. A prolonged screaming filled the air.
“My Arachne warriors have arrived,” Grandmother said calmly. The Rutban ship’s entry hatch shuddered under a powerful blow from outside.
“Open it willingly and they won’t have to break it,” Grandmother said calmly. The lizard captain hesitated, leaning hopefully toward the lizard troops on the ground.
“Too late,” she amended. The hatch door blew open and dozens of spiders swarmed out, climbing down the hull to overwhelm the lizard forces. A line of five taller Arachne marched through the crowd wearing armor and belts studded with weapons. They wore no disguises. The view through the glasses was the same as when I pushed them down. Spiders all the way.
The read out informed me:
Arachne Warrior Group arriving. Retreat if possible.
The five leaders lined up facing Grandmother. One scuttled forward and rose on its back four legs to shriek at her.
She shrieked back.
My ears were ringing standing so close to them.
“This is my oldest nestling. She now commands the ship you see.” Grandmother’s voice swelled with pride. “Her troops have traveled long distances to verify my safety and that of my companions. My daughter’s troops would prefer to eat your crew before leaving. However, out of respect for me, she will remove her ship and warriors and leave you unharmed once the humans and I have reentered the portal and arrived on Earth.”
More shrieking from Grandmother’s offspring.
“They request this body,” she pointed at the lizard I’d killed.
I suppressed a sigh. There was no bringing him back now.
“Anything, just let us go,” the lizard captain said.
“I will release you once we enter the portal. My offspring will escort your crew members out of the ship.”
Kirby signaled to Sophie and Chad to join Wade and Dennis. The lizard crew members freed Dennis and the other three from the goo-filled containers. Wade took Dennis’s arm and motioned for Chad and Sophie to help the others.
“You are an inexperienced nestling,” she said, her elderly lady voice buzzing behind her damaged mask. “Don’t let the mating frenzy take you too soon.”
“Open the ship door for us and signal the Portal Control that ten humans will be arriving,” Kirby called down to the lizard captain, who spoke to his crew. We walked down the ramp to stand on a circular raised area while the ship floated back behind what seemed to be an obscuring barrier.
Two portals opened, a smaller one back to earth and the other with the Arachne ship and the lizard ship on another. The Arachne warriors waited in the lizard ship.
Kirby helped Chad and Sophie guide the three victims while Wade kept an arm around Dennis. Once out of their containers, the human victims walked unsteadily, but let themselves be led down the ramp and up a set of steps next to the ship transfer bay to a smaller portal area for foot traffic.
The younger woman, short and round with rumpled red hair, wore pajamas. Chad took off his jacket and put it coat around her. “They took me from my bed,” she kept saying over and over.
The older couple was silent. They stumbled along, trying to move faster than their legs would carry them. They kept casting looks back at the lizard ship as if expecting them to try to recapture them.
I stayed with Grandmother, who dragged the Rutban Commander without a hint of straining under his weight. She paused at the edge of the portal back home and saluted her daughter.
“Our coordinates to return us to Earth are entered,” Kirby told her.
Grandmother released the Lizard captain. She and I went up the steps to join the others on the transfer bay. The commander staggered backward and scrambled back to the group of lizards gathered around the breached door of their ship.