Lair of the Sentinels

by Geoff Palmer

  ‘And they chose Smudge.’

  ‘Maybe cats are easier to take over than people. Maybe they’re easier to control too.’

  ‘Wah!’ Norman leapt back as a large black spider dropped from his hair and scuttled away across the grass. ‘There. I told you! Did you see that?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ Coral said.

  ‘There is one problem though,’ Tim said. ‘The timing’s wrong. The Eltherian ship crashed twenty-five years ago, remember? Smudge isn’t that old. And Aunt Em and Uncle Frank haven’t been married that long either.’

  ‘Fourteen years,’ Coral said, recalling Frank’s comment after he crashed the mower.

  ‘So why set this up so long afterwards?’

  Ludokrus looked thoughtful. ‘Because they do not know if we survive.’

  He explained about the crash, how the ship’s chronocells — the special batteries that stored spare time — sent out an emergency signal when they were wrecked. Called a Time Scream, it was a signal of distress to all other Eltherian vessels in the area.

  ‘But no one come,’ Ludokrus said. ‘The Thanatos must block.’

  The signal alerted the Thanatos to the crash, but it didn’t tell them what the damage was, or whether there were even any survivors. So they sent out the Sentinels to keep an eye on things, just in case.

  ‘Crash is bad. There is much damage. Many raw materials are lost. It take much time to find and refine these things, and always — away from the ship — Albert must go careful in case he is detect.’

  The first priority was to fix the ship’s engines because, until they were functioning again, it was reliant on power from dwindling electric batteries and carefully deployed solar panels.

  ‘Once the engine is fix, she must be restart. This always give off a telltale signal. Very small. Almost invisible unless you are looking.’

  ‘Which is exactly what the Sentinels were doing,’ Tim said. ‘They spotted it, saw it meant someone was still alive out there, and realised that to get home they’d need to top up their chronocells. That’s when they set up the trap.’

  ‘How long did it take to fix the engines?’ Coral asked.

  ‘Albert tell us more than ten years.’

  ‘That’s it then: the last piece of the puzzle. There was no point doing anything earlier because you might all be dead.’

  They stood in silence, eyes bright, delighted to have solved the puzzle.

  ‘Should we have put that box back?’ Coral said.

  ‘What do you mean “we”?’ Norman muttered.

  ‘Maybe we should haul it out again and destroy it. Deprive the Sentinels of one of their agents.’

  ‘Better, I think, to leave. We know for sure now, but the Sentinel do not know we know. Maybe we can use this.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right.’

  Norman looked relieved.

  ‘We must tell Albert right away,’ Alkemy said, getting to her feet. ‘Maybe he will make a new plan and we do not have to go .’

  Frank’s voice sounded from the front of the house, a cupped-hand bellow. ‘Paging Coral, Tim and Norman Smith. Dinner will be served in five minutes. Repeat, five minutes. This is your one and only call.’

  ‘Oh man, dinner,’ Norman said. ‘I could eat a horse.’

  ‘You can’t go in like that,’ Coral told him. ‘Look at the state of you. You’re filthy. And what’s that crawling in your hair?’

  ‘What? Ah! Oh my god!’ He started a crazed dance, shaking and smacking himself around the head.

  Coral grinned at the others. ‘Damn! Missed another priceless video moment.’

  15 : Distant Thunder

  The long summer evening was drawing to a close. After saying goodbye to the others, after dinner and doing the dishes — without the help of nanomachines — Tim and Norman sat on the veranda watching black clouds form in the hills on the southern horizon. There was a flash of lightning. Norman began counting, ‘... twenty-two ... twenty-three ... twenty-four ...’ then they heard the thunder, a distant rumbling roar.

  ‘Eight kilometres away,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘It’s the difference between the speed of sound and the speed of light. Sound’s much slower, so you count off the seconds then divide by three to get the distance.’

  There was another rumble. Louder. Tim shuddered. The sound reminded him of the explosion. He thought of Alkemy and Ludokrus back at the caravan and wondered how they’d react.

  ‘Weird storm though,’ Norman added. ‘It came in really quickly. The sky over there was clear five minutes ago.’

  Coral appeared from the kitchen. ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock. You did set the video, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tim said wearily. It was the third time she’d asked.

  Em, Frank and Alice were already in the lounge when they took their places on the sofa. ‘Are you sure it’s recording?’ Coral squinted at the unit below the TV.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And it’s on the right channel?’

  ‘There’s only two choices.’

  ‘Well I don’t want to save some cooking show.’

  ‘Nine News at nine,’ a booming voice-over proclaimed as dramatic music swelled and surged. ‘All the news you need to know.’

  A series of images flashed across the screen as the announcer said, ‘In the news tonight: Can the Minister of Finance really count? ... Will Bubbles the giraffe finally get a hip replacement? ... And could a tiny South Island town be the staging point for an alien invasion?’ A clip showed Coral in close-up saying, ‘We wouldn’t have had a chance. We’d have been blown to smithereens.’ The music swelled again, more graphics tumbled about the screen, and the picture finally settled on the two presenters.

  ‘Oh my god! Was that me?’

  ‘Wow, third item.’

  ‘Have you told your mum and dad this is on?’

  ‘Do I really sound like that?’

  Their item started six minutes later, beginning with a view from the air. The camera tracked sedately over farm land and bush until it suddenly came to rest at a sunburst-like scar in the landscape. Torn earth, raw and fresh, streams of debris radiating from its centre. It looked like they’d suddenly entered a war zone.

  ‘The meteor came down in a remote area of native bush about forty kilometres south of Haast,’ the newsreader said. ‘Our news team has been on the scene since first light this morning.’

  The picture switched to a twilight view of Crystal standing in Rata’s main street as the words Live and Exclusive scrolled along the bottom.

  ‘Hey, there’s RAGS!’

  ‘Call your mum. Tell her to go out and wave.’

  ‘Ssshh!’

  ‘... and earlier today I spoke to some of the lucky survivors,’ Crystal said as the picture switched to the interview with Tim and Coral.

  ‘What about me?’ Frank said. ‘I put on tie and everything.’

  ‘Ssshh!’

  Tim looked uncomfortable describing the streaking light he’d seen in the sky in the seconds before impact, but Coral had no such qualms. She cut him off before he could even finish.

  ‘We were coming down this road here,’ she said, pointing, ‘and suddenly there was this flash of light. Then about a second later: boom. Man, I thought the world had ended.’

  ‘Were you frightened?’

  ‘Not really. Just stunned.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘This sort of mushroom cloud rose up. Like a mini atom bomb or something. Then it started snowing dust and stuff. From the explosion, I guess. It was pretty weird.’

  ‘What if you’d been a bit closer?’

  ‘We wouldn’t have had a chance. We’d have been blown to smithereens. I mean, look at the crater and all the trees around it.’

  The picture changed to a shot of the three of them looking down into the crater.

  The boys laughed and nudged each other. Coral squealed and buried her face in a cushion, half-afraid to look and
half-afraid not to.

  ‘A family of tourists also had a near miss. Earlier this afternoon I tried to speak with them,’ Crystal’s voice-over continued, ‘but they were still pretty shaken by their ordeal.’ The screen showed pictures of the closed-up caravan and the scorched paint along the back.

  Back in the studio, the newsreader said, ‘I understand this isn’t the first time this area’s been, shall we say, targeted, Crystal.’

  ‘Quite right, John. This is only the latest in a series of mysterious happenings in an area that some people are already calling Latitude 51 ...’

  ‘What people?’ Frank said.

  ‘... a clear reference to the mysterious Area 51 in the US where alien spaceships are supposed to have been captured and alien autopsies performed.’

  Alice put a hand to her mouth.

  ‘And just three nights ago, a shooting star startled locals as it skimmed the tree tops before coming to rest in remote bush somewhere to the northwest ...’ she gestured vaguely.

  ‘That’s south,’ Frank said.

  Norman gave Tim a quizzical look.

  ‘The killer robot’s ship,’ Tim whispered in his ear.

  ‘... the very same area where, twenty-five years ago, yet another meteorite came down. Late this afternoon, I spoke to someone who was there.’

  The picture changed to a wiry, middle-aged man in a khaki apron.

  ‘Rambob!’

  ‘He’s not wearing a tie.’

  ‘Ssshh!’

  ‘Yes, I remember it well,’ Rambob said. ‘It came down near an old mining area called Gizzard Gully. We had to go in there about a week afterwards because there were a couple of trampers missing in the bush nearby. I was part of the search party. We actually saw where it had come down.’

  ‘Can you describe it?’

  ‘Just a long burnt streak in the ground. Must’ve come in at a shallow angle because it went on for quite a way.’

  ‘No crater then?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Any sign of what caused it?’

  ‘Whatever it was, it must’ve buried itself pretty deep.’

  ‘And the trampers?’

  ‘We found them a few hours later. They were out of food and a bit confused. Had some wild stories about lights in the sky and strange noises at night, but they were fine.’

  Back Live and Exclusive on Main Street, Crystal stared intently at the camera. ‘So there you have it. Three mysterious impacts in the space of just twenty-five years. The experts tell us that the chances of that happening in the same area are more than a billion to one. So what is it about this remote town that’s drawing the attention of visitors from outer space? Is it, as some claim, pure coincidence? Or is there something darker and more mysterious going on here?’

  Alice, staring wide-eyed at the screen, gave a low moan.

  ‘I’ll have more tomorrow, and an exclusive Nine News in-depth report on Monday.’

  The image cut back to the studio. ‘That was Crystal Starbrite, live, from Southland.’

  Frank snorted. ‘We’re West Coast, you chump!’

  * * *

  Norman unfurled his sleeping bag and climbed into bed. ‘So that first one, the one that Rambob and the search party saw, the one that dug itself in, that must’ve been the Sentinels themselves, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tim said, turning out the light. It had been a long day.

  ‘Fancy Rambob coming across that. Who’d’ve guessed?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Oh, there’s something I want to check.’ Norman’s torch snapped on and he leaned across the camp stretcher to examine the bookshelf. He pulled out an atlas and thumbed through it till he found a map of New Zealand. ‘Hah! Thought so.’

  ‘Thought what?’ Tim muttered, barely able to keep his eyes open.

  ‘That reporter kept talking about Latitude 51, but that’s way down south by Campbell Island. We’re about latitude forty-four. She’s only six hundred kilometres out!’

  Tim grunted.

  ‘If those sort of people can’t get their facts right, you don’t know what to believe.’ Norman put the book back and switched off his torch. ‘I wonder what Albert said about Smudge. It’s a real breakthrough, eh? Maybe he’s come up with another way to get a message to their mothership. How many escape pods does it have, d’you know? Maybe they could send for a couple and we could go with them and have a look at it. Imagine that, a real live interstellar spaceship. How cool would that be?’

  A faint sigh was Tim’s only reply.

  ‘Tim?’

  Norman flashed his torch around and saw his friend was sound asleep .

  16 : Absent Friends

  Tim woke with a start, his heart pounding. The thump of it seemed to fill the silent room around him.

  A flicker of moonlight hung around the edges of the curtains. Drizzly rain sounded on the iron roof. But that hadn’t woken him. Norman gave a half-snore and turned over in the camp stretcher on the other side of the room. It wasn’t that either.

  His racing heart began to slow and he was half-convinced it had been a dream when it came again.

  Tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap.

  He sat up in bed.

  ‘Norman,’ he whispered, ‘did you hear that?’

  Norman didn’t stir.

  ‘Norman!’ he whispered as loud as he dared, but Norman’s breathing carried on, slow and steady.

  The sound had come from somewhere outside. Tim thought of the hatch beneath the house, right below his bedroom window and the vision of a Sentinel-controlled killer robot bursting through the floorboards filled his mind for a moment.

  Then it came again.

  Tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap.

  No, it wasn’t the floor. It was coming from the window. And he recognised the pattern. What Ludokrus jokingly called his secret knock. The one he’d used to open the escape pod when he showed it to them.

  Tim sprang out of bed, hurried across and snatched the curtains aside to reveal two pinched faces staring back at him through the rain-streaked glass.

  * * *

  The tea candles were Coral’s idea. She said the room light might draw the attention of someone using the bathroom, so she sneaked them in from the kitchen and arranged them in a circle on the floor. Tim wedged his pillows against the bottom of the door in case even that flickering light was visible from the hallway, then the conference began.

  ‘Start from the beginning,’ Coral said. ‘Right after you guys left us before dinner.’

  Alkemy combed her damp hair back with her fingers. ‘When we return to the caravan, Albert study a map book, one of the whole area he borrow from Glad. He read it like he is scanning to memorise. We tell him what we learn of Smudge and he is much pleased. Says that maybe we can use this information, but for now he must make more of the scanner block.

  ‘He work for maybe two hour. Much intense. When is finish, he say he go for walk. Need to stretch. Will place more of the scanner block because there are not so many near the reserve.

  ‘But we left heaps around there,’ Coral said. ‘And why bother anyway? They’re useless.’

  Alkemy shrugged. ‘He go. We do not see him since.’

  The rain outside intensified, surging against the roof with a sound like a breaking wave. Alkemy and Ludokrus stared at the candles. The others exchanged worried glances.

  ‘You went back to the reserve about six o’clock,’ Tim said. ‘How soon did he go out before that storm hit? Do you think he might have got caught in it?’

  ‘It does not reach us, but we hear the thunder. Much loud. He go maybe one hour before.’

  ‘Well that storm started just before the nine o’clock news, which means he left about eight.’ Tim checked his watch. ‘Which means he’s been gone for four-and-a-half hours.’

  ‘He say he will be only one,’ Alkemy said.

  ‘Which direction was he heading?’

  ‘Toward the resource pit.’

  ‘What’s past there?’ Coral said to
Tim. ‘Just bush, isn’t it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Maybe he’s lost. It does happen, you know.’

  ‘Maybe. But I do not think. He have very good direction. Remember, he is part machine.’

  ‘Could he have had an accident? Be lying injured somewhere?’

  ‘Maybe he got struck by lightning,’ Norman said.

  They all stared at him.

  ‘It does happen you know. Dozens of people get hit by lightning every year.’

  ‘Not if the storm was eight K away like you reckoned,’ Tim said. ‘He was on foot, remember? He can’t have gone that far.’

  ‘You will be surprised,’ Ludokrus said. ‘Syntho may cover much ground quick. Machine part does not tire. Go maybe thirty kilometre in this time.’

  ‘Even in dense bush?’

  ‘In bush, maybe half of that.’

  Norman reached for Tim’s calculator. ‘So fifteen K ... pi times radius squared ... That makes a search area of about seven hundred square kilometres. Halve that because we’re on the coast — he’s not likely to be at sea — but it’s still a big area.’

  ‘What if he’s not lost or injured?’ Coral said, choosing her words carefully. No one wanted to say it, but they had to consider the possibility. ‘What if the Sentinels got him? Or a killer robot?’

  Ludokrus shook his head. ‘The robot blow himself up with our ship. They have no other.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘If they do, it would come for us also.’

  ‘So your no-robot theory is based on the fact that you’re not dead yet?’

  Ludokrus made a face. ‘Albert say they have only one.’

  ‘And Albert was always straight with you guys, right?’

  He pursed his lips and looked away.

  ‘What about the Sentinels themselves?’ Tim said. ‘Could they have caught him?’

  Ludokrus shook his head. ‘They live underground. Avoid the the sun.’

  ‘The sun’s not up now,’ Coral said.

  ‘It was when he leave.’

  ‘They might have set a trap.’

  ‘How can you make a trap if you cannot go outside?’