Starman

by Alan Dean Foster

  Without pausing to slip on her pants, which she tossed over an arm, she opened the bedroom window and climbed over the sill. It was only a short drop to the ground.

  There was gas in the tank. She’d filled up before turning off the highway, not wanting to find herself stuck at the cabin without a quick way out. Her intention had been to be ready to flee from unbearable memories. Now she found herself running from something much worse.

  Surely she could get the car started and backed out of the carport before he could react! It was an older car but it was as finely tuned as a Tina Turner song. Scott had always kept it tuned perfectly. Scott had always . . .

  She turned the corner toward the carport and felt strong hands on her shoulders.

  No more fainting, not now, not again. That wouldn’t make the nightmare go away. So she started screaming instead. If he’d slapped her, or yelled at her to stop it, or thrown her to the ground, she would have quit. But he did none of those things. He just stood there holding onto her and staring at her out of those strangely deep eyes.

  Her hysteria was washed out by the rumble of a forestry service helicopter as it thumped past overhead. It was on its way to join its brethren in fighting the fire across the lake. Now the man who looked like Scott but wasn’t a man shook her. Not hard, but sufficient to choke off her screams.

  She gagged, caught her breath enough to choke out, “Who are you? What are you? What do you want with me? Please, let me alone.”

  “We go,” he said. It was Scott’s voice this time, just slightly different. Just as the man holding her was slightly different.

  Another helicopter trundled past. She waved frantically at it but the pilot wasn’t looking downward. His attention was on the fiery destination ahead. He was talking to his copilot, estimating how many minutes remained before they reached the flames and trying to decide from a combination of visual observations and radio reports where best to dump the load of fire retardant chemicals they carried in the chopper’s belly.

  The man who looked like Scott turned and pointed toward the carport. “We go,” he said again. He headed back into the house, pulling her along with him. Inside she watched as he dressed himself in the chinos, checkered shirt, and a windbreaker. After a moment’s thought he added socks and loafers. Underwear he ignored.

  Then he escorted her back to the car, watched carefully as she slid behind the wheel, and climbed in next to her. He gave her no chance to lock him out. Not that she would have considered doing so anyway. Not while he still had the gun.

  He watched closely as she turned the key in the ignition. Her hand was shaking and she made a bad job of what ordinarily was a simple task. The battery ran down despite her best efforts to get the engine to turn over. Maybe Scott had kept the engine tuned up, but the battery was old and probably in need of replacement.

  “It’s been sitting here for days,” she told him. “And the motor’s cold. And the battery needs replacing, and I . . .”

  She broke off. He was staring at her uncomprehendingly. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” She muttered to herself. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. Two downers and a jug of wine.” She slapped herself. It worked in cartoons. Maybe it would work now.

  “Jenny, dammit, wake up.”

  No luck. He was still there, staring at her. As she waited he raised an arm and gestured toward the dirt road that led away from the lake. There was a halting insistence in his voice.

  “We must go. Now.”

  She tried the key again. The engine growled. She was frightened and tired and dazed and she wasn’t thinking her actions through. The end result was that she flooded the engine. When it died this time it sounded final. The thin sharp smell of gasoline filled the car.

  His hand dropped to the automatic resting in his lap. She was near collapse from panic.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I can’t get it started. I tried, but I can’t. Can’t you smell it? It’s flooded. We’ll have to wait.” Her eyes were darting rapidly from his face to the hand now cradling the forty-five.

  Suddenly he leaned over and touched the ignition key. Or maybe he didn’t touch it. Maybe he only touched the ignition plate. She was never certain, then or afterward.

  The engine rumbled, turned over once, twice. It caught on the third try, the big 387 under the hood coming to loud life. It idled smoothly as she threw her companion an uncertain look, then turned resolutely away from him. If she didn’t pay attention to her driving she’d like as not end up killing them both.

  Still feeling his eyes on her she backed out, shifted gears and sent them bouncing down the narrow access road that led away from the bay.

  They worked their way through mud and over potholes until they finally came to the intersection where the access lane met blacktop. Jenny slowed to a halt. She was glad of the solid, unyielding plastic of the steering wheel beneath her fingers. It gave her something to hold onto, and she badly needed something to hold onto. Reality was a half-memory. She was trapped in a persistent nightmare that was solidifying around her like stale Jell-o. It was hard to breathe, harder still to remain calm. If anything even slightly out of the ordinary had happened to that steering wheel, if it had turned suddenly soft and rubbery in her hands or sported a couple of leering eyes or gone floating off skyward like a small gray sphere she’d recently seen do just that, she was absolutely certain she would have gone quite insane.

  It did none of those things. It stayed a steering wheel, the familiar smooth plastic curve cool inside the curl of her fingers. The engine purred softly beneath the hood, the leather seat was warm against her back. Everything was as it should be. Everything, except the character sitting next to her cradling the deadly automatic in his lap.

  “Why do you stop?”

  Compared to what her keeper had said so far, the question amounted to a veritable speech.

  She gestured at the intersection. “Which way do you want to go? Left or right? East or west? Does it matter? Should I just drive?” Silently she prayed that he’d leave the decision up to her. It would amount to a confession of ignorance of his surroundings—though she already suspected he wasn’t a local. If he just wanted to drive aimlessly she would turn left and head for the nearest big town.

  He appeared to be debating with himself. Finally, and with obvious reluctance, he reached into one of the windbreaker’s pockets and withdrew another of the mysterious gray spheres. She wondered if it, too, was going to vanish into the night sky.

  “What’s that?” she asked, unable to restrain her curiosity. As usual, he ignored her question. Not that she expected an answer, but the sound of her own voice was better than complete silence.

  He was staring at it intently. It began to hum, a purely mechanical noise but not an unpleasant one. Like the one she’d seen him holding on the porch, it also started to glow, though not nearly as intensely. It did not rise out of his hands.

  Instead, it exploded.

  She threw up both hands in front of her face, trying to shield her eyes. There was no need. The explosion produced neither sound, heat, radiation, or damaging light. When she lowered her hands she found herself gaping at an image splashed across the inside of the windshield. It was so realistic she momentarily had to grab the wheel to steady herself. Then she realized they hadn’t been suddenly transported to a point in space hundreds of miles up.

  The windshield had been replaced by a holographic projection of startling depth and realism. She recognized the image instantly. It was the continent of North America, rendered in every perfect detail. It was not a map, but rather a reproduction of some kind of miraculous photograph.

  As she stared the image shrank until it encompassed only the continental United States, swerved and compressed still further until it showed the Southwest. She gulped and hung onto the wheel anyway. Watching the shifting image was like falling.

  Specific geographic features were brought into sharp relief with the aid of superimposed bright colors. There was an is
olated, exceptionally high mountain, a series of descending plateaus, and in the center of the projection an odd circular canyon—no, a crater. She was sure it was some kind of crater.

  The image enlarged slightly but remained focused on the brightly outlined crater. She wished she’d studied her geography better in school.

  Her keeper reached up, into the projection itself. The outline of the crater pulsed when his finger touched it. “Here.”

  She gaped at him. “You wanna be driven to that place? Is that it?” And she’d been hoping he’d ask to be dropped off somewhere nearby.

  “Yes. That place.” He looked relieved at having made his point. “Wanna be driven that place. You know where that place is?”

  She forced herself to consider the projection. “Well, if that’s Baja California down there, and up there’s Salt Lake, then over here,” she reached up to touch the image and was inordinately pleased with herself for not twitching when her finger passed into and through the seemingly solid surface, “this has to be the Grand Canyon. The place you want to go is further east, but it’s still got to be in—it’s hard to tell without state lines on your map. I’m not real good at this.”

  “State lines?”

  “Never mind. What you’re pointing to is, like, Arizona maybe.”

  He nodded vigorously. “Yes, wanna be driven there. Arizona-maybe.”

  “Why Arizona?”

  “Driven there. Now.”

  She sighed tiredly. Some of the fear was beginning to give way to curiosity. You couldn’t stay terrified forever, after all. For one thing, it was too exhausting. And it seemed like as long as she did as he asked, he wasn’t going to hurt her. If his original motive had been robbery he already would have taken what he wanted, including the car, and left. If rape, there was no need to drive all the way to Arizona to perpetrate the act. That left only kidnapping, but that didn’t make much sense either. And why haul her all the way to Arizona, when she might have a dozen chances to escape during the long drive?

  And there was his manner. She didn’t know what else to call it. What at first she’d taken for brusqueness now seemed more like plain ignorance. Ignorance of the language, of local customs, of the simplest things. She decided he had to be a foreigner of some kind—but weird. And what about the glowing spheres, and this incredible photomap, and the hair blowing straight up into the air?

  What about his face? Scott’s face.

  She followed his instructions and took a right out onto the blacktop, still worried but no longer petrified with fear. She’d always considered herself a sensible woman, and none of the events of the past hour made the slightest bit of sense.

  “If this isn’t a dream,” she muttered aloud, “then I’m in big trouble.” He might have been expected to comment on that, to say something to the effect that she was right and it wasn’t a dream. But as with everything else she said he ignored it. He just sat there, holding onto the gun, staring out at the road and drinking in the scenery. Often he would turn sharply, as though he saw something in the black wall of the forest, and she had the feeling he could see just as well in the dark as he could during the day.

  The army helicopter was an S-76: big, clumsy, slow, reliable. It went thrashing along above the forest, disturbing the peaceful Wisconsin dawn and sending a flock of startled geese splashing in panic across the mirrorlike surface of the lake.

  Its pilot studied his electronic coordinator, which relieved him of personal responsibility for finding out where the hell he was, and compared the readings with what he could see of the terrain ahead. He turned to his copilot.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “What say?” The copilot was bouncing and jerking about in his seat like someone possessed by an incurable muscular disease. The pilot, who did not approve of the cause of this seated version of Saint Vitus’s dance, would have been more likely to compare it to a mental deficiency.

  He cured it by reaching across and yanking the stereo earphones off the copilot’s head. “I said, ten minutes!” He nodded toward the back of the chopper. “Better wake the cargo.”

  “Right.” The copilot set his tape player aside, along with more official sound equipment, and headed toward the back of the helicopter.

  In the communications compartment the radioman was seated at his position, listening to KWFJ out of Milwaukee and wishing he had enough range to pick up Detroit. But it was better than that station they’d hit on earlier, the one that played polka music twenty-four hours ’round the clock. The radioman would rather listen to the music of the Gulag, and unlike Gamble, he didn’t pull enough rank to rate bringing his personal music box on board.

  “What’s up?” he asked the copilot.

  “We’re getting close. Time for all good passengers to start earning their keep, I guess. Or whatever it is this dude’s supposed to do out here.” He nodded toward the rumpled figure sprawled out on the nearby cot. “Wonder who he is to rate this kind of service?”

  The radioman shrugged. “Beats me, man.” He returned to his monitoring.

  The copilot moved past him, put a hand on the sleeper’s shoulder and shook firmly. He didn’t know much about their passenger and sole cargo, but he was willing to give anyone who could climb aboard an S-76 and instantly fall asleep the benefit of the doubt.

  “About that time, Mister Shermin.” When no response was forthcoming he gave the shoulder another nudge.

  Mark Shermin blinked, rubbed at his eyes as he sat up. “Oh. Okay.” He tried to see past the radioman and out the side window. “We there already?”

  “Already? We’ve been in the air for almost an hour, Mister Shermin.” The radioman felt a twinge of sympathy for the civilian. Poor guy. No telling when was the last chance he had to sleep in his own bed. “My name’s Lemon.” He reached down and picked up a thermos, scrounged until he’d located an almost clean cup. “Coffee?”

  “Thanks,” said Gamble, reaching for it.

  “Not you, disco-brain. Get back forward where you belong.” The copilot grinned at him and made his way back to the forward compartment.

  “Thanks.” Shermin accepted thermos and cup and poured himself six ounces of black liquid. A couple of swallows and his brain began to function again. Colombia’s legal narcotic. He found himself considering the complex of communications equipment as he sipped.

  “Listen sergeant, I know you can handle all kinds of exotic transmissions and high-speed signals with that, but what about more commonplace stuff? Can you pick up the regular police bands on that thing?”

  “No problem. Why? You bored already?”

  “It’s not that. Kind of has to do with what I’m out here for. I’m interested in anything really freaky that’s been going on around here. You know: far out, weird, bizarre. It’s all related to what I do.”

  Lemon smiled. “I know a lady you’d like.”

  Shermin grinned back at him, finished the rest of the coffee and set the cup aside. “Better start getting ready, I guess. What’s it like, where we’re going?”

  The radioman was fiddling with his instrumentation. “Like most of Wisconsin: trees, lakes, nice country. You want weird and far out? Man, you’re going to get weird and far out. Just promise me one thing, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  “After you get through doing your studies or digging or photographing or whatever it is you’re out here to do, you let me know what the hell’s going on.”

  “If I can.” Shermin got off the cot, took his contamination suit off the wall rack and started struggling into it. Lemon watched the procedure thoughtfully while continuing to monitor his instruments.

  “Hey, what’s that for? They didn’t give us nothing like that when they sent us out here to recon.”

  “You’ve been to the site already, then?” Shermin pulled the sleeves of the suit up his arm, made sure the elastic at the wrists was secure and started slipping on the gloves.

  “Yeah, once.”

  “Did you set down in the area?�
�

  Lemon shook his head. “Just circled and took pictures.”

  “Then you wouldn’t need something like this.” He zipped up the front of the suit and checked to make sure the gloves were secured to the sleeves at the wrists. “What do you think?”

  “Flashy. You look like the baked potato that ate Chicago. Seriously, you think you’re going to need it, down there?”

  “I hope not, but I wouldn’t want to guess wrong and find myself without it. I might like to have kids some day, you know?”

  The last vestige of the radioman’s smile vanished. “I hear you.”

  By the time the S-76 rumbled into the impact area the chopper’s crew was all business. Smoke still rose from blackened trees. The forest fire had burned briefly but intensely, helped along by a gusting breeze. It was out now only because the forestry service and local fire brigades had jumped on it hard and fast.

  Shermin tucked his helmet under an arm. Local monitors already on the scene would inform him if it was necessary. He peered out the side window as they hovered above the devastated area. It was immediately apparent that something more than a simple forest fire had damaged this part of southern Wisconsin.

  In addition to the trees incinerated in the fire there was a long black swath that ran through otherwise untouched forest from west to east. Something had cut through the woods with irresistible force. The path of destruction ended near the center of the fire and was centered on a shallow but still impressive impact crater. Around the crater trees hadn’t been burned as much as they’d been flattened, their needles and leaves and smaller branches blasted off.

  “Jesus,” Shermin muttered.

  “Looks like somebody set off a big one, huh?” Lemon commented without looking up from his equipment.

  “Something like that,” was Shermin’s noncommittal reply. He knew full well that no bomb had caused this havoc, but his employers would crucify him if he started volunteering his professional opinion to the uniformed help. So he kept his thoughts to himself. Lemon took the hint and didn’t ask a second time.

  Two more helicopters were in view, flying circles around the crater, as the S-76 settled down in the impact area. They were smaller Hueys, flying patrol. Farther off Shermin saw a fully armed Apache keeping watch on the lake. Woe to any curious pilots of private aircraft who unwisely strayed into this off-limits chunk of airspace.