Starman

by Alan Dean Foster

  Shermin was first out, putting up a hand to shade his eyes from the intense red-orange glow. Even at a distance the heat was daunting. Anything within fifty feet of the blaze would be incinerated in seconds.

  Shermin was certain nothing could be brighter than that gasoline fire, but he was wrong. He knew he was wrong when he saw the three beams of laserlike light pierce the smoke and flame. The light grew brighter as he stared at it, heedless of any danger to his eyes. It exploded outward in rainbow brilliance, punching through the inferno and the smoke-filled night. And it came from the still flaming corpse of the Mustang.

  As he squinted through his tears at the conflagration the door on the passenger’s side of the carbonized car fell off its hinges. Something came out. It wasn’t on fire, wasn’t even smoking, and that was impossible, impossible. But it was happening, he was seeing it. It looked like Scott Hayden—or whatever it was that had chosen to adopt the guise of Scott Hayden. In its arms it held the unconscious and apparently unburned body of Jenny Hayden, and both of them were coming out of the flames on a broad beam of light.

  Shermin knew it was happening because everyone else saw it, too. Up on the hilltop several of the onlookers turned and fled in panic. One of the state troopers fell to his knees and commenced to pray. The rest just stood there in shock and stared, unable to move. The smoke grew dense around them.

  Something surrounded Jenny Hayden and the being who cradled her in his arms. Something different from the ashes and flames. It flickered and pulsed, enclosing them in a protective cocoon of polarized light. It was at once beautiful and terrifying.

  The starman was staring hard at his surroundings, and this time the expression on his face wasn’t a mimickry of something seen before. It flowed straight out of the basic, raw human emotion his human frame was heir too. It was not controlled, and it was full of anger.

  The light breeze which had sprung up in the wake of the tanker’s explosion now died. Smoke closed in tightly around the impossibility. Police and onlookers alike began coughing and running in search of cleaner air. Shermin stood there, coughing his lungs out, until Lemon came and pulled him bodily back inside the helicopter.

  Night closed in and hid what the thick black smoke did not.

  Seven

  The wreckage was still smoldering the following morning when the big truck wrecker finally succeeded in dragging it off to the side of the road. Firemen stood ready nearby and continued to drench the steaming metal frame, alert lest the heat spread fire to the surrounding brush. Tired police began directing the long line of backed-up traffic around the seared splotch of highway. Exhausted drivers, many of whom had spent the night discussing what they thought they’d seen amidst the smoke and confusion, climbed back into their cars and prepared to resumed their interrupted travels.

  One cop had been delegated to break the good news to the impatient truckers. “All right, all clear up ahead. Let’s crank ’em up and move ’em out, boys!”

  “With pleasure!” replied the first in line. His colleagues readily agreed with him, though they voiced their feelings in more colorful terms as they scattered to their respective rigs.

  The growls of big Detroit diesels filled the crisp dawn air, sending foraging birds racing for quieter climes. One at a time the big trucks moved out into the newly opened lanes.

  One extra-long flatbed had half a mobile home lashed to it. As he headed for his cab, the driver noticed that one of the bottom flaps of the polyethelene sheet that sealed off the center of the home-to-be had become unfastened. He pulled the loose tab through an eyebolt and tied it securely before climbing into his cab and firing up the engine.

  The starman lay motionless on the floor of the mobile home, waiting and listening as the truck started to move. Despite his best attempts to cushion Jenny, the sudden jostling woke her. She cried out in pain and looked up at him without seeing him. Then her eyes glazed over again. Her breathing had become slow and labored. Her right side was covered with dried blood where the blouse had been soaked through.

  The bouncing eased once the big truck was back out on the smooth highway and up to speed. Their driver knew his business and ran through the gears with nary a jerk.

  Moving on his belly, the starman crawled to the edge of the half house and lifted the lower edge of the plastic seal. Scenery was racing past. The air was warm and dry. There were no signs of following police. He let the flap fall back into place and hurried back to Jenny.

  She had lapsed into unconsciousness. After a moment he removed her blouse and compared his skin color to her own. He knew that pigmentation varied widely among humans, but Jenny’s was too pale even for her own light-skinned type. Gingerly, he moved her right arm away from her body so he could check her side. She was still bleeding. She wouldn’t last through the day.

  He put a hand over her heart, moved it slowly up to her forehead. He could hear the air flowing slowly in and out of her chest. Comparing his own body to hers, he discovered that her heartbeat had become slow and irregular. The life-support system that was the human body was less complex than many he had studied. Jenny’s was hovering dangerously close to failure.

  He reached into a pocket and brought out the two remaining gray spheres. One he slipped back into the windbreaker. The other he crushed in his right hand. Light and heat began to emerge from between his clenched fingers.

  He started with her face, where a piece of shattered window glass had cut the skin. The resultant wound was jagged and ugly. Placing the hand holding the sphere over the site of the injury, he pressed gently. A sharp pain went through him but he did not move his hand. The sphere would not do such work by itself. There had to be organic input from an outside source, and he was the only source available. It put considerable strain on his already weakened self, but there was no thought of hesitating.

  When he finally pulled away his hand he was relieved to see that the wound had disappeared without leaving a scar. He’d been especially careful about that. Repeated observations indicated that these people placed great store in their facial appearance.

  More confident now, he went to work on her side and the darker, deeper injuries there. Her skin became almost transparent. Deep within her body, small fragments of lead shot began to glow as the starman manipulated the healing energies of the sphere. He was struggling both to seal the wounds the shotgun had produced and to reduce the imbedded metal to harmless particles of microscopic size. He worked slowly and with patience. It was not the first time, after all, that he had worked on a human body. He’d already fashioned one for himself.

  It took time. The body would make use of the iron, but the lead would have to be completely eliminated from Jenny’s system. It was a complicated piece of work.

  Once, the whole rig swerved violently as the driver was forced to cut in front of a couple of old pickups doing no better than forty. The starman gritted his teeth and held his position, not daring to break the healing chain that linked him to Jenny. If it was broken now, there might not be enough energy left in the sphere to reestablish the bridge.

  Eventually the time came when the last of the damaging pellets had been dissolved, the final nerves and blood vessels repaired. Letting out a long sigh of relief and exhaustion, he sat back against a kitchen cabinet and cradled her in his arms. It was easy to check her vitals and he was gratified to observe that both her breathing and heartbeat had returned to normal.

  “It was my fault.” Even as he whispered to her he was aware of the absurdity of the apologia. She was sound asleep and couldn’t hear a word he said, but for some reason voicing the mea culpa aloud in the alien tongue made him feel better. “My fault. I am so sorry.”

  As he sat there, listening to the miles slide past beneath the flatbed’s thick tires, he thought back to something he’d learned not long ago while watching the visual communications device. It was something he’d been wanting to try. Under the present circumstances it took on a new significance.

  He bent over and kissed her li
ghtly. She did not respond, though she stirred ever so slightly in her sleep. His human form did. It was the simplest and most uncomplicated gesture he had performed since he’d assumed his human shape.

  It was also in many ways the most enlightening.

  The bird woke Jenny. Cars and trucks had been coming and going all around her for hours and she’d slept through everything. But there’s something about the raucous call of a blue jay that’s just as penetrating if not quite as loud as an air horn. It made her blink.

  She was lying on the floor of a house, only it was a funny kind of house. There was no furniture, only built-ins. Linoleum was smooth and cool beneath her. Raising her head enabled her to see a sink and dishwasher, cabinets and countertops, but not a hint of decoration.

  There was also something that didn’t belong in any house: the sound of a CB blasting away somewhere nearby.

  “Flash for all you good buddies heading west on seventy,” the heavily accented voice was declaiming. “They’ve got a roadblock in place just out of Grand Junction. Don’t ask me why, but better dump your dope and anything else you oughtn’t to have. Looks like this is serious business. They’re takin’ names and kickin’ ass.”

  A crackling sound as other voices all tried to join in simultaneously. Jenny was fully awake now. What had happened? She’d been asleep, and soundly for the first time in days. She felt refreshed and fully rested. That didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense because . . .

  She remembered the shock of the impact as the slugs from the riot gun had torn into her side, remembered the dizzying pain before the darkness had engulfed her. She sat up and the windbreaker that had been covering her fell off. Dazed, she looked down at it. It was his.

  Her eyes went to her ribs, her hands to her face. The skin was smooth and unmarred. But—she’d been shot. She remembered it clearly, remembered the feel of the window glass tearing into her cheek as she’d tried to turn away. The gun had been so close, had hurt so bad. As a little girl she’d been kicked in the side by a horse. That was what the shot reminded her of. But there was no evidence of it now, except for the memory.

  There was something else, too. On her right side beneath the last rib she’d had a mole, ever since she could remember. Not a big one, but she’d always worried about it despite numerous doctors’ repeated insistence that it presented no danger to her. It was gone too.

  What had happened? Had everything been a dream?

  Another piece of clothing lay nearby. She reached over and picked up the blouse she’d been wearing, unfolded it and saw the extensive bloodstains. Her blood. It covered half the blouse, the entire right side and all the way around at the waist. End of dream theory.

  Slipping into the windbreaker, she zipped up the front and began searching the floor. Her purse lay nearby. She ignored it, stood up and started through the other rooms. The CB outside came to life again.

  “The block’s on I-70 just east of Grand Junction. It’s not just local smokies, either. There’s army paratroopers out there too and they’re checking papers. Any you illegal beagles out there drivin’ better detour down through Delta. Way I hear it is they’re lookin’ for some young stud who’s supposed to have kidnapped a chick . . .”

  Jenny’s eyes went wide. Grand Junction? That didn’t sound like Nebraska. Colorado, maybe. How long had she been unconscious? It was morning outside. Only one night, then. Somehow her wounds had healed completely overnight. Look as she might, she couldn’t find a single scar, much less any sign that she’d taken a shotgun blast in the ribs. There wasn’t much doubt about the source of her miraculous cure. The resurrected deer was still fresh in her memory.

  But where was he?

  She crossed to the side of the house and slipped under the bottom edge of the thick polyethelene sheet, found herself standing in an expansive parking lot. There were a half dozen eighteen-wheelers parked neatly side by side like ships in a Navy yard, a few cars, several RVs, and one beat-up but flashy pickup equipped with chrome roll bar, a big number thirteen painted on its hood and doors, and enough spotlights to illuminate the big room at Carlsbad Caverns.

  At the back of the parking lot was a long, low single-story building that looked as old as the surrounding mountains. The sign above the entrance read ELMO’S. She hurried toward it.

  The booths and the counter were busy. A small horde of tourists and quietly chatting truckers were deep into breakfast. She didn’t give a thought for subtlety and had no time for it anyway.

  “Who’s hauling the mobile home?” She had to shout to make herself heard over the peripatetic children. Few of the tourists bothered to look up, but all the truckers did.

  One of them replied, “I am. Why?”

  She walked over to him. His companions silently bemoaned their lack of potential good fortune and returned to their meals.

  “I’m looking for a fella,” she said softly. “He might’ve been riding on the back of your rig. About twenty-six. Brown hair, eyes, six foot, one seventy or so. Chinos, red plaid shirt. Might’ve passed him on the road hitchhiking if he wasn’t with you.” She raised her voice, repeated the description and the query. “Anybody? Anybody see him?”

  A series of denials, followed by a few offers to replace the services of the missing gentleman. She smiled but ignored the latter as she headed for the rear of the restaurant. It was near a back door and the phone was enclosed.

  She shut the double doors behind her and took out her wallet, hunted through it until she found a quarter. Setting the wallet and her purse down next to the phone, she dropped the quarter into the slot and dialed O.

  “I want the police,” she told the operator.

  Shermin was standing close to the chopper, watching as the paratroopers politely questioned irate motorists and searched car trunks, vans, and campers. The troops weren’t his idea. He thought they were too visible. But Fox had insisted. Considering the mess the local cops had made of things Shermin wasn’t very vocal in his objections, even though both men knew it was going to make it tougher than ever to keep everything out of the papers. They’d already had to deal with a local UPI stringer out of Denver who’d come sniffing around earlier this morning. Fox had managed to get rid of him by promising him an exclusive later on when the “real” story broke. The reporter had departed only partly mollified. Shermin knew that the first thing the man was going to do when he got back to Denver was report the whole business to his bureau chief. Then the fat would really be in the fire.

  For the moment, though, they had preserved Operation Visitor’s anonymity. It wouldn’t last forever and they weren’t making much progress. They had to find him soon, before the media hordes latched onto what was really going on. Then science would lose out to the inevitable circus that would follow. Knowledge of that reality was the main thing that kept two such disparate personalities as Fox and Shermin working smoothly together.

  He thought back to the incredible events of the previous night, remembered trying to explain them to Fox.

  “Never mind,” the chief of security had finally told him. “The main thing is that we can’t risk a reoccurrence. Next time some innocent bystanders are liable to get blown away. If that happens it’ll be my neck as well as yours.”

  “Why me?” Shermin had replied. “I’m just a lousy consultant. Tactics aren’t my department.”

  “Try telling that to a congressional panel of inquiry.” With that, Fox had broken the connection.

  Shermin wished that a congressional panel of inquiry could have witnessed the unexplainable on the highway last night, but he wasn’t having much luck lately getting his wishes fulfilled. A voice interrupted his musing. Lemon stuck his head out the chopper door.

  “Hey, Mark! You’re wanted on the horn. Urgent.”

  “Isn’t it always,” he muttered as he turned to enter the helicopter. Lemon thrust mike and earphones at him. He slipped the phones indifferently over his head. Probably some local cop who thought he might maybe perhaps possibly have
seen their quarry. Every law enforcement officer in the central United States was trying to make a name for himself by finding the fugitive the government wanted so badly. Shermin had resigned himself to dealing with hundreds of false sightings. They couldn’t afford to ignore any of them, though. The least positive might turn out to be the most accurate.

  Anyhow, talking on the radiophone was more interesting than standing and staring at the roadblock.

  Jenny considered hanging up and trying again. “Hello. Hello? I’ve been cut off. I was talking to the police, please.”

  What had happened to her connection? One minute she’d been talking with a desk sergeant, then with his superior, and the next thing she knew the line was full of beeps and squawks. She was about to hang up when a new voice came on the line. It was pleasant and chatty, reassuringly friendly even over the static.

  “Hello, Mrs. Hayden? I’m not the police. They very kindly referred your call through to me. My name’s Shermin, Mark Shermin. I’m with the National Security Agency.”

  She frowned. “Like the FBI?”

  “Sort of. We’re just not quite as visible. I understand you wanted to speak with somebody about a kidnapping?”

  “Yes. Well, the thing is, there wasn’t any kidnapping.”

  A pause at the other end of the line. “I see. You know, I had the opportunity to talk to that real-estate lady of yours, Mrs. Hayden—what’s her name again? She seemed to think you’d met with some kind of foul play.”

  “It’s Gretchen Gilman. She’s with Gilman Realtors in Ashland. But you probably know that already, since you say you’ve talked to her. Is she okay?”

  “Worried about you is all. There was that bullet hole in the window of your living room. We’re all worried about you, Mrs. Hayden.”

  “Well you don’t have to be. I’m fine. I don’t know about any bullet hole in my window but there aren’t any in me.” Not since he fixed me up, anyway, she reminded herself. “All I’m calling for is to clear up this business about kidnapping. See, it’s kind of complicated, but what’s really happening is that . . .”