Black Desert

by Peter Francis

  “I have doubts,” confessed Ramirez.

  “Then here is a thought – don’t decide what can’t be done until you’ve tried every way to do it. Forget physics – it’s always behind reality.”

  “This lobster is really good,” said Stiers in an effort to move the conversation. He did not wish to be depressed and wanted again to hug his children and hoist them into the air while they giggled and screamed in delight.

  “It is,” agreed Ogden. “Those chefs in there certainly know how to present a simple yet delicious feast.”

  Ramirez, however, was not yet done. “Assuming we can move in time, do you have any plans to destroy the aliens or are we just going to pull faces and shout ‘yah boo’ and wave our bosoms at them?”

  “I am working on that,” said Ogden with a serious note to his voice.

  “Good thing, Paunchy…”

  “You keep calling Daniel ‘Paunchy’ and I will jab my fork into your groin,” said the Professor.

  “If you want to eat me, Prof, I have a better way.”

  “There are only two people in this crew who are having sex,” said Lillishenger. “And you are not one of them. Perhaps you need to change your attitude somewhat.”

  “I am sure he has plenty of sex,” said Gowan. “It’s just not with anybody.”

  “Look…”

  “You are correct regarding his attitude,” said Ogden.

  “Look…”

  “Do you think he has a chip on his shoulder in addition to the potato round his mouth?” asked Lillishenger.

  “Look…” said Ramirez and smeared his face with the paper napkin.

  “I think there is hope for the boy,” said Ogden. “Maybe not in this lifetime.”

  Ramirez gained control of his mouth. “Do you really have a plan?” he asked.

  “I believe I do but I will need to conduct some more experiments with the Professor.”

  “Will they involve removing your clothes together?” asked Ramirez. “Aaah!” He leapt in the air clutching at his leg. “Damn, you stabbed me in my thigh.”

  Lillishenger stayed unmoved. “I was aiming for your penis,” she said. “Anyway, it was just the tip of my fork. There isn’t even any blood.”

  Ramirez rubbed his leg and sat down again then looked at Ogden. “You’d better watch out, Pau…Ogden. This crazy woman has been here too long. You’re likely to be walking around with assorted kitchen flatware sticking out of your vitals.”

  “It surprised you, is all,” said Lillishenger.

  “A fork in the gonads often does,” complained Ramirez but went back to tucking in to his lobster. “I’m just warning Ogden. No man wants to walk around with kitchen implements stuck in his proverbials.”

  “Professor, you will refrain from stabbing Ramirez with your fork or anything else,” said Stiers. “And you will also refrain from discussing your love life.”

  “Isn’t there some Fleet rule about sex between Fleet officers while on active duty,” said Ramirez and watched as Lillishenger’s hand wander close to her knife.

  “That hasn’t stopped you from haranguing Gowan at every opportunity,” said the Captain. “So watch your mouth and focus on the job ahead – however impossible it may seem.”

  “The Prof still hasn’t explained the difference between rotation and spinning,” said Ramirez. “I’m all ears.”

  “And I figured you thought of yourself as being all dick,” said Gowan.

  “Enough,” said Stiers.

  “Let’s forget all talk of slingshots round the sun and other such crap,” said the Professor. “Let’s think instead of movement itself. It is generally accepted that those on board a vessel moving at light speeds and above would age more slowly than those who remain on Earth. My point is, why do you have to be travelling through space to achieve this? It is the travelling at greater than light speeds that causes this phenomenon. Think about the Japanese trying to develop a train. You don’t need an engine, they decided. You just need electromagnets in a line which come on, attract the train then die as the next one hums into action. Phenomenal speeds can be achieved. There are centrifuges that can revolve at 65 million miles an hour just using motors and gears. Virtual stationary light speeds are attainable – without actually moving through space very far at all.”

  “But you are talking about laying a track,” said Gowan.

  “No – a circular track, and a small one at that.”

  “Let’s have coffee,” suggested Ogden.

  “No,” said Lillishenger. “Go for iced tea. American coffee in these places is just awful. I haven’t yet found a Costa or Starbucks – not locally, anyway.”

  They ordered iced tea apart from Stiers, who endured the weak gruel known locally as coffee. “No wonder they give you free refills,” he said. “You could hardly give this stuff away.”

  “All I’m concerned about, Prof, is that you feel optimistic about finding a way back to our own time.”

  “There are problems to be overcome,” she admitted and finished her tea.

  They settled the bill and stood up to leave. Outside the Jeep waited patiently in the balmy air. They climbed aboard and drove back to the road out of town.

  “We must continue our analyses tomorrow,” said Ogden. “I believe there is still much information regarding that ship to be yielded.”

  “We’ll tackle it from different angles,” said Stiers. “The Professor and Ramirez will look for weaknesses in the alien vessel while the rest of us seek a way of knocking them out.”

  “We don’t know enough about them,” said Gowan.

  “It doesn’t matter what we know at the moment – it’s up to Ogden and the Professor to give us some options – we still have to discover what weapons we can manufacture against them.”

  “There’s a light tailing us,” said Ramirez. “I keep seeing a single light behind – a long way behind but noticeable on the straights.”

  “Coincidence,” said Gowan. “Other people must use this road.”

  “Not many,” said Lillishenger. “And there is no shift change at the plant.”

  “Stop and let him pass,” said Stiers. “Whoever it is.”

  Lillishenger found a spot a few hundred metres further on and pulled the Jeep in to wait. After several minutes, nothing had passed them. Ramirez kept glancing behind but the road was empty. “I did see a light,” he said.

  “Drive on, please,” said the Captain and Lillishenger moved them forward and after a short while they reached the centre of Holmgrove. Ramirez kept watch and shortly said, “That light is back – or one like it.”

  “That could have come from anywhere,” said Lillishenger. “From one of the side roads. Keep an eye on it anyway.”

  As they reached the edge of town and plunged into the blackness beyond, Ramirez said, “Whatever it was turned off at the last road back there.”

  “Was it one light or two?” asked the Professor.

  “Two lights close enough together to be one,” he said.

  “Mmm. Hard to figure what it was. Motorcycle probably.”

  “Well, it’s gone now,” said Ramirez and faced forward again. The Jeep pulled up alongside the high fence and Lillishenger stepped out and opened one of the tall gates. She drove inside then stepped out to lock it behind her.

  “If anybody was following, that will keep them out,” she said.

  The Jeep drove round to the back of the huge workshop and they stepped out to go inside the house but Lillishenger stopped them and instead opened the small door to the large structure. She turned on the lights and they followed her inside. The Defender sat soporific in the corner, its chameleon cells trying to hide it in white.

  “What do you notice?” asked the Professor.

  They looked around and Ramirez shrugged. “Nothing.”

  There was general agreement and the Professor smiled. “Good,” she said. “Is anything missing?”

  They looked around. Ramirez said, “That old Dodge has gone. When did y
ou move it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “It was right there,” said Ramirez and pointed to a corner. “It’s plainly not there now so you obviously moved it.”

  “I have not moved it. Tell me what you see?”

  “Just the workshop – just the white walls.”

  Ogden squinted his eyes and Stiers merely stared.

  “Are the walls clear?” asked Lillishenger. “No, a tad fuzzy like I have something in my eye,” said Gowan. “Where is the station wagon if you didn’t move it?”

  “Oh, it’s right there.” She stepped closer to the corner and pressed something like a TV remote she kept in the Jeep. The old, battered Dodge leapt into sharp focus. Gowan and Ogden both jumped back.

  “You cloaked it, you clever old Prof,” said Ramirez and walked forward to touch the car. “How did you do it?”

  “You are all still young enough to be fooled,” said Lillishenger. “A much older person would have seen it normally. The Alpha part of the brain declines with age which is why stage hypnotists mostly select young people for their tricks. Alpha brain is strong in the young. Essentially I have attached a device to this automobile which sends a message to the Alpha brain saying, in essence, ‘you cannot see me. I am not here’. It works very well with everybody except the elderly.”

  “How come Ogden was fooled?” said Ramirez.

  “Don’t make him out to be old. He won’t be fooled when he is 80 – nor will you.”

  “Can you apply it to our craft?” asked Stiers.

  “This will be too small but I can build a better one with longer range,” said the Professor. “And I can see we are going to need it.”

  “As soon as our analyses are complete, build it,” he said. “Ramirez will help.”

  “If we plan to do any travelling in Challenger we should work on the device straight away,” said Lillishenger. “It will be faster in the interim to upgrade the one presently in the Dodge in the interim. With the help of Ramirez I could have that installed sometime tomorrow.”

  “Fine by me,” said Ramirez.

  “Agreed,” said Stiers. “Anything we can do to camouflage the ship should take priority. We have all the time in the world to deal with other matters. How complex is the decloaker?”

  “It is essentially a radio,” said the Professor. “A finely tuned radio transmitter.”

  “I’m for bed, then, and an early start,” said the Captain.

  “I also,” said Ogden.

  “You hardly made an early start this morning,” Ramirez pointed out. “Perhaps a little less of the hippo wrestling will help.”

  Ogden’s face went a deep shade of a colour that in other circumstances might have indicated an apoplectic attack. “I’m certain your private life is of no interest to me,” he said.

  “I don’t have one,” said Ramirez.

  “Really?” queried Gowan. “Didn’t you read that book ‘Learning About Your Own Body Appendages’?”

  “I know what my bits are for.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Enjoy them.”

  “And what about you, Gowan? Do you roll up your blanket between your thighs or do you prefer to let your fingers do the walking?”

  “I oughta…”

  “I am depressed about having to come between you two all the time,” said Stiers. “Why don’t you just make love to each other and get it out of the way so we can focus on getting home and saving civilisation?”

  “Don’t even joke about that, Captain,” said Gowan. “I would rather go in for surgical removal of my interesting parts than allow this lower class urchin into my bed.”

  “I have seen your boobies, Gowan, and my tongue isn’t hanging out yet.”

  “Are they always like this?” the Professor asked Ogden.

  He nodded. “Pretty much,” he said.

  “Did they ever have an affair?” Gowan looked about to throw up and Ramirez scowled.

  “I seriously doubt that,” that Ogden. “I haven’t seen the heavens split asunder and all life cease – not yet.”

  “Believe me, you’re never going to,” said Gowan.

  “She would have to beg me,” said Ramirez.

  “They are so humble,” said Gowan.

  “As I said, I’m off to bed,” said the Captain.

  Ramirez was shocked. “I do the rhymes, Captain.”

  “Accident of words,” said Stiers.

  They locked up the hangar and went inside the house and made chocolate to take to bed. They sat around and chatted a while but knowing that work would be the first order next day, they one by one retired. Ramirez was last, after first heading for the old dining room and studying the dollar bills experiment. He thought for a while then tutted and went to bed. Lillishenger must had been treated to an ample ration the night before because all was quiet from the room she shared with Ogden. He smiled and when in his own room, undressed and pondered the problems of what happens to the human body at faster that light speed travel. The results of his imaginings were not pleasant. But life was good – and tomorrow he would learn more about camouflage.

  There was a soft tap at his door and it opened slowly. Gowan stood there in night clothes that revealed nothing of her body. She said, “For the sake of all of us, we have to stop digging at each other.”

  “What? And take all the humour out of life,” he responded.

  “I tried,” she said then closed the door and left.

  Ramirex rested and thought deeply about surviving light speeds until sleep took him back to his family.

  The next morning they rose early and Stiers beat Ramirez to their shared bathroom. He knocked on the door. “You can let me in, Captain. I’m not shy. We can share.”

  “Sorry, Ramirez, but I’ve no plans to share the WC with you. It only seats one.”

  “I’ll wait then,” said Ramirez. “Better tell the others I may be ten minutes late.”

  “The extractor fan is on.”

  “Okay. I must confess this old time food certainly comes with its own after smells – especially the hamburgers.”

  “Can you either go away or find another topic of conversation, pard?”

  “Okay, big guy.”

  Ramirez moved along the corridor a few feet and paused by Gowan’s bathroom and listened. She shouted, “You’re too late. I’ve already had my shower.”

  Damn, he thought. How did she know I was there? He decided not to respond but crept back to his room and waited for a vacancy. After they had all showered and breakfasted, Lillishenger took them into her temporary lab and opened her experiment in time travel. She took out the dollar bill with protection and the other plastic tube. The bill inside the tube was still fresh but the unprotected bill was faded and the paper was brittle.

  “American money is about 25 per cent cotton,” she said. “The cotton survives but the paper hardens and dries out.”

  “Is that going to happen to us?” asked Ramirez.

  “You object to going hard?” whispered Gowan and received a glare from the Captain.

  “Not if we are protected like the other bill was.”

  “I don’t think I’ll fit in that tube,” said Ramirez.

  “Your dick will,” said Gowan and received an even sharper glare.

  “I am hoping the ship itself will protect us from the worst,” said the Professor. “The speed of travel is what worries me. We’ll think about that. Meanwhile let’s go to Challenger and continue our studies.”

  They all moved over to the large structure and Lillishenger opened up. A motorcycle cruised by on the road and continued towards the nearby Canyon. The Professor said, “That’s all you sometimes see on that road – motorcycles and quad bikes travelling the desert for fun. I don’t think young people have that much else to do.”

  “That was not a young person,” said Ogden. “I would estimate his age at somewhere in his thirties. I think that in this time that would be approaching middle age.”

  “It’s a viewpoint,” said Lillishenger as
they went inside and closed the doors.

  She and Ramirez let the others inside to work in the ship while they selected tools and began to dismantle the cloaking device from the Dodge. Ramirez was surprised at how crude it was, comprising circuit boards inside a plastic lunch box. Wires linked it to storage batteries in the trunk which were charged by the station wagon’s charging system. The transmission mast was a circle of metal fitted to the rood of the car on the outside.

  “I had to do that because of the metal of the car body,” said the Professor. “Challenger has a multilayer construction containing very little metal – apart from lithium and titanium strands. This means we should be able to fabricate a transmitter that is larger and uses the craft’s nuclear power. That will give us longer range and better cover. It may take a while to rejig these circuits.”

  “No, Prof, if you can draw it we can make in on board in minutes,” said Ramirez.

  “Of course. You have the 3D replication system.”

  “Yes,” said Ramirez proudly. “We do.”

  “Thank God for that. We can just about have this completed, installed and tested in one day.”

  “Just feed in your circuit boards, specify the changes you want to make, and permit the device to select its own manufacturing materials.”

  “I was born a decade too early,” said the Professor.

  “We were all born in the wrong decade, Prof, or we wouldn’t be here.”

  It took all of ten minutes to carefully dismantle the device from the Dodge and Ramirez was put to fabricating a new aerial. Which he did in the old fashioned way in the workshop. Lillishenger had suggested a diameter of about a meter. He was almost finished when Gowan arrived on a break from inside. “What are you making?” she asked.

  “It’s a cock ring,” he said. “For me.”

  “I tried,” she said, repeating her phrase from the night before and went back inside, leaving Ramirez ready to kick himself. After struggling with his conscience he put aside what he was doing and sought her out where she sat at her screens analysing data.

  “I apologise,” he said.

  “If it had been a half inch across I might have believed you about the cock ring,” said Gowan.