Voyage

by C. Paul Lockman

  Falik puffed out her cheeks. It was very cute. “Our computers are still mostly down and gravity… well, you can see.” Everything which wasn’t attached to a surface, including everyone aboard, was freely floating in zero-G. “They think we’ll have a 1-G rotation and our computers restored in a few days but for now we’re running a very simple ship.”

  I held her tight, never wanting to let go. She smiled at me, her perfect, beautiful smile which always seemed to say ‘everything’s OK’. “Where are we?” I managed to say.

  “Right where we’re supposed to be!” barked the Captain, as jolly as I’d seen him. “We’re in cruise right now. Going to start decelerating tomorrow. Should be there in five days. Are you alright?”

  I nodded. Falik explained that I, and most of the passengers and crew, had passed out as the ship approached light speed; I had simply stayed out for a lot longer, on account of this ‘flashback’. The engines had worked almost too well, accelerating us to within 0.4% of the speed of light, which had caused a number of strange effects. Time, for one thing, had slowed down markedly. Three days had passed on board, but we would have to re-set our watches and clocks. Nearly a month had gone by, as perceived by all those who were not at lightspeed. This dilation of time would continue until we began to decelerate. In essence, we had skipped a month, not even ageing during that time. It still made for a faster journey than a conventional, slow-speed cruise to the Outer Rim, the fastest of which took nearly a year.

  The vortex effect had been caused by the rate at which we had approached our highest speed. It caused massive electric failures but, mercifully, no structural problems. The ship was as sound as a bell, the Captain declared, proud of his vessel. Engineers were working on the problems, and we would request an analysis from Holdrian once our communicators were working again. Without the replicators, we were down to stored emergency rations, mostly old-fashioned space food, rehydrated in packets, and canned food.

  There was sufficient power for our lecterns, however. Garlidan appeared in the bridge clutching his, having spent some time helping the engineers with the quantum effects. We caught up. He had not passed out, having experienced lightspeed before. In fact, he had taken a sleeping pill long before the journey even started and awoke feeling great, to find everyone unconscious and the ship in need of repairs. He had floated around the ship, waking people and plugging in his lectern to update the ship’s computers. According to the Captain, without Garlidan, we would have been in truly deep shit.

  “I think we owe you a drink.” George was still a little groggy but was up to serving scotch and Garlidan’s favourite fruit drink. “How did you know about the quantum effects?”

  Garlidan sipped his drink. “Oh, I’m an old hand at all this”, he said, rather nonchalantly. “Seen it all before”. I spread my hands to encourage him to tell the story, but he seemed reticent. “Never mind about that. Let’s finish this plan and get the last details to Holdrian once we’re in communications range. That should be tomorrow. They’ll want to know all of this in advance.”

  We hammered out the details. I would request a chrono-transfer, that is to travel through time, back to the 1960s. I would then travel at super-lightspeed, using a modified Takanli Cruiser, and arrive at the Earth just before the day I was taken from Snowdonia. Garlidan and I agreed that, given improvements in human abilities to detect incoming asteroids and such, I should try to keep off their scopes. The Perseids meteor shower would be underway, and it seemed the perfect cover. The Cruiser would streak into the atmosphere alongside chunks of comet rock, at night, and dive into a lake a mile from my mountain.

  With the breaking of dawn would begin the day I was abducted. It felt like a thousand years ago, even without the wonders of lightspeed, but it had been just less than 42 years. I had aged only seven months in that time, what with the Cosmic Sleep and our recent lightspeed experience. I would exit the Cruiser through an airlock and swim to the surface. I would store my suit and other belongings and climb the ridgeline from the opposite side, so that there was no way my old self would see my new self arriving. However, as a little treat and a method of ‘closure’ as Garlidan put it, I would experience seeing myself be taken up by the scout ship. That, I reasoned, sounded pretty cool. If startlingly weird.

  This ‘me’, recently arrived from Outer Space, would then take over from that ‘me’, who was being whisked away to Takanli. I would return home with my new suitcases and set up a headquarters for the restoration of my planet. The plan was in its advanced stages, but we were still researching. I drained my scotch once more. Damn, this was good stuff.

  “When was your last contact with Holdrian?” I wanted to know.

  “About an hour before we left Gaspirian orbit. They said everything was proceeding normally. Privately, I think some of the scientists believe you’re out of your mind.”

  I chuckled. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” He grinned.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “No, instead I’m absolutely certain you’re out of your mind.”

  *****

  Deceleration began. It was too subtle for anyone to detect, but the Captain reminded us that ship had been rotated 180 degrees and that the engines were now thrusting steadily in the direction of flight. We would slow down to a tidy orbital velocity around Holdrian for a minimum expenditure of fuel – and without further dynamic pressures on the ship. The relief on board was palpable.

  After 48 hours’ straight effort, the engineering team had got the computers back online. Daedalus was no longer deaf and blind. We tapped into a remote communications booster and let the Universe know that we were alive, repaired, and homing in on our destination. Garlidan and I resumed our research and finalised the plan for my work on Earth. The Holdrian scientists wanted only three weeks work-up time after our arrival. Then I would go.

  The rest of the time, Falik and I made love in as many rooms of the ship as we could manage. It became almost a challenge. At night, when the ship was truly deserted, we fucked in the engineering spaces, by the light of the decelerating engines. I had her on a dining room table. I bent her over a branch high up in the tallest tree in the atrium and slid into her beautiful, warm ass. And, of course, we floated together, locked in a carnal embrace, through the zero-G storage spaces, as I had first done with the Raptor. We dismissed George and had wonderful, illicit sex in the Captain’s bar, looking out at the stars. And in our cabin, our bolt-hole. Every night, three or four times.

  The pain of our impending separation never left me. I was horribly torn between love of my home and its people, and my love of this amazing woman and the exciting, distant we were travelling together. We tried not to talk about the future. It hurt too much. Falik liked to joke about how popular I would be among the Earth girls, with my upgraded physique and powerful sexual overdrive. About how I’d seem so much smarter than the other guys. About how great a time I would have.

  But I could barely imagine being without her. My constant companion for the last seven months, my interlocutor, translator, confidant, lover… God, can I do this without her? She would return with Daedalus, once I was settled in among the scientists at Holdrian. To follow me there, in her words, would be ‘a long, painful goodbye’. Best to get it over with, to begin moving on. But we would never forget. How could we forget?

  The ship’s newly-repaired readouts were showing velocities which didn’t require an order of magnitude in their name – I had set the cabin’s lectern to plain old miles per hour. Holdrian appeared in the far distance from the atrium windows. There was something odd about how it looked, but at this distance I couldn’t tell. I asked Garlidan and he got us some time with one of the ship’s telescopes. What we saw just about blew my mind.

  The planet was about the size of Mars, but lushly green. One could only ever see about half of the surface, the night side and the terminator, because the remainder was encircled by a gigantic semi-circular shield. I took a closer look. The shield
consisted of titanic sheets of advanced plastic which were held in place by orbiting stations, linked by thin fibres of metal. Sunlight was filtered, to eradicate harmful rays and control surface temperatures. The plastic’s photovoltaic properties generated a staggering amount of electrical power, which was beamed to the node stations and then down to the surface. These people, Garlidan explained, had seen the writing on the wall and had really done something about it.

  “No greenhouse effect here. No global warming, no rising seas. Complete control of their environment, through the highest technology. Don’t act like you’re not impressed.”

  I was. This was unbelievable. “How the hell did they get it up there?”

  Garlidan clicked his lectern, showing me what looked like a diagram of the system. “This dates from about ten thousand years ago”. I marvelled at the neat, self-contained whirling of Holdrian’s many natural satellites. “You see this moon?” He pointed to the lectern, indicating a body about the size of Io, a moon of Jupiter in my own system. “Can you find it in the sky?”

  I tapped the lectern for more help, gazed into the right part of space, and found nothing. “Can’t see it”, I confessed.

  “Well, does that answer your question about how they did all of this?”

  Wow. They had mined their own moon to extinction, in exchange for a safe, unmolested growing environment for life on their planet. “There are pieces of it still, mostly hollowed out and used as retreats, storage locations or manufacturing concerns. There are a bunch of them at L1”, he said, referring to the Lagrange Point between Holdrian and its sun, where gravitational conditions helped objects to simply hang in space. “And wait until you see their Science Institute. This shit will knock you on your ass.”

  I stared at Garlidan, then burst out laughing. “Just trying to sound a bit more like you… you know.” He gave up and waved away the gales of laughter, turning back to his lectern. “Hey…” he tried to shut me up, “hey, Earth Boy!” I suppressed my giggles. “Stay focussed here, will you? We’re arriving tomorrow. Get your act together. Are you ready for this?”

  I sobered up, nodded. “I am. Besides, there’s more time when I get there. I’ll be OK.”

  He paused for a moment and then said, quietly, “and are you ready to leave her?”

  I stared out into space for a second, then at the planet, and thought of my own. “No.” I said, simply. “But I’m going to have to.”

  Chapter XXVIII: Planet of the Time Lords

  During the night, Daedalus entered orbit around Holdrian and docked with its refuelling station. I woke early to watch the process from the atrium, perched on my high branch. The ship slid around the shield which protected the planet, which seemed to move beneath us as we circled in our orbit. The station then came into view. It was massive, perhaps the largest structure I had ever seen in space, and numerous ships were docked to it. Some resembled the Cruisers from Takanli, sleek and clearly designed to operate in atmospheres. Others were chunky transport ships, sucking down fuel for their next long-range cargo mission. Many of these, I knew, were fully automated. Crews would go insane on 3 year roundtrips to the Outer Rim or, even further, to the asteroid belt which encircled the furthest reaches of the system. Holdrian was host to a family of moons, mostly just huge balls of ice, captured comets and outer-rim asteroids. Many of them had been captured, broken down into water and rock, and utilized to create the shield, orbiting stations and fuelling depots. I marvelled at these people, and I’d yet to even meet one.

  Naturally, for a planet with this level of technological complexity, they had a space elevator. In fact, they had three, all at equatorial locations at different points on the surface. The massive, carbon nano-tube cable looped up into space, attached to large, roughly cuboid chunks of their former moon which had been hollowed out and used as counterweights and transport nodes.

  I bid a fond farewell to the Captain. We would speak again before the ship left, I knew, but he had done all we had hoped for, and more. His business was picking up, owing largely to new friendships formed during our tour; I was even allowed a brief moment alone with Jasira, who was tearfully staring out of her window at the rotating planet. We embraced, kissed tenderly, but stopped short of making love, preferring to keep perfect the memories we had created together. Xathan, hearing that I was on board for the last time, hurried to say his own goodbyes. We hugged in Jasira’s ante-room, muttering our own thanks, for memorable times, for crucial Red Cubes, for... well, let’s just call them explorations. Given how much I owed him – not just me, but the whole of humanity – I thought it best to consent to the ‘few kisses’ he just needed to deliver before I left. Short on time, I let him do as he wished. He passionately tongued my chest and stomach, begging me to pull down my pants and, when I did so, gratefully sucking my engorged cock. I accepted his attentions, only marginally discomforted by the decidedly unfeminine sensations of his tongue and hands on me.

  I checked my lectern as he enthusiastically fellated me; sixteen minutes to launch. They would wait, but I shouldn’t be late for any aspect of such an important meeting. His mouth withdrew and his hands took over. In a quiet, almost boyish voice, he asked, “would you like to finish inside me?”

  This was so clearly what he wanted, and quickly his clothes were gone and his muscular bum was spread, lubricated with saliva, and gently penetrated by my super-hard cock. His moans betrayed just how much he loved the sensation of being filled like this. I did not rush, but we both needed to come. Appreciating the uniqueness of the sensations, I passed my cock steadily, back and forth, into Xathan’s willing, hot rectum while he furiously stroked himself. As before, without needing to communicate, we sought mutuality. As his cum erupted over the carpet, I emptied my own contribution into his hot passage.

  Mutual washing, tender kissing, profuse thanks, and I was gone.

  *****

  Garlidan, Falik and I took a space taxi from Daedalus, which I left with a heavy heart, to one of the elevator nodes. We were joined by four members of the crew, engineering experts, who had arranged to take a week of classes from Holdrian’s scientists. This was a common request, I learned. Everyone wanted to study with these people, and I could readily see why.

  Once on the elevator, the true scope of the achievement which gave this planet its shield was made obvious. As we descended, the plastic permitted the cable to pass through it, sealing itself once more afterwards. Precise station-keeping meant that the cable would never strike one of the node stations. This was more than science, this was choreography. I was stunned. Even Falik, who was never one to shy away from celebrating Takanli’s technological accomplishments, was agape at the sight.

  Garlidan explained the history. “Holdrian was generally called a planet, but this is perhaps misleading. It is, in fact, a large, rogue moon, spun away from its parent planet. Opinions are divided as to if it began life in the proximity of Gaj, the gas giant which dominates mid-system space, or Bephra. Whichever it true, the moon was sent careering out and into a highly elliptical and irregular orbit.” He drew the orbital path with one hand, while the other, representing the sun, remained still. “Sometimes Holdrian comes within the orbit of Berjarai”, he explained, indicating the seventh planet with an index finger in the air, “and at other times, it is among the most distant planetoids from our star, way out past Jakalzzi’s orbit”.

  I marvelled at this news. How could life be sustained on a planet whose orbital characteristics brought such changes in temperature and lighting? The population would have had to adapt quickly, shielding their surface using the super-technology plastics we had seen from orbit. Necessity had truly been the mother of invention. And what extraordinary inventions they were.

  We zipped efficiently down the elevator cable. Holdrian was quite unlike the intensely built-up, concentratedly urban environment of Takanli, the baked, desert wastes of Jakalzzi or the stark mountains of Gaspiri. Instead, its cities were divided evenly throughout the surface, which from orbit were
the lush green colour of its massive forests. The largest cities were at the base of each elevator cable. Holdrian’s landmass was broken up, not unlike a huge archipelago, but each island was the size of Australia or Greenland. Between them, I could begin to see ships on their way from one to another. To be visible from this altitude, they must be huge, I reasoned. Lower still, I could make our the city and, as we slowed, the beautiful integration of nature and man. Like Takanli, there were parks everywhere. The city refused to encroach upon rainforest which bordered it, teaming with life. Its structures were largely low-level and unassuming, but architecturally eye-catching, aesthetically pleasing. I had a thousand questions at once.

  The doors of the elevator opened and we walked into a large hall. Various other humanoids, and some other beings, had ridden down and were now dispersing into the hall, meeting others, taking out communicators. Just like any transport node anywhere, but populated by ten species of beings. I recognised one or two, but quickly appreciated how far I was from Takanli. Many of these beings had built-in biotechnology, propulsion devices or sensory equipment, which turned them into slightly sinister cyborgs. One being, wreathed in electrical discharges which sparked whenever he touched the floor, floated along in a sphere of blue light. At the centre of the sphere I could see the being, a wizened, tiny creature in brown robes. What appeared to be a head was emerging from the robes, but I could see no eyes or ears. A blue strand reached out and seemed to flick my forehead.

  “Welcome to Holdrian! Try the Happy Hour at The Lazy Jakalzzian, 2300h through 2900h, all beverages 3% off!” He then floated out of the hall into the plaza which channelled arrivals into the city. We followed, a little self-conscious, hoping to be met by one of the science team. As we were about to enter the Plaza, a white light appeared amid the gantries which made up the tall, glass ceiling. It materialized, took on a faintly rectangular form, and descended towards us. Its shape and appearance are almost impossible to describe, which is ironic given the importance this being already had, and would continue to exert, on my journey. Perhaps it kept changing shape. It was like watching smoke, but smoke which was capable of organizing itself, taking new forms. It hovered before us. Then, blue strands emerged and connected to us all, remaining in place this time, latched to a point by my right temple.