by Alan Black
When both of then nodded, he jumped up. “Are you two up for a quick walk across the pasture?” He grabbed his backpack and attached sleeping bag without waiting for an answer and was halfway to the door before Gary and Marcy even finished listening to the question. It wasn’t a speed of sound issue as a certain cow in the back pasture could have explained. It was more of a human hearing versus listening issue. Most humans hear much more than they listen. Comprehension takes a tad bit longer than the sound itself. Reaction to the comprehension compounds the time lag. All of which was well understood by human psychologists and had no bearing whatsoever on why most human conversations seemed to drone on and on and on and on and on and on without any point whatsoever.
This listening versus hearing issue also had no impact on why people in conversations repeated themselves, or why they said the same thing more than once, or why they tried to say the same thing as many different ways as they could think of. With the exception of instructional situations where repetition is required, most people repeated themselves simply because they liked hearing themselves talk.
Larry was no exception when it came to talking just for the sake of talking. He could be quiet in a pool hall, well — at least when someone was trying to sink a difficult bank shot. He could be quiet waiting in line at the bank, well — when he couldn’t think of a reason to avoid going into town. He could be quiet on those rare days he went fishing, or at least any time he had his butt on the bank and his feet in the water.
However, his tractor, the four-wheeler and his old pickup truck could all testify that Larry could be a real chatterbox at times. The tractor and the truck found him occasionally informative and, on a rare occasion or two, even amusing. The four-wheeler, being a much less mature machine, thought Larry rambled on a bit too much, not to mention being a bit too gentle on the throttle.
Larry pointed out features of his farm as they walked. The morning dew was heavy on the grass and the air smelled of the sweet odor of clear, clean air. It was a beautiful morning to take a stroll before a long space voyage.
It didn’t take long to walk through the barbwire lane between the front steer pastures. The lane was wide enough to back up an eighteen-wheel cattle truck. At the point where the four pastures met, Larry pointed out his design for opening one pasture to the corral and cattle chute and then switching to another pasture. It eliminated the need to shuffle cattle between one pasture and the next during a roundup or at market time. Once through the gate between the steer and heifer pastures, Larry continued talking and pointing out watershed features and grass mixture.
He stopped talking when he realized he was talking to himself. He was alone. He was used to being alone and talking to himself. It just surprised him this time because he thought he had someone with him.
He looked behind him. Gary and Marcy were backed up against the cattle chute staring at the spaceships across the field. He had seen that look before. The wide-eyed stare of disbelief and horror was the exact expression Ol’ Bucky got come bath time. They even looked like they would try to bite if he dragged them any closer. Ol’ Bucky often tried to bite when he was being dragged to the big aluminum tub in the yard for his annual bathing.
Larry grinned to himself. Ol’ Bucky really liked baths once he got into the water. But he somehow never remembered it from one year to the next. He was sure Gary and Marcy would like Scooter and the other Teumess if they got the chance to meet them. Still, Marcy may not — stress may not — be much of a biter, but Larry had come to realize since Nancy left that he was a poor judge of the female half of the species. He could judge a cow. He could judge a book (whether by its cover or its content). He could judge good western music (not that new country stuff, but good old western stuff like Marty Robbins, the Riders of the Purple Sage, or Roy and Dale). He could even judge an apple pie, if he could remember to slow down and taste it. But, the older he got the more mysterious women became.
He walked back to where Gary and Marcy stood frozen against the cattle chute. Larry had to admit that he’d built a pretty sturdy cattle chute. It would easily hold a mean, three thousand pound bull that did not want to go into the back of a truck. It would hold half a dozen two-year-old steers. It would hold up against Gary and Marcy clinging to it for protection.
He just wasn’t sure how much protection it would provide against fourteen spaceships, should protection be needed. He was also sure it wouldn’t hold up if Scooter and the Teumess had landed on it instead of the open field. Scooter seemed to be a polite sort, so much so that they hadn’t smushed one of his cows on landing when she hadn’t moved out of the way fast enough.
“Interesting sort of sight for Kansas, wouldn’t you say?” Larry asked. The spacecraft were house-sized and wouldn’t look too out of place if they had driveways and garages, but they did look a bit odd hovering in the air about a foot over the top of the grass.
Gary tore his gaze away from the spaceships to stare at Larry. “I went to Army boot camp in California and saw some weird things in the land of fruits, nuts, and flakes. I think those … that … any one of those things — whatever the “H” it is — would look strange anywhere.” His eyes snapped back to the ships. His grip on the cattle chute was turning his knuckles white.
Larry laughed, “They are not an “it”. There are fourteen of them. And I imagine they wouldn’t look too out of place at Epcot Center in Florida, or even the Kennedy Space Center. I’m just imagining though, since I’ve never been to either place.”
“I’ve been to both of those places as a child,” Marcy said. “But I didn’t see anything like them at either of those places.” She never took her eyes off the Teumess spaceships. “Are they real UFOs?”
Larry said, “No. Actually, I think you would have to call them ULOs since they aren’t flying and have landed. That would be Unidentified Landed Objects, or maybe even just LOs since I have identified what they are. I’m pretty sure they’re real. When you get up close you can tell they aren’t made of plywood and glossy oil based paint.”
Gary said, “No.”
“No what?” Larry asked.
“I am not going to get close enough to see what they’re made off.”
Larry shrugged, “That’s your call, cousin. I can see why you’d need to stay back here because you’ve got a pregnant wife to protect and all.”
Gary snorted, but his eyes never left the ships. He did take one hand off the cattle chute and grab Marcy’s hand. He squeezed it tight, but he wasn’t about to splinter it like he was threatening to do with his other hand on the chute. “With all due respect to you and all my love to Marcy, having her here doesn’t have a dang thing to do with why I’m not going to get any closer to those things. And this is a might bit too close already.”
“They don’t seem to care.” Larry pointed to the cows grazing nearby.
“Yeah, but cows are stupid.”
Gary’s remark didn’t seem to offend any of the nearby cows. Maybe they were used to such comments by humans and maybe they just didn’t care. Whatever the cow’s reasoning, their “turn the other cheek” was a very mature attitude.
“Have you been inside? Did they kidnap you? Are you under mind control?” Marcy asked.
Larry answered the questions in order, “No. Not yet. I don’t think so, but if I was, how would I know? Look, I met the Teumess. They’re nice people. Not much like you or me, but nice anyway.”
He held up a hand about four feet off the ground. “They are about this tall, covered in red fur and look kind of fox-like. They need a bit of a hand with a problem they can’t handle themselves and I volunteered to go with them.”
Both Gary and Marcy tore their gaze away from the ships and looked at Larry.
“You freakin’ volunteered to go? Are you nuts?” Gary asked. As a measure of how emphatic he was, he really didn’t say “freak”, but actually used the other F word right in front of his pregnant wife, who — rather than look upset — looked as if she wholeheartedly agreed with her
potty-mouthed husband. “That was rule number one in the Army. Never volunteer for anything.”
“I heard that. But, I knew this guy at college. He was an Air Force vet. He said that he always volunteered for the first thing offered up. He said he once volunteered and ended up giving blood and taking the day off. But the rest of his flight ended up doing K.P. for the day. He said he volunteered to help paint an officer’s office and the rest of his flight ended up scrubbing and painting trash dumpsters.”
Marcy said, “Scrubbing dumpsters isn’t like volunteering to go to space. You could end up as a center piece at their meal.”
Larry shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure they are rabid vegetarians, maybe even vegan. Still, I would rather volunteer for this than get wrapped up in what might happen if I don’t go and help.”
Larry had given considerable thought to what problems might be endangering the Teumess. Whatever it was, if they couldn’t handle it with their superior technology and they were being killed and eaten, then who was next on their adversary’s menu?
He wasn’t sure what one lone human could do, but if they thought he could help, he would. Even if Earth was never threatened, he liked Scooter, sort of. For an alien he was an okay kind of guy. He couldn’t hold his intoxicants worth beans, but nice enough. Besides, going on a space trip was sure a better excuse than he normally found for not mucking out the barn.
Larry said, “Oh, I’m not sure how long I’m going to be gone, but Gary, it would be great if you could find the time to muck out the barn for me. And I’m going to hold you both to your promise to keep this a secret.”
Marcy said, “Who are we going to tell? No one in their right mind is going to believe us. I see it with my own eyes and I’m not sure I believe it.”
“Good enough,” Larry said. “Actually, you two got enough trouble right now without being sent to the Big Crazy House. Well, the sun is up and the Teumess should be ready to open the door and hit the road, or the sky, or well — dog dung on a doorknob — we may shoot through a wormhole or straddle an alternate universe for all I know. You two kids have fun and I’ll see you when I get back.”
He didn’t want to add “if I get back”, but that’s what he thought as he walked to the spaceship. He tossed his backpack into the first open melted hatch he came to, thinking it might be the ship Scooter came in.
Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from them! (Jeremiah 9:2)
CHAPTER FIVE
LARRY looked around him. He was standing in a small airlock. It wasn’t much of an airlock. There were no knobs, readout displays, wheels, levers, or buttons. He recognized it as an airlock because it was just a small room between two heavy doors, or rather hatches. The whole thing looked exactly like the mudroom between his parent’s porch and their living room, except there wasn’t any mud, muddy boots, or mud covered coveralls, plus there weren’t any hat hooks, umbrella stands, or coat racks. Not to mention, at his parent’s house he would have been greeted by two yappy little, mop-like dogs and by Grandpa, probably sans underwear … again.
Both hatches were wide open. He wasn’t an expert on spacecraft airlocks, but he assumed the atmosphere and atmospheric pressure must be similar on the two planets. Scooter said the air was breathable for both species, but if he was the captain, he would still have kept the doors working in series instead of in tandem. The doors must seal tight as there was no evidence of grooves in the floor or walls, as he would’ve expected to see.
He based his expectation of grooves on his years of extensive experience in extraterrestrial vehicles from bad science fiction movies. Most of those movies were written by humans more interested in fiction than science; more interested in entertainment than true speculation. So far, the Teumess would have bored any movie-goer used to watching aliens who looked more like half-rotten zombie troll nightmares than curious woodland creatures from the sequel to Bambi.
He dragged his gear into the spaceship hallway and stood alone. He looked both left and right along the corridor, but there didn’t appear to be anyone home. The stillness felt exactly like going into a church on a Thursday morning. You expected someone to be there, the building was open and felt occupied, but there wasn’t anyone around. Not that Larry had much experience in going into churches, not on a Thursday or even a Sunday for that matter.
He stretched out a hand and touched the walls — bulkheads. He was going to have to remember to go full-on nautical with his terms. Nautical terms didn’t came natural to a Kansas farm boy, but he’d read enough books to know what was what. Bulkheads, decks, fore, aft, port, starboard, ladders, and hatches were terms he knew, but had little use for on a farm. He could have called his barn door a hatch, but Dad would have thought he had taken up raising chickens.
He rapped his knuckles on the interior bulkhead. It rapped a pleasant thunk, not at all like trying to hammer on the outside hull. The material didn’t look any different than the exterior hull, but it wasn’t configured for noise dampening.
He looked behind him. The hatches were still un-melted. He looked through the airlock and across the pasture. He waved to Gary and Marcy, still standing at the cattle chute. He was sure a wave was appropriate, as it was between humans. Gary waved back, somewhat hesitantly, somewhat by remote reaction, but following typical human convention.
Gary would have understood a Vulcan salute, as he would’ve easily understood a rude, middle-finger single-digit gesture, but neither would have been any more appropriate than Marcy’s response. Marcy looked ill. She bent over and retched into the grass. She heaved a few times with such violence Gary tore his eyes away from the spaceship to console his wife.
Larry wondered if the view of him disappearing into a spaceship was distressing to his new first-cousin-in-law or if she was having a simple bout of morning sickness. Neither reason was a particular concern to him. He was more concerned that someone or something would come by and shut the exterior door before they took off.
He realized they might not have to shut the hatch. Maybe they had force fields to keep out the empty vacuum of space, or to keep the thin, delicate atmosphere in the ship from leaking into space. Either way, un-melting the hatch seemed to make more sense. Whatever their typical practice, having a completely sealed spaceship was a good thing to have if a person planned to travel between worlds.
In his excitement, he’d forgotten about the translator machine. It still hovered a foot above the grass in the field. The Teumess hadn’t brought it in. He knew Gary would retrieve it and probably become as wealthy as the guy who invented fire, but he decided he might need to talk to his hosts, assuming there would be talking between probing sessions. Maybe the Teumess had another translator machine and maybe they didn’t.
Larry hopped down to the grass. He grabbed the little DNA unit sitting on top of the interpreter and tossed it through the airlock to land next to his backpack and sleeping bag. He dragged the machine to the main hatch by yanking on the leash. Leading the translator machine was exactly like leading Ol’ Bucky around by a leash. You could get where you were going, but a few sideways leaps were always required and a few fancy dance steps were necessary to keep the leash from wrapping around your knees.
The translator was more than willing to go where Larry wanted it to, but it seemed to be a bit more eager to get there than even his tractor would have been. It took a big dip at every little dip in the uneven ground around the open hatch and blew about with every small gust of air. It took some doing, but Larry finally got it aligned to the hatch.
He couldn’t figure how to get it up, it hovered about a foot above the ground, but that didn’t exactly match the height of the hatch. The spaceships were hovering at about a foot above the ground, but the main hatch was a foot or so above that. Larry wrapped his arms around the machine and tried brute force. That always seemed to work when he tried to get Ol’ Bucky into the bath, biting notwithstanding.
The translator didn’t b
udge.
Larry was frustrated. How could a machine blow about with each wisp of wind, but not move when he put all of his back and thigh muscles into it? Even when he kept his back straight, lifting with his legs, exactly like Doug Rickenhauser hadn’t done at Racine’s, he couldn’t get the little machine to rise.
He stepped back and blew on the machine. It didn’t move.
He grabbed the leash and yanked. The machine danced sideways.
Larry tugged the leash, bringing the interpreter back to the hatch. He pulled up on the leash and the little machine rose sedately to the hatch level and floated inside. He leaped up behind it.
He looked around and couldn’t see any manual hatch release. The bulkheads were smooth and soft. They weren’t metal. They weren’t wood. They weren’t carpet, hanging tapestries, or compressed cardboard. As far as he could see along the corridor, the bulkheads were one unbroken color of some unknown material.
He wondered if all of the controls were on the bridge. He couldn’t imagine designing a spacecraft without emergency hatch controls, but he hadn’t been consulted on the design of this particular craft. He also doubted the Teumess were going to let him go banging around on the bridge, poking at the controls and accidently activating the self-destruct.
Larry shouldered his backpack and sleeping bag. They fit comfortably on his shoulders. The weight was familiar as he liked camping, hunting, and fishing. If he hadn’t enjoyed outdoor activities he wouldn’t be a farmer. He was sure he could have earned a degree at college for anything other than agribusiness. He could have been a computer programmer, a teacher, or even a doctor. None of those professions would have afforded him the opportunity to spend his days outside. Now that he thought about it, a degree in astrophysics might come in handy right about now.
Pulling the translator behind him by its leash was easier than dragging Ol’ Bucky along on a camping trip. On the smooth deck, it followed along like a well-behaved puppy, if there ever had been such a thing. Puppies, by their very nature, were not well behaved. It took a great deal of training to bring a puppy from its normal not well behavior to the level of Ol’ Bucky’s not well behavior.