by Geoff Palmer
The spaceship’s medical systems had diagnosed two cracked ribs, mild burns and a handful of minor cuts in addition to the bullet wound, so she’d spent half an hour on one of the gel couches while it accelerated her body’s own healing systems.
‘You are hungry perhaps?’ Alkemy suggested.
‘Starving,’ Glad replied. ‘And thirsty.’
‘Is expected. Your body has been working much hard.’
They sat in the long grass beside the caravan, sipping on soft drinks that seemed a fraction too fizzy while Albert went in search of food.
‘So if Cakeface is one of the Sentinels,’ Tim said, ‘who’s the other one? You said they always work in pairs.’
Coral reached for her battered notebook but Ludokrus shrugged saying, ‘I guess it does not matter now. Soon we will be gone.’
Albert returned bearing a box of bluish coloured biscuits from the ship’s emergency rations. It was all he could find.
‘Shame about the piglets,’ Ludokrus sighed, glancing up the path to where a flock of birds were picking over the remains.
‘Pikelets!’ the others corrected. laughing.
46 : Footprints
‘Emissaries do not just disappear!’
‘Apparently they do.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The machine was damaged. Look. Look at these read outs from before it went off-line.’
‘It is an elite fighting machine. More than a match for these monkey people.’
‘But it was not just dealing with monkey people.’
‘Are you suggesting the Eltherians are here in more force than we suspected?’
‘Of course not. But we should not jump to conclusions. Is it not more logical to consider that the machine itself is flawed?’
‘That ... is possible, I suppose. It was in storage orbit for a long time. If it was faulty our masters will be most unhappy.’
‘Our masters will be unhappy with either outcome. Would it not be better to wait until we have more information?’
‘Very well. Leave the link open and keep trying.’
* * *
‘You think they will be all right?’ Alkemy asked as Pipi and Paua scuttled off into the undergrowth.
‘They will be fine,’ Ludokrus assured her. ‘Remember, we find them here to start.’
Alkemy called a last goodbye as her brother beckoned. ‘Come, we have much to do. Fix broken fence and blown-up car.’
‘And the prefab. And return the bus,’ Tim added.
‘Leave only footprints,’ Coral said.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s what they say here when you go into the outdoors — like your Galactic Creed. The only things you should take are photographs, and the only things you should leave behind are footprints.’
Ludokrus nodded. ‘Very good. We start leaving only footprint.’
Glad overtook them at Dead Man’s Bend.
‘Race you!’ she called, grinning from the open window of the Flyer as it lumbered past in low gear.
The fence posts hung over the edge of the cliff on strands of wire. Albert hauled them back, separating each with a few snips of his pliers while Alkemy dripped blobs of nanomachines on to the broken ends. Taking each post in turn, Ludokrus pressed them against the sheared off sections still in the ground. After a few seconds they were fixed and firm.
‘What about the wire?’ Norman asked, pointing to the sagging loops.
‘They will fix him also, but take more time because the metal has been stretch.’
‘Speaking of the wire,’ Albert said, pointing to the Emissary’s motorbike where it hung over the edge.
‘Careful,’ Ludokrus said. ‘Maybe is booby trap. Cut, I think.’ So Albert cut. A second later a muffled explosion sounded far below them.
‘What about Dead Man’s Pine?’ Coral asked.
‘Good tree,’ Ludokrus mused. ‘It save us. Almost kill us too. There is no way to fix the top, but maybe we make some nice fertiliser for his root. Give him new name too.’
‘Yes,’ Coral said firmly. ‘Something heroic. Something to say thank you for saving us.’
‘Oh. I was thinking maybe “Dead Man’s Stump”.’
Coral hit him.
Once they were on the road again, Tim, who was sharing the wide front seat with Norman, turned and addressed Albert. ‘There’s something that’s been bugging me a while.’
The others fell silent.
‘Why were the Thanatos were so bothered about you crashing in our solar system? I know it’s supposed to be their territory, but why go to so much trouble? It seems like there’s something you haven’t told us yet.’
‘Yeah,’ Ludokrus said, leaning forward to rest his arms on the back of the front seat. ‘We ask this also but you do not tell.’
Albert looked at him in the rear vision mirror then cleared his throat. ‘You must understand that I always act in your best interests,’ he said, ‘even if there are times when I cannot tell you what those interests are.’
‘Yes, but ...’
He raised a hand and glanced at Tim. ‘As to the matter of the Thanatos, yes, there is something else. Something you shouldn’t know because of the Galactic Creed. But I will tell you anyway because we are all still in mortal danger.’
* * *
‘Jeez Alice. You been playing on the electric fence?’
Alice Jones staggered into the kitchen and collapsed on to a chair. Her hair was a spiky, tangled shock, matted with dirt and twigs. Her face was scratched, her hands and feet were filthy, and her kaftan hung in muddy tatters.
‘Oh Alice!’ Em cried. ‘What happened?’
Alice shook her head in a daze and reached out a hand to her sister.
‘Pikelets,’ she breathed.
‘Don’t think there’s any left, mate.’
‘Frank ...’
‘He didn’t want his pikelets ...’
‘Who, dear? Albert?’
Alice took a breath and blinked. ‘He didn’t want his pikelets because ... because he’s ...’ She bit her lip and seized her sister’s hand. ‘Oh Emmy! You’ll never believe what I’ve discovered ...’
47 : Billion Year Failure
Albert guided the Cadillac round the next bend then began by telling them about the Old Ones — the mysterious beings who’d built a mighty civilisation when the galaxy was in it’s infancy.
‘No one has ever worked out how they did it or where they went, even the beings who emerged shortly after them and briefly shared the galaxy with them: the Thanatos.’
‘The Thanatos knew the Old Ones?’
‘Yes, but they’ve never quite reached their level of technology.’ He glanced at Tim. ‘Without the Old Ones perhaps the Thanatos would be content. But they know there are greater things to achieve, yet they’ve never achieved them.’
‘Why not?’
Albert shook his head. ‘No one knows. But there must be something missing — some key element or faculty that only the Old Ones possessed. So the Thanatos started an experiment, an experiment involving hundreds of solar systems and thousands of planets to study the way intelligent life develops. An experiment to try to recreate the essence of the Old Ones.
‘The method is simple: sterilise a planet, leave it a few million years, then come back and see what sort of life forms have emerged. If you don’t like what you see you simply start again.’
‘How do you sterilise a whole planet?’ Tim asked.
‘With one of the objects we crashed into on the outskirts of your solar system.’
‘You mean meteors?’
‘That’s what they become once they are launched.’
‘The dinosaurs!’ Norman exclaimed. ‘That’s what happened to the dinosaurs!’
Albert nodded. ‘They ruled the Earth for a hundred and sixty million years then vanished overnight.’
‘And that was a meteor?’
‘A large one,’ Albert said. ‘The dust from its impact filled the atmosphere and st
arved the planet of sunlight. Imagine a freezing winter that lasted ten thousand years. So, the dinosaurs died out. And you emerged.’
‘Us?’
‘Yes, human beings. The most exciting species the Thanatos have seen in a billion years.’
* * *
‘ssDazxg h^##oG3gt+Ww@y~prQ*jJ!’
‘ssDazxg h^##oG3gt+Ww@y~prQ*jJ!’
‘ssDazxg h^##oG3gt ...’
The transmission was unintelligible. There was too much missing and the Emissary was too badly damaged. But buried deep within its almost indestructible core its primary mission circuits still ticked over quietly.
The tide had dragged it away from the point of impact and carelessly flung it further round the bay. There it had dug its one remaining limb deep into the sand to anchor itself against the insistent waves and then, with aching slowness, worked its way toward the beach.
In the shallows it let itself be carried and rolled by the waves. It was now little more than a torso with a single functioning arm. Its battered head, attached by only a few tenuous cables, hung loosely. Its lower half was missing completely. Below the waist it trailed a knotted mass of wires and connecting rods. But when a tidal surge pushed it high up on the beach and one of its few remaining sensors detected the tell-tale pulse of a reactivated Revolt-O-Ray, the Emissary’s primary mission circuits took control once more.
48 : The New Old Ones
‘The average time for an intelligent species to move from stone tools to nuclear weapons is around fifty million years,’ Albert said as they approached Rata. ‘Human beings did it in just two million.’
There was a surprised silence in the car.
‘A hundred years ago most of your international communication was by Morse code. Now it’s instant; beamed round the planet to radios, television sets and cellphones.’
‘Except round here,’ Coral muttered.
‘The things you’ve achieved in the last century take most species ten thousand years. Now perhaps you understand the Thanatos’ interest. You may be the new Old Ones.’
Tim and Norman looked at each other. It was a look that said ‘Us?’ but also ‘Us!’
‘Whether you are or not,’ Albert continued, ‘they want to keep you a secret from the rest of the galaxy. They want to observe you, follow your progress, see where you lead them. Above all they don’t want to disturb you, to risk changing the direction you might otherwise find for yourselves. That is why they want to keep outsiders away. That is why they’ve gone to so much trouble to trap us, and why — after all we have discovered — they want to stop us from returning home.’
He swung the Cadillac into the forecourt of the service station where the bright green bus was parked exactly as it had been before they borrowed it. Glad was reaching through the broken office window, replacing the keys and carefully gathering up shards of shattered glass.
‘And that,’ Albert said quietly, ‘is why we must leave as soon as possible. We’ve got what we came for. Now, for your safety and for ours, we must leave before the Thanatos can amass the forces to prevent us. We must leave tonight.’
* * *
‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’
‘Where? Show me.’
‘Look. See?’
‘That? That tiny blip?’
‘You don’t understand. That is the signal from the failure circuit. The last thing an Emissary ever does.’
‘You mean self-destruction?’
‘Yes, self-destruction. But not yet. See how the signal moves? It has found something. It has found its primary target. It will self-destruct, but only when it gets there!’
* * *
Em put the receiver down thoughtfully. ‘That was Glad. She said the children have been at her place all afternoon. And Albert joined them about an hour ago.’
Frank pulled a face. ‘Like I said, bonkers. Complete, stark, utter, staring, round the twist and bonkers. She’s not just a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, she’s an entire picnic short of a picnic.’
‘We could at least take a look ...’
Frank shook his head. ‘I’m not going looking for a mad woman’s fantasy spaceship.’
There was a clatter from the cat door as Smudge marched in, glaring disdainfully at her empty dish. Emma Townsend scooped her up and set her on her lap.
‘You’re right,’ she sighed, rubbing the cat’s ears. ‘But I’m worried about her, Frank. D’you think I should call Dr Smedley?’
‘Only if he brings a couple of blokes in white coats with him,’ Frank muttered.
49 : Running on Empty
It was a gloomy dinner. Nobody said much and nobody ate much. Glad tried chivvying them along and cheering them up but they just nodded politely or looked at her distantly.
Albert checked his watch. ‘Your car should be ready,’ he said, and they drove back to the school to find Glad’s red Mini gleaming under a light coating of expired nano dust. The grass in front of the prefab was still scorched and the skid marks were visible but all the other damage had been repaired.
Albert took a spare can of petrol from the Cadillac and the little car started first go. Then they hastened away, wary in case the Millais’ should return.
Back at RAGS, Glad reported the Mini was running better than new and everyone said how pleased they were — except they didn’t look it.
Albert was right. They all knew it. It made perfect sense. The Eltherians had what they’d come for. It was silly to hang around. It would be safer for everyone. But though it might be sensible and reasonable it didn’t make it easier.
Once they’d returned to their starship they’d fly away, weaving through space and time to a place that was barely a pinprick of light in the vastness of the night sky. Fifty light years. Five hundred trillion kilometres. Unimaginable distance. Unreachable. Unknowable.
If they ever made it.
So they stood on the footpath outside RAGS, shuffling awkwardly in the evening air. Glad cleared her throat and wished them well, saying she’d be sure to see Tim and Coral over the holiday weekend. Norman just stared at his shoes. Then Alkemy sniffed and that was it. Coral burst into tears and that set Alkemy off properly. Tim and Norman did their best to fight it but when Ludokrus let out a choking sob they couldn’t stop themselves. Within seconds they were all crying and hugging and kissing, and laughing a little too at how silly they were being. Even Albert seemed affected, though he claimed it was a bit of wind-blown grit.
As they drove away a heavy silence descended. The worst farewell was yet to come.
* * *
The few remaining indicators flashed urgently, every one of them showing critical system failures or dangerously low energy levels as the Emissary dragged and rolled itself as close as it could. Odd waves of nausea flowed over it, seeping into its circuits and slowing its reactions. To go further would risk a total shut-down. This would have to do. This would have to be enough ...
* * *
Alkemy insisted they stop at Dead Man’s Bend to check on the fence, but when they got there she just stood staring at the view. The sun had melted, leaving a smear of orange-yellow light floating like an oil slick on the dappled surface of the sea. The sky above it deepened, fading through shades of violet and midnight blue.
‘Such a beautiful planet,’ she sighed, her voice wavering slightly. ‘I want to remember her like this.’
Tim stood behind her in the twilight. He could tell she was crying again.
Coral stretched out a hand to Dead Man’s Pine. ‘I name you Freya.’
‘Freya?’ Ludokrus asked. ‘Who is he?’
‘She,’ Coral corrected him, ‘and you should know. She’s the Norse goddess of love and beauty.’
Ludokrus looked at the ungainly tree. ‘Does not quite fit,’ he said. ‘But maybe this Freya was also hit by bus and her head fall off.’
Coral tried not to laugh so she hit him instead, but not hard. He caught her hand and held it for a second.
The Cadillac started with a
roar. Albert flashed the headlights and tooted loudly. They dragged themselves reluctantly towards it and clambered in. But as they began to move off the engine spluttered and died.
‘See,’ Coral said quietly, ‘even the car doesn’t want you to go.’
Tim leaned across and pointed to the petrol gauge. The needle was hard on Empty.
‘Hydrocarbons,’ Albert muttered. ‘Blast!’
Tim gave the others a rueful smirk.
‘Still, I have a spare ...’ Albert began, before remembering he didn’t. He’d poured his spare can of petrol into Glad’s Mini. ‘Oh bother!’
With the car in neutral and the handbrake off they started coasting down the hill. Slowly at first, then gradually picking up speed, they ran silently into the encroaching darkness.
And then the hill ran out.
And then they had to push.
‘Come on, slaves!’ Tim called from behind the wheel.
‘You will have good memory of us,’ Ludokrus grunted, setting his shoulder against one of the massive tail fins. ‘We are much advanced people. We have many technologies. We fly through space, make things out of rubbish, fight off killer robot, but always we are running out of petrol.’
‘I said you should not make such big car,’ Alkemy puffed, her feet slithering on the gravel.
It wasn’t so bad once they got it moving. The road still sloped gently towards the coast and that helped too. But the best part was doing something physical — and being able to grumble about it. It was good for their spirits.
‘Why do we push her anyway?’ Ludokrus panted. ‘We do not need her any more. Just set some nanomachines to deconstruct and the wind will blow her away.’
Albert shook his head and pointed to the boot. He hadn’t yet unloaded his supplies from Queenstown. He’d done the calculations, he said, and this was the easiest way to move everything.
‘Done the calculations,’ Ludokrus muttered. ‘Pity you did not calculate the petro ...’
A flash of light lit the sky like the dawning of a thousand suns. Blinding, searing, white-hot. A perfect sphere of energy bursting behind the reserve. For an instant they could see the caravan outlined against the glare, then they shut their eyes and shielded their faces.