Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future

by Martin Caidin

  "Describe the feelings," Valmar asked.

  "It's . . . not comfortable. I can feel their pain . . . and these people are tired. Very tired. There's a sense of futility, of an ending to everything."

  "That could be deliberate," Valmar said, "to get you off your guard."

  "Whatever the reason, I don't believe we need to be on guard. It's as if they're glad we're here. They want to share their history with us before . . ." He let out a cry of pain. Wilma had cradled her head in both hands. She was weeping.

  "Rogers! What is it?"

  "I can't believe this. They're in my mind. And they're . . . they're waiting to . . ."

  His voice faded away. He felt a crushing, terrible sadness.

  "Rogers! Report!"

  "They're waiting to die. There are hundreds of them around us now, swimming alongside us, inviting us down."

  "/o, this is Deering. We're being taken to a pressure dome. Once we're inside, they'll evacuate the water and establish normal air pressure and oxygen for us. I—"

  Her voice was cut off as the little submarine rocked sharply. A sound like deep thunder rolled through the sea, alarming the albino figures about them.

  "We've just felt the shock wave from a seaquake," Buck called in immediately. "From what I can determine, they've been having a lot of these lately. That would explain the debris and decay in the city itself lo, there's nothing here that even smacks remotely of military installations. Maybe Wilma can get some more from them."

  Buck Rogers

  She turned to Buck. "They'll explain once we're inside the pressure chamber. They've told me . . . somehow . . . that they are in danger. So are we. And lo, too. There's something else. I'm having difficulty understanding what they mean . . . it's something about lo. . . ."

  Spell it out, Deering!"

  "They'll explain," she said, "after we're in the chamber so we can talk . . . no, not talk. Communicate directly with our minds. We're almost to the building with the pressure chamber. As soon as we can, we'll call back and report. But they . . . they say the mountains will fall soon. I'm not sure what that means. Deering, out."

  Wilma shut off their radio. "I'm sorry, Buck. They say there's no time to lose. We must meet with them now."

  Buck saw a ring of lights surrounding an oval entrance to a long chamber. He eased the sub inside, stopped their forward motion, and they settled to a flooring. Behind them, they heard a huge door closing, and the shriek of air pressure resounded through he sub's hull. All about them the water drained away. Then they were approached by several of the strange people. "They're asking us to come out now," Wilma told Buck.

  They sat around a large oval table. The surface was slick stone, polished and cool to the hand. Before them were six of the albino people. The sense of sadness was almost overwhelming. Everyone looked up sharply as a roll of thunder passed through the pressure chamber. Several sharp impacts followed.

  "Quick, Buck. Take their hands in yours."

  He felt strangely calm and safe with these people. He reached out his hands and grasped their slender, white fingers. Six fingers, he noted.

  They're looking straight ahead rather than at us, he noted, as if they're not seeing. . . . My God, they're blind. All of them!

  "Wilma, I—"

  "Yes, I know," she broke into his words. "They've been blind for centuries. They do not have speech. They did, long ago, but it became unnecessary. They see through the eyes of others. Through the Chileans. The animals . . . dolphins, seals, whales.

  A Life in the Future

  They enter other creatures' minds and see through their eyes. Buck . . . empty your mind. Please. Just let your thoughts go . . . you'll understand. . . ."

  He closed his eyes and relaxed totally. Pictures came clearly to him. A beautiful world floating in space. Blue and white and green, like Earth . . . but not Earth. Splendid cities, with people in harmony with their world. Swiftly the scenes changed. He felt a rushing upward from the planet, like hurtling through space. He was staring at a star, angry, as hurling streamers of violent fire shot outward. The star seemed to tremble as if wracked by terrible internal forces.

  The planet again. The same star seen from the surface of the world. People suffering. Heat. Oceans steaming and boiling away. Volcanic eruptions spewing molten lava across hills and fields. Quakes . . . buildings toppling.

  Another scene. An enormous spaceport of the future. A huge craft, with people hurrying to get inside. The violent eruptions increased. He was inside the gigantic spaceship, looking down through an observation port. The world beneath him seemed to fall away as the great ship lifted silently through turbulent clouds and lightning-ripped skies.

  Then he saw stars through the port. The stars became blurred streaks of light, turning yellow, orange, then red as the spaceship reached some enormous speed. The stars winked out. Blackness.

  Time . . . countless years. Most of the people were in some sort of suspended animation. . . . Then the stars came out again. Far ahead, he saw a single yellow sun. Deceleration. A planet orbiting the sun coming closer and closer. All forward motion stopped.

  In his mind. Buck looked down upon Earth perhaps fifty thousand years before as the huge vessel lowered gently to a mountainous countryside. There were verdant valleys and fields, with an ocean beyond. The Andes in Chile . . . the spaceship on the ground, people ecstatic with their new world.

  But not for long. The radiations from the star were strange, unforeseen. People stumbling, holding their hands to their eyes.

  It rushed through his mind like a silent, turbulent wind. They were going blind from the sun. Frantic, they raised their

  Buck Rogers

  ship again, drifting off the coastline, and descended into the ocean. Machines brought from the ship gouged out the deep circular depression. Buildings going up. They learned to modify their blood and oxygen systems so that, like seals and other sea mammals, they were able to enrich the oxygen in their blood until they could remain underwater for an hour or more at a time.

  They could not live on the surface. They needed the protection of the ocean to shield them from the radiation of their new sun. But they needed food grown on land as well as raw materials during the many years that passed.

  During this period of acclimating to a new life, they developed latent telepathic abilities. Since they were blinded, nature provided through direct mind contact what it had taken from them. They learned to reach the minds of the higher animals, to "see" through the eyes of other creatures.

  A new creature entered upon the scene, and men began to flourish across the land. As the aliens drifted across the countryside in antigravity machines, resplendent in the sky, then plunged back into the sea, the legends began.

  There was a hidden civilization beneath the sea. Rumors of a powerful nation, of a magnificent city that had slipped beneath the waves, spread throughout the world. The land came to be known as Atlantis. Navies and armies began to search for the fabled city, the unseen land. The people from space came to be regarded as gods. The natives of Chile were pressed more and more into service as the Atlanteans found returning to the surface ever more dangerous.

  Surface radiation had taken its toll. The skin of the Atlanteans became as white as chalk. Their brief forays onto the surface, sometimes witnessed by Earth people, gave rise to stories of aliens landing from space—but no one knew when or how long they had been here.

  But the Atlanteans were slowly but steadily d3ring out. Their birthrate fell steadily. Fewer and fewer children were born, until finally the aliens had become sterile, weak. Natural disasters took their toll. Deep undersea storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions pounded the city.

  A Life in the Future

  The sense of sadness became like a physical weight on Buck and Wilma. In their minds, they saw the extinction of the Atlanteans. Shock waves rumbled through the sea. A powerful earthquake was in the making. The Andes would crumble, tear apart. Volcanic vents would burst open, and the mountains
would slide into the sea . . .

  . . . onto the fabled nation of Atlantis, sealing its doom. They were tired and were ready to accept their death.

  If their guests were to live, they must leave immediately and head with all possible speed for the open sea, far from where the mountains would crack like brittle clay and where torrents of blazing rock would pour from the coastline. The sea floor itself would break open to spread molten magma across the ocean floor.

  There was a final series of scenes, of Buck and Wilma entering their submarine, sealing themselves inside. The pressure chamber filled with water, the entryway opened, and they returned at once to their great undersea craft, which in turn must make all possible speed due west. Not even lo could withstand the violence that was about to come.

  "/o, Rogers here."

  "We read you, Rogers. What's happened with you two, anyway?"

  "No time for explanations, lo. Listen to me. The Andes are about to undergo a tremendous earthquake. They're going to tumble into the ocean from the Chilean coastline. It can happen any time now. We're coming back as fast as we can. When we're aboard, you've got to go to head due west at full speed."

  "That's an awfully big pill to swallow all at once, Rogers."

  "It's real, damn it!"

  "Give us something to go on, Rogers," Captain Valmar came back. "We can't just change plans like—"

  "Maybe this will convince you, then," Buck broke in. "We have a message for you. They told us you would understand immediately"

  "Spit it out, Colonel."

  "They told us, in pictures, of an enormous explosion, a fireball within the sea at least thirty or forty miles wide. They said for

  Buck Rogers

  you to disarm Marblehead, whatever that means."

  ''They told you that?"

  "Affirmative."

  Aboard lo, Captain Valmar looked with shock and disbelief at Admiral Barney. "Blacky . . . there's no way, no way at all, they could know about Marblehead! Rogers and Deering don't have even a suspicion of what we were prepared to do!"

  She returned to communicate with the probe. "Rogers, do you know what that was they showed you—that fireball?"

  Buck glanced at Wilma. She gestured for him to continue. "I can guess. Captain. If something went wrong when we got to Atlantis, if they were an armed enemy ready to do battle with us or destroy or capture lo, you would detonate a very high-yield hydrogen bomb you have aboard. My guess is a hundred megatons or more."

  "Buck, Barney here. What about that woman, Dawn Noriega? Was she there? Is she telepathic?"

  "She was there, Barney. And she's for real. Call her telepathic or psychic or whatever you want, but there's no question that she's for real."

  "Buck, you're certain of that?"

  "I sure am, Barney. She stayed with the Atlanteans to be taught by them. That's why she's so good at sending mind pictures."

  "But . . . if everything you say is true, she'd die with the Atlanteans!"

  "No, she won't. She's in the probe with us. And she's scared."

  They brought the small probe back aboard lo. The moment the boat was sealed again. Captain Valmar stood at the helm.

  "Commander Cortez, maximum speed, full ahead, course two seven zero degrees. Let's get the hell out of here."

  Six hours later, the mountains came down.

  Chapter 19

  "Buck, will you please stand still? If I'm ever to make you presentable to the High Council, you've got to stop squirming like a child trying to get out of a visit to the dentist." Wilma smiled as she needled Buck, who stood uncomfortably before a glowing three-panel mirror.

  "Damn it, Wilma, I thought I left all this folderol behind me," he grumbled. "In fact, I left it behind me more than four centuries ago. You'd think that in all this time civilized people would have gotten rid of all these fancy costumes in favor of some comfortable clothing." He glared at his reflection. "I look like a bloody popinjay."

  "Whatever that is," Wilma said, ignoring his tirade. "You're being made a high officer, someone who will report directly to the council. I don't even know what your rank will be."

  "As if it matters," he groused. "No airplane ever knew the rank of the pilot behind the controls."

  "Oh, be quiet. This isn't a cockpit you're going into. You're being honored—promoted—and from what I hear, Commodore Kevin Kane is going to personally request that you be assigned to his command."

  Buck half-turned, his interest suddenly piqued. He pictured in his mind the brutish-appearing, stocky man built like a keg of nails. Kane would have been right at home in a wrestling ring,

  Buck Rogers

  but there was no doubting his reputation as a master tactician and strategist.

  "Isn't he the head honcho for space operations?" Buck asked.

  "If honcho' means the commander of space-ops, yes," she replied. "He's been in the miUtary ever since he enHsted in the space force when he was sixteen. They would have thrown him out when they learned his age, but he passed his entry exams with a perfect score. There was no stopping him after that. He's also known to favor the Latin countries in Central and South America."

  Buck snapped his fingers. "I've heard about that. He named both his headquarters and his command ship the Admiral Vespucci. Quite a reputation."

  "He's as crazy and reckless as he is brilliant."

  "You served under him?"

  Wilma nodded. "Uh-huh. Stand still! I've almost got this. . . ." She stood back to examine his reflection in the mirror. "You'll do."

  "Did you serve under Kane?" Buck pressed.

  "Under and with him. I got to be close friends with Nanette."

  "Who's that?"

  "His wife. She's a full commander, the best code and communications expert in the business. She's broken every code the Mongols have ever used. She's also learned the language of the Tiger Men."

  Buck gave a blank look. "Who and what are the Tiger Men?"

  "They were the dominant race on Mars."

  He stared at Wilma. "Girl, I'm miles behind you. A dominant race on Mars? And I believe you said they were —you know, like past tense—the dominant race on that planet. What are they? Aliens? I thought the only aliens were from Atlantis, and they're a page in history now."

  "I couldn't begin to tell you in two minutes."

  "Then take two hours," Buck cajoled. "Take two days if you have to!"

  "There's no time now. It will take us ten minutes to reach the council chambers if we start right now, and we're due there in eleven minutes. Buck, please don't kept the council waiting for us!"

  "I want to know about Mars."

  "You will . . . from the council itself"

  A Life in the Future

  "Oh . . ."

  They went quickly to the terminal droptube, where they plummeted several hundred feet before they eased to a stop. Then their bullet-shaped car rotated and slid into the antigrav force field of the inner-city tubeway. Wilma looked directly into a computer eyescope for retinal identification and clearance. "Cent—" she began, then stopped. "Buck, sit down, will you?"

  An electronic voice sounded softly. "Please repeat your instructions, Wilma Deering."

  "Central, please. Nonstop."

  "Central nonstop confirmed. Commencing in five seconds," the voice answered.

  "Wilma, why do you say 'please' to a computer? You're not talking to a person."

  Before she answered, the overhead and side lights of the vacuum tube became a blur as they shot into motion.

  "Perhaps not. But this particular computer and I have been talking back and forth for years. She—I guess it's a she; sure doesn't sound grouchy, like you—recognizes small things about me. A pattern, you can call it. After a while, the manner of speech, innuendos, tone, volume—and courtesy—is in the security memory banks, and Diedre—"

  "Who's Diedre?"

  "The computer, silly. Who else did you think I was talking to?"

  "You call the computer by name? Sort of personal, isn
't it?"

  "Of course. If I called her Sally, she'd know something was wrong, and security would block any further movement. Besides," Wilma laughed, "you do the same thing."

  "I do?" he said dubiously.

  "I've heard you! When you're flying, you talk to your airplane. You say things like 'Come on, baby' or 'Atta girl,' and you pat the instrument panel and call her 'Sweetheart.' "

  Buck kept a poker face. "Well, that's because the airplane hears me, and she understands. You get better performance that way. I'm not talking to some dumb computer." He stopped and looked about him, eyes wide.

  "Nothing personal, Diedre," he added to the walls of their car.

  "No offense taken, Colonel Rogers," came the reply, and Wilma and Buck broke out laughing.

  They eased into their station at Central, and the door slid

  Buck Rogers

  open with a sibilant hiss. As they left the car, Buck paused and patted the backrest of his seat. "Nice job, girl," he said and went into the station with a grin on his face.

  ^ :{: ^ ;is ;(:

  Buck hated pomp and circumstance. He'd always detested it when he received medals for combat missions, when he was feted "in the old days" as an outstanding aviator, or when he set new flight records. It was easier flying through a thunderstorm than standing stiffly before hundreds of people, lights glaring in his eyes while he searched his mind for something to say that wouldn't be insipid. The old discomfort came back full force as he and Wilma entered the waiting room before entering the council chamber. He felt like stiff cardboard in his dress uniform, which actually fit remarkably well. Wilma had explained that the material was thermal-sensitive and would adapt to his body weight and shape. Black jacket, fitted gleaming gold scarf, dark gray shirt, silver lapels, a nine-pointed iridescent star over his left breast. He liked the feel and heft of the thick studded belt, but he'd bet a dollar to a doughnut it wasn't real leather—more likely it was lizard or sharkskin. Best of all were his boots, engineer style, high on the ankle. When he first slipped into the boots they felt clumsy and uncomfortable. Several minutes later he felt he was wearing slippers of amazing comfort.