"Rogers," Doc Huer called out. "You ever go through this kind of maneuver before?"
Buck Rogers
To his surprise, Buck nodded. "Once. That was enough."
The crew looked at him in surprise. "When was that?" Huer asked.
"A very long time ago. I was about twelve years old. They used this same maneuver in a movie called 2010 to decelerate a Russian spacecraft going into orbit around Jupiter."
"Did it work?"
"It worked," Buck said with a grin.
Suddenly an enormous shock wave slammed against the hull and the electrical meters spiked. "Lightning," Blackwell announced. "We're a lightning rod for all sorts of electrical activity. We'll get hit plenty of times on the way down."
At ten miles up, they were the center of an electrical maelstrom, with lightning flashing all about them. Barney cut loose the magnesium envelope. It fell behind them rapidly, blazing, attracting its own lightning strikes.
"Six miles to landing," Kane announced. "Recommend bringing in the antigrav lift and activating Inertron bands. We're decelerating rapidly."
"External temperatures are diminishing," Seidman called out as he studied his instruments. "We're just under Mach One and still slowing."
"Velocity is down to just under one hundred miles per hour," announced Barney. "Hydrojets coming on line in fifteen seconds."
Then they were cruising at slow speed, decelerating with the antigrav units. Nautilus rocked and pitched from powerful lightning strikes. "The outside wind is down to less than forty miles per hour," announced Ardala Valmar. The crew was working together like a fine watch.
"Thirty-degree right turn," Buck ordered. "We've got a volcanic eruption dead ahead. Sensors picking up heavy objects lofting in from below."
Nautilus veered gently to the right, then resumed course. They were using radar, lasers, cryogenic scanners—everything possible to maintain their preset course based on radar-imaging charts of the surface.
"Skin and internal temps holding," Barney announced. "All cryogenic systems working perfectly."
Outside the outer skin, the temperature was already nearly two thousand degrees. "Confirm pressure," Blackwell called.
A Life in the Future
"Fourteen hundred psi," Barney answered. "Just as advertised."
"We're getting some visibility now," Buck announced. "Height above surface is only three hundred feet. I'll put the scanners on the holos."
They looked upon a scene that might have been a painting of Hades. Everything was a murky orange, the sun a dim light barely able to penetrate the thick clouds above.
"Full power to the lights," Blackwell ordered.
"Lights coming on," Barney announced.
A battery of superxenon halogens speared the orange murk, intense light beams reflecting from the strange atmosphere as if it were a fog bank, revealing scaly rocks and slag all along the surface.
Seidman's voice boomed in their headsets. "Listen up, everybody. I'm picking up metallic objects ahead of us."
"We'd better slow down until we know what the devil is out there," Doc Huer recommended.
"No way, Doc," Buck said. "In this atmosphere, we're a submarine. "We've got to keep moving. We're negative buoyancy, like an aircraft. If we drop speed, we'll sink like an overloaded sub."
"Barney, what do you make of what's in front of us?" Valmar questioned.
Barney kept his eyes moving from the visual holos to his instruments.
Barney delayed his answer. "I'm setting up the holo imaging with full screening for ambient conditions. You'll be able to see outside if you're wearing the informax goggles, but everything on the holoscreen will be in three dimensions. Get ready for a shock." He paused again. "Buck, arm all weapons systems. Kane, get on the missile batteries. Millford, man the intercept systems. Seidman, you and Doc get into your armor suits and be ready for surface excursion. Check in with me, everybody. Blackwell, if I call for power, give me everything this bucket has. Valmar, you support Blackwell. Noriega and Deering, see what you can pick up."
They executed Barney's orders, then looked at the holoscreen with disbelief
Before them spread a Mongol encampment. They saw three spherical vessels on the ground, with men moving about in
Buck Rogers
armor suits, and several tracked vehicles, but what really commanded their attention was a huge thermonuclear power station, assembled in orbit and then maglev lowered to the surface. Thick cables ran from the station to a series of huge tubular banks, burrowed at low sloping angles into the ground.
"Barney, have they detected us yet?" Blackwell asked. Everyone was ready for any emergency.
"No," Barney replied. "Stand easy, everyone. I killed all lights and thrusters when I first detected the camp, and I've got a cryogenic fog drifting across the entire area. To the Mongols, we're nothing more than a cold spot in this crazy atmosphere. But it may not stay like this for very long."
Ardala Valmar turned to Dawn and Wilma. "Anything?" she asked.
"Pictures . . . muddled scenes," Wilma answered. "Something spinning. Huge, planet-sized, spinning like mad. It feels wrong somehow."
"Dawn, how about you?"
"Someone is thinking about . . . the future. I have a hazy picture of a new great city amidst mountains, but everything is surrounded by water. Cold . . . blizzard . . . Japanese."
"'Japanese'?" Barney blurted out. "That doesn't make any
sense
"The images fade in and out. Someone, or a group, is thinking of a great victory, a new world order . . . then it fades again."
Barney turned to Buck. "Hey, I know the Japanese. The only people who hate them more than the Mongols are the Han, and I know they won't work with the Japanese. Dawn, any idea of where this place is you're imaging?"
"Islands . . . winter . . . mountains and water. That's all I can make out."
"Work on that puzzle later," Blackwell said in a no-nonsense tone. "Look sharp. See those floating spheres? They're armored, and you can see the rocket launchers. The warheads are probably set to explode at a distance of at least one mile from the spheres. That would create enough overpressure to damage Nautilus and let them survive the shock. What they don't know is that we could take a dozen of those kinds of warheads and not even quiver."
A Life m the Future
"But they could be crazy and fire something to penetrate our hulls," Buck snapped. "Those things are manned, and we've got weapons to penetrate any kind of armor. Seidman! Set up the Madsens for high penetration only. We don't need incendiaries here, we just want to hole those things and let this atmosphere do the rest."
He watched the spheres approaching, three of them in a V formation, closing steadily. Then it hit him. They were floaters, like rubber rafts being pushed slowly on a lake, while Nautilus could maneuver like a wolf chasing sheep.
"Full ahead!" Buck commanded. "Gunners, fire when the target is in range. Everyone hang on. We're going to ram that sphere on the right. In five seconds, I want a spray of xenon flares to blind their sensors and tracking devices."
Five seconds later the missile array went out, sparkling and burning fiercely. The Mongol crews were caught by surprise. Even their pilots reacting clumsily, the spheres bobbing about like corks in a turbulent stream. A fusillade of Madsen cannon shells ripped into the lead sphere, cracking it open like an enormous walnut. Instantly metal folded inward, powerful armor plating twisting and splitting like shards of glass. A dull boom sounded over the distant cannonading of incessant lightning strikes as the sphere imploded to a mashed pile of junk.
"Hard right!" yelled Barney. "Missiles coming dead on! Hard right and climb!"
Buck didn't answer as he maneuvered Nautilus under full power. Her thrusters powered the great spacecraft upward, an enormous teardrop shape seeming to leap into the murky orange sky. At the same time. Buck rolled out of the climb, still under power, and dove directly at the target sphere. Without orders, both Kane and Blackwell fired a spray of m
issiles to confuse their target. The sphere started up, dropped like a stone, then bobbed to the right. Buck went in at reduced power, and an enormous magsteel ram sliced into the sphere like a hot poker into a ball of butter. As the metal yielded, poisonous atmosphere under enormous pressure ripped into the sphere. There was the sound of another implosion as Buck reversed thrust and pulled away from the mortally wounded sphere.
Buck Rogers
"Everybody fire steadily at that third sphere. Fire a brace of seeker homers. They'll probably launch some heavy torps at us, and we may not be able to withstand a direct hit." Even as Nautilus launched counter-torp rockets that would race against the incoming missiles from the last sphere, Buck sped forward, the belly of Nautilus scraping rocks. Mongol missiles sped overhead, lacing the orange sky with trails of fire, only to finally exhaust their fuel and impact with the distant ground and explode harmlessly.
Buck dismissed the spheres from his attention. Ahead of Nautilus reared a high, steep cliff Weapons turrets studded the cliff face.
Barney spoke directly to Killer Kane. "This installation isn't even supposed to be here! What the hell is going on?"
Kane laughed. "No time for questions, old friend. Rogers! You see those turrets? They're missile launchers, and there's too many of them for us. If you've got a plan, use it now!"
"The best defense . . ." Buck started.
Kane finished it for him: ". . . is a good offense, so let's let them have a full blast and then get out of here."
"You heard the man," Buck confirmed. "I want every weapon we have to fire immediately against that cliff. Torps, missiles, Madsens on full autofire. Kick off every xenon blinder we have as well. As soon as we've let everything loose, hang on. We're getting out of here. Valmar! Blackwell! As soon as we launch our weapons, I want full thrust, maximum possible climb, curving ascent. I'll be doing some weaving and S-turning on the way up. Fire lightning xenon flares to our port and starboard and let them float down. They won't be able to track us. Fire!"
Buck just had time to see one of their missiles, followed by a stream of exploding Madsen cannon shells, rip into one of the enormous cylindrical tubes. From everything he had learned of such energy mass drivers, the tube should have been studded with transformers that would accelerate the energy charge as it went through the tube and deep into the mountain into which it was fixed.
The transformers were there, visible only for seconds as the side of the cliff collapsed under the withering firepower.
A tremendous shock slammed into Nautilus. "We've taken a
A Life in the Future
torp," Doc Huer said calmly. "Heavy damage. Cryogenic protection systems are falling off line."
"Overdrive, now!" Buck shouted to Valmar and Blackwell. A blast of nuclear fire well behind him slammed him back in his seat, crushing him against his backrest. He tasted blood as his teeth bit into his lower lip, and he was barely able to move as Nautilus accelerated quickly. Behind them, through the holo-scope, he saw explosions where they had been only moments before.
They climbed at a breathless pace, the nose section blazing from friction, heat seeping into the crew compartment. They were taking five, then seven, then twelve times the force of gravity. Several of the crew were already unconscious, blood streaming from nose and ears. They couldn't take this much longer. Suddenly a dazzling light appeared before them. The sun!
"Out of atmosphere!" Blackwell announced.
"Decelerate to five-g max," Buck ordered, trying to save his crew. Racing away from Venus, maintaining the punishing acceleration of five times gravity force, speed building up swiftly to dangerous limits, Buck instantly changed their acceleration and course. He took direct command of their power now, reducing acceleration to three g's. "Fire off trail decoys," he ordered. "Let them track the dummies."
Blazing torps with subatomic spray and xenon superflares burst in a curving line away from Nautilus's course.
"Buck, you read me? This is Doc."
"Go ahead."
"You realize we're in an orbital curve that's taking us straight toward the sun. Pretty soon this thing is going to pass a million miles an hour when we start being pulled in by solar gravity."
"Right, Doc."
"They had some light cruisers out here we didn't see on the way in," Doc went on. "You have them on your scope?"
"Got 'em. Doc," Buck said, his voice deceptively calm.
"They may be able to outspeed us. Buck," Doc said.
"Rogers," Kane added, "I hope to Hades you know what you're doing. This bucket ain't no spacefighter. Any Asp or Zhang can run circles around us. We're in a submarine. Will you please keep that in mind?"
Buck Rogers
"Yep," Buck laughed. "That's why we're going to play Wile E. Coyote."
His words were met with a chorus of "What?"
"Make sense, will you?" Blackwell said sharply.
"When you can't outfight them and you can't run away from them, you vanish," Buck laughed. "Or at least they think you've vanished. Even better, they might believe you've been destroyed. Seidman, prepare to launch dummy ship."
"Ready," came the answer.
"Then let her go," Buck ordered.
A long cylinder sped away from Nautilus. Immediately Buck cut power, impelled by their speed alone, leaving no exhaust trail. Behind them, a metal-coated duplicate of Nautilus, a rigid balloon, expanded into the same size and sensor readings as Nautilus.
"We're close enough to the sun now that we'll be accelerating steadily," Buck told his crew. "So is that dummy ship. Any moment now it should trail a false exhaust they can't miss with their sensors. They'll be within firing range soon, and I want them to hit the dummy. When they do, the impact will set off the high intensity flares, and at the same time, it will emit signals of the ship breaking up, pieces going out in all directions."
"And what will we be doing all this time?" Seidman asked.
"We're headed straight for Mercury. Look at your screens."
Behind them, missiles slammed into the duplicate Nautilus, setting off violent explosions. Buck closed on Mercury, running without power. Nevertheless, their rate of closure was frightening. At the last possible safe moment. Buck played his next card. "Full rad shields!" he ordered. An intense energy shield surrounded Nautilus to ward off the powerful radiations streaming outward from the sun.
"This close in," he said aloud, as much to himself as to his crew, "we're blanketed by Mercury's disc, and solar radiation is making hash of the Mongols' sensors. They can't see or detect us ... so they'll believe that dummy was us."
He worked the controls as if he were in a fierce race around a pylon course. Crater walls seemed to leap out at them. Buck slammed the controls in full reverse thrust, decelerating almost to a hover, bringing in the Inertron and antigrav fields. Nautilus
A Life in the Future
went down like a helicopter, slowing steadily.
"We're not taking any chances," he announced. Nautilus rounded the curve of the planet into sunside as Buck lowered the ship into a deep crater, shielded from the sun by towering walls. They felt the hull touch rock. "Shut her down!" he barked. "Life-support systems only!"
Nautilus lay like a great shark at the crater bottom, shrouded in darkness.
High above, three Mongol battle cruisers raced by, unaware that they were passing directly over the Nautilus.
Two hours later, sensors sweeping space in all directions, Buck lifted Nautilus slowly. "Blackwell, as soon as we're clear of high solar radiation, get off a subspace message to Admiral Bemis. Have him send in a heavy force to clean up any Mongol spacecraft they can find. No quarter is to be given."
"You've got it," she answered, sealing the doom of the remaining Mongol battle fleet.
Buck was stage center as the group met with the Amerigo High Council. "We have all studied your report," President Logan began. "We've also seen the reports of the crew of your vessel. Nautilus. You have all performed in a most exemplary manner, and we are g
rateful." Logan stacked papers neatly before him.
"Our study of these documents, as well as viewing the videoholos and instrument readings, tells us a great deal. But by their necessary impersonal nature, they leave much unsaid or explained. We know that events witnessed and judged by some crew members will produce different conclusions on the part of fellow crew members." Buck and the others nodded.
"It is our desire that this meeting be conducted in a completely informal manner. Do not stand on diplomacy or even courtesy. Please feel free to interrupt whenever you have something to offer you judge vital. Consider this session a debriefing for all of us. For the remainder of this session, no rank or protocol should interfere with what we need to know. Brigadier Rogers, please proceed."
Buck Rogers
"My report differs somewhat from the others, as you have already noted," Buck began. "We saw the same events, but what we judged, as you point out, was obviously affected by what background knowledge some of us might have, which others lacked.
"Unless I am otherwise corrected, I believe I understand what the Mongols—in concert with the Tiger Men of Mars—have not only been planning but have also actually begun. They have been more than devious, with the destruction of this country, and even all of Earth, as one of their primary goals."
He paused to let his words sink in. The council remained silent, but from their facial expressions and uncomfortable shifting in their seats. Buck could tell just how much of a bombshell he had set off in their midst.
He worked his way slowly through the events on Venus with Nautilus, then paused as he described the huge cliff face studded with weapons, and especially the huge energy drives being built deeply into the surface of the planet. He then described how one of the huge cylindrical energy tubes had been sliced open by his weapons.
"This energy system," he said slowly, "has been described to me, and I believe this conviction is held by most of us in Amerigo, as cooperation by the Mongols in speeding up the rotation of Venus. This is being done to eliminate the greenhouse effect and to initiate an Earthlike weather engine system on that planet. The intended goal is a rotational period of twenty-one to twenty-six hours to accommodate that goal."
Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Page 34