Kane said to Ardala, “Something about a United States. Never heard of it.” He turned commandingly upon Buck. “Captain, what is your destination?”
Reaction to his first movement in half a millennium overcame Buck. He clutched at his head, collapsed back onto the table. “Oh, my God!” he gasped.
The princess looked on in alarm. “What is it?”
“My head.” He clutched at his temples. “Anyone got an aspirin?”
Puzzled, the princess asked, “What does that mean?”
“Probably some sort of anti-pain drug,” Kane supplied.
“Give him something to ease his discomfort,” Ardala commanded.
Taking his clue from the princess, Kane nodded toward an orderly. The latter moved off to bring a medication.
Buck had recovered sufficiently to speak again. “What is this place? Where am I? Who are you?”
“You’re aboard the king’s flagship Draconia.” Ardala supplied. “Under the command of the Royal Princess Ardala.”
“Oh,” Buck said. Then it sank in. “Who?”
“Never mind,” Kane interrupted the exchange. “We want to know all about you. Where you are from.”
“Wait,” Buck pleaded. “Slow down. What was that about a ship?”
“One of His Majesty’s Star Fortresses,” Ardala said. “On its way to Earth on a mission of peace.”
“On its way to Earth?” Buck was startled. “You mean, you guys aren’t from . . . I mean, we aren’t on . . .” He tried again to rise, failed. “Oh, I’m definitely going to need that aspirin.”
At this moment the orderly returned, a hypodermic syringe held carefully in one hand.
“Give it to him,” Ardala commanded.
“Hey,” Buck exclaimed. “What’s in that? Ooooh.”
Kane spoke menacingly. “Captain, bearing in mind that you are a captive of a dynasty that has conquered three fourths of the universe . . . you will answer very carefully, if you value your life.”
Buck stared at Kane, dumbstruck. The drug that had been administered was beginning to take effect: his eyes were growing vague. “What . . .”
“You claim to have been blown off course,” Kane said accusingly.
“Hmmm?”
“How do you explain that you were conveniently drifting in an unconscious state that would take you directly onto the princess’ announced flight path to Earth?”
Buck turned his gaze away from the menacing Kane, toward the beautifully and splendidly garbed princess. “That you?” he asked with childlike wonder. “Are you a real live princess?”
“I think you’ve given our captain a little too much medication,” Ardala commented.
“No,” Buck countered almost drunkenly. “I feel great.” And he began to giggle, and giggle, and giggle, while the technicians stared at him as if he had gone mad!
Later, three figures walked together down one of the corridors of the ship. One of them was Kane. Another was the Princess Ardala. The third was a strange being, a mutant, neither human nor animal, neither man nor beast, but something in between. As intelligent as a human—or nearly so—and as powerful and cunning as the jungle predators from whom his ancestors had been bred. He was Tigerman.
Ardala and Kane were conversing seriously while Tigerman padded silently, watchfully, menacingly beside them.
“The United States of America,” Ardala said thoughtfully. “I recall that it was an empire on the planet Earth, some centuries ago.”
“Those royal tutors gave you your money’s worth,” Kane commented wryly.
“You are from Earth,” Ardala snapped. “Surely you remember its history better than I!”
“The United States,” Kane took up the thread. “It perished almost five hundred years ago. It doesn’t exist any longer. The man Rogers is lying.”
“It would explain his clothing,” Ardala said. “As well as his spacecraft and the settings of its instruments.”
“I’ve a better explanation,” Kane countered. “He’s a very clever plant from those schemers on the Federal Directorate on Earth.”
Ardala stopped in mid-stride and swung upon Kane. “A plant?”
“A spy, yes! Placed in our path deliberately by their military, so we would discover him, by accident.” The irony was heavy in his voice.
“They wouldn’t dare,” Ardala said scornfully. “We come as a royal envoy to earth from my father’s kingdom.”
“I am aware of your father’s stated purpose,” Kane replied. “To guarantee trade between Earth and the Draconian dynasty.”
“Then why would they possibly place a spy on board our ship?” Ardala asked.
“To search our ship,” Kane answered. “To see if we are armed!”
“I see.” Ardala’s imperious posture seemed to sink a little. She gazed down the corridor and said again, “I see.”
“We cannot allow that, can we?” Kane prompted.
“No . . .”
“Then I am to assume that I may—let us say, dispose—of Captain Rogers, as I see fit?”
Ardala turned away without making a direct reply. “How you deal with security,” she said, “is your own prerogative, Kane.”
T W O
Inside the great bay, Buck Rogers’ ship was all but lost in the immensity of the cavernous interior and the massive, complex array of machinery. Workmen were bustling over and around the ship, studying, investigating, restoring it to working order. From one of the corridor portals, Kane entered the bay. He was carrying a small oblong box. He handed it to one of the technicians working on the ship and instructed the worker. “These are computer boards to be reinstalled on Captain Rogers’ ship, now that we’ve studied and tested them thoroughly. As soon as they’re reconnected, stand by to launch!”
Buck himself, still recovering from his long ordeal, was wheeled into the bay, rather than walking there under his own power. “Now this is realistic,” he was saying, still half-bemused by the Draconian drug that had been injected into him. “What a layout this place is. It looks like Howard Hughes’ bathroom!”
Kane stepped away from the ship, stood over Buck’s rolling transport. “And how are we this morning?” Kane asked unctuously.
“Fantastic,” Buck grinned. “I wish you were all really here, but I know I’m gonna wake up, and when I do—poof!”
Buck continued talking to Kane as he rolled toward his ship. “Say, what a coincidence! I have a ship just like that one.”
Kane shot a significant glance to one of Buck’s medical orderlies. “You can discontinue medication now,” Kane commanded.
“No,” Buck countered. “Leave it on. I love it.”
“You’ll be on your way shortly,” Kane muttered.
Buck said, “Great! Where are we going?”
“You’re going home,” Kane answered.
“Great. Where’s that?”
“Earth.”
“Oh. Right.”
They had arrived at the ship. The orderlies helped Buck to a sitting posture. He heard Kane continuing to speak. “Your ship has been serviced and its computers reprogrammed to take you home. I’m sure you must be very anxious to get back.”
“Oh, yeah,” Buck said. “I feel like I must have been gone for weeks. Weeks and weeks and weeks.” He started to climb down from the rolling cart but his knees buckled beneath him. Orderlies sprang forward to keep him from falling.
“Whoo-eee!” Buck grabbed his head. “I must’ve had some good time with you guys. Gonna miss you. Say, why don’t we all go on down there together?”
“No, Captain,” Kane said, “you go on ahead. But don’t worry, we’ll follow in just a few days.”
“Not if I wake up,” Buck grinned. “Poof!”
An orderly at either side, Buck was helped through the boarding hatch into his ancient spaceship. “Guess I’ll be seeing you. I mean you’re going to be hard to miss coming down in this thing. Piece of advice,” he grinned. “Don’t try landing at New York. They weren’t even too cra
zy about the Concorde.” Again, Buck burst into giggles. The others remained serious.
“Say,” Buck complained, “I guess you guys can’t fix everything. My chronometer’s still acting whacky. Seems to say that I’ve been gone for five hundred years. Hahaha!” As Buck’s laughter echoed through the great bay, Kane nodded to a crew of technicians. They slammed shut the boarding hatch on Buck’s spaceship and locked it with all seals down.
Inside the ship, Buck muttered to himself. “Boy, are they going to be surprised back at Houston when I show up with this story. Talk about deep-space rapture making you hallucinate!”
And the ancient spaceship blasted through the opened doors of the giant bay, back to the blackness and emptiness from which it had been retrieved after its journey of half a millennium.
As Buck’s ship shrank from a spacecraft to a tiny point of gleaming light, the Princess Ardala peered after it, her thoughts lost in the distant stars. Her giant Tigerman bodyguard loomed powerfully behind her, and Kane advanced to parley with his princess.
“Is it possible?” Ardala asked. “Could he really have come through space from the Earth of five hundred years ago?”
“Yes,” Kane nodded. “It’s just possible. Precisely why I believe it to be an ingenious plan to dupe us, undoubtedly masterminded by Doctor Huer. Well, we will turn this little charade against its creator!”
“Against him? Why? How?” Ardala asked.
“He has given us the perfect opportunity to test the Earth’s defense shield.”
“What do you mean, test it? We know that anything approaching Earth without clearance is immediately incinerated.”
“But if our captain is a spy,” Kane purred, “as I suspect he is . . . they will escort him through the shield. Along the narrow channel known only to their military.”
“But,” Ardala demanded, “how will that help us?”
“I’ve hidden a microtransmitter aboard Captain Rogers’ ship,” Kane explained. “There’s no way he can detect its presence—I had our techs build it into his computer’s circuits. When they take him down, the transmitter will be giving us the equivalent of a guide map. When we give the signal, that map will be used by your father’s forces to pour through their defensive shield.”
Ardala looked up into Kane’s face, admiration filling her own. “You are clever, Kane!”
“A perfect combination,” he responded. “Your throne and my ability. We will one day rule your father’s kingdom!”
“Don’t be so eager to unseat my father,” Ardala snapped. “What if our captain is not a spy—what happens then?”
Kane shrugged. “Then he burns.”
Ardala looked away oddly. “I see.”
“You don’t look pleased,” Kane said.
“Of course I’m pleased. It’s just that . . . I had the strangest feeling that . . . I’d meet Captain Rogers again, somewhere.” Ardala looked away from Kane, a wistful expression on her beautiful features.
Inside his spaceship, Buck Rogers was functioning as a space pilot for the first time in half a thousand years. His skillful fingers switched controls, flipped levers as he ran through his pre-touchdown checklist. He was thoroughly enjoying his last hours in space, singing half-aloud as he worked.
“I’m flying down . . . I’m getting down . . . down, down, down . . . to my kind of town!” He broke off his song and switched on his transmitter. “Houston Control,” he snapped in businesslike terms. “This is astro-flight 711. Put down the cards and the backgammon boards and get on the horn to me. Buck is back—Lucky Buck!”
Buck switched off his transmitter, turned up the receiver of his radio set. It whined and blasted out amplified static, but there was no voice in reply to his own. “Hello,” Buck tried again. “Houston control! Hello! What say, guys? Do you read . . .?”
On the Earth below the results of half a thousand years of history lay spread across the face of the planet, across her continents and her oceans; no square foot of Earth’s face was untouched by the hands of humankind, from polar ice cap to equatorial desert, from ice-capped mountain peak to steaming, green jungle.
In some places the hand of man had wrought beauty.
In others—horror.
Inside a towering city of the twenty-fifth century, inside one of the great supermodern buildings, there was a room . . . a strange room with no discernible walls. Only planes of velvety blackness, strange, deep velvety blackness, and on the blackness, outlines and points of light, lights that represented the stars surrounding Earth. And on the floor of the strange room, a gridwork of coordinates with pinpoints of gleaming color moving back and forth, left and right.
This strange room was unknown to most of the inhabitants of earth. Ninety-nine percent of humanity had never heard of this strange place, and the one percent who knew of its existence spoke of it in hushed whispers, glancing furtively about to make certain that their statements were not overheard.
This was the War Room.
Inside the War Room a technician’s eyes widened as she saw the light moving across the face of her ’scope. She was unconscious of the curves of her body, of how they were emphasized by her trim, form-fitting tunic and tight-cut military trousers. She thought only of her duty, of the responsibilities which she bore.
“Uh, sir . . .” the technician said aloud. “Super . . .”
Her supervisor, a similarly uniformed technician wearing the unisex garb of his assignment, turned at the sound of her voice. “Super here,” he spoke into a mouthpiece. “What station is this?”
“Delta Vector, Supervisor.” A momentary pause. “You don’t hear from me very often. My scanners monitor the low-frequency direct-commo bands.”
“Yes, yes, Delta Vector. I’m sure you’re picking up Pirate and Marauder chatter. No reason for alarm. Probably Van Allen belt echoes from that attack on our freighters last night. Those signals will be bouncing around the spectrum for a week at least.”
“Yes, sir. I mean—no, sir! This isn’t an echo. It’s a voice, a strong voice. And it’s singing.”
“Singing? Delta Vector, did you say singing? Stay on the line, Delta.” He switched lines. “Operational Control, this is supervisor control on the floor. I want a direct feed-line from Delta Vector.”
And into his monitor minispeaker there came the static-distorted tones of a man’s voice singing. “Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey, won’t you come home . . .” The voice dropped the old song, switched over to businesslike, almost urgent tones. “Hey, you guys, wake up and fly right! What’s goin’ on there? I’m on final reentry countdown and I can’t read anything from you. If I don’t get some landing instructions from you, I’m going to put a big black hole right in the middle of beautiful downtown Burbank. Or Peoria. Or to tell the God’s honest truth, I don’t have the slightest idea of where the hell I’m heading!”
A look of puzzlement crossed the supervisor’s face. “Practically a foreign language. Can it be some kind of joke?”
But the supervisor’s thoughts weren’t left to run their course. Another voice broke in, even more urgently, on the line. “Alert! Alert! Alien space craft invading defense belt, vector four one zero. Repeat, alien space craft . . .”
The supervisor leaped into action. “My God!” he exclaimed, “it’s heading directly for the defense shield!” Into his transmitter he almost shouted, “Get me intercept. Intercept squadron on the line-quickly! Top red-emergency!”
At Intercept Squadron headquarters the commanding officer picked up her handset. Colonel Wilma Deering was herself a beautiful woman, fully aware of her own features and the power they gave her in human dealings, but when she was on duty there was no consideration of glamour or romance. Her job was far too important for her to permit any dalliance to distract her from its performance.
“Colonel Deering here. Yes. I read. What are the coordinates? Right!” She hung her commo unit away, pressed the control stud under a glaringly flashing light. A raucous klaxon sent up its grating, grinding h
oots. “Alert intercept!” Wilma commanded via loudspeaker. “Retard defense shield counterforce one hundred miles. Hold fire until we verify target identification!”
And from launching pads where sleek interceptor craft were held in flight-ready preparedness twenty-four hours a day, engines roared into shrieking, urgent life and gleaming, powerful fighting craft screamed away from earth, ready to engage any enemy that appeared.
“Alert intercept aircraft,” Colonel Deering’s voice came. “Stand by for readout on position of enemy craft!”
The War Room supervisor’s voice came metallically over the transmitter to Wilma’s earphone. “Very odd, Colonel.”
“What’s odd?” she snapped.
“Target seems to be moving unusually slowly for any known type of spacecraft. And its flight path is strange, too—erratic.”
A technician’s voice broke in on the line. “Target, thirty seconds from electronic destruct field.”
Wilma Deering peered through her window. She was no deskbound commander, but flew every mission with her squadron, fought in every engagement and shared every risk that she asked her subordinates to run. “I have the target in visual sight, now,” she was saying. “My God! What is that thing?”
As astonished as their commander, the members of the Intercept Squadron streaked past Buck’s antiquated spaceship, banking smoothly for another pass at the intruder.
“All right,” Buck Rogers exclaimed, unaware of the purpose of the craft that had scrambled to meet him. “Hey, really nice to see some friendly space-jockeys up to meet me!” His eyes widened, then narrowed again. “Wait a minute.” He gazed in amazement at these sleek, yet brutally powerful space fighters as they roared around his primitive ship like turbohydroplanes circling a wallowing rowboat. “Who are you guys?” Buck asked weakly. “Hell, what are ya?”
The voice that returned through his headset was that of Wilma Deering. “Attention alien spacecraft. Do you read me?”
“You bet I read you! And watch who you’re calling alien! You don’t look so goddamned familiar yourself. Who are you?”
Buck Rogers 1 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Page 3