“You’re wrong this time, Arlynn. Your life is important, to me and I’m sure to lots of others,” he said, standing up and turning to face her. “I’ll make you a promise. I’ll do my very best to get you and your bag of spare parts home.”
“But, Greg, I hardly know you. Once I take the cold sleep medicine, the ship will be yours. Without limitation. That’s the only way it will work. What is to prevent you from keeping the ship or from turning it over to your government?”
“My integrity is what will prevent me from doing such a thing, Arlynn.” He took both of her hands in his own and looked into her eyes. “I’ll make you a further promise. Not only will I do my best to get you home, I’ll use every trick at my disposal to avoid the Harbok and to avoid detection by my own people. What I’m saying is that I’m willing to commit myself for the duration of this trip to your goals, even though I don’t fully understand them. If you’ll agree to take the cold sleep medicine now, I’ll act as your ally in every way, just as if I were one of your people.”
Tears came to her eyes, and she reached out to hold him. The sick heat from her body radiated through him as he pressed her head into his shoulder. They held each other for a long time, gathering strength from each other for their separate trials to come.
She eventually pushed herself away. “I have a few additional instructions to give the computer, then I’ll turn the ship and myself over to you. Take us out of the simulator mode.”
He returned to his seat, though his concern was for her, and he had trouble concentrating. He made a few mistakes, but he managed to cancel the tactical mode and bring the course data back to life on the screen. Arlynn was busy with a computer at the StarDrive station when he brought the ship out of the lake and to a rest beside his float plane. Her body was draining energy in its fight against the Harbok illness, and dark circles beneath her eyes gave her a haunted, wasted look.
“It’s done,” she said, turning to him. “The ship is yours, Greg. I’ve given it a few final instructions to assist you if the Harbok discover you. Please understand that these instructions are not given because I don’t trust you. I do trust you, and I’m only trying to ensure our survival. First, if you change any of our trip parameters on the computer – our course, speed, or destination – the ship will automatically broadcast a high-power distress signal to my baseship. Second, if the ship senses a threat from the Harbok, the ship will assume you are under attack and will automatically switch to preset values for your shield strength and flicker rate. It will place you in the tactical mode and automatically begin broadcasting the distress signal. It will continue broadcasting until instructed otherwise. Once these things have occurred, you will have complete control of the ship again, and you will be able to select other modes of operation and shield values. Third, if all goes well, the ship will automatically stop 30,000 kilometers short of our destination and broadcast my message on a short-range beamer to alert the baseship of your needs. You will not have to land this ship, Greg. They will come and get you. Just follow any instructions they issue.”
“I can do that.”
“Then I’m ready.” She turned and shuffled back through the ship to her cabin, then she lay face down on her bed and instructed him to inject the cold sleep formula into her arm. She held his hand while waiting for the drug to take effect.
“We will next meet in better surroundings, Greg. If we do not, I know it will not be for lack of trying. Even with proper medical help, it is possible that I will not survive the effects of the cold sleep. For me, there was no alternative. I’m glad to have met you, Greg Hamilton. I’m pleased that it was you who came to my rescue. I hope my people will come to like you as much as I do.”
Her eyes closed. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, but he was pretty sure she was already gone.
Chapter Thirteen
He had things to do. She had a month, or at least she had told him she had a month, but in reality, she could count the rest of her life in a finite number of minutes. He felt pressured to get going. Nevertheless, rather than rush headlong into something he knew nothing about, he decided to take a little extra time and think it through.
He returned to the control room, a room that seemed lonely and empty now without her presence. He was hard hit by the knowledge that this was all his now even though he knew almost nothing about it. Was he really going to take this thing out to the Asteroid Belt? All by himself? The bridge breathed of sophistication and power, of life and pent up energy, and he had no doubt that the ship could make the trip, but could he do his part? There was no one to turn to if he got overwhelmed. What he was about to do would affect Arlynn’s life, the ship, First Contact, and if he let himself think about it, perhaps even the futures of several civilizations. The responsibility weighed heavily. He needed to get going, but he knew that as soon as he took the first step down this road, there would be no turning back. What he was about to do could not be undone.
Then he heard the tick . . . tick . . . tick of Arlynn’s clock. He had secured the plane, so it did not need his attention. When he failed to show up back at the camp, Jim and Nancy would come looking for him. Both were qualified pilots, so they could bring both planes back home.
Through the screen surrounding himself on three sides, he looked around the clearing. He looked at the fir trees as if he had never seen one before, he noted the texture of the short grass, and even the contrasting light and dark grays of the clouds overhead. Branches on the trees swayed in a light breeze, and he wondered when, or where, he would next feel a breeze. Would this trip ultimately be his passport to Arlynn’s world, or to any other world for that matter, or would his next step be the beginning of the end?
He was delaying, and he knew it. Arlynn had said she had a month, but did she really have that long? Even if she did, she would probably be better off if he could minimize her time under cold sleep. With a deep breath and squared shoulders, he looked once more around the clearing, but this time with clear focus. He said goodbye, then reached out to the controls and pressed keys. The flight plan sprang onto the screen. There was the flashing marker of Arlynn’s baseship summoning him. He pressed the ‘up’ button, brought the ship to a safe altitude above the trees, then he touched the execute command. The ship pivoted to a westerly heading and came up to a moderate speed.
It was done. He was underway.
* * * * *
He forced himself to sit back and watch. He wanted to fly the ship. He wanted to be in control, but as hard as it was to admit it, this was not the time.
As the ship gained altitude to clear the mountains ahead, the view abruptly changed both in color and clarity. The mountains and sky were still there, but their colors had shifted down the spectrum to magenta, and details were less clear. He suspected he was in the clouds—the mountain tops to the west had been obscured earlier in the morning as he flew toward the lake. Amazingly, the view of the mountains and sky was still there, just slightly less clear. Could this thing see right through clouds? The more he thought about it, the more sense it made that it probably could. Many forms of energy went right through clouds. If the ship was sensing those kinds of energies, and there was no reason to think otherwise, then it might be possible for a very powerful processor to reconstruct the portion of the light spectrum it was missing but which his eyes needed. Whew! What other surprises did this ship hold in store for him?
An hour later the coastline passed sedately beneath, and the ship began a descent until it was only a few hundred feet above the ocean. Then, in the space of a few heartbeats, it increased its speed until the ocean was just a blur. Separated from the wind and water only by the invisible screen, his whole world became the rushing waters ahead, below, and to the sides. It gave him an incredible rush.
He didn’t like it. He found himself leaning farther and farther forward, pulled into the rushing waters. He had to force himself back into the seat with his eyes closed to escape the feeling that he was being sucked right down into the o
cean. He used his sleeve to wipe a sheen of sweat from his brow and decided to occupy his mind with something useful before the jitters got the best of him.
He tried to determine how long it would take to reach Australia. Arlynn had said the ship could do Mach 10 in atmosphere. Perhaps it could go even faster. Roughing the voyage out in his head, he knew that the Earth had a circumference of some 25,000 miles, and the distance they had to fly was roughly one-third to one-half of the circumference of the globe. That meant some 8,000 to 12,000 miles. At Mach 10, roughly 7,000 miles per hour at sea level, it would take somewhere between one and two hours.
Ridiculous!
He grew frustrated, knowing the data scrolling around the periphery of the screen, all of it in a language he had no clue how to read, gave him a precise answer to his question. The simple red course line reaching out ahead was the only symbol he understood.
Then he had an inspiration. He left his seat and scrambled back to the cabin Arlynn had assigned him. He grabbed his portable GPS and raced back to the bridge. He faced straight ahead, feet spread wide, and hit the ‘on’ button. Nothing happened. He waited, then he punched several more buttons, but the unit stayed dead. His shoulders drooped, and he scowled. It wouldn’t even self-test. What kind of energies were floating around in this ship anyway? As with everything else here, there were no answers forthcoming.
He leaned over the back of his seat and stared at the course line, considering. There must be some way to figure this out. The line disappeared behind them as they advanced, so it was hard to tell how much of the trip was already over, but he might be able to approximate how quickly the line ahead shortened. He expanded the scale on the screen to include only that portion of the trip over the Earth. Twenty minutes later, after carefully watching the line shorten, he decided they had roughly another two and one-half hours to go, which meant only three hours total from when they had crossed the shore line of North America.
Whew! He grinned in triumph, then he sobered again. He had been playing follow-the-leader for several days, just letting things happen as they would, but he was on his own now. Old instincts demanded that he take control. The very real possibility existed that he was headed into a war zone. He somehow had to prepare for what lay ahead even if he was limited in what he could do. He needed a plan.
The most dangerous part of the trip would be as he left Earth. Even after flying half way around the globe and using a polar trajectory for concealment, detection by the Harbok was possible, even probable if they were on the lookout. They almost certainly knew by now that parts of their cloaking device system had been stolen. Did they know Arlynn had survived her encounter with the UFO? More important, did they know she had another ship?
The Harbok had been willing to shoot down Arlynn’s ship. Did that mean they were, as a people, quick on the trigger? Were they bloodthirsty warriors?
Not necessarily. Arlynn had implied that they preferred to shoot rather than talk, yet they had not ravaged Earth, at least not yet, and they certainly had the ability to do so. That indicated there was at least some discipline among them, which led him to believe he was up against experienced military forces rather than undisciplined savages.
If they were military, and if they were good, he knew what they would do, because it was what he had done during his fighting days. Their goal would be to stop Arlynn’s people from getting the cloaking device. Period. And they would not go charging in recklessly, even if revenge was a factor. They would plan for all contingencies in a business-like manner, leaving nothing to chance. They would stop any ships from leaving the planet, and they would stop any rescue attempt from Arlynn’s people out in space.
Harbok readiness was the fundamental issue. Were their ships operational? Did they have more ships that Arlynn did not know about? If so, he was flying into an ambush. They would be cloaked, and he would probably never know what hit him.
That was a worst-case scenario from which there was no escape. Arlynn had programmed the ship to go to maximum shielding at the first hint of trouble. His job would be to stay out of their line of fire while programming a high-speed course directly to her baseship, but the Harbok would have a plan in place to prevent that. He’d have to go somewhere else. Back to Earth? Head the opposite way, toward the sun? It would all depend on the positioning of the Harbok ships. If he went back to Earth, they’d have the ship, of course, but he might be able to get Arlynn and himself off before they blew it up.
That option left Arlynn dead in a month.
If, on the other hand, the only ships available to the Harbok were the ones damaged in their base, he had some chance of success. They’d had five days to make repairs, but how many mechanics would an outpost have on an alien world? If they operated like our military forces, they would plan to swap black boxes at the local level, leaving complicated repairs to higher level repair centers. Swapping black boxes was quick and reliable, but in this case, they were dealing with sabotage. The kind of damage done by Jarl and Arlynn would not likely have been part of their repair strategy. And there were only three ships left.
They would assume his ship was piloted by someone skilled in its capabilities. In fact, they might assume it was the same person who had already shot down one of their ships, so they would be careful. That was a big plus in his favor—they would hesitate if their ships were not fully functional. Little did they know they were up against an unarmed ship flown by an untrained pilot. Then he gulped as the thought struck him that they might somehow know that, too.
If his logic was correct, the first few hours in space would be the most dangerous time. He needed breathing room, and he needed inoperative cloaking devices. Was that asking too much? If all ships had similar capabilities, and Arlynn had implied that they did, then all he had to do was get a short head start on them and they’d never catch up. He felt comfortable with his ability to program the computer to go fast.
He desperately wanted to practice maneuvering the ship, particularly in the tactical mode. His fingers reached out to start punching keys, but the rushing waters below brought him back to his senses. What would happen if he punched the wrong button this close to the water?
No, he would not touch anything until he was out in space.
The plan then, if the Harbok found him, was to go fast. He would head toward Arlynn’s baseship if possible, but he would go away from the Harbok no matter what. As soon as he did that, Arlynn’s message would go out over the radio alerting her people who, hopefully, would come to his rescue. She had said the whole trip at highest speed would take three days. That meant help could arrive in about a day and a half if it met him half way. Could he outrun the Harbok for that long? Positioning would be everything.
The hours of training had stretched his mind to the limit. Now there was nothing to do, and the forced inactivity took its toll. His eyes grew heavy, mesmerized by the constant rush of water below. He shook his head to clear it, then his eyes settled on the course-change marker over Australia and he sat up straight, remembering.
Space! He was going into space. He was racing headlong through the greatest adventure of his life. A grin split his face from one side to the other. He turned around in his seat to look at all the wonderful buttons and switches everywhere. For the first time, he really looked at the bridge, and his adrenaline began to flow. Until now he had not really had the opportunity to just look around. Arlynn had been all business . . . well, almost all business . . . and she had controlled his every moment. Now he was alone. No tasks demanded his attention, and he let the wonder settle in.
Look at this thing, he thought, his eyes glistening as his gaze wandered over the arrays of panels, switches, computer screens, data entry keyboards, even the storage compartments with their contents just waiting to be explored. Bright light lit the bridge, but where it came from he could not tell. He guessed the whole area, from the nose all the way back to the door separating the bridge from the rest of the ship, stretched 45 or 50 feet in length and a good 15 or 20
feet wide. Much of it was empty space to allow viewing the front screen. The back half of the bridge, at first glance, appeared squared off into a box shape, but on closer inspection, he decided the walls and ceiling were subtly curved to give a pleasing sense of softness to everything. He knew from his brief outside walk to the ship that the exterior surfaces continued widening, easily reaching a width of fifty or sixty feet for the bulk of the vessel. Tucked behind the walls, floor, and ceiling then were all the electronic and mechanical things the ship needed to make it function. The place felt spacious, but on further consideration, he decided it would probably seem busy with a full crew.
Three seats perched out on the transparent front screen, one on each side behind the pilot, all seemingly floating in mid-air. Each was equipped with the same wide, fan-shaped armrests, but what specific functions the two extra positions served in a fully manned ship he did not know.
The side entry door was just aft of the front screen. Aft of that was the fourth seat, the StarDrive position, which was also apparently the communications console since that was where Arlynn had prepared the messages to her baseship. The StarDrive controls were built into a curved table surrounding a computer screen. Above the table, the wall was full of switches, meters, and access panels as high as a person standing could reach.
Directly across from the StarDrive position, the fifth seat faced a wall-mounted table below three computer screens. The table appeared to function primarily as a data input station for the screens above. Orderly rows of switches, meters, and other paraphernalia lined the remainder of the wall, all of them utterly meaningless to him. He got up and went aft to study this position and decided it might be an engineering station.
Moving farther aft brought him to the area of storage compartments lining both walls, the ceiling, and possibly the floor. He decided he might as well explore. He touched the first door-open pad aft of the engineering station, expecting the familiar ‘snick’ of a rapidly opening door. Instead, he watched wide-eyed as a section of wall four feet across split at waist height. The bottom section disappeared into the floor while the top half went into the ceiling.
Ship's Log Page 16