by Mack Maloney
The priest did a slight bow. "May I get something in my pocket?" he asked Lisa. "Not a weapon, I assure you."
"I'm a sucker for a good laugh," she said. "Be my guest."
Tomm reached into his pocket and withdrew an electron torch, the handy tool just about everyone in the Galaxy carried. He turned it on, then carved a square out of the air in front of him. The molecules instantly bonded into a pane of superglass, about two feet by two feet, glistening, yet pliable. Tomm grabbed the pane out of the air, and then began pushing it in from its corners, quickly forming a perfect, if overly large superglass diamond. Then he blew on it gently, causing the molecules to disperse and making it disappear.
They all looked at Lisa. She was staring back at them, mouth open, but skeptical around her eyes.
"A trick…" she managed to mumble. "A good one, but…"
Tomm looked at Hunter. More was needed. The pilot took a small white box from his pocket and activated the button on top. There was a sudden flash and then a burst of green smoke. When it dissipated, his flying machine was standing in the middle of the big room, its tail fin crushing some of the Christmas boxes.
Lisa dropped her glasses; they hit the table, then the floor, shattering into a thousand little pieces. Her jaw fell open. She turned pale. She tried to say something, but no words would come out. In fact, she had a hard time catching her breath. She managed to stand up, though, and stumble forward, approaching the spacecraft gingerly. She reached out and touched it, making sure that she wasn't in a dream.
Then she began shaking her head. "No… this… this can't be real… "
They took her at her word; they couldn't help it, that's the way they were. So Zarex snapped his fingers, there was another burst of green smoke, and suddenly the danker 33418 was standing before them, all ten feet of him. Metallic muscles, arm weapons, death-ray visor. The works.
Lisa looked up at him, and the robot made an unusual whirring sound.
That's when she fainted dead away.
She hit the floor with a bang, taking out one of the old rickety chairs with her. "Oh great!" Zarex moaned. 'Wow what do we do with her?"
Not a minute later, they were bounding down the stairs of the police station, trying to make the least amount of noise possible, but tripping and slamming into things in the dark, nevertheless.
They reached the bottom floor and found themselves in a pitch-black hallway. Above them, they could hear many footsteps running down the stairs, coming their way. Hunter began groping around the wall and somehow found the rear door to the building. He hit the bar and the door sprang free. It also set off the building's security alarm.
There were only two cars in the parking lot. One had police writing all over it; the other was very sleek-looking in an odd kind of way, white with fiery decals on the front and a winglike contraption on the back. It was Lisa's Firebird. Zarex climbed in behind the wheel of the car; he'd fished the keys out of Lisa's jacket pocket soon after she collapsed. As Hunter and Tomm piled into the backseat, Zarex tried to figure out exactly how to insert the keys into the ignition. It took a few moments, but finally the key went into the slot.
Nothing happened.
Zarex pulled the key out and put it back in again.
Still nothing…
"What infernal machine is this?" he roared. "Surely these things tap into its power supply!"
Lights were blinking on all over the police station now. And the alarm was ringing even louder.
"Manipulate the key, brother!" Tomm yelled to Zarex.
That's when Zarex realized the key had to be not only inserted into the ignition but turned as well. As soon as he did this, the car's engine roared to life. Hunter reached forward and pulled the control stick down to the initial D, and off they went.
Wheels screeching, tires burning rubber, they peeled out onto the street in front of the police station, knocking over a line of trash cans in the process. Zarex didn't know how to drive; he was having trouble just keeping the wheel straight while pushing the accelerator to the floor. The result was a high-speed, careening journey down Main Street, sideswiping several parked cars and running two red lights. They were making so much noise, store alarms were popping on as soon as they roared past. Zarex took a sharp comer at the intersection of Elm and Main, creaming a park bench and taking down a no parking sign as well. Finally, they swerved onto Route 67A and took off toward the west. Though it had not been as subtle as they would have liked, they had not met any other vehicles since thundering out of the police station parking lot, and none were in pursuit.
Zarex managed to keep the car fairly straight on the road now and was intent on making the needle, which indicated their speed, climb to the far end of its limit, which was 160 miles per hour.
Only once he'd achieved this speed did Hunter and Tomm finally sit back and relax for a moment.
"We're safe now," Tomm said with a sigh of relief.
They drove for about twenty miles.
It was almost midnight. Traveling through the particularly isolated part of southwestern Illinois, they saw no other cars on the little-used highway nor any structures except for a few scattered barns and sheds. There were immense fields of alfalfa and wheat on either side of the straight, flat road. The winds rippled across these fields in such a way, they made the stalks move like waves on an ocean. Just above the roadway itself, a thick but shallow mist had gathered. Rain clouds hung low overhead. This was called inclement weather, Tomm reminded them. A rarity in most places, and in some parts of the Galaxy, it didn't exist at all.
Zarex had finally gotten the hang of operating the Firebird. Just keep the wheel steady and the pedal to the floor; it was really as simple as that. Yet the car did not ride very smooth at its maximum speed; this surprised them, as did the motor, which seemed a hundred times noisier than the power generator on any spacecraft they'd been in.
While putting distance between them and Betaville was an immediate priority, there was something even more urgent pressing on their minds. Their violent landing on this planet had come just after dawn, so they'd yet to glimpse this world's night sky. And that was the problem. They had told the Betaville cops the truth about one thing: They had no idea where they were. Not a clue. All that day, during their interrogation, they had yearned for night to fall just so they could see the stars and get a reading on their galactic location. Now it was dark again, and the rain clouds were finally beginning to break up ahead of them. So even though the police might be coming over the next hill in high pursuit, the three fellow travelers knew they had to stop and study the sky the first chance they got.
Spotting a fairly high hill ahead, Zarex pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine. All they could hear now was the wind. Suddenly, it was howling. They climbed out of the car and found the clouds above them were moving away very quickly. Strangely, it was getting very bright out. They climbed a wire fence, then forded a small stream before reaching the base of the hill. Scrambling up to the summit, they found the clouds were blowing away in every direction now, magically revealing the night sky for the first time.
"Am I seeing things?" Zarex was the first to gasp, shielding his eyes from the glare. "Or does this before us seem alien and unreal?"
That it did. Unlike the black-magic planet of Myx, the sky here was absolutely filled with stars. From horizon to horizon to horizon, there seemed to be nothing but stars. More stars than black space in between. More stars than it would seem possible, especially in the middle of the sky, where there were so many clustered together, they seemed to create one gigantic orb of light.
They had never seen anything like this.
"My God," Tomm breathed. "Where can we be?"
The three travelers had no idea. But it was important that they find out. Before being arrested, they'd given their personal items to Pater Tomm, hoping the police would not frisk someone who looked like a priest, which they did not. This was how they had been able to retain their various quadtrols and Twenty 'n S
ix boxes. Zarex pulled out his quadtrol now and scanned the vast, star-studded sky above them. He looked at the initial readings and let out a long, astonished groan.
"No wonder no one in the Five-Arm knew where this place was," he said finally. "It's because we're not on the Five-Arm anymore."
Hunter and Tomm didn't like the sound of that.
"If not the Five-Arm, then where are we, brother?" Tomm asked him anxiously.
Zarex pushed some more buttons; again it took a few mo-merits for the calculations to bounce back to him.
"Goodness," he breathed. "Can this be accurate?"
He turned the quadtrol around so they could both see.
"If this is correct," he said. "We're not on any arm at all."
Hunter and Tomm just stared back at him. Not on any arm?
"Nor are we inward, near the Ball," Zarex continued. "We are at neither place."
"Is that possible?" Hunter asked.
Zarex just shrugged. "Certainly every known star in the Galaxy is located either on the arms or in the Ball, or very close by. Yet, if my quadtrol is to be believed, we are at neither point in space."
He paused and looked up again. "In all my years, I've never seen a sky such as this."
But why did the sky look so thick with stars? Hunter was the first to spit out a theory. Because the Galaxy was flat and spiral, they were used to looking through one of the arms toward the center. Could it be that they were actually somewhere looking down onto the Milky Way, so the stars were not spread before them on a straight plane, but instead literally filled up the sky?
"An interesting conjecture," Zarex said. "Except top or bottom, there aren't any systems anywhere near the area we would have to be. It is supposed to be totally empty space; the gap between us and the other galaxies—"
"But dear God, it's the only explanation!" Tomm cried. "As crazy as it may seem."
This was all becoming very unsettling for Zarex. As a lifelong star shooter, it was a bit frightening not knowing exactly where he was. Even in his longest explorations, he'd always left from a familiar starting point, knowing he could always return to the same.
But not this time.
"Oh Lord," the giant explorer moaned now as it all began to sink in. "We are looking down at the whole thing. Or up as the case may be. That flood in the center must be the Ball, the streams on its edge the beginnings of the arms. But we must be thousands upon thousands of light-years removed from the swirl to have such a view!"
He shook once, from head to toe, then whispered, "Brothers, this is truly an unnatural place for us to be."
But the flood of stars was not the only unusual thing going on over their heads. Rising off to the east, breaking through the last of the clouds, was the strange planet's only moon. It seemed overly large, very close and familiar somehow. Bright white, with many craters in evidence, it was traveling so fast across the very starry sky, they could actually see its movement.
And still, that was not the strangest thing above them. Strangest of all was the string of heavenly bodies that stretched across the sky, roughly east to west, like a necklace of gigantic white gems. It was hard to tell just what these things were, or how far out from the planet. From their size and brightness, they seemed almost close to orbit. Yet the way they were aligned across the entire sky indicated they were much farther out.
Zarex began madly pushing the buttons on his quadtrol now. This was getting too crazy. He had to know where he was. But his device started going haywire. It made a very strange noise, and then it shut down altogether. All three men let out a gasp. A quadtrol going bust? They'd never heard of such a thing before.
Both Hunter and Tomm quickly retrieved their own quadtrols, but the effect was the same. Their devices took a few readings, delivered the unprecedented news that they couldn't fix their own location, then began beeping and whirring until fizzling out for good.
The three travelers stood mute in amazement. Then reality came flooding in. They still didn't know where they were… and without any quadtrols, they were like ships on the ocean without a compass. They really were lost.
Hunter swore under his breath. Damn, this was not going well at all. It wasn't just that they didn't know where they were. It was the planet itself. It just didn't look the part for this great adventure. What had he imagined their ultimate destination to be? A world inhabited entirely by valiant soldiers like the Freedom Brigade meres? No, not quite. But certainly, he'd expected some kind of advanced civilization, maybe even u/fra-advanced. A place that was impressive and exotic. An entire planet that looked like Big Bright City. That had been his fantasy. Buildings, air machines, towers, floating cities, and billions of people, waiting with open arms for him and others who had been called back home.
But this definitely did not seem like home. Surely his psyche would be flashing all kinds of signals, that yes! He'd finally made it to the end of what was supposed to be an impossible journey. But none of this was happening inside him now. Just the opposite, in fact.
But did this mean they'd ended up on the wrong planet? It was obvious the people here had never been contacted, either by locals from planets nearby or by anyone else. They were totally ignorant of other life in space. How could the Freedom Brigade come from such a place then? Had Hunter and his friends been tricked? Had the poof steered them off course on purpose? Or had she miscalculated somehow?
Or could there be some other explanation entirely?
Was this the place he was supposed to be?
Looking up at the very strange sky now, Hunter knew there was only one way to find out.
They would have to take Agent Lisa's advice.
9
It was fourth down and inches to go.
There were six seconds remaining on the clock. The score was twenty-fourteen. A touchdown here would give Mayfield High a tie. The extra point would win the game.
Tension gripped the stadium. The boisterous crowd had become eerily quiet. Two thousand people, collectively holding their breath. Even the vendors were paying attention. Along the home sideline, some of the Mayfield cheerleaders were crying. This was the biggest game of the year. The opposing team, the hated Smalltown High, had been their rival for like, ages.
Those cheerleaders not crying were either praying or trying to induce others in the crowd to pray. AH except one, Ashley Woods. She was the squad leader, and this was a moment of big responsibility for her. Yet she was not thinking about the game, the crowd, or her squad. She was thinking about a dream she had had the night before.
She was walking down a long, straight road somewhere near her home. She met a very cute guy walking in the other direction. He didn't scare her. She talked to him for a while. They had a few beers. They kissed. Then, they did it___
It!
They… did… it.
She'd never had a dream like that in her life.
She was blond and beautiful, the prettiest cheerleader on the squad, thus her elevated status. But she was not stuck up, not a clothes freak, not a druggie, not a smoker. Not an angel, either, but close. Some things tempted her. Mostly she thought of herself as a normal seventeen-year-old kid. She loved old movies. She loved Saturday morning cartoons. She loved dancing.
And she liked boys. A lot. She didn't have a boyfriend, and never really had one. Not a serious one, anyway. She had kissed a few, though. And done a few other things. Not much, but some.
But dreaming… about doing it?
Never…
The referee's whistle knocked her out of the trance.
She looked to the end zone just as the ball was being hiked. What happened next came like slow motion. The last six seconds begin ticking away. The quarterback — Billy Rogers, class hunk — gets the ball and drops back to pass but everybody is covered. Billy starts scrambling. Two seconds tick away. Billy is running for his life, half the Smalltown squad is chasing him. Two seconds to go. At the very last instant, Billy changes direction and heads for the end zone. He makes a great leap, twis
ts in midair — and is stopped, dead, by one, two, three opposing players. Slammed to the turf, eleven Smalltown players pile on top of him.
He is still a half a foot away from the goal line. The last two seconds tick away. The horn sounds.
The game was over.
Ashley went back to thinking about her dream.
The other girls on the Mayfield cheering squad took the loss very hard. Even a half hour after the game was over, they were too distraught to do anything but cry some more and then eat.
So it was up to Ashley to pick up the squad's equipment— pom-poms mostly. But by the time she'd finished policing their area and gathered her own things together, she found herself alone in the stadium. All the fans were gone. The cheer squad bus, which was supposed to drop them all off at their homes, had left as well. Even the janitors were gone.
"Must be my lucky day," she thought.
Then she slung her gym bag over her shoulder and began the mile and a half walk to town and home.
It was a warm fall day, and after a while, she didn't mind the walk at all. Thoughts bounced between her pretty little ears as she sauntered down the barely paved road, looking everywhere but straight in front of her. There were at least ten parties she could go to tonight Some with booze. Some with pot. Some with both. Some with none. All might be tres boring. She considered just staying home and renting a scary movie. If she went out, what would she wear? She was so sick of her jeans these days, but a skirt might not work, as all the parties would be outside, and it was starting to get cold these nights. So if it was her jeans then, which shoes? Which top? Would she need a jacket? Did she have enough money to chip in for beer? What if…
Suddenly she stopped in her tracks. There was a shadow on the road in front her, not her own. She looked up to see a guy standing practically in front of her. He was smiling. He was older. He was handsome. He also looked very, very different. And very lost.
Ashley did not feel nervous at all. She was out in the middle of nowhere — well, at least a mile from town. And this guy had literally popped up like magic. But she was okay, and she knew it.