by Isaac Stone
“This is crazy,” the field technician said to himself again as he studied the remains of the stone inside the alarm. “Why didn’t anyone tell us about this?”
He picked up his portable phone to call the district office, but found it no longer worked.
Most of the settlements that remained on Old Earth still survived. There were enough of the older electrical generators on the surface to provide for basic needs. Civilization was set back because the newer power packs were all over the place. The corporation tried to distribute them as much as they could.
The EAC Corporation folded not long after. The executives not immediately apprehended and jailed, most of whom had no knowledge of where the free energy originated, fled their offices and assumed new identities. This wasn’t hard to do when civilization fell apart. The unlucky ones were lynched or torn asunder by angry mobs. Stories circulated about EAC representatives found dead with useless power packs rammed down their throats. These were the lucky ones. Others never made it back to Earth as their shuttles failed on reentry and burnt up. Still more perished in the vacuum of space when the life support systems failed.
A few minutes after the control room of the Paradiso faded away, Kris found herself standing alone in a grassy plain. She felt the wind on her face and looked down to see the brown earth underneath her boots. She still wore the same basic security uniform she’d worn ever since the departure of the gunship Thelema. She felt the sun on her face and looked up to see the familiar orb of Sol break through a cloud.
If this is VR, she thought, they did a great job. I didn’t need to wear the helmet or even put on the harness. I wonder how this was done. The next minute she felt a tap on the shoulder.
Kris turned around to see Makulah next to her. “How did we get here?” he asked her. “That last thing I remember was watching the Paradiso blow that asteroid to pieces. Then the world went black. Now I’m here with you. Any idea where we might be at this minute?” He looked around and tried to remember where he’d seen this scene before, as it seemed oddly familiar.
“I’m just as confused as you,” Kris responded, her blond hair blowing in the wind. “I don’t think it’s VR. The air and sun feel too much like the real thing.” She reached down and picked up a pile of dirt.
Kris looked at the dirt in her hand and sifted through it. Bugs crawled out of it and the small bits of plant matter fell off her hand. It had the smell of rich loam and soil. She watched the dirt smear on her hands and dropped it to the ground.
“Real dirt,” she told Makulah. “Impossible to fake. I grew up around it and they’d never be able to fool me.”
“Which doesn’t answer the question,” he said to her, “where we are right now?” He turned his head and looked at the forest in the distance.
The next instant, two people emerged from it. He covered his eyes with one hand and looked across the grass at them. They seemed familiar and he realized who it was at the tree line.
“It’s Costa and Jack over there!” he announced. “At least most of us ended up in the same place.”
After joining up with the other two, they shared stories of arrival and found them to be similar. It was the same way: at one moment they felt unease, just as they did before the Paradiso made a jump, and then the world went black. When it returned, they found themselves in this place.
“We were inside the Hell Gate,” Jack pointed out. “Once we crossed into the abyss, anything was possible. I suppose we should be happy to be alive.”
“I’d like to know where the others went,” Costa said, “I guess we could hunt around and see if they ended up in this location too.” He sat on a rock and tried to identify what kind of trees surrounded them after their hike into the forest.
“There they are!” he heard in the distance and looked across the green veldt.
It was Theo and Ester was with him.
“You did say she was alive,” Costa spoke to Kris. “Guess you told the truth. Sorry I doubted you.”
“There isn’t much you can believe about this place,” she replied and walked out to greet the two new comers.
“Still no Ash or Barbara Ann,” Jack observed.
“Or Haddo,” Costa added. “But I don’t think we’ll ever see him again.
16
Two days later, they found the gunship Thelema sitting in a valley.
The gunship was parked on the grass near a river. It was close enough to the river that a few crocodiles had crawled up on the banks next to it and were soaking up the sun rays. The ground was sunk down from the previous day’s rain, but there was no sign it had crashed or otherwise endured a forced landing. Even the rear thrusters seemed to be in better shape than they’d left it.
Makulah, who, as a pilot, had the most experience with the ship walked the length of it and looked over Thelema from the outside. He ran his hand up one side of the metal body and felt for any kind of imperfections. As far as he could tell, this was the same ship they’d flown across the system in search of Haddo.
“No pitting from meteors,” he noted. “I would expect some, but that skin is clean. You don’t see that level of clean on anything that’s been outside the atmosphere for a length of time. My guess is that this was cleaned before they placed it here.”
“Africa,” Kris finally pronounced as she looked at the landscape around the ship. “We’re in Africa. We have to be south of the Sahara, maybe even further south than the Serengeti plains. Look at the mountains in the distance. It would be my guess.”
“Then why no signal on any of the radios?” Jack asked her. “I haven’t been able to raise a soul in the past two days. This area should be populated by all matter of towns and we haven’t found one yet.” He walked up to the Thelema and look at it.
“Can’t for the life of me figure out how it got here,” he spoke. “She’s not supposed to be able to make planetfall. Can’t survive reentry after Char detonated the self-destruct charges, they are designed to turn the ship into a useless scrap heap. Yet, here she is. As if a big hand placed her down gently and walked away.”
“You still have the remote for the exterior door, don’t you?” Kris asked Makulah. “Why don’t you try and see if it works?”
Makulah pulled a small box out of his pocket and punched a few buttons. “Might as well try. It was built to be serviced in a station with spin gravity, so the door has a ramp.” He clicked another switch and looked up at the gunship.
There was a hum and the hatch on the side began to open. The next minute, a long ramp extended out of the gunship and touched the ground. Makulah stepped on the lowest rung of the steps and tested it. Solid.
“Ready for boarding,” Makulah announced as he began to climb the stairs.
They found the control room in excellent shape. It had been cleaned up and everything was in its proper place. Costa even found his spare environmental suit and extra impact gun. They were careful to look it over and check everything inside it.
“I thought this thing was destroyed on the surface of Mercury,” Jack finally said. “How did it get off the planet and dropped on Earth? It couldn’t have been hauled over here. It was placed on the surface from something else. What did they use to move it?”
“Don’t know,” Kris spoke up. “I didn’t see any marks on the outside from gantries or grappling arms. I don’t think they used a hauler. My guess is some kind of external jump drive we didn’t know about.”
“Which would mean the Paradiso is not the only human ship to have a jump drive,” Makulah noted. “Wouldn’t be that much harder to build a second one if you had the first one operational. Perhaps there was another star ship on Mercury we didn’t know about.” He sat down in the pilot’s chair and looked at his dashboard. Everything was in place.
“Everyone assumed I was dead,” Ester pointed out. “And yet here I am. Explain that.”
“I don’t,” Theo commented. “But you can tell us what it was like.” He waited for her response.
Ester had a funny
look on her face. “You know,” she told them, “I don’t remember a thing about it. I don’t even remember dying.”
There was a crackle in the air above them and they turned their eyes upward to see the faces of Barbara Ann and Ash form in the air. Maybe they could at last find out what had taken place.
“Sorry we can’t be here with you,” Ash told them. “But Barbara and I have to leave. It was good working with everyone and I know your future will meet with success.”
“As for your location,” Barbara Ann told them, “it’s 50,000 years BC and you are in Africa. Humanity lives in small hunter-gatherer tribes, which are scattered across the continent. I am sure you will be able to thrive with the information stored in the gunship.”
“The ship’s guns don’t work,” Ash added. “Nor do the engines. All the fuel was removed. The remainder of the Thelema will provide adequate shelter for you. There is plenty of food and water which you will need before you have to go out and find your own. Your rifles and armor work fine though.”
“But what about the time paradox?” Kris asked. “Won’t we affect the future and cancel out our existence by being here?”
“There are an infinite number of time lines,” Barbara Ann told her. “You were dropped into a similar line to the one we left. It’s up to all of you to make certain it doesn’t experience the problems you know about.”
“So have a good eternity,” Ash said to them. “I wish we could stay and help, but we can’t. It was part of the deal we did to save your lives, and, you know, reality.”
Both heads faded away and vanished.
“50,000 BC,” Theo commented. “Kind of hard to restart civilization, but I suppose we can try.”
“The rest of you might want to see this,” Ester called from the hatch. They’d left it open when the crew entered the star ship. “I think we have some visitors.” Everyone else went to the open hatch.
The Bear Tribe found the strange bronze ship early in the day. One of their scouts told them about it while they made their way in search of a deer herd that had to be in this part of the valley. Old Claw sat down with the scouts when they came back and listened to what they told him. And then he thought for a long time.
A metal ship inland made no sense. People should not be able to build such things. If a tribe could build a gigantic bronze ship, they could build all manner of things. It was not a good sign because a tribe that strong could kill every member of the Bear Tribe. The best course of action would be to avoid it. Go in another direction and forget about his part of the valley.
On the other hand, perhaps it was abandoned. The scouts claimed they saw nothing around it. If the makers had relocated, the bronze was free for the taking. Bronze could be used and traded. It had value. This made all the difference.
“We are going to approach the bronze ship and see if anyone is still around it,” he told the tribal elders. “If we see anyone, we leave. I can’t risk the danger to the tribe from it.”
As they approached the ship from the hills, the men of the tribe stopped and waited when Old Claw gave them the signal. Each man carried a bow and notched arrow, but they would be of little use against the metal sides of the ship. They marched forward on his command and continued to the strange ship.
“Halt!” Old Claw yelled when he saw something that caught his eye.
“What is it?” one of the young men asked. “I see no one around the ship.”
“Awfully far from the sea for a ship,” one of the other young men grumbled. “How did it ever get here?”
“The opening,” Old Claw spoke in a whisper to everyone else. “There is an opening up at the top of the ship. See the ramp that leads up to it. I don’t think one was there when our scouts came through this place.”
“Looks to be about twenty of them,” Makulah spoke. “Definitely old school humans.”
“I would approach with extreme caution,” a familiar voice spoke behind them.
The crew turned around to face the disembodied head of Simon Haddo as it floated around the interior of the gunship. It was the same dour face with the serious eyes and shaved head. The head came close to the ground, and then shot up at them.
“These are very basic tribal people,” he explained. “So you can make yourself a divine being in their eyes. You can also make yourself a monster. It is up to you to choose what direction you want to take.”
“We wondered what happened to you, Simon,” Kris said to him. “Are you coming back?”
“No,” the head told her, “Debts have to be paid, they weren’t going to let me off that easy. Apparently the well-meaning Judas was my role to play, but I have my tricks, I am what they empowered me to be after all. So remember what I said and don’t make a mess of things, though if you do, make sure it’s a glorious disaster.” Haddo winked and faded away.
They turned back to regard the tribal people who were at the base of the ramp. They looked up at them. Costa could tell there was a leader in the group from the way they gathered around an older man. The younger men paid him respect. The entire group below the ramp carried spears with obsidian heads.
“I thought you said we would leave if there were any signs of the ship builder,” one of the young men said to Old Claw. “I see quite a few of them up there and they know we are here. Shouldn’t we leave before they do anything?”
“If we flee and they have better weapons, it won’t do us any good,” came the response. “I suspect there may be more inside the metal ship, but I don’t know how many. Right now, they know we are here and haven’t attacked us. So please wait and see what they will do next.” He placed his spear on the ground and waited to see what would happen.
“Why did you put your spear down?” the young man asked him. “Now we won’t have any way to defend ourselves.”
“I’ve shown them that we are willing to negotiate,” Old Claw growled at him. “We need to find out what they have on that ship and I can’t think of a better way to do it.”
“The tribal leader placed his spear on the ground,” Kris noted. “I think we should go down there and talk to them.” She began to walk down the ramp.
“It could be a trap,” Costa suggested. “I wait to see what else happens.” He stood at the open hatch and waited.
“We need to show them good faith,” Kris returned and continued to walk down the ramp. Costa waited a few seconds, swore as he slung his rifle over his shoulder, and followed her. A few minutes later, the rest of the crew joined them.
By the time she arrived at the bottom, Kris picked up the spear and held it in her hands. She examined the intricate beadwork on the shaft as the rest of the tribesmen watched her in silence. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a utility knife, which she handed to the man who appeared to be the leader. It wasn’t a very impressive tool, but she felt he might like it.
Old Claw was fascinated by the knife the woman traded him for the spear. It was unlike any he’d ever seen. Now he had something to show the rest of the tribe.
It was later as the bonfire blazed in front of the ship that Kris and the rest of the crew realized they would never leave this place. They decided to examine the ship for what it carried and see what could be used on this new world.
The two groups spent the rest of the day gathering wood. Using the sensors from the Thelema, Makulah located the deer herd for the tribe. Kris and Costa walked the men out to the stream where the deer were and watched as they hunted. In a few hours, there was plenty of meat for everyone. The tribe was organized and hunted together. They reminded Kris of Team Omega.
“It’s not really new,” Ester, pointed out. “We’re on Earth, but 50,000 years in the past.” She turned to watch some of the tribesmen roast meat on a spit.
“Not our Earth,” Kris corrected her. “But one very similar. Close enough I suppose.”
She turned and watched the tribe as they prepared the day’s hunt with several of the knives given to them by the crew. Perhaps the knives would be holy objects s
omeday. Just wait till they see the impact guns in action. Maybe it was good they only had a finite amount of ammo for them.
Tomorrow she would have to plan the future. But that was the next day. She had all the time in the universe to decide on their future.
FROM THE AUTHOR
Thank you so much for taking this adventure with me, take a quick break and if you liked what you just experienced check out some of my other work.
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