My Other Car is a Spaceship

by Mark Terence Chapman

Penrod looked up at the taller Chan’Yi with calculation. “So. The guard said you had some important information for me. Now, what might that be?”

  “I must apologize for the misunderstanding. I told the guard that I had an important matter to discuss. In fact, I have a proposition for you.”

  “Really. Go ahead.”

  “As you yourself pointed out, I have much experience treating many sentient races—far more than most doctors, I dare say. Do your doctors know how to treat Zoloxxian Flu, or Weller’s Croup, or Jestrohn Dystrophy? I do.” He paused as Penrod conceded the point. “A few minutes ago, a large procession of what I can only assume are prisoners passed by our cell. I could not help but notice that many of them sounded ill. I would like to volunteer to help treat them.”

  Penrod pursed his lips in thought. “You’ll forgive me if I suspect that this is nothing more than a ploy to give you access to sharp implements and other tools to help you and your friends escape.”

  “A reasonable assumption under the circumstances. However, I am a doctor, sworn to treat illness and injury. I have resigned myself to the idea that soon I will be sold to someone who needs a doctor. While these are not the circumstances under which I would prefer to practice, at least I will be fulfilling my purpose in life. But I serve no purpose locked in a cell, and frankly I am bored. I would much prefer to treat patients than sit on a bunk all day staring at the walls. Besides, you hold my friends hostage. I will not try to escape.”

  “Your friends are not hostages, doctor, they’re prisoners.”

  “Forgive me, sir, if I do not appreciate the distinction under the circumstances.”

  “It’s quite simple. I didn’t take them from friends and family at gunpoint. They attacked me. I was merely defending myself and managed to capture them. Hence they’re prisoners, not hostages.”

  Nude shrugged. “A matter of semantics. We could debate all day who attacked whom first and why, but I do not think it would get us anywhere.”

  “On the contrary, doctor. I think I would enjoy that. My associate, Jern, is an efficient administrator, but not much of a conversationalist. I crave intellectual discussion from time to time. Surely, talking to me would be more stimulating than sitting in a bare cell when you’re not treating patients.”

  “You have a point. Do I take it, then, that you accept my proposal?”

  “You’re quite correct, doctor, that my existing medical practitioners don’t have your breadth of experience with some of these races. We could use your skill. There appears to be some sort of flu-like illness our doctors haven’t seen before affecting many of the prisoners. Perhaps it’s something you’re familiar with. But I’ll have to ask for your word as an officer and a gentleman, that you won’t attempt to escape.”

  “You have my word, sir. I will not attempt to escape.”

  “Very good. You can begin immediately.” Penrod raised his voice. “Guards! Take Dr. Chalmis’Noud’Ourien here to the medical facility. The shackles will not be needed; however he is to be taken to an individual cell after each shift. I’m sure it won’t be necessary to search him for potential weapons—right, doctor?”

  Nude nodded graciously. “I did promise not to try to escape.” Of course, he thought to himself, I did not promise not to help my friends try to escape.

  “And I’m sure I needn’t remind you that should you get any…shall we say, ‘radical ideas,’ I still have your friends. We wouldn’t want them to pay for your transgressions, now would we?” He flashed an insincere grin.

  Nude shook his head, wondering once again how exactly that situation differed from holding hostages.

  Hal’s ears perked up at the sound of the door opening. Nude had been gone for more than a day with no word as to his condition. Is he going to walk in on his own, or are they carrying him on a stretcher? He held his breath.

  Four guards entered, weapons drawn, again two-by-two—but no Nude.

  Hal and Kalen exchanged glances.

  Uh-oh.

  One guard gestured to the prisoners. “Come on. Move it.”

  The two men stood and approached the guards, one of whom shackled them together. She gestured for them to exit the cell. Two of the guards remained behind, as the other two—one in the front and one in the rear—marched Hal and Kalen down the corridor containing their cell, to the main corridor, and then down a narrower and dimmer corridor.

  First they take Nude away and he doesn’t return. Now this. Hal suppressed a shudder. I guess I’ve seen too many war and gangster movies where the bad guys lead the good guys to an open field or dark alley somewhere and then machine gun them to death.

  Penrod says he considers us valuable commodities, so that couldn’t be what’s happening here—right?

  The lead guard stopped at a doorway and gestured for the men to enter. The door slid aside to reveal a brightly lit room full of examination tables and medical equipment. A number of people representing several species milled about busily.

  Hal quickly dismissed the idea of being used as a living organ donor. Get a grip, man! You’re much more valuable as a fighter pilot than as an organ farm.

  Still, a trace of fear lingered deep in the primitive part of his brain. There was something about the place that gave him the heebie-jeebies. Then he saw Nude at the center of the activity and relaxed.

  This must be his idea. He said to go with the flow. I wonder what he has in mind.

  One of the guards gestured toward Nude. “Go get your shots and come right back.”

  The guards waited on either side of the door as Hal and Kalen joined the queue of shackled prisoners inching toward Nude. Four other guards stood around the perimeter of the room, out of the way but with unimpeded lines of fire, should anyone decide to try something.

  After several minutes, it was Hal’s turn. “What’s going on?” he whispered to Nude.

  The doctor examined Hal’s tongue and eyes as he replied, softly. His back faced the guards, so they couldn’t see his lips move. “I convinced Penrod to let me help treat the ill as a pretext to get in here. Then I informed him that several of the prisoners had pyraxia, which is quite contagious, and that if we did not act quickly to treat the sick and inoculate everyone else, there could be many fatalities—and not only among the prisoners. I did not lie about the disease, but I exaggerated its effects. Pyraxia is rarely fatal, even when left untreated, and never affects humans. But it is a rare disease and the other doctors here had never seen a case. I’m giving you saline as a placebo.” He raised his voice as he slid back Hal’s sleeve. “This may tingle slightly, but it will keep you from getting sick.”

  He pressed a pneumodermic against the front of Hal’s wrist and depressed the button. Hal felt an icy blast against his skin, and then Nude placed Hal’s other hand over the spot. He felt something hard and metallic under his palm.

  “Squeeze your wrist for about five minutes, until the tingling stops. That will help disperse the medication.”

  “Thanks, doc.”

  Hal stepped ahead and waited while Nude treated Kalen. Then both walked to the doorway, still clutching their wrists and were escorted back to their cell.

  Once away from the eyes of the guards, both men opened their palms to reveal what Nude had slipped them. Kalen had a small, disposable pneumodermic unit.

  “What’s in it? Hal asked.

  “It says ‘Fleurodine’, four doses. If I remember correctly, it’s a fast-acting sedative.”

  “That could come in handy with the guards. But what the heck is this?” He turned the object over in his hand. It looked vaguely like an old Zippo cigarette lighter: a silvery rectangle with rounded edges and corners, approximately five centimeters long, three centimeters wide, and two centimeters thick. It had a seam across the center. Hal tugged on the two ends and the cap popped off in his hand, revealing what lay inside. “Okay, I still don’t know what it is.”

  Kalen took the object from him and examined it. There were four small recessed dials along the narrow
sides, two on the left and two on the right, positioned almost like the tires on a car. The front contained a small screen and several tiny buttons. He used his thumb to turn one of the dials slowly. Numbers and a graph appeared on the screen.

  He held the unit up to his ear. “Ah. I thought so. Hear that? I saw a technician using one of these on the ship once. It’s a diagnostic tool, used for calibrating certain equipment. It can be set to emit a wide number of frequencies. As I recall, the four dials are to set the frequency, amplitude, phase, and signal strength.”

  “Sounds useful. But how does that help us?”

  Kalen barked out a laugh. “You know, I haven’t a clue.”

  “Then I guess we’d better put on our thinking caps. I’m sure Nude wouldn’t have risked his life to slip us that gizmo if he didn’t think it could help us escape.”

  Spelvin Mynax sighed to himself. The first of the recalled ships had arrived to begin the decommissioning process. The four ships that had returned from battle had already been processed. It would be months yet before the last of the ships patrolling embargoed systems docked somewhere it could get word of the Unity’s dissolution. But in the meantime the process would continue on the other ships.

  First, the weapons and any equipment not authorized for the civilian sector would be removed for sale to various planetary governments. Then the computers would be purged of Unity-specific information. Finally, the Unity logos, transponders, and other identifiers would be removed and destroyed to prevent their fraudulent use in a far-off system that might not yet have heard the news.

  Mynax sighed again and made the call to the salvage yard to begin the process.

  This is a black day in the history of the Unity. Or should I say the ex-Unity?

  What’s that expression? Life sucks and then you die? I guess this proves I’m alive then, because life surely does suck right now.

  Three days later, the prisoners still hadn’t figured out how to use the calibrator to help them escape. They experimented on the sanitation unit and after some trial and error figured out how to use the tool to control the flow rate of the water spigot and turn it off and on manually. It was a matter of finding the right frequency to trigger the controls. With additional testing, they found the frequency to open and close the door on the washer and to start the sanitizing process, even with no clothes in the unit.

  But no matter how many frequencies they tried, they couldn’t find one that would open the door.

  “There must be more to it than emitting a simple frequency,” Kalen said. “That would be too easy to replicate. A malfunctioning piece of equipment passing by in the corridor could accidentally trip the door release and let all the prisoners out. There must be more to it than that.”

  Hal nodded. “Makes sense. I haven't been around this newfangled alien technology as long as you have, but it seems likely they’d use something more sophisticated than that. Maybe multiple frequencies at once, sort of like a combination lock. You’d have to get three or five or ten frequencies exactly right at the same time. Or maybe there’s only one frequency, but it’s pulsed—something like Morse code, so that you’d have to have the right sequence: five short pulses, eight long ones, two short, and so on. There must be so many ways to implement that sort of thing I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Maybe it’s a double lock and it has to be released both locally and from a remote security office.”

  Kalen sighed. “You’re right. With a computer, a sophisticated piece of testing equipment, and lots of time, maybe we could figure it out. But with just this calibrator and our feeble brains, it would be a one-in-a-million shot.”

  “Maybe we’re not supposed to break out of here with it. Maybe it’s for the shackles. Have you noticed the guards don’t use mechanical keys? The locks seem to be operated electronically or electromagnetically.”

  “Ri-i-ght. Do a Houdini act and slip out of our shackles right in front of four huge armed guards. Besides, how are we supposed to test the calibrator on the shackles? We can’t exactly do it while we’re chained up, and even if we could it might take months. Hell, years even, with only a few minutes here and there to test—especially if they’re secured with multiple pulsed frequencies, or some other security protocol. It’s not like they leave the shackles in the cell for us to play with when they go.”

  Hal shrugged. “It was just a thought. It sure would help if we knew what Nude had in mind when he gave it to us.”

  “How can I help you?” Nude spoke loudly enough for the guards staning by the door to hear.

  Why is he still here? Why haven’t they gone?

  Hal did likewise. “I tripped and fell. I think I sprained my wrist.”

  Nude lowered his voice as he examined the man’s wrist. “I expected you to have escaped by now.”

  “How?” Hal asked softly but with exasperation. “We know what the calibrator does, but not what to do with it. Besides, we wouldn’t leave without you.”

  Now Nude was exasperated. “You are supposed to use it to match the frequencies of the door and the shackles to open them. As for me, I had to promise Penrod I would not try to escape.” He raised his voice, for the guards. “Does this hurt?”

  “Ow! Yes.” Hal dropped his voice to a soft whisper. “I know we’re supposed to match the frequencies, but which ones? There could be thousands of possible combinations.”

  “Can you not hear the frequencies of the locks?”

  “Hear them? What are you talking about?”

  “Ah, yes. I forgot about the limitations of the human auditory system.”

  Nude shook his head in frustration. Humans! They still have so much evolving to do.

  He raised his voice again. “You will need a wrap on that wrist. Hold still.” Then softly, “Do you have the calibrator with you?”

  “Sure. Here it is.” He held it in the “injured” hand.

  Nude reached in a drawer and pulled out a self-conforming piece of foamwrap that molded itself to the contours of Hal’s wrist and thumb and stiffened even as he took the calibrator from Hal. He quickly pulled off the cap and spun three of the dials with his thumb.

  Hal heard a soft click and felt his shackles loosen. He forced himself not to react with surprise and quickly snapped them both closed again.

  Nude replaced the cap on the calibrator and slipped it into Hal’s palm, under the edge of the wrap. “I cannot help you with the door frequencies unless I am there to hear them.” He raised his voice. “There you go. Try not to fall on it for a few days and you will be fine. The wrap will dissolve when it is no longer needed.”

  “Thanks, doc.”

  Jern Ishtawahl knocked on Penrod’s doorframe. “Tarl, I have spoken with Dr. Felmendar and he assured me that he can have the first nuke repaired within the week, and a second a week after that. They were not as badly damaged as we thought. The circuits were fried by the electromagnetic pulse from the nuke that detonated. Other than replacing the controls, there are one or two other parts that need to be manufactured, and then everything must be tested to be sure there is no hidden damage.”

  “Excellent.” Penrod said with a satisfied smile. “And the rest?”

  “The other four can be repaired within a month or two after the second one, he thinks. Building and testing new warheads for the salvaged plutonium will take months longer, perhaps up to a year for the last one.”

  “Good, good. Six should be plenty to get the ball rolling and have governments and companies throwing money at our feet to keep the mean ol’ pirates from their front doors. The other five will simply be insurance. We may never need to use them, but they’ll be good to have in reserve, just in case. Good work, Jern.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “By the way, I have several candidates picked out for our first target. When you get a chance, we can discuss them to come up with the ‘winner’.”

  Eight days later, Hal and Kalen still hadn’t had success opening the door to the holding pen.

  “This is impo
ssible,” Kalen lamented. “We could be here forever and never hit on the right combination.”

  “Maybe so, but what else are we going to do with our time—?” Hal froze as he heard the door lock click. “Did you do that?”

  Kalen shook his head, then stepped back as the door opened.

  Instead of the expected guards, eight prisoners filed in, one by one. The men got out of the way of the procession and watched. One of the four guards who trailed the prisoners unlocked the shackles while the other three kept their weapons leveled.

  “I guess business has been good lately,” Hal muttered.

  Kalen responded in kind. “Too good. Now what? We can’t keep trying to break out of here with all these witnesses.”

  “Maybe we won’t have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take a closer look at our roommates.”

  Kalen frowned. “What? There’s a human, two Foren, two Sestrans, an Alberian, a Thorian, and a Chan’Yi.”

  “Exactly. A Chan’Yi who can hear the frequencies.”

  Kalen’s eyes lit up. “Ah, yes. But how do we know we can trust her?”

  The other man shrugged. “How does she know she can trust us?”

  “Touché.”

  “This could be the break we’ve been looking for.” Hal had a spark of fire in his eyes for the first time in weeks.

  “God, I hope so.”

  “It could take a while to win her trust, though.”

  “So? You have somewhere else to be?”

  Hal’s face grew hard. “How about Penrod’s office, with a gun in his face? I believe we owe him that much, and then some.”

  “I like the way you think, Mr. Nellis,” Kalen said with a smirk. “Let’s mark that day in our calendars, shall we, so we don’t forget?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “So how do we get her alone to talk to her?” Hal asked. “We’ve got seven other sets of ears around. How do we know one isn’t a mole working for Penrod? Or at least someone willing to trade information for favors.”