Moses looked at all of this and then observed, “Although I have most of Amy’s memories, much of her performance is still a puzzle.”
“Is the term, horse play, in your memory?” Alice asked.
“Ah,” Moses said, “now I comprehend—almost.”
Amy rode her steed the rest of the way to the trolley station. Unlike the rest of us, M1 did not look at the two of them. At the station, the entire front wall with its single doorway was still intact. The destructive bolt had hit the roof in the center. It created a large hole and a good deal of rubble, but probably eighty percent of the place was still in fair shape.
“What are those curvy lines carved over the doorway?” M1 asked Moses.
“This is the one thousand two hundred and twenty-first station in row thirty six, west of Nexus Central and that is where we must go. The closer portals are to Nexus, the older they are. Many of the planets those portals lead to also have their own portals back to numerous home planets. So that is where we should concentrate our exploration.”
Alice looked at the sky and did some quick calculating. “That means that we could hoof it in maybe a week if the trolley system is kaput.”
“If that’s the case,” M2 said, “I vote we go back to the Hollow Mountain and get our bikes.”
“Actually, that’s a good idea,” M1 said, “but let’s first see what Moses can find inside.”
The main floor proved to be empty except for benches near the exterior walls and a pile of broken roof in the middle. We could see a bit of the second floor and some machinery, but Moses ignored it and headed to the left and down a wide ramp to the trolley platform. The lower level was an empty, dim space, spared the destruction above and big enough to echo slightly. The only object in the big room was a console and the trolley “track”, but it was by no means a standard track. I saw a blue tube that could have been the bottom half of foot wide water pipe. Emerging from a tunnel in one wall, it ran the length of the room at floor level and disappeared into another tunnel in the opposite wall. There were no barriers at all, only the single console that looked like the ones that operated the portals.
“You guys sure like blue,” Amy said. “I bet the bottom of the trolley will be yellow.”
“You are quite right,” Moses said, “but how did you know about the colors?”
Amy deferred to Alice for the explanation. When she told him of the glass beaker in the Hollow Mountain, a look of consternation washed across his face.
“When we have time,” he said, “you must tell me of the other objects you have seen in the Hollow Mountain, but right now I’ll see if I can call up a trolley.”
He walked to the podium and placed a hand on the white circle that lit up promptly.
“So far, so good,” he said, “and now we wait. I think there are turn-offs between stations where the vehicles wait until called to service.”
As he finished, we saw our chariot arrive. It was a simple, but sleek tube, rounded at both ends with clear glass or plastic on the upper half. A door in the center slid open as if to welcome us aboard. Just inside the door, Moses consulted a small console.
“There is one obstruction at eight hundred and sixty-two east,” he said, “but that doesn’t affect us at this point. Our way is clear.”
“Is there any reason not to load up and go?” M1 asked.
“Let’s go get our packs,” Harry said.
There was general agreement so we headed back. On the way, M1 asked M2, who had been taking pictures, to send a camera card and a note back to the pink Quonset hut.
“How much should I say in the note?” M2 asked.
After a moment, M1 said, “Just say that we are exploring ruins and have seen no signs of life other than the moss.”
“I’ll click off a few pictures on a new card,” M2 said, “and wrap it all in this piece of cloth I picked up at the station. What I’ll do is just toss it up through the portal.”
M1 stopped. “A piece of cloth? Here? Let’s see it.”
M2 displayed a fragment of red material about the size of a playing card. “It’s a chunk torn off a corner of a larger piece. It has two finished edges and two rough. Looks like cotton.”
“Where exactly did you find it?” M1 asked.
“On a small ledge on the back of the podium. It’s a rather sheltered spot.”
M1 showed it to Moses. “Do you know what this is?
“It has no meaning for me,” Moses said.
“Any idea how it got here?” M1 asked.
Moses shrugged. “I’m sorry, no.”
“Tell you what,” M1 said. “Alice is carrying some baggies. Use one of them and keep the cloth.”
I watched this intently as did Moses. I couldn’t read his face, nor could I understand M1’s interest in the cloth. I wanted to discuss this, but I realized that the Band could not have a private conversation. We could always turn off our radios, but YDRII had phenomenal hearing.
When we reached our bivouac, M1 had Harry go along with M2. The rule was that no one goes off alone. The rest of us went to the turret and climbed the stairs to our accommodations.
“I’m hungry. Can we grab a bite here?” Amy asked.
“Sure,” M1 said. “We’ll be eating our rations for as long as possible,”
“I’ll settle for a Spam sandwich,” I said.
“Well pardner,” Alice said, while digging in her backpack, “lookie here.”
She raised her hand above her head to display the item I had requested.
“Our first meal on a distant planet,” Amy said, “and it’s Spam. I think I’m in an episode of Monte Python’s Flying Circus.”
As Alice was carving our feast, M2 and Harry returned and we all got busy opening assorted cans of vegetables and fruit. Moses was content to eat what we were eating.
“You know,” I said, “I don’t know if it’s because of the pill, but I feel really great.”
I do feel extra good,” Alice said. “Moses, does the pill work that fast?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It only takes a matter of hours. In about thirty days, those of you who are over thirty will also begin to look younger. I might add that it is a one-time treatment. Your system cannot tolerate another pill.”
We had a quick cup of semi-good coffee then packed up for the trip to Nexus Central. Alice wrote “Kilroy Was Here” on the bottom of our empty Spam can and left it on her cot for other explorers to puzzle over. As we left our motel Alice and M1 discussed the need to send any more information back to the Hollow Mountain.
“I think it best,” M1 said, “not to send a message. Because our plans are so general, the information would not be helpful to them and they might start throwing notes of advice back through the portal.”
Thanks to the lighter gravity, the walk to the trolley station took only about ten minutes. We took a slightly different route. There was a short, but exciting delay when M-1 shouted, “STOP! Trip wire.” We froze and looked where he was pointing. The thin wire, stretched perpendicular to the path, was all but invisible. “Can’t make out where it goes, but my guess is that metal ball.”
He pointed at a four foot diameter and, very rusty metal ball perched on a short length of pipe.
“Probably a booby trap,” M1 said. “We could go around it, but I’m curious. I’d like to see a bit of the stuff we may be facing.”
“Easy,” M2 said. “Let’s go back about a hundred yards, off to the side and behind some stones. I’ll set this big slab of stone on edge, about six inches from the wire. Once we’re set, I’ll blast the rock with buckshot. That should tip it onto the wire.”
We went and hunkered down in a spot that allowed peeking room. M2 gave us a heads up and fired. As he predicted, the rock fell over and the metal ball came to life. It split horizontally and the top rose up about three inches. There was a lot of metallic screeching. As it began to slowly spin, we saw the flashes and heard the sound of machine gun fire. It sprayed bullets in a full circle, but on its seco
nd revolution, the ball fell off its mount and the gun went silent.
“Looks like the old thing pooped out,” Alice said.
M2 trotted over and examined the wreck. “It’s dead. James, come here and look at the insides.”
I went to look. It took only moments. “I doubt that this is alien. It looks like an MG 42 Mauser machine gun. It was very popular with the Wehrmacht. The whole device was spring wound. Good for a one-time use. Very deadly and effective though. I don’t see any markings.”
“I have no record of such an object,” YDRII said.
M2 took a picture of the junk pile. “I’ll just add it to my files.”
“I hope there aren’t any more in the area,” Alice said. “At least we now know to look for trip wires.” She looked at M1. “It sure doesn’t look like a Buck Rogers item.”
M1 didn’t reply, but we Terrans had the same thought. This thing looks like it came from Earth. It was frustrating in that we couldn’t talk about our growing suspicions.
“It’s graffiti time,” Amy said. “Let me do the honors in tribute to my Grandpa.”
She picked up a shard and scratched the “Kilroy Was Here” message on the rusty surface. Meanwhile M2 wrote a note and placed it on the ground with the empty shotgun shell for a paperweight.
“This is for Carl if he gets this far,” he said. “The note says that it took a shot at us and otherwise there are no signs of life.”
There was nothing more to do so we continued our walk to the station. When we arrived, we found the trolley car gone. Moses touched the call button and it returned as before. We dumped our packs in the back, then Moses showed us the control panel for the car. It had one large GO button and ten small ones in a row numbered from zero to nine although the numbers looked like wavy lines. The idea was to punch in the number of the hut one wanted to travel to then push GO. For Nexus Central all he did was press zero followed by GO. The door slid closed and we gently accelerated. A medium bright glow illuminated the tunnel as each trolley stop slipped rapidly past like telephone poles on a highway.
“Say, Moses,” Harry said, “it’s a piece of luck that your people also use the decimal system. Makes it easier for us.”
“Not luck, Harry,” Moses said, while holding up both hands—fingers spread wide. “We tally on our fingers too.”
In about sixty minutes, our vehicle slowed to a stop and the door slid quietly open.
CHAPTER 18
Nexus Central was a disaster of much greater magnitude. It had received the full force of whatever space artillery had rained down. It was only good fortune that kept some of the rubble from spilling onto the blue rail. The odds that there were intact portals were slim to none.
The place was huge. Our part was the same as 36-221West except that it was ever so much wider. It extended over the roadway to include the building in the next row and the next and the next, but none of it had escaped the major stomping. Moses explained that it was one super-wide station that included all of the many rows of stations, extending to the shores of the lakes on either side.
Since everything in sight had significant damage, we went to the first southward hut and crawled inside. It was pretty bad, but there was one undamaged portal. “I’m afraid we’re working blind,” said Moses. “There is a dominant list somewhere in the central station that would link a planet name and location to the portal numbers, but I don’t think it endured.”
I could tell by the look on Alice’s face that she wanted to tell Moses to keep on sorting out his language shortcomings. Our alien pulled out his portal probe, inserted it and got a satisfactory reading. He then pressed the console and the green barrier parted. YDRII stuck his head through to check conditions and then gave us the all clear.
“The dome at the other end is intact,” he said, “but there is vegetation partially obscuring the viewing ports. Gravity is a bit high. The air pressure is satisfactory.”
“M2 and I will go first,” M1 said. “If it looks okay, I’ll stick my hand back through and give a thumbs up.”
With guns drawn, the boys walked through and all was quiet for about one minute. We saw a hand poke through with a vertical thumb so we all joined the two on the new planet.
The dome interior was similar to the one on the immigrant planet. Immediately, we all felt the higher gravity. It was like the starting surge of an express elevator, except that the surge did not diminish. The view ports were, as YDRII had said, partially covered with some sort of vine. In places the glass like material had a clouded coating on the exterior where small vine suckers had glued their pods.
Moses first closed the portal. He explained that the Quonset huts on Nexus acted as domes when they were intact. When any portal had a dome only at one end, the dome door would not open unless one first closed the portal.
“But what if we go back and leave the portals open?” M2 asked. “How would someone from here open the outer door?”
“Next to the outer door handle,” Moses said, “there is a small blue button. Just push it and the portal will close.”
The vines only partially engulfed the door and we managed to force it open enough to hack away the rope like stalks. The air was muggy, smelling a lot like my compost pile back home.
Once outside we were standing knee deep in a tangled tumble of one type of growth. The dome was on a hill and that gave us a good panoramic view of a great deal of landscape.
“Can I name this place?” Amy asked.
“You’re pretty good at that sort of thing,” Alice said, “so go ahead.”
She raised both arms as though bestowing a blessing and shouted to the sky, “I christen thee, the planet KUDZU.” To Moses, she said, “Kudzu is a creeping, climbing vine. It’s an invasive species that’s terrorizing native plants all over the southeastern United States.”
We all applauded and agreed that the name was perfect. All we could see, from horizon to horizon, was a land covered completely with vines. There were the shapes of hills and cliffs draped solidly with cascades of green. In the distance, I saw squared off vertical shapes that must have been rather tall buildings, but they too were under that awesome carpet. The exception was a broad river that ran through the valley below. Even there the vines were busy pushing their way well out from the banks and in one place the vines crossed the entire span of water. They had the arched shape of the bridge that must have been somewhere inside the tangled mass. It was both beautiful and terrible. It made me uneasy and I kept moving my feet to be sure that tendrils from the vine that ate a world were not snaking around my ankles.
YDRII reported there were no humans within the radius of his scan. “There is the dominant vine, some other insignificant plant life, a few small mammals and a large insect population.”
“There’s nothing buzzing around,” I said. “In fact, I haven’t seen a single bug.”
“You haven’t seen them” YDRII said, “because they are mostly underground, but I sense that they have discovered our presence and apparently we have disturbed them.”
“What are they like?” Amy asked.
“Very big ants, and here they come.”
Fifty yards away on all sides, the vines began to heave. The wave began to move in slow motion, but directly toward us. We still couldn’t see what was under the leaves, but no one had a desire to wait until several billion super-ants became visible. In record time, we retreated into the dome and sealed the door. Nor did we wait to get a glimpse of the creatures as they swarmed over the enclosure. As soon as the door was secure, we went through the portal and closed the green shield at the other end.
CHAPTER 19
“Well, that was fast and furious,” Alice said, as she penciled a warning on the console. “I’d like to know if the vines and ants drove out the population or did they just take over an abandoned planet?”
“Speculate all you want, babe,” Harry said, “but I’ll never go near that place again.”
“I itch,” Amy said, as she examined her boots fo
r creepy crawlies.
“Remember kiddo,” I said, “If they aren’t patterned, they can’t get a ticket to ride.”
“But maybe they are,” she replied, in her scary voice.
“I guess we move on now,” M1 said to Moses. “Do you want to go to the next hut in line or should we cross the street and work our way toward a lake?”
“Let us do the latter,” Moses said. “I think our chances are better by staying as close as conceivable to Nexus Central.”
The next few days were very discouraging. Most every hut was a complete wreck and the few intact portals led to places that were inhospitable or downright poisonous. One took us to the edge of a vast, red colored open pit mine. Amy named that one Rust.
Another was an ancient desert where the wind had ground the sand to a fine powder. Lumpy remnants of stone buildings dotted the flat and otherwise featureless landscape making the scene even more tragic and forlorn than the Libyan Desert where Harry had parked Nora. Amy named it Dust.
We recognized that the sameness and sterility of Nexus had begun to put a damper on our spirits. Even Moses was troubled, although he tried not to show it. That served to make us concentrate more on the task at hand. From the beginning, the pace of our adventure was remarkably fast. The expectation was that it would continue in that fashion, but we fell into an unproductive rut as we worked our way toward the lake at the edge of Nexus Central.
We arrived at the lake, which had been a goal, but it proved to be anticlimactic. At the shoreline, the water began and that was it. The color was gray and uninviting. Somehow, the thought of taking a dip in that dark and unrevealing liquid filled me with dread. I knew that other than plankton, the biggest form of life there was a tiny crustacean. My spine though, was sure that oceanic monsters lurked unseen, but within striking distance of foolish bathers.
“This body of water just makes me uneasy,” Alice said. “I think I’d rather stink a little than take a bath in that stuff.”
That was the consensus, so we went to the other side of Nexus Central and began to work our way back. Based on our recent experience we decided to expand our search to include the second hut in each row.
LOST AND FORGOTTEN: Book 2 The Secret Path Page 12