by Gen LaGreca
“Shut up!” He muttered, as he squeezed the rope tightly around my ankles.
I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at him as I spoke. “Then your hidden camera informed you that Dr. Merrett was launching Project Z to make the very weapon you lusted for but could not produce. All you had to do was wait until he finished, then steal it. But to steal it, you had to have Charles Merrett’s face to get into the Project Z area. You had to subdue your bristly stalks of hair and your savage expression to cultivate a more civilized appearance. You had to have lessons on how to speak and act like Charles Merrett. But a little surgery, grooming, and studying were surely worth the prize of total conquest of the Earth. Besides, why not adopt such a plan, because it enabled you to exchange your ugly face for a handsome one?”
He lost control and punched me again, and blood trickled from the corner of my mouth.
“Stop it!” Kristin screamed at him. She bent down to me and wiped the blood with a handkerchief.
“Get away from him, honey,” Feran said in his calmest Daddy voice. He lifted her up gently and placed Coquet in his pocket now that my arms and legs were restrained. “I know he played with your feelings and deceived you, and I’m sorry. But he’s a wanted man. He’s dangerous. Nobody’s gonna harm him. I just need to hold him here for ES.”
Kristin stepped away from me again. As I wondered what she was thinking, Feran searched the closet for another item.
“You cannot kill me until you are sure you have the sunbeam intact. You still have to be civilized, at least for now, in your role as Charles Merrett, because you first have to find the device, and then you might need to call an engineer for a repair or get a replacement part if I damaged your cargo. That allows me to finish my story.”
Feran bristled, but Kristin listened intently.
“You did not know that Dr. Merrett was going to dismantle the weapon. No one knew that. You were at MAS the Sunday he canceled the project, but you were here to pick up the sunbeam intact. By reading the documents from Dustin’s camera, you knew that the weapon was finished and ready for delivery. You were going to deploy it outside the flexite area and thereby end the greatest chapter in the story of human life. You chose Sunday, when MAS is at its emptiest, when it is almost a . . . a . . .”—I searched for Frank Brennan’s words—“a ghost town, so you could take the sunbeam when no one was around to question you. How inconvenient that Dr. Merrett had disassembled the weapon just before you arrived. You had to return to Asteron with the parts for your engineers to reassemble. That is how the sunbeam ended up on Asteron. This time your people had the complete instructions and diagrams, recorded by Dustin’s camera, plus all the sunbeam’s parts, so even they could not fail.
“While you were waiting for the sunbeam to be reassembled, you went back and forth to Earth, pretending to be Charles Merrett, no doubt intensifying your acting lessons for a bigger role than you had anticipated. For the past two months, you had to play Charles Merrett until the sunbeam was fully reassembled on Asteron. You might have needed help from the project team, or parts from MAS. Above all, you had to pretend you were Charles Merrett, because if Earth officials knew that he and his invention had vanished, you could have faced a full-scale invasion of Asteron to hunt for them. You had to live at Charles Merrett’s home, deal with his daughter, conduct his business, and make his appointments so no one would suspect anything had happened to him.
“Now, you did not originally intend to continue your masquerade longer than it took to reach the secured area and pick up the sunbeam intact, so there has been seepage through your seams, signs that you are not really Charles Merrett, if Kristin cares to examine your behavior closely.”
Kristin looked at him sharply.
“Kristin says she has seen little of you since Project Z’s cancellation. Could that be because you did not want her to take closer notice of your appearance, your expressions, or your memory of family situations that only Charles Merrett would know? Has Kristin tested you?”
Kristin cocked her head in curiosity, studying the figure that had found what he was looking for in the closet, a scarf.
“Haven’t you exploited my daughter enough?”
“Of course, you never got any new projects for MAS, because that was not your intention. And your business failure and unusual grouchy state, as Kristin called it, was blamed on Project Z, not on your being a different person, a completely opposite person, as black is opposite to white. Your odd behavior was not blamed on your being Feran! And of course most recently you have had more reasons to be grouchy, because I stole your spacecraft with the reassembled sunbeam inside just as you were ready to embark on your mission of destruction.”
Feran walked toward me, unfolding the scarf.
“No!” Kristin blocked his path. “You can’t gag him.”
“Oh, can’t I?”
“You don’t understand, Daddy. It makes him feel helpless. Something terrible once happened to him—”
“Oh, did it, now? Isn’t that too bad?”
I knew my time was up as Feran spread the cloth out in his hands and bent down to me. Kristin fell to her knees by my side, struggling to stop him, so I had a final moment. “Kristin, you must find a way to stop his scheme. If he activates the sunbeam, we are all doom—”
Fresh blood dripped down my throat as the gag cut into the gashes his punches had made on my mouth.
“Now Kris, dear, we need to keep him quiet until we can give him to ES. You trust them, don’t you? They’ll treat him fairly.”
The gag was in place.
Then his phone rang. “Yes? . . . You did? Good! I’ll be there in a minute.” He placed his hands on Kristin’s arms, lifting her up with him. “Earth Security found his spacecraft hidden in the empty lot across the road. That’s where we think we’ll find the weapon he stole from me. He’s right, you know. Project Z is a weapon, a very dangerous one that we can’t let fall into the hands of his government. Now come with me, honey. I don’t want to worry about you being here with him. I can’t take any chances with your safety, you know. When I lost your mother, it was . . . devastating.”
With superb acting, Feran lowered his head and seemed to let fall a little tear.
“I didn’t mean to be rough with him, Kris. I know what you must be going through, but every time I think of the way we found your mother—”
He threw his arms around Kristin. She permitted the hug but did not return it. I lay on the floor, my hands and legs bound, my mouth finally silenced, my body propped up on one elbow. I stared at Kristin’s distressed face as I wondered about her thoughts.
“Come with me, please, Kris,” said Daddy.
Kristin’s eyes lingered on mine. Just as in a time that seemed long ago, I was gagged and a most beautiful female was staring at me in bewilderment and fear. I wanted to reach out to her, but I could not. I wanted to cry out to her, but I could not. I thought of the only thing I could do. This time I knew it was a most inappropriate gesture for a desperate occasion. But was it not the acknowledgment of a secret shared by two? A salute of some kind? An expression of . . . closeness? I blinked at Kristin with one eye.
Her eyes swept over my body in a soft caress. Then slowly, painfully, she closed them.
“Come on, baby, let’s go.” Feran gently took her hand.
With obvious effort, she opened her eyes and turned to the door, and then she walked toward it. She paused to look back at me once more. With Feran holding the door for her in a display of good manners, she left the room to accompany him in retrieving the invention that would end the human epoch on Earth.
Before joining her in the hallway, Feran paused a moment. Out of her view, he gripped the drooling mouth of Coquet, her lights blinking. He fondled the tiny band of buttons he knew intimately, until he found the one he wanted. A mocking metal tongue jutted out at me.
There was a sudden flash of light, a whoosh of air, and a burning sting to my forehead. I convulsed in agony in a liquid room that whirled aro
und me.
Then there was only darkness.
Chapter 24
A cool draft hit my face and brought me back to consciousness. As I lay curled on the floor, I felt blood dripping from my forehead. I was in the room for attitude adjustment, I thought. There was something important I must do. I tried to recall. . . . It was night, and I was never going to see another sunrise. . . . Slowly I opened my eyes to a blur of trees and blue sky from a window. I was confused. Was it night or day? . . . Was I to end my life or to begin it?
Then I saw the carpet, the desk, and the whole setting of my new world as I felt the restraints of my old one cutting into my limbs and mouth. I realized I was in Dr. Merrett’s office. No, in the office of Feran the executive.
As the fog from my blackout lifted, I felt a new sting, more horrible than a bite from Coquet. Feran would find the spacecraft and get the sunbeam! He would put on the flexite suit and release the deadly ray. A clock on the desk read: 6:05 P.M. I judged that I had been unconscious for about ten minutes, time enough for Feran to reach the ship. In a moment, the will I was struggling to summon would be lost forever.
But no, I realized, as more thoughts returned. I had borrowed Kristin’s plane the previous night in order to move the sunbeam. Feran’s spies were getting too close, so I had removed the cargo from my ship. We were safe. Or were we? Feran would know by now that his cargo was not in the spacecraft. He would be back any moment to torture me for the sunbeam! He would do something unbearable; he would use Krist— I had to hurry!
I inched my way to the desk and raised myself to my knees. With my head, I spilled a small dish of paper clips onto the floor. With my hands behind my back, I picked up one and began molding it into a shape that would unlock the handcuffs. Although out of practice, I was quite familiar with this task from my previous life.
Suddenly I heard engines overhead. I continued with my tedious task and finally bent the paper clip into the desired shape. I placed it in the key slot, gently . . . gently. I heard the tiny squeak that disengaged the lock. I was free! Within seconds I had untied myself and removed my gag. I sprang to my feet, jolted with a sudden surge of energy.
I sped to the front door and peered out. Near the garden, two planes were descending vertically and about to land. I could see the faces of the pilots—Feran’s spies. Kristin’s shiny red plane was just steps away from me. Fresh, cool air washed through my lungs as I opened the door and sped toward Kristin’s cockpit. Moments later the spies were on the ground and running toward me, weapons in hand. Then I watched them dive into a thorny rose bush as I swept Kristin’s plane over them, barely missing their heads.
I took the plane above a few scattered clouds into the late-afternoon sky, forming a plan. I loaded the files of Project Z onto the plane’s computer so that I could search through them for information that would help me to safely dismantle the zametron.
My plan was to get the sunbeam from its hiding place before Feran got me, then take it to a remote spot in the mountains and remove its Zamean-matter fuel. Next, I would reassemble the machine with dirt inside in place of the fuel. Distraught over the thought of his torturing Kristin, which he would certainly threaten to do, I would contact Feran to make a deal. In exchange for the sunbeam, I would demand Kristin. I would also ask for the spacecraft because he knew I would not stay to be irradiated. I would let Feran think I was giving up Earth to him. Once Kristin and the Zamean matter were out of his grasp, she and I could get help. That was my plan. But first I had to lose the two speeding planes behind me.
I headed away from the coast toward an area of uninhabited mountains where I had flown with Kristin. Would the spies hit me? Surely they could not risk killing me until they had the cargo, but they could try to force me down and bring me to Feran.
I came dangerously close to a wall of red-brown rock and climbed vertically along it. After flying over the top of the wall, I suddenly flipped the plane over to reverse my course. Hanging inverted from my harness, I saw the spies climbing over the rocks just as I was diving back down the same rocks in the opposite direction. I disappeared into a deep, narrow canyon. The winds whipped through the canyon at high velocity, as sometimes occurs in that kind of terrain, creating turbulence. They shook my plane incessantly, swaying it toward the jagged stone walls, but I struggled to avoid the menacing ledges that jutted out close to my wing tips. After traveling some miles from where I had last seen the spies, I could no longer locate them. Certain that I had lost them, I climbed away from the V-shaped stone gorge to get out of the maze of mountains.
But just then the curved beaks of two metal vultures appeared overhead. How could Feran’s spies have known exactly where to find for me? I descended back into the winding canyon, with the spies’ planes on my tail.
The rocks flowed by in a liquid smear as I cut through the narrow rift. The winds ripped by incessantly, shaking the craft, changing my altitude in sudden spurts, vibrating the wings. I constantly tried to steady the plane, with the spies still in pursuit. I flew higher and then lower but found turbulence at every altitude. I meandered along the snakelike canyon until it narrowed too much for me to chance going any farther at low altitude in the high winds. I pulled back hard for a steep climb, just missing a protruding sandstone spire. When I looked back, only one hooked nose was behind me. The other had burst into a fireball of molten metal on the spire I had just missed.
I thought I was headed out, but found myself amid more high peaks. I dived under an arch of rocks spanning from cliff to cliff above my plane, all the time fighting nausea. I had to get out of the mountains and into the open sky, but I was losing my way. I was turning left, directly toward the rocks. I had to lower my right wing to correct. But no! My instruments told me my wings were level and I was not turning. I had to resist the urge to correct the wings, because I could no longer trust my senses. The turbulence was upsetting my equilibrium. I was in an exceedingly dangerous place to be afflicted with the condition I was now experiencing—vertigo.
I had to force my eyes to lock on the instruments that presented a true picture while I disregarded the illusions of my mind. I had to resist my distorted perceptions and concentrate. Just then a wall of rock appeared directly in front of me. I had to climb above it, but I was diving instead. I had to adjust quickly. No, the instruments said I was not diving; I was climbing. I had better not adjust or I would stall! I was hesitating too much, and the mountain was coming at me. Suddenly, I rolled sideways through a sliver of blue space between the jagged peaks I did not quite manage to climb over. Then I turned to see a blinding explosion that was the second of the spies’ planes splattered on one of the peaks behind me.
After traveling out of the turbulence, I continued to battle dizziness for a while. I set the craft’s instruments to automatically fly me to my destination, and then I tried to regain my orientation.
I felt better by the time I reached my target. Detecting no one following me, I descended softly into the quiet crescent that was the baseball stadium. I landed in foul territory in front of the dugout between home plate and first base. Because the stadium was empty during the off-season, I thought it would make a good place to conceal the sunbeam. As Kristin had surmised, there were no security guards or systems monitoring the open field. I had confirmed that the previous night when I had come down here with her plane to deposit the cargo in a new place. I figured that Feran would think a giant, open arena too preposterous a hiding spot ever to consider.
I left the engine of Kristin’s plane running while I jumped out. Wobbly, I fought the lingering spatial disorientation as I walked into the stands near the dugout. There I found lodged under the seats, where I had left it, the gray box that was Feran’s cargo. Carefully I slid it out, its cool metal solidly in my grip.
The sunbeam was mine! Feran would never get it now. Presently it would be nothing more than a harmless metal box full of dirt, and the Zamean fuel would be a mere clump of matter without a mechanism to generate its deadly rays. There wou
ld be no fireworks tonight. The peaceful arena of Earth would remain undisturbed for the enduring season of the human epoch. There would be no noxious beam released but only a deadly demon captured. I lifted the sunbeam into my arms gingerly, as if it were a baby. I turned to head back to my craft. Then I stopped.
On the field in front of my plane I saw three mouths gaping at me: one in innocence, one in malice, and one in drooling excitement of impending violence. I saw Kristin, Feran, and Coquet.
“I’ll take that, please,” said Feran pleasantly.
Chapter 25
Kristin’s father’s plane had quietly descended into the infield and landed at the foul line behind where I had parked her red plane. Because I had left the noisy fuel engine of her plane running, I had not heard the nearly silent electric plane approaching. While I was reaching under the seats to retrieve the sunbeam, I had not seen the two passengers get out and walk in front of my plane to watch me.
As I stood speechless at this sudden change of events, I noticed a small electronic object stuck to the red fuselage.
“Did your spies shoot a sensor onto Kristin’s plane while I was flying? Was that how they tailed me and how you knew where to find me?”
Feran smiled smugly, saying in his gentle Earthling voice, “It’s one of the things our security forces have here on Earth that you don’t see on Asteron.”
“We do not need to see things on Asteron. We have a ruler who sees for us.”
The smile vanished. “Move slowly and don’t try anything. Bring that box to me here on the field. Oh, Kristin, dear?”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Bring me the flexite suit we took from his spacecraft, will you, honey? I need to make a quick adjustment on the . . . object, so it’ll be quite harmless. Then I’ll bring it to the Project Z area to disassemble and destroy once and for all, with no renegade from Asteron stealing it this time.”