Yes, my child, Mary thought to herself. We are home on our mother planet and at the same time we are aliens among our own kind. We are a new race. But where do we really belong?
Later that evening, after Cori, Beth and Michael Keane got over the initial shock of seeing Mary, they enjoyed a family dinner seated around the mahogany dining table that had been a gift from Ben and Mary to the Keane’s when they had moved to Florida. Mary explained that their words and thoughts could be sent across vast distances, and that she and Ben had always sent them love. That was what they’d felt. She told them of their decision to become commanders. Cori, the fifteen-year-old, examined the cerebral implant carefully.
“And this expands your brain function to full capacity?” the teenager asked.
“Even beyond that. We can combine our thoughts, our wills and energy. We are eleven commanders, but when we join telepathically, even across light years, we become one hundred times more powerful.”
“Can you speak to Dad now?” Michael Keane asked.
“I am! He sends his love and is glad to see you are all looking so well and grown up. He can’t wait to give you all a big hug.”
“He can see us?” Beth asked incredulously.
“And hear you, and if I touch you then he feels that too.”
“Then here’s a kiss, Grandpa,” Cori said as she got up and kissed her grandmother. Everyone laughed until Cori, suddenly startled, gasped. “Oh. It can’t be. But I just felt someone kiss me back.”
“Grandpa did that,” Mary told her youngest granddaughter. “And this is for all of you.” One by one, each at the table had the sensation of Ben Green gently kissing them on the forehead. Michael touched his balding pate as his father-in-law sent him a greeting.
“The others?” Pat asked. “Your friends from the condo. Where are they?”
“Alma and Joe Finley are here with us. The other seven are on a mission.”
Something was gnawing at Pat. “Mom?” she asked. “You and Dad wrote in the letter that you would be gone, well, perhaps forever. You said you would live a long, fruitful life out there. Mr. Fischer said the Antareans seem to live forever. So why did you come back? I mean now . . . so soon?”
Mary looked around at her family, knowing the moment had come for her to make a decision. On the Probecraft they had discussed it over and over. It was a judgment call that depended on how the family responded to Mary’s return. She wanted desperately to tell her family about their mission, but she feared the knowledge she would impart might be an impossible burden for them to carry in secret for as long as they lived on the Earth.
“Before I answer you, and I promise I will, let me tell you a little about our adventures “out there” as you call it; about some of the worlds we have seen and the beings we have met. Afterwards, if you insist, I will tell you why we have come home to our Earth.”
Commander Ruth Charnofsky, formerly of lower Collins Avenue and now in her ninety-first year of life, stood alongside Commander Frank Hankinson on the Watership flight deck. Hank had been a newspaper publisher in St. Louis, and although he had opted for commander status, his wife Andrea had not. The Watership was approaching light speed as Ruth and Frank watched the Parman guides change shift and lock on to the Earth’s sun, a tiny dot in he cosmos that was their beacon home.
“They are taking us home,” Ruth said.
“That was or is?” Frank asked.
“An interesting concept,” she mused as her thoughts went far out to the great red giant star Rigel and the planet, Subax-Rigel Quad 3 that had been her home for the past three years. Beyond the planet and its great red sun, her thoughts were of her new husband, mate and friend Panatoy, the tall humanoid from that world with whom she now shared her life in that inhospitable world. Ruth loved Panatoy as dearly as she had her Earth-human husband who had died decades ago. Dear Panatoy who now slept below deck, suspended in his special atmospheric chamber, awaiting the Watership’s arrival on Earth and the revelation of the awesome secret they carried on board. She could picture his strong, graceful body, glowing with the bluish pigmentation of his people that had come to seem so beautiful; so right to her.
CHAPTER NINE – ARE THEY SAFE?
Jack kept the Manta III in good shape. With the sale of the Antares condo complex, he had enough money to buy any yacht his heart desired, but the old charter boat was his love. It was docked along the Inter-coastal in Boca Raton, just south of Yamato Road.
During the night while Detective Cummings kept his vigil near Terra Time, the Antarean Probeship slipped out of the Boynton Beach Marina and headed south, submerged near the bottom of the Inter-coastal Waterway, to Jack’s dock in Boca Raton. They moored the Probeship directly underneath the broad-beamed Manta III and proceeded with their preparations for diving at the stones tomorrow morning.
It wasn’t until well after midnight that Cummings suspected he had been duped. Interior and running lights had been left on aboard Terra Time. Now they clicked off simultaneously. A timer Cummings speculated? He got out of his car and cautiously approached the luxury Hatteras yacht. There was no sign of life. Only the gentle lapping of water against the sturdy dock pilings and fiberglass hull broke the eerie stillness of the moonless tropical night.
The detective boarded, flashlight in hand, his badge conspicuously pinned to his crumpled tan sports jacket. The last thing he needed was to be taken for an intruder. Charter captains had the reputation of being very touchy about strangers aboard their boats. The door leading to the main cabin was open. Cummings turned on his flashlight and played the beam around inside.
“Hello. Anybody home?” he called in a friendly voice. No answer. He moved into the cabin and strained to hear sounds of people sleeping below. Silence. The Terra Time was empty. Somehow, Fisher, Doyle and that old man had slipped away.
Earlier that evening Coolridge Betters had radioed to inform his partner that the rental car and elderly driver, as described, had never made it to Ives Dairy Road on I-95. Both cops agreed that Betters should head down to the Antares condo complex in case it was being used as a base again. Cummings had not heard from Betters after that.
Instead of trying to raise his partner on their prearranged radio frequency, Cummings found a pay telephone on the deserted dock and called his partner’s home. The aging detective answered on the fifth ring.
“Hello?”
“It’s Matt.”
“Oh. Hey man, listen, I’m sorry about not getting back to you, but my radio went down right after I got to the Antares condos.”
“You see the old guy?”
“I did. Well, not exactly the guy, but I found that rental down on the Red Lake Canal, just below the condos. Damned near the place they tossed me out onto that lawn five years ago.”
“But you didn’t see the guy?”
“I saw nobody. You want to stake out the car?”
“Not now. It’s just you and me. We can’t be spreading things too thin.”
“How’d you make out, Matt?”
“They gave me the slip.”
“They took the boat out?”
“No. But somehow they got off without my seeing them.”
“Maybe they went to Fischer’s boat.”
“He still has that old tub?”
“He keeps it up in Boca somewhere. I can’t remember the name…”
“Manta III,” Cummings blurted out. “I’ll never forget it and the sight of those old people going over the sides. It still makes me sick.”
“I can get on the horn in the morning with the Boca Coast Guard station and see where it’s registered.”
“Do that first thing. I’m gonna get me a motel in Boca for the night. I’ll call you at seven.”
“You want to meet up there?”
“Keep an eye on that condo. After I check out the Manta III we can talk.”
“Okay, Matt. Get some rest.”
“Not till those creeps are in the lockup.”
Betters heard from Cummings
precisely at seven A.M. He had already spoken to the Coast Guard, who confirmed that Jack Fischer kept a thirty-eight-foot fishing boat, Manta III, docked near the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers facility on the Inter-coastal Waterway.
“I’m on my way,” Cummings said. “I’ll radio when I get an eyeball on the boat.”
A half hour later, a disappointed Cummings reported to Betters that the Manta III was not in its slip. When he’d asked around, the fuel barge attendant recalled seeing the Manta III leave just before dawn. The attendant, a grizzled, toothless old Greek, who smoked a crooked, foul-smelling DiNoble cigar, chuckled when Cummings flashed his badge and asked for more information. “Do you have a more precise time that they left?”
“Coupla hours. The sun no for to come yet.”
“Did you see who was on the boat?”
“Dark. Hey, it’s night before the sun she come up.”
“Which way did they go?”
“To the ocean. Through the inlet up to the bridge.” And then as an afterthought he added, “He take that old tub out pretty fast. I guess he for to have trouble keeping up with submarine.”
“Submarine?” Cummings repeated. “There are no submarines in the Inter-coastal.”
“Maybe.” The old Greek chuckled again. “Maybe I just make imagination.”
Cummings knew he had lost Fischer and the old man for the time being. He radioed Betters to go up to Boynton Beach and keep an eye on Doyle’s Terra Time. “I’ll hang here until the return.” They had to come back to one of the boats, Cummings reasoned, unless they had a submarine like the old barge guy had claimed. But that was ridiculous and Cummings dismissed the thought.
The Manta III was on site over the Stones. While Jack and Phil stayed above, keeping an eye out for intruders, Amos Bright, Ben and Joe detached the Probeship from the Manta III’s hull and guided it beneath the calm, crystal-clear water that allowed sunlight to penetrate and illuminate the reef below. The Antarean and his two human commanders left the Probeship through the pressurized hatch and swam freely toward the reef. They located the doorway to the secreted chambers and carefully uncovered the seals that protected this section of the sleeping Antarean cocoon army. The seals were intact and undisturbed - exactly as they had been left five years ago. Amos located the chamber locking marker and, slipping an oblong metal device from the leg pouch on his wet suit, inserted the sharp end into the marker and activated the mechanism. The chamber door slowly slid open, hardly stirring the sandy nearby.
The chamber was undisturbed. Hundreds of cocoons, snugly nestled against one another on racks, glowed with a faint red light at the tip of each. Each rack held fifty cocoons, and in this chamber there were three racks. Ben, Joe and Amos entered the chamber, each swimming down along a rack, checking to see that all of the cocoons were viable. Satisfied, the men paused for a moment and thought a prayer for their sleeping companions. They then resealed that chamber and went on to check out the three remaining chambers. Everything was in order. Later that evening, after they returned to the dock and had hidden the Probeship, Amos Bright would send a message to the Antarean Watership, now only weeks away from its earthly destination.
“Our brothers and sisters are well and asleep. They await your arrival and the great day of awakening. We send you love.”
Back at the dock in Boca Raton, a restless, unshaven Matthew Cummings was buoyed when he caught sight of the Manta III chugging up the Inter-coastal toward its marina. This time, in the light of day, Jack kept the broad-beamed fishing boat down to four knots. This allowed the Probeship, attached to the Manta’s hull, to ride low in the water and therefore out of sight. Cummings backed away from the dock, crouching in the shadows cast by a copse of palm trees. The old Greek watched the detective hide. Then he saw the Manta III approaching. Chewing on the cigar stub, he muttered to himself,. “That submarine is under the boat. I can see. Well, if Jack stops for to get gas, I tell him. If not, I just watch what the cop does.”
But Ben, Joe and Amos didn’t have to be told that Cummings was there. They had already tuned in on his presence. Their problem was not how to confront the Coral Gables cop, but when.
CHAPTER TEN – A SACRED MISSION
Amos Bright’s message to the Watership was joyfully received by all who were awake and functioning, including the six human commanders were gathered for a conference. Bess and Arthur Perlman, Bess’s sister Betty Franklin, Bernie and Rose Lewis, Ruth Charnofsky and Frank Hankinson sat around the oval obsidian table that contained a data screen. They studied detailed, three dimensional maps of the western coastline of South Florida and the ocean floor offshore. The huge Antarean Watership groaned slightly as the Parman guide farthest forward adjusted its crystalline alignment to compensate for a momentary change in the far distant Sun’s ultraviolet radiation caused by the release of a huge solar prominence.
Antarean Waterships had been named for their primary function to carry liquids, usually under extreme pressure, to planets and Antarean colonies in the galaxy. Huge storage tanks, each capable of holding hundreds of millions of gallons of pressurized fluids, were the prominent feature of the vessel. The tanks, attached by service walkways to one another, trailed out behind the flight deck and crew quarters, which they dwarfed.
Mostly, these vessels carried water to arid planets. At other times the modular tanks were filled with liquid oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and transported to planets or colonies without natural atmospheres of their own. The Antareans were gifted in their ability to create and maintain entire atmospheres around smaller planets or under specially constructed domes. Many diverse living beings depended upon Antarean technology and integrity. Failure of either could mean a disaster of major proportions. The Antareans, respected and ancient travelers, held the trust of the water users. Many of the Antarean’s customers were dependent upon Waterships for survival
This particular Watership had three tanks. Two of the huge containers were filled with exotic mixtures of life-support gasses from four diverse planets. The center tank was filled with liquid oxygen for ballast. It had been recalled from the Rigel Quad 3 system, where it was replenishing an atmosphere to Subax, an ice planet near the red giant star Rigel.
Ruth Charnofsky, who lived on Subax, studied topographic details of the undersea area near the Stones. “The closest place to park the Watership, as far as I can see, is here,” she said, pointing her remarkably smooth, tapered finger, once bent, wrinkled and locked by age and crippling arthritis, at a spot on the ocean floor nearly three miles from the site of the cocoon chambers secreted in the reef called the Stones.
Bernie Lewis leaned in to see the location. “That’s the old wreck off Boynton Beach. It’ll mean moving the cocoons a long way underwater.”
“We have the flight crew and the Probeship,” Bess Perlman said.
“At that distance, it could take weeks to move all those cocoons,” Art Perlman chimed in, “and some of us won’t all be able to help.”
“And I’m sure Ben and Joe will get Jack and his friends to help again.”
“We’ll make do,” Ruth Charnofsky said with finality in her voice, indicating that she had come to a decision. Her keen, concise manner of taking action when discussion had to be concluded made her the natural leader among the Earth-human commanders. “How we proceed will depend on where Amos, the Green’s and the Finley’s find the facility we need,” Ruth continued.
“That will be the key,” Bess Perlman agreed, shifting in her chair uncomfortably. She was not feeling well. Everyone in the room sensed her discomfort.
The problems they faced were indeed unique and unexpected. Five years ago, when the elderly Earth-humans chose to travel with the Antareans underwent the physical transformation required for off-planet life, no one had anticipated or completely understood all the effects of Antarean space/body/mind processing on them. As it turned out, halting the aging process was only the beginning. The complete cleansing of blood and bone marrow, organs, and the lymphatic and respirat
ory systems removed all disease and damaged tissue. This process was dangerous to younger humans, which is why those who chose to leave the planet had to be seniors of at least sixty-five to seventy years of age. The Earth-human reaction was unique in Antarean experience in that the aging process not only stopped, but slowly, at first imperceptibly, was reversed.
Beyond physical cleansing, repair and reconstruction, an expansion of the human brain’s capacity to near full potential was also begun in the processing room. The commanders had consciously undergone additional mental enhancement with cerebral transplants, a device that brought their mental capacities up to Antarean commander level. But the expansion of functioning brain capacity, thought to be perhaps ten percent in most Earth-humans, increased to nearly ninety percent for those who did not become commanders. The commanders capacity went beyond that to nearly one hundred percent; potentially equal to Antarean commanders.
All of the Earth-human space travelers had weathered the journey to Parma Quad 2 well. They spent two years living within the Parman society, teaching and being taught, acting as ambassadors for the Antareans, and generally integrating themselves and the Parmans into the galaxy which contained a seeming endless multitude of life forms, societies and civilizations.
It took another two years of many intra-galactic trips, before it was evident that one special aspect of the processing was unique to the Earth-human race. Reproductive systems that had ceased functioning twenty to forty years before had slowly awakened and begun to work again. All of the space travelers, male and female, could become sexually active if they chose to do so. Not long after that, another unique effect became evident. Fertility!
As the Watership hurtled toward Earth, twenty-eight of the women aboard were pregnant. Married couples, who already had great-grandchildren, were about to become parents again. And many new couples had been formed by widows and widowers.
The Cocoon Trilogy Page 29