The Cocoon Trilogy

by David Saperstein

  The next couple had to meet in a special chamber that the Antareans had prepared. The female was from Wilmington, North Carolina. Her name was Ellie-Mae Boyd, an African-American. Her involvement with the Geriatric Brigade came quite by accident. She had been a nurse for most of her life. She never married, and had six children with her common-law husband because of the miscegenation laws in North Carolina. He was a career solider, killed by Chinese troops when they crossed the Yalu River during the Korean War. She raised the children by herself. As they came of age, her children moved north with the exception of a daughter who had also become a nurse and worked in Florida. That daughter brought her aging mother to live with her, and to keep busy Ellie-Mae had taken a part-time job in a nursing home near Coral Gables. It was from that home that several of the Geriatric Brigade members were recruited, among them Betty, Bess Perlman’s sister. Ellie-Mae had been the only person at the home who had been kind to Betty, a severe stroke victim. After Betty had been processed by the Antareans she went to Ellie-Mae and invited her to join in the adventure. Although reluctant to leave her daughter, Ellie-Mae chose to join Betty and the others, leaving behind the bigotry of the American Southland.

  Ellie’s mate was a doctor named Manterid, a chemist; a humanoid native of Betch, the sister planet to Hillet in the Alphard system near the star Hydra. In fact, Andrea and Frank Hankinson’s friends, the Messina’s and the Erhardt’s, both of whom had given birth prematurely aboard the Watership, had conceived their babies on Hillet. The inhabitants of Hillet and Betch shared a common heritage and genetic background. Betch, a seasonal water planet, supports a controlled humanoid population. At first glance, Ellie’s mate, Doctor Manterid, might be mistaken for an American Indian or Eskimo. But his pigmentation was capable of chameleon-like properties - a genetic adaptation. His eyes were set wider apart than Earth-human, nearly reaching to the side of his oval, weathered face. His hair was jet black, coarse and braided. His mouth was also wide, with teeth set in two rows that interlocked. That too was an adaptation developed to make efficient use of the high cellulose vegetation upon which the people of Betch, who were called the Hillet. They were a tall race, most males over six feet. On the nearby planet called Hillet, which was colonized millennia ago, the humanoids who evolved there called themselves Hilletoros. They were fiercely nationalistic, having won independence from Betch. Unlike Bedtch, Hillet’s climate was warmer and dryer. The atmosphere was basically nitrogen with only five percent oxygen. Although their features were similar to the Hillet, Hilletoros their ability to change pigmentation had been replaced by a dark, reddish leathery skin. They were also much shorter than their Hillet ancestors.

  Dr. Manterid was a chemist. Earth atmosphere, which he barely tolerated, made him lightheaded. In order to room with Ellie-Mae, he put up with the discomfort for as long as possible. Their quarters had been designed so that after an hour in her atmosphere, nitrogen was pumped in and the temperature increased. Within fifteen minutes, which were uncomfortable for Ellie-Mae, he was recovered. This way he could be close to his mate, whom he insisted on calling wife. It was a word that he’d learned was important to Ellie-Mae. Dr. Manterid had questioned Commander Hankinson regarding Earth customs when he had decided to mate with Ellie-Mae. The concept of marriage was known on Betch. When the Doctor discovered that Ellie-Mae had not ever been legally married, he insisted on a full-blown wedding, Earth style. One of the Brigade members, a retired Reform rabbi from New York, performed the nuptials, which were a mixture of whatever Baptist ceremony Ellie-Mae remembered, a little Judaism, a sprinkling of Parman philosophy and some Antarean words to bless the Master’s wisdom in this unique joining.

  The last of the mixed matings consisted of a Earth-human male and an off-planet female. He was Peter Martindale, a retired steelworker and union organizer from Ashland, Kentucky. Peter was eighty-six years old when his friend Paul Amato, a resident of the Antares condo, brought him into the fold. Paul knew Martindale from their common union connection to the National Board of the AF of L/CIO. Peter was a handsome man who’d kept himself in good shape. But before he’d been processed for space travel with the Antareans he was dying of lung cancer. The processing restored him to perfect health.

  After his two years on Parma Quad 2 he chose to travel with an Antarean Cargoship that was making a sweep of Quad 1. The first stop was Turmoline, the fifth planet in the Spica star system in the constellation Virgo. Their stay had been less han a month, but during that time Peter Martindale concluded that space travel was not his primary interest. Although he enjoyed the company of the small Antarean and Brigade crew, he found life aboard the Cargoship boring, On Turmoline, a lush water planet inhabited by a race of meat-eating humanoid hunters. They were called the Penditan and closely resembled Earth-humans but lived at a fairly primitive level as compared to Antares. Peter met Tern, a young female Penditan who served as liaison at the Antarean cargo port facility. He fell in love with the beautiful female. By custom he asked her tribal leaders permission for her to be his mate. They consented with the terms that he work one Turmoline year in the service of the tribe before Tern was his.

  Martindale’s skill as a steelworker came in handy. On Earth he had been a melter, the man responsible for operating the huge electric arc furnaces that made specialized alloy steel. It was his job to bring the furnace, initially loaded with scrap metal, to the temperature required. When the metal was molten and red hot, he supervised the addition of other elements such as zinc, nickel and titanium in order to produce the particular alloy steel the batch required. It was a highly skilled job with great responsibility. One mistake might ruin an entire melt. During his year of labor for Tern’s tribe, he built a small blast furnace and taught the Penditan to make hunting weapons superior to those they normally used. Before doing this he had to ask permission of the Antarean envoy to Turmoline, since the improvement might be considered tampering with the normal development of a planet’s indigenous population. The furnace was approved, because the Penditan already smelted metal and were sophisticated hunters on a planet that abounded with game and other fierce predators. It was also a fact that Turmoline skins and furs traded to the Antareans were coveted by many who populated or worked on less bountiful planets.

  After his year of servitude, Peter Martindale and Tern were mated. They lived together on Turmoline for more than a year and then traveled to Antares on a Cargoship so that Peter might visit with Marie and Paul Amato. It was on that journey that Tern became pregnant. When they arrived on Antares the pregnant Brigade women were gathering. Tern had the choice of going back to her home planet to have her baby, staying on Antares, or going to Earth with the others. She chose Earth, stating that although hers was a mixed baby, her inner spirit voice, a feeling of deep religious significance to the Penditan, guided her to birth the baby to Earth. “Within me we have created a new race,” she told Peter. “He must begin his life with the other babies of your kind.” And so. Much to Peter Martindale’s delight, they joined the passengers on the Watership.

  As the Parman guides retired from their task, and the Antarean flight crew guided the Watership to the moon’s hidden side, the returning Brigade members met to discuss how to deal with the families some of them had left behind on Earth. They had received a report from Mary Green regarding her visit to her daughter in Scarsdale. The sense that her family seemed to accept her extraordinary new life was a positive sign. But the fact that she hesitated to reveal her pregnancy to them weighed heavily on some minds. Of the forty-two returning couples, nineteen had family on Earth. Jack Fischer had visited each family, bringing the news of their parents’ and grandparents’ journey into space as well as personal letters left behind by the travelers. He had assured them of the goodness of the Antareans and that the decision made by their loved ones was a free and rational choice. But there was no mention of return, much less pregnancy. The families had eventually accepted their elder’s decisions and all had promised to keep the secret.

  The gro
up aboard the Watership,, along with the commanders on board, wrestled with the problem of family contact – if, when and how. Was it fair to rekindle relationships after departing in such a strange, abrupt manner? They were gone five years. What of grandchildren? How would sons and daughters tke to newborn siblings? Emotions ran high, but cooler heads prevailed. Bernie Lewis said it best.

  “This has all happened very fast. There was a time when five years, the time we have been away, seemed forever. But now we have been out among the stars, we have sampled other worlds, other beings, and we have come to gather a great of very special knowledge, powers and wisdom. But now we return, unannounced because something else has happened. Something that is common on Earth, birth, and something that is unheard of on Earth, birth from parents our age. And some from mates who would be immediately labeled as alien, while we know them to be as human as any Earth-human. There are many who would attach religious significance to this event. Many who would, because of their narrow point of view, look upon our return fearfully, hearing they are not the only life in the universe. We are here to bear our young. That is the way of the galaxy we have come to know. It is best that we go about our business first, meaning that we have our babies, bring them into life with health and love, and that we are firm in our plans for their future. When that is done, then it will be time for each of us to decide what is to be told, or not told, to those whom we love and left behind.”

  There was agreement. Family contact would wait. Bernie sent word to Ben, Mary, Joe, Alma and Amos Bright. They, in turn, had the word of the President that he would arrange private transport for the Brigade’s families to Houston whenever it was requested. Everyone agreed. Family contact would wait.

  An Earth-hour later. the conference room viewing portal opened. Ahead, looming majestically was the moon. Just beyond a blue dot was dipping below the horizon. It was the Earth. It was home-planet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO – A RECEPTION AWAITS

  Manta III bobbed about like a cork on the rough sea. It was nearly two A.M. and the wind had shifted from east to northeast, a harbinger of bad weather. One hundred yards off the starboard, Terra Time’s running lights were intermittently visible as it too was rocked in the ever increasing swells. Beyond the two sport-fishing boats, whose position was directly over the six-hundred-foot wreck, the rest of Captain Walkly’s Operation Earthmother naval fleet waited in the ink-black night.

  That morning, while Jack Fischer and Phil Doyle prepared for their part of the mission, President Teller spoke to the nation on television and radio at a press conference. He announced that a previously unannounced launch of the space shuttle Remembrance was taking place. He then proceeded to outline the test of the Solar Screen Program, the SSP, to be made that night along the eastern seaboard of the United States. He was questioned by the White House reporters as to why the test had not been announced and why it was being conducted now. The President stated that newly gathered data revealed considerable upcoming sunspot activity as well as a newly measured dangerous thinning of parts of the ozone layer. He also suggested that the moon was entering a waning phase and the sky would be darkest, enabling the NASA test instruments to study the highly reflective surface of the screens as they deployed. The program was of such a top-secret nature that no one in the press corps knew what technical questions to ask. By the time they had conferred with their editors and science experts, the President had left Washington, ostensibly to observe the screen deployment from a naval vessel at sea.

  Remembrance, one of the third generation of shuttles built after the Challenger disaster, had a flawless lift-off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle achieved its required orbit an hour later and one of the science teams aboard began their EVA outside the craft as they prepared the delicate and complex SSP deployment equipment. Inside the shuttle, the second science team began the intricate process of preparing the various chemicals that would eventually form the polymer screen in the vacuum of space.

  The President’s party that included Margo McNeil, Secretary Mersky, Alicia Sanchez and Phillip Margolin left Washington aboard Air Force One and flew to Shaw AFB near Columbia, South Carolina. From there they transferred to a Marine jet helicopter that flew them out to the Operation Earthmother flagship, the guided missile cruiser USS Simi where they were welcomed aboard by Captain Walkly and Benton Fuller.

  Nearby, the smaller frigate, USS Hapsas, special agent Gary McGill watched over his charges, Detectives Matthew Cummings and Coolridge Betters. The two Coral Gables cops had been supposedly assigned as liaison for the massive drug bust that was about to commence. They were impressed with the scope of the operation and the efficiency of coordination between what appeared to be Secret Service, FBI and U.S. Navy forces..

  Earlier that morning, after they had been on board for two days, the Hapsas had left its mooring off Key Largo and headed northeast toward their current position. The two detectives were fed only bits of information, but they were privy to the coded radio traffic in the area and knew that at least seven other vessels, a submarine and four or five aircraft were involved in what was now called Operation Earthmother. Cummings, a bachelor, had no one to explain his absence, but his partner, Betters, had been married for forty-three years to a woman who worried about her husband more and more as the day of his retirement neared. Rather than tell her it was a dangerous drug operation, Betters said he was going fishing with Cummings in the Keys for a few days on a friend’s boat. Neither cop was much of a sailor, so as the weather worsened and the seas swelled, they stayed out on the second deck just below the bridge.

  “How the hell are they going to chase anyone in this ocean?” Cummings asked. His empty stomach grumbled.

  “They have some big boats out here. And choppers.” Betters wished he had a bottle of Jack Daniels to settle his stomach.

  “Why do I have this funny feeling we’re being snookered?”

  “That funny feeling is this damned ocean that won’t stay still.” Both men chuckled. Betters frowned and looked at Cummings. “What do you mean, snookered?”

  “It just feels too pat. I don’t trust those feds.”

  “You’re gettin’ paranoid in your old age, Matt.”

  “Hey buddy, not me. There’s a lot of expensive hardware out here. Big bucks. So I ask you, why pull in two old farts like us?”

  “Like the man said, we were onto his collar.”

  “Baloney. This ain’t for those charter boat guys. I know Doyle and Mazuski. Small-timers, if that. And that Fischer guy doesn’t have the smarts for something this big.”

  “What about the old people?”

  “Right. That’s what’s bugging me. Where are they? See, we weren’t on to them . . . at least not after they gave us the slip. All we were doing was watching a couple of boats.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “That maybe there’s something more going down here than our FBI keeper or that other fed is telling us.”

  “The Navy guy seems okay.”

  “You know who he is?”

  “Captain Thomas Walkly?”

  “Yeah. I asked if you know who he is?.”

  “Who? Spiderman? Batman? What?”

  “Funny… but close. He’s the goddamned Undersecretary of the Navy.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Betters forgot his queasy stomach.

  “I checked it out with our underwater snoop photographer.”

  “Leiter?”

  “Yeah. He was one of those Navy Seals before he went commercial. He knew Walkly as soon as I mentioned him. Seems the guy was heavy duty in Viet Nam when Leiter was in service there.” Betters was beginning to feel uneasy.

  “So what do you think a big shot like that is doing out here with us?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s keep our eyes open.” The frigate Hapsas turned into the rising swells. Above them on the bridge deck, a seaman flashed a lantern semaphore message to another vessel off to port.

  That ship was the NOA
A research vessel Orca - a seventy-foot, steel-hulled, bristling with sophisticated electronics and capable of supporting both submersible and free deep-diving scuba teams. The captain, Roger Hadges was a forty-five-year-old veteran of five round-the-world cruises aboard Orca. His boss, Dr. Caroline Macklow, who had been working with the special Seal team attached to Operation Earthmother was also aboard the Orca. The team was in civilian dress and was introduced as a new diving unit attached to NOAA, but Hadges wasn’t fooled. He knew military when he saw it, and these divers were definitely military.

  “We will proceed to these coordinates now, Captain Hadges,” Dr. Macklow explained, pointing to the position of the six-hundred-foot wreck off the Boynton Beach inlet. “I want to arrive there no later than oh-three-hundred hours.” Hadges looked at his watch. It was one-thirty in the morning. He peered outside at the black moonless night and felt the swells rising underneath his vessel.

  “We’ve got four-to-eight-foot seas now, and predicted to get worse,” he told the stately Ph.D.

  “We have to be there on time.”

  “Then I’d say it’s time to get moving now. I wish you’d told me this sooner.”

  “We all have orders to follow, Captain Hadges.”

  “Those Navy boys of yours sure know how to do that,” he said, unable to hold back the sarcasm from his voice.