An Alien Rescue

by Gordon Mackay

  The sound of a scuffle filtered in from outside the doors, making the larger group wonder what might be happening. The base’s commander had decided to place every single member outside the door to physically throw themselves at the quintet as they left the room’s safety. He would remain within the Control Room to oversee the operation, a place where he could be contacted by all at any time and able to monitor the situation. Belinda read the screen’s updated information, informing the others of the strategy. Scott waived his revolver in the air above his head while Belinda began to prepare the sphere. Phyllis explained her hand situation before Frell and Drang caught up with the events that had occurred since they had been captured. Learning they were in a subterranean base beneath a vast ocean of water and swimming to safety was not an option, they began to look for another means of escape; other than blasting out with weapons blazing. Scott recalled the movie, where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ran from their place of safety with six-guns firing salvoes of bullets in all directions, believing they could shoot their way out of a tricky situation. What had seemed like a good idea actually turned into a fatal death-trap because the heavily armed forces that waited on them were much greater in number than was expected. He recalled their fate and the mistaken belief of escaping easily, turning the thought into the position he presently found himself and the others to be in. He too began to wonder if there might be another way of escaping as he only had six bullets at any one time and the sphere would only take-out so many at once.

  Phyllis said, “What about the doorway where the caskets entered through. Where does that lead?”

  Belinda actuated the screen’s plan of the base, concentrating her attention on routes for automated conveyors and passageways. Pressing a few buttons to actuate a search, she began to sound hopeful as she announced, “The doorway leads downwards to a subterranean level, one where there are other entrances and exits.” Turning to Phyllis with a beaming grin, she said, “I think you have found us a safer way of leaving, and if my calculations are correct, there is a direct passage leading close to the dock where the ship we arrived in is parked.”

  They all looked at each other, wondering who was going to make the first move, when Phyllis commanded, “Follow me!”

  Running to the edge of the doorway, she ripped a panel from the wall with a cracking splintering sound. Holding it firmly in her hands with sparks flying around her, she said, “My new hands work really well with lots of strength and grip. Bloody brilliant!”

  Frell and Drang heard her expletive, wondering how she could find such language in her vocabulary. Then it dawned on them both at once. She had been in Scott’s presence for quite some time and his influence had obviously affected her in different ways; for instance, her own vocabulary had taken on a more colourful bouquet. They both knew from experience how his presence could change the mind and habits of an individual. They simply smiled at her outburst, recognising his words leaving her mouth.

  Casting the wrecked panel to one side, she altered a few wires within the uncovered power-distribution box before activating something concealed within the wall’s cavity. The hatch flung itself open with a tremendous bang, continuously bouncing against the upper door-stops. The door’s motors were still running as hard as they could as their limitation cut outs were none existent as automatic control was overridden. Phyllis beckoned the others to follow, insisting they should get through as quickly as possible because the motors wouldn’t last long with the hatch slamming open until its inevitable failure. Without any questions they left the room as the first wafts of smoke began to appear. The burning smell was becoming chokingly strong and the feeling there might be a fire in the not too distant future spurred them to move even quicker. Belinda had memorised the route to take, but they must first gain access to the lower level. She moved forward to take the lead, tracing the way as she remembered it. They worked their way along a narrow tunnel where the roof was too low to stand upright. Then the access shaft appeared, a vertical drop with small hand and foot rails set into one wall. The light was so dim they couldn’t tell how far down it went.

  “There’s only this one way out,” Belinda announced to her audience, just as the sound of a slamming door behind them echoed loudly. Recognising the motorised door had finally failed and dropped like an effective guillotine, she added, “We do not have any other choice. We must climb down to escape.”

  Scott squeezed past the others to peer down the shaft, whistling at the sight of fading rails and walls into the distance. “It looks like an express elevator shaft to hell,” he said.

  Standing beside Scott, Belinda looked downwards into the plummeting darkness, seeing the colours fade from light to black, trying to whistle like he did. She failed completely. He couldn’t help himself, giving her a comical nudge in the ribs with his elbow, grinning smugly. She returned the compliment, but not nearly so gently by mistake. He felt the pain of it, like a kick in the rib cage, but took it in good measure, smiling to let her know it was OK while he really wanted to say, Ouch!.

  Then the communications channels reopened from the Greys around the base. The entire party stopped to listen, trying to make a vivid mental picture of what might be going on and if any plans or traps were in the process of being reorganised. Belinda insisted they start climbing down at once.

  “Our safety and our lives depend on how quickly we can return to the ship.”

  Without any further comments, they each followed the other, all climbing down the rungs and disappearing into the shaft’s dark and dismal gloom. Belinda agreed to lead with Scott watching their backs.

  The shaft had been sunk for some considerable distance, but only enough to leave a safe margin of rock between the two floors for structural integrity. Another corridor was where they ended up dropping into, with limited lighting and no visible indications of direction. Belinda was certain she knew the direction to take and led them.

  There was a deathly chill with signs of condensation on the walls. A humming sound assured the group there was adequate ventilation and breathable air. And even though there was a slight amount of moisture drifting around, the floor was dry and clean, where no footprints would show they had passed by. They all recognised the significance of not leaving any clues so each was as careful as their predecessor concerning not making any marks or leaving signs of their presence. There were no Hansels’ or Gretels’ among them, and definitely no trail of bread crumbs either. Scott’s hunger pangs had been forgotten and his newest concern was to get everyone out of that base and away to safety. His next mission in life was to create another with his beautiful lover, Frell. What had also slipped his mind was how tall and athletic she appeared and how absolutely drop-dead gorgeous she actually was. A woman definitely worth risking his life for, he knew. He was as smitten as a teenager hopelessly in love with a page three babe.

  They continued for an appropriate time, covering approximately the same distance from where they had exited the ship to the recovery room. So no-one was surprised when Belinda stopped by another set of rungs that led upwards. The closed upper hatchway could be seen looking down at them, a climb that shouldn’t take very long to achieve. Without another word, she indicated with a pointing finger and began to ascend. Everyone fell into line in exactly the same order as when they descended. It’s like a clandestine military operation, thought Scott.

  Belinda cracked opened the hatch, listening and looking for any signs of activity. There was none. She spotted the open doors that led into the docking area with the nose of the black ship just visible. Without waiting, she crept out of the shaft, having raised a hand to make the others wait for her say so before they too emerged. She stepped across to the hangar entrance while still looking around and listening. There was no-one else around and nothing to give her concern. She returned to the others and whispered it was safe, insisting they should head for the ship as soon as they were clear. One by one, they each climbed from the shaft and made their way towards the dock. Frell and Dran
g felt extreme trepidation as they approached the same type of ship that had caught them leaving Earth’s solar system. They both hoped it wasn’t another trap as freedom seemed so close.

  Scott had fallen behind the others, waiting by the hangar doors as the rest tip-toed across the smooth floor. He was about to turn and follow when the sound of dozens of tiny feet could be heard in the distance, getting closer by the shortening seconds. He whistled loudly and shouted, “Run like hell and get this thing ready for take-off!”

  They looked and heard the reason for his extremely loud and worrying outburst. Not one person hesitated. Phyllis sprinted like an athlete, bounding past the others like a kangaroo on heat and a promise. She cleared the ramp in good enough time to embarrass any Olympic hop-skip-and jump hopeful. The others weren’t far behind, all running as if the Devil himself was snapping at their heels.

  Strapping in to the pilot’s seat, Phyllis took the helm and began to energise the systems needed to leave. Information regarding the ship’s position flashed across several screens with certain conditions highlighted before the ship could exit. Drang had already taken up a similar position and was making himself familiar with the ship’s controls and layout. Both Phyllis and Drang worked hard at getting this ship ready for departure, checking more systems while powering others. A warning beacon drew their attention from the controls they fought to energise and understand, with Belinda observing from behind them. Frell was standing by the door waiting for her lover and father of her daughter. Her concern for him had made her wait, just in case another pair of hands would help him, and also to recover his body should things turn awkward. Knowing the others were safely on board with Frell positioned at the top of the ramp, Scott decided it was time to make his break for freedom. Starting his run towards the ship, he heard the pitter-patter of feet directly behind him. “Holy-shit!” he shouted as he tried to put some distance between them.

  The ship lurched as the beacon warning changed colour. Its repetitive flashing altered as well, taking on a much faster rate. There was a feeling of hopelessness as they each realised the cradle that supported the ship, upon which it rested, was urgently lowering itself towards the floor. The ramp began to bend as the ship’s height decreased, with Frell holding on to the door’s edge and shouting for Scott to run faster. He couldn’t reply as he was going flat-out and his breathing wouldn’t allow him to cough never mind discuss his tactics of escape.

  Belinda reached across to touch Phyllis on a shoulder, pointing to the control for the ramp and undercarriage. Drang caught sight of her and understood what she was trying to say. Phyllis nodded as she shouted, “Lowering the undercarriage… Now!”

  Another jolt ran through the ship’s structure, throwing Frell from one side of the door across to the other. She exhaled a loud shout of surprise as she grabbed hold while continuing to watch Scott’s valiant attempt to make the half-minute mile a reality. “C’mon General, you can do it!” she shouted at the top of her voice.

  The Greys were right on his heals as he approached the ramp’s bottom edge and as the ship’s undercarriage doors began to open. But what happened next surprised everyone, including and especially the little grey guys who were about to lay claim to Scott. The undercarriage doors released a torrent of sea water as they burst open. Three tsunami waves rushed across the hanger floor, one from each of the undercarriage bays. The surges picked up the little grey bodies before smashing them into the walls and fittings. Some were knocked unconscious while others frantically struggled to stay afloat, with them all eventually surging through the hangar’s doorway, all carried by a torrential flow of water. The hanger’s safety sensors detected the sudden appearance of water with overriding mechanisms energising to seal the hangar, thereby saving the rest of the base from flooding. The system was installed to protect the base in case of leakage from the ocean outside, and most effective it was too. As the doors slammed shut with a vengeance, a small grey figure was seen to be sliced through his middle. Another lost an arm and a leg. A few others who had still been trying to make some headway through the rushing torrent to reach the ship were caught in mini whirlpools, where drowning seemed to be their only release from a life of servitude.

  The ship was felt to leap upwards as the trapped water was released, allowing it to settle more gently on the floor as the cradle finally pancaked. Scott had only just made it onto the ramp as the first ferocious waterfall began, twisting around to witness his pursuers being swept away. He recalled the loose gas bottle and Phyllis’s remark about a purging fault, putting two and two together. “Effen brilliant!” he said.

  “We are both inside and safe so the ramp can be retracted and the outer door closed,” reported a relieved Frell to the ship’s control. She grabbed hold of Scott before pulling him towards her and kissing him passionately. He still hadn’t got his breath back as his lover gave him the enormous smacker. To anyone else it might have sounded as if he was hot for sex with his heavy breathing through his nose and heaving chest. But in reality, although he was enjoying the pleasure of the kiss, he was suffocating and desperate to breath.

  Phyllis witnessed the illuminated beacon extinguishing while Drang reported the accepted pre-takeoff condition of closed hangar doors. The preset signal for departure doors to open was initiated and the hanger began to flood completely. Any greys who had survived the initial swamping were about to meet their doom as the hangar filled with water with a pressure that would be beyond their capacity of endurance. A few little bodies were crushed, their contorted little shapes swirled around the hangar as the turbulence of the water created swirls. They would eventually be ejected as flotsam. The protective system for flooding locked-out any other that may have been used to override the doors. Part of the fault diagnosis and repair of any detected leakage was for the exit doors to open allowing any flood-water, flotsam and seabed sediments to be ejected. This would ensure the seals around each doorway would be free from any kind of obstruction, allowing for the eventual closure to be clear of debris and extremely secure. Should there be any kind of leakage after that, it would be up to the maintenance personnel to detect where the problem was and repair it.

  The area filled in double-quick time and the ship’s undercarriage was retracted. A departing level of buoyancy was achieved, rotating as it prepared to exit the base. When its attitude was in line with the outer doors, the surrounding water was purged from the hangar at a very high rate. The ship didn’t need to use its own power as the flow of forced water carried it clear of the base and across the ocean floor. As soon as the ship was clear, the base doors slammed shut. It was as if they had offended a host to the point where they had been thrown out and told never to return. Scott smiled as he said, “I’ve been thrown out of better places than that, but certainly none as strange.” His companions smiled as they liked his joke. “And they’re definitely off my Christmas card list,” he added with a jovial shake of an angry fist.

  Drang and Phyllis coordinated the work load, preparing to rise and leave the ocean’s depths and the planet’s atmosphere. Telepathy was back in action, as well as verbal methods of communicating with each other. Drang and Phyllis were presently using speech to confer with each other, their pre-flight checks and preparations would have filled everyone’s head with meaningless information if they had used telepathy. Scott heard everything. He listened to the voices of the pilots and telepathic chatter by the others’. He felt he was flying an airline when the announcement to take a seat and strap-in was announced. He was tempted to ask when the duty-free trolley would be coming round before thinking of the in-flight meals that are provided. That was when his belly released the loudest rumble he had heard since Mars. The sound was like distant thunder and a blocked drain clearing at the same time. Hunger had raised its starving head once again, and much louder too. He was determined to get some food from the kitchen, preferably something other than crisps. He even began to wonder how one might actually cook a grey, if it were at all possible. What kind of sto
ck would you get from the flesh, and would it make a tasty soup? He really didn’t want to think about it, but when your belly is making as loud a rumpus as his was anything that might be remotely edible begins to look like a veritable feast. The others picked-up his thoughts, hoping he was making another joke of the situation. But they too began to feel they needed to eat.

  “Standby everyone, we’re about to leave the ocean. There might be a surge of acceleration as we break free so ensure you are both seated and secure.” Phyllis had issued the instructions as she was programming coordinates for orbit, wishing the greys had inertia stabilisers fitted as their own ships did. It would make sense and travel would be a whole lot better and safer. Each member of the group informed Phyllis when they were ready.

  “Here we go,” she said with relief, touching a circular panel with the heel of one hand and using only three fingers to press buttons. The ship’s momentum could be felt, and even though they were travelling through dense sea water the ship was getting faster at a quickening pace, much like a missile in its early stages of launching.