Stranded (A stand-alone SF thriller) (The Prometheus Project Book 3)
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“Alyssa,” she shouted angrily just after her scream had stopped. “Could you come here for a minute?”
Kelsey turned toward her sister and grinned. “Let me guess,” she said. “You didn’t tell Grandma about your new pets.”
Despite being in a bad mood, Alyssa laughed. “Uh-oh,” she said, rushing off toward the kitchen. Her grandmother had lived a long time, but Alyssa was willing to bet she had never found forty bees in the fridge before. “Coming Grandma,” she shouted, a broad smile still on her face. “Whatever you do, make sure you don’t eat any of those. I need them.”
CHAPTER 16
From Bad to Worse
Regan listened as her parents discussed strategies for rescuing Ryan. But as clever as they were they could think of no way to cross the glowing molten sea. Finally they gave up.
Regan had never seen her father cry, but he did on this occasion. His son was in grave danger and he was powerless to help him. Her mother just became strangely silent and her eyes burned with a frightening rage.
Thirty minutes later the predators returned.
One by one they came, until more than a dozen different species were represented. Along with the gray wolf-things they had faced there were armored creatures, clawed creatures, and creatures with eight-inch fangs. There were reptilian creatures the size of hippos with heads crowned in twenty-inch spikes. Carnivores that lumbered like bears but had the faces and teeth of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Hairy spider-creatures the size of small dogs that shot bolts of electricity at the barrier. Tentacled animals with razor sharp claws at the end of each of their ten snake-like arms. Brightly colored creatures that expanded like accordions and shot poison at the barrier from glands on their throats. Large, furless predators with kangaroo-like legs whose powerful kicks would surely have broken through the barrier had not the electric shocks discouraged their attempts. Animals with powerful tails ending in massive balls of thick bone that could be used as devastating clubs. And even animals that launched projectiles, like porcupine needles, from slots in their heads.
And every single one of them had a common goal: get inside the barrier and kill anything human. The approach of nightfall did nothing to discourage them and their growls and roars and hisses and clicks and screeches and snarls were unrelenting. Each tried to throw themselves through the glowing green barrier and each received a harsh shock for their efforts. This seemed to only make them that much more eager to reach the humans.
Miguel and Cam were still lying on the ground about twenty yards from the rest of the expedition. The group thought leaving them alone, away from loud voices and at a range that wouldn’t tempt them to weaken themselves by contributing to any conversations, would be helpful as they began to recuperate. And they were right, especially since the remaining, healthy members of the expedition were at each other’s throats. Their endless bickering was loud, and savage in its intensity.
Regan knew the team was falling apart, just when they needed each other the most. Her father was detached, as if he didn’t care anymore, and her mother was more combative than Regan had ever seen her, sticking up for her husband and family.
Strangely, the wildlife seemed to ignore Cam and Miguel. The predators focused on the main group. None of the assorted beasts tried to throw themselves at the barrier near the two members of security. Only when Amanda Resnick brought them food and checked on their bandages did a number of the snarling beasts peel themselves away to stalk that part of the barrier—leaving as soon as she did.
Regan wanted to check in on her brother in the worst way. But she was afraid of distracting him at just the wrong moment. That was the last thing he needed. Besides, he had said he would contact her to report.
She lifted her yellow and black backpack and wandered to the opposite end of the shield to be alone. She plopped down on the ground and pulled a small white wristwatch from the front pocket of the nylon bag. It showed the time in Pennsylvania. A place to which she would never return.
She frowned and thought of Ryan once again as the incessant arguing between the adults became even louder.
She would wait five minutes, no more. Then she would contact her brother.
CHAPTER 17
A New Hypothesis
“Ryan,” broadcast Regan as loudly as she could.
“Are you still okay?”
Several long seconds passed. “I told you I’d let you know!” he barked.
“I’m worried about you, Ryan.”
“Well you should be!”
“What’s happening?”
“You tell me.”
“Okay. Cam and Miguel are recovering a little but they’re still really weak. Mom and Dad are worried to death about you and blaming themselves that you got cut off from us. And most of the team members are still acting like crazed idiots. Dad’s still the leader, but I’m not sure how long that will last. Donna, Bob, and Eric all seem like they can’t wait to take over.”
“So you’ve got a Lord of the Flies thing happening, only with adults.”
“Lord of the Flies?”
“It’s a book,” explained Ryan irritably.
“I haven’t read it.”
“You will,” snapped Ryan, but as he thought about this further he laughed bitterly. “Then again, maybe you won’t. Unless someone brought a copy in their backpack.” He paused. “Okay. Thanks for the depressing report. Now go away!”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on with you,” insisted Regan, trying not to be hurt by her brother’s words.
“Why do you even care?” he demanded. “So you can put the right words on my gravestone! Okay, I’ll tell you. I’m sitting with my back against the Isis shield with a ring of fire in front of me. And fourteen of those clicking, gray wolf-things are waiting patiently for the fire to die. Once the fire dies … so do I.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Well I do!” snapped Ryan. “I know exactly what to say. We’re the biggest fools who ever lived. We’re not ready for Prometheus. We should have just walked away from it.”
“We are ready,” countered Regan. “Dad and the others are being really careful. We just didn’t count on a psycho like Nathaniel.”
“So you contacted me on my last night alive to argue with me!” he broadcast angrily. “Is that really what you want to do?” He frowned deeply. “Something bad was bound to happen, no matter how careful we’re being. We shouldn’t be messing with technology and science we can’t understand. Not don’t understand. Can’t understand. Like how gravity can be controlled by a small cube. Like how the Teacher can turn solid objects into see-through ghosts. Like the fourth dimension. Impossible to find. Impossible to even imagine. We’re way, way out of our league.”
Regan gasped, both aloud and telepathically.
“What?” snapped Ryan. “What now?”
“That’s it, Ryan!”
Regan paused for several long moments as her mind raced through the possibilities.
“What’s it?” he demanded.
“What you just said. About us turning into ghosts—and the fourth dimension. They’re the same thing! It’s so clear to me now.”
“You’ve lost it, Regan.”
“No. I’ve found it. Hold on.”
Regan removed a pad of paper and pencil from her backpack and hastily scribbled on the first page.
“Remember Dad’s drawing of Flatland? Well, there’s something obvious that we didn’t think about. I’ve just drawn a picture and I’m going to look at it and transmit it to you telepathically. I think you’ll understand right away. Here it is.”
Regan didn’t need to ask if her brother had received her mental image of the drawing. She knew he had.
“So here are two Flatlanders facing each other. I’ve drawn them like Dad did—you know, kind of like frog people. Anyway, I’ve shown the heart inside the one on the right. And inside the heart is a blood vessel. And inside the blood vessel are cells.”
Ryan w
as having trouble concentrating, but even so understood where Regan was going immediately. “You’re right. I do get it,” he broadcast. “I wouldn’t have drawn a heart like a valentine, but I get it. No Flat-lander can see what’s inside any other Flatlander. But we 3D beings can. Easily. We can see inside of everything in Flatland, at every level of detail, all at once.”
“Exactly,” broadcast Regan excitedly. “Dad was saying that Flatlanders could never understand up or down unless someone pulled them off the page. Well, what would happen if someone did that? They could look down for the first time. They could see everything inside of bank vaults and homes. And people. Their hearts, lungs and brains. They would think their fellow Flatlanders had all turned into ghosts. Remind you of anything?”
Ryan made no reply.
“Don’t you see, Ryan! That’s what the Teacher did to us. It pulled us in whichever direction the fourth dimension is in. If the two Flatlanders I’ve drawn were about to smash into each other, you could stop it by lifting one above the other. Not knowing about the third dimension they would swear that the only reason they didn’t collide was that they had passed through each other. Just like we thought had happened with the Hauler. And the one on the left would be able to see everything inside of the one on the right. When the Hauler was about to crush us, the Teacher yanked us into the fourth dimension. While we were there we could see everything inside of three-dimensional objects.”
“I get it,” barked Ryan. “I just don’t care. I don’t want to think about Qwervy science. I wish I’d never heard of them! Why don’t you get out of my head and leave me in peace!”
“I won’t Ryan! Let me finish. I have an idea that might save your life.”
“An idea? You think an idea is going to stop me from becoming dinner? No thanks. What I need is a machine gun. So unless you can get me one of those, leave me alone.”
“I think we enter the fourth dimension whenever we pass though a Qwervy shield,” she continued, deciding to ignore her brother completely. “That’s why we felt the way we did—and why we could see inside of things again—when the tram passed through the Isis shield. Just like we could when the Hauler was about to hit us. Dad was sure a single crystal couldn’t get us through every shield, no matter what the frequency. But it can. Because all the shields are touching the fourth dimension somehow.”
Regan scribbled another drawing.
“Imagine you’re a Flatlander. This is the shield surrounding the portal to Earth. You’re the stick-figure. If you could just lift your foot a billionth of an inch in the up direction you could cross over the barrier. But you can’t. I think that’s where the crystal comes in. It gives us just enough of a push into the fourth dimension to let us cross the barrier. But if we could just move a billionth of an inch in that direction ourselves, we wouldn’t need the crystal.”
Ryan didn’t answer so Regan forged ahead.
“Before, we were just like everyone else. But things have changed. The Teacher lifted us off the page. We know what 3D objects look like when viewed from the fourth dimension. We know how our bodies feel when we’re moving in that impossible direction. So all you have to do is find a tiny fourth-dimensional seam in the shield and go through. You can do it, Ryan. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s great, Regan,” replied her brother sarcastically, finally responding. “Can you come up with a theory of how I can flap my arms and fly out of here? That’s just as likely. Or maybe I can click my heels together and say, ‘there’s no place like home.’ “
“Come on, Ryan. Why are we now suddenly able to see inside solid objects when we go through a barrier? Because our minds have been changed again. We’ve been shown the fourth dimension. So now we can recognize it when we’re there. So press against the shield and find a way to move a billionth of an inch into the fourth dimension. And then go through it as easily as a Flatlander walking over a line.”
“That’s impossible!” barked Ryan. “Dad said no human has ever been able to move into the fourth dimension. What part of that didn’t you understand!”
“No human has ever been telepathic either. And yet we’re using telepathy right now. Give it a shot,” she broadcast as forcefully as she could. “You have nothing to lose.”
“All right already! I’ll give it a try. Just to shut you up! Just promise you’ll leave when it doesn’t work.”
“I promise.”
Ryan rose and walked closer to the surrounding gray beasts, still inside the roaring semicircle of fire. He picked up his last three stones and flung them as hard as he could at the nearest three carnivores. “I hate this planet and I hate you!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. Then he stopped using words and just screamed at them as threateningly as he could until his throat hurt. None of the animals were the least bit intimidated.
Finally, he decided he was ready to make his ridiculous attempt. He pressed against the wall of force so he was touching it with as much of his body as possible.
If Regan was right, the barrier touched the fourth dimension. There was a crack he could pass through. Or step over. If only he could find an impossible direction in which to move.
He closed his eyes. He curled his hands into fists and fought to concentrate. He needed to move his body so he would feel the same stretching sensation he had felt twice before. He tried to recapture what this felt like in his mind. He visualized what he had seen before. The driver’s insides. And inside the insides. And inside of that. For just a moment he fooled himself into thinking the sensation of being pulled apart had returned, but then he totally lost his concentration and knew he would never get it back.
It was over. He never had a chance of finding the fourth dimension and he knew it.
“I’m done,” he broadcast to his sister. “I tried your idiotic idea and I failed! Now go away!”
CHAPTER 18
Through the Looking Glass
Ryan turned back around. To face the fire. And the vicious pack eagerly awaiting their chance at him. He opened his eyes.
The barrier was an inch in front of him!
He gasped. He blinked rapidly, not sure if he should believe his eyes. But the blinking didn’t change anything.
He had made it through, after all. He had found the seam.
“Regan, I’m in! You were right!”
Three miles away, sitting by herself near the edge of a portable, green-tinted force-field, Regan beamed. “Yessss!” she replied happily. “I knew it!”
Ryan wasted no further time on celebration. He had to find a way to help the rest of the expedition. “I’m looking for the other tram.”
He searched for several minutes within the shield perimeter and found the tram Nathaniel had stolen. He quickly inspected it. “Nathaniel removed both the red and white crystals from this one too. And there aren’t any more trams on Isis.”
“Why would he bother to do that? He thought there was no way we could get back through the shield to even reach the second tram.”
“He’s like Tezoc,” replied Ryan. “Very, very careful. If someone from Prometheus did try to rescue us, he wanted them to fail.” He paused. “I’ll be right back.”
As Ryan bolted through the portal the connection with his sister ended abruptly. Earth was just slightly beyond their telepathic range of fifteen miles.
Ryan looked around cautiously but no one was inside the zoo building. He shot through the nearest portal and used his knife to pry both a red and then a white crystal from the first tram he spotted. Returning to Isis he slid the white crystal into the small, hidden slot in the front of the tram and worked the controls.
Nothing happened.
“Regan,” he broadcast. “I can’t get the tram to work. There must be some trick to inserting the white crystal, or maybe a white crystal from one tram won’t work in another. I don’t know.”
“That’s okay. It doesn’t matter anyway. You can’t reach us until the lava river stops flowing and cools down. Or until we find a way around it.”
“Where are you going?” asked Regan.
But Ryan was just stepping through the portal as the thought reached him, and an instant later he was once again 25,000 light years away, back in the zoo building.
Ryan returned, right on schedule. “I had to get another red crystal,” he told her upon his return.
“Why do you need two?”
“You may be able to get through the shield the way I did, but who knows. I have no idea how I did it. And I’m not sure I could do it again. In case something happens to me and help never comes, I’m leaving a red crystal outside the shield for you and the expedition.”
Regan considered this. “Good thinking. And I get why you have two. So you can leave one outside and use one to get back across the barrier.”
“Exactly,” replied Ryan. “I’ll bury the crystal right next to the shield. Look for a ring of ash by the shield where my fire was. I’ll also mark its location with a few sticks.”
“How will you explain how you got through the barrier?”
Ryan thought for a few seconds. Having set foot back on Earth had done wonders for his mood and his powers of concentration. “I’ll say I was getting attacked and the barrier just opened for me somehow. Like this was another safety feature the Qwervy built in to protect zoo visitors that we didn’t know about.”
Regan nodded. “That should work.”
“Regan,” he broadcast. “Thanks. And sorry for being such a jerk. I owe you one. And I’m going to make it up to you.” Ryan paused. “But before I go, I could use your help one last time. Remember in Nathaniel’s letter he said something about gravity being an insanely weak force. A force that isn’t a force.”
“I remember.”
“I might be facing a weapon that controls gravity. So the more I understand it, the better.”