She accepted that, too.
“You still have that night class?” he asked.
“The medieval lit course? Hardly. Registration for it has been falling off drastically. Who wants to read Hawthorne and Tolstoy and Unamuno when they can read the moderns?”
“You do.”
“I’m weird. Just like you. We’re of a kind, Michael. Both of us are mired in the past. Your past just happens to be further in the past than mine.”
“If you don’t have the class, mind taking me for a ride?”
“I’ll take you for a ride anytime, bucko,” she said.
“Might get nasty.”
“I can handle it.” From her joking response Ralston knew she didn’t believe him. He had never been more serious, however. A hundred things might have betrayed him—a thousand.
He had no idea what sources of information the P’torra had. He didn’t even know the alien’s motives in making him the scapegoat for the campus unrest. It might go much deeper than trying to eliminate P’torra opposition.
Salazar might have discovered the tampering with the committee minutes. The University vidnews might have already run the story. If Salazar saw that, he’d definitely have the campus security force looking for Ralston.
“You did something pretty outrageous today, didn’t you?” asked Druanna.
“You call what we did outrageous? Why, I’ve heard that on Elysium 2, they…”
“You know what I mean, Michael.”
He told her how he’d tampered with the records. Druanna smiled broadly and asked, “How did you do it, now? I want to know. This can come in handy.”
“I’ve put Salazar in a bad spot,” he said. “It’ll look as if he authorized my departure before the de la Cruz hearing. If I come back with the telepathy gadget, I’m a hero and they have to give me medals.”
“And if you don’t, your ass is grass, anyway. Nice move. You could have taught the ancient generals a thing or two, Michael.”
“I’ve studied more than how to rob graves. Vom Kriege is one of my favorite books. Can we get going?” He glanced out the window again. Dusk had hardened into night. In the sky he saw a half-dozen slowly moving points. Some were information satellites, others starships in orbit waiting for cargos or passengers. He had no idea which was going to be his ticket back to Muckup.
A pounding on the door startled him.
“No, Michael, not that way,” Druanna said when he tried to force open the window. “It’s permanently sealed. This way.”
“We’re not going to be able to hide,” he said. “They’ll scan the place with IR sensors. Even a single wall between us won’t…” His voice trailed off when he saw a staircase hidden in one closet and going below ground level. The woman impatiently gestured for him to be quiet. He hurried down the spiraling stairs. Druanna closed the closet door and rushed after him.
“That way. A tunnel out to my flyer.”
“How’d you ever come to have this built?” he asked.
“I dug it myself. Pretty good work, eh? See the supports?”
“But why?”
“You pace. I need to be doing something more substantial and more private. So I dig. Got fed up with a garden that kept dying and thought this’d be a positively medieval touch for the house. Keeps me out of the rain, too.”
Ralston quickly ascended another spiral staircase and came out in a small shed not five meters from Druanna’s flyer. A man stood guard beside it.
“Now what?” she whispered.
Ralston never hesitated. All the combat training given him by the Nex rushed back. He strode out, planted his feet, and drove his fist only a few centimeters—into the man’s left kidney. The guard gasped and fell face-forward onto the ground, unconscious before he hit.
“Who does he belong to?” asked Druanna. Ralston jerked her into the flyer. He didn’t care. He had to reach the launch site or be left behind.
He seated himself at the controls, warmed up the engine, and complimented Druanna on how well she maintained the machine. He swung the flyer around and sent it quietly following the buried induction cable to the main road. He glanced behind and saw a half-dozen figures rushing from Druanna’s home.
He turned the controls to max. The acceleration flattened them in their seats.
“You always were a dangerous one,” she said.
“And this is getting too dangerous for you,” he said. “Take the controls. Keep it at full speed. You know the Estrellita Launch Bay?”
“The tiny field outside the main port? I think so.”
“I have a shuttle pod waiting for me there. When we get near it, I want you to slow down, I’ll jump out, then you speed up and just drive around.”
“You think they’re following us?” She made a motion with her head indicating those who’d been in her home.
“Not a bad working hypothesis,” he said. “You decoy them. I’ll be off for Alpha 3.”
“Some people have all the fun.”
“I’ll bring back lots of photos.”
“How I spent my summer vacation,” Druanna said sarcastically. “You never take me anywhere.”
“You wouldn’t like it on Muckup. Too wet.” He leaned over and kissed her. Before she could say another word, he pointed. “There’s the turn where I want off.”
“This slow enough?”
“Have to do. See you in a few months.” With that Ralston threw open the door and heaved himself out. He hit, rolled, and smashed hard against a tree. For several seconds all he heard was the ringing in his ears. He shook himself and got painfully to his feet.
Druanna’s flyer had already vanished down the road. At top speed she might already be three or four kilometers distant. He oriented himself and started walking.
Before he’d gone two hundred meters he broke into a run. The resonant hum of at least two flyers broke the stillness of the night. If they had figured out what he was up to, they’d know he was headed for the shuttle launch site. He couldn’t risk their continuing on after Druanna’s flyer. He ran even faster when he saw the launch lights ahead.
Gasping for breath, Ralston leaned heavily against a shed. Through the pounding of his pulse in his head he heard the magnetic hum of flyers. They hadn’t been decoyed away. That was all right with Ralston; that meant Druanna had gotten away cleanly.
Some wind regained, Ralston sprinted hard for the stubby cargo ship sitting in the middle of the launch apron. The gigantic laser beneath it hissed with escaping coolant gases and crackled with the ultrahigh voltages.
“Get it ready for launch,” he shouted as he ran. Ralston took a second to look over his shoulder. The first flyer grounded and three men clambered out.
“What’s going on?” asked the field tech. “Look, if you’re running from the police, forget this launch. I’m not getting paid enough to get myself rehabbed.”
“They’re not police,” gasped Ralston. “University prank. They’re supposed to kidnap me as part of an initiation. I’m their archaeology professor.”
“Yeah, he’d mentioned you were one of those.” The man frowned as he worked through the possibilities. “Then we’ll call the police. They shouldn’t do that to you. Not unless you want to play along.”
“Launch the damned thing!”
“All right, all right. We’ll show them. You’re going to be in orbit before they know what’s happening.”
A loud klaxon signaled all off the field. Ralston dived through the door and flopped onto an acceleration couch. The pilot silently waited in the cockpit for takeoff, oblivious to all that went on below.
Ralston screwed his eyes tightly shut, even though it was impossible for him to see the launcher light. The sudden takeoff crushed the air from his still straining lungs. The laser repeatedly fired, hammering against the ceramic refractory base of the shuttle pod. The only sounds Ralston heard were the rush of air past the hull, the pilot’s monotone recitation of launch data, and the pounding of his own heart.
When
the shuttle’s guidance rockets cut in, Ralston knew he’d escaped. Novo Terra would be left behind and Alpha 3’s secrets would be unlocked. He tried to relax but found himself too keyed up.
Alpha 3’s secrets would be his!
FOURTEEN
“This isn’t what I thought he’d arrange,” said Michael Ralston after he had boarded the starship. This vessel was easily twice the size of the one he had starred on previously to Alpha 3.
“A few additional arrangements were made,” Leonore Disa told him, smiling. “I thought you might appreciate this more than the garbage can your mysterious friend had arranged.”
“He’s no friend,” Ralston said. “But I paid him good money. You didn’t spook him, did you? He’s paranoid about anything out of the ordinary happening during a deal.”
“Then he’ll approve of the change in plans.” Leonore gestured that Ralston was to follow her. They went to a lounge area—a lounge!—and peered up at a small vidscreen showing the cockpit where the pilot toiled in preflight checks.
“This isn’t possible,” Ralston said. “He couldn’t have gotten a ship this large.” Suspiciously, Ralston asked the woman, “Your father furnished it, didn’t he? Does he know?”
“Daddy doesn’t know any more than I told him. Which isn’t much. Relax, Michael. This is all legal, unlike that other star-ship.” She pointed to an inset in the screen. A small cargo ship showed in it, hardly more than a dot, even with the electronic magnification.
Before Ralston could say anything, the pilot’s voice came over a speaker. “Flight Control’s just canceled the cargo ship’s launch request. What do you flunk’s on that monstrosity? Some members of that religious cult who go around blowing up churches?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Leonore said into a small microphone. “What’s not on it matters more. Hurry with the shift.”
“Even if FC tells us to wait?” The pilot’s voice quivered with excitement.
“It might be best if you experienced some difficulty hearing such orders,” Leonore said, skirting a direct answer. The pilot’s face almost glowed at the intrigue and challenge.
“We’ll be on Alpha 3 in three weeks,” he promised. Ralston watched in fascination as the pilot’s hands glided over the controls. A gentle nudge told of acceleration pulling them to a higher orbit.
“This is an Interstellar Computronics ship?” Ralston asked Leonore. “And your father doesn’t know what his daughter’s doing?”
“Something like that. Don’t worry so. You’re sounding as if it’s not important to get back to Alpha 3.”
“Three weeks?”
“This ship is faster than most. Daddy always wanted me to use my own initiative. What’ll he do to me, anyway? Spank me? I own fifteen percent of IC, and he knows I’d give him a hard time at the next stockholders’ meeting. So relax, Michael. It’s all right.”
Ralston didn’t have it in his heart to complain. The less time in transit, the more time he could spend gathering information on Muckup. That muddy ball spinning through space had such a short lifetime now. He wanted to be its biographer, to find every secret of its people, to know it all!
If some small deceptions had to be made along the way, so be it. Hadn’t he already altered University records, released a vidnews story to the effect that Salazar had authorized this return? What was it to him if Leonore lied her way into a faster, more luxurious starship than he could possibly afford through connections who survived at the very fringes of Novo Terran law?
“They’ve definitely impounded the cargo ship,” the pilot said over the speaker. “Something about contraband? Maybe so, yeah, verd, definitely. This is hot. Prepare for preshift maneuvers. Starting sequencing… now!”
The ship had attained an orbit at six planetary diameters. Rockets cut in and slammed Ralston back onto his couch. The ship headed into emptiness where the pilot had marked an imaginary takeoff spot. Once there, they would star for Alpha 3.
“How long?” he asked Leonore.
“The pilot’s the best. We’ll shift within a few hours.”
“Good,” said Ralston, settling down, knowing this would be the last weight he’d feel for close to a month. But the trip would be a busy one this time. No work on an archaeology textbook that’d never see publication. He had equipment to prepare. And he and Leonore had to work out a schedule to maximize what they could accomplish.
Time pressed in on him. But Ralston smiled. He felt more alive than he had since finding the dioramas. The committee meetings were behind him, confronting de la Cruz’s death something to be postponed, all that he hated most either deferred or finished. Everything that lay ahead was what he loved most: discovery.
“Can’t he hurry?” Ralston asked. He floated through the lounge area, trailing equipment like a mechanical hydra. He needed several more weeks to finish programming the master supervisor, but he found himself even more anxious to land on Alpha 3’s muddy surface.
“He came in on target,” Leonore said. She seemed to be able to read the pilot’s instruments. Ralston wondered if she might not be a starship pilot herself, but he didn’t ask. Too many other things to know, too much else to do.
“Two days?” he pressed.
“I’m certain.”
“Citizen Disa,” came the pilot’s voice. Throughout the three-week trip, the pilot had remained in his quarters. Only twice had Ralston seen him drifting through the ship—he counted these as the peculiar moments. Pilots tended to be clannish and reclusive, never dealing directly with their passengers. Even on the longest trips, those lasting several months, pilots segregated themselves from their passengers.
“Yes?”
“Got a Dr. Bernssen on the com. You want to talk to him?”
“Yes!” Ralston both heard the delighted excitement in Leonore’s voice and saw the reaction. Her cheeks flushed and her space-induced paleness vanished.
“What are you doing back here?” came Nels Bernssen’s querulous voice. “We’re in the middle of a heavy-particle solar storm alert. Might come at any time.”
Ralston saw the pilot stiffen at the warning and reach over to tap a detector. The dull amber glow on the instrument’s face indicated only moderate danger, he guessed.
“We’ll land within a day,” Leonore said. “Aren’t you glad that I’m back, Nels?”
“No! It’s getting dangerous. Radiation levels are up. Solar instability is increasing again. There might be only days left.”
Ralston cursed under his breath.
“You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Not for a while. But it can’t be much longer. Weeks, maybe, days are more likely. You were safe. Why’d you come back?”
“We have work to do, too,” she said primly. Ralston saw how irritated Leonore was at the lack of warm reception on Bernssen’s part.
“Let me,” Ralston said, reaching to the microphone. “Dr. Bernssen, we can’t let the discovery go up in a flash of nova, but we’re not suicidal, either. If you can give me a guarantee that the star will explode before we can unload and work a few more days, we’ll turn around and go back to Novo Terra.”
“Do it,” said Bernssen.
“You can guarantee we’ll never get even a few days’ further exploration done?”
“Hell, I can’t guarantee that, but the star’s going to blow soon. Why the hell else do you think I’m here?”
“Please let us know when you’re preparing to leave. We’ll depart then, too.”
“Leonore’s going to be in danger,” Bernssen protested.
“So are you, Nels. Your work’s important. Mine is, too!” the woman said angrily.
Bernssen mumbled something that got lost in the heavy solar storm-induced static. “Land, then,” he said. “I’ve got to tell Dr. Rasmussen about it, though.”
“Please do,” said Ralston. “We’ll want to keep in close communication.” Ralston relinquished the microphone and kicked away a few feet.
The lowered air pressure robbed him
of the words Leonore spoke, but he saw her lips moving. He read, “I love you, Nels.” She then tossed the microphone away and went back to work on one of their ultrasonic cleaning heads, as if nothing had happened.
But Ralston saw that the glow in her cheeks remained.
“You’re out of your chinging minds,” complained Nels Bernssen. The burly solar physicist heaved one of the bulky instrument-laden crates aside where a small robot worked to pull off the sides and ready the equipment inside.
“Thanks for helping us, Nels. I appreciate it.” Leonore stood on tiptoe and lightly kissed him on the cheek.
“You’re going to get yourselves killed, and all for what? A few lousy pictures that wouldn’t be of interest to anybody at the University, even in a tridee play.”
“This isn’t fiction. It’s an entire culture. We can’t let it be destroyed.”
“It’s all going up, no matter what we do.”
“It’s important,” insisted Leonore, pausing to wipe sweat from her eyes. “Just as your work’s important.”
Ralston knew that line of logic would fail. To Bernssen, nothing could be as important. Ralston had to smile to himself. Each researcher thought their particular line of inquiry was the most vital. Ego entered into it, but often that fed genius and produced breakthroughs. Intuition as much as logic produced the important discoveries. He had been lucky with this one. Luck. Intuition. Logic. All elements of good research. And maybe the most important part, the researcher’s absolute conviction in the project.
Ralston looked up at the sky. Through the fluffy clouds forming up for the afternoon’s rainstorm, he saw shimmering veils that floated and vanished, darted about and formed thicker blankets in what ought to be clear sky.
“So you noticed it, eh?” asked Bernssen.
“What is it?”
“You’ve never seen an aurora?”
“In the middle of the day?”
“That,” said Bernssen grimly, “is what worries all of us. The electrical activity in the atmosphere is growing more and more intense each day. At night, the sky’s lit up like a neon sign. Pretty, when you can see it through the clouds.”
[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos Page 16