Project U.L.F.

by Stuart Clark

  * * * * *

  Most of the animals they released in the near vicinity of the Santa Maria, bringing them out in cages, opening one side and retreating to a safe distance. Some needed coaxing out, but most took a tentative step out of the cage, sniffed the air once, and then, realizing they were free, raced off into the nearby trees and disappeared.

  A team of four, including Chris, took the amphibians back to the habitat they had been taken from. Wyatt stayed behind to think on their predicament. Kit would not go on principle. When asked if he wanted to be in the away team he had said, “Just giving those slugs their freedom back ain’t gonna make me feel better. It don’t change the fact that we’re gonna die.” Nobody argued with him. They just took that as a no.

  * * * * *

  Wyatt was on the bridge poring over displays of the ship when he heard the door hiss open behind him. He turned to find Kate standing in the opening. She was clearly nervous, standing awkwardly.

  “Um…Sorry to interrupt. I…I…would have knocked but…” she turned to look back at the door, “…it kinda opened before I got the chance.” Wyatt smiled in sympathetic understanding. Kate waited for a moment, expecting him to say something, but he remained silent. “Well,” she said suddenly. “I was down near the holding pens and it seems the others have overlooked one of the acquisitions.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, the one you caught yesterday. Brown hair, long fluffy tail, big golden eyes,” she blurted. “For some reason it was put in a pen well away from the other animals.”

  Wyatt raised his eyebrows at the news. Although there was nothing particularly unusual about that.

  “The point is,” Kate added hurriedly, “that it hasn’t been released and I was wondering if it should have been.”

  “Yes, as far as I’m aware it should have been. You can do it now if you like. It’s a pretty harmless soul, as far as I can tell, but be careful all the same.”

  Kate nodded. “Okay,” she said, but she did not move away from the spot.

  “Okay,” Wyatt agreed. He swung his chair back to face the console, skimming his eyes over the ship’s blueprints once more but taking very little notice of them, acutely aware that Kate had not left.

  He swung his chair back to face her once more. She was biting her bottom lip and gazing at the floor off to her left, deep in thought about something. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused.

  “Was there something else?” Wyatt asked.

  Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice. “Um…er…no. I mean, er, yes. Yes, there was. I just, er…I just wanted to say I was sorry for what I said yesterday.” Her eyes dropped. “I…I understand now,” she added quietly. Then she turned and was gone.

  “I…” Wyatt began, raising a hand to catch Kate’s attention, but the doors had closed behind her. He let the hand drop and turned back to the console, putting his elbows on the flat surface in front of him and rubbing his face with his hands, thinking.

  In hindsight, he had treated her badly, but that was only because there could be no margin for error. She had to comply with the rules or else she was putting herself and possibly others in danger. At the end of the day, he had her own best interests at heart, but thinking about it, it probably did not appear that way to her. And I didn’t even get a chance to explain. To apologize, he thought.

  He wiped the screen with a touch and then went after her.

  * * * * *

  “Come on,” she said. “Look what I’ve got here for you.” Kate was crouched in the doorway of the holding pen, holding some Ickayub roots toward the animal in an outstretched hand. “Come on,” she said again. “You like these.”

  The animal was curled up on the floor in the far corner of the cage, motionless. At the sound of her voice, it looked at her, the two golden eyes appearing over the long tail, wrapped around its body like a scarf. “Come on,” Kate said again. The animal did nothing, the eyes just blinked sleepily at her.

  Kate made to move into the cage, to check that the animal was all right. Swiftly, it uncurled itself and ran across the floor in a series of quick, tiny jumps. It leapt onto her arm and ran up behind her head, sitting itself across her shoulders. Kate turned her head to look at it. “There you go,” she said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it now?” The animal just looked at her. It sniffed her hair and then her cheek and then began to lick her. Kate laughed. “Come on,” she said. “Much as I hate to, I have to let you go.” She turned out of the pen and down the corridor, then down the entry ramp, out of the gloom and into the blinding sunlight.

  Wyatt arrived at the bay area just in time to catch a glimpse of Kate as she walked out of the ship. He walked down to the entry ramp and was just about to follow her out when he stopped himself. He stayed in the shadows and watched her as she walked away.

  About fifty yards from the ship, Kate stopped and seated herself on a felled trunk, a victim of the landing. She held out the Ickayub roots in her hand and the creature crawled down from her shoulders to sit on her lap and pick at them. She looked at the nearby trees and then down at the small bundle of brown fur contentedly feeding. “You’re going home,” she said quietly to it. The animal stopped and looked at her, the huge eyes blinking slowly, no hint of comprehension there. “I don’t suppose you know who your parents are, do you?” she asked, looking out at the forest vacantly. “I guess in a way you’re quite lucky.”

  Suddenly, the implications of their predicament hit her. Maybe because in some way she identified with this small animal, however alien it was. Like her, it had been taken away from its home and had no idea when it was going back, even if it was going back. The truth she had suppressed all day, the facts she had tried not to believe, to ignore, suddenly surfaced.

  “Dad,” she whispered, and then she began to cry. A tear rolled down her cheek and fell onto the creature’s nose, surprising it. It looked up at her and then darted back up her arm, running backwards and forwards across her shoulders. It seemed the animal was becoming agitated because Kate was upset. It sensed that something was wrong.

  “This will never do,” Kate muttered to herself. She threw the remaining roots away and then wiped her face with the back of a hand. She took a deep breath and composed herself and then turned her attention to the acquisition. “Hey, hey!” she said. “Shhhh. Calm down, it’s okay, it’s okay.” When the animal had calmed, she added, “Come on. Let’s take you home.”

  She stood and wandered over to the trees. When she reached them she picked the animal off her shoulders and placed it on the nearest tree. It clasped the trunk and looked at her. “Go on,” she said. “You’re free! Go!” The animal did nothing, just looked at her with those huge doleful eyes.

  “Go on…go!” she said again. Again, nothing.

  Kate sighed, shrugged her shoulders, then reluctantly turned and began to walk away from the trees. She had gone about five yards when the creature leaped on to her back. “Hey!” she laughed. “You’re not supposed to come back with me. You’re free. You’re supposed to go home.”

  She walked back to the tree and put the animal back. “Now stay,” she said, pointing a finger at it. This time she backed away until she was about ten yards from the animal, then she turned and headed back to the ship. Almost immediately, the creature landed on her back again.

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” she said, smiling.

  She took the animal back to the tree for the third time and then backed away, keeping her eye on the animal. It stayed put. When she was about forty yards away she finally turned her back on it. She had taken about five paces when she turned to see if it was still there. It had gone. She sighed, grateful but also a little sad. Then there was a tug on her leg and before she even had time to look down, the animal had climbed up her side and perched on her shoulders again. “What am I going to do with you?” she laughed.

  From the gloom of the Santa Maria, Wyatt had seen the whole thing. He laughed quietly to himself and watched as Kate walked back towards the ship. The
acquisition sat across her shoulders. As they approached, Wyatt took time to take in her features, the angular face, the brown eyes and the jet black hair just visible under her red cap and presumably in a neat pony-tail falling to the middle of her back. She was pretty.

  She was almost on top of him when he remembered himself. He didn’t have time to disappear back into the ship without making his presence obvious so he turned toward a nearby control panel and tried his best to make it look like he was working on it.

  As she approached the ramp she spotted him and slowed. He turned towards her.

  “Er…hi,” she said nervously.

  “Hi.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Diagnostics. Checking out all the ship’s systems,” he lied. His eyes flicked to the animal. Kate swallowed nervously. “You’ve still got the acquisition, I see,” he said in a disapproving tone. “I thought you were going to set it loose.”

  “Oh…I…er…Well, I…er…I tried, but…”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “…But it just wouldn’t go, it kept coming back every…”

  He raised a hand to stop her. “It’s okay,” he said again, nodding. “Just make sure it doesn’t get in the way.”

  Kate stopped suddenly. “Really?” she asked, hardly believing her ears.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt smiled. “Really.”

  She made as if to say something but the words wouldn’t come so she simply smiled back at him and disappeared into the gloom of the ship. Wyatt could have sworn that there was a lightness in her step that had not been there before.

  * * * * *

  Kate was eating her dinner alone in the mess hall. “This isn’t bad for rehydrated food,” she said through a full mouth. She indicated her plate with the fork held in her hand. The creature sat on the table in front of her, tipping its head to one side, puzzled. “Here. You wanna try some?” She picked some of the paste off her plate and held it toward the animal which sniffed at it tentatively before licking her fingers. Then suddenly it gagged and made a funny noise somewhere between a cough and sneeze. Kate laughed. “Not to your liking, I guess. I’m sorry, little guy.” She stroked the back of the animal’s head and brought her hand down to tickle it under the ear. The creature tipped its head towards her hand and closed its eyes. “You like that, huh?” The creature just curled up on the table as she continued to stroke it. “Why did he let me keep you?” Kate said quietly. She had expected anything but compassion from Wyatt when she returned to the ship with it. Strange. It was the first time she had seen anything other than his hard exterior. The first chink in his armor.

  Outside the door she heard voices. The others had returned.

  * * * * *

  Wyatt called a meeting in the counsel chamber. Nobody sat at the table, they were scattered round the room. Anxious. Bobby came over to Kate, who cradled the acquisition in her arms.

  “Are you keeping that furball?” she asked, joking.

  “Well, yeah. Kind of,” Kate replied. Bobby frowned at her. “Well, it just wouldn’t go. I tried to free it earlier today but it just kept running back to me. I think it likes me.”

  “And Wyatt let you keep it? What did you do to curry such favor?” She gave Kate a grin. Kate laughed at the insinuation. “Well?” Bobby raised her eyebrows.

  Wyatt’s voice interrupted their joke. “Right, well, I guess you know why we’re all here,” he sighed. “Has anyone thought about our situation? Anyone got any ideas?”

  “Thought about it?” Bobby said. “It hasn’t left my mind all day.”

  “Me either,” Chris added

  “So…any suggestions?”

  “I didn’t come up with anything,” Bobby admitted. “If we’ve got no fuel left and no means of signaling then I don’t really see a solution. The only thing I could think of is that somehow we might be able to strip down the ship’s computer and make some kind of transmitter from the components, but even then that’s only going to produce a very weak signal and it could be weeks or months or even years before someone picks it up, and we don’t have that long.”

  “No, right,” Wyatt agreed. “I looked at all the ship’s systems to see how many I could shut down and how much extra power I could route to the ship’s generator. I figured that if we could break the planet’s atmosphere then we could use the solid fuel system as a boost to originally give us some direction and then, when that was spent, we’d just drift. There’s a very slim possibility that someone might pick us up, but again, that could be a long time.”

  “But if we went back into cryosleep there’s be no need for us to use up the ship’s supplies.” Chris added, warming to the idea.

  “Yeah, but then we could be in suspended animation for years, even decades, if no one finds us. Do you want to wake up in a future you don’t even recognize?” Par asked him. “And what if we overshoot our destination or set off on the wrong course? We’ll just drift forever.”

  “It’s gotta be a better way to go.” Byron concluded. “At least we won’t know anything about it.”

  “Anyway, it’s not a viable option,” Wyatt interjected. “Even if I shut down every system including life support, which’d be pretty pointless, we still can’t get enough power.”

  The others’ heads all fell.

  “Kit? Did you come up with anything?”

  “No. What’s the point? I ain’t afraid of dying, and let’s face it, we ain’t getting off this rock!”

  “Yeah, well…thanks for your input,” Bobby said sarcastically.

  “Why don’t you shut up, bitch!” Kit snarled at her.

  “‘Cause some of us are going home and if you don’t want to come, then that’s fine. I’d just as soon leave you here anyway. If you haven’t got anything positive to add, why don’t you shut up?”

  “Hey! The man asked a question!”

  “Okay, Okay,” Wyatt interrupted. “Why don’t we all cool down for a second?” He looked around. “Anybody else? Kate? Byron?”

  Byron spoke up from across the room. “Well, how did we get here?”

  “Easy,” Chris said, throwing his hands up, exasperated. “We got loaded into a ship, they blasted us off, a few million miles later and hey presto! We’re here.”

  Byron laughed. “That’s not what I meant, kid.”

  “Well then, what did you mean?” Kate asked, frowning.

  “I was thinking about it in a wider sense. I meant how did we get here? What sequence of events ended with us being sent here? Someone else must know about this place, so someone must have been here before us.”

  “Or is still here,” Wyatt whispered to himself. “That’s it!” he snapped, clicking his fingers. He turned and ran out of the opening door.

  “Where are you going?” Bobby shouted after him.

  “You’ll see!” he shouted back at them as the door began to close behind him. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  * * * * *

  Wyatt slid the panel aside and began to push apart the chest protectors, moving them down the rail until, finally, it was there in front of him. He breathed a sigh of relief, picked it up out of its alcove and then ran back down the corridor, forgetting to push the panel back into place.

  * * * * *

  “Where the hell was that?” Byron asked, instantly recognizing the small black box Wyatt carried into the counsel chamber.

  “Down in stores, with the chest protectors,” he puffed.

  “What on earth was it doing down there?” Par asked.

  “I don’t know. When I first found it I assumed it was faulty because when I switched it on there was a signal. In which case someone might have dumped it somewhere obscure like the weapon store. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that would have happened. But what if we’re not the only ones here? What if it is recording a genuine signal? Down there in the gloom all I could see was the red light on it indicating an incoming transmission. If I switch it on up here, we’ll know if it’s reading a transmission from a
n actual ship or whether it is faulty as I suspect.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Bobby said. “Turn the damn thing on!”

  “Okay. Okay. Give me a chance!” He placed the unit on the floor and knelt over it. Then looked straight at Bobby. “Don’t get your hopes up, though,” he said.

  He slid the switch on the side of the unit and the red light on its top came on as it had done previously.

  “All right!” Chris shouted.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet, kid,” Wyatt said, damping his enthusiasm.

  Reaching down to the front face of the box, Wyatt set the frequency scanner into search mode. As he watched, the frequency of the wavelengths the unit was monitoring climbed rapidly, the numbers on the LCD display flicking past almost too fast for his eyes to register them. Then it stopped, the display reading 1732.752 kHz. The red light flicked out. “We’ve got a hit!” he said, looking at the others, seeing his own excitement reflected in their faces.

  Wyatt returned his attention to the LCD. The black cursor was already leaving a trail of letters behind it as it raced across the display. He read the information to the others. “Ship: The Angelica, Craft type: Deep space mining ship, Coordinates 100206.378, 80005.2209, 178021.4475…”

  “Look!” Byron said, pointing to the unit. The red light had come on again. After a brief period it began to flash. “You’ve not just got one hit. There’s something else here. That unit is recording multiple signals!”

  “You’re right!”

  Wyatt set the unit scanning again and again it stopped on a frequency. Wyatt read out the new information as it appeared. “Ship: The Endeavour, Craft type: CSETI Maxi-Shuttle, Coordinates 100205.957, 80005.8651, 178020.0012.”