Project U.L.F.

by Stuart Clark

  The shuttle seemed to lift a little and Wyatt peered out of the side of his window to check if they had actually achieved a second lift-off. What he saw made his heart leap into his mouth. The entire side of the tree was ablaze and flames licked up the side of ship. “Oh my God,” he whispered, and then the shuttle fell as the branch gave way beneath it.

  The fall was only seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime for the two occupants of the spacecraft. Kate tried desperately to right the ship with the attitude adjusters, but the jets of gas which could have such a profound effect in space, were useless on such a mass traveling at such speed in an atmosphere. The world outside rushed by in green and then, for the second time in as many minutes, they were jarred senseless.

  The shuttle crunched into the ground, the full weight of the ship landing on the left runner which buckled underneath it. Wyatt and Kate were thrown sideways in their seats but were grateful that at least they were down. Or so they thought. Beneath the ship the rockets continued to burn, generating more thrust with each passing second, thrust which reached a critical level almost the instant the shuttle touched down. Wyatt felt the ship lifting beneath him and yanked down on the booster control but it was too late. Even though he had cut the engines, the ship still lifted off the ground, its sideways momentum making it jump and then crunch to the ground again, the damaged runner lodging fast in the earth. For a second the shuttle teetered over the runner, threatening to fall over on to its side, but then it crashed back to the ground, battered, but upright.

  Drops of water appeared on the windows as the automatic exterior sprinkler systems came on to extinguish any brush fires the rockets may have started. The drops began to join and rivulets of water ran down the glass, obscuring the world outside. Kate breathed a deep sigh of relief, closed her eyes, and let her head fall back on the headrest. Next to her, Wyatt was breathing heavily, as much from shock as from exhilaration. She heard him and sat up, realizing that he still had his trembling hand clenched over hers. When she tried to remove it, he grasped it tighter and turned to her. “Now what was it you wanted to say to me, you know, before, in the tree?” his eyes were bright, almost wild with delirium and it frightened Kate. It was the same hungry look she had seen in Kit’s eyes.

  “Oh, it was nothing,” she said quickly. She saw the light in his eyes die and immediately regretted not thinking more carefully about her response. “I mean it’s not important now,” she added, trying to salvage something. She gave him a small smile and though he smiled back, it was a sad smile and his eyes betrayed him. He nodded knowingly.

  Far away, something stirred.

  CHAPTER

  13

  It had been ten minutes since the shuttle had crash–landed, and aside from the brief exchange immediately after touching down, an exchange Kate very much regretted, she and Wyatt had not said another word to each other. They sat in stunned silence on the floor of the shuttle, their legs hanging out of the open door, booted feet on the damaged runner.

  Kate could still feel the effects of the adrenaline in her blood. Her heart thumped in her chest, threatening to break free from its prison of ribs. A cool breeze played around her and she lifted her face to it, refreshing herself, reminding herself she was indeed still alive.

  The peace was suddenly shattered as something burst from the trees. Wyatt had his weapon drawn and trained on the new threat with an almost incomprehensible speed. He relaxed. Running at full stride towards them was Byron. He slowed and then stopped. His face was red from exertion and his forehead decorated with tiny jewels of perspiration. “Oh,” he managed between wheezing and panting. “Oh,” he said again before bending over his knees to catch his breath. “You did it! You’re alright!”

  Wyatt said nothing, just shrugged and spread his hands wide as if to indicate that Byron’s eyes really weren’t deceiving him and that, yes indeed, he, Kate and the shuttle were all there right in front of him.

  “We heard the most terrible noise…like thunder, only louder,” Byron continued between breaths. “If I didn’t know better I’d have said that you’d fired up the solid fuel rockets.”

  Wyatt and Kate shared a knowing glance and at the same time a pop and crack came from up in the tree behind them. Byron looked towards the noise and saw the blackened and charred trunk and higher still, small flames which had evaded the reach of the sprinklers and still fed on the bark. He laughed. Not the belly laugh associated with a good joke, more a snort of disbelief. “You didn’t…?” he began, but he only needed to look back at their faces to realize that they did—and they had. He scratched the back of his neck, his eyes distant for a second as though he were wondering whether he possessed the same temporary insanity somewhere deep inside of him. “You bloody cowboy,” he laughed, still shaking his head in disbelief. “Who do you think you are, Han-bloody-Solo?”

  “Who?” Wyatt frowned at him.

  “Ah, never mind, you wouldn’t understand anyway,” Byron dismissed him with a wave of his hand. He walked up to them, placed a hand on each of their shoulders and looked at them like a proud father would his children. Then he hugged them both.

  * * * * *

  The others arrived shortly afterwards, picking a snaking path through the brush more carefully and more slowly than Byron had. Chris and Par carried Bobby between them and Kit brought up the rear, shouldering two backpacks. At the sight of the ship and the others they quickened their pace into the clearing.

  “You made it,” Par said, but it was a statement of fact, not a voicing of surprise.

  “Yes,” Wyatt spoke the word very slowly. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Mmm,” Par nodded and gave the shuttle a cursory once-over. For someone who had just got his ticket home, he could be more enthusiastic, Wyatt thought.

  Chris was at the front of the ship, running his hand gently over it as if he still could not believe that it was there in front of him on the ground. He caressed the side of it as though if he touched it with any more force then his hands would pass right through it and shatter the illusion. Kit said little as always, just seemed to mumble under his breath, but Wyatt could see that even the big man was pleased.

  The reality was they did not have their ticket home. Not yet. The hyperdrive was out, and without that they could not make the jump into hyperspace. They could get into local space but without a hyperdrive getting home would take millennia, not a couple of weeks.

  Par patted the sorry hulk of metal. “How does she fly then?”

  “I could tell you if anything we did resembled flying but the truth is, I wouldn’t know,” Wyatt joked.

  “Well, no time like the present to find out.” Chris also now had his hand firmly on the vessel. He had decided that it was solid after all.

  Wyatt looked at his feet, almost too embarrassed to look him in the eye. “It’s not that simple, kid.”

  “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  Wyatt looked up at him; something in the youngster’s voice had caught his ear. He had not been disappointed by Wyatt’s answer. It was almost like it had been the answer he was expecting to hear, like he had fed Wyatt the question only to confirm the answer to himself.

  “Things have got that bad for you, have they?” he asked.

  Chris, blushing, shook his head. He had not meant for someone to so readily note the attitude in his voice.

  “Why? What’s the problem?” Byron asked.

  Wyatt sighed. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. “Par was right, there’s electrical short circuits all over the ship, including the hyperdrive.”

  Kate thought about mentioning that the hyperdrive had been working fine until Wyatt had pushed it too far but thought better of it. It might only cause resentment between him and the others, or worse, between the pair of them. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  “I can fix it,” Chris piped, anxious to redeem himself in Wyatt’s eyes.

  “How do you know that until you look at it?” Wyatt asked him
.

  “Well I…I can probably fix it,” he added sheepishly. “Look, I was only trying to…”

  “I know, kid. I know,” but the truth was he was baffled as to how a medic would fix the electrics of a spaceship. The job required somewhat more than forceps and medical tape. He looked at each of them in turn, taking in their expressions. “Now, theoretically, we could get her into space but if we can’t get that hyperdrive working then we still can’t get home—at least not in this lifetime. There’s also no guarantee that the hull, with that damage, can withstand the pressures we’ll be subjecting her to. She could crumple like a tin can once we get her out of the atmosphere.”

  “Well those sound like risks we’ll just have to take.” It was Par who had spoken and he suddenly became very conscious as all eyes turned to him, some of them questioning. “I mean, what other options do we have?” he stammered.

  “Well, if you hear me out,” Wyatt continued, “We, sorry, Chris, can try and repair it here, before we take off.”

  “What difference does it make if we try and repair it here or up there,” Kit complained in a gruff voice, looking skyward. “If we…” he stopped and then looked at Chris, pointing a finger accusingly, “If he can’t fix this thing the outcome is still the same. How’s a medic gonna fix it anyway?’ he finished, muttering.

  Kit’s good spirits had been extinguished abruptly, Wyatt noticed with dismay, but the question he asked was a good one. “How can you fix it?” he asked turning to Chris.

  “I know a lot about electronics,” the youngster answered.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, as a kid I was always good at science. Physics was my favorite but I had a flair for electronics.” He smiled at happy memories. “I used to have a lab in the garden shed back home where I’d muck about and make things, circuits, systems, basic computers, logic boards, that kind of thing.”

  “So how come you ended up a medic?”

  Chris’ smile faded. “My father wouldn’t let me follow it as a career. Said electronics was such a fast moving and cutthroat business that I’d never make it. He was a doctor, like his father before him, and he just wanted me to keep with family tradition. He enrolled me into a medicine course at university.” He struck a pose and continued in a deeper voice, impersonating his father, “‘There’ll always be people need fixing,’” he continued. “That’s what he used to say to me.

  “I did okay but I always loved electronics and I’d try my hand at it whenever I could. I used to go over to the physical sciences block at college and see what the students over there were doing. They were more my friends than anyone from the medical faculty.” He stopped, realizing he had reminisced more than enough. “It’s just a way of thinking,” he continued. “Think of wires like veins and arteries, current like blood, electrons like oxygen.”

  “Great. Remind me not to get hurt next time you have a soldering iron in your hand,” Par joked, but the others were just looking at Chris without understanding.

  “Has the ship got a self-diagnostic program?” Chris asked, impatient. Explanations seemed to be getting him nowhere.

  “Yeah, I imagine so,” Wyatt said.

  “Well, between that and me, I reckon we can figure out what the problem is.”

  Wyatt nodded to indicate that he was satisfied.

  “Still don’t see why we can’t do it up there,” Kit’s voice came from behind him. “Now we’ve got a means to get off this god-forsaken hole why don’t we use it before there’s none of us left.”

  “Because,” Wyatt said, almost smugly, “Up there we don’t have a source for spares if we need them.”

  Kit laughed and looked around at the trees. “I don’t see nuthin’ here.”

  “The other ship,” Kate said brightly, remembering.

  “Exactly.” Wyatt spun, pointing at her. “Exactly,” he said again. He glanced back over his shoulder at Chris. “Do you want to see what you can do?”

  “Yes, sir,” the youngster beamed. “Right away, sir.” Chris hurried past him and climbed up into the shuttle.

  “Now then,” Wyatt said, bringing his hands in front of him with a clap and rubbing them together. “Anyone else got any hidden talents they want to share with me before we carry on?”

  * * * * *

  Chris discovered that actually locating the hyperdrive unit was going to be one of his first major problems. He sat in the cockpit conversing with the diagnostic routine which had identified many faults with the hyperdrive for him, but like most good manuals or points of reference, while he had learned nearly all he needed to know about the hyperdrive and its problems, the one nugget of information he really needed had not been programmed into the diagnostics system.

  Using a bit of common sense and the telltale clues given to him from the construction of the ship, he managed to pinpoint the drive unit to a specific region of the shuttle but he still had to unscrew and remove a number of floor panels before he finally found it.

  Working on it was not going to be easy either, or comfortable for that matter. The hyperdrive was under the storage hatches at the back of the ship which meant, with his legs and backside sticking out of a hole in the floor, he had to snake his torso under the hatches and hang over it. Still, he was grateful for something to focus his mind on.

  Despite his outburst earlier, Chris had to admit to himself that he was feeling a lot happier about their predicament. Not just for himself, but for Bobby as well. Though he had not checked, he was certain that in one of the hatches above him were fresh medical supplies and more of the antibiotics that were struggling to keep Bobby’s infection at bay, and, regardless of whether this ship was going anywhere or not, it provided a solid, secure unit in which they could stay. They could shut out the world and its horrors as well as the chill night air, which, Chris was sure, was not helping Bobby’s condition. Tonight he would sleep well. Tonight he would not be jumping awake at every crack of the fire or the lonely wail of some creature of the night.

  At first, all of this relief had overcome him. When he had originally entered the cockpit and he had been alone, he had sobbed huge sobs that shook his body in the seat. He had not cried, he had long forgotten how to, but the tears would not have come anyway. He realized that he was exhausted; for the first time in days he had been able to lower his guard, no longer did he have to look over his shoulder. He was tired, so tired, but now was when they needed him most. Now was his time, his turn to be the hero. Maybe now the others would show him a little respect. He had gathered himself and begun to interrogate the ship’s computer.

  “How’s it going, kid?”

  Chris looked round but could only see a pair of boots on the floor beside his legs. They were Byron’s, he concluded from the voice that accompanied them. “Okay,” he said in a strained voice. “Just gotta get this retaining bolt off the unit and then I’ll be able to take a good look at it for you.”

  “Good,” the body-less boots replied, “Well, if you need a hand with anything, let us know.”

  “Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.” Chris returned his attention to the bolt and tried once more to get some kind of purchase on it with the best suited tool he had for the job. The feet clomped away from him and out of the shuttle.

  “Gotcha,” Chris whispered to the bolt as the tool snapped shut around it. With a grunt he turned the tool in his hand and the bolt with it. It was stiff, locked into place through years of inaction, but fortunately yielding. After three or four turns, he was able to be turn it by hand and he spun it free.

  With the bolt removed, Chris lifted the lid on top of the hyperdrive housing. Dirty black clouds of smoke belched out of it and Chris banged his head on the floor above him trying to avoid them. He wriggled out of his hole and staggered out of the ship coughing and spluttering, partially blinded by the smoke. The others all looked up in surprise.

  “Well?” asked Wyatt.

  Chris rubbed his eyes with the back of a dirty hand. “I’d say your hyperdrive’s pretty knack
….” he began to nobody in particular, and then, remembering himself, he addressed Wyatt. “The hyperdrive has suffered some damage, sir, but as yet I haven’t been able to find out exactly what that is.”

  The others looked at each other and then back at Chris who was unaware that the sooty smoke had blackened his face and hands. He was a comical sight. They began to laugh. So much for respect, Chris thought scratching the back of his head. He discovered a lump was appearing there already to replace the one he had just lost.

  Failing to see what was so funny, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and disappeared back into the ship to waft the smoke out with waves of his arm.

  The next time Chris emerged from the shuttle, more than two hours had elapsed. He walked confidently but his face looked troubled. Byron saw the furrowed brow on the youngster before the others even noticed him approaching, and he immediately felt sorry for him. He guessed that Chris had found the problem but that the news was not good.

  At the sound of Chris’ footfalls Wyatt turned and then stood, grateful for the chance to take the weight off his aching behind. Chris’ face was still black with soot from earlier except for his forehead where he had wiped away the sweat, and some dirty lines on his cheeks. Wyatt looked upon that face now and no longer found it cause for amusement. The look he got back prompted his first question.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Well, sir, it could be worse,” Chris said, trying to sound optimistic. “There’s damage in the cockpit, mainly wiring associated with the hyperdrive controls – that accounts for the explosions you talked about. I’m going to need to replace all that.” He paused, and then added, “That’s the good news.”

  “And the bad?”

  “Well, basically, sir, there was a small fire in the hyperdrive unit. Hence this…” He pointed to his blackened face with black hands. “It would appear that it was over-loaded and over-heated which then caused it to spontaneously combust.”