But it hadn’t turned out that way. The first job he held was a photographer’s position, which he was able to use his knowledge of developing photos that he’d learned in the Boy Scouts. Lenny was sent around to all the courthouses to take photographs of legal documents, which were preserved for important cases. All day long, he’d slide one document in the camera holder after another. He would adjust his big camera at the start of the day and spend the next eight hours taking pictures. At the end to the week, he’d drive to the company office in Sacramento and drop off the undeveloped film. It was boring work, but it paid well for a young man just out of the service.
In the evening, he’d stay in the room at his boarding house reading crime and adventure magazines. It helped to pass the time. He had a notebook of stories he’d worked on for the past two years, but none of them were close to finished. The lab job started a few years ago and he expected to be there for the rest of his life. Not what he’d planned, but what else was he to do other than start a family with the right woman? Lenny was too much of an introvert to find women.
He was certain it was Jupiter in his telescope. Dead sure. Lenny made a note of the time and location in a notebook he carried around with him. There were other sky watchers out tonight, Lenny thought he saw a few when he drove up to the reservoir, but no one came out to this place in the evening. It was fine with him; he liked the solitude as it gave him time to think.
In a few minutes, he’d fold up his telescope and put everything away. Then he would have the time to pull out his latest hidden magazine from its secret place in the trunk of the car. He had more like it, but they were in the attic of the shed in the back of his house. He shuddered at the thought of his neighbors finding out about his collection. Or his family; it could destroy him.
He couldn’t understand why these magazines were so hard to find. No one wanted to talk about them at the place where he’d bought the issues. He knew someone would say the magazines were degrading to women, but how could that be? The women in those magazines were the ones who held the whips.
Lenny decided not to worry about the lack of light, the moon was high in the sky and reflected enough light back to Earth for him to read. Or at least admire the pictures. He pulled the magazine out of the trunk, sat down on the hood of his car, and glanced through his latest find. Where did these women get the underwear they wore? He never saw anything like it in the department stores where he shopped.
He leaned back and looked up at the sky again. So many stars, would he someday get to visit one, or was it just a foolish wish on his part? He looked at the area around the big dipper.
He noticed something odd.
One of the stars was moving rapidly. It couldn’t be a star; it had to be some kind of airplane. Lenny noticed the star increase in intensity, then fade across the horizon. He ran into the car and pulled out another telescope. He had to get a better look. Lenny didn’t think about the magazine on the hood of his car as he swept the horizon through the viewfinder.
The sky lit-up as if another sun had blossomed.
Lenny almost dropped the telescope and looked up. A ball of fire was hurling down from the sky headed in his direction. His heart began to beat faster because this had to be a meteorite. He would be able to claim the find if it hit anywhere near him!
He watched the fireball hurl down from the sky and head for the lake. He squinted his eyes. Was it a meteorite? It appeared to have a coherent shape, but he couldn’t tell from his angle. It was too dark and the light from the fireball too intense. He stood on the car and watched it hurl across the reservoir.
And then the fireball did a strange thing: it spun up to the sky and appeared to slow down. His jaw almost fell off his face as Lenny realized the fireball wasn’t a meteorite at all, but some kind of aircraft. As he stood and watched it, the fireball reached the height of the arc it took over the reservoir, and then plunged downward into the waters. There was a loud splash and the sound of hissing steam as the hot metal made contact with the artificial lake.
He sat his telescope on the hood of his car again. There it was: the aircraft. It had come down into the water. It floated in the middle of the reservoir. However, the plane didn’t seem to be staying afloat very well and began to sink.
Lenny stood there and wondered if someone was inside it. There had to be a pilot inside unless they bailed out earlier. His answer came when a door on the top of the aircraft blew off and hit the water, sinking directly to the bottom.
As he focused his telescope on the aircraft, which began to sink, he could see a form moving around the open door.
This had to be the pilot. Was he okay?
Shakti and Kamala were pulling themselves out of the acceleration chairs when the emergency lights came on inside the shuttle. What little information they could see from the display told them they were in the middle of a body of water and sinking fast. As Shakti unlatched the supports of her suit armor, she remembered the shuttle landed in the exact place she guided it to after the near-collision in the air.
Kamala was the one who found the lake on the display after Shakti changed the approach of the shuttle. They’d avoided a collision, but the course Shakti planned for them had to be rearranged. Fast. The surface of the planet was coming up quick and there was no way they could make orbit again with their lack of fuel. The descent to the new world was their only chance and both of them knew it.
The lake Kamala spotted on the display was directly in their line of approach. It was night on this side of the planet and the body of the shuttle glowed from the heat of re-entry. The lake she’d spotted appeared to be deserted; at least there were no lights or radio signals around it. They would have to make a landing there, as it was their only opportunity. The shuttle was in no condition to land on anything but water.
The shuttle hurled from the sky and descended directly to the lake. It was an artificial one, Kamala observed from the display, created by a small damn to stop the flow of water. Perhaps the inhabitants of this planet had more technology than they assumed. If they didn’t survive planet fall it wouldn’t matter.
They were slammed back into their chairs as Shakti managed to pull the shuttle up from the lake. She used the last bit of fuel to brake their fall. They felt the push of the acceleration and then the loss of gravity as the shuttle reached the height of its climb from the lake. Shakti made one final adjustment as the shuttle dropped back down to the lake. Seconds later, it hit the water and hydroplaned across, spinning around out of control. Shakti blacked out.
When she returned to consciousness, Kamala was out of her chair. “What can we take with us?” Kamala yelled as she stripped off her suit armor. “I’ve got a rations case, but I can’t swim with much else. Life raft is damaged and we can’t use it. Can you swim?”
“It’s been a long time, but I’ll try,” Shakti told her. She unlatched herself and climbed out of the chair. In minutes, she was down to a basic cover over her breasts and a skirt.
“I’ll grab a short sword, we might need it,” Shakti cried out
“Worry about it when we reach the shore,” Kamala responded, “this shuttle is going down quick.”
They turned to the side hatch as the craft began to flip to one side. Although the chairs were now on the wall, it still allowed them a clear angle to release the door to the outside.
“Pray this atmosphere is good for us,” Kamala announced and punched a code into the panel next to the hatch. There was a pop and the hatch blew across the lake, letting in more water and the sweet smell of planetary air.
Kamala jumped to the outside of the sinking shuttle. She reached back in to pull out Shakti. They caught their breaths outside the shuttle as the water began to climb. The shore appeared to be fifty yards away.
“Let’s go!” Kamala yelled to her companion and swam with the survival case in one hand. Shakti stopped for a second to stare at the shore. Was there a figure watching them from it? It didn’t matter, she wasn’t about to go down with the shu
ttle. She swam after Kamala.
Lenny watched the two figures jump off the aircraft and begin to swim for shore. This had to be some kind of test plane and it had crash-landed in the middle of the reservoir. There was only one thing he could do. Lenny turned on his flashlight and began shaking it as a beacon. At the same time, he began to yell at the swimming figures in the water.
Lenny was relieved to see them swim toward him. He prayed there were no other people in the sinking aircraft. At least he could get the two pilots back to the air base where he worked. He didn’t expect to get any special award for this, but it was the right thing to do. He told the other men on his bomber crew during the war that if the plane crashed in the ocean he wanted to die on impact than struggle in those waters.
“Over here!” Lenny began to yell at the top of his lungs. It was a little cool that evening and he had on his bomber jacket he wore on these nights. It was made out of leather and held up nicely over the years.
He could see the forms swimming in his direction, but he couldn’t see their faces. They were swimming as hard as they could. In the distance, he could see the aircraft sink into the water. Only part of the top was still visible. Funny, it didn’t have any wings.
“Are you alright?” he yelled at the two as they made the shallow part near the bank. He still couldn’t see very well in the dark and didn’t want to blind either of them with his flashlight. Even the moonlight wasn’t much help at this distance. He saw the final part of the aircraft slip under the water. The reservoir was isolated and the military would have fun when they came to recover that thing.
The two pilots emerged from the water, coughing in the moonlight and shivering. He could tell they’d shed their uniforms, which would only make sense if they wanted to swim to the shore. One of them tossed a case to the bank and shook in the cool air.
“I’ve got a car,” Lenny yelled to them. “I can get you to the base. Was there anyone else on board? What was that you were flying? Is it some kind of experimental aircraft?”
One was taller than the other. The larger figure collapsed on the banks and began to breathe rapidly. Lenny realized they might be suffering from shock and took his jacket off. While the other one climbed up to the shore, he ran down to the bigger of the two and offered the man his jacket. When he didn’t respond, Lenny reached down to put it on his back.
He was sent backwards by a blow to his side. It knocked him to the ground. Stunned, Lenny rolled over to see who had struck him so hard. It had to be the other pilot. Why had he done this? Did the crash mess with their minds? He knew the altitude could play tricks with a person mind. He remembered the story of the pilot who needed to be strapped down on a bombing run because he was sure there were little green men running on the wings.
Lenny rolled over to look at his attacker.
Both of them stood over him and glared down. The smaller figure who’d struck him held a long blade and pointed it at his throat. The meaning was clear: he was to stay still and not move.
Lenny noticed two things. One, they were in top physical shape with defined muscles on their naked bodies.
The other thing he noticed: both were women.
Shakti and Kamala were almost to the shore when they saw the man yelling at them. He was alone and swung a light of some kind. He wanted their attention, that was certain.
“What do you think?” Shakti asked her companion. “Does he look dangerous?”
“Hard to tell,” Kamala responded while she coughed out a mouthful of water. “He’s seen us and there goes our surprise. Might as well make for him and hope there are no more.”
He was still yelling at them when Shakti felt the loose mud of the shore beneath her feet. At least they were still alive. She’d turned once to see the shuttle slip beneath the water. It wasn’t designed to float for very long. Everything she found about planet fall on board recommended a quick trip to a body of water and a fast swim to the shore. This type of shuttles was built for travel between star craft. They could be used to reach the surface of a planet in an emergency, but the record of successful landings was not good. Already, they’d beaten the odds so many times; the Great Mother had to be watching over them.
As Shakti staggered to dry land, she saw Kamala on her knees coughing the water out. She turned to see the figure run toward Kamala with something in his hands. She still had the short sword in her right hand. Her instincts activated and Shakti lunged at the man and slammed him to the ground. He fell and rolled over to look at her.
He held a coat of some kind in his hands.
Then it hit her: she’d knocked him to the ground while when he tried to help Kamala. He’d noticed her co-wife was without clothes and shivering in the cold air. The jacket was for her.
Shakti held the sword point at him and walked over to look at her first sight of the inhabitant of this new world. At least she hadn’t killed him.
And the strange man looked up at her. The look in his eyes told her everything she needed to know.
Lenny looked up at them. His first thought was surprise. The air force used women pilots? Not only were they women, both looked black. He knew there were black pilots in the war. There was an entire black squadron out of the South and he’d seen them flying back after several missions. One of the other men on his crew pointed them out. But two black women pilots? Was some new program he was supposed to know about?
These were not the usual air force recruits either. Both of these women were solid. They had scars on them. Where did they come from? One held a sword pointed at him. Who took a sword on board an aircraft? It made more sense to equip a pilot with a small gun if you were concerned about the plane going down.
“Are you pilots?” was all Lenny could think to say.
The woman with the sword moved the point away from his throat. She took one step closer to him and looked into his eyes with hers. Lenny’s heart began to pound faster than it had ever done so before. Even when his bomber took a hit over Germany, he never felt this scared. At least there were still two engines that worked after the fighter strafed them. He didn’t know who this woman was or where she came from. Didn’t the Russians use women in combat? He remembered some GI telling him about a tank corps near Berlin made up of Russian women. Was this one of them?
“America?” the woman said to him. She was about a three inches shorter than the other woman was, but looked just as deadly. At that very moment, Lenny knew what a bug might feel as it encountered a wolf spider.
“Yes,” Lenny replied as he tried no to look like a threat, “You are in America. Are you Russian?”
The woman, with her eyes still on him, spoke to the woman next to him in a singsong language that he couldn’t understand. It couldn’t be Russian; Lenny knew a few phrases, which he learned in the war, and from his old neighborhood in Pittsburgh. But he also knew that Russian was only one of many languages spoken in the USSR.
“He wants to know if we’re from another part of the planet,” she said to Kamala. “I don’t think he’s dangerous. The man appears to be harmless. I don’t know how the government works here, but the planet is broken up into different empires. I think we are in the Kingdom of America. If he thinks we’re from an enemy nation, he might try and betray us.”
“He reminds me of the last merchant who wanted to be slapped around for five gold ones,” Kamala replied. “I don’t think he’ll be a lot of trouble.” She picked herself off the ground and walked over to Lenny.
Kamala reached down and put on the jacket he was holding. She turned to Shakti and admired it.
“How do you think it looks on me?”
“Functional. I don’t understand all the patches on it, but I’m sure they have a purpose.”
Lenny couldn’t follow anything they said to each other. All he knew was that one of them held a sword with a razor edge and the other had his leather bomber jacket on. A few months ago, Lenny drove past a band of guys on motorcycles near San Bernardino and saw one of the women riding on the seat
behind wearing a jacket exactly like it. He’d thought a lot about a woman in a leather jacket since that day. In his private magazine collection, he couldn’t find any pictures of women in leather jackets for some reason.
Right now, there was a big woman wearing his bomber jacket to keep warm. Cold lake water still dripped off her muscled form.
“Can you speak to him?” Kamala asked. He seemed to understand a few words you said.”
“I picked up some of their tongue from watching the transmissions,” Shakti replied. “I don’t think I can carry on a conversation. We’ll both pick it up in due time. We’ve nowhere else to go.”
Kamala reached down again and yanked him off the ground by the back of his shirt. He didn’t give her much resistance, which confirmed a few things she suspected.
“Tell him to take us somewhere where we can get some clothes and food,” she said to Shakti. “And tell him we don’t want to be seen by anyone.”
“Need food, clothes,” Lenny heard the smaller woman say to him. She still had the sword in her hand. “No people. Quiet!”
“Sure,” Lenny said to them. “I have this cabin not too far away, you can stay there. Come with me, I have the car.”
He led them over the car. His telescope still sat propped up on the hood. He broke it down one-step at a time, because Lenny didn’t want either of these women to think it was a gun. When he was about to put it in its case, the big woman grabbed it and looked at the small end. She took the telescope and trained it on the lake for a few seconds. Satisfied, she handed it to him and Lenny put it in the case. The leather jacket was a little tight around her ample breasts.
With care, he moved to the back of the car, opened the trunk and put the case inside it. While the woman with the sword moved around to his right side, Lenny pulled out a spare blanket and handed it to her. He closed the trunk lid as she wrapped the wool around her shoulders. In the moonlight, he could see the scar on her face. What really caused that mark?
Angels of Eternity: The Complete Novel Page 23