Shock Diamonds

by E. R. Mason

  “Sweet dreams.”

  I awoke that evening to find Danica busying herself running navigation checks on the flight deck while Wilson sat sheepishly looking at me from the conference table with his Norsican mug steaming with Earth-standard coffee. On the counter in the galley was a four-foot high case of Enuro blue. There was no sign of R.J.

  “Is he still in his cell?” I asked Wilson, pointing over my shoulder with a thumb.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Have either of you checked on him?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  I went to R.J.’s sleeper cell compartment and tapped gently on the door. At first there was no response. After the third try a muffled voice trying to whisper through the panel answered. “Yeah, what?”

  “You okay? You need anything?”

  “Just a little hung over, Adrian. Let me sleep it off, okay?”

  “Okay, sorry to disturb you.”

  That was all I got. I went back and sat with Wilson, still sporting his boyishly guilty face. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”

  “I think so. It’s not like him, though.”

  “Well, everybody’s got to turn loose sometime.”

  “What about you? Conquer and loot any villages last night?”

  “Those guys were something else. They said they’re from some place called Barbium Prime. They’re a Chancellor’s forward guard, on leave. We ended up at this combat sim place underground. By the way, the underground city is four times bigger than what you see up here. That’s where the real action is. Can you believe I fought hand to hand with a hologram that felt solid? We should have that on Earth to train our special ops guys.”

  “Sounds like you won us some allies, maybe?”

  “I wouldn’t want them as enemies. I’ll tell you that.”

  Later that night, with everyone else sacked out, I began to be concerned about R.J. again, but was hesitant to knock on his cell. I paced around checking things, looking his way. At about 1:00 A.M. I heard a thump against his cell door, and finally couldn’t stand it any longer. I winced and tapped. This time a voice answered right away.

  “Wait, let me call up the habitat cam. Oh. Adrian, is anyone else with you?”

  “Just me, who slept too long today and can’t get back to sleep.”

  “Wait a minute.” After a few moments, his sleeper cell door scrolled upward. There in all his glory was R.J., with a smoking pipe in his mouth, a tablet in one hand, wearing a standard issue tan flight suit. There was one other thing that was different. R.J. was as blue as a robin’s egg.

  “What the…”

  “Yeah, yeah. And I bugged you about reading the SIDs before we got here.”

  “You’re quite a beautiful blue, R.J.”

  “See? That’s why I can’t come out. I’ll get an endless amount of innuendos like that one.”

  “Is this...”

  “No, of course it’s not permanent. It should clear up tomorrow.”

  “But you were with three of them. You didn’t…”

  “Never mind that. It doesn’t matter how many you’re with. It just takes twenty-four to forty-eight hours to clear up.”

  “Why, you dog. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Don’t speak of this to anyone. I’m just in here with a hangover. It’s embarrassing enough as it is. I wouldn’t have told you except I knew you’d be insisting.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, in case you don’t remember, I was there when they delivered you. Those tiny women were extremely intoxicating.”

  “Try drinking that blue Culatta with them.”

  “You’re not automatically married or anything, are you?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake, no.”

  “You can’t blame me for asking.”

  “Well, if I were you, I’d keep a short reign on Wilson. If this can happen to someone like me, imagine how he’d end up.”

  “So when will you stick your head out of the gopher hole?”

  “Tomorrow around noon.”

  “I’ll tell everyone I spoke with you tonight and you're fine.”

  “Anyway, I’ve been watching them work on the ship on some of the below-deck monitors. They are incredible.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Any problems with the ship?”

  “Just that same radar interference in the tail. Otherwise, we should be leaving on schedule.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna close down now in case somebody suddenly gets up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “That sure is a nice shade of blue.”

  “Oh, shut up.” R.J. banged the key and his sleeper cell door dropped down.

  The next morning, the three of us foraged around finding space in stores for the fifty bottles of Culatta Blue. R.J. finally emerged from his hibernation. He milled around, casting wary glances at his crew mates, worried they might detect the faint remnants of his blue-man experience. Although most of the blue had subsided, there was a faint aura of it about him, though no one seemed to notice except him and me.

  We held a short crew meeting in which it was agreed that from now on, all excursions into the world of Enuro would be made using the buddy system. No one offered any objections. Over the next few days, we took turns exploring the arcane, perplexing world around us, both on the surface and below. There were so many structures of such abstract architecture, it was impossible to get comfortable on any given tour, an awkwardness enhanced by the many individuals of equally absurd physiology that continually passed by.

  By week’s end, we had learned many things. Fortunately, there were no further instances of blue skin tone, changes in eye color, or spontaneous fights to the death. But by the end of it we were all ready to get back into space. When Lotho finally declared the project complete and handed me a memory module with all the pertinent artificial gravity system documentation, there was a great sentiment of relief throughout the ship. People busied themselves stowing gear, whether it was needed or not.

  Enuro provided for an odd departure. There was no Orbital or Space Traffic Control System. Ascent was based solely on our ship’s navigation and collision avoidance system. It kept the attention of all four of us strapped in on the flight deck. We went directly to high orbit, then jumped out after only a single loop around.

  It took a full two days to acclimate to a Griffin with gravity. We still did some things required in zero G even though they were no longer needed. The magnetic playing cards were a nuisance and had to be exchanged for Wilson’s regular ones. The magnetic seats in the habitat module had to be turned off because they were annoying. Galley facilities had to be switched to gravity mode. Our sleeper cells seemed slightly less comfortable. Standing at the portals to look out at the stars felt strange. The comment, “Man, this is weird,” was repeated regularly. Some of us tended to grab onto things as we went, even though we did not need to.

  On day three of the trip, I sat up front in the left seat, talking with Danica.

  “So, what is your plan for when we get home?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “Well, what you gonna do?”

  “I was hoping you’d have a suggestion.”

  “Are you absolutely sure the man really has murder or something on his mind?”

  “I’m sorry to get you involved in this.”

  “As I said, if he’s asking questions about the Griffin, I was already involved and just didn’t know it. Probably wouldn’t have seen that coming. Besides, anyone threatening you, if you hadn’t told me I’d have really been pissed off, girl.”

  “I’ve been worried this whole trip he’d show up in a spacecraft somehow.”

  “So I guess we better come up with something good. When do you think he’ll figure out his skull is a fake?”

  “There’s no way to tell, Adrian. He meditates to the thing several hours a day, like he’s trying to get it to do something, but it never works. Maybe he won’t even figure it out.”

  “Even so, he’ll still be coming after you,
right?”

  “Of that I’m certain. His henchmen are either looking for me right now, or waiting for me to return.”

  “Any chance it could all blow over?”

  “I doubt it. The bastard is not that kind of person.”

  “How about if I had a word or two with him?”

  “You’d never get that close, and you’d be added to the list.”

  “So how about we hide you real good, and then bring certain authorities into this?”

  “Who you got in mind?”

  “Some friends in the agency's security division. They’ve got connections.”

  “But the bastard hasn’t done anything yet.”

  “Yeah, we’ll have to play out line and get him to make a mistake.”

  “Or we could just take the Griffin away somewhere we couldn’t be found.”

  “And start a new life?”

  “Very funny. I meant just hide out for a while. Maybe the asshole will get busted and thrown back in jail. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “How ‘bout we make that plan B?”

  “From outer space?”

  “It’s a classic.”

  “Where would I hang?”

  “With me, in disguise.”

  “I heard you got a thing going on with a doctor. Won’t that get too cozy?”

  “I don’t know if I’ve got a thing going on or not. She is a real wild card, that one.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve met your match?”

  “Well, with this one, even if she does have a thing for a guy, she might just kill him.”

  “She’s a doctor, right?”

  “Yeah, that sometimes smokes, and sometimes wrecks your car at one hundred and seventy miles an hour.”

  “I believe I’m starting to like this woman.”

  “My god, now that I think about it, the two of you may be related.”

  “When can I meet this person?”

  “No one on Earth ever really knows where she'll be at any given time, probably not even her. Anyway, in the meantime, we’ll get you a good wig, sunglasses, and other adornments to turn you into my latest love interest. Then you will never go anywhere alone. Either R.J., Wilson, or I must be there. As soon as we get a lead, we’ll turn it around and put my friends on them and they will be the prey instead of the predators.”

  “Well, that makes me feel a little better, even though I’ll be a kept woman.”

  “Maybe we can do some digging and find something out about your diamond skull and that other thing Mr. Blackwell is trying to get his hands on.”

  “So we’re going to need to bring the other guys in on this. You may want to break out the skull for that.”

  “R.J. is a genius on these kinds of problems. He comes up with the damnedest stuff. I’ll be interested to hear what he thinks.”

  “Well, you guys are the best bet I’ve got. Let’s do it. I sure hate this.”

  We switched primary control to the left pilot position, and under Danica’s watchful eye I removed the wrapped diamond skull from under my seat. I walked it back to the conference table and set it there, motioning R.J. and Wilson to join me. They took seats with matching captivated stares.

  I unwrapped the skull, set it on table center, and told the intriguing tale of how our crew mate’s life seemed to be in imminent danger, and what I planned to do about it. R.J. could not resist. As I spoke, he took up the skull and began examining it, millimeter by millimeter.

  “Holy crap, this isn’t crystal, you know.”

  “Yeah it is, I’ve seen one of those in a Mayan artifact museum,” said Wilson.

  “I beg to differ, Compadre. This is diamond. One very large chunk of diamond. You won’t find such a thing on Earth. This could only form on a giant body somewhere outside our system. This is not from Earth.”

  “No kidding?” said Wilson.

  “Not only that, this is not representative of a human skull.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “The indentations on the temple, and the parietal and occipital regions are too large. Also, beside the indentations, the frontal area is too pronounced.”

  “He’s bullshitting us, Adrian. How can you possibly know this crap, R.J.?” demanded Wilson.

  “Ah, yes, to study flight dynamics or battlefield strategy is such a natural undertaking, but if one chooses to consider something as basic and natural as human anatomy, oh look out. It’s something more basic than any science, evolution created from the ground we walk on before time began, yet to delve into it is considered an anomaly to present day human nature…”

  “Oh my god, we’ve lost him,” said Wilson. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

  “Easy, R.J. It was a compliment, not a slam on Earth science.”

  “What? A compliment, you say? In that case let me add that this representation of a hominid cranium was not constructed by any means known to us.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Wilson.

  R.J. pushed himself up and drew a hand scanner from a drawer within his engineering station. He began scanning the skull in green-beam mode. “Yep, just as I thought, irregular atomic alignment and quantum…”

  I jumped up and yelled, “R.J., your scanner is smoking!”

  I was too late. The scanner erupted into small jets of flame and flew from his grasp as he shook it away. The device bounced off the table and slid on the galley floor, still on fire, emitting sparks, and leaving a trail of smoke. Wilson sprang into action, stomping the thing until the fire was beaten into crumpled ash. We stood there dumbfounded, looking at the electronic corpse and the diamond skull that had apparently destroyed it.

  Danica called back from the flight deck. “What the hell is going on back there? You’ve set off a smoke indicator on my panel.”

  “It’s okay, Danica. A scanner caught fire but it’s out. There’s no danger.”

  “What the hell are you guys doing?”

  Wilson picked up the scanner remains by one charred wire, looked over at us for objections, and then dropped it in the galley disposal unit. We regrouped around the skull and took our seats where Danica could see and hear us on monitors.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” said R.J.

  “If that’s what it does to a hand scanner, what the hell would happen if you fired a sidearm at it?” asked Wilson as he eyed the thing warily.

  It set R.J. off again. “Oh, yeah. There goes the military mind. A beautiful diamond artifact, an exquisitely sculptured idol perhaps millions of years old, and the first thing you guys start thinking about is what kind of weapon is needed to destroy it.”

  “Easy, R.J. Easy. It was just a joke,” said Wilson.

  “What were you starting to say before the scanner roasting?” I asked.

  R. J. wiped his hands on the legs of his flight suit, looked at them, and wiped some more. “This skull is not a simple sculpture from diamond. The scanner confirmed that before it torched.”

  “Go on…” I begged.

  “It is an artificial construct. From subatomic up.”

  “How do you artificially recreate something that takes millions of years under pressure to form?”

  “You don’t. You take something that has formed over millions of years, and you modify it.”

  “Modify how?”

  “You redistribute the subatomic patterns within it.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “In this case, I have no idea. All I know is that the subatomic structure is not linear. It is a maze of billions of patterns, rather than the nice orderly rows of molecules that are normal in this type of crystalline product.”

  “You're saying this skull does something but you don’t know what?” asked Wilson.

  “Well, it destroys scanners, for one thing.”

  “Can you theorize what it does, R.J.?” I asked.

  “Let me have it for a while. I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  “You think that’s safe?” asked Wilson. “We don’t wa
nna be floatin’ home later.”

  “I’ll use single pulse scans so I’ll know if anything upsets it. That scanner problem may have just been from reflection or something.”

  I stood at the table and nodded to him. “Go slow, R.J. Real slow. And if you go data searching, keep it inside the ship. We don’t want anyone picking up any data streams and finding out we’re interested in that thing, you know?”

  Back in my seat on the flight deck, Danica waited for me to begin the conversation. “So that thing is not simply art. Did you get a good enough look through the monitors at what happened?”

  She looked at me with a wrinkled brow. “You really think the skull destroyed that scanner?”

  “It sure looked like it. I have a hunch R.J.’s relentless brain will come up with a whole lot more about it. In the meantime, at least everybody’s signed up for the Danica guardian angels plan.”

  “When they’re not back there setting fire to stuff, you mean?”

  “Hey, we’re men. It’s what we do.”

  The final day of our return trip brought new mumbling from Wilson about his situation with Jeannie and her seemingly non-returnable engagement ring. R.J. had spent every waking moment studying his newfound nemesis, the diamond skull. He was completely consumed by it, but would only confirm to us that it was designed to do something. He did not know what. He had found nothing in library records, which only made him all the more intrigued. I had to practically pull it from his grasp to return it to the designated hiding place before landing. At the Terran outer rim, we reported to Earth’s Lunar Receiving Station and were cleared for a 218.44 Earth orbital insertion and parking. A dedication ceremony going on at the Space Center made air traffic unusually heavy.

  The plan was, after landing, only three of us would disembark. Danica would remain on board. If unfriendly eyes were on us, we wanted to give the impression she had not been a part of the crew, or if she had, she did not return with us. Crew manifests are never made public without agency approval. Dorian Blackwell would have to pull some pretty long strings to get that kind of information out of the Flight Planning Group.

  When we finally touched down late in the evening, we did so with Wilson in the left seat, just in case. Jeannie was waiting at the gate. We left Wilson to his dilemma, though the passionate exchange immediately following their reunion suggested there was no dilemma at all.