by E. R. Mason
The composite metals on the pod would show up in their scans. It would also suggest the transponder contact was genuine. They’d put down as close to it as possible. They would see the Tusani encampment and fear attack from them. They would also not wish to affect the culture by having a spacecraft land in their midst.
So they would probably land at night without lights, drop off a heavily armed Wilson, and wait for him to contact them after surveillance.
That is also what I would have done.
My first thought was to camp out at the edge of the forest near the pod to watch the open plain, but that was too dangerous at night. They would probably make the recon drop around early morning. Wilson was a jungle expert. He’d be carrying enough firepower to take down a T-Rex. He’d move in undercover and try to spot me or anything that would give off a false transponder signal.
I returned to camp and found I had the shakes. I had to hide them from the others. Pretending everything was normal was difficult. I held out until dark and pretended to sack out with the rest of the tribe. I did not sleep a wink. At the first crack of light, I crept silently out, a long spear in hand, and headed down the trail to the high-grass clearing. Except for the torn-up flight suit and boots, my uncut hair, beard, and overly tanned skin made me look like just another wild native. I hurried along toward the clearing, listening for the sound of a spacecraft.
I met them on the trail, headed for the camp. Wilson was dressed in green camouflage, green paint on his face, a heavy automatic weapon hanging from his chest, a larger one strapped on his back. R.J. was beside him, dressed in a standard green flight suit with only a belt and small stun gun stuck to it.
On sight, the three of us stopped in our tracks and stared in disbelief. R.J. let out an “Oh my god!” that sounded like a disapproving mother finding a lost child. All concern for manhood cast aside, I ran to them, drove my spear into the ground, and embraced them in a three-way bear hug.
“Oh my god!” repeated R.J. indignantly, as he pulled back to look me up and down.
“Adrian, what the hell…?” asked Wilson, but for some reason he was unable to finish.
“Man, you two misfits have never looked so good!” I clamped a hand on each of their shoulders and shook to be sure they were real.
“The beard is a nice touch,” remarked R.J. “I like it.”
“I don’t,” said Wilson. “Nice spear, though.”
“You guys have no idea...”
“Looking at you, I’d say we do,” replied R.J. He looked left and right. “Is it safe here?”
“How in god’s name did you find me?”
R.J. nodded reluctantly. “It was Wilson, but it’s a long story. I now owe him dishwashing and latrine duties for a week.”
“Hey. Let me borrow your communicator for a second.”
R.J. handed me his, as Wilson continued to guard the surroundings.
I keyed the mike. “Danica, maintain current orbit, stand by for further instructions.”
There was a very long pause. Danica came back, “R.J., who was that? If you guys are screwing around, it’s not funny.”
“Danica, how do you clear a mountain range with dead engines when a thermal inversion has dragged you down too low?”
“Oh my god, Adrian! Thank God!”
“Give the others my warmest greetings and tell them I’ll join you shortly.”
She clicked off without answering, but as she did I could hear her calling them.
I shared a long look at my compatriots, and let out another great sigh of relief that bottomed out in my soul. “How long have I been gone?”
R.J. answered. “Almost three months.”
“You returned to Earth and came back?”
“No, we couldn’t do that,” said R.J.
“What? Why not?”
“It’s another long story. What do you need to do before you can leave?”
“How about you come with me and meet the people that saved my ass? There’s quite a bit that needs to be done first.”
“Do I need to cover you guys?” asked Wilson.
“No, they are friends. You come in with us, Wilson.”
“If you say so.”
We entered the camp as casually as possible. Most of the tribe was up. Those milling around the camp stopped to stare at the newcomers. Ooda was setting up with some archers near the target area. I waved him to follow. At the cave, there was much staring and silence. Chief Tawna was with his caregivers. They all stopped as we approached. I held R.J. and Wilson back and went to the Chief and explained members of my clan had finally found me and they would be honored to meet him. He nodded graciously, as a concerned Ooda came up alongside.
The Chief remained cordial. He maintained that slight standoffishness all veteran diplomats use. As best I could, I explained that other of my family were waiting nearby and would also like to meet the Chief and offer gifts of friendship. The unexpected intrusion was awkward for the Chief, Ooda, and the others, but the Chief’s trust in me held. I promised we would leave and return after sunrise the next day. My leaving the camp seemed to increase the uneasiness.
We hiked to a clearing beyond the east mountains, where the Griffin’s descent would not be seen. Danica zeroed in on our transponders and for the first time in so many months, I saw the silhouette of the Griffin appear in the orange sky, descending toward me. I had to hide a choke. The damp green forest reflected its shimmering white skin as it whined down, kicking up dirt and grass as it jockeyed aground. The aft airlock door hissed open and the loading ramp deployed.
I stood at the base of the ramp and had chills from the experience. I could have fallen to my knees and kissed the ramp. In deference to male pride, I marched up the ramp, climbed into the airlock, then through the lab, gym, and sleeping quarters, and met the three astonished people waiting in the habitat area. Danica had left the pilot seat and was standing beside Patrick and Catherine. She shook her head as though she was about to scold me, then stepped forward and hugged me so hard it knocked the wind out of me. Catherine grabbed me tightly by one arm and whispered, “Adrian,” then just stared while Patrick patted my shoulder.
I begged off from the barrage of questions, saying I just had to get a shower. Silent approval came immediately and was almost insulting. Afterward, I put on a clean blue flight suit, traded my beat-up boots for deck shoes, and decided not to shave. I did not want the Tusani to see me as someone else.
As I reentered the habitat area, R.J. stood up and cried, “Well, thank goodness, you didn’t shave.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your entire tribe would try to imitate you, the Tarn-god.”
“Maybe, but I made sure I wasn’t a god to them, R.J. So, ladies and gentleman, shall we sit together and try to figure life out? I can’t tell you how good it is to be here.”
Danica stood in the airlock door. “Do you want to lift off so we’re not seen?”
“It’s okay, Danica. They saw the pod. There has already been that contamination. A few of them might sneak over here for a look but that’s all. We can sit here overnight as long as the radar is scanning, unless you know of some other danger.”
Catherine spoke, “There’s an active volcano in the southern hemisphere. That’s why the sky is orange. And by the way, Adrian, I put it to you, we can’t leave this place just yet.”
“What do you have in mind, Doctor?”
“Your tribe. You’ve exposed them to pathogens a million years ahead of their time. Every one of them needs to be examined and inoculated as necessary, otherwise you could leave and months from now the entire group contracts something and is wiped out completely.”
“To tell you the truth, in all the confusion to stay alive I hadn’t thought of that.”
Patrick asked, “Will they let us do that, Adrian?”
“Yes. They are a very peaceful people considering how badly they’ve been victimized.”
R.J. said, “They can’t be too peaceful. They’ve
developed the Clovis point.”
I shook my head. “Not until I arrived.”
“Why would you do that?” he asked.
“To survive,” I replied.
He looked at me and a variety of emotions crossed his face, ending in understanding. “How else have you changed them?”
“They have fire now. They were without it a very long time.”
“Bow drill?” asked Wilson.
I nodded.
“Well, so much for worrying about contamination,” said R.J. “But you know there are other species on this planet. You’ve probably changed its history forever.”
“It was that or be eaten by the Scabas.”
“I know what I would have done,” said Wilson.
“These people were being regularly harvested by ape-men. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The Tusani took me in, healed my wounds, fed me and cared for me. It’s a long story. But let’s switch back to business. Since we’re demanding explanations, why didn’t you take this ship back to Earth, or at least report what happened and ask for orders?”
There was a long nervous pause. They all hemmed and hawed, waiting for someone else to answer.
“Well?”
“We couldn’t report back to Earth,” said R.J. in a half whine.
“Why not?”
Again a long pause in which everyone hoped someone else had a good response.
R.J. said, “Well, we all agreed that if we contacted Earth and told them you were taken, we’d then have to wait for the answer and they probably would have ordered us back to Earth. That’s what Danica thought.”
“We didn’t want to go back,” said Wilson.
“So you just went on your merry way, then?”
“We took a vote…” pleaded Wilson.
“Oh! A vote? How quaint. What was the tally?”
“Five not to contact Earth. Zero to contact Earth,” said Danica, as though she thought it was adding legitimacy to their case.
“Unanimous then! You all agreed to violate standard agency rules? Is that what you’re saying?”
“It was a private mission, Mr. Tarn,” said Catherine.
“We were afraid when all was said and done they wouldn’t send a search party for you, Adrian,” said Patrick.
“For cripes sake, Adrian. We came out here to find a person, not lose another one,” insisted R.J.
“It didn’t seem like there was any harm in just looking around a bit,” said Danica.
“And you. You and the big guy ended up in jail when I got knocked out, right? How’d you get out?”
Wilson looked at Danica. “How’d he know that? Who told?”
“Never mind that. How’d you get out of jail?”
R.J. spoke. “The blue stuff. The blue stuff you got on Enuro. It turns out that Marshall’s deputies will kill for it. It only took six bottles. We’re not even wanted any more. Not even a record, they said. Plus it was really lucky Dan and Wilson were in that jail. That’s how we got a lead on you.”
I gave an exaggerated, disapproving nod. “Oh good, very good. So, you busted yourself out of jail and went cruising around unknown space looking for me. I can’t tell you the images that invokes in my mind. Did you get into any other trouble?”
Wilson piped up hopefully. “Nothing at all really, Adrian. Nothing. Except we did have to fire the ship’s weapons system once.”
“What! You had to shoot someone?”
Wilson looked over at R.J. “You know, he looks more authoritative with the beard. It makes me uneasy.”
“Did you hit something when you fired? Did you kill anybody?”
“Certainly not!” insisted Patrick. “It was merely a warning shot.”
Danica took over. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. We were scanning an asteroid field for your pod. A ship not much bigger than us pulled up a few hundred meters starboard. They came over the com and demanded we prepare to be boarded. We said no. They insisted. We turned into them, placed a high energy burst across their bow. Never saw any ship leave that fast. They must’ve thought we were serious and just missed. They never came back.”
“I don’t believe this! The four of you have become a bunch of pirates!”
Wilson cocked his head and laughed, “Aye, matey. We be overdue for a good plunder!”
“Wilson, this is no joke. What gave you guys the idea you had any chance at all of finding me?”
R.J. began, “Oh yeah, that’s a pretty good one, Adrian.”
“Of that I have no doubt.”
“While Danica and Wilson were in jail, it turns out the guy who jumped you just abandoned his own guys and left them fuming in the next cell.”
“He just left the guys he sent to round you up?”
“Yeah, they were in the cell next to Wilson and Dan. Anyway…”
Wilson interrupted. “Hey, you should’a seen Danica in that one, Adrian. I swear, she had them guys near tears. You would’a been proud.”
“So I heard.”
“You heard?”
“As I was saying,” interrupted R.J. “They were really pissed off at the world, or should I say the moon…. Anyway, at first they just wanted to kill Danica for the gouged eye and stuff. But we were buying our guys out, and they were screwed. They started begging us to make a deal. We gave the Marshall enough extra bottles of blue stuff and ended up partying with him and his deputies, while the other guys were begging us to help. We started cutting them in on the blue stuff, and the more they drank, the more they talked. The name of the guy with the cigar is Silas Killion. They were more pissed off at Killion than they were at us. They told us where he was headed, a planet called Enrika. We got the coordinates, and after promising to pay their fine so they could get out, we even got the longitude and latitude on Enrika where Killion was supposed to meet his contact. For a few extra bottles, we got the Marshall to agree to hold those guys for twenty-four hours to give us some distance between us and them, then we took off and headed for Enrika, but on the third day, the com station suddenly became overloaded with transmissions about some ship being destroyed. The moment he saw it, Wilson began insisting you had to be involved.”
“Damn right. You still owe me the galley time,” added Wilson.
R.J. scowled, “If you don’t mind, Wilson? The rest of us wanted to continue on, but Wilson became a real pain in the ass.”
“I was …tenacious.”
“Obstinate, pigheaded.”
“Well, I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Gentlemen, please…”
“Yeah, okay, so because of Wilson we stopped and began going through more of the communication streams. Finally, we came across one that said a rescue pod from the destroyed ship with two Sumani lizard-people females in it had been recovered, and the story was that the destruction of the ship was caused by an evil human. That immediately seemed like too much of a coincidence.”
“Evil human made you think of me, then?”
“Well, it wasn’t just that. From that point, we began plotting all the bodies in range of those escape pods, and then started scanning each location. Problem was, there were so many places to search it was like a needle in a haystack. From there, you know the rest of the story.”
“Wow.”
“You wouldn’t believe how much data we’ve gathered on this sector of space,” added R.J.
I sat back and looked at each of them and sighed. “I’m sorry I screwed up and got taken in. It was stupid. I’m guessing you’re all way past being sick of space and ready to get back.”
There was a long heavy pause that surprised me. I had expected exclamations of relief.
Catherine spoke. “We have big leads on Patrick’s daughter, Adrian. We think we know where she and some others might be being held.”
“Ship’s stores are still well-stocked, Adrian,” added Danica.
“We have made a few allies here, too,” said Wilson.
I looked again at each of them. “Are you kidding me? Are you guys saying you want to go on?
I mean, I know how Patrick feels, but the rest of you want to go on, really?”
“Go,” said Wilson.
R.J. nodded.
“Go,” added Danica.
Catherine surprised me the most. She folded her arms and said, “I definitely want to go on.”
I sat back and exhaled heavily. “I really must be dreaming.”
Chapter 19
After sleeping late, followed by a massive conventional breakfast for the first time in months, then looking over flight deck standby lights, I rounded up Wilson and we led the two doctors with med kits up the trail toward the Tusani colony. There seemed to be something unusual between Catherine and Patrick. They lagged behind a bit, and kept speaking in low tones.
Wilson was his usual jolly old self. “I was wondering, Adrian. You really did blow up that ship, didn’t you? Was I not right about that?”
“It’s something I’m not proud of. Still coming to terms with it.”
“Sure, I get that. But tell me, you had to have been on that thing when you destroyed it, didn’t you?”
“Just between you and me, it was pretty close.”
“So you set something off, and somehow got off the damn thing then?”
“Barely.”
“So you must’a known where the escape pods were located and got there just in time.”
“Nope.”
“You’re saying you didn’t know where the escape pods were located when you blew it?”
“Nope.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Nope.”
“So you blew the freakin’ thing up and then went looking for a way off?”
“Yep.”
“How the hell could you do that?”
“I hurried.”
“Holy crap! You set that thing off not knowing you’d find a ride.”
“I wasn’t willing to go back to the cell.”
“Roger that. How’d you get out of the damn cell then?”
“I committed suicide.”
“You made it look like suicide so a guard would come in or something.”
“Something like that.”
“And he came in to look you over.”
“It was the last thing he ever saw.”