Independence Day: Silent Zone

by Stephen Molstad

  Everyone had a job. Dworkin would monitor the input/output meters while Lenel operated the cannon. Freiling tracked the energy levels reaching the sensors, and Cibatutto stood ready to give the cutloff signal when the ship’s temperature climbed past 140 degrees. That left Okun and Radecker with their hands free to watch the show. A mirror was positioned at an angle below the generator to let them see how it worked. Special prismatic crystal goggles were distributed. If everything worked like it was supposed to, they would allow the team to watch the energy surge spit out of the ship and travel through the room. When everything seemed to be in order, Okun gave the final go-ahead.

  “Okey-dokey, boys, let’s get it on.”

  Lenel was standing on the operator’s platform of the cannon, a device that looked like a dentist’s X-ray machine built to battleship-sized proportions. He adjusted his goggles, then threw the switch. Everything happened at once. The cannon sent a beam of arcing electrical power through the air, penetrating the walls of the ship and coursing into the generator. A tremendous crack ripped through the bunker, and the ship seemed to explode into flames of blue light. The glass on the instrument panel in front of Dworkin shattered, and Okun was sure he’d ruined the ship forever. But Lenel continued to fire. A firestorm of hazy blue light flared out of the ship in all directions, stabbing into the air in a zigzag dance of truly alarming speed, like a thousand ghosts looking for a way out of a pillowcase at the speed of light. When Cibatutto directed his attention to the generator at the bottom of the ship, Okun instantly knew why they called it the aqua-box: green light was spilling out of the opening and, on the surface of the mirror, Okun could see energy racing around the inside of the generator chamber like a waterspout, a cyclone of crystal green water. Then Cibatutto waved his arms, Lenel killed the power, and it all came to a dead stop. The room echoed with silence except for the frazzled sputter coming from one of the lighting fixtures, which popped and died. The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds.

  The scientists all looked at Okun, who pulled off his goggles and stared wide-eyed at the ship. “That was pretty trippy.” It was a few moments before the young genius realized what had happened. He had been proved right. The energy wasn’t simply leaching out of the ship; it was being forced out, purged, by the ship’s design. And the aqua-box, as he had predicted, seemed to function as some sort of capacitor, a device which multiplied the energy before passing it back to the system. It had more than quadrupled the power input from the cannon, overwhelming the meters on Dworkin’s output monitors and sending them into meltdown.

  “Nicely done, young man, nicely done indeed! We haven’t made this much progress in years.” Dworkin and the others were jubilant. Even Lenel was smiling.

  They began checking the registers on the meters wired to the sensors on the walls. Despite all the visual fireworks, Okun was surprised that they hadn’t burned up along with Dworkin’s voltmeter. In fact, the numbers were rather low. Very little energy had reached the sensors up near the ceiling. That, he realized immediately, spelled trouble for his theory. The energy was dissipating much more quickly than he guessed it would. Then again, the violent, flailing, spasmodic way the energy had shot around the room could indicate a mistake in the way the scientists had put things back together.

  Dworkin was already calling for a bottle of champagne. He was busy extolling this advance in their knowledge to Radecker when Okun called across the room, “Something’s not right.” He came and explained the sensor readouts to the others. “It means these alien ships would have to fly wingtip to wingtip in order to keep their communal energy supply alive.”

  “Still,” Dworkin countered, “you have proved that the ship is designed to take energy in, magnify it, and pump it back out. Perhaps the presence of other ships would attract or draw the energy from this one.”

  Okun screwed up his face and shook his head no. “I don’t buy it.”

  Lenel joined them and was characteristically blunt. “Of course this means we’ve spent twenty five years screwing around down here for nothing. But at least now we know.”

  “Know what?” Radecker asked.

  “The kid just proved this hunk of alien junk can’t fly by itself. If we’re ever gonna get it to fly, we’ll need another ship just like it.” When no one backed him up, Lenel asked, “Isn’t that right, fellas?”

  “That would seem to be the logical conclusion,” Dworkin agreed. “Didn’t we mention that part?”

  “No! No one mentioned that,” Radecker yelled. “Did I mention the fact that I can’t leave until we get this thing to fly?” Radecker reached up and began massaging his temples. Obviously, he hadn’t understood the full implications of the test until that moment. When he felt the impulse to grab the first seventy-year-old he could lay his hands on and begin choking him to death, he reminded himself to breathe deeply.

  Okun wanted to run the test again at a slightly higher input level and see if he could get a different reading on the sensors. And an hour later, when the ship had cooled down, the scientists agreed. After carefully setting the levels on the energy input cannon, Okun asked the others to tell him if the flaring aura of light behaved any differently, then headed off toward the center of the ship.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Um, inside. I noticed last time that some of the gizmos inside the cockpit lit up, and I want to check out what’s going on in there.”

  Dworkin chuckled. “Mr. Okun, I’m afraid that’s impossible. I believe I’ve already mentioned to you that the energy levels we’re using overheat the circuits and generate intolerably high temperatures.”

  Freiling concurred. “He’s right, Breakfast.”

  “Brackish. My name is Brackish.”

  Freiling didn’t seem to listen. “The inside of the cockpit gets hotter than a skillet. If you touch it, you’ll get burned.”

  “Look, guys, I’m young, I’m nimble, I’m a natural athlete. Don’t worry. When it starts getting hot, I’ll get out quick.”

  “I won’t allow it.” Dworkin put his foot down. “Mr. Radecker, as director of the lab, would you please forbid this young man from going through with this foolish idea. The temperature inside the craft quickly rises to more than two hundred degrees. He’ll roast. Dr. Lenel, come down off that gun. The experiment is canceled.”

  “Stay where you are, Doctor.” Radecker thought about it. No more Okun, no more five-year contract. Without their boy genius, Spelman would have to pull the plug on the project, or at least reorganize. “Mr. Okun, do you honestly think you can get out of there in time?”

  Okun’s mind made another odd connection. “Have any of you guys ever seen that show called Thrillseekers? Where these guys crash cars and jump motorcycles over things? Anyways, I saw this one where a guy, a stuntman, walks into a house, a little fake house they built for the stunt, dig? He’s got his crash helmet and these fire-retarding overalls on. So, he waves to the crowd and goes inside. Then these other guys come and set fire to the shack and then throw this honkin’ bundle of dynamite inside. A couple of seconds later, kablooey! The whole thing blows sky-high, and you see the stuntman come flying through the air—Aaaaagh!—in this perfect swan dive, and he lands on this big air-mattress. For a minute he just lies there—I might be dead—but then he jumps up and takes a bow.”

  “I think I saw that one,” Freiling shouted. “It was at a racetrack.”

  “If you have a point to make, why don’t you get to it?” Radecker snapped.

  “Are you dense?” Freiling demanded, wheeling around and looking at Radecker like he was the crazy one. “The boy is asking for some safety equipment. He needs a crash helmet and something to land on.”

  And fifteen minutes later, that is what he had. Cibatutto had taken a colander from the kitchen, lined the inside with foam padding, and attached a chin strap. By the time this makeshift headgear was ready, Okun and Radecker had created a landing pad by stacking mattresses under the hatchway of the alien ship. Okun strapped on the h
elmet, climbed the ladder, and practiced diving to safety. It was fun, it was simple, they were ready to go.

  When he saw they meant to go through with it, Dworkin announced that he refused to participate and started to leave the hangar.

  “Dr. Dworkin,” Radecker called across the room. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Have you already forgotten our deal?” The tall gaunt scientist stood there for a moment while his conscience wrestled with his sense of self-preservation. Finally, he turned around and returned a few steps closer to the ship. “How would the director like me to assist?”

  “That’s OK, you can just stand there and watch. Dr. Lenel, why don’t you show me how to work this contraption. I’d like to operate it, if that’s okay with our stuntman.”

  Okun realized Radecker was blackmailing the holding their embezzlement over their heads like a hatchet. And while it made him sad to see the regal old Dworkin having to kowtow to a man of half his years and a quarter of his IQ, he figured there was nothing he could do about it. Looking completely ridiculous standing next to the spaceship with the big stainless-steel strainer strapped to his head, he offered Radecker a manly thumbs-up, then, after a few deep breaths, climbed the ladder and disappeared into the dark mass of the alien vehicle.

  Lenel turned the power dial a tad lower than Okun had requested, then showed Radecker how to activate the power by means of a simple switch. As he turned and stepped off the operators platform, Radecker quickly reached down and cranked the power regulator up a full twist to the right. That ought to do the job.

  Inside, Okun looked around uncertainly. This was starting to seem like a very bad idea. It wasn’t the power surge that would rip through the ship in a moment; it was the dark interior. Being in there alone, he suddenly felt how foreign, how otherworldly this claustrophobic environment was. There was just enough light seeping through the cabin windows to cast dim shadows across the rounded walls, which were dripping with creepy, semiorganic technology. It felt more like a mausoleum than a flying machine. He was on the verge of chickening out, but instead he pulled on his goggles and yelled down through the hatch that he was ready.

  As soon as the power switched on, the same loud crack ripped through the ship, knocking Okun slightly off-balance. He reached out to steady himself on the wall. All across the instrument panel lights snapped on, including the shell screen Cibatutto had shown him. He jerked his hand away from the wall when he felt it swell to life under his palm. Unfortunately, the momentum of his arm combined with the uncertainty of his feet to cause the natural athlete to trip once over his left foot, then immediately again over his right, all of it taking him farther away from the escape door. His stumbling landed him flat-ass on the floor directly in front of the shell screen, where he saw something that scared the bejesus out of him. A picture filled the vein-laced screen, a fuzzy, distorted image of a giant Y rising straight out of the ground. The alien technology gave this image a visual texture unlike any Okun had seen before. The picture spoke to him. Not with words, but in emotional terms. For reasons he would never fully understand, this simple image communicated a deep emotional sensation that hit him like a punch in the gut. It seemed like the loneliest, most desolate thing he’d ever seen in his life. He got the sense this great Y-shape was somehow an instrument of torture, an enemy. But at the same time, it was beckoning Okun, urgently calling for him to come. His plan to check the other instruments completely forgotten, Okun sat on the floor, mesmerized by the picture and his strong emotional response to it. Later he would be able to joke about the moment, likening it to reading a travel brochure for Hell written by Samuel Beckett, but at the moment he was in trouble. The temperature inside the ship was rising fast. Fortunately, something nearby started moving. The steering controls, that neatly folded stack of bones, opened itself and twitched to life like a pair of giant lobster legs. This distraction saved his life, occurring as it did just as a butt-bubbling wave of heat suddenly rose in the floor. In one giant stride, Okun crossed the cockpit and dived through the hatch, handing facefirst on the mattress.

  Radecker switched off the power.

  The scientists looked at the long-haired daredevil stuntman-cum-lab worker and waited for a sign that he would live. His exit from the ship could not fairly be called a swan dive, but it was pretty close, especially for a beginner, so the gentlemen were expecting him to leap up any moment and take a bow.

  “Mr. Okun?… Mr. Okun?…”

  5

  Into the Stacks

  Standing on a chair with his pants around his ankles and his ass toward the bathroom mirror, Okun examined his burns. The doctor who examined him upstairs in the hangar had assured him they weren’t serious. But they were painful enough to keep him from sitting down for a few days. He gingerly pulled up his trousers, then examined his new piece of jewelry. He’d attached the ankh-shaped gizmo he’d found in the ship to a piece of leather string to make himself a necklace. He admired his new treasure in the mirror. “Groovy,” he nodded. Then, feeling hungry, he went looking for food.

  “Howdy, hot pants,” Lenel barked out for the benefit of the other scientists when Okun wandered into the kitchen. The young man ignored the comment. He grabbed a box of cereal and lay down, belly first, on the daybed they’d brought in for him.

  Cibatutto couldn’t resist cracking a joke of his own. “We were going to have hot dogs for lunch,” he sniggered, “but we can’t seem to find any toasted buns!” The old men howled with laughter.

  “Fortunately,” Dworkin added, “it looks as though there’s plenty of rump roast.” This witticism brought on yet another round of guffaws.

  When they were finished, Okun turned a jaundiced eye on them and tried out a one-liner of his own. “Hardy har har. You guys are so hilarious, you should work in Vegas. Call yourselves ‘Jerry’s kids’—Jerry Atrics, that is.” The scientists didn’t get it. “As in Geriatrics? Oh, forget it.” The men had been in the hole too long to know anything about the telethon.

  For the next ten minutes, these distinguished gentlemen of science devoted their attention to the creation of one butt joke after another. The wisecracks were their way of welcoming Okun into their clique. He’d passed a major test the day before. Although he hadn’t exactly spilled blood for the good of the project, he’d brought it to the surface of his skin, and that was close enough.

  Freiling called for everyone’s attention. “OK, Brecklish, I got one for you.” He smiled devilishly. “I made it up myself.”

  “Brackish. The name is Brackish.”

  Freiling seemed to blank out for a moment. “Now I forgot the damn joke! No, wait, I got it. Why did the newspaper editor call the lobster?”

  Brackish knew he was supposed to ask why. The Y! “Oh my God,” he burst out, “I didn’t tell you guys what I saw inside the ship!” He turned to Cibatutto.

  “You know that yellowy shell instrument deal with all the little whatchamacallits running through it?”

  Cibatutto nodded.

  “When the energy came through the ship, it had a picture on it, and—I don’t want you guys to think I’m a complete weirdo for telling you this, but—it was giving off feelings, emotions. Seriously, it was like the visual image was only one part of a larger message. There was another layer of communication going on, something meant to be felt—desperation, doom, abandonment, something like that. Now that I think about it, it might have been some kind of SOS, a distress call.”

  This announcement dramatically changed the mood in the kitchen. “That would fit nicely with your second-ship theory,” Dworkin pointed out, skeptical.

  “Did this image look like anything in particular?” Lenel inquired.

  “You bet. It looked like a Y. Like a big old honkin’ letter Y standing out in the middle of nowhere.” His audience reacted strangely to this last bit of information, exchanging wide-eyed looks. “What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

  Before anyone could answer, Radecker’s footsteps came clacking down the hallway.
Dworkin looked quickly across the table and put his index finger to his lips, telling Okun to keep this news quiet.

  “It took all day, but I finally got Spelman on the phone,” Radecker announced, marching straight to the fridge and fishing out a soda.

  “And?”

  “Well, I didn’t explain all the particulars. I just told him we’d proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that the ship can’t fly.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t think he believed me. He said, ‘Your assignment is to get that ship to fly.’ So I said, ‘I’m telling you it cannot and will not fly.’ ‘Well, sir, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re assigned to the project for a five-year term or until such time as blah blah blah.’ So I asked him what he would like for me to be doing out here. And you know what the son of a female dog says to me? He goes, ‘You’ve got four years, eleven months, and twenty-six days to figure that one out for yourselves. Stay in touch.’ ” Radecker sat down with the others at the table and drowned his sorrows in a long slug of soda.

  “Did you happen to mention the matter of our finances?” Dworkin inquired gingerly.

  “Not yet,” he said, with a look which suggested he still might. Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed Okun across the room, preoccupied with a reexamination of his burns. Radecker leaned in and whispered to the scientists, “I might be able to keep you guys off the hook. It didn’t sound like Spelman plans to come out here for a visit anytime soon, so we might be able to just start killing off the other names on the payroll one by one. Every couple of months, we’ll call the Treasury Department and say another one has died. By the way, I saw your life insurance policy. Cute trick naming one another beneficiaries. How did you ever get a policy like that?”

  “Our banking friends in Las Vegas are very flexible.”

  “Also, it sounds like you guys can get everything you want in the way of materials and equipment—as long as Boy Wonder over there approves it.”