Day of the Dragonstar

by David Bischoff

  eventhorizonpg.com

  SOMETHING MOVED beyond the Barrier.

  The sound stirred Garr from his thoughts and the dreamy half-sleep which had overtaken him. Guard duty was usually so monotonous, it was easy to not remain alert. A lonely business, being on the night cycle . . . and standing sentry during just that portion of the night when most of one’s fellows had locked themselves in the Dark Fold.

  Now Garr was fully awake, listening. Something stamped through thick jungle, the sound of its great hind claws crushing undergrowth harshly. Whatever it was, thought Garr, it was big and it was coming close to the Watchtower. A ravenous cry pierced the blackness. Garr tensed. The beasts were getting bolder. Despite the boring nature of Dark Watch duty, more reports were being logged concerning beasts roaming closer to the Barrier. Though most waited till dark to begin their feeding, several species had begun to learn to feed during the day—much to the distress of the maintenance crews who worked on the fortifications during the hours of light.

  No light now, thought Garr as he peered over the edge of the Tower. The thing below neared his position, masked by the darkness. Anxiously, Garr tugged the latch of the Weapons Cage. Wakened, the tiny beasts within chittered and hissed. Garr didn’t like waking them up, they complained so. But he didn’t want to take any chances. With a gloved hand he reached in and grabbed one quickly. Dealing with squaves was second nature to a warrior. Upon detection of his scent, the specially bred lizard quieted, sheathed its needle claws, and wrapped its rudimentary wings close to its narrow body. Upon touching it, Garr felt the immediate subliminal contact of master to beast. Instinctively, the squave stiffened into firing position as it was brought up into the night air. Garr placed it into his Launcher. He cocked the bow, and trained it upon the sound’s seeming origin. The polished wood of its stock felt slippery as he traced its contours down to the trigger. He leaned over the edge of the Tower, which loomed high above the great wall of the Barrier. He wanted desperately to hang his lantern over the edge and shed some light on the creature. Always best to know the enemy, But Headquarters advised against attracting the beasts to lanterns if it could be avoided.

  The sounds grew louder. Snapping branches. Muffled clumps of heavy hand-claws. Wheezing, bellows-like breathing. It was down there, coming closer.

  Though it was his calling, Garr hated Watch duty in the Towers. You were so confined. So alone. And nobody closer than the next Tower down the line—more than two hundred ems distant on either side. That is, except for the Prowl Beasts, and Garr never felt very comfortable around them without their trainers nearby.

  There was no communication among the Towers other than by lanterns. A green light flashed each hour, downline to the right, if everything was secure. A red light shone anytime that all hell was breaking loose. You just always hoped there would be time to rig that red light and flash it.

  Scraping sounds. The rasp of claws against the wood and stone base of the Barrier.

  The damn thing had picked up his scent, thought Garr. It was trying to get up at him. He could hear the beast mewling as it clawed at the base of the great wall. Too dumb to know that Garr was beyond its reach. Garr was grateful the walls of the Barrier were so smooth and steep. However, when any of the big carnivores got worked up into a real feeding frenzy, they did not exhibit such traits as cunning or patience to try to figure out how to deal with a wall. They just hurled themselves against it.

  Unconsciousiy, Garr stroked the scales of the squave nestled in the wide groove of the launcher. Garr avoided the sharp spine that grew from the creature’s head, which injected enough poison to stop just about any medium-sized beast. Arrows were available, but the squaves were much more effective. Voracious little creatures, with the help of a Launcher, they could be hurled at beasts at sufficient speed to pierce the toughest of hides. Even if they were not accurately fired, they could use their tiny wings to guide them toward the beasts. As often as not, squaves were killed in the process, but if the beast were not quick enough, a squave could, with the help of its claws and needle-sharp teeth, burrow quickly into a beast and have a marvelous feast.

  The really large creatures were fortunately too massive, too ponderous, to attempt any serious climbing of the walls. The only damage the really big bastards ever did was an occasional stumble against the masonry, knocking loose mortar and buttressing. More work for the maintenance crews.

  That was the real problem, thought Garr. The Barrier itself. It was so old, so terribly old. Built so long ago that even the Priests were not certain of its true age, parts of it were always decaying, weakening. That, plus the prowling of the beasts, had required the systems of Watchtowers, which were strung along the great wall like beads on a string. All the way around the world.

  More clawing, snarling, The creature was getting frustrated. He sounded like a good-sized carnivore. Peering over the edge, down into the murky jungle twenty ems below, Garr was unable to see anything. Even when he held the lantern over the edge at arm’s length, there was not enough illumination to penetrate the black night. But the beast needed no light as long as it could smell its prey . . .

  The noises from the moist darkness increased. Guttural, slavering sounds. From deep in the thing’s throat came the sounds of mindless hunger, of meat-gulping urgency. Claws scrabbled crazily against the stone.

  What was going on? He’d never heard one of them act so persistently, with such determined commotion. Straining, he thought he saw the faintest of reflections and movements, but it was so dark below that the jungle could have been a bottomless pit. A pit of nightmares. They loved the darkness, where they could slither up behind you and—chomp!—that was the end. Just thinking of it made Garr’s scales sit up on edge, his nostrils flare involuntarily.

  Suddenly, the scraping sounds ceased. There was a pause in the beast’s rapid, panting breath. For an instant, there was a silence in the jungle below: no small animal scuttlings, no clicks and murmurings of insects. Nothing. When one of the beasts was stalking, all the crawling and flying things seemed to vanish.

  Another sound. It was walking away, Garr thought as he perceived footfalls on the matte of the jungle undergrowth. The footfalls stopped. Garr heard unnatural groaning sounds—the strain of wood and bark as a tree was being uprooted, and the sucking up of thick mud as its roots were pulled from the wet floor. A muffled crash sounded as the tree smashed through the undergrowth. The beast must have been so crazed with hunger it had stumbled into something, thought Garr. Soon it would be lost in the black depths, however, and there would be no danger. He brought the lantern in off the edge of the Tower, easing his grip on the Launcher, but still drumming his three fingers nervously against its solid stock.

  Just as he was beginning to relax, new sounds floated up. The beast was still there. Its breathing increased, rasping the air. A new sound. Something was being dragged across the vine-tangled brush of the forest.

  His scales tensed once again, his thin tongue whipping constantly in and out of his mouth. Garr listened, wondering what was happening below. Waiting in the darkness was too passive; he had to do something.

  Pulling a rag torch from his supply chest, Garr struck his flint. The torch soon blazed with an oily flame, casting a blood-red glow upon the sparse interior of the Tower. Just as he leaned over the edge, holding the torch in his right forelimb, something jarred against the base of the Barrier. Something massive and heavy thundered against the Tower, shaking Garr from head to tail. The rag torch fell from his grip and fluttered downward.

  As the fire penetrated the darkness, Garr saw the thick trunk of a tree leaning against the Barrier, extendi
ng above the base of the Tower itself. The torch fell to the jungle floor, lighting up lush green surfaces . . . and something else.

  A brief glimpse of something tan, or grey, moving quickly to avoid the heat and light, Then scrabbling sounds of claws against rough bark.

  The torch flared once before going out. In that instant Garr saw how close the beast was, how terribly close. He felt himself thinking of when he was young . . . just reaching intelligence level after a savage youth surviving the wilds where he’d hatched. He remembered vaguely moments like this, staring into the face of death. Yet somehow, he’d always escaped . . .

  Garr stared down at the creature, as if under a spell, his eyes locked in upon the thing which stared up at him with great eyes like flat yellow pools. It lunged forward. The eyes grew wider. Powerful hindlegs gouged into the tree bark. The thing surged upward in a final savage thrust.

  Garr raised the Launcher in his hands, knowing he would not be quick enough. There was a flash of white teeth in the dying light, the glow of the lantern. The beast’s mouth opened wide, as if unhinged, and closed quickly, snapping the Launcher and the squave in half, and taking off Garr’s right forelimb in an instant.

  The attack had been so swift, so surgically clean, that Garr had felt nothing. His nostrils flared as he took in the full-scent of the beast’s dead-blood breath. The great yellow eyes flicked and the jaws snapped once more.

  It was the last thing Garr ever saw.

  2027 A.D.

  COPERNICUS BASE: lASA LUNAR COLONY

  “WE’VE GOT a problem,” the Professor had said on the phone.

  The statement woke Colonel Phineas Kemp up fully. Problems were his meat and potatoes. That was why he was Colony Commander here, as well as Chief of IASA Deep-Space Operations. Problems were worth getting out of bed for at such an early hour.

  “Does it demand immediate action? I came over as soon as I could,” Colonel Kemp said tersely, hiding his enthusiasm.

  Professor Andre Labate, Director of the Lunar Observatory, stood over a bank of consoles, glanced at the illuminated display screens; his mind had drifted away from the conversation. “Uhmm . . . no. No, it’s not exactly of that nature, Colonel.” Evidently the Astronomy Chief had been awakened early as well. His wavy grey hair was mussed, his off-duty clothing disheveled. Kemp seemed to tower over the small man, even though he was not a tall man himself. He just cleared the height limitation for astronauts at 1.8 meters. His erect posture and well-proportioned, muscular body gave the impression of a tall presence. Despite his haste to get to the Observatory from his quarters, Kemp wore a fresh uniform. He always looked crisp and professional. Sharp, clear-eyed, alert. That was the ticket. He wore his dirty-blond hair fashionably long. His nose was sharp and hawkish, accenting his thin-lipped, firmly-set mouth. At thirty-seven years old, Kemp was the ideal media-image IASA astronaut. He worked very hard to maintain that appearance.

  Impatiently, Colonel Kemp cleared his throat and waited for Professor Labate to continue. The fellow had an irritating flair for the dramatic pause. Probably a throwback to his days in lecture halls.

  “A problem, you said . . .”

  Labate blinked, then nodded. “Oh, yes. Fascinating, all of this. Well, now. Let me give you some background information first. One of my graduate students . . .” He pointed to a dark-haired young man seated at a console across the room—the only other occupant of the Observatory. “Name of Boucher. Robert Boucher. He was on shift here about an hour ago. We’ve been running some routine measurements on the Tarantula . . . You know, the Great Looped Nebula. It’s in the large Magellanic Cloud in the Constellation Doradus. The biggest we know of its kind, with a diameter of eight hundred light-years.”

  Speaking with soft urgency, Labate moved his hands about as though in some scientific sign language. His thin grey eyebrows rose and fell emphatically. “Now,” he continued—and though Kemp knew some of what he was saying, he let the man tell his story unimpeded—“part of our project concerns photometric analysis. We set up a large array of aligned photometers, each focused on a small, sequential feature of the Nebula, each comparing radiation output from hard U. V. out to the near infrared. Three-micrometer cut-off. Each photometer covers a small arc of the sky. Do you follow me so far?”

  Kemp smiled patronizingly and nodded. He shifted his weight casually and leaned against the edge of the computer console behind, him, keeping “his stare intent -despite his feeling. This couldn’t be that important. An interesting astronomical discovery. No crisis.

  “We were getting reams of good hard data. Fascinating results, but totally reasonable. Until tonight.”

  “Okay. I’ll bite. What happened tonight?” Finally it was coming out. He’d discover why the priority-intercept line had buzzed him from a deep sleep and he’d been summoned here.

  “I’m getting to that. My grad assistant, Boucher, was sitting right here, monitoring the displays, when he noticed an unexpected peak on one of the photometers in the array.”

  “Indicating what?”

  Labate shrugged. “Any number of things. Boucher immediately checked the most obvious—instrument malfunction—but he couldn’t find anything wrong. Could have been some kind of stellar eruption—a nova in Tarantula—but it was so brief we had to discount that kind of explanation.” The older man drew a breath, exhaled. “Boucher logged in the peak and continued to monitor the system, until he noticed that other photometers in the array were producing peaks at regular intervals. The display was linear for all intents, and each peak was equal in strength. Now Boucher’s from Princeton—he’s here on an IASA Fellowship—and he’s one of my better assistants. He immediately considered the possibility that the instruments were not picking up a disturbance within the Great Looped Nebula, but something far closer, something moving in front of the field of view. Follow?”

  “Meteor storm? New asteroid?” But no, Kemp thought immediately.

  Labate shook his head. “Not very likely. Although whatever it was that was producing those photometric peaks was probably quite large, it’s doubtful it could be a meteor swarm—too far away, not enough density. And we didn’t like the idea of an asteroid because the photometer array is aimed so far off the ecliptic.”

  “A comet, then.” Jeez. This was getting to be like Twenty Questions. Kemp hated games and could not hide the impatience in his voice.

  Smiling, Labate clapped his hands together. The sound was sharp and surprising against the soft hums and general low noise of the room. “That’s very good, Colonel. Very good. All evidence seems to point towards a comet, doesn’t it? Indeed, that is what young Boucher imagined. Boucher’s comet indeed. The lad was ecstatic.” He chuckled, gazing over fondly at his astronomy student.

  Kemp surmised the obvious. “Not a comet then.”

  “Odds are very much against it,” Labate said crisply. “Unless it’s like no comet any of us have ever seen. Boucher called me about an hour ago, several minutes after he picked up on the peaks. We ran a spectroscopic analysis of the object, continued tracking it, and finally compiled a rough set of orbital elements. It’s heliocentric, no doubt about it.”

  “Did that clarify anything?” This was strange. Something in a solar orbit. Any object large enough to peak a photometric array might be very large indeed. Something that big, hurtling down the gravity well towards the sun . . . Perhaps this was a problem, or could become one.

  Labate nodded. “A few things. The object is following a fairly classic cometary, orbital pattern, close to parabolic. Its distance, when sighted, was about eight hundred million kilometers—about the same as Jupiter’s orbit. Spectrographic analysis gave us Fraunhofer absorption lines, which was odd, if it was going to be a comet. We then checked for Doppler shift on the sodium D line, as part of the range-rate measurement. As you know, there’s no absorption to speak of between here and Jupiter’s distance.”

  Sounded righ
t, but Kemp was not totally sure of the implications. His knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics was comprehensive, but only on the survey level. He was about to ask Labate to clarify when the old man began speaking again, this time more excitedly, his hands twitching even more animatedly,

  “So we ran some spectrographic comparisons and found that the orbital spectrum was an exact match of the solar spectrum, slightly shifted by Doppler effect. Do you understand what that means?”

  Kemp, had played along so far, but he was getting weary of this. Phineas Kemp could be as polite as necessary to humor anyone, but he wasn’t by nature a mild man prone to gentleness for its own sake. He knew how to wield both politeness and sternness. Both played a part in leadership, and it was the latter that he began to employ now, with steely efficiency.

  “I’m not sure, I do, Professor. But if this is indeed, as important as you think it is, you had better stop playing teacher and start filling me in with the straight scoop.”

  Blinking and cringing a bit, Labate seemed a little surprised at the rebellion of his temporary student.

  “Well, I’m not sure what it is, mind you. But it appears to be something very large, and with a highly reflecting surface. Smooth enough to produce photometric peaks whenever that smooth surface faces the sun and reflects back the light. Whatever it is, it is probably engaged in some kind of slow, but regular tumbling motion—hence the regularly spaced and timed peak intervals.”

  “I see . . . and this behavior is unnatural for any known solar system bodies?”

  Labate shook his head. “There’s nothing out there that we know about with an all-wavelength better than .99, Colonel. Nothing! And don’t forget those first-look orbital elements. It has come in from a long way out. Maybe as far as Pluto.”

  Kemp looked away from the Professor, glancing absently at the banks of instruments and displays within the Lunar Observatory. Beyond the instruments yawned a large observation bay window which presented a view of the sloping shelf upon which the Observatory rested. Spreading out into the main depression of the crater lay the sprawl of dome-structures which comprised the Lunar Colony. Beyond the Colony, the short horizon of the moon edged out the velvet-black sky. Somewhere out there, thought Kemp, an object was hurtling towards the sun . . . towards mankind.