“Incorrect, there are seven.” The droid, continuing on, picked up speed as it moved along. Another set of hatchway doors swung up then closed. Two identical-looking stubby droids were making their way toward Retention 4. He saw onboard were tools such as a shovel and an empty container. Progress. For the first time, the ship didn’t seem quite so deserted. Glancing back into the aft hold, Cameron was able to make out the two bright headlight beams on his F150. He then debated if it even mattered; not like he’d be taking the truck out for a spin any time soon. Still, he thought it best to save the battery.
He made his way to the truck, yanked opened the stubborn driver-side door, and turned off the headlights. Then, sliding all the way onto the seat, he placed his hands on the steering wheel, suddenly realizing the truck was his anchor. The only real connection he had to a life back on Earth. He was thankful it was there with him now. “Sorry I called you an old heap … We’re in this together, old girl.”
A loud alarm klaxon began to wail above, prompting Cameron to cover his ears with his hands. He then felt the truck’s rocking back and forth on its suspension. His stomach, practically leaping into his throat, felt like he was dropping fast in an elevator. That’s a major decrease of gravity … Are we no longer in outer space?
Chapter 15
Heather awoke to an annoying, repetitive, scraping sound. Squinting through overly bright florescent lights, she instantly knew where she was—lying in a bed in a hospital. And undoubtedly, it was Birch Memorial. She closed her eyes again, wanting to return to her dream.
She and Cam were paddling a canoe. An early morning mist surrounded them, and the chilly air felt wonderful—invigorating. Sitting behind her, he spoke in a hushed voice—as if he didn’t want to disturb the sanctity of the morning’s quiet stillness. God … how she loved his voice.
“So, you’re not going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise …”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“You’ll like this one,” he promised.
“What’s in the basket?”
“Our lunch and a few other things.”
“Can I look?” she asked, surprised by her own growing anticipation because—at some deeper level—she knew that this was a dream.
“Not yet.”
She stopped paddling, listening to the soothing lapping of water against the side of the canoe, then said, “I hope where you’re taking me … it’ll be just the two of us there. Our own time together.”
A chuckle came behind her. Heather, glancing over her shoulder, found Cam smiling back at her—gazing at her in that certain way. She could get lost in those brown eyes. She felt safe, and inner warmth spread deep within her chest.
There was light shining through the fog, casting golden sunbeams down on a small island up ahead with a sandy beach. Everything was aglow in the sun’s radiance. The island looked welcoming—heavenly. Yes … that was where he was taking her.
Then the annoying scraping sound returned, taking on an even more pronounced, more vigorous, cadence. Heather opened her eyes and glared at the man, sitting in the chair beside the bed. She watched as he licked the last bit of chocolate pudding from his spoon before setting the plastic cup down onto the nightstand. He looked uncomfortable. A stark-white fiberglass cast encased the entirety of his outstretched right leg, a pair of crutches angled against the bedframe.
“Dad?”
Sheriff Bart Christy leaned forward, taking one of her hands in both of his. The worry in his eyes scared her.
“What happened? How did I get here?”
“Hey, Squeak. First of all … you’re going to be fine.” Smiling, he added, “But I guess we’re wearing matching casts.”
She felt it then: hard fiberglass against her skin that enveloped her own right leg. “You’re kidding me … Ugh … I have a broken leg? How did I break my leg? How did …” Then it all came back to her—an instant rush of wild images and frightening sounds. Her breath suddenly caught in her chest as she began to relive those last moments, when the thing—the creature—charged directly for them. She pictured its disgusting legs, churning up the snow—and the horrible oversized head, all that syrupy saliva caught-up in the wind.
“It veered away from us. I remember praying and thanking God for saving us. For not letting it trample us to death beneath it. But I guess one of its trailing legs, or tentacles … whatever they were … hit the car. Toppled the car over like it was a toy.” She looked at her father, noticing his grave expression. Then she remembered Ginger. “Oh God… Ginger, is she …”
Her father looked confused.
“You mean dead?” came a female voice.
Heather, unaware she was in a double-occupancy room, leaned forward and turned. Her body complained as she shifted her weight. Now seeing Ginger—apparently okay and sitting upright in bed—Heather laughed, tears filling her eyes. “Ginger!”
Her freckled-faced, copper-headed friend grimaced back. Raising her left arm off a stack of pillows, she studied the new cast with distain.
“It hurts like a mother…. And I won’t be able to work for … like weeks. And my car is toast!”
Heather nodded, then tried to match her friend’s look of discouragement but couldn’t hold it. She smiled, and eventually Ginger smiled back, too. “We’ll always be able to say we survived the beast … right?”
Ginger shrugged and nodded half-heartedly.
She saw her father, now struggling to his feet, grab for his crutches. “I have to go. The two of you will be fine. You’ll be sorer than hell, but otherwise just fine.”
“Where is it, Dad? Did they kill it?” Heather asked.
“No. Apparently the creature has the ability to dig … crawl deep beneath the ground. It’s now somewhere underneath Larksburg. Scientists … experts … are flying in from California.”
“Hon?” he queried, seeing she’d stopped listening to him.
“Dad, what did they find up on the mountain? At the Jericho site?”
“Well … they found truck tracks in the snow. Could be from an F150. But no truck. Sorry, no sign of Cameron up there,” he added.
“Anything else?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Looks as though the beast started its trek down the mountain from that same area. And something else too; something huge was also up there … left an impression in the snow. I’m not saying what it was, exactly, but … well … yes, it could have been some kind of spacecraft. According to my deputy, there’s a series of blast marks on the ground.”
Could it actually be true? She wondered. Heather swallowed hard, trying to come to terms with that possibility. Did Cam, somehow, get whisked away on a fucking spaceship?
Again, her father was speaking: “The place is crawling with government people. Closed off now from the public, even from my people. But let’s not jump to any hasty conclusions, Squeak. Okay?”
“What happens if that … thing … comes up out of the ground? What are we going to do?”
The sheriff looked down at his daughter. Not having a suitable answer, he offered her a half-hearted smile, then left.
Chapter 16
As the ship suddenly listed to one side, Cameron felt the truck’s tires begin to skitter across the deck. The F150’s tail end swung fast around until it knocked up against the bulkhead. He heard the ship’s engines, now straining louder. Still holding onto the steering wheel, all he could do was wait for whatever was to come next.
He listened as things scraped outside on the fuselage and instantly knew they were branches snapping—trees breaking. The Primion was crash landing! Tightening his grip, his teeth clenched, Cameron thought there still might be a silver lining—just maybe the spaceship was landing back on Earth. They’d only been in outer space for several hours. What he’d read about space travel was that any possibly inhabitable planets would be light-years away. And, according to Einstein, traveling faster than the speed of light—in excess of 186,000 mil
es per second—was pretty much impossible. Yes, perhaps XI had changed its decision—had turned the ship around and was trying to land.
The clattering noise outside hit a loud crescendo and then an expected hard impact ensued. It was a teeth-jarring hit. He felt the Primion bounce up and then thump down hard again onto the ground and slide for a long time before beginning to lose forward momentum. Then, suddenly, the vessel dropped down hard one more time.
Cameron pushed open the truck’s driver-side door and climbed out. Behind him, he could see where his vehicle had impacted with the bulkhead; the back left taillight took the brunt of the hit. He recalled something Chuck Yeager once said: If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing.
* * *
By the time Cameron reached the other end of the ship and was descending the stairway onto the bridge, he was still hopeful they’d returned to Earth. But with one glance at the myriad of virtual holographic displays popping up around the compartment, seemingly indiscriminately, it was evident by the vivid landscape panoramas that they were on an alien planet. Either that, or planet Earth was now forested with ginormous aqua-colored trees.
Cameron looked about the bridge for the matte black droid but didn’t see it. Turning all the way around, he called out, “XI … you here?” He waited for an answer and, tilting his head, listening, wondered at what point the ship’s engines had been turned off. Or did they just quit, during their not so gentle landing? For the first time, he noticed, there in the dark recesses on either side of the descending stairway, two passageways. The area was so poorly illuminated he hadn’t noticed them before. So much of the Primion seemed to be in a sleep state.
Opting for the passage on the left side of the stairs, Cameron proceeded into what could best be described as a hall of glowing doughnuts. Taller than him, over seven feet in height, each one stood upright; he could see straight through the circular doughnut hole centers. They were situated one after the other, lined up along the curvature of the compartment. He counted ten—in that section of the compartment alone; each one softly glowed with a faint bluish cast. Like the bridge, the compartment was oval-shaped. Only this oval was elongated, port to starboard, while the bridge’s oval was elongated in a bow to stern direction.
As Cameron’s eyes adjusted in the low lighting, he slowly discerned more of the compartment’s advanced technology—strange things that glowed and pulsed and blinked. Then he heard faint sounds, similar to that of people whispering. There was an unmistakable synthetic component to the noise. At the rear mid-point of the compartment was a closed hatchway, which led somewhere astern. Cameron, after taking a few strides, found if he continued on he’d end up coming out on the far side of the stairs. Bringing his hand up, he tentatively placed it on the nearest glowing donut. The static electricity arising from that one action made the hairs on his arms stand upright. Each hair on his head was doing the same thing. Yet that paled in significance to what he was now hearing. Not so much hearing as … understanding. Like hundreds, maybe even thousands, of whispering voices being fine-tuned—brought into focus. But the voices weren’t strung together, as in a sentence—nor were they in any Earth language, such as English, Russian, or Spanish. He didn’t know which language it specifically was, only that he was able to understand some of it.
Back in high school, Cameron took to computer languages like a duck to water. Transitioning first into college, then the internship, he was far above average in both understanding and the implementation of computer programming languages. They just came easy to him. Perhaps tied somehow with how his brain retained stupid trivia. All he knew was jumping from Ajax, Ruby on Rails, Java, Python, HTML, CSS, C++, even Assembly, held little difficulty for him.
What Cameron did know in that moment was that he was on the receiving end of tremendous influxes. Some kind of highly advanced computer code he was able to decipher—to some degree. The problem was so many conversations, all happening at once, made it hard to track what was being relayed. Zeroing his attention on only one particular stream proved helpful. Although the other information streams were still there, they’d faded out somewhat—taking a backseat within his consciousness.
He understood that the Primion’s AI was communicating, in the process of itemizing a damage report regarding the significant damage in multiple ship systems. Internal and external mechanical apparatuses had withstood catastrophic destruction. Cameron didn’t like the sound of that. Didn’t like its dire implications.
He realized now he was standing within the brain center of the ship—the core of the artificial intelligence. Without any further thought, Cameron asked out loud, “Can I help out with any of those … repairs?”
There was a momentary break, or pause, within the particular info-stream before a pleasant, albeit stern sounding, female voice answer came back. “At an assigned level four, you do not have the appropriate hierarchical clearance to offer assistance.” With that said, Cameron could no longer decipher any of the whispering sounds. His disappointment quickly turned to anger at himself. Damn it! If he’d just kept his mouth, his thoughts, to himself, he undoubtedly would have picked up, learned, all kinds of new things pertaining to both the ship and his overall situation here.
Removing his hand from the cool, glowing, surface, he let out an audible sigh, still disgusted-with-himself. He asked, “XI … where are you?”
The response was instantaneous. “XI is close by.”
Cameron spun around, found the droid hovering close at head-level, its dark matte surface almost indistinguishable in the dim surroundings. “Where are we? Where have you landed the ship?” he asked.
“Planet name is Sang-Morang … located within the Lorient star cluster.”
“How far are we from Earth?”
“What you would equate as 10.5 light-years distance.”
“So this ship … the Primion can travel faster than the speed of light?”
Cameron watched as the droid began to shudder before dropping down to his knee level. It then spun 360 degrees, first going a little topsy-turvy before it rose back to eye-level again. Obviously, the droid continued to have technical issues, though XI answered Cameron’s question as if nothing had happened.
“No … traveling in excess of the speed of light is not possible. The Primion transmigrated through four Slip Bands to accommodate this segment of the voyage.”
Cameron, surprised by the amount of information the typically tightlipped droid was now offering up, asked, “What’s a Slip Band?”
“A Slip Band is a naturally occurring space/time pinch—one that occurs within the very fabric of space itself. Once detected and analyzed for suitability, it is through these spatial fold-type anomalies, which are highly common throughout the universe, great distances can be traversed … almost instantaneously.”
“That’s actually really cool to know,” Cameron said. “Anyway … um … so you crashed landed the Primion on this Sang-Morang world? Why here? And why crash at all?”
“The aggregate levels of Xenon are exceptionally high on this planet, so replenishing ship reserves will be relatively quick, Cameron.”
That was weird. He couldn’t remember the nasty little droid using his given name before. And by far, this was the longest, most in-depth conversation he’d had with the thing. Something definitely was up.
“And the ship can grab the Xenon gas out of the atmosphere?” Cameron asked.
“That is correct.”
“Yeah … I’m sure the Primion is capable of doing that kind of thing, without a doubt.” Cameron added, “So why such a rough landing? From what I heard, the ship has been heavily damaged as a result of it. Are we stuck here?”
“The ship can be repaired,” XI said without really answering his question. “You offered to help. You and several specialty bots will assist in this process.”
“Oh, I will, will I?” And there it was! The droid only had been playing nice because it wanted something in return. Apparently, alien droids wer
e not above a little manipulation here and there. “We’ll have to see,” Cameron said. “What is it I’d have to do? Will it be dangerous?”
“It could be … Yes, there is the possibility of danger. Environmental conditions outside the fuselage may indeed be hazardous.”
“You mean like the air outside … the atmosphere?”
“No. The atmosphere here is similar enough to Earth. Your physiology will not be impacted in a negative way.”
No big surprise, his conversation with XI was becoming annoying. Why couldn’t the droid just answer his questions? But getting mad wasn’t going to help, so he offered up a crooked smile and asked, “So why is it dangerous outside?”
“Indigenous life forms. Sensor analyses of the collective bio-organisms place a high probability of the presence of multiple carnivore species.”
“Like man-eaters?” he asked.
XI didn’t respond.
“Sounds like the specialty droids you spoke of should do the repairs. Maybe I can help out from inside the ship?”
“No, Cameron. The specialty droids onboard the Primion are incapable of performing certain aspects of the necessary repair work. Be assured you will be outfitted with a protective environmental suit. If you would like to expedite the timeframe … the time spent on this planet, you should assist with the repairs.”
“Nah … I don’t think so. You’ll have to do it yourself,” Cameron said.
“Unacceptable. Leaving this planet is impossible until repairs have been made and the depleted Xenon levels augmented.”
Cameron shrugged. “Uh huh … Tell me, how long would it take the bots to make the repairs on their own? Like, based on going at it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? How many days … or weeks, would that entail?”
XI said, “Without your assistance, the Primion will never leave this world.”
The thought of being marooned here, for the rest of his life, was more than a little sobering. There had to be another way. Then something occurred to him. “If I help, you’d take me back to Earth … right?”
Ship Wrecked: Stranded on an alien world Page 8