by John Zakour
There was silence for a nano or two. K-999 looked up at SC. “Can we activate the Explorer?”
“Yes, I have their access codes,” SC said.
“Good — then do it,” GiS said.
“I can’t,” SC said.
“Why not?” GiS asked.
“We’re too far away,” Elvin and Lobi both said.
“Oh,” GiS and K-999 said.
“True,” SC said. “I need to be within 1,000 kilometers before I can transmit to the Explorer. Even then I may only be able to activate certain systems. It depends on the damage to the Explorer and its computer system.”
“Can you override their system with your own?” Kymm asked.
“I could, but…”
“If the TVTrons have a backdoor virus on the system it would infect SC,” Chriz said.
“Correct,” SC said. “The only way to assure that doesn’t happen is to…”
“Totally erase the old system and reload SC,” Chriz answered.
“How long would that take?” GiS asked.
“I would estimate fourteen hours,” SC said.
“The Explorer would be totally dead while the transfer was going on,” I said. “Right?”
Elvin and Lobi just nodded.
“Okay, then that’s our backup plan,” GiS said.
“I agree,” K-999. “I have a bad feeling about hanging around here for too long.”
“So what’s the primary plan then?” I asked, though I knew I shouldn’t.
GiS put his arm around me. “We’re going to fly over to Explorer and check her out.”
“Oh,” I said meekly. “Sorry I asked.”
Chapter 14
My squad, GiS and I were in my shuttle flying toward the Explorer. While it was still way cool to be flying in space on an actual mission it wasn’t quite as subzero cool as it was the first time. I don’t know if it was because we were flying toward a potential trap or if I was just getting used to the idea of flying actual missions. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t as thrilled as before. That didn’t mean I wasn’t just as determined, though, to get the job done.
I was anxious to get to the bottom of what that life sign was on the Explorer. Even it was trap I wanted to get it over with. This was one of those times where the anticipation and the lack of knowing what we were getting into was the hardest part of the mission.
“Don’t worry Baxter, it will be all right,” GiS said in his most calming tone. I had to give him credit for picking up on my tenseness. Either he was a lot more observant than I gave him credit for, or I was a lot worse at hiding my fears than I thought.
The Explorer was now clearly in our view screen. It was just sitting there dark and lifeless in space. It looked very uninviting.
“We are now within 3,000 kilometers of Explorer,” SC said.
“Okay, Baxter, start slowing our approach now,” GiS order.
I cut the forward thrusters. When you are flying in zero gravity you can’t just jam on the brakes and instantly stop. To stop you basically need to slow down and then use reverse thrusters to neutralize your forward progress. I would let the ship coast for the next 2,000 kilometers, gradually using the stabilizers to bring her to a complete stop.
We could feel the ship’s forward momentum slowing. The Explorer was still growing in our view screen but not nearly as fast as before.
“Reverse thrusters now,” SC said.
I pressed the reverse thrust button. The reverse thrusters fired. I slowly eased up the button. The shuttle came to a complete stop. The Explorer was looming dead ahead of us.
GiS smiled at me though he tried not to show it.
“We are 900 kilometers away,” Elvin said.
“Confirmed,” SC said. “We are now within range for me to broadcast access codes to the Explorer.”
“Begin broadcast,” GiS said.
“Confirmed,” SC said.
We all looked at the Explorer. At first nothing happened. Then a couple of the lights above the landing area blinked on. They weren’t much, but they were a start.
“Is that it?” GiS asked.
“Wait for it,” SC said.
One by one, more lights on the Explorer blinked to life, starting from the bottom and working their way up. Not all the lights came on, but at least half of them did. It still didn’t look all that inviting but at least it didn’t look dead anymore.
“How’s that?” SC said.
“Is that all you can do?” GiS asked.
“Yes.”
“In that case it will do,” GiS said.
“I’ve also got life support going,” SC said.
“That’s good,” I said. “Now can you open the landing bay door?”
“Of course,” SC said. There was a pause. “Slight problem.”
“Can you elaborate?” I asked.
“Yes,” SC said.
We waited.
“Well?” GiS asked.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” SC said.
“What’s the good news?” Zenna asked.
“I have gravity up in the Explorer and working at 75 per-cent, I have some lights working and life support working on minimal.”
“If that’s the good news, what’s the bad?” I asked.
“Well,” SC said slowly. “I can only get the bay door open 25 percent. Plus I can’t activate any of the landing bay bots. For that matter I can’t activate any of the bots aboard.”
There was more silence.
“So we’ll do it the old-fashioned way, without bots,” Zenna said. “I’m sure back before bots, people landed on light-speed ships without bots.”
Okay, her words didn’t exactly make total sense, yet somehow they made enough sense. We were able to do this without bots. Sure, bots helped stop us. Sure, bots turned us around. Sure, bots loaded us with fuel. All of those were useful functions but we could get by without them.
“The shuttle can still fit in the door?” I asked.
“With over two meters to spare on each side,” SC said.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
I looked over at GiS. He nodded and pointed forward. I started up the engines and eased her forward. It was funny. I was in a hurry to reach the Explorer, yet I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to get it over with, to prove that I could do it. But I was also a little worried that I was in over my head. Landing on a mostly dead Explorer with the door mostly closed! Was I nuts?
I took a deep breath as we drew nearer and nearer to the Explorer. No, I wasn’t crazy, nuts or loono. I was a galactic scout. I had a job to do and I was going to do it.
“This is going to be tricky,” GiS said, not being all that helpful. “But quite doable,” he added, trying to be helpful.
Normal procedure is to cut power 200 kilometers from your landing target and to drift in. Despite the fact that I was actually going quite slowly (by outer space speeds), I cut the power at 300 kilometers. I wanted to be extra careful. We didn’t have to get there fast. We just needed to get there in one piece.
“You do realize there will be no computer assist on this landing,” Elvin said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said as we closed the gap between us and the Explorer. “Computers are way overrated.”
“Hey!” SC said.
“Nothing personal, SC,” I said as we closed in on the Explorer.
Phew. There wasn’t a lot of space. I was coming in a bit high. Normally there’s no problem coming in a little high but this time there was no room for error. I lowered my ship’s nose, then leveled her out. I held my breath (as I’m sure my crew as doing too).
The shuttle’s nose entered the Explorer. So far so good. The body of the shuttle cleared the door; there were no explosions and no sparks. That was a good sign. We were in the landing bay. Since gravity was at 75 percent, the landing brakes should work just fine. I hoped.
I pressed the brake button. The shuttle slowed, but not as much as I thought it should have. We slid over my landing mark toward the far w
all. The shuttle was slowly slowing down. The shuttle was going to stop. The question was, was it going to stop before it hit the wall?
We skidded across the floor.
“SC, are we going to stop?” I asked.
“Before we hit the wall?” SC asked, not being helpful.
“Preferably…” GiS said.
“The odds are good,” SC said, slowly. “Three to one for.”
“I agree, “ Elvin said.
Those odds weren’t good enough for me. The landing bay was empty so I had room to maneuver, so I figured I might as well use it. I pulled the control stick hard to the left, reversing the shuttle’s direction. The shuttle jerked as it went to the left, but the movement not only gave us more room to move but it also slowed us down.
The shuttle rolled for a few hundred meters then came to a stop. Not the best landing. But it worked.
I looked at my crew. “Are you alright?”
Elvin and Zenna nodded.
“We’re fine,” GiS said. “Though the landing could have been smoother!”
“I thought you did a really good job, Baxter,” Zenna said.
We all unharnessed and stood up. I stretched a bit. GiS walked over to one of the shuttle’s side panels. He pressed a few buttons with his feet. The side panel popped open. He pulled out five long rods — stun rods.
“Since we don’t know what we’re getting into I want us to at least be able to defend ourselves,” GiS said.
He walked up to Zenna and handed her a stun energy rod.
“Thanks,” she said.
He walked up to Elvin and handed him a rod. Elvin hesitated.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to have weapons?”
“We can’t have lethal weapons. These energy rods are locked on stun so they are only lethal to machines,” GiS said.
Elvin smiled weakly. He opened his hand. GiS gave him a stun rod.
GiS tossed me a rod. I must have looked too eager as I caught it.
“Remember these are for emergency use only,” GiS cautioned.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said as I walked toward the shuttle’s door.
“It’s…” GiS started to say.
“…my job to worry,” Zenna, Elvin and I, said for him.
I reached for the door open button. I stopped. I looked up at SC.
“Are you sure life support is functioning?” I asked.
“Of course,” SC said calmly. “Not at full capacity but at enough capacity so you’ll be fine as long as you don’t exert yourselves too much.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said. I started to open the door again. I stopped again.
“What is it now?” SC asked.
“How are we going to communicate with you while we’re on the ship?”
“I’ve patched SC into our intersquad sleeve communicators,” Elvin said. “We can talk to him and he can talk to us.”
“Are you happy now?” SC asked.
“Yep,” I said. I popped open the door.
Chapter 15
We all dropped out of the shuttle down the Explorer’s landing bay. It had an eerie quiet about it. No bots running around. Just enough light to cast some freaky shadows and to let us see where we were going — barely.
We all kept our stun rods drawn as we slowly walked toward the elevator door. Our footsteps echoed off the vast emptiness of the room.
Elvin looked at a mini-scanner-computer he wore on his wrist. “Okay, the med lab is on the seventeenth floor,” Elvin said.
We reached the elevator door. It didn’t open.
“SC, can you activate the elevator?” GiS asked.
“Yes,” SC said through our communicators.
We all waited. The door still didn’t open.
“SC, will you activate the elevator?” GiS asked, exasperated.
“You don’t want that,” SC said.
“Why not?”
“Because in order to activate the elevator lift I would have to deactivate life support and gravity,” SC said.
“Why didn’t you tell us that before?”
“You didn’t ask.”
We all shook our heads in confusion. Well, all of us except Zenna. SC was acting a bit stranger than usual. My guess was that SC wasn’t really designed to be powering a Space Sphere. Controlling two of them had put extra demand on his logic processors, making him a bit more flaky. At least I hoped that was the reason.
“I suggest you do this the old-fashioned way,” SC said. “There is a man-powered-vertical-rung-lift that runs along the left side the elevator.”
Sure enough, on closer examination the wall on to the left of the lift did appear to have a removable panel. Elvin tapped the panel with his rod. It gave off a hollow sound.
Elvin ran his hand up and down the wall.
“I can’t seem to find a switch to give us access,” he said.
Zenna stepped up to the wall.
“Here — it needs a lady’s touch,” she said.
Zenna grabbed hold of the panel. There were no grip bars or slots but Zenna made two by literally digging her hands into the wall. She groaned for a second, then pulled back, pulling the panel off the wall. She turned and tossed the panel into the bay area. She rubbed her hands together cleaning off the dust. She smiled.
“A woman’s work is never done,” she said happily.
Behind the panel was a small room not much bigger than a closet. There was also a ladder leading straight up, way up.
We all walked into the room. We looked up. All we could see was ladder.
“Each level has exactly 125 rungs,” SC said briskly. “When you reach a level there is a door that is clearly marked that leads to the floor. I suggest you start now.”
GiS looked up at the ladder and smiled. “I haven’t had a workout like this in a while!” he said enthusiastically. “This will be good for us.”
“It will be like climbing to the top of the old Empire State building,” Elvin said.
GiS pointed to the ladder. “Zenna, you lead the way because we might need your muscle to open the door.”
“Right,” Zenna said. She grabbed the ladder and started moving up.
“Baxter and Elvin, you two are next. I’ll follow up the rear. Just in case I have to give one of you a little push.”
I grabbed the ladder and looked up. All I could see was more ladder. I decided it was best not to look. I started up.
“Remember, don’t look down,” GiS shouted.
* * * *
After about an hour’s worth of climbing, we had reached the tenth floor. Zenna was a trooper as always. She didn’t show any signs of tiring. Her only concern was that she had to be careful not to fart with all of us behind her like we were.
GiS of course was eating this up. He loved it. Of course it’s easy to climb when you can grab the rungs with either your feet or your hands.
I had to give Elvin credit. He hated heights. Yet he was hanging in there. He was sweating like a pig but he was keeping up with us without much prodding from GiS. He was also working out ways that SC would be able to activate the elevator for the ride down without having to deactivate gravity or life support.
As for me, I was much more worried about the boredom killing me than anything else. The climb was strenuous, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Like some dead philosopher once said, whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Part of me, though, was craving action. The other part of me, the smaller, more cautious, part had a feeling that soon there would be plenty of action.
* * * *
We climbed and climbed. Each level had a little walk pad and door marked with the floor number on it. We would take a brief two-minute break on every fifth pad. After about another hour (that felt a lot longer) we reached the walk pad for the seventeenth floor.
We all stood on the pad. Elvin looked at his scanner.
“The energy reading is down this hall,” he said.
“Any extra energy readings?” GiS asked.
E
lvin shook his head no.
Zenna pushed the door open. We all peered down the hallway. It didn’t look like much, a long dark hall, dotted by doors.
“The med lab is at the very end of the hall,” Elvin said.
“Of course it is,” I said. “Anyplace else wouldn’t be as creepy.”
We started walking down the hallway. Zenna, GiS and I had our weapons ready. Elvin was working out some calculations on his scanner.
“Are you still picking up energy readings, Elvin?” GiS asked as we moved closer to the door in question.
“Huh?” Elvin said as GiS’s words pulled him away from his wrist scanner. He pressed another button. “Uh, yes,” Elvin said.
We continued down the hallway until we came to the door. GiS looked at the access pad on the door.
“SC, do you know what the door’s access code is?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?” GiS asked anxiously.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“The door is not locked.”
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“You never asked.”
GiS just shook his head and mumbled, “Computers…”
I’m pretty sure SC mumbled back, “Chimps…” But we all ignored it.
GiS pressed the open button. The door sprang open. Sure enough, the room was a med room. In the middle of the room was a stasis bed. We were all familiar enough with stasis beds; every ship had them. They would put you in a state of almost suspended animation. In the old days these beds, which looked pretty much like a standard regulation bed enclosed in a big tube, were used to help pass the time during long space flights. These days, the beds are used for healing. It has been found that the body heals much more rapidly while in near suspended state.
So the stasis bed wasn’t anything special. What was special was what was in the bed. Or should I say, who was in the bed. It was a blue-skinned, blue-haired girl, wearing a long dark green dress with sequins on it. She looked like she was about our age.
We all approached the bed cautiously. None of us had ever seen an alien before. At least not this close.
“Zow! An Aquarian!” Zenna said.