Edge of Revelation

by David John West

  Professor Kitteridge was about to hang up when, as a passing thought, he asked the clerk if there had ever been any strange happenings at the Lodge house.

  “Oh yes,” she replied, “there have always been things going on at that house. You get periods when nobody notices very much and then several things all at once. I remember one time there was a story about the ghost of a gardener. Not many actually saw him but they say that you could hear his wheelbarrow going ‘squeak…squeak… squeak’.”

  “He was a very slow gardener, then,” said the Professor smiling, “As I would have liked to hear it going ‘squeak, squeak, squeak’.”

  The clerk added, “There was one time one of the neighbours was out jogging. It was early in the morning and it was misty. He came up on the Lodge and was terrified to see a figure in monk’s robes gliding by the hedge. Then it turned out that the figure was the gardener who was living there and he had decided to become a monk so he was trying out his robes!”

  Professor Kitteridge was thinking that at least if all of this were true then it was nothing to be fearful of, other than it was another case where life as he had thought it to be, neat and tidy in a scientific way, seemed to have changed forever.

  SIX

  Rakul MuneMei’s flotilla of starships containing the additional Jarlankan troops burst from DMF drive through the warp node nearest to the Spargar space station buried amongst the rocks in Saturn’s rings. Dust motes burned like golden sparks from the appearing craft, illuminated by the bright yellow star Sol – Sun to Earth people – plus its musical identifier to the navigators from the rest of the galaxy. The Sun shone large and bright beneath and to the right of Rakul’s arrowhead-shaped flagship. All five craft had exited DMF drive outside the collision risk zone derived from the uncertainty of overlapping destination coordinates of their space drives, ten kilometres apart at a distance of 200 light years. Saturn’s massive orb, girdled with its golden ring of icy debris coruscating in the Sun’s heavenly glow, hung spectacularly dead ahead. Planet Earth was a mere speck invisible beyond Saturn’s bulk. This hid their arrival from the prying telescopes and monitoring instruments of the Earthmen; the Jarlankan flotilla arrived uncloaked to present themselves as friendly ships amongst the other Spargar traffic servicing their space station. Rakul watched the safe arrival of the other four vessels on his big screens. The ships were magnified as they approached the flagship two to each side and manoeuvred to join one long side each to his ship and one to each other. The five ships were soon joined together forming one craft, which was a massive delta wing shape. Rakul’s flagship formed the central axis and two additional craft on each side formed the extended wings. As soon as they were completely joined, the ports could be opened to allow the Jarlankans to move between the five vessels that had now become one, and Rakul could navigate as one huge craft.

  Rakul hailed the Spargar station and informed them he would pass straight on past them and Saturn to journey on to planet Earth. The Spargar controllers on the station logged the call with a mixture of disappointment and quiet relief. Rakul’s reputation was for disruption of Spargar regulations but his celebrity aroused curiosity in even the most process-oriented of Spargar administrators. At least they would not be troubled with all the detailed ceremonies attending a Rakul’s visit to a Spargar outpost.

  Rakul welcomed the five commanders of his fleet vessels once the delta craft was formed and the internal ports were unsealed so they could join him. They greeted him and each other by clasping right hands to forearms. Rakul then invited them to sit in flight chairs set in a circle at the point of the prow of the flagship where the forward-looking screens showed their stately progress around Saturn’s bulk. The commanders, three male, two female, were the peak of the military castes of Jarlanka’s military academies but they comfortably accepted Rakul’s leadership, enjoying the warmth of spirit he affected toward his direct reports.

  “I have been good and checked in with the Spargar minions hiding in their station,” Rakul smiled and waved airily towards Saturn’s broad rings, large on the screens, the disguised space station picked out for their convenience in green outline by the ship’s computer. The station itself was imperceptible to the naked eye, looking like an agglomeration of debris hidden among the massed ice rocks of the flattened disc 300,000 kilometres in diameter yet only one kilometre thick around the planet. “We won’t waste more time calling in, we will progress on to Earth with all speed. We will trace back to Omeyn MuneMei’s last-known position where we will question the Spargar local command, incompetent as they clearly are, and put any locals to the question as we see fit till we find where she has been taken. We will raise a little hell as we go along, beat the bushes and see what we can stir up.” The commanders basked in this promise of real action unconstrained by the galactic treaties and Spargar rules that had constrained their warlike nature in the past. Rakul was a leader who knew the bounds of Spargar high command but he had outgrown it and operated with a freedom not dared by others. He could only be stopped by being taken out of action physically and legend said that was a monumental task. In any event the four commanders were convinced this mission would be the highlight of their careers whether they survived to tell their offspring or crashed and burned in a ball of fire. It mattered little to them whichever way.

  The flagship console advised Rakul the course to planet Earth was prepared, looping round Saturn’s great mass to slingshot them on to Earth’s trajectory. Rakul advised that deceleration and arrival should be cloaked; they would approach their destination from the eastern seaboard of the United Kingdom over the North Sea and find a landing site close to the missing Omeyn MuneMei’s Cambridge headquarters. Rakul and his commanders relaxed and settled for the short journey to Earth. Their flight seats enfolded them completely in readiness for the next stage of their journey. This wrapping protected them from the gravitational forces and deadly radiation of deep space. The conjoined delta wing lumbered past Saturn, accelerating gently yet constantly until the craft thrust away from the planet dominating their port side view, and was slung out into starry blackness. The forward screens magnified a tiny blue planet attended by a slender silver crescent moon dead ahead.

  *

  Rakul’s ship arrived in Earth’s atmosphere soon after dark taking a course from the north polar region over the stormy seas between the cliffs of Scotland and Norway. The flight seats unwrapped their guests who performed the stretching exercises to reanimate their clamped bodies. The ship’s screens advised the command group that the land masses hulking on both coasts were sparsely populated. The seas themselves contained a fair amount of surface boats plus a number of stationary platforms, presumably for energy production or mineral extraction. These were of small importance to the Jarlankans and they slowed to local aircraft speed before making landfall in the notch of the coast called the Wash, giving access to the eastern United Kingdom closest to their destination. Rakul issued several drones to test the environment as they progressed from seas to land. A few metres across, these highly manoeuvrable spheres zipped into the seas and ahead of their spacecraft sampling the Earth’s atmosphere and testing its security before reporting back to the ship. Rakul consulted the summary and was surprised by the biodiversity of this planet still in its relative infancy. The seas were teeming with life, the land bursting with tall trees that were the lungs of the world, bringing clean air to the people and wildlife. It occurred to Rakul for the first time that this would be an ideal home world for himself, part of the Spargar Empire but far enough from planet Spargan to allow his people to thrive, away from the close attention of the Omeyns. Jarlanka, by comparison, was an older world, dry with red dust offering scant nutrients for sparse firs and stunted fruit bushes, whereas Earth’s plants grew large and spreading on fertile ground, competing with each other for the young sunlight. Yes indeed, there may be a whole new dimension to his visit to planet Earth beyond the simple task the Omeyns had set for him.

/>   *

  Rakul’s craft crossed the quiet East Anglian coast over sparse street lights of a small town adjacent to the Queen of England’s Sandringham estate located in north Norfolk. He set course for the Thetford Forest site, the last-known location of the missing Omeyn MuneMei he was tasked with recovering. His ship travelled cloaked over the sparsely populated agricultural and forested lands studded with many lakes to the east of the Great Ouse river. He deployed more drones that foraged ahead and took particular interest in the Royal Air Force base at Marham, testing their defences and sparking their detection systems into life. Guards on the base raised the alarm and filed eyewitness reports of silvery balls flying at remarkable speeds through their airspace. These reports soon found their way into David Harrier’s Logistics Liaison network.

  Air traffic control did not see the massive cloaked spacecraft passing slowly directly overhead the air base, Jarlankan eyes curiously examining the primitive Tornado aircraft of 138 Expeditionary Air Wing stationed there. These aircraft were analysed with interest but they carried no obvious threat to the invisible Jarlankan spacecraft. Two of the fighters were scrambled at the detection of the strange random UFOs that were the drone outriders of Rakul’s ship. It was far from the first time that the pilots had been dispatched to intercept such UFOs and they had little confidence they would learn anything from their forays even if they caught a meaningful look at the intruders.

  Past the military airfield and on towards the Thetford Forest site, Rakul chose to decloak the space craft. This was very much against Spargar regulations and galactic treaties concerning the behaviour of more advanced races’ visits to early stage developing planets. Time to start beating the bushes and see what breaks from cover, Rakul thought as his delta wing craft swept over farmland and village alike. The craft progressed at ground observation speed, little faster than a gliding bird, as the Jarlankan crew peered down through transparent walls and floors of the observation decks with their instruments and their naked eyes. They had all been briefed on the reports of the missing Omeyn and her Zarnha defenders from the remote site in the centre of Thetford Forest. They were full of anticipation as they approached the arena they knew so well in theory and now approached in reality, collecting all manner of telemetry on the local conditions.

  *

  Rod and Maggie Press were luxuriating in their hot tub at the rear of their detached house in Thetford town that backed on to the Little Ouse river. Rod had done well in his building business with the boom in local house prices that had fuelled any number of extensions and loft conversions he had built over the last few years. An influx of skilled workers from Eastern Europe met this demand with a stream of construction labourers at the right cost and Rod had managed to string together a good few years of healthy profits that had funded their spacious home and affluent lifestyle. Rod still worked long hours but he was now more the visiting foreman than the hands-on labourer he used to be when he started out. He had met Maggie in the first flush of his building business, married and grown a family in a rush and now the kids had moved out to give Rod and Maggie time and space at a relatively young age. Maggie’s appetite for the good life had grown with Rod’s business success and she was enjoying the extra good things in life. Her most recent acquisition was the hot tub and this evening they had donned swim shorts and bikini, covered up with towelling robes for the short rush from the kitchen door to the tub and opened up the cover lifter to vertical, blocking out the lights of the house. They each carried a glass of Rioja Crianza in large plastic wine glasses and turned on the hot tub lights.

  “Ooh, it’s getting chilly now, Rod,” Maggie exclaimed as she slipped off the robe and hooked it on the side of cover lifter. She flipped off her yellow flip-flops decorated with plastic daisies and quickly scaled the three steps up and over into the tub. The swirling water was pleasingly hot.“Now that is gorgeous Rod, get in quick!” she exclaimed.

  Rod followed more sedately and sat in the deep corner where the jets were most powerful. “You don’t notice the cold at all in here, love,” he said as he spread out, enjoying the quick heat feeding into his bones, which overwhelmed the cramp of the cool evening. “Look at the stars tonight, so clear,” Rod was staring into the southern skies beyond their garden fence. A light silvery mist hung over the water meadows down to the river beyond. A footpath ran along the exterior of their fence and gawking night walkers would occasionally pause to see the couple disporting themselves, especially if the hot tub lights were on and they were wine in hand. To the low south-east the constellation Orion hung impressively in the dark sky, belt stars pointing the way towards Aldebaran in the Hyades star cluster and the small blotch of the Pleiades beyond that. “Let’s do satellite spotting,” Rod said. “We should see loads tonight. Turn off the tub lights, Maggie.”

  Maggie was not so bothered about scouring the heavens for satellites but was titillated by turning off the lights and sitting in the bubbling jets in the dark. Her attention was drawn to a couple of passenger airliners passing over, red and white lights flashing.

  “Those are just planes,” Rod observed. “Satellites are moving so fast but so high up they just look like slow-moving stars. Look, there’s one, three o’clock to that bright star, moving south to north.” Maggie turned her face up to look and said she could see it; Rod was not so sure he believed her.“They seem to go either across or up–down in both directions, so many of them,” he observed.

  Maggie thought this was all too boring so she took a glug of wine, giggled and scraped long red fingernails up the leg of his shorts, tickling and exciting in equal measure. “This is a better game, Rod,” she smiled widely under lowering lashes in the hot bubbling dark.

  “Mmm, you are right there, love, but what if one of those satellites is checking us out? We wouldn’t know if we are on some big screen in some secret service headquarters, just being watched. That’s what they do, you know.” They both craned up to stare at a star-like speck tracking steadily west to east and wondered if it was watching them. As they stared, a shallow-pointed triangle of blackness emerged from the roof of the house and the hot tub cover. It obscured the star field as it spread, then the satellite they were watching disappeared into the growing triangular darkness. At first Rod thought it was a cloud, but it was too straight-edged and the rest of the sky was completely clear. The blunt triangle continued to blot out a large sector of the starry skies as it progressed directly over them.

  “What the **** is that?!” Rod exclaimed.

  “Is it a plane?” Maggie offered in a thin voice. The shape was indeed similar to the new delta winged stealth bombers that were being stationed at the nearby USAF bases.

  “It’s got to be ten times bigger than any plane I ever saw,” Rod said flatly. Suddenly they felt very vulnerable sitting in a tub of hot water in just their swim wear. The craft continued south until the sky directly above was covered by intense darkness. Soon the whole delta wing shape emerged from the outline of the house as a totally black symmetrical mass, almost like a triangular hole cut through the rest of the starry sky. It slipped slowly away from their house roof and the stars emerged again in a shallow arrowhead line overhead as it passed. On it went towards the southerly horizon defined by the orange glow of streetlights hanging over trees and houses. The moving shape was indeed massive; they would later describe it to the authorities as being the same shape as one of the chevrons from the logo of the oil company of the same name.

  “Should we get out, Rod? We might not be safe,” Maggie was genuinely frightened now, her confidence and excitement lost under the menacing silent spread of Rakul’s spacecraft. Maggie reached forward and switched on the hot tub lights to dispel the anxiety.

  “Don’t do that, Maggie!” Rod exclaimed. “They might be able to see us.” Maggie had pressed the button and the lights sprang out to display them in the tub. “Too late now. Let’s get out and back in the house!”

  Maggie stoo
d and stepped over the lip of the tub, water gushing from her down the plastic steps. Rod followed a little too fast and they collided, slipping on the bottom step and sprawling onto the surrounding lawn. Both complaining, they helped each other up and back into flip-flops and robes before scuttling back into the kitchen where Rod picked up the phone to dial the emergency number for the police.

  Rakul sat dispassionately amused on high, viewing the small town through the completely clear fuselage under the pointed prow of his spacecraft. At observation speed they were travelling so slowly they felt they were hanging in space over the meagre lights of the town. Rakul and his commanders were genuinely interested in the street plan below, small dwellings connected by roadways upon which personal transports in the form of cars occasionally navigated by forward white lights and rearward red lights. The town had no obvious geometric design, spreading out from a few larger, brighter buildings in the centre like a worn spider web. The dark line of the river slashed a drunken, wavy ‘Y’ line through the general illumination of roads and buildings.

  Rakul spotted a cerise light switching on next to a dwelling as they passed overhead. It merged into green as he watched, “Perhaps a warning signal of our presence?” he mused to his commanders. As he peered down to the new light the fuselage information systems followed his gaze and amplified the image so that Rod and Maggie’s inglorious exit from the hot tub played out from vertically above. The amusing picture turned to hilarity in Rakul’s group as the couple fell from the lower step and tangled together on the lawn, arguing furiously with each other and gesturing wildly at the craft directly overhead.

  “I fear we may have been noticed by the locals, my friends,” Rakul said to his admiring group. “We may well be in trouble again.” He rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders in mock supplication. They all imagined the conclave of the Omeyns admonishing him for such flagrant flouting of basic rules and regulations and the companionship of Rakul’s command group grew deeper with the shared comedy.