Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  Max shook his head. So did Marco.

  “It seemed to me perfectly natural to walk the way I did,” said Lita, and Ney nodded in agreement.

  The boys only shrugged at her question, looking somewhat puzzled.

  “It’s likely your PSI abilities showing themselves again, Kati,” Mikal said. “The Deflector Shield is created with energy, and persons with ESP are usually quite sensitive to energy flows. It’s a useful sensitivity to have.”

  “Maybe,” Kati allowed. “Although I have no idea if I would have picked up on it if I hadn’t already known that the shielding was there. Otherwise I might have done like anybody would, and walked by blithely, not knowing that I’d missed anything.”

  “Well, be that as it may, let us all circle back to the other side of this wood,” suggested Mikal. “Once I have the measure of the shielded field, we’ll try the little gadget that The Seabird’s Raiders acquired for us, and see if we can find out what’s been hidden in the copse.”

  Once they were back on the other side, Mikal studied the copse thoughtfully.

  “It seems to me that the deflector field is centred pretty much in the middle of the little grove,” he said after a moment. “Simmy, Lem, what’s in the trees normally?’

  “Oh, there’s a clearing there, a small one, like a play room,” replied Simmy, delighted to be of help. “There’s not even grass on it, only tree needles, and it’s hidden from the outside, so you can’t see anybody who’s there until you’re right in the trees.”

  “That’s why it was such a good place to play in,” added Lem, obviously keen to be in on the conversation.

  “Ah, a ready-made hiding place,” commented Mikal. “No wonder our un-friends grabbed it, and chased away the children.”

  He drew the Deflector Shield controller from his pocket. Kati stared at it along with all the rest of them. It was such a small object—could it really undo what had been done to the boys’ playground? The granda had assured her that it was not booby-trapped; but could she—and the rest of the group—trust that assurance? Suppose that Guzi and Dakra had access to some diabolical security feature which was not on the granda’s radar? Suppose that the copse turned into a fireball the moment Mikal pressed the button on the controller?

  Mikal pointed the slanted end towards what he judged to be the centre of the copse.

  “Wait a minute,” Kati said to him. “Shouldn’t we all be further back? Shouldn’t we all be ready to run for our lives? What if there’s some nasty fail-safe in that thing, and everything blows up in our faces the moment you activate it?”

  Mikal let his arm fall down.

  “I thought your inner rogue passed it off as clean,” he said.

  “The granda did,” Katie agreed. “But, regardless of what the granda thinks, he’s not infallible. And I’m not prepared to risk anyone’s life, especially those of a couple of kids, on his say-so.”

  “Point taken.”

  Mikal looked around at the waiting group.

  “Every one of you move back, way back,” he said then. “You too, Kati. We never made that recording yet, the one Marco suggested we make. You’ll have to take care of it, if this thing blows up in my face. And let my family know what happened to me, once you make it to Lamania.”

  He had turned to face the copse again.

  “Aren’t you going to move back with us?” Kati asked, even as she began to shoo the others away.

  “I doubt that this controller has a very wide range,” Mikal replied. “There’s no need for that; besides, booby-trapping it would be pointless if it did work at a long distance.”

  There was a sharp edge to his voice, and Kati felt sick to her stomach.

  “Buck up your backside, you woman of little faith,” the granda subvocalized to her. “He’ll be all right; all of you will be all right. I know I’m not infallible, but, girl, you’re an ESP. Don’t you think that I’d take advantage of that?”

  Kati ignored her node. Instead, she herded the troops, every one of whom was looking serious now, back about fifty feet from Mikal. She fervently hoped that the granda was right, that it was not merely being an egotistical idiot. What would she do without Mikal? How could she keep on moving without him?

  Mikal looked back to judge the distance between him and the others. When he thought that they had retreated to a safe distance, he faced the trees again, pointed the controller at them, and pressed his thumb down on the button on its side.

  For a brief moment—nothing. Then, before anyone had a chance to do much more than draw a breath, there came a loud whooshing sound, loud enough that the two small boys instinctively retreated a few steps to stand behind Max and Marco who happened to be the closest adults.

  It looked to Kati like a shimmering energy veil removed itself from the stand of trees and retreated into the little rod through its pointing end. It only took a second for it to happen; then the shimmer was gone and all was normal again.

  Lita let out an inarticulate cry, and Ney, looming tall behind Kati, gasped at the same time. Marco and Max merely stared, first at the trees, then at the rod in Mikal’s hands. Kati felt such a strong sense of relief surge through her that for a moment she could only shudder, even as Ney, always the gentleman, steadied her with a strong hand on her shoulder.

  “I told you so,” subvocalized the granda.

  Mikal laughed, threw the rod into air and caught it again. He whooped.

  “We did it!” he shouted. “Come and see the miracles done at Kati and Mikal’s Travelling Show, all you children of all ages!”

  “Man!” cried Marco. “That’s quite some little gadget you’ve got there!”

  “What—what happened?” asked Simmy, looking confused.

  “Try walking into your playground now,” Mikal suggested to him, grinning broadly and gesturing for him—and everyone else—to approach.

  Lem followed Simmy. And the adults followed Lem. They made a bee-line for the little wood, and when Simmy stopped to push aside the first branches, to get in among the trees, he turned for a second to grin at Mikal. Moments later the adults heard his shout:

  “There’s a metal thingy in here! What’s it doing here? What is it?”

  “That’s a flyer,” Mikal enlightened the boy as he reached the clearing among the trees, now mostly filled with the body of a sleek, oval machine.

  “What does it do?” This was Lem, staring at the object wide-eyed.

  “Normally it flies,” replied Mikal. “However, it so happens that we can’t get into it, nor can we make it fly. Its controls have been set so that only one particular person, or maybe two people, can fly it, and both those people should be in Portobay jail by now.”

  “Are they crooks?” Lem dared to ask.

  “They are,” Mikal answered solemnly. “I want to be very sure that these crooks won’t be flying this machine ever again, and for that reason, Marco and I are going to break this flyer into pieces. The pieces will go to The Reclamation Project in Portobay.

  “And when that’s done you boys will have your playground back.”

  Kati and Lita were given the task of keeping the two boys—and any other curious children that might show up—within a safe distance from the flyer while the adult males worked. Mikal and Marco, with Ney and Max’s help, assembled the tools that they had collected at The Reclamation Project, hours ago, it seemed. Then the four men got busy with laser cutters, and the sonic cutter from Guzi and Dakra’s room.

  The flyer was a well-built machine and breaking into it, even with the cutters that they had, was slow work. Simmy and Lem had time to grow bored before Mikal and Marco had done much more than made the first breach in the metal casing. The boys had a whispered conversation which Kati and Lita politely ignored until they were approached conspiratorially.

  “Do you think that you and the workmen would like some drinks, and maybe some snacks?” Simmy asked in a low voice. “Lem and I could go and ask Mother if we could bring some for you. She always tells us that we sh
ould be hospitable to guests. Besides, we think she and our Dad would like to hear that our playground is going to be empty again.”

  Lita and Kati exchanged grins.

  “I could use a drink of some sort, sure,” Lita answered gravely and Kati nodded her agreement. “And I’m sure the fellows could use something, too. Their job is the hot one. So, if you boys think that your Mom could spare some fruit juice or something—yes, we’d be grateful.”

  Laughing, the boys started running back towards the farmhouse.

  “They we’re dying to tell their parents what’s going on. And I’m sure the parents are just as curious,” Lita said, chuckling. “I’m betting that the parents—or at least one of them—will arrive along with the refreshments!”

  “And I’m not taking that bet!” Kati chortled. “I’ve been long enough on this world to know that everybody here likes to know everything that’s going on! Whether it’s their business or not!”

  “’Course in this case it is their business,” threw in Mikal who had returned to fetch one of the tools which he had left on the ground by Kati and Lita, just in time to hear the comments. “We are on their land, after all.”

  “They’ll be great about it, though,” Lita commented. “That’s another sure bet. They’ll be grateful to us for opening up the copse, and they’ll be happy to hear that the remains of the off-world machine are to go to The Reclamation Project. They’ll probably even lend us carts to get the pieces there.”

  *****

  That was pretty much how things went.

  Simmy and Lem’s father, Farmer Josh, accompanied his sons on their return trip to the end of his field. The boys had excitedly told him and his wife about the half-a-dozen strangers, one of whom had used a metal rod to open up the interior of the little grove which had lately become unapproachable. And among the trees there had been a metal flying machine which had certainly not been there a week ago! The farmer and his sons carried coolers full of fruit drinks and small, sweet pastries that Farmer Josh’s wife had recently baked, to these unexpected and helpful guests.

  Farmer Josh was a surprisingly young-looking man with the same slight, dusky good looks that his sons displayed. He greeted Ney as an old friend—apparently Ney had hauled produce to town for him in the past—and he seemed to have at least a passing acquaintance with the others of the Portobay contingent of the group. Marco he recognized as a Reclamation Project employee, and this gave weight to the story that he was being asked to believe.

  Marco introduced Kati and Mikal to him, and Kati watched, with quiet amusement, as the farmer and the Federation Peace Officer sized one another up, even while Mikal continued cutting into Guzi and Dakra’s flyer. Both men were smiling when their respective examinations were over, so, presumably, they had decided to like, or at least, respect, one another.

  “We’ll get this machine off your land and to The Reclamation Project as soon as we have it in pieces small enough to transport,” Mikal promised.

  He and Marco had made enough progress that they had set Max and Ney to levering a hole open on one side of the flyer.

  “Seems a pity to tear into pieces such a nice machine,” commented Farmer Josh.

  “Yes it is,” agreed Mikal, standing away from his task for a moment. “Unfortunately it’s locked in such a way that only the two people who we don’t want using it, can, in fact, fly it. Right now they should be caged up in the Portobay jail, but I don’t want them able to chase Kati and myself with this thing, if they somehow manage to get out.”

  “I think that we’ll be able to learn a lot from it at The Project even if it is in pieces,” said Marco. “This metal, to begin with, is quite amazing.”

  Mikal asked Kati to answer Farmer Josh’s questions while he returned to tearing apart the flyer. She obliged by explaining about the Deflector Shield and its controller rod, as clearly and concisely as she could. Simmy and Lem helped by, once again, telling of how they had walked with Max towards the evergreens, only to find themselves circling around them.

  “The same thing happened to the others, too, when they tried to get into the copse,” Simmy explained to his father.

  “Then when we all came back to the front,” Lem said excitedly, unaware of the contradiction in his statement, “Mikal pulled out that rod,”—he indicated it as Kati displayed it—“and pointed it at the trees, and pressed a button, and—whoosh! There were sparkles in the trees and the rod sucked them all up into it!”

  It seemed that he had already forgotten about the fright Kati had precipitated, before Mikal had performed the Magic Act with the rod.

  “Actually,” Kati added at the end, “I don’t have the least notion of how the Deflector Shield or its controller work.”

  She turned the rod over and over in her hands.

  “I guess I better be careful not to press the button on it,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t want to make anything or anyone disappear unexpectedly.”

  “Just to be safe, Kati, toss it in with my tools,” suggested Mikal, proving that, once again, he had been paying attention to the conversation. “The Reclamation Project people can play with it all they want, later on, as long as its charge lasts.”

  “And those criminals that Mikal spoke of had set that shield to hide their machine, is that it?” Farmer Josh asked Kati. Without waiting for an answer he went on talking:

  “It’s really not fair of them to have used someone else’s property like that, turning it into a hiding place. Can’t say that I much like that kind of behaviour.” He shook his head.

  “I don’t think they much care about what’s fair,” said Kati. “They probably saw the copse from the air when they flew over it, and it looked to them like the perfect place to hide the flyer. It didn’t matter to them what anyone thought, since they had the means to keep people away.

  “It was actually very fortunate for us that your boys were in the habit of playing in there. We might never have found the flyer, if they hadn’t realized that something was very wrong.”

  “Well, well, well! This is turning out to be quite the day!” Farmer Josh shook his head. Then he changed the subject:

  “Shall we set up the coolers out on the field in the sunshine, boys? It’s pretty nice out there.”

  His sons’ enthusiasm was redirected to moving the coolers to a sunny spot and opening them up to reveal the bottles of juice and the baked snacks that their mother had provided.

  “Come and get it, everybody!” shouted Simmy, when the hosts had the cups, the food and the drinks spread out on the tablecloth that Farmer Josh’s wife had provided for the purpose.

  No-one could claim to not have heard that invitation, even with the noise of the flyer being torn apart, filling the air. And it was pleasant to have an excuse to take a break from the work, and to eat and socialize.

  *****

  Once the flyer had been broken up, the job proceeded apace. Mikal looked over the things that had been left in the flyer to determine if there was anything that the Reclamation Project staff ought to treat with special care. Fortunately, besides a couple of light-weight blankets and an extra first-aid kit, the only items that were not standard issue for a flyer were two stunners. Apparently Dakra and Guzi had hauled their stock of deadly weapons with them to Portobay.

  “One wonders,” muttered Mikal, with a shake of his head, “how paranoid those two really are.

  “These stunners should go to Portobay Law Enforcement,” he added. “They can use them to keep Dakra and Guzi under control, if they get difficult, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they do get difficult.”

  As Lita had predicted earlier, Farmer Josh offered the loan of his produce carts for the task of ferrying the flyer pieces to the Reclamation Project. He had four such, just enough for the job, Marco and Mikal judged, and each one of them could be attached to the rear of a bicycle, and thus be hauled by a cyclist.

  “Four carts and four men,” Lita laughed as they were transferring the flyer pieces on to the carts
which Farmer Josh had told Simmy and Lem to pull to the evergreen stand. “Does that mean that the women are off the hook when it comes to hauling?”

  “Nah,” replied Marco before any of the others could answer. “You and Kati will be the spares. If one of us guys gets tired, one of you will get to pitch in.”

  “Nobody will have to pitch in for me,” said Ney, taking the heaviest cart and starting to pull it towards the road, and the bicycles. “This is an easy job for me.”

  Watching him go, Kati did not doubt it. He moved fast and with practiced ease. Connecting the cart to the back of the cycle took him seconds; he was ready to start biking before the next man—Marco—was halfway to the road. Generously, he waited and helped the others with the cart attachments, before being the first one to head for town, fast.

  “Ney’s a pro,” Lita commented as she and Kati turned to enter the woods to do a final walk-over of the site where the flyer had stood.

  Simmy and Lem had settled into their newly empty playground. Kati and Lita grinned at one another as they eavesdropped on the brothers’ conversation.

  “There are going to be new games played in this neighbourhood, from the sounds of it,” Lita commented, when the women had departed from the boys’ hearing range.

  “Simmy and Lem are going to be in a happy place for some time to come,” Kati added lightly. “They will be the ones who get to explain everything to the neighbours’ kids. They’re the ones who were here and saw what happened.”

  *****

  The private dining room of The Seaview Inn’s restaurant was a happening place that evening. The Hostess had arranged to have two more tables brought in, to accommodate the crowd that was scheduled to meet there; even at that, not everyone who was keen to hang out, could have found a place to rest his or her derriere. In the end, Kati and the Hostess decided that since there was no longer any need for secrecy—Guzi and Dakra were, after all, now in the custody of the Sickle Island Law Enforcement—the doors leading into the Common Dining Room would be thrown open, so that anyone who wanted to listen to the stories told, could freely circulate from one room to the other.