2000 Light Years from Home (James London)

by Iain Benson

  “I’ll help James into the suit,” Xia said, twisting lithely out of her seat. “Follow me.”

  The pair headed down the corridor to the main door. Just to the left, Xia opened a panel. The door hissed open, sliding into the bulkhead and revealing a large red suit with a large clear front visor, with white trim. The same white detail wrapped around the joints for the wrists and ankles. At least Vera was bipedal so London wasn’t going to have to fit into a pantomime horse-shaped suit.

  Xia slid the sleeve computer cover open to reveal the main controls.

  “This is the thrust control,” she said, quickly going over the controls, London concentrated, trying to take it all on.

  “What about these,” London said, indicating another group.

  “Don’t press those outside,” said Xia. “It’ll open your suit.”

  “I won’t press that,” London said definitely. “But if I do, how do I close it again?”

  “Press it again,” said Xia. “Don’t press it in the first place.”

  “Don’t worry,” said London. “I’ve been exposed to vacuum, and I don’t fancy it again.”

  Xia hit the button London wasn’t supposed to press and the front of the suit hissed open, revealing a harness and a black padded interior. London backed into it, slipping his arms in through the harness and down the sleeves of the suit. It was very roomy. The straps hissed and snuggly fit around his arms and body. His jacket caught in the strap, twisting the contents of his pocket started to fall. He caught most of them, and zipped his pocket up. As the suit closed, he realised his phone was by his feet.

  “That’d be just my luck,” he muttered. “I keep my phone safe across the galaxy and back, and when I get home, I drop it in a suit whilst rescuing a stranded astronaut. Bloody typical. I bet I’ve cracked the screen.”

  Air hissed into his face in a cool stream, smelling slightly minty and making his eyes water. The suit snapped shut.

  “Can you hear me?” Xia asked.

  “Of course, you’re standing there,” London said.

  “The suit is soundproof,” said Vera in London’s ear.

  “Oh, it’s a radio.”

  “Nothing quite so primitive,” said Vera. “It’s a modulated quantum entanglement communication device.”

  “Can I call it a quadio?” London asked.

  “If you desire to,” Vera said.

  “Be safe,” Xia said, closing the hatch to the ship.

  London’s ear told him he was turning, but his eyes registered nothing but the glowing amber and blue readouts projected onto the helmet visor.

  Without much pre-amble, London was in space, safely this time. Just him and the great arch of ghostly blue tenuous atmosphere. It looked amazing, and took London’s breath away. There was a long moment spent looking at his home, before he snapped his attention back to the spinning astronaut. Tearing his eyes from the endless curve of the Earth with the ISS hanging motionless against it was hard, but the astronaut needed his help.

  The suit turned out to be fairly easy to control. It moved until he stopped telling it to, turned easily and felt like he wasn’t moving at all, but instead, the astronaut was getting closer. When London slid his finger forward, it drew the astronaut towards him. Sliding his finger to the left made the astronaut move to the right. On the attitude dial, he could make the astronaut move up and down. Whilst moving towards the stricken astronaut, London made her go up and down like a yo-yo.

  After a couple of minutes, London caught up with the suit. He matched the spin and grabbed the limp body. With a few key presses he stopped their spin and turned back towards the International Space Station feeling as though he rescued stranded space workers every day. London turned his casualty around, and saw she was in her mid-thirties, only a small part of her face visible amid all the safety equipment in the suit. Her breast badge identified her as Vicky Lake from Canada. Up close, her white suit was distinctly grey in hue. There was a lot of computer equipment, readouts and none of them were painting a good picture. The computer equipment was blackened, damaged, and what was working flashed at him in an alarming way.

  “Sorry I took so long, Vicky,” he said to the unconscious woman.

  “She can’t hear you,” Xia’s voice said in London’s ear. “Vacuums are notoriously bad for transmitting sound.”

  “Except in films,” said London. “You can hear every explosion and scream.”

  London set off towards the ISS, and the glorious sight that was the Earth. Like the shore from a ship, the station was further away than it looked. He was glad he wasn’t swimming. He’d made that mistake as a child and nearly drowned going from a pleasure yacht to a beach.

  Vicky started to come round. London could see into her visor clearly. London watched as she got her recent memory back. Her eyes widened as she saw the big red suited (with white trim) character carrying her like a sack of toys. Panic kicked in quicker than her training. She started to struggle to escape the robotic grip that was, from her perspective, holding her in the darkness of space. There was no sense of movement, no background to gauge how fast they were going. She couldn’t know that they were heading back to the sanctuary of the ISS.

  Her flailing arm slid along the control panel, sending them in a rapidly spinning spiral through space, fortunately still heading in the right direction. London used his free arm to try and grasp her hands before she hit anything important.

  Like the suit opening mechanism.

  London heard the air rushing out of the suit.

  “Bollocks, not again,” he said, although, with vacuum being notoriously bad at transmitting sound, he made none. London pushed Vicky away from him, and re-sealed the suit. Along with Vicky, heading back towards the ISS, London caught a glint of a small black plastic box.

  “My phone!” he said.

  There being air in the suit again, his next series of expletives were heard.

  “What’s the matter?” Xia said. “Our readouts showed you had opened the suit.”

  “Vicky panicked and hit the suit open button,” London said. “I got it closed, but my phone was sucked out.”

  “It’s only a phone,” Xia said.

  “It might be only a phone to you,” said London, “but I was on level one hundred and twelve of Candy Rush. I’m going to have to start again at the beginning on a new phone now.”

  “I feel your pain,” Xia said, sarcastically.

  “I’d kept hold of that phone across the galaxy and back,” said London. “It’s got selfies of me on alien planets. You know what they say: pictures or it never happened. Who’s going to believe me?”

  “Nobody, what a shame,” said Xia. “Anyway, weren’t you rescuing a stranded astronaut?”

  London made a tutting noise and caught up with Vicky. He knocked her flailing hands away and turned her round so she could see the ISS, grabbed her by the waist and moved forward as fast as the suit would go.

  “She believes you are a space alien,” Bonbon said inside London’s head. “She cannot see your face. However, she now understands that you are rescuing her.”

  London sighed. Bonbon could easily pass a message to her, but it really wasn’t worth it. They were approaching the ISS.

  “Can you find out where the airlock is?” London thought to Bonbon.

  London unexpectedly knew exactly where it was. He rotated him and his passenger slightly to line up with the airlock. The ISS had been getting larger as they neared, but it was suddenly all London could see. The huge white walls of the space station stretched away in all directions. The structure was immense. There were portholes all along the side; five of them had faces pressed against them. Vicky grabbed hold of a rung next to the airlock door, and London backed off, mentally adding a note to go to Canada and hunt her down. She could pay for a new phone.

  “Next time I’m in Canada,” London warned the unhearing Vicky as she pulled the lever down to open the outer door.

  Like a proper gentleman, he waited until Vicky
had got back inside before twisting around and heading back towards Vera’s ship. Just for a second he realised he’d forgotten where the door was, but then he remembered. He added a mental thanks to Bonbon, feeling a warm glow in return. He was beginning to recognise the occasional nudge from the furry pompom. He should feel annoyed that his mind was an open book for the telepath to read, but strangely, he’d come to the conclusion that when a being can read everybody’s thoughts, everybody was still on a level playing field.

  The airlock cycled through and London came back inside, hitting the button to open the suit. Xia was there to help him out of the armour. London climbed down.

  “There should be a confirmation on the suit open,” London told her with an annoyed tone. “Or perhaps a safety mechanism so it doesn’t open in space.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Xia. “Or just don’t press the button. The rest of the universe seems to manage such a simple instruction.”

  They returned to the bridge. Vera had spent the time mapping the manmade asteroid belt that surrounded Earth.

  “You did a decent rescue,” said Vera, without turning. “I’ve mapped a route through your satellite system. How do you keep them from crashing into each other?”

  “I don’t,” said London.

  “It is a complicated dance that is co-ordinated,” said Vera. “I am impressed. Although the need for all these orbital objects seems obscure.”

  “I’m pretty sure that they’re all vital,” said London.

  “I agree,” Vera replied. “You don’t have anti-gravity to lift them into orbit, so they must be vital.”

  “Can you get through it?” London asked.

  “Easily,” Vera replied. “Where are we going?”

  They brought up a map of Earth. London walked up close to the big display and pointed to a small island. “Here.”

  “There it shall be,” Vera replied.

  The ISS was left quickly behind as Vera’s ship dropped into the ozone depleted, smog filled unbalanced air that made up London’s favourite atmosphere. London watched the displays as they soared into his home skies, the deep blue lightening into pale blue, a cloud base obscuring Europe. They plunged through the clouds and emerged over the white cliffs of Dover, travelling at speed that quickly had them cross into British air traffic space. Before long, London saw Heathrow airport in the distance.

  “There’s something wrong,” said London.

  “What is it?” Xia asked.

  “There are no planes,” said London.

  “Is that unusual?” Vera asked.

  “There are normally thousands of planes in the air at any one time,” London told them.

  “Planes?”

  “Like space craft, but only in the air.”

  “You should invent space elevators,” said Vera. “They are much more efficient.”

  “I’ll suggest it to our inventions committee,” said London.

  “You have an inventions committee?” Vera asked.

  “They’re called Dragon’s Den,” said London.

  Birmingham came and went. Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield zipped underneath, with Preston barely a blip. They slowed at Lancaster, and hovered over Windermere.

  “Where can we put down?” Vera asked.

  London looked at in the direction of the car-park by the lake. However, it was a public car-park, and London did not feel that he could afford the pay-and-display for a space craft the size of five double-decker buses. They’d probably still get a ticket for crossing the parking bay lines. It would be better to park in a less populated area. London saw the woods on one side of the lake. There was a boat house by a small stony beach.

  “We can go there,” said London. “Can you drop behind that boat house?”

  “Sure,” Vera replied, turning the ship, and bringing it down low over the water. There was still plenty of daylight left, with the sun coming down, the lake looked tranquil, with just a couple of pleasure boats out on the water, a small knot of tourists out for an afternoon stroll, all of them looking at the sleek spacecraft floating above the lake, its reflection dancing in the slight chop of the water.

  Vera manoeuvred the ship behind the shed, the tail end crushing a three hundred year old horse chestnut, the legs counteracting the unevenness of the ground.

  “I owe you a burger,” said London.

  “I do not need to hold you to that,” said Vera. “You have more than repaid this trip by helping me become reunited with my ship.”

  “And a milkshake,” London said, trying to tempt him.

  “What about all the humans?” Vera asked. “They are not aware of aliens. My presence might cause them to become hysterical.”

  “They’ve just seen a spaceship fly across the lake and land in the woods,” London told him. “They’ll expect an alien. That’s if they even see you. The vast majority of people see what they want to see, and then only rarely. If they see you at all, they’ll assume it’s a costume.”

  “Why would anybody do that?”

  “They’re English,” said London. “Asking them to countenance anything beyond their ken, and that’s classed as ‘downright rude’.”

  “What about me?” Bonbon asked.

  “Sit on Vera’s shoulder,” said Xia. “You are similar colours. Nobody knows what the Apkallu are supposed to look like, so Bonbon would appear to be a part of you.”

  Vera picked up the fur ball and placed him gently on his shoulder.

  “Apkallu?” London said. He paused in making sure he had everything he’d brought. The loss of his phone stabbed at him again.

  “Yes,” said Vera. “This is the name of my species.”

  London shrugged into his jacket.

  “May I suggest that everybody learns the local language?” Bonbon asked.

  “I already know it,” said London.

  “And now, so do I,” said Vera.

  “Thank you Bonbon,” Xia said.

  The ramp came down, crushing a mulberry bush. Vera, with Bonbon on his shoulder, brought up the rear. As they were clear of the ramp, Vera pressed a button on a small device. The ship’s landing lights flashed twice with a blip-blip noise and the door closed. London felt he had to lead the way, knowing the area slightly better than the other two, having been to the Lake District five times in total. And that was counting the time he got diesel at the Rheged Centre in Penrith, the time he’d fished a sword from a lake, the time he’d dropped a sword in a lake, the time he’d rescued the town of Penrith from an evil sorcerer, and the time he’d ridden the Ullswater Monster across the mouth of the River Eamont to prevent resurrected iron age marauders from taking over Pooley Bridge. They all counted though.

  The amazing thing about the Lake District is that no matter where you park your spaceship, you are never more than a few metres from a signed pathway. After scrambling through bushes and past conifer trees, they emerged onto a path made of white chipped stone, running across their route, paralleling the lake. London didn’t have a clue which way the nearest burger was, but figured that Bowness had to be to the left. Besides: He always picked left.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” Xia asked.

  “Yes,” London replied, sounding totally confident. Sounding totally confident is the main skill of a leader.

  They followed the path through the darkening woods, smelling the scents of the flowers and trees until they came to a low stile and gate combination in a waist-high drystone wall. London opened the gate for the other three. On the other side, a road inclined down towards the lake. The footpath continued across the other side of the road, but London opted to follow the road. After a couple of minutes walking, the road bent round to follow the lake itself by a series of fairly modern looking glass fronted houses.

  A small village lay just beyond.

  “See,” said London. “There’s bound to be a gastro-pub or quaint café here.”

  “It seems an awfully small village to be catering for recreational eating,” V
era observed.

  “This is the Lake District,” London told him. “I think there’s a by-law that states that in any collection of three or more houses, one has to serve food and alcoholic beverages.”

  The village turned out to have a collection of several whitewashed houses with the traditional slated roof of this area. Across a small green that advised against ball games there was a quaint double fronted pub that advertised food and a beer garden, London’s favourite type of garden. Small narrow windows on two floors looked out over the green towards the lake. A small seating area at the front with umbrellas and benches should have been thronging with visitors. But it was empty.

  “Something is definitely wrong,” said London.

  “What?” asked Xia, putting her hand on her energy weapon.

  “It’s a nice day, this is the Lake District,” London explained. “It’s late spring; there should be hordes of people, even if it is approaching evening.”

  London led them across the green into the pub. Vera had to stoop to get in, Bonbon almost brushed from his shoulder. The bar was to their right as they entered, eyes adjusting to the gloom inside. It was a faux traditional bar, with glasses stored overhead, and a brass rail on which to rest a foot whilst waiting to be served. Behind the bar was just one man, in his late forties, wearing a black tee-shirt and jeans. Behind him London could see the usual array of spirits nobody drank and the optics of the spirits people actually bought. Between the racks of unsaleable spirits were boards advertising specials on drinks and food.

  “You three made it just in time,” said the barman, as they ducked their way up to the bar. “I take it you’ll be staying the night, only you’ll never get back before curfew.”

  “Probably,” said London. “We’ll sort that out after food. What curfew?”

  “He’s a strange one,” said the barman, seemingly ignoring the question. “What is it, some kind of science fiction convention?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” said London.

  “I like the two-headed touch,” the barman said, nodding at Bonbon. “It’s very Zaphod Beeblebrox. I love those books.”

  “We thought it a good costume,” said London.