by Bob Mauldin
The last room in the suite was the one they were in. “Conference room?” Gayle guessed. “I’m betting you can get twenty or more people around this table once we can get it lowered and have some more chairs brought in.”
Simon nodded in agreement. “Mission briefings, daily reports, that sort of thing, maybe. It’s perfect. Three doors that let people in from the secretary’s office, the Captain’s office or the Captain’s private quarters.” A thought crossed his mind and he smiled. When the two women looked perplexed, he added, “Of course, it would make a hell of a room for poker games, too.”
Kitty bristled at Simon’s comment. “These people were ... are ... aliens, Simon. You can’t just go assigning things like that to them. There’s no telling what they did here.”
“You’re right, Kitty,” Simon said slowly. “But I can make some assumptions about them. I have to. Like they were concerned with their physical well-being. Why else would there be obvious exercise rooms aboard? They also colonize other planets to perpetuate their species. They eat, drink, shit, sleep, and all the things we do.”
He stood up and began to walk around the table. “They lose things ... like this ship. They have enemies or they wouldn’t need weapons like those fighters down below, or the cannon we’ve found mounted on level one. And they need room to expand or they would never have built this ship. If they just wanted to explore, there would be no need for a factory ship.” He fell silent, but continued to walk, more pacing than anything else. Something Kitty had only seen him do when he had a really tough decision to make.
“Okay, we have a bunch of unknowns,” Simon said, “and very few knowns.” He began ticking off points on his fingers. “Starting with why the alien chose us, humans, in general, and Kitty to give the Captain’s wristband to. We don’t know why large chunks of the computer’s memory have been wiped out. Things like all the astrogational data. Nothing at all about the race that built the ship, except for their language in the computer. Which could come in handy in the future, if and when we run into them. No real idea why a colony ship would be coming here, and no idea who their enemies are.”
“You’re right, Simon. The knowns are very few.” Kitty looked to the pad in front of her. “We know the translation program will allow us to re-label all the controls so that we can run this ship. And we know we aren’t going to be able to run it because it takes over nine hundred people, and we don’t know that many people. We’d have to put a lot of trust in a lot of people, and I just don’t know how we can do it.”
“Two more unknowns,” Gayle added. “How these aliens react to strange races, and how they react to strange races that have some of their technology. And, I want to know how you are so sure that they have enemies in the first place.”
“Well,” Simon said defensively, “it’s just logic. First, until we got the ship, or until we met the alien, we could always believe that we were the only intelligent race in the universe. But then we got hit in the face with reality. There is another intelligent race out there. If there’s one, there could be a third, fourth, or fifth. Even more. Knowing of two, ourselves and whoever built this ship, lets us extrapolate other races. Looking at the ships in the bays on the lower level is what tells me that if there are races other than our two, then at least one of them is an enemy of the people who built this ship. If you don’t have enemies, you don’t need weapons.
“Now, as for the technology level. You heard the computer on the bridge,” Simon continued. “We have a matter transmitter aboard. That means we can beam down and up just like Star Trek as long as we have these bands and someone stays aboard to operate the controls, which can’t be automated. That’s a hell of a plus, even if it is restricted to ships of this size due to the size of the equipment. Matter conversion in the factories, and the ship only needs to have the fuel supply replaced every five years. Personally, I need time to think about all this. And we don’t have a helluva lot of that at our disposal.”
“It’s something we all need to think about,” Kitty said dryly. “Truth to tell, I already have some ideas to bounce off of you two. These guys have exercise rooms, mess halls, kitchens, showers, all the things needed to allow this many people to function, like you just said. Like a small city, is what it is. And we’ve only scratched the surface. We’ve just seen the top three levels of the living area.”
“What I want to see is the factory section,” Gayle declared.
Simon grinned at her. “Well, I’ve only got the beginnings of some ideas. Believe it or not, I had this dream last night, and the more I walk through this ship, the more concrete it becomes. Most of ‘em get lost after a while, but this one ...” He shook his head. “I’m going for a walk. Maybe I can get something to gel.”
Kitty and Gayle looked at each other, and Kitty said, “Okay, Simon. You do that and we’ll toss a few ideas around in here.”
“Let’s do our idea tossing while we go through the factory section,” Gayle suggested. “That’s what this ship is all about and I want to see it!”
They agreed to meet in two hours in the shuttle bay for lunch, and when Simon arrived, he started in without preamble. “We ran into each other enough times,” he said, “for you to know that I spent a lot of time in the factory section, too. That is an amazing place! Anyway, I was wandering from room to room, trying to get a feel for what should be going on. If this thing was properly crewed, so much would be happening. Pulling asteroids into the converter for breakdown into raw materials, moving those raw materials to the various rooms, making parts, moving them down to the lower level for either assembly or loading onto a shuttle to be transported to a planet’s surface. There are computer terminals in each of the rooms to tell the machines what to make and a larger one in what appears to be a control room that has image after image of things that this ship can build. From sheds to skyscrapers, from cars to tanks, from planes to spaceships. All the infrastructure of a colony world.”
“Let me guess,” Kitty cut in. “I know you, husband-mine. We already have the infra-structure. You want to build more ships. Where are we going to get the people to crew this one, much less others? And, why would we want to build ships in the first place?”
“Because whoever lost this thing is going to want it back sooner or later. I’d like to have the time to duplicate this thing and some of those fighters to defend what we build before its owners show up. Maybe we can be strong enough to hold them off long enough for us to get a permanent foot-hold in space.”
He busied himself with turning some of the stored food into edible meals for them. As he opened packages and combined things, he continued, “First, we need to learn as much about this thing as we can before we crew it. And for that, we need scientists. I sure don’t know any we can trust, so we’ll have to come up with a plan. Table that for now. We need to get the trucks down since we don’t need them anymore, so we learn how to fly the damned shuttle, get Gayle and the Jeep back to a remote location, and get back up here. I’ll drive our truck home and get the original confrontation settled.”
“Oh, no, Simon Hawke. I know your temper and the willingness of the DIA to negotiate. They get you and we’re dead in the water.
“Nice try, Kittyn, but you can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” Simon said. “I know the routines these guys will go through. Do you want to be on the end of their questioning? I think not.”
“And,” Gayle added hastily, cutting Simon off, “we can start looking for scientists to come up here.”
“And these,” Kitty said, laying a few metal disks onto the tailgate of the Jeep, “are locator disks. Found ‘em in the same room where the wristband machine is. Or whatever you want to call it. Hand one to a person, press the red button on your band, and you and the other person will be transported to the ship if the two are close enough together. Or, it will work as a single function device. The person holding it will be transported alone if they press the button on the upper side. At least, that’s what the comput
er told us. “We found the transporter room, too. We missed it on our first walk-through. At least, I don’t remember seeing it. It will allow four at a time to beam up or down. So,” she said, changing the subject, “who’s going to pilot the shuttle?”
“Why don’t we all practice at it? Simon suggested. “Three heads and all that. I think that getting back up here will be the same as before. Hopefully. Just get close enough and let the auto-landing program take over. Get the computer to help us re-label the controls and maybe we can figure out the rest for ourselves. That is, if the thing is as user-friendly as you think.”
“And try to keep us stealthed. And go back down at dusk, so we have less chance of being seen,” Kitty said practically. “If that button works like it did before without anything on the radar, then we might just get away with it. Both vehicles get home, and we get to work finding someone to bring in on this.”
“Agreed,” Simon said after a little thought. “The more the merrier, I think.”
Two more days found the trio ready to depart. Day one had gone into re-labeling the shuttle controls and learning how to use the transporter. First a bag of trash the three had accumulated was beamed down to a little-used campsite with a locator disk inside the bag. What looked like a shower of blue sparks surrounded the bag and then it faded from sight. When it was beamed back up, Simon went through it. “Looks like trash,” he announced, unscrewing the cap from a Pepsi bottle and taking an experimental sip. “Tastes like pop to me,” he said, causing Kitty to scold him for his foolhardiness.
“Lighten up, Hon,” Simon admonished his wife. “Someone has to try it out sooner or later.” He walked over to one of the hexes on the floor and turned to face the two women. “Now, just do the same thing again, this time with me. Wait about thirty seconds and bring me back.”
“I’m not sure I like this, Simon,” Kitty said, voice atremble. “What if something goes wrong?”
Simon walked back to Kitty and wrapped his arms around her. “Nobody said that there weren’t going to be risks, Kittyn. But sooner tested, sooner known, besides, I’m the logical candidate.” He leaned back and tilted her head up with a finger under her chin. “In two minutes this will all be history and we can get on to other things, so let’s do it, OK?”
Kitty took a deep breath and said, “If anything goes wrong, I will never forgive you. I understand the need to know, but I don’t like to risk losing you to some alien ...” She reached up and pulled his head down for a long kiss. “Two minutes, no more,” she said firmly after breaking loose.
With a side-wise look at Gayle, Kitty walked over to the console and began to press the combination that would dematerialize her husband. Simon walked back to the hex and stood waiting.
Kitty’s finger paused over the last button. Gayle asked, “Do you want me to do it?”
“No. He’s my husband, and if anyone is going to be responsible, it has to be me. But I don’t have to like it.” Without looking up, she pushed the final button and Simon disappeared.
The second day was used to learn to handle the shuttle. Since it was a powered vessel, keeping control was only a matter of staying out of any major atmospheric disturbances once they started down. Test flights around the bigger ship were successful, except that landing in the relatively small bay was tricky. Simon cheated by pressing the return button on all three approaches to the ship and let the landing system take over. The stealth button lit up each time it was pressed, so it was assumed that the system was in operation. Only lack of visitors would confirm that once they got back to the surface.
Deciding where to land was a problem until Gayle remembered: “The rifle range! Outside of Acton, Simon. We went there last year to sight in our rifles just before hunting season. There’s that wide valley, and the ramp should let us drive right out onto the road. All we’ll need to do is open one gate and, bingo, back in Billings.”
“And it should be easy to find,” Kitty put in. “Just north and west of town. We come in from the east, keep Billings on our left, and we should see that valley fairly easily.”
Simon looked at the control panel in front of him. “We don’t have a lot of options. Too far away will take too long to get home. And if the stealth works it won’t matter anyway,” he concluded. He looked at his watch. “Let’s get some rest. It’s still a few hours until dark.”
Kitty spent the last few minutes before departure in the control room looking at the planet as it spun below them. This would be a dead reckoning flight. I wish I hadn’t used the word ‘dead,’ she thought. The sky was clear over most of the Pacific Northwest, so she was able to pick out the jewel that was Billings and headed for the shuttle. “Cargo net on?” she asked.
“Check,” Gayle answered from the left side control panel.
“Stealth on?” she asked, looking at the panel.
“Confirmed,” came from Simon, seated to her right.
“Bay doors sealed?”
“Confirmed,” Simon said, looking strangely at Kitty.
“Okay, depressurizing,” she said, pushing the newly re-labeled button. “I’m really glad that this thing is built as well as it is. Have either of you noticed that there isn’t a real airlock on board. Or on the big ship, for that matter? Apparently, these folk never landed anywhere that there wasn’t air to breathe.”
When the door opened, she grasped the twin joysticks and pulled the left one backward, raising the ship off the deck slightly, and pushed forward fractionally on the right which moved the shuttle out of the bay and into the bright light of a full sun. Wish I’d been a Nintendo player, she thought. This would probably be easier. The trip down wasn’t without incident. No one had noticed the turbulence on the flight up. They were too keyed up probably, but on the trip down, it scared the hell out of all of them. The hull temperature stabilized, so Kitty kept the speed constant until they hit the jet stream. None of them had even considered it, and the violence of the impact knocked Kitty’s hands off of the joysticks long enough for the ship to break through the lower layer and right itself.
“Ignorance is going to get us killed,” Kitty said, after she got her voice under control. “The first thing I’m going to do is find a pilot, then a scientist.”
Thirty minutes after leaving the ship, Kitty set the shuttle down in a little valley just north of Billings. “Cargo net off, Gayle,” she ordered. “Radar shroud is still on-line, so we have a few minutes at least. I’d like to talk to Simon alone for a few. Can you get the Jeep out by yourself?”
Kitty felt him shudder when he put his arms around her. During their entire fifteen year marriage, they had never been separated by more than a few hundred miles. Now it was going to be twelve thousand miles, and all of them straight up. “Don’t worry. If anything happens, I’ll just press the button and you can beam me up. God, that sounds weird to say! Gayle will beam right out of her truck, and I’ll face the DIA waiting at home. It won’t be easy though.”
“I could try some of the contacts I have at MIT, but that’s been a long time.”
“Yeah, I know,” Simon nodded in agreement. “Who’s going to believe you when you say, ‘Guess what? I’ve got a spaceship!’ Still working without a clue?”
“So far. But you know how Gayle and I get when we start tossing ideas around.”
“Indeed, I do, Love. I’ve had to deal with the aftermath of some of the schemes you two work out. Just remember that whoever you go after, he or she doesn’t know you. Be gentle, okay?”
“Yes, Dear.” Kitty kissed him lingeringly. “Think that’ll hold till you get back?”
“I hope so. And there’s no time for more. Gayle just pulled up in front of the shuttle.” Simon took her by the arm and guided her to the stairs. All the words he didn’t know how to say tangled in his throat, allowing none to get out, so he just hugged her one more time. “I better go. We could have been seen landing. I love you. Now get back into the cockpit. Before I ... just go!”
Simon tu
rned Kitty around and gave her a small shove as Gayle honked her horn. Leaning out the window, Gayle yelled, “Let’s get moving! Just in case!”
Kitty closed the ramp and watched the taillights move off over the hill. Still feeling a strange pressure deep in her chest, she reached out to press the return button. Stopping her finger just before contact, she leaned back in her chair. Why not? she thought. I never said I wouldn’t. Of course, neither of them asked me. Grinning at that, she gripped the joysticks, pulled the nose up, fed power to the engines, and took the craft back up out of the atmosphere. I’ll still let the autonav land it, but this is fun!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kitty’s return to the larger ship was not without incident. Owing in large part to her lack of knowledge of celestial mechanics and astro-navigation, she couldn’t find the damned thing! Understandable, perhaps, in light of the state of human space exploration, but potentially fatal, except for the fail-safe homing system built into the shuttle’s controls.
Kitty had never really considered the fact that getting from ground to a particular point in space in a fully powered vehicle was an entirely different matter than getting from space to a particular point on the ground by seat-of-the-pants flying. Nor had she considered things like orbiting satellites, Simon had quipped, “Expect the unexpected and you ... we ... might all survive this.” This comment had come just before Simon fired up their truck and followed the Jeep up the rutted road to the Forest Service gate.
Five minutes after she left Simon and Gayle, the radar lit up with several blips. She looked over her shoulder at the empty radar operator’s display. She gripped the joy-stick controls and worked to match orbits with the three blips. Looking over her shoulder at the display to see the results hurt her neck, so she finally swiveled her chair around to better see the results. She kept wanting to look over her shoulder out the forward view screen, but suppressed the urge to do so. When the three blips were stationary in relation to the icon that represented the shuttle, she pulled back on the left grip, increasing power to the ship's engines.