Legacy

by Bob Mauldin

  “Well, you’re not about to disappear me,” Gayle stated positively. “I’ve got plans.”

  “Miss Miller, we really don’t care what you have planned. We’re going to ask questions and you’re going to answer them.”

  Gayle put her best indignant look on her face. “You threaten to haul me away to some governmental limbo and you want my help? Please, allow me to cordially invite you to go piss up a rope.”

  “I’m truly sorry you feel that way, Miss Miller. Because the accommodations aren’t going to be like Club Med.” San Martino didn’t sound as if he much cared either way.

  Simon crossed his legs and leaned back on the couch, seemingly totally unconcerned. Gayle merely seemed ready for whatever action she needed to take. “I’m really surprised that you didn’t see the need to bring more than four men to take us in, John. You know I never work without a fallback position.”

  “‘What I haven’t forgotten,” the agent retorted, “is your ability to make the best of any situation. That’s why this mission wasn’t restricted to just four men. Those are just the front team. You were meant to see them, Simon. You must be getting soft.” He crossed his own legs and finally reached for the beer he had set aside earlier. He twisted the cap off, dropped it deliberately on the floor and took a healthy swig. “I brought a full tactical assault team. The rest of them moved into position as soon as you came into the house.”

  “Simon,” Gayle asked worriedly, “what does an assault team consist of?”

  “In this case, knowing John, a full platoon of forty men, armed for a small invasion, armored against anything except a nuclear explosion, and with orders to shoot to kill if any of us step out of the house. How’d I do, John?”

  “Pretty good, Simon, except that they are required to shoot to stun. We want the information. See? I can give away things if I think I might get something in return.”

  “A full platoon, John? Did you bring air-mobile support as well?” Simon asked tersely. “I guess I should be impressed that you think you need that much firepower to bring us in.”

  “Simon, Simon, you know how it is. The women are pressure. We really don’t believe that they know that much. Now your blonde friend did surprise us a bit. Three different black belts in three different disciplines. All deadly. But that we can counter. It’s you we have to neutralize. You forget: I watched you kill two men with your bare hands in less than ten seconds. I’m not going to make the mistake of underestimating you. Even you can’t talk your way past forty men who have no ties to you what-so-ever.”

  Gayle looked at Simon with a measure of respect that she hadn’t shown before. “You let me win, you son-of-a-bitch!” she hissed, referring to their sparring matches.

  “Not once,” Simon said defensively. “We were fighting by rules. You beat me by those rules. If you want a no-holds-barred match sometime, I’ll try to go easy on you.”

  Gayle huffed up and started to say something, but San Martino stood up impatiently. “Enough of this domesticity. We have transport waiting to take you to a secure location. Miss Miller, if you ever find yourself in a position to take Simon up on that free-for-all, I suggest that you don’t.”

  “No way to talk you out of this, John?” Simon asked lightly.

  “I have my orders, Simon.”

  Simon’s face clouded up. “Ya know, as soon as I remembered that I left the telescope behind, easy enough to do in all the excitement, especially in light of the fact that I’ve been out of the business for fifteen years, I knew somebody would be here sooner or later. I wasn’t expecting you, but I guess I should have. Playing on my loyalties and all that.”

  Simon let his body posture relax, leaning back onto the couch, projecting less aggressiveness than he had seconds before. “You know, you were one of the ones that used to get together and discuss just what we would do if something like this should ever really happen. As I remember it, you were one of the advocates for blowing the thing to kingdom come, Johnny. What happened to change all that?”

  “I decided to live in the real world, Simon. My agenda is whatever my bosses tell me it is. And at the moment that is acquiring all the advantages possible for the U.S. in a rapidly deteriorating world situation.”

  “Well, I have an agenda of my own, old friend, and I can’t be letting you interfere with it,” Simon informed the agent, sadness in his voice. “It was always a given that we could count on each other. It’s too bad that you’ve gone and let the powers-that-be brainwash you so thoroughly. I could have used a friend on this one. As it is, you’ve just forced me into that fallback position I mentioned earlier.”

  “One word from me and this house will be assaulted from all four sides,” San Martino said regretfully. “You’re not getting out of this one, Simon. Face it, you’re weaponless, surrounded, and no one knows you’re here.”

  “Let me guess, John. That word would be ‘indigo.’ At the agent’s look of confusion, Simon laughed out loud. “You come here thinking you know me, friend. Well, I’ll let you in on a secret. I’ve grown in the fifteen years I’ve been gone. The love of a good woman will do that to you. You, on the other hand, haven’t. Just remembering your activation word should show you I know more about you than you do about me.”

  “What I know, Simon, is that I’ve got the upper hand here. You have no chance to get away.”

  Simon smiled. “I know you’re wired, John. Are you set up for video, too?”

  “Why?” A suspicious look crossed San Martino’s face.

  “You just said that I had no chance to get away. I’m about to prove you wrong. I also intend to take Gayle with me. I just hope that this is on video, so your boss can see what he’s up against.”

  San Martino was livid. Not in his wildest imaginings had he expected this interview to go this way. “Okay, partner, I’m calling your bluff. If you think you can get both of you past forty armed men, especially after warning us, go ahead and try. He spoke into his lapel, “Condition Red. Take down anyone leaving the house.”

  Simon looked over at Gayle. “Let’s go.” Gayle just nodded, stood up and pressed the return button on her wristband. While San Martino’s eyes were on her, he hit his own at the same time.

  San Martino’s eyes went wide as Gayle vanished in a cloud of blue sparks. “Sorry it has to end this way Johnny, but sometimes people do change.” He snaked his foot out and caught the pistol-belt, transferring it to his hand as San Martino’s pistol appeared. Blue sparks started to flow past his eyes and San Martino’s face evaporated, to be replaced by the reddish light of the transporter bay.

  Kitty stared thoughtfully into the open hatch. The computer had told her where to find the access hatch to the main data storage area, and she had wound up here. Located in the factory section, the computer room, as Kitty called it, was merely an empty room with a door in one wall (she had used that to enter the room), and this hatch. What she stared at reminded her not of a computer, but a bowl of Jell-O more than anything else.

  The entire mass, some four cubic feet, appeared to be back-lit by a light that came out a glowing, iridescent green after it passed through the ... proto-organic gel, the computer had called it. Lights flashed on and off within the mass, the product of something called whisker-lasers, the computer’s way of writing information to, and reading from, the memory core.

  Baffled by the advanced technology, she had asked the computer how someone would go about removing data from the memory core. “Data deletions can be ordered from any of a number of consoles throughout the ship, but it would be most convenient for someone to do it from either the bridge or the environmental control center,” the computer responded.

  “But, how do you know a valid order?” Kitty probed. “Or could anyone have given the order to delete astronomical data and all data on the original builders?”

  “It would require the deletion request and passwords from two ships’ officers.”

  “So, let’s trace the passwords. Ca
n you do that?” Kitty asked.

  “No. All passwords have been deleted.”

  “So that leaves?”

  “No way to determine who deleted the information.”

  “Wonderful,” Kitty muttered as she listened to the pneumatic hiss of some device sealing the access cover back into place over the computer core. She stood up and massaged a kink out of her back. “First thing we have the new guy do is find us a computer specialist with imagination and vision. This is light-years ahead of anything we’ve got. Somebody has got to want to study this!”

  She began walking down the corridor away from the computer room looking into each room she came to. Sensors turned the lights on as she entered a room and turned them off again as she left. Along with the lights, the sensors activated a console located near the door of each room and a variety of different machines. Pressing buttons on the consoles produced few results. Probably needs certain keys pressed certain ways to activate ‘em, she thought. Or maybe, there has to be raw material in the room for the machines to make something. All rooms provided virtually the same results, with only a few buttons lighting up or doing anything at all.

  It was the picture window that gave it away. Kitty’s heart beat faster as she slowly walked across the room and put her hands on the glass. She looked out and down into a huge funnel-shaped hole leading into the bowels of the ship. She looked at the rim some two hundred feet above. This had to be the matter converter that shredded asteroidal material into its basic components for the various factories and assembly areas. That placed her roughly in the center of the huge ship.

  She turned around, forcing her attention back to the job at hand. All the consoles in this new room were considerably more advanced… complicated… than the others. And no machines. Just the various workstations, six in all, scattered around the room. Near the window, a separate console sat fully powered and operational. Even the usual flat-screen-like panel always located on the right side of all consoles looked bigger, more imposing, somehow.

  She guessed that this was the main control room for the factory section. She looked back out the window and remembered one of the training flights made before taking Simon and Gayle down. She had circled the ship, learning the controls and looked at just about every inch of the exterior. This funnel was the matter converter. Centered in the upper side of the ship, the converter penetrated almost half-way into the ship and was capable of taking asteroidal material in chunks up to almost two hundred and fifty feet in width. Larger rocks were sliced up by lasers mounted in the tractor beam towers circling the rim.

  The over-sized flat-screen on the main desk was displaying the image of a device slowly rotating through all its angles in the upper left corner of the screen. On the right side, a column of figures scrolled from top to bottom. Beneath the small image, an expanded view of the device took up the rest of the screen.

  Beneath the display was a confusing array of buttons. One flashed. Taking a deep breath, she pressed the glowing spot on the panel and the image changed. First, it was a full-screen view of a different object. Then the image shrank into the upper left corner and the screen displayed the same information as it had for the previous image. The next images were of a spaceship, one of a distinctly more warlike look than this one or the three little ones in their bays.

  An alarm interrupted her. She shut the panel down and headed for the transport control room. The panel identified it as Gayle’s transport request, so she got to watch her friend sparkle into existence. Simon’s wristband was flashing as well, so she quickly reset the panel and beamed him in, too. Having been in a seated position when the beam-up occurred, he naturally landed flat on his butt, muttering curses at alien technology.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Unexplored territory, Simon thought, standing in front of a perfectly normal door on factory level sixteen. After his return to the ship he began to do a more systematic search. He was facing the last barrier to their exploration.

  He spun the now-familiar door-lock. This door, though, opened in such a way that if the room were decompressed, he would not be able to open the door against the exterior pressure. Once all the bars were fully retracted, he pulled on the door, noting the strength necessary to get it moving and the results of his efforts. The door did open, but being heavier, took much more effort to start moving.

  Engine room, he decided as he entered the over-sized room. Several of the shuttle test flights around the giant ship passed by the stern of the vessel. Three huge black nozzles marred the otherwise smooth rear of the ship.

  He had figured then that they were engine exhaust ports. Now he was pretty sure that he was looking at the other end of those holes. Before him were three cylinders, each hundreds of feet long and easily sixty feet high. But it wasn’t the engines that took most of his attention. That was accomplished by a huge, ill-defined, yet solid-looking sphere floating equidistant between the floor and the ceiling.

  Besides a low railing completely encircling a dark-colored area directly beneath the sphere, the only other constructions in the room were dozens of tubes and the supposed engines. Attached to the sphere’s surface by no obvious means, two tubes ran from the sphere to each engine while others disappeared into the walls for purposes unknown. In exasperation, he wrote, “Let whoever the girls pick out decide what kind of scientists we need and who to choose.”

  Simon stifled a yawn and looked at his watch. Shaking his head at the amount of time he had spent going even this far, he headed back to the captain’s quarters to dine upon some of the oh-so-appealing MRE’s he had off-loaded from Gayle’s Jeep.

  “Grabbing a little rack time wouldn’t hurt, either,” he mused later, cleaning up the residue of his meal. And putting how to dispose of the trash at the top of the list would probably be a wise move. He jotted that final note on his pad and left the over-sized room in search of his bed.

  Somewhere between lying down and starting to worry about something else, a fitful slumber finally overtook him. He walked through a murky darkness, alone except for shadowy, unidentifiable ... things ... at the edge of his vision. Things which never seemed to get any nearer, staying just out of reach.

  Simon dreamed. And knew that he dreamed. Of darkness and light. Oh, yes! The light. For just as the darkness brought visions of fear, hysteria, and loss, so did the light bring visions of splendor, glory, and hope.

  When he woke up, it was to a feeling of disorientation. Normally not one to remember his dreams other than vaguely, this one stood out due to its complexity, but that wasn’t what left him uneasy. The darkness was complete, and as he lay there, a slight noise, more of a low-level vibration in the air itself, intruded on his consciousness. He reached out to turn on his bed-side lamp and banged his hand on a metal surface. “Damn!” he muttered.

  The feeling of falling or floating had been so real just before he woke up. He sat up on the side of the bed, letting his feet swing a bit, until he realized that they should be touching the floor. That was when the events of the last few days snapped into focus. “Lights,” he said into the darkness, and a red glow pervaded the room. “I’ve got to do something about the lighting. This can’t go on. It’s too depressing. Like being at battle stations at all times.”

  He padded into the bathroom, noticing the extra height on the fixtures there, and made a mental note to see about having something done about that, too. After throwing water on his face, he went back to the bedroom and got dressed. He worked his way through another MRE packet and went to the bridge. “Computer,” he said as he entered.

  “Attending.”

  “The lights on this ship are not… adequate… for humans. What can be done to change them?”

  “The lighting can be adjusted to any wavelength required. Please define the parameters.”

  Simon thought for a few seconds and said, “How about something more appropriate to the planet below. “Say high noon halfway between the equator and either pole.” The room immediately b
rightened to a harsh glare. “We’re on the right track,” Simon commented, quickly shading his eyes from the light. “Less intensity, please.” The glare seemed to dissipate somewhat, and after a few more adjustments, he was satisfied with the level. “Let’s set that as the standard all over the ship, please.”

  “New configuration locked.”

  Simon smiled as he walked off the bridge, thinking about how pleased Kitty would be at the lighting change. That happy thought led directly to realizing that he was feeling better without having known that he felt less than well. It must have been all that red lighting, he thought.

  He stopped in the corridor and looked at the legal pad that seemed to have become his constant companion. He noted the rumpled and dirtied edges, the dog-eared corners and wondered if there weren’t a better way to keep track of his to-do list. His eyes focused on a single word, underlined twice, at the bottom of the page: fighters. Much easier to read now in the brighter light, the word brought direction to his otherwise aimless wandering.

  He stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the lowest level. The floor fell away and he fell with it, enjoying the sensation. Probably has something to do with the lower gravity. He felt weight returning when it dawned on him that the numbers on the control panel were in English. The lowest button had the number eighteen on it. He noticed that the three was highlighted in red. Because it’s the command deck? he asked himself. It was as good a guess as any.

  Simon walked out into the cavernous space and immediately noticed the difference. Where the lighting had once been dimmer and more indirect, now he could see the light strips running the length of the room. Their intensity also allowed him to see the circular openings, all irised closed, in regular rows between the light strips. He noted his observation and moved on to the fighter bays.

  The sleek little ship sat in its stall, looking as if it had been built the day before, the image ruined by scorch marks around the engine nacelles. Grey over most of its surface, there were markings on the erect fin at the rear of the ship, “Probably ID numbers,” Simon guessed. Walking all the way around the ship, he added to his guesses. The legs the ship sat on had no tires, only ski-shaped feet or skids, making him think of Earth-manufactured vertical-take-off-and-landing aircraft, but the small wing surface argued higher speeds than the skids suggested.