by Bob Mauldin
He shook his head at the discrepancy and looked for a way to get to the cockpit. No ladders or other machinery were present in the room, and no handholds were apparent on the body of the craft, so, experimenting in the lighter gravity, he flexed his knees and jumped for the edge of the cockpit some twelve feet off the floor. His fingers missed the edge by a matter of inches, so on the next attempt he crouched deeper and pushed off harder. This attempt netted him a handhold and left his body dangling down the side of the ship. He lifted himself up by the strength of his arms alone until he was able to get first one elbow, then the other, over the edge and wriggled into the single seat.
Moving a helmet designed for a head slightly different from his own from the seat, he set it on the fighter body just outside where the canopy would seal and looked over the controls. A joystick-style system sat in the obvious place for a bipedal creature and an abbreviated instrument panel, dark and lifeless, was arrayed just below the seal and wrapped around the front of the compartment. A pair of pedals were just out of comfortable reach in the recesses under the control panel.
Form follows function, Simon sub-vocalized for the hundredth time. At least for people of the same general type of body structure. His hands found a series of pockets on either side of the cockpit and he idly stuck his hands into each one, finding nothing until he slid his fingers into a small pocket on the bottom right side. He felt a sizable lump in the little pouch and managed to jam two fingers into the narrow pocket. Pulling up slowly, he worked the item out of its hiding place. He held a smooth, dark-green stone in a heavy silvery setting, dangling on a long chain of what looked like the same kind of metal.
He looked at the necklace for a while, wondering at the significance of the design completely encircling the oval green stone, if any, and wondering why it was here when the rest of the ship was so nearly sterile. He held it up to the light and studied it for a minute, watching it dangle. Shrugging, he slipped it into his pocket and returned to his examination of the cockpit.
The seat was a bit too large for him, a condition he was used to from the chairs, benches, beds and other sitting places aboard the rest of the vessel. But less so, it seemed, than those places. He noticed as well that he had to lean forward only a bit to reach some of the hand controls. Maybe their pilots are required to be smaller than their average, he mused.
Simon closed his eyes and let his hand find the main joystick-style control and wrapped his fingers around it. Contoured to fit a hand different from his own, it felt awkward, but it went along with the feeling that the ship was designed for a being somewhat taller than himself. He opened his eyes and, after another look around, he climbed out of the cockpit and perched on the edge. He put the helmet back in the seat, suppressing an urge to put it on, and eyed the drop to the floor. It’s called a deck, he told himself, and let his body slide free of the little ship.
In the lighter gravity, he floated, it seemed, to the deck, flexing his knees to take the shock of landing. His hand touched the deck, steadying himself, then rose to his full height. He walked around the back of the craft again and looked at the twin orifices he found there. Not truly holes that led someplace deeper within the vessel, these were capped with a translucent material set about three feet inside the holes. The edges of the metal at the most aft portion were discolored by, he imagined, the titanic and unknown forces that propelled the fighter through space. The same discoloration showed on three smaller and similarly capped orifices located at the front end of the ship. Attitude controls? he speculated.
Knowing that he wasn’t going to take this thing out for a spin anytime soon, he reluctantly closed the hatch and headed back to the command deck.
The two women noticed when the lighting changed. “I’ll bet this is Simon’s doing. Good for him. We’re going to have to spend more time together,” Kitty said. They were discussing how they were going to find a suitable candidate to recruit. “We can’t just beam back down and start making phone calls, Kitty said. “Simon mentioned something about a way to hack into public communications on Earth. Let’s go see what we can find.”
The two women wound up in what Kitty called the master control room for the factory section. Bringing power up to the main board activated a dozen or more auxiliary terminals around the room. “Computer?” Kitty asked, hopefully.
“Attending, Captain.”
“I want to know about that device that will let us access and use Earth-side communications without detection.”
“Simon Hawke has already researched that data, and I have found and re-configured a device that will perform as requested.”
On the main screen was a flat-looking device, slowly rotating through all its axes. “Placed on top of any power transformer in close proximity to telephone lines, it will provide total access to all communications without the possibility of discovery, barring a physical inspection of the transformer itself. It merely needs to be placed on top of the transformer and access will be instantaneous.”
Simon asked, “Do we have enough material to build three of these? Back-ups would be nice. And make sure that any tampering registers here before the device fries itself.”
“Instructions have been downloaded to manufacturing. Room thirteen-dash-seven. The process requires initiation by a person. Will two back-ups suffice?”
“For now,” Kitty hedged, and she Gayle made their way down to 13/7, found the systems alive, schematics already input and a single light flashing on the activation panel. “I guess we just push the button,” Gayle said. “That’s all we had to do on the shuttle.”
Kitty nodded and with only a hint of hesitation, pressed the button. “Okay, computer. What happens now?”
“In about an hour, you will find all three devices waiting at the far end of the assembly machine.”
“Thank you, computer,” Kitty said, feeling a bit self-conscious about thanking a machine. But the damned thing seemed so ... normal. “Come on, Gayle. Let’s go get a bite and start figuring where to put our little packages. Obscure places. One’s that aren’t too likely to need repair often.”
Choosing three spots was the work of minutes after a light lunch with Simon showing up for once. The operations panel in the transport room was live as they entered the room. Simon took the three devices, dinner-plate sized with several short antennae on top, and placed them on individual transport hexes. “So what’s the plan after we get these things in place?” Simon asked casually.
“First, we go shopping,” Kitty said. “I think we can convert power to Earth-side stuff like computers and start looking for our first victim.” She looked at her own clothes and then pointedly at both Simon and Gayle. “We can’t just appear somewhere and go shopping, so we are going to have to appropriate things for a while. Once something gets scanned into the computer, we can send the originals back. Hell, most things can come from the homes of recruits. New clothes, computers that are state-of-the-art, until we can be sure of this one, and food! I am sick to death of MRE’s. If we spread our perishable purchases out over the whole world, no one will be hurt. Plus, with anything appropriated, we send it back as soon as we can get it scanned. It’s a victimless crime. Except for the food part.”
Simon went quiet and stared at the deck for a time. Finally he said, “Well, that sounds like a plan to me. Would you like do the honors?” He bowed toward the transporter panel waiting for coordinates for the three devices.
Kitty shook herself and walked over to the panel. She had to stretch her short frame to reach some of the buttons on her cheat sheet, and each device winked out of existence.
CHAPTER NINE
It took two days to find all they needed to make life more comfortable. With the big computer’s help, they found one of the kitchen areas, mess halls as Simon called them, and began filling the shelves of the refrigerator/freezer with food. It turned out later that both cold sections were inside a modified stasis chamber. The temperature was allowed to reach a certain level an
d the stasis turned on automatically until the door opened.
The computers were beginning to pay off as well. Hooked into the Internet, it took Kitty and Gayle just an afternoon to find their first recruit, though a battle still raged about how to approach him.
“We don’t have to convince him,” Gayle said, taking a sip from her coffee as the two women sat at the table. She pawed through the printouts and found the downloaded picture of the dark-haired astrophysicist. “All we have to do is get him aboard and the ship itself will convince him for us.”
“True,” Kitty agreed, “but anything less than him going along of his own free will is going to cause him to resent us.” She stood up and walked around the mess hall. “We need to get his interest and make him want to come aboard, not kidnap him.”
“Leave that to me,” Gayle said. “Of course, you realize you’re taking all the fun out of it if I can’t just throw a rope around him,” she kidded.
“This is who we’ve come up with,” Kitty told Simon. “First of all, we asked ourselves who would be most likely to believe us in the first place. The answer was obvious ... after we hit on it. A SETI scientist. They spend all their spare time sitting at some radio-telescope looking for little green men.”
“And right now,” Gayle added, punctuating her comments with a fork, “this guy is our best bet. Because of the limited usage of the telescope that anyone can get, there are only a few people in the world who ever get access to the big dish. We got this picture off an astronomy web-site he runs. Dr. Stephen Walker, PhD. Thirty-eight years old, single, degrees in astrophysics and mechanical engineering, and right now he is down in Arecibo looking for signals from space.”
The three began exploring ideas about how to confront their choice until Gayle finally said, “My mother once said there were two ways to get a man’s attention. And since I can’t cook ... let’s send me to Arecibo and see what I can do. He’ll have trouble resisting these!” She grinned as she wiggled her chest at her companions.
“If I was single, I’d agree with you.” Simon grinned back and looked at Kitty, whose face was carefully neutral. “Looks like we have a new personnel officer. Now for my news. I’ve been working with the transporter, so we can beam Gayle right into Arecibo. It only works in line-of-sight mode, but from our altitude, we can beam to and from just about anywhere in this whole section of the northern hemisphere, and that includes Puerto Rico. With the sensors this thing has, we should be able to drop her within a few feet of whatever location we choose.” He turned to Gayle. “Ready to go to Puerto Rico?”
“You bet! But first, I need a change of clothes, especially for the tropics. And maybe someday, I’ll get a chance to sight-see!”
The three conspirators went to the transporter room and Simon showed off the console. “The sensors on this ship are so refined I can almost read over the shoulder of someone on the surface. We can drop Gayle just about anywhere we want.”
“The colors, and the general lighting, are ... right, now. What did you do?” Kitty asked as she looked over Simon’s shoulder at the console’s screens.
“Just talked to the computer,” Simon said. “I got it to adjust everything for human eyes. You should see the view screens on the bridge!” He consulted a piece of paper on the edge of the console. “Cheat sheet,” he admitted. “Don’t want to drop her anywhere but home, now do we?”
“I’d hope not!” Gayle put in. Simon motioned for her to go stand on one of the transport hexes and went back to the console. “Uh, Simon? Is there a chance that I can be ... you know ... beamed into something? Like a bed or a wall or something?”
“No,” he replied standing back from the console. “As a matter of fact, you should come see this. Kitty, too. You’ll both need to know how to do it.” Kitty stood beside Simon, eager to see the finer details. “First, the physics of this machine is that the pads,” he pointed at the four hexes and went on, “must be set up close to a field generator of some kind, I guess you can call it. Anyway, the sensors on board this thing will determine if there is enough free space in, say, a room, or your garage, Gayle, to allow a transport to the indicated destination.” He scrolled a cross-hairs-type indicator across an expanded aerial view of a neighborhood. “I’ve already got Billings in the computer as a main reference point.” He set the cross-hairs on an intersection and turned to Gayle. “North is at the top of the screen. This is the intersection of Juniper and Ash. Which house is yours?”
Gayle indicated a spot. “Two houses up from the second corner.”
Simon moved the cross-hairs and put his finger on a button. “Increasing magnification.” Gayle’s breath hissed at the speed of the magnification process. Simon smiled. He had had the same reaction the first time he zoomed in on his own house. Touching two other buttons, he said, “This thing uses some kind of pulsed energy beam to target the house. They, we, use it as a carrier wave to piggy-back sensors on to read the destination. One of ‘em is a sonic-type sensor to tell if there is enough room for the package, you or me, to be delivered, so to speak.”
Kitty immediately caught the implication. “So, if there is no room, the machine won’t transport her?”
“Exactly,” Simon confirmed. “Kind of a fail-safe. These people were ... are ... masters of user friendly technology, it seems. Everything is set up so that it takes more than just one mistake for someone to get hurt. You should see the things I call constructions pods. Self-contained miniature space ships with grappling arms. Used to build things in space from components built here.” Simon shook his head. “There is just so much stuff! Right now, though, we need to get Gayle on her way.”
“Right,” Gayle agreed. “If I’m going man hunting, I need different clothes, and that’s just for starters.” She walked back to the transport hex, turned to face Simon and Kitty and said, “I’ll buzz you tomorrow morning. Don’t go far.”
Simon pressed the sequence he had written down on the small paper attached to the side of the console and Gayle disappeared in a shower of sparks. No sooner had she disappeared than Kitty spun around and punched Simon in the arm. “That ‘if I was single’ comment was some crack, Simon!”
He grimaced as he rubbed his arm. “Well, yours got my attention first. And they still have it. Besides, I’m right, aren’t I?”
Kitty said deprecatingly, “Well, yeah. Our Dr. Walker is in for a bit of a shock.”
They looked at the map and Simon said, “We need to drop her just outside of town in a secluded spot. Won’t do to have her spotted beaming in.” He scrolled the screen to show Puerto Rico. “This looks good. No nearby buildings, and only about a mile from town. Among other things, the computer has infra-red scanners so we can make sure that there are no people around and drop her right before sunset. She can get a room if any are available and look up our guy.”
The pair walked out of the transporter room and down the hall towards the Captain’s quarters. Halfway there, Simon remembered a discovery he made the previous day. “Hon, would you like to see something? I think you’ll enjoy it, if you aren’t too tired. You have had a busy day.”
Kitty heard the excitement in Simon’s voice and asked, “Can you give me your impression of this little surprise in ten words or less?”
Simon’s head tilted to one side a bit. After a few seconds he said, raising a finger for each word, “So cool it’s almost frigid. In a word, spectacular. Nine. How’s that?”
Kitty bowed slightly and waved her hand in a sweeping move, palm up. Simon, not to be outdone, held his arm out for her to take and led her to the nearest elevator. Exiting on level one, uppermost in the ship and devoted mainly to sensor arrays and weapons pods with some crew quarters for those personnel who needed to be near one or the other, Simon led his wife down a maze of corridors until he came to a small airtight door. Opening it, he exposed the first set of stairs Kitty had seen aboard the ship.
Curious, she climbed them, stretching her legs on the slightly over-sized risers,
and emerged in a spacious, hemispherical dome near the bow of the ship. Awestruck, she raised her head and stared at the sight outside the dome. The dome was turned away from Earth at the moment, so she felt as if she had stepped into the airless void of space, the velvet blackness was pierced by a myriad of tiny colored lights. Her breathing came in small gasps at first. Knowing that the ship was in orbit only helped a little.
A feeling of insignificance threatened to wash over her when she thought about the plans they were making. She melted into the comfort of Simon’s embrace, knowing the feeling of protection was illusory, but grateful for it none-the-less. Simon put his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close and copied her stare into infinity for a time she never would be able to accurately define.
Simon tensed slightly, breaking her mood. She looked up into his grinning face. “What? Am I going to have to set a limit on how many time you can surprise me on any given day?”
His grin got even bigger, telling her that he did indeed have something else in mind. “I found something earlier today,” he said confirming her suspicions. Most men were so transparent, although, she had to admit, Simon did have more than his share of surprises in him. “It may be the only personal artifact on board this thing, and I immediately thought of you.”
He reached into his pocket and slowly pulled the necklace he had found in the fighter into the light. Bringing out the chain first, stretching out the moment, he finally let the pendant slide from his pocket and begin to sway back and forth. At the sight of the dark green stone glowing brightly in the starlit dome he froze. “It didn’t do that before,” he commented wonderingly.