Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  In the Moss Room, Karen risked a quick glance down at the terminal before her, taking in the warnings relayed to that point with increasing frequency and intensity.

  “Don’t!” Richard begged her. “I know it’s going; just keep that image before me and I’ll have us down within forty seconds,” he promised. The Scout Craft continued its uneven descent to an altitude of five hundred feet; the near edge of the Shell barrier slid beneath them. Richard held his breath, then realised that, even with the natural curve of the hemispherical Shell Field, they must have passed through it successfully. He let out a long sigh. A little further ahead, just beyond a shallow dip of smooth ground, was an area that looked paved. Beyond that was a series of huge buildings with cavernous openings; several of them now towered above their present altitude. Richard hoped one of them was a Scout Craft maintenance area, as the computer records had indicated that one was planned for this Outpost.

  Suddenly the image slipped and a view of the smooth ground filled Karen’s mental transmission. Richard pulled back harder on the control, but there was no response. Several of the flashing lights failed, and the interior of the ruined Control Centre was pitched into darkness, absolute except for the faint green glow from the boarding pod on the right.

  “We’re going to crash!” Richard shouted as he drifted up from his chair in the sudden absence of simulated gravity. The dim glow of blue emergency lighting threw a pale, ghostly illumination over the room, then Richard was slammed back into his seat as the Scout Craft struck the ground tail first.

  Karen slid down the sloping floor towards the entrance to the Drive chamber, then jumped up and entered it. The entire room was a blaze of light; she realised the Drive was at extreme overload once more. “Richard, shut it down!”

  “I’m doing just that,” came his response. “Quick! Let’s get out of here before the whole system shuts down.” He ran towards the rear of the Control Centre after hastily deactivating the pilot console, and found himself shimmering into the Moss Room. There, before him, but lower down the strangely sloping floor, was Karen, bending over the alien once more.

  She looked up as he appeared. “Give me a hand; you take the head!”

  Richard grabbed the block-like head and used it to lever the heavy torso off the floor. He dragged it towards the door with Karen struggling to lift the legs. He backed through the exit and found himself falling. A moment later the alien fell on top of him, followed rapidly by Karen’s lesser bulk. He gasped, desperately trying to fill his lungs, as Karen rolled off the pile of bodies and dragged the unconscious invader off her fiancé.

  She looked around with a worried expression, then smiled and reached over, picking up the now trusted Earth weapon from the dusty ground. “I’m not going anywhere without this.” She held up Ed Baynes’ M9 handgun with grim enthusiasm and replaced it in its holster on the belt around her waist. “There’s still twelve rounds in the magazine!”

  Richard sat up, having finally got over his breathing difficulties. He looked around. About twenty yards away there was a bench-like object. Richard got up and, holding Karen’s hand, made his way over to it with her and sat down. From the comfort of this unexpected convenience the two exhausted survivors surveyed the scene.

  Scout Craft Seven lay, or more correctly, was impaled in the arid soil before them. To one side of that view was an expanse of flat ground, with a few stumps sticking out of it. In the distance the ground became rockier, but this was beyond the protective cover of the Shell Field. To the other side of the wreck there was the shallow depression that both of them had noticed in the last few seconds of powered flight, and beyond that was the paved area on which Richard had intended to land. At the far edge of the landing area, the huge, hanger-like buildings towered far higher than either of them had imagined from the images they had observed whilst still in flight.

  As their breathing became less rapid, the awesome silence of the Outpost engulfed them.

  “Nice landing,” Karen said as she turned back towards her ancient home.

  Richard grinned and shook his head ruefully. “I’ve had better days!” He looked at her and saw that she was smiling.

  “No, really, that was something else!” she insisted.

  “At least we got out before the whole thing shut down. I wonder if you become embedded in the structure if that happens.”

  Karen shuddered. “Please, don’t.” She got up and walked back towards the body on the sandy soil. The alien was already surrounded by a damp patch of discoloured ground, grim evidence that his wounds had been reopened by the rough handling they had given him in their frantic escape from imminent entombment.

  Richard walked up beside her. “We should get a stretcher, or find an ambulance or something.”

  “Yes.” Karen turned and looked towards the distant buildings. “I guess there’s no one coming,” she said sadly.

  “They must have left here some time ago.”

  “And the aliens never broke in.”

  “Maybe this creature here is an indication that they are still trying.”

  Karen nodded. She glanced up at the invisible Shell Field, doubly thankful – that it had prevented the aliens from taking the Outpost, and also that it had somehow been opened or briefly shut down so that Citadel could enter the safe haven within.

  They stood in silence once again, savouring their liberty and their health – counting the factors that had worked in their favour, so that they were still free, and the only enemy remaining was rendered harmless, perhaps even close to death.

  Eventually Karen looked at Richard, puzzled for a moment by what she received, until she caught his vague thoughts more clearly. “You think this used to be a park?”

  “Yep! Those stumps back there are probably the remains of trees and–”

  “And that depression was once a lake,” Karen finished for him. She looked around again thoughtfully, trying to picture it as it had once looked. “It was quite nice then, I think.”

  Without a further spoken word, they hugged for a long time. Both of them felt the tension of the past few days start to dissipate. They took each other by the hand and walked slowly towards the distant buildings.

  Several minutes later, as they traversed the ancient lakebed, Richard chuckled and shook his head. “What would my parents think if they could see me now?”

  “I’m sure they’d approve of your taste in girls,” Karen winked at him. “Though they might think my outfit was a little much!”

  Richard grinned as he realised she had managed to decipher his mixed feelings about her shiny blue leotards.

  “I wish I had taken the time to make shoes;” Karen admitted as she carefully placed her blue-skinned feet between the round stones that were scattered over the old lakebed.

  “I left all the laser rifles back in there, too,” Richard said regretfully; “I feel kind of exposed out here.”

  “We are safe, aren’t we? And I still have Mr. Baynes’ gun.”

  “We must be.” Richard nodded. “If these aliens are the reason why your parents were left to fend for themselves on Earth, this war between the Arshonnans and the aliens must have started a long time ago, soon after fourteen twenty-six AD. If they haven’t managed to penetrate this stronghold by now, they probably never will.”

  “So, why did everyone leave?”

  Richard thought on this for a moment. “Good question. Makes me think of lots more, too. Perhaps we’ll find lots of answers inside those buildings.” They walked on in silence for a few more minutes. Soon they started up the gradual slope towards the far side of the lake.

  Richard turned when they got to the level ground where there had once been grass or something similar, and looked back at Scout Craft Seven. The black bulk looked weird from that angle, especially with the nearest end, the Drive sphere, being partly buried in the ground while the other end was suspended in mid-air. The most disturbing feature, however, was the shiny translucent bubble that appeared to have bulged out from the Co
ntrol Centre, as if the ship were a rotting vegetable with diseased material oozing out through a fissure.

  He shuddered and resumed walking, aware that Karen had felt his abhorrence and reciprocated it, too.

  They completed their crossing of the wide expanse of artificial surfacing a couple of minutes later, and the central building loomed even larger before them.

  Karen stopped on the threshold of the wide-open entrance and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom inside. “Do you think they will have left much behind?”

  Richard considered this as he waited for his eyes to adjust, too. “They must have left the bulk of their equipment here, why else would they leave the Shell Field running?”

  Karen nodded and started to walk slowly in. “Let’s see what we can find to carry the alien back in.”

  Richard followed her inside. Before them, stretching into the far distance, was a huge hangar. Most of the lights were out, but even in the dimness they could both see that everything that had once been stored inside it was gone. To the right there was a smaller doorway that led into a plain, grey corridor. An area marked “Transport Arrangements” opened up from this corridor about twenty feet down to the left. Karen stepped inside.

  “No much here, either.”

  Richard walked in and glanced around. Again, few lights were operational, but there were enough to see that the room was largely empty. A few chairs sat around forlornly, and one large computer terminal lay smashed on the dusty floor. Several cables hung out of sockets on the wall behind it. Richard walked up and examined the computer terminal. “This room must have been built long before Citadel,” he surmised. “The equipment doesn’t look much better than the stuff you’d find on Earth these days.”

  “Let’s try the next room,” Karen suggested quietly, as if she felt a kind of reverence for the place, subdued by the knowledge that this ancient facility had probably dropped out of use when the inhabitants of Earth were still shivering in their wooden shacks and drafty, glassless castles.

  They found that the entire row of rooms down the right hand side of the building had been stripped and were deserted of any useful equipment, so they walked back out into the afternoon sunshine and on down to the next, slightly shorter building. As they walked in through the huge entrance, the hanger stretched out before them into impenetrable darkness. Karen turned instinctively right and found another smaller doorway in the gloom. As they approached it, several lights came on automatically.

  “This is more like it!” Karen whispered. She turned into the first compartment and watched as the darkness was split into squares, like a gigantic chessboard, as the automatic sensors registered their presence. The nearest light was centred over a terminal that looked similar to those that could be conjured up inside Scout Craft Seven. She walked over and sat down while Richard leaned over her shoulder to watch.

  As she settled into the seat, the screen glowed into life and the words: ‘Spaceways Shipping’ came up. Karen tried to type in a command, but the system did not respond, so after a brief search she found and hit the restart key and waited while the diagnostics did their job. A few seconds later the heading returned, together with a list of options. They both read through them with considerable interest.

  “How about this one?” Richard pointed at the fourth entry: ‘Life Support - Port Facilities’.

  Karen selected it and the screen turned into a map of the outpost, with several areas highlighted. “This one is right in this building!” She announced, after studying the map for a few seconds. They both got up and walked down three rooms until they arrived at the location designated on the map. Again the lights came on as they entered the room; this time only three of the twelve overhead illuminators failed to operate. The room was equipped with several coffin-like containers, mounted slightly off the floor, with a bank of instruments set in a tall cabinet next to each one.

  Richard walked up to the nearest cabinet and touched the standby pad near the top of the panel. The ‘coffin’ lid raised up and revealed an interior lined with a soft white padding. “It really is a coffin!” he remarked, only half-jokingly.

  Karen stepped inside and settled herself into the padding. “How does the panel look now?”

  Richard was startled by her boldness, as he was finding the association suggested by his mind to be more compelling than his powers of reasoning. He forced himself to take his eyes off her and check the readings. Pulse, body temperature, blood pressure and a host of other quantified measurements of more complex bodily functions were indicated in copious and increasingly incomprehensible detail before him. Several green lights glowed steadily around the edge of the panel, and a short message appeared on the central screen of the console: ‘Patient functional at upper limits of parameters.’

  “I think you pass,” he commented dryly. “They won’t keep you.”

  Karen smiled as she stood up. “I’m glad I didn’t watch any of those really gross horror movies when I was growing up; your memories are quite enough for me!”

  “Okay,” Richard admitted. “So they don’t do much for the spirit! I was a dumb kid then!”

  “We had better find some way of bringing the invader back here before he dies,” Karen said as she stepped up beside him.

  “That’s what I was going to look for next,” Richard smiled as she put her arm around his waist. “I never saw a corpse dressed like you anyway!” He backed out of the diagnostics screen and returned the display to its ‘home’ setting, so Karen could search for the Arshonnan equivalent of an ambulance.

  “Here it is.” Karen smiled, as she saw herself as he pictured her in the life support system, with a bunch of roses laid out on her stomach and her hands crossed over her chest. “The Stretcher Float is in a small compartment near the main entrance; we must have walked right past it!”

  Richard thought that was not surprising, considering the number of other things that they had seen. They walked back out and found the spot easily enough; the cover was labelled with an Arshonnan symbol which Richard found way back in the deepest of the memories that he had received from Karen, one that looked like a small animal carrying an even smaller one on its back.

  As he reached towards it, the panel slid up out of sight, revealing the long, flat, padded surface that was clearly intended for carrying patients, mounted on a wheel-less and remarkably featureless oblong box. Near the front end, there was a seat mounted sideways, and directly in front of it was the driver’s seat, which Richard could see was equipped with a long curved rod mounted on the foot rest in front. At the other end was a further seat, mounted sideways like the one behind the driver’s position.

  “May I?” Karen walked towards the driver’s seat and looked back at Richard questioningly.

  “Go ahead,” he said as he sat down behind her.

  Karen got comfortable and found that the end of the curved rod started to glow with a dull green light. “I hope it still works.” She grasped the rod gently and felt the long contraption float up a few inches above the ground.

  “I like it!” Richard murmured in her ear as she pushed forwards and sideways on the control rod and glided the floating stretcher out of its storage compartment and through the exit. As the craft accelerated it continued to rise above the ground, until they were going about eighty kilometres per hour and maintaining a constant three feet of air between them and smooth surface below.

  Karen leaned back, her hair whipping around Richard in the rush of air. “I do, too!”

  The inbound trip of thirty minutes or more was reduced to less than two minutes, and the device settled automatically to the ground as Karen slowed and stopped next to the body of their prisoner. They managed, with great difficulty, to heave the dead weight of the alien onto the flat surface and Karen gave Richard the gun to hold, in case the invader suddenly awoke and attacked them as she prepared to drive them back.

  “Don’t worry, he’s not going to do anything,” Richard reassured her confidently.

  �
��That’s easy for you to say; you didn’t see the dead look of his eyes just before he started to strangle me.” Karen leaned forward on the control and waited as their speed gradually built up again. “I’ll never feel safe around something like that.”

  As they crossed the lakebed Karen noticed their forward momentum start to reduce, and she watched as the green glow on the end of the control rod faded away until she could no longer distinguish it. The distance to the ground rushing by below them reduced gradually to less than a foot, and she found herself willing the old craft to continue.

  Richard jumped off as the speed dropped to less than ten kilometres per hour, and he ran behind. “I’ll catch up!” he promised, as she slid away across the paved area. Sure enough, as she crossed the threshold into the second hanger and turned towards the emergency facilities, Richard jogged to the door and walked in, just seconds behind. The stretcher floated just inches off the floor and glided to a halt by the nearest of the coffin-like units.

  Karen looked at him as she got off, and smiled as he gasped for breath. “I think I may have overloaded it on the way out.”

  “Speed demon!” Richard leaned on the edging behind the tail end seat and pulled his hand away quickly. “It’s hot!” he panted. “Let’s get… him inside and… see if it can… figure him out.”

  They took off the restraining cords reluctantly, though it was clear that they were unnecessary, pulled the space suit fabric down below the wounds and shoved the body off the edge. Richard tried to slow the descent, but it slid into the padded interior and landed with a thump. He closed the lid and turned back to the monitors. Several of the displays, including pulse, body temperature and blood pressure started to give readings which looked reasonable to him, but the other measurements of more complex bodily functions were even more unintelligible than those he had seen when Karen had tried out the unit.