Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  “They would have killed us both, if we hadn’t managed to beat them to the punch,” he tried to reassure her. Somehow the logic did not seem to help, as now, for the first time, they were left with the problem of what to do with the bodies of those who had died opposing them. In contrast, neither of them had thought much about the unknown numbers who had been obliterated without a trace when Richard had turned the Negatruction weapon on the attacking ship.

  Several minutes passed before either of them could concentrate on the situation sufficiently clearly to decide on the next move. Finally, Karen looked idly over the controls before her and found a possible solution.

  “This might be useful.” A small sphere, like the Drive and weapons spheres, but with a red and black spiral pattern from one ‘pole’ to the other, materialised above the instrument panel. She made some adjustments to the presets and focus of the device she had discovered, squeezed the ball and twisted it clockwise until a chime sounded, and moved the Seagull over the bodies once more.

  Richard nodded as he picked up her idea, and waited with interest to see the results. She twisted the ball the other way and they both heard the chime, a lower tone this time. Then she backed her Seagull off so they could see what had been achieved beneath the Aircar. There, partly covering the bodies and shattered remnants of the boarding vessel, was a rough pile of soil and small rocks.

  Karen repeated the process, using the specialised miniature Shell Field to cut out another section of the desolate, powder-dry surface below them and deposit it on the pile she was forming. Several minutes passed as she continued to work, and finally she stopped and pulled the Seagull a few yards to one side and let the Aircar float there while she and Richard surveyed her handiwork.

  “That’s good,” Richard said finally as he took in the cairn-like pile of rocks and soil. He especially liked the final few layers, which Karen had removed from the bottom of one of the pits she had created as a secondary effect of her actions. This top surface consisted of fairly large, rounded rocks, which gave the pile the aura of a monument. Richard looked at the two control spheres, one like a miniature soccer ball, the other almost psychedelic in its bold red and blackness, waiting quiescently and patiently for the next commands.

  “Do you think that device,” he leaned over to read the label above the controls. “That ‘Shell Hoist’… could lift Citadel?”

  Karen considered this for a moment, then moved the Seagull fluidly into position over the Scout Craft and manipulated the hoist sphere once more. Rather than try to lift the craft towards their Aircar, she took hold of the yellow and black chequered Drive Sphere and lifted it slowly. “Let me try more power,” she said after a few seconds of apparent inactivity. She raised the power setting by increments until the board before them started to flash warning lights, but the massive black bulk below them refused to budge. She turned to Richard as she let the sphere return to its rest position, and shut down the Shell Hoist, making the spiral-patterned sphere disappear silently. “It’s no good, we don’t have the power.”

  “Then we’ll never get it into the hangar. How can we expect to fix it out here? We can’t even get inside it!” Richard was exasperated.

  “Let’s go and see if that smaller Aircar can be fixed. Perhaps that will have a Shell Hoist, and between them we’ll have enough power to lift Citadel,” Karen suggested optimistically.

  “I doubt it, somehow,” Richard responded gloomily. “We should probably do a complete survey of the Outpost and see if the Arshonnans left any working ships behind, or ones that need less fixing than Citadel, at least.”

  Karen shifted over and gently pushed him into the pilot seating area. “You fly us back; then we can check that little Aircar and use it to speed up our search.”

  “Why do you want to speed it up? Do you think the aliens will return?”

  “Somehow, I think they will.”

  He looked at her questioningly as he reached for the flight control sphere. “Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?” And, as he spoke the words, he realised she was. “But if the enemy has been coming here regularly to collect supplies of beryllium, which Citadel’s computer indicated was fairly abundant on this planet–”

  “And if one of those fuel-collecting craft was the one that found our ship floating, apparently helpless, in the system,” Karen continued for him. “They will be wondering why it has not returned.”

  “So they’ll send another ship to find out!” Richard pushed the yellow and black ball forward and accelerated rapidly towards the hangar. “And if they find us here… “

  “We would be trapped,” Karen finished simply.

  Richard flew them back in silence as they contemplated their jointly reached and equally startling conclusion. He flew competently enough, but he realised now that his ability as a pilot did not match Karen’s natural flair for the task. They both scanned the huge vault of the hangar as he slowed to make the search easier, but the tiny Aircar with the mobile stretcher still parked near it were the only things left in its forsaken and lonely interior.

  Richard landed the Seagull gently beside the Aircar and they both climbed out. “Do you remember how many other facilities like this were listed in the computer records of ‘Spaceways’?” he asked as they looked inside and saw the same orange lights glowing feebly.

  “There were several, and there may be others not associated with Spaceways.” Karen climbed inside and initiated the system check. “There’s no Shell Hoist in this model,” she reported with a hint of disappointment in her voice. “It must be a fairly basic, run-around sort of Aircar.” A moment later she looked out at him, baffled. “I can’t get any response; I’ll try and move it a little instead.”

  Richard was about to tell her not to take the chance, but she had already powered up and was reaching for the flight control sphere as she spoke. He stepped back to give her room to manoeuvre, and the tiny Aircar moved backwards slightly with a screech of metal as Karen reversed it out of the dent it had made in the wall centuries before, and lifted it off the floor. She pulled it up next to Richard and he leaned in through the still open door. All the orange lights had gone out.

  “The system checks out just fine now!” she said happily.

  Richard shook his head in disbelief. “You really have a way with these things.” He walked around and looked at the slight dent in the front end of the Aircar as it floated about three feet off the ground. “If yours is a Seagull, this must be a Woodpecker that got a little too enthusiastic!” he called out.

  Karen laughed, catching his joke through their mental connection more than by conventional audio means. I’ll let you have the ‘Woodpecker’. Then, just in case you might start wondering if we will ever get to Arshonna, whenever you’re flying her you’ll have a reminder that anything is possible!

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  After the unexpected, choice of response may change all – Idahnian

  Richard walked back around the larger Aircar as Karen lowered the more diminutive craft to the dusty floor and returned to her beloved Seagull. He got in Woodpecker and closed the door, finding that there would be just enough room for two inside, as long as the two were not exceptionally tall or wide.

  Let’s just move along the rows of hangers as we find them, he began, testing out his ability to ‘send’ without vocalising the message. We can keep a look-out for any ship that might be operative, or just need minor repairs, at the same time as searching for a Scout Craft maintenance facility, in case we have no alternative than to fix ‘number seven’ out there.

  Okay, Karen’s thought came back clearly, I want to see if I can send you a visual of the view from Seagull; you try to send me what you can see, at the same time.

  Karen’s Aircar climbed into the air and shot off towards the exit, with Richard’s following. He shook his head after a couple of seconds, as he seemed to be experiencing a disconcerting attack of double-vision.

  “I’m sorry, Karen,” he began as he swerved h
astily to avoid the framework of the huge doorway. “I can’t seem to distinguish between the view you are seeing and the one that’s really before me!”

  We’ll try again some other time, Karen responded, without undue concern. I got your view well. Too well! I thought you were going to add another dent to the front end of Woodpecker!

  Richard laughed as he dropped down towards the fourth hangar, after observing Seagull entering the third.

  This hangar is empty, also, Karen reported. I’m going to check out the computer in here.

  Richard swooped into the fourth hangar and flew down its broad expanse. “This one’s empty; do you think they all are?”

  The computer here is connected to the Spaceways network like the one in the second hangar. It says all the hangars belonging to Spaceways are located at this landing spot, and all the ships were removed as directed.

  By this time, Richard had located a terminal and had confirmed her findings. “Let’s fly over to the other main collection of hangars in this quadrant. I don’t see any details for them in the system.”

  No, you’re right; that probably means they belong to another shipping organisation. I’ll race you there! Karen jumped back into the Seagull and accelerated rapidly towards the light shining through the entrance to the hangar. As she burst out, she looked to the right and saw the Woodpecker emerge and swerve ahead of her. “No way!” She pushed the yellow and black sphere forwards and pulled level with him, then swerved to one side to avoid a taller building. About thirty seconds later she dropped towards the first hangar in the next cluster. Looking over both shoulders, she finally spotted Richard’s Aircar coming down behind her, about three hundred yards back.

  “Maybe the dent in the nose of this ’car did something to its maximum speed,” Richard began good-humouredly. “In any case, I’m running it flat out now!”

  We’ll have to find some matched Aircars someday, Karen began as she turned and disappeared into the gloom. I wasn’t even using even half the capacity of Seagull! Karen flew the entire length of the building, watching as the empty floor appeared in the light of her Aircar. Once she had ascertained that the hangar was devoid of ships, she landed near the usual location for the computer room and got out. The sheer blankness of feeling – no other life nearby – made her feel uneasy, for it was something she had never experienced before, when surrounded by all the trappings of humanity. Ed Baynes’ handgun, clipped in its holster on the belt around her waist now, reminded her of the laser rifles behind the seat of Seagull. Why don’t you join me in here, she began, then you can take one of these weapons with you?

  “Okay,” Richard responded, aware of her uneasiness, and happy to humour her in such an easy way, if it helped her stress level diminish. “I was getting lonely, anyway!” By the time he had landed, Karen had switched on the lights for the hangar and was standing by a computer terminal with one of her dazzling smiles on her face. Richard looked at her with pride, noticing the dimples that formed whenever she was really happy. “You’ve kept this a secret, so what did you find?” he said, aware of the emotions she transmitted as she hid her thoughts temporarily from him.

  “We have one less worry.” She pointed at the display. “See; it says this is a Scout Craft maintenance facility.”

  Richard nodded as he read the information eagerly.

  Karen depressed a control, and the walls down the side of the hangar opened up, revealing copious stocks of the black, ebony-like material that Citadel was made of, and seemingly endless supplies of components, panels, Macrals, and other, unrecognisable but familiarly styled parts. “The good news is that everything necessary to repair a Scout Craft is here, and the equipment is the most recent we had found thus far. There are nine of those Thurgiderns.”

  “And the bad news?” Richard continued, familiar with the music-hall style of joke and recognising, after a moment of introspection, that she had probably picked the concept up from him during one of their mind-sharing sessions.

  “I think it would take weeks, or even months to rebuild Scout Craft Seven, even with all this equipment to help us. Just getting the power restored to the interior of the shell is a big task, and you can’t afford to make any mistakes. You can’t get inside until you do that, of course. Installing a new Drive… well, I’d hate to think how long that might take.”

  Richard nodded grimly, the image of the hole that was not a hole in Citadel’s forward sphere still creepily crystal-clear in his mind.

  “We had better carry on looking for something in better condition, then,” he said shortly, his eyes scanning over some of the impressive stocks that had been stored so many centuries earlier.

  Karen agreed sadly.

  Richard hugged her for a while; their emotional levels merged, reflected and finally settled down again. Then he turned to climb back into Woodpecker.

  “Wait!” Karen called, and she leaned back inside Seagull. “Here’s a laser rifle… just in case!”

  Richard smiled as he took the weapon from her. The design was very strange, as he had noted before, when he had taken one as his protection whilst he went to check that all the other invading Narlavs were dead. The body of the rifle, as she so aptly termed it, was quite long, and, although not very heavy, was difficult to hold up for any length of time, because the only hand-grip was at the end opposite to the laser exit point. He swung it up and fired a test shot at the floor a few feet away. A flash of light temporarily blinded them both; they blinked and moments later the dull blotches faded from their eyes to reveal a narrow groove a few inches long and several inches deep in the hard surface. “Does that make you feel less worried about my safety?”

  Karen smiled. “I know, it’s silly; I know there’s no one else here, but…” she shrugged.

  “Maybe you should take one of these rifles instead of that old thing.” Richard pointed at the semi-automatic pistol in the holster attached at Karen’s waist.

  “No, thanks. This has served me well in the past.” Karen waved cheerfully as Richard stepped back inside and flew off in Woodpecker, disappearing out of the hangar at a comfortable cruising speed.

  As the day wore on and they flew from hangar to hangar, they found that mental communication between them had finally become almost effortless. So much so that Richard compared it to using the telephone.

  “Did you know that there’s a communication system in these Aircars?” Richard asked after another fruitless tour of an empty hangar.

  I wondered when you would notice that. Karen’s thought came through with a hint of her amusement.

  “I guess I was occupied with other things.” Richard had returned to his Woodpecker and climbed inside. “Does it work?”

  Karen depressed the transmit button on her control panel. “Seagull to Woodpecker, do you receive me?”

  “It’s ‘are you receiving me’,” Richard corrected, trying his unit in turn, as he felt her response in his mind. “And the answer is ‘no’.”

  You’re not coming through, either. It’s a good job we have a better method!

  Richard flew towards the next hangar as he tried to puzzle it out. “Perhaps they had a central ‘switch-board operator’, like in the old movies,” he speculated. “Then I would have to ask the operator to connect me to you. ‘Operator, patch me through to a Miss Karen Amer, please,”’ he said primly.

  Karen chuckled at his amusing conjecture on the past, and that started her thinking about her father, and how he used to sound when he called to her from the other end of the Moss Room at meal time and bedtime. She smiled dreamily as she sat down at another terminal, her task temporarily forgotten.

  “What was your real name -- I mean, before you chose Karen?” Richard asked as he picked up her reminiscences.

  Karen reached back even further and recalled a golden moment from the timeless past of her childhood, when her father had been trying to teach her to pronounce her own name as he and her mother had intended it to be said. The Moss room seemed much larger in this faint me
mory from her childhood, when she had been so much shorter, and her father seemed almost impossibly tall.

  “My name Kirrina!” Karen stated emphatically.

  Richard smiled as he caught the child-like quality of her voice, even though he could not hear it. “Kirrina.” Richard tried it out, rolling the word around on his tongue. “Kirrina. That’s really pretty.” He landed inside the next hangar and walked over to the terminal, carrying the laser rifle casually under one arm, the ‘business end’ pointed forwards and down slightly. “Do you mind if I call you that from now on?”

  Karen smiled as she continued to stare off at nothing in particular. “I’d like that very much.”

  “Great!” Richard sat down and started punching keys. “Nothing much in this system,” he determined a moment later.

  Karen glanced down guiltily and started to access the records before her.

  “No! Wait!” he corrected himself. “It says there is a ‘Patrol Vessel’ under construction here, Kirrina.” He got up and walked towards the passageway indicated on the screen. “I’m just entering the accessway now.” Richard stopped before the closed door and looked around, momentarily baffled, until he spotted another terminal. “It appears I have to identify myself here. That’s the first time I’ve come across any security. How do you think I should –” Richard screamed briefly.

  The mind link from Kirrina’s fiancé seemed to snap. She gasped as she felt the pain from his last, truncated thought. Kirrina jumped up, banging her knee against the metal edging of the terminal, as she ran and tumbled back into Seagull. A moment later the Aircar spun around in a fantastically tight turn and raced out of the hangar.

  “Richard!” she screamed out loudly in a frantic attempt to regain contact with him. A vague impression of a flash of light came feebly and fleetingly to her mind as she swung into the hangar where he had disappeared. Smoke and dust billowed out of the opening, then around Seagull as she threw it down beside Woodpecker and shoved the door up so she could scramble out. She rushed forward, past his Aircar, crouching low, and stumbled over something soft as she entered the corridor. While she was struggling to regain her balance, a flash of light passed close by her head, causing her eyes to smart and feel suddenly dry. She pulled the gun out and started to fire at the source of the light as she resisted the impulse to stop her fall and instead threw herself to the floor. The dust puffed as she hit, hiding her within a grey fog of fine particles. Some inner instinct warned her to roll to the left, and the tip of the pistol vanished in the next flash as she did so, but Kirrina continued to dodge haphazardly in the haze and fire sporadically until all the bullets in the clip had been used up.