Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  Bonchor led out, her smile spilling on all within range, and Rendan followed his effervescent pilot. Esten went to follow their lead, checked a little nervously that the celebrities were close behind, and walked on.

  Batamon nodded as she turned away, and stayed close to Kirrina as they worked their way through the packed crowd. Occasionally one of those further back would shout out a greeting, and Richard or Kirrina would wave back. Those at the sides of the human pathway reached out to shake their hands as they passed by. Once or twice, a particularly jubilant local would reach out and grab Paranak’s arm or hand and shout a friendly greeting. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the group progressed to an opening that led into the side of a steep ridge, covered with hanging plants that were barely visible in the twilight. Almost instantly they found themselves inside a wide, shiny, well-lit passageway, and the noise of the crowd was left far behind.

  Kirrina sighed as she managed to tune out the emotions of the people, something impossible to her, moments earlier in the close proximity of the packed applauders.

  “Exhilarating, isn’t it?” Batamon glanced at her and smiled, his loose, collarless maroon shirt giving his appearance a cheerful glow. “I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced anything quite like it.”

  “I guess I’m not used to such events;” Kirrina smiled as Richard finally was able to walk alongside her, immediately putting his arm around her shoulder and taking the hand that she proffered up to him. “I feel exhausted.”

  Richard sensed a slow but steady drain as their hands contacted, but he could sense no urgency in this unconscious appropriation of his slightly less worn energy levels, just a feeling of belonging, of relief and of vindication.

  Kirrina looked back at Paranak, close behind her, and her focus on her own dreams and their realisation promptly changed to reflection on how he must have been feeling since she had found her own people and discovered her own, long-lost relative in a sea of Arshonnans. He was walking solidly and seemingly without concern for his potentially precarious predicament, surrounded as he was by his people’s perennial opponents.

  “Thank you my friend;” the orphan spoke simply, leaving the concerns she had regarding the lone Narlav for another, less public time. “I have finally found my home at last!”

  Chapter Forty

  The impact of impacts can never be fully anticipated – Idahnian

  “Commander Steele, I’d like you to meet Latt Jusstinalss,” Judy began proudly. As they approached the hangar entrance she took the American naval officer the few paces from his escort, over to Latt, putting her arm around the man she considered to be her very own extra-terrestrial, and especially now, her fiancé, as soon as she reached him. “He’s the real ‘brains’ behind our work here in Cold Lake.”

  “Good to meet you, Latt.” The naval officer shook his hand enthusiastically and turned his still somewhat boyish face towards Latt with interest, seeing someone who looked younger than himself, and trying to reconcile this with the fact of his almost encyclopaedic knowledge of alien power systems, weapons, space and, he supposed, the Galaxy. He noticed Judy’s considerably changed appearance since her visit to the USS Chicago, and her possessive attitude to Latt, with surprise. She’s grown her hair out and got herself a truly unique boyfriend, too! She’s not what I remembered her to be like, not one bit!

  “Why don’t you both call me Kevin?” he suggested, trying hard to keep the surprise out of his voice and his expression. “I think we’ll be together too much to stand on formality.”

  “Yes, Kevin!” Latt agreed as he returned the Commander’s handshake with equal enthusiasm, clearly both used to and happy with having the slightly taller woman close beside him. “I am very glad that you were able to come, and even more pleased that your Navy has supplied us with a working reactor. The Canadians don’t have anything suitable. Our need is truly desperate, now that our prototype is gone, especially with Professor Hardy still in the hospital.”

  “Yes, the escort gave me the latest on the way from the aircraft – he must be one of the luckiest men on Earth, having escaped from two apparently hopeless situations; it sounds like he should be released from the hospital fairly soon. As for our surplus and rather old equipment, you won’t get nearly as much power out of this reactor as you must have expected to get from the Eliminator; it comes from one of our old Thresher class subs.”

  Latt nodded and turned to the guard by the small door next to the huge sliding entrance doors. The soldier opened it immediately, and they walked inside, leaving the crisp February air behind them.

  Latt looked back a moment later and saw that Commander Steele had stopped to take in the scene.

  “It’s quite the craft, isn’t it?” Judy said with a grin as she watched his expression. She had been walking alongside their guest, and had stopped with him.

  “I’d say!” Kevin murmured, running his eyes over the gleaming, streamlined shape. “It looks a little like one of my dream subs; I never thought I’d see the like in reality.”

  “Your old Thressher reactor will be the final ingredient to making this a reality.” Latt declared enthusiastically.

  “Hopefully it won’t give us everything it’s got in an instant.” Brisson commented quietly as the Commander took a slow step closer to the ‘Spacesub’.

  “No, it won’t ever give you all it’s got in an instant, or in a week or a month; to be brutally honest, you’ll be lucky if it even gives you forty percent of what it theoretically has ‘got’, in terms of power output rates!”

  “I’ll show you the insides,” Latt suggested, hopeful that he would prove that prediction untrue. “From the dimensional data you gave, I’m sure your reactor won’t fit, but perhaps some components could be realigned, or even omitted.”

  The Commander looked startled, but refrained from commenting until he could learn more about Latt and an alien technology that could convert matter entirely into energy and warp gravity fields to induce motion.

  “At least you’ll get some idea of what we will achieve once we have integrated your reactor with our Gravity Inducers.” Latt walked a little ahead, with Judy now close to his side.

  Steele followed without saying another word. He climbed through the pair of tiny round hatches – outer and inner airlock doors – and took in the incredibly compact Eliminator reactor and the interior features of the craft silently, nodding occasionally as Latt described pertinent aspects of the design.

  “I understand the propulsion system is not ready yet, anyway,” he said once Latt had finished. “How long will it take to get that up and running?”

  “There are now seventeen Inducers integrated to ninety four percent in an array surrounding the central section here,” Latt explained in a matter-of-fact voice, giving no indication of the Herculean efforts he and Judy had gone to, to reach this stage. “I plan to extend the coverage to the entire craft within three weeks. Allowing for unforeseen circumstances, Earth DEfender Mark One will be ready for action in about a month.”

  Kevin wondered to himself how you could ever allow for unforeseen circumstances, but refrained from any comment that might be construed as negative, or defeatist.

  “Ready, apart from the power source, that is,” Judy stepped up to Latt and put her hand on his shoulder. “It has been decided not to actually use this Narlav reactor in our ‘EDEM One’ once we get to the flight trials stage, to guarantee that it will always be available for comparison and reference purposes. The craft will be like a submarine with propellers but no engine. That’s where you come in.”

  Commander Steele nodded and examined the dimensions of the interior space once more. “It looks to me like you’ll have to build another shell, and make it at least eight feet wider. And your drive system will have to cope with the increased weight of the naval reactor, not to mention the inevitable increase in weight associated with a larger craft.”

  Latt’s expression became more distant. “This will put us back several months.” He wal
ked to the front of the craft and stared out of one of the small round windows at the hangar.

  “How will you get past the need for a steam turbine to convert the power into a usable form?” Kevin asked with intense interest.

  Latt brightened a little at this. “We had two sets of spares for our Eliminator, so we’ll use parts from the second set to provide the components to do that task – it will take less than a tenth of the space of your steam turbines, and about a hundredth of their weight!”

  Judy looked at him anxiously, aware that this would create a huge amount of work, and knowing that, without Professor Hardy’s assistance, at least at the start, it would fall to her own special ‘alien’ to do the lion’s share. She turned to the Commander. “You’ll have to see Ed Baynes about the new craft. He’s not going to like that part one bit.”

  “Perhaps we could just modify this one – if we really don’t need as much shielding, as I have heard, it may not be such a beast to fit in.” The American naval officer suggested, as he started to accept the concept of usable alien technology.

  “That’s another of the benefits of the Narlav technology,” Latt responded enthusiastically. “The components I was referring to actually capture and convert the stray ionising radiation into usable power, too.”

  “Incredible!” Kevin was staring at the Eliminator again. “What couldn’t you do with a reactor like this in a sub!”

  “The Narlavs might even leave you alone, if you stayed under water – at least for a while.” Latt nodded soberly.

  “Any chance that you could build another ‘local’ Eliminator?” Kevin wondered aloud.

  “We will, we must, and then many, many more of them… but first we would have to determine what went wrong down in Nevada.” Judy interjected. “That’s why we need your old reactor, to keep to our schedule for becoming ‘space-worthy’.”

  “Space-worthy… I like that!” Steele grinned at this descriptive term, then shrugged. “I heard the report from Nevada was inconclusive, to say the least. They have absolutely no idea what caused the accident.”

  “It’s hard to deduce much when the object you are trying to analyse has turned to vapour and created what some people are calling the largest crater in both technological and recorded history,” Judy sympathised with the investigators. “The electromagnetic pulse from the blast wiped the hardened military recording media clean, and wrecked most of their supposedly radiation-resistant electronics, too; they’ll have to replace it all to provide some confidence in the reliability of their systems. Even in Las Vegas, half the computers were fried, it made those gambling casinos lose a lot of money – everything was shut down. The effect went upwards, too: we lost a couple of satellites, as did some other countries, although they are mostly playing their cards close to their chests, seeing as they don’t know what to conclude about the events of the last few weeks in our country.”

  “I heard that Professor Hardy was not just physically injured.” Steele ventured.

  “Yeah,” Brisson admitted. “Isaac can’t remember what happened at all that day; it seems his short-term memory was blocked off by his concussion.”

  “That’s a real pity, but memories can be recovered sometimes, after that kind of injury.” The naval officer voiced his most positive perspective. “It may take some time, but we may get our answers.”

  “I’m still hoping for that,” Latt revealed with his usual frankness.

  “I’m glad he made it through, though; that’s his second close call – after the one you and he had on Mars.” Judy shuddered as she relived the experience she had missed, as it had happened before she even knew of Latt – somehow she could picture the massive laser beam, barely missing him, and vaporising Terry Stadt’s arm. She became introspective, and she found, after an unknown but surely brief interval, that she had missed something – and could not be certain if Latt or the new Commander, or even both, had spoken. In any case, Steele was continuing to discuss the situation:

  “…about the explosion, I heard that our government is stalling a U.N. resolution to send a team from the I.A.E.A to look at the site. The dust cloud is still protecting the site from satellite analysis, and there’s stratospheric dust all around the world already, making weird atmospheric effects like green sunsets and blue sunrises.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been watching the news – or at least the headlines – the stations all seemed scared at first, but now they’re just enjoying the spectacle.” Judy nodded.

  “Apparently most of the isotopes are so short-lived that the ground will be cold and clueless in another four days, providing the perfect alibi. And the groundwater has been fairly flooding in, covering a lot of the crater – there’s just an island of exposed rubble in the middle now, with a bit of a peak. Meanwhile our ambassadors are having their work cut out reassuring the nations of the world,” Steele laughed. “They all think we have a super weapon, and many of them have put their own militaries on alert!”

  “As there’s no traditional fission nuclides, like strontium and caesium, except of course for old bomb-testing remnants thrown up when the crater was created, they’ll have to accept our word that it wasn’t a bomb. All those monitoring stations around the world, none of them are coming up with anything significant.” Judy smiled slightly. “Anyway, they’ll get over it. The biggest concern lately was how much the price of sheet and plate glass will go up, as just about all the windows in Las Vegas got smashed.” She shook her head as if clearing it of the subject, more concerned with the mood of her idol than what she considered to be insignificant problems inside or outside of North America. “I have to help Latt with the Inducers now. The guard will direct you to Major Baynes.”

  The Commander took the hint and excused himself graciously.

  Once he was out of sight, Judy moved closer behind Latt and hugged him, resting her chin on his shoulder. For a long time nothing was said.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” he whispered. “I have the awful feeling the Narlavs are already here, watching uss, calculating how much, if any, additional effort they need to make to ensure our destruction. We haven’t even sstarted on the N-beam weapon yet; there isn’t any real point until we have a means of getting it out in sspace where we can test it safely. Without it we will be defenceless against their Warrnam. We were sso close!” He thumped one fist into the palm of his other hand in frustration. “There was nothing wrong with that reactor, I’m sure. I would have sstood by it and run it up to power myself, if I had not been more concerned with the Inducers.”

  “Maybe Isaac will remember what happened.” Judy shuddered again at the thought of losing Latt. “If only Director Christiansen had been able to salvage something from his electronic record. Even the older, back-up videotape was fried! But we have Kevin to help us now. Once we have the Inducers figured out, we’ll get to work on those weapons,” she assured him. “You have done what no one else on Earth could have done. Nobody believed you when you said you would fix the Gravity Inducers. You proved them wrong. I’ll help you. You’ll prove them wrong again.”

  “Nobody believed me?” Latt turned as he felt her shudder a third time. He took her in his arms and smiled at her. “What about my very sspecial woman?”

  “Of course I did.” Judy kissed him for emphasis. “I meant everyone else.”

  “Okay.” Latt grinned broadly. “We set up those stress gauges all day. Tomorrow, too. Until we finish. Then we run at two percent and tune as before.”

  “I know,” Judy interrupted. “Then we run at eight percent and make corrections. Then twenty five, and so on.”

  “That’s when it will fly,” he predicted softly. “We’ll do that late at night when we can be sure no one will disturb us.”

  Judy grinned at the thought of flying silently around inside the hangar in Kevin Steele’s dream ‘Spacesub’. Almost as exciting as… She pushed the thought out of her mind and reminded herself that he was worth the wait.

  “You’re the best engineer I ever met!
” Latt kissed her in return, recognising her feelings now he had learned about his own emotional responses. “But this aspect of our lives must wait until we have saved your mixed-up planet and returned to rescue my people.”

  Judy nodded sadly. It would be nice to just get away again. She pictured herself with Latt on some deserted beach, palm trees waving in the breeze, lying on the sand in just a skimpy yellow bikini… but then a black shape expanded rapidly overhead, cutting out the sunlight, and a brilliant laser beam struck the water, causing it to boil up as the craft moved inexorably towards them. Her dream was ruined. Those Narlavs… They’re like a plague!

  ***

  The air in the crater was clear, ironically.

  The imposing void was laid out in all its raw grandeur, the details of the opposite rim optically sharp in a way that made it seem impossible that it was twenty five thousand feet, or almost five miles, away. The lake that was still forming within its confines reflected the rocky central peak with a mirror-like precision, making it seem a very peaceful spot, a great potential destination for tourists to enjoy.

  Four men stood side by side on the ridge; none of them felt the least bit like a tourist. Each one was thinking the same thoughts, each hoping one of the others would have come up with a better, and hopefully more credible explanation for the gigantic hole made by the new and seemingly dangerously unstable Eliminator reactor than they could.

  “Well, gentlemen,” The President’s Chief Scientific Advisor began after he conceded to himself that his apparent age, coupled with his prestigious position, made him the de facto head of this working group. “The International Atomic Energy Inspectors will be here at the end of the week. What will they find?”

  “Hrm!” ‘Chris’ Christiansen shifted into a crouch and dropped his meter none too gently onto the rubble at his feet. The liquid crystal display auto-ranged up twice, and settled to give both the digital result of its innards and an analogue representation of the same, above the numbers. “Still giving me twenty five millirem per hour. Should be about background in three days at this rate, and considering the main radionuclides that were produced.”