by Mike Luoma
Chapter Seventeen
Alibi clears his Cruiser out of the Ceres Central port and begins winding his way through the asteroids out to a safe Transpace point. He feels bad about stretching the truth with Anita and M'Bekke, but he knows they wouldn't approve of yet another trip to the planetoid.
"I'd rather not ask. They can tell me later that I shouldn't have," he thinks out loud as he flies through the rocks. The ship's shielding brushes aside micro-particles so the Cruiser can move safely through the dense neighborhood of the asteroid belt.
Two hours later it's safe to make the Transpace jump. Alibi takes the ship through Transpace. He's on the ground on Rigel Four about a half an hour later, Rigel Four having few orbital neighbors to avoid on the trip. Alibi has no problem finding a landing bay in which to keep his Cruiser. The SAIF garrison here grants most registered SAIF ships easy landing rights.
Alibi finds his way back to Krish's place to pick up the old scientist.
"Alibi! Good as your word! We are not really doing this, though, are we?"
"Well, we want to make it look like we're not doing anything..."
"Come in, come in for a minute. I want to do one thing before we go."
He escorts Alibi into the crowded living space, and then hands him something that looks like a Wand.
"This Wand operates on a hyper-isolated basis," Krish says. "We'll be able to narrowly communicate with both Rigel Four and Cat's Eye."
"Cat's Eye? Why? Why do we want to do that?"
"We'll set a course for Cat's Eye, book it, log it. We'll check in with Rigel Four from the Transpace Point all systems go, but then call Cat's Eye reporting mechanical failure. We tell them we're going back to Rigel Four. Then no one expects us anywhere! But we'll need an isolated signal to do that discretely. That's what this Wand does."
"Let's do it, then. Sounds like a plan!"
Alibi and Krish make for his ship.
The two head off in Alibi's Cruiser for the Transpace jump point. They fool their way off the grid and jump through Transpace to a neutral, empty system, just in case they are in some way being followed. As soon as they come out of Transpace, Alibi's Wand alarm begins going off.
"Aw, shit, don't tell me Aunt Anita found us out! Oh. Says unknown source," Alibi notes, surprised.
"Hello Alibi, this is Kit," the voice on the other end purrs. "I see you are coming in to Cat's Eye. I will meet you there with some news."
"Uh, Kit?" Alibi starts. "We're, uh, not... Damn. Can you send me your location code? I want to call you back on another Wand." Kit sends the coordinates across the Wand and signs off. Alibi transfers the code to the special Wand and calls Kit back using its isolated signal.
"This signal is more secure," Alibi explains. "We're not going to Cat's Eye, Kit. We told them we turned back to Rigel Four."
"But it was only when they published your departure time and trip log on Rigel Four that I was able to track you down. Rigel Four's port still has you listed as traveling to Cats Eye."
"That's what we told them," Alibi says.
"So where are you? Where are you going?"
"I'm sending you coordinates for where we are right now," Alibi tells Kit as he does.
"Received," Kit acknowledges. "These coordinates are in the middle of nowhere," Kit replies, puzzled.
"We're in the "middle of nowhere" right now," Alibi says. "A temporary stopover before we go... somewhere else. A return trip."
"I will go with you," Kit says. It sounds like he understands what Alibi is inferring. "Programming the coordinates for Transpace now. I should be at your location soon. Kit out."
Alibi moves the Cruiser away from the actual Transpace coordinates he just sent over. He and Krish watch through the Cruiser's main view screen as the stars seem to ripple and fade. A pinpoint of light grows to become a Dakhur ship zooming in from Transpace, suddenly surging in out of nothing and nowhere to appear right next to Alibi's Cruiser.
The Dakhur ship is a small personal transport large enough to carry four large beings, but with no cargo capacity by the look of it. A docking collar extends off from of the side of the ship, around its airlock door.
"Alibi, I'm going to dock with your Cruiser," Kit says over the com.
"Go ahead, Kit. I can see the docking collar extending, it looks good to go. We won't move, I promise."
Kit's ship lines up alongside. Its docking collar connects to the Cruiser magnetically, snapping into place. After a minute, Alibi hears the Cruiser's airlock door cycle open. Kit soon joins them on the bridge.
"You are going back to the planetoid?" Kit asks, first thing.
"We are," Alibi confirms.
"It is now off limits. You are aware of this?" Both Krish and Alibi nod. "All right. But listen to my information first, and you may not need to go back to that planetoid," Kit tells him.
"Really?" Alibi asks. "Well, I'm curious. What information is that?"
"Thanks to reports I came across back on Hur, I have found another planet where Eldred have been spotted recently, a world called De'Ramanar. It is quite a distance from here. It lies in the old Eldred expanse, the now unclaimed systems between Dakhur space and the Tek'Tah. It is in a sort of limbo similar to our planetoid between Tek'Tah and human space in the old Eldred worlds, would you not agree?" Alibi and Krish nod.
"Sounds very similar," Alibi grants him.
"De'Ramanar is under no jurisdiction right now, not Dakhur, not Tek'Tah. Until recently this had not been an issue. The world was like so many other dead Eldred worlds, deadly poison to any who ventured to land. We Dakhur believe that when the Eldred race died a toxin was released into the atmosphere, by will or by accident."
"Typical," Alibi says. "I still don't understand why they felt they had to kill their worlds as they died out."
"Control," Krish offers. "Even in death, their race desired control," he explains. "The only way they could control their worlds after they were gone was to make sure that no one could land on them."
"Bastards," Alibi sneers.
"The Eldred were obsessed by control," Kit admits. "The highly contagious viral toxin with which they flooded the atmosphere of De'Ramanar was impossible to remove from materials with which it came in contact – our safety suits could not be worn safely. One might be safe inside the suit while one was on the planet, but even after one left De'Ramanar, there was no way to remove the toxin from the exterior of one's suit without suffering contamination and rapid death," Kit tells them.
"Nice," Alibi cracks.
"De'Ramanar was marked as a deathtrap and left alone for the last twenty-three years. Now we have reports of activity in the system. Unknown ships sighted landing on De'Ramanar. Our probes sent into the atmosphere, when not destroyed, show that the toxin has disappeared, perhaps dissipated or gone dormant," Kit says. "But most of our probes have been destroyed before we can take complete atmospheric readings. Someone or something is shooting them down."
"Oh really," Alibi says with new interest.
"Really," Kit confirms. "I volunteered to investigate and discovered the Eldred were there. I was chased off the planet soon after spotting them, but make no mistake, it was them. The same small furry race of 'killer koalas from outer space', as you once called them, Alibi."
"I called them that before I had to fight them. There's nothing cute about the Eldred now," Alibi says.
"There's never been anything cute about the Eldred except their outward appearance," Krish notes. "But..." he grows concerned, "before we look into the Eldred on De'Ramanar, we need to go back to Masakov's planetoid, correct? That is still the plan, is it not?" Krish asks Alibi.
"I'm setting course for the planetoid," Alibi announces. He punches in the Transpace point and sets the ship to jump. "If we don't find anything on the planetoid we can go to De'Ramanar next."
"We're not just going there looking for Eldred," Krish tells Kit.
"You may not be," Kit says to Krish. He nods at Alibi. "But he is."
"Still, Alibi?" Krish a
sks. "Is that why you really want to go back?"
"I want to prove what I know to be true," Alibi says. "I want people to believe me when I tell them the Eldred are back, so we can deal with the question of why they're back. And why they're working with the Tek'Tah."
"I don't think we'll find anything to help your case on that planetoid," Krish says to Alibi. "The Tek'Tah or whoever cleaned that place out want to keep the current existence of the Eldred a secret. I don't think they've left anything behind for you to discover."
"Well, if I may ask, then," Kit inquires of Krish, "Why are you going?"
"Tachyons!" Krish declares. "I found many tachyon particles on and around Masakov's body."
"I do not know that word," Kit replies.
"Well, let's see, tachyons aren't actually particles, they're strings, because if they were particles they wouldn't exist. Has to do with negative mass squared, imaginary mass and..." Krish trails off. "It is hard to explain without writing down the equations."
"I do not know that I would understand your equations," Kit says.
"Right," Krish agrees. "Let me see... We've been able to detect them since we discovered we were actually creating them as we looked for them in the future. Then we figured out how to compensate for that, so we could detect tachyons we weren't creating, and we found them. Because these things move faster than light, they move outside of time, in both directions, at least, the ones we detect seem to. But we've only been able to create ones that move forward into the future."
"These 'tachyons' travel through time?" Kit asks.
"They seem to," Krish says.
"So... could someone hitch a ride on them, use them to travel through time?" Alibi asks. "Sounds pretty far fetched!"
"That is because it is far fetched," Krish says. "You would have to find a way to attach yourself to something that has no actual mass in our three dimensions. And then you would need a whole lot of them. So far, we cannot produce very many, and not all at once."
"So... you wish to check for Tachyons on the planetoid?" Kit asks him.
"I do. After we brought Masakov's body back, I started testing the body for various elements. For some reason, I decided to check for tachyons. He was loaded with them! All moving into the future, in concentrations and numbers like we never see!" Krish says, getting excited in the telling. "The only other concentrations we have seen like that have appeared in deep space. Seemingly random clouds of tachyons. This is the first time we've seen a body soaking in them."
"Do you think he was attempting to move through time?" Kit asks Krish.
"He did flail a lot," Alibi notes.
"Maybe," Krish answers Kit. "But maybe not his body? If Masakov had some way to isolate his bio-electrical energy matrix he might have... Well, it just seems unlikely. We can see he didn't go anywhere. And the effort killed him."
"The flailing, right?"Alibi jokes. "And the lesson we learn from the story is, 'Kids? Don't play with tachyons'!"
"We'll measure and see what the levels look like down there, where you two saw that machine of his," Krish explains.
"Perhaps we should take my craft to the planetoid? It is smaller," Kit notes.
"Can't," Krish says. "The tachyon detector is very large, not truly portable, actually. It's in the cargo bay. We'll have to land this ship next to where we want to use it," he explains.
"Very well. I will leave my craft here, then, and travel with you. I will secure my ship and unlock the docking collar momentarily," Kit tells them. He leaves to go back to his ship. He's back on the bridge within the half hour.
"I must disengage my ship," Kit tells them. He sits down in the co-pilot's seat and runs through commands that set his ship free to float away from the Cruiser.
"I suppose that it is safe to leave it here," Kit says, "seeing that this is nowhere."
"Should be," Alibi agrees.
"How will we get past the sentinel satellite?" Kit asks, turning back to the matter at hand.
"He designed them," Alibi tells Kit, nodding at Krish who's smiling proudly. "He tells me that's not going to be a problem."
"I built a back door redundancy into them, in case I ever needed it," Krish explains. "It's something we engineers do. Build in back doors, just-in-cases. In this case, it's a trigger that will feed a repeat of the events of 24 hours prior from the platform's memory instead of the live feed. It syncs back up to live after 24 hours, a brief day's hiccup where we can slip in and out unseen because all those watching the platform's feed see yesterday's footage."
"That's pretty cool," Alibi comments.
"You seem to be somewhat of an evil genius, Doctor Krish," Kit purrs.
"Thank you, I think," Krish says.
The three of them prep for the landing.
Alibi launches the ship through Transpace using slightly altered end coordinates. They're attempting to come out of Transpace far enough away from the planetoid for Krish to make them invisible. He's been readying codes while they travel. As they emerge from Transpace he begins firing them off through the ship's com.
"Done! Now they are getting yesterday's news!" Krish jokes. "Where nothing is happening."
Alibi brings the Cruiser down towards the surface. The underground hangar is now open and empty. Alibi lowers the Cruiser down into the cavern, landing next to the former location of Masakov's machine. He and Kit open the cargo bay and assist Krish with the placement of sensors for the tachyon detector.
Once Krish is set with his equipment, Alibi leaves the underground hangar to jog across the surface, trying to spot fresh Eldred bodies.
He checks the grim pile of corpses. There's nothing new. He searches the area between the underground hangar and the lab building, and then finds himself walking through the empty lab building. As he approaches the place where the large man was chained to the wall he again feels something strange, as if he's feeling echoes instead of hearing them, deep, individual, stretched out laughs echoing through him every few seconds.
He walks over to the wall. With no threat from Tek'Tah fighters overhead, he can relax and see if he can get some kind of mental 'impression' from the wall. He stretches his arms ahead, gloved palms facing outward.
Echoes pulse through him faster now. He touches the wall and feels an electric shock. He leans in against the wall and images begin appearing in his mind. The echoing pulsing laughter gets faster – he can both hear and feel it. He closes his eyes, and sees himself, then Piccolo, and then Kit coming after him through a blue haze. Alibi realizes he is Masakov! Then all is pain. The world glows bright gold, then white. Darkness then descends.
Until he blinks his eyes. At least, he thinks he's blinking his eyes. Alibi can't tell if he is blinking his own eyes, or if he's seeing someone else's memories of blinking their eyes.
He stands up straight and finds he's pulling away from the wall. Laughter continues to echo. Is he laughing, is it him?
The memory impression is so strong!
He feels himself pulling away from the wall, pulling off the manacles as if they were made of paper. Or is it him?
He's looking at hands now too large, down at feet now too big, and he laughs and the laughter... stops. The echo fades fast. Alibi finds himself standing alone in the empty lab building, trying to make sense out of what he just saw.
He wanders outside of the lab building, still shaken by the powerful mental impression. Without thinking, he wanders back to the pile of bodies. There's been no sign of any new Eldred bodies. The pile is covered by recently killed human bodies. Alibi contemplates digging down into the pile to see if there are new Eldred bodies hidden underneath other corpses. Then a disturbing thought screams into his consciousness: Miss Kay is probably somewhere on this pile.
No... not her. Just her body. Miss Kay is gone.
Standing there thinking, letting his eyes lose focus, letting the grim sight before him blur into indistinct globs, Alibi finds he does not have the stomach to lift the bodies from off the pile to satisfy his cu
riosity. There may be fresh Eldred killed underneath, but it's not worth the trauma to discover whether or not he's right. He stares at the pile lost in thought, numb.
"You should stop looking at that," Kit says in his ear, over the com. Alibi sees him standing a few meters away.
"Thanks," Alibi says. "I was kind of zoning out."
"Perhaps part of your mind shut down in the face of so much carnage," Kit offers.
"No... my mind is anything BUT shut down," Alibi tells him. "Feel like I'm thinking too much."
"I do not think that is possible," Kit comments. He changes the subject. "Let us return to the ship. Krish reports his work is nearly done."
Alibi takes his time walking back to the Cruiser. Kit measures his pace to walk alongside his friend. Krish waves when he spots them approaching.
"Alibi!" Krish shouts in his ear over the com.
"Krish, you're on the com, don't shout, you don't need to."
"I am sorry," he says more softly, "I'm just excited. The tachyon readings are way off our charts. I cannot even measure them with my equipment – they're beyond anything we've seen before!"
"Really?" Alibi thinks for a moment. "Can we measure a spot in the lab, too, Krish?"
Krish looks puzzled behind his faceplate.
"If you can land the ship next to it, we could measure the spot from outside of the building," Krish says, thinking on his feet. "But the sensors won't go all the way into and around inside the building. Outside is the best we can do."
"Okay," Alibi decides. "Let's try it!"
"We must pack up here first," Krish cautions. The three of them pitch in to pack up. Alibi then flies the Cruiser up and out of the hangar, skimming over the surface to the lab building. Alibi lands the Cruiser as close to the building as he can, estimating where the shackles were on the inside wall. Kit and Alibi once again help Krish unpack and place the sensors.
Krish turns on his sensors again as Alibi and Kit look on, waiting.
"Isn't that something!" Krish says, once the sensors have finished taking their readings. "Even from out here, the tachyon readings are incredibly high! How did you know?" Krish asks Alibi.
"I got an impression from the wall inside there," Alibi tells them, nodding at the lab as they once again pack up the gear. "As if I could see Masakov's memory. Except I didn't stay Masakov. I became the big drooling guy chained to the other side of this wall. I think. And I was laughing the whole time, sort of. Could he have switched bodies?"
"Masakov? I don't know!"
"Well, you were talking about him maybe being able to move his biorhythms through time or something," Alibi explains himself, "I was just thinking, wondering, really, if he could do that in a small way and switch into another body. A bigger, badder stronger body, too, by the way."
"I was calling it his 'bio-electrical energy matrix'," Krish says. "I meant his essence, as encompassed by all of his energies, somehow held together and moved through time. It is highly unlikely. Very theoretical."
"Yes," Kit observes, "But so are those 'tachyon' readings you have been getting, correct?"
"Correct. I guess we are in the realm of the unlikely, aren't we?" Krish admits.
"Katie said he called himself 'Ashumeth', not Masakov. Perhaps this was not the first time he has done this," Kit observes.
"You mean whoever Ashumeth is or was, he did this before? And what? 'Landed' in Masakov?"
"Oh, I don't like this..." Krish says. He starts looking around, as if in panic. "No, this isn't... this is bad," he says in a rushed, hushed voice. "Very very bad."
"Do you think it is likely?" Kit asks Alibi. "Do you think he can travel through time?"
"Oh no... no no, this can't be..." Krish is mumbling.
"Sounds as plausible as anything else we're discussing here," Alibi says. "But who is he? Where's he from?"
"More apropos to ask 'When' is he from, is it not?" Kit observes.
"Oh, I think we know when!" Krish says, suddenly loud and clear. He has a crazy look in his eyes.
"When?" both Alibi and Kit ask at the same time.
"We have found huge, lingering clouds of tachyons massed in deep space," Krish says. "We thought they were naturally occurring phenomenon. Even classified them that way. But those readings were very similar to these we've taken today." Krish scratches his head. "The same way these readings blow away the ability of my equipment to measure them accurately, those readings dwarf these we've taken here and now. That would make them, quite possibly, the residue of a huge leap forward in time. The amount that can be moved would seem to be limited, so any extra energy poured into the creation of tachyons would extend the string's reach. In this case, their reach into the future."
"So those huge clouds of tachyons you've found could mean someone moved far into the future? I mean into our time, their future, from a very long time ago? I don't think I like where you're going with this, Doctor Krish," Alibi says.
"I do not like where this has already gone, Alibi," Krish says, shaking his helmeted head. "The energies we've measured? We're easily talking hundreds of thousands of years," Krish says. "And, yes... quite probably a million."
"You are saying it is possible this 'Ashumeth' came forward in time a million years and took over Masakov?" Kit asks for clarification.
"Entirely possible," Krish admits. "However unlikely."
"Huh," Alibi grunts in surprise at a surfacing memory. "I remember something Masakov said to me, it was weird. He had been lisping and slurring his words, but then for a second he spoke clearly. He said, 'sometimes... I am still I.' It didn't make sense at the time."
"Sounds like you heard the real Masakov," Krish says. "If only for a moment. A moment when he wasn't possessed by one of them. One of the Ancient Enemy!"
The words hang in the quiet space between them. No one speaks for a moment.
"We should get out of here," Alibi breaks the silence. "If what we think is true..." Alibi trails off. "There's one of them out there. Aunt Anita was right, even though she didn't want to be. And even though I don't want her to be right."
"It is too bad the trail ends here," Krish laments.
"I believe we do know where he has gone," Kit tells them. "We will find this Ancient Enemy where we find his servants. Where we find the Eldred, I believe we will find this Ashumeth... on De'Ramanar."
"I don't think I'll be making that trip with you," Krish tells them. "Can you bring me back to Rigel Four? I want to examine the sensor readings to double check and see if they really mean what I'm afraid they do."
"That's fine with me, Krish," Alibi says. "It'll give me a chance to resupply the Cruiser."
They pack up the sensor equipment in solemn silence and leave the planet.
Alibi checks the ship's sensor array as they tack toward the Transpace jump point. Nothing shows up on his screens. Seems they've made this visit undetected. They jump back to the middle of nowhere, so Kit can board his Dakhur spacecraft, and the two ships jump together back to Rigel Four.
Along the way they concoct a story about Kit finding Alibi's Cruiser after the engines gave Alibi trouble. It's plausible enough that it satisfies the curiosity of the SAIF garrison communications officer, who clears them to land.
Krish arranges for dock workers to offload the tachyon detector from the Cruiser and deliver it back to the Project installation on Rigel Four. Alibi and Kit see Krish safely back to his home.
"I plan to begin examining the data we gathered immediately," Krish says as Kit and Alibi prepare to leave. "I will call your Wand as soon as I have something conclusive."
"Hell, Krish, call me if you get anything," Alibi tells him. He smiles at the old man. "You know, you've been quite the planet hopper for a crotchety old fart!"
"Watch who you're calling an old fart!" Krish says in mock protest. "You should remember – I was traveling to other worlds before most of the human race even knew they were out there!"
"See? Like I said, you're old," Alibi cracks back.
"Get out of here," Krish says, waving them out of his crowded front room. "You two tell me if you find anything on De'Ramanar, you hear?"
"We will, Krish," Alibi assures him.
"We will," Kit agrees.
Alibi smiles at the scientist. He and Kit leave, heading back to the port and their ships.
"Are you ready to take on Ashumeth and the Eldred again," Kit asks Alibi as they check in with the SAIF Port Authority on Rigel Four. Alibi is filing a flight plan for De'Ramanar, figuring no one on Rigel Four knows where it is.
"I don't know," Alibi replies. "Guess so. You?"
"I do not know, either," Kit admits. "Perhaps being ready for them does not matter."
Alibi laughs.
"What is funny about this?" Kit asks him, perplexed.
"We're worried about creatures most people don't think exist anymore. Just struck me that folks would think we're deathly afraid of imaginary monsters, made me chuckle," he tells Kit.
"I do not see the humor."
"Well, if we can prove they exist, no one will be laughing," Alibi says, darkening.
Alibi finishes up with the Port Authority. Kit arranges to leave his ship on Rigel Four. The two board Alibi's Cruiser and are soon jumping through Transpace, bound for De'Ramanar.
