by Ian Douglas
And Carruthers wasn’t sure he could blame them. They lived a precarious existence, hidden away within their artificially generated dream worlds, but vulnerable to any psychopathically inclined aliens who might come along. Their Guardians were the equivalent of crotchety old men, standing on their porch and shouting, “Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!”
And the conflict between humans and Saurians on their planetary doorstep could only reinforce their opinion of outsiders. No wonder the Xaxki didn’t want to talk with them.
“Admiral?” Colbert, a senior aide, said from a nearby console.
“What is it?”
“Sir, message from the planet. Commander Hunter reports that he has 315 civilian nudists down there who require immediate transport back to the Hillenkoetter. He says . . . uh . . .”
“Out with it, Lieutenant. He says what?”
“Sir . . . that if you don’t send down two TR-3Bs and a team of medical technicians to help with the transfer stat, then he will personally come up here and, ah, explain things to you.”
“Those weren’t his exact words, were they?”
“No, sir.”
Carruthers chuckled. “Okay. We’ll deal with the issue of insubordination later. Right now, Captain Groton, please send two TR-3Bs down as . . . requested.”
King shook his head. “Admiral, I still feel that—”
“We tried giving peace a chance,” Carruthers said. “Now let’s let the military have a go.”
“You think Carruthers will cave?” Briggs asked Hunter. Alfa Platoon had returned to Dome Two, where he stood in a puddle of water as the stuff condensed out of the air and onto the frigid surface of his environmental suit.
“I don’t know, Master Sergeant,” Hunter replied. “If I need to hitch a ride upstairs on the recon ship and have words with the guy face-to-face, I will. Mink? How are things going with the decanting?”
“We’ve got a good start, sir,” Minkowski replied. “Last time I checked they had about thirty people pulled out of those cylinders and recovering.” He shook his head, his eyes showing horror. “My God, sir! Those people were just being stored in those tubes. Like spare parts! Awake and everything!”
“Any . . . problems?” Hunter tapped the side of his head with a forefinger.
“You mean psychological problems? Not really, sir. Most of them seem to be feeling relieved more than anything else. A few had hysterics when we pulled them out. Doc Marlow is giving them sedatives.”
“Okay. Keep them warm and dry, and we’ll see about getting them up to the Big-H.”
“Absolutely, Skipper.”
“Staff Sergeant Daly!”
“Sir!”
“Pick three men and suit up. You’re going to go up to the ship with Duvall on that TR-3R outside.”
For just an instant, Hunter thought the Army SpecOps operator was going to give him an argument, but the man shuttered his expression. “Yes, sir!”
“You will take all of the wounded with you, Miss Clarke, and as many of the other civilians as you can pack on board that ship. And when you board the Hillenkoetter, you make a big noise about getting a couple of 3Bs down here stat. Go all the way to the admiral’s office and sit on his desk if you have to. Understand?”
The expressionless mask broke with the slightest of grins. “Yes, sir. That I can do, sir!”
“Good.” He thought for a moment. “Take Marine staff sergeant Seton with you.”
“Commander!” Seton said. She’d been standing close enough to hear. “Are you saying that because I’m female?”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant. I’m saying it because Miss Clarke and some of the other women from downstairs might appreciate having a woman with them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hunter was torn between sending as many of the refugees up to orbit as he could, or as many of his own men as possible. The cold truth remained, though, that only a tiny fraction of the humans on this planet could reach the Hillenkoetter on the recon transport; they needed at least two of the far larger TR-3Bs down here to get everyone off.
In the meantime, if the vanishing pillbugs launched another attack on the compound, he needed enough men down here to hold them off. Ultimately he’d decided to send the absolute minimum of his personnel—just enough to maintain order on the transport . . . and to make that “big noise” back on the Hillenkoetter he wanted.
“Mink?”
“Sir!”
“Get that lizard in here. The leader.”
A moment later, Minkowski returned with the Saurian. He looked down at the alien. “Do you have a name?” he demanded.
“No.”
The answer surprised Hunter, but so little about these beings made any sense at all.
“As of right now, your name is Joe. Okay?”
“Joe. But I do not require a—”
“No, but I damn well do!”
“Yes, sir.”
The honorific startled Hunter more than the alien’s lack of a name. Evidently, it had been listening . . . and learning.
Or perhaps it assumed that “Sir” was Hunter’s name.
“You told me a while ago that we can’t teleport from the planet onto the Hillenkoetter because of the difference in relative velocities. Right?”
“Yes.”
“The way I see it, we have two options. We have the Hillenkoetter match velocities with this spot on the planet . . . or we have them send down transport spacecraft to pick us up.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Are you willing to show us how to work this system, so we can get off this planet?”
This was the worrisome part. Would the Saurian leader help them? Or would it refuse, or, worse, pretend to help them but pull some kind of sneaky, high-tech trick that would teleport them all into hard vacuum or the interior of a sun? Just missing the target and dropping an unprotected man on the surface of Serpo would be more than enough to kill him.
Hunter had no idea how he could even begin to trust the alien.
“Joe” seemed to be reading Hunter’s thoughts. Perhaps it was.
“Sir . . . I assure you that we want you and your kind off of this planet just as much as you wish to be gone. Further, we wish to be gone, as well. Our one ship on this world was destroyed in your last attack.”
“Your ship? When was that?”
The Saurian passed a skinny hand over a nearby console. On a screen, a building, low and squat like a bunker, could be seen embedded in the side of the mountain. Human fighters flashed overhead, one after another, and then the bunker erupted in a violent flash.
Hunter studied the image. “That building . . . it connects with this base?”
“Through a tunnel to the lower floor, yes.”
“Could we get out that way?”
“No. Not any longer. The tunnel has collapsed completely.”
Damn. For a moment, there, Hunter had thought he’d seen a way out.
“So how do we get out?”
“We do have a dimensional transport system operational . . . what you call teleportation. If one of your ships were to land outside this base, we could use the system to . . . to open a kind of tunnel past space. Your people—and we—could use that tunnel to get on board your ship and make our escape.”
“What about that kinetic field outside?”
“That would have to be lowered, of course, for your ship to land within the compound.”
Hunter nodded. They’d lowered the shield to let Duvall in with his TR-3R, and to permit the recon team to enter. The shields were up once more. “What if they land outside?”
“They would be attacked by the Dreamers, of course. When we drop the shield, the Dreamers will be able to enter the compound and attack us here.”
Hunter nodded, picturing the tactical problems. If Carruthers got off his ass and sent down a couple of TR-3Bs, they could escape, along with all of the human prisoners in the basement downstairs. The discovery of all those civilians changed things, made things far more
urgent.
Hillenkoetter couldn’t help, not directly, not blocked by that damned shield.
No, it was up to him.
Could he trust the Saurians?
Of course not! But what other choice did he have?
“Where are you guys from, anyway?” he asked the being. “What is your homeworld?”
“Earth,” it replied.
“You mean you plan on taking over Earth? Earth will be yours in the future?”
“Earth was ours in the past,” it told him. “From one point of view, it still is.”
It seemed open and forthcoming with its answers, but Hunter didn’t understand. No matter. He had a plan of action now, a way to get out of this trap.
“You or your people will show us how to operate the dimensional transporter?”
“Of course.”
“And you will help us free the people you’ve been holding downstairs?”
The being hesitated at that. “There is no reason to bring them along. They are useless to us now.”
“They are human beings!” he shouted, and some of the people in the control room jumped at the yell. The Saurian flinched. Hunter took a deep breath and added, somewhat more calmly, “They are our people, they are under my protection, and they are going back with us. Period.”
“As you say.”
But the Saurian did not sound convinced.
Twenty minutes later, Duvall stared at a spherical something shimmering above the control center’s deck. “That leads to my ship?” he asked.
“That’s what the lizard says,” Hunter told him. Their pet Saurian had manipulated some controls, and a kind of hole had opened up inside the control room, a hole with edges blurred by sharp distortions of space, a spherical hole which suggested a twist through higher dimensions—like the one they had seen in Dome Four. Hunter raised his voice and addressed the room at large. “Listen up, people! I need a volunteer to check this out. . . .”
“Never mind,” Duvall said. “I’ll do it. It’s my ship. Besides, I’m already suited up.” He snapped down the visor of his helmet, sealing it.
“Lieutenant, I don’t—”
“Bucky here can fly the ship if . . . well, if things go bad.”
“Stay in radio contact, then.”
“Yes, sir.” Steeling himself, he stepped into the sphere, crouching a bit to make his lanky frame fit . . .
. . . and immediately stepped onto the narrow cargo deck of the TR-3R.
“I’m through,” he said over his radio link.
“Copy that,” Hunter’s voice came back. “Lieutenant Bucknell’s coming through behind you.”
A spherical blur opened nearby, appearing to be unfolding from the bulkhead, and then Bucky materialized within the blur and walked out. “Permission to come aboard,” she said, grinning through her visor.
“Granted,” Duvall said. “Jesus, that is the weirdest way to travel I’ve ever seen!”
“Just like Star Trek.”
“Well, not exactly. No sparkly lights. C’mon, let’s get topside.”
The two of them had climbed the ship’s ladder forward and entered the flight deck. Strapping into their seats, they began running down the launch checklist and warming up the ship’s systems.
“Main power,” he said, his gloved hand dancing over the main touch screen.
“Green,” Bucky told him.
“Drive.”
“Hot.”
“Nav.”
“Green.”
“Com.”
“Go . . .”
As they went down the checklist, the ship rocked ever so slightly. People were filing through that damned weird hole in space and entering the cargo bay, their accumulating weight causing the craft to shift slightly as they moved. A few moments later, Staff Sergeant Ann Seton’s voice came over the TR-3R’s intercom. “We’re all on board, Lieutenant,” she told him. “As many as we could squeeze in, anyway.”
“How many is that?” he asked.
“Twelve refugees, four wounded, and the four of us.”
Duvall tried to imagine twenty people packed into that cargo deck. The word sardines came to mind.
“Brace yourselves as well as you can back there,” he said. “There won’t be any high accelerations, so you should be okay braced against one another on the deck, but if I have to maneuver you might get thrown back and forth a bit.” He opened a radio channel. “Velat Base, TR-3R Delta ready for liftoff.”
“Copy, Delta. We’ll drop the compound shield in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . now!”
The triangular ship rose from the ground on humming gravitics, rising straight up until it was well clear of the base. “Velat Base, Delta, we are at five hundred feet. We’re clear of the shield.”
“Thank you, Delta. Shield is up. Have a safe trip!”
“I’ll be back with a couple of 3Bs in tow, Velat, just as quick as I can manage it!”
And he swung the ship’s nose toward heaven and accelerated.
“They’re away,” Hunter said. “Okay, people. Everyone into your BioSuits. Check your weapons. I want everyone ready to move as soon as those transports arrive. Bravo Platoon? Are you ready?”
“Will be in a moment, Skipper,” Billingsly replied. “We’re still down here hauling civilians out of these damned vats.”
“Any problems?”
“Yessir. Not enough towels.”
Hunter chuckled. Unlikely as it had seemed, they had turned up a supply of towels and blankets in a kind of alien linen closet. Evidently, even highly evolved Grays from the remote future needed to dry off occasionally, though the shower facilities appeared to use jets of warm air for the purpose, rather than cloth.
But there weren’t enough, not by far, for over three hundred people.
“Do the best you can. Charlie Platoon. What’s your status?”
“Outside on the perimeter, sir,” Layton told him. “No sign of activity.”
“Okay. When the transports touch down, I want you guys to hold that perimeter, just in case the Dreamers get frisky. When I give you the word, you will fall back on the transports and board one through the airlock.”
“Roger that, Commander.”
Was there anything he was missing? Hunter was racking his brain, trying to spot any holes in the opplan. There were only two major problems he could see. If Admiral Carruthers refused to send the transports down was one. The other was the danger of trusting the aliens. The Grays seemed meek, even docile, but those Saurians were downright sneaky, and they could be nasty. A number of Saurians had escaped at the end of that last firefight. Where they might be and what they were up to were the great unknowns here.
“So what are we going to do with you, Joe?” he asked in a conversational tone. The Saurian looked at him through emotionless, vertically slit pupils, the eyes golden and unblinking.
“I imagine your superiors will determine that,” the being told him. It didn’t sound concerned. “We have a large colony on Earth at this time. I imagine we will be released to them.”
“A large colony? Where?”
The slitted eyes remained fixed on his. “I can’t imagine that you expect me to answer that, Commander. We have a number of bases there, however, in large caverns and under the oceans. We’ve been there for a very long time.”
Hunter had known that, though he still didn’t know how they managed to stay so completely hidden from humans. Scuttlebutt said they were everywhere, manipulating human politics, abducting humans, possibly even working toward the overthrow of humankind. Hunter wasn’t sure how much of the scuttlebutt to believe, but they say there’s no smoke without fire.
“Commander!” Colby called out. “Message from the Hillenkoetter: two TR-3Bs are now en route to Velat!”
Hunter’s eyes remained locked with the Saurian’s unblinking gaze. “Excellent,” he said. “Pass the word to Bravo to step up the decanting.”
The sooner they were off this nightmare world, the better.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Would we, if we could, educate and sophisticate pigs, geese, cattle? Would it be wise to establish diplomatic relation with the hen that now functions, satisfied with mere sense of achievement by way of compensation? I think we’re property.
Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, 1919
Helpless, Kammler watched as a pair of space-suited men unsealed the narrow tube within which he’d been floating in green liquid for God alone knew how long. A third man tapped away at a small touch screen nearby, and with a shock of renewed terror, Kammler felt the tubes in his throat and in more private parts of his anatomy being withdrawn, and needles embedded in his throat and at his groin retracting. He tried telling himself that these people were trying to rescue him, to get him out of the tank, but his mind gibbered and thrashed, certain that any change would be bad.
The memory of that intrusive, invading Mind still haunted him. Full-blown paranoia stirred nightmare horror, chilling his brain and throat and belly.
The green liquid drained suddenly away and he began gasping and retching, a terrible pain clawing at his lungs as the oxygenated liquid was violently forced from them. He drew his first ragged, agonizing breath in . . . how long?
How long?
Abruptly, the tube tilted forward, bringing him horizontal and face down. Several hands reached in to haul him bodily out into the air and light.
“Take it easy there, mister,” a not-unfriendly voice told him. “Go ahead and cough as hard as you can to get that green shit out of your chest.”
After one desperate, gurgling breath, he couldn’t inhale again. He retched . . . and retched again, as green liquid gushed and then dribbled from both nose and mouth. His heart hammered in his chest as though it was going to burst. He was strangling, drowning in air . . .
. . . and then, at last, air flooded his tortured lungs. He lay on the cold deck for a moment, gasping, panting, coughing, trying to catch his breath.
Fingers pressed at the angle of his jaw, seeking his pulse, then patted him on his back. “Okay,” a voice said. “This one’s good to go.”
Elsewhere in that dark room, other tubes were being upended, their pitiful human contents spilled coughing and gagging onto the floor. Someone handed him a towel. It was sopping wet, having been used by God knew how many other rescued prisoners.
