by Terry Mixon
“Which aspect of my performance are you objecting to, Doctor?”
“Call me Michael. Everything! We need to stop everyone and document everything where it currently sits. Then, we can start a closer examination in selected areas, but nothing is to be moved without proper care.” He stared over her shoulder. “You there! Put that back!”
A glance showed one of the engineers from Liberty Station had picked up something from the floor and was about to put it into a bag.
Jess planted herself between the archaeologist and the unfortunate engineer. “You do realize that we’re pulling out of this facility in less than three days, right? And we’ve already used one of them.”
“Three days? Are you insane? This excavation will take years. These people are going to destroy irreplaceable artifacts and historical information. This simply will not do.”
“Michael,” the man’s wife, Sierra said. “Are you expecting her to control the laws of physics?”
He turned toward his wife and somehow managed to huff inside his spacesuit. “Of course not, but we can’t come in here with a back loader and haul everything out. It’s…sacrilege.”
“Tell me how to stop time and I’ll listen,” Jess said. “Everyone is being as careful as they can. They’re taking pictures and making note of where everything came from. If something looks fragile, they’ll call you or the preservationists.
“While it’s possible we’ll leave a team here, I think that’s very unlikely. We don’t have time to treat this with the reverence you want. I’m sorry.”
He sighed. “Well, I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t blow the whole thing up.”
“One stupid pyramid and you’re tainted forever,” Jess muttered. “It wasn’t even me! Hell, it wasn’t even Harry. It was his crazy brother.”
Sierra took her husband’s arm. “We have an area on the next level up where the crew is bringing artifacts. Emily is already there. We should go help her.”
The archaeologist threw his arms up theatrically. “Fine! But I want to go on record as saying this is a bad idea. When history judges us, I want my voice heard loud and clear!
“And Emily is bringing the digital scanner. I want everyone to leave things alone until we scan each room. Then we can see how it was originally in high resolution. I’m afraid I must insist.”
Jess raised her hands in surrender. “So long as it doesn’t take too much time, I’ll do what you suggest. I promise we’ll be careful.”
She watched the two of them head for the stairs with more than a hint of bemusement. And some sympathy. This wasn’t how she preferred to operate, either.
“Jess, we found something,” a male voice said.
“Who are you and where are you?”
“Sorry. It’s Ray Proudfoot. Look up.”
She tilted her head back and saw a suited figure waving from the hemisphere overhead. “Man, I hate this design. I’ll be right there. What is it?”
“It looks like a power control station. I think. All the power cubes seem to be connected to it, anyway.”
Jess trudged around the hollow sphere until she stood beside Liberty Station’s chief engineer. The console he was looking at bore a striking resemblance to the one in the crashed ship. The slick glass of the dark touchscreens wrapped a full 270º around the chair and so did the screen perched above it.
“Damn, this looks nice.”
He nodded. “See the cables around back? They lead off to all the power substations. Well, them and a bunch of other machines that we haven’t managed to figure out yet. How did the one you found before work?”
She sat awkwardly in the seat. “The touchscreens came to life when I ran my hand along the surface to clear the dust. I’m not sure it will work from inside a suit. It might need something warm and hand-like.”
A smear in the dust gave her the idea that he’d already tried that. Unsuccessfully, it appeared.
“What’s the surface temperature in here?” she asked.
“Cold. Not absolute zero, but I wouldn’t touch anything with your bare hands. That would be almost as bad as licking a flagpole in winter.”
She cocked her head and gave him a look. “That sounds like the voice of experience.”
“No comment. But beer was involved.”
“Well, that explains everything. Let me try something.”
The spacesuits had bulky mitts, but the wearer could swap them out for other equipment that required fine manipulation. The suit pressure wouldn’t leak out of the arm while the change was taking place.
She didn’t intend to do anything stupid, but the colder temperature might allow the console to read her hand without actually touching it. If not, no harm.
Jess disconnected the mitt on her right hand and pulled it off. This wasn’t the first time she’d done so in a true vacuum, so she knew it was safe. All those stories about bodies exploding without pressure or freezing immediately were wrong.
The human skin did an admirable job keeping all the squishy bits inside. Even the eyes were fine in the short term. Certainly long enough for someone to asphyxiate, which would be what killed you in an explosive decompression.
The vacuum was also a virtually perfect insulator. So long as she didn’t touch something a couple of hundred degrees colder than zero, she’d be fine.
She brought her hand slowly closer to the console until it lit up. She was still a good few centimeters from the surface, so it was sensitive. It would probably require a touch if the temperature was normal. For safety, it should require an actual touch even to activate. The builders probably hadn’t considered that it might get this cold.
Once the controls were active, she pulled her hand back and scanned the brightly lit console. It wasn’t like the pilot’s controls she’d seen before, so a power control board wasn’t out of the question.
The monitors showed interior views of the comet. Some in this room, based on the people moving around in the images. Others were dark. Perhaps rooms they hadn’t seen. It was possible the lights didn’t come up until someone was there to need them.
“Look at the icons on the right side of the console,” Ray said.
She turned and looked at them. These were ones she could make a guess at. One that looked like a lightning bolt was highlighted. There were others that seemed to represent other needs. Water might be life support. Or maybe supplies. One looked like a little spaceship.
Maybe that was a map of the comet or something to do with their surroundings.
Jess knew she shouldn’t touch them, but time was very short. She lowered her hand close to the spaceship icon and it lit up. The controls reconfigured to something much more like the ones on the crashed ship. A lot simpler in layout, but recognizable.
The monitor showed a map of the solar system. The comet was a gold diamond on its way toward passing Mars’ orbit. There were other colored icons scattered around the system.
“Do those icons mean other installations?” she asked.
“Damned if I know,” Ray said. “We should take pictures.”
Jess slid her hand back into her mitt and stepped out of the way while Ray used his suit camera to take images of everything.
“Looks like these people went just about everywhere. There’s nothing on Mercury, but there’s something on Venus. And just about every bit of real estate out from there. It seems as though Earth and the moon might have more than one. It’s hard to tell at this kind of resolution. I wonder if we can get a close-up.”
He reached out and touched Earth. Nothing happened.
“It must not like my mitt.”
“Or it doesn’t expand any further.” She shooed him out of the way and took her mitt back off. The Earth-Moon system grew slightly larger as she brought her hand close to it and a red circle appeared around it.
“I wonder what the hell that means?” she asked. “Let me try something stupid.”
She touched the screen with the back of her knuckle. The cold was painful, but she p
ulled her hand back before it had more than a moment to register.
The Earth Moon system expanded to take up the entire left side of the monitor. Both globes rotated moderately quickly. The maps were good, which made sense. This comet had been active only a thousand years ago. The Earth hadn’t changed on a geological level in that time.
There were six red triangles scattered across the Earth’s surface. One in France, one somewhere in the Middle East, one in China, one in Africa, one in New Zealand, and one in South America. Not Guatemala, she noted.
“Hmm. There are a few places on Earth they were interested in.” She looked over at the Moon. “One location on the Moon. That’s the far side somewhere near the North Pole, I think.”
Ray leaned in and looked at the icons. “Might be. At the very least, these people were all over the damned system. Now they’re gone. Kind of spooky.”
A tap away from Earth brought the image back out to showing the entire system. “There’s something on Mars, but I’m curious about the outer system. The Mayan art showed something way out past Eris.
She saw that on the map, but there was a smaller dot much closer to Pluto. She touched it with the back of her knuckle and it expanded a little, but it just stayed an icon. She couldn’t tell anything about it.
It had a greenish circle around it. That meant something, she was sure. She pressed her knuckle against it again, hoping she’d just failed to get it to enlarge.
The circle started flashing and alien text appeared beside it.
“Uh oh.”
“Okay,” Ray said. “Play time just ended. We need to get the doctors up here to tell us what that says. And we should probably stop screwing around with equipment we don’t understand.”
The flashing of the circle sped up and then it changed color to gold. The writing changed.
Hopefully, that didn’t mean something bad.
Chapter Seven
Kathleen Bennett felt like screaming when her assistant told her the walking dead was back.
“Which part of ‘call my attorney’ does that idiot not understand? Park him and call legal. I want them here to document this harassment. Then they can have a contest to see who can write the most legal papers to bury the bastard with.”
She said that with more relish than she should have, but he was running neck and neck with her son for the Moron of the Year award. She didn’t even care that he’d undoubtedly heard every word she’d just said.
“He’s not alone, ma’am. He has someone from the State Department with him.”
“I don’t care if he has the president with him,” she snarled. “They can wait.”
Kathleen cut the line and leaned back in her padded chair. What could some State Department flunky want? Was this about Paris? Well, that wasn’t her damned fault.
In the end, they’d blamed the attack on those ISIS loons. Why not? The bastards had no qualms about blowing up buildings and killing people. They could take the hit for this, too. Karma was a bitch.
She’d considered blaming her ex-husband, but rejected the idea. After all, even though that was true, it would start a chain of uncomfortable questions that might lead back to her possession of the crashed ship.
As far as she knew, no one could connect her to Guatemala. Nathan might be a psychopath, but he was thorough. No witnesses survived that could identify him or what they’d taken.
He’d killed the general workers and left them to rot in the jungle. Those too valuable to dispose of had come back here to work on the project. They didn’t know what happened to their friends, of course.
The head of BenCorp’s legal department came into her office with several of his henchmen at his heels. She filled them in on what her assistant had said and parked them against the wall. Then she told her assistant to send the bastards in.
That walking corpse Pembroke smiled smugly at her. The man with him looked vaguely familiar. Maybe she’d seen him at some Washington party.
“This is getting tiresome, Agent Pembroke,” she said flatly. “I think I’ve made my position as clear as humanly possible. You don’t get to see what we have in the other buildings. You’ll just have to take our word that we didn’t find any bodies or secret journals.”
“Your rocky relationship with honesty compels me to doubt that, but I’m not here to argue with you about it. The appeals court will come to a decision before long. One I have every expectation will allow me unfettered access to these buildings.
“I’m actually here as an inter-agency favor. The State Department would like a few words with you.”
The other man smiled on cue. “Mrs. Bennett, we’ve met but I don’t believe we’ve ever been officially introduced. Josh Queen.”
That poked her memory and sent a chill down her spine. “I thought you looked familiar, Mister Secretary. Though I have to confess to some confusion about what could bring a Cabinet secretary to my office.”
She shifted her eyes to the FBI agent. “Especially in the company of someone I see as hostile.”
“I prefer to think of Agent Pembroke as the stick to my carrot. There have been a series of disturbing events that the United States is watching with grave concern. Unless I’m mistaken, you and your company are tied up with them far more intimately than most people suspect.”
His smile widened. “Most aren’t even aware of the scope of what I’m talking about, but I’ll wager you understand. Either we can discuss these matters in front of your lawyers and Agent Pembroke, thus making this all on the record, or we can speak privately.
“Personally, I think a quiet chat would be far more productive, but a public spectacle would be fabulously entertaining. It all depends on what you want to do.”
* * * * *
A chime woke Harry from a sound sleep. He rolled into a sitting position and slapped the accept button on the desk beside his bed. Years of working dangerous situations made the transition to wakefulness proceed quickly. “Go.”
“Harry, this is the bridge. I’m seeing something unusual on the comet. I think our sensors might be screwed up.”
“Well, I’m not exactly much help when it comes to tech. What are you seeing?”
He rose to his feet and started getting dressed. If this was nothing, he could go back to bed. If it was trouble, seconds might matter. The clock said he’d only been asleep a short while.
“The comet is moving. Not just in its orbit, but the scanners say it’s speeding up.”
“Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my planetary bodies to coast along. Get the engineers to start checking the equipment. Has anyone called the team on the comet?”
“We don’t have a reliable relay that can carry transmissions into the base. They have a transmitter unit, but it isn’t operational yet. We’ve just been passing messages with lifters.”
“I’m on my way. Have one of the lifters primed for immediate transit, just in case. Are there any over there right now?”
“Negative. We’ve wrapped the surface scans, so there aren’t even any in orbit. The one that’s normally on site came back to get more oxygen canisters.”
He slid his boots on. “Have them expedite. We’ll want to find out what’s happening in there as soon as possible. Rogers out.”
It only took a few minutes to get to the bridge, but he could feel the tension was higher when he walked through the door. “Give me a status.”
Lindsay Waller had joined the third shift pilot. She looked up from the console, her expression a mixture of concern and befuddlement. “It’s not the instruments. The damned thing is picking up speed.”
He sat down at his console and examined the main screen. Things still looked relatively the same as when he’d left to get dinner.
“What’s your projection?”
“Bad,” she said. “I’ve already adjusted our speed to match several times. We’re on continuous thrust now just to keep pace. Harry, we’re up to eighty percent thrust and climbing.”
“How long can we maintain con
tact?”
“Half an hour, if it doesn’t decide to up the ante.”
That wasn’t much time. “How many people are over there?”
“Almost three hundred. We had a deadline so the extra bodies were getting more work done in that short window.”
They couldn’t move everyone in half an hour. The lifters normally carried a dozen passengers. In an emergency—which this was—they could stuff three times that number aboard briefly. There physically wasn’t room for more people in vacuum suits. And with no airlock they could dock with, everyone had to wear suits.
That meant they could rescue 216 people. Worse, that meant they couldn’t save almost a hundred others.
Or maybe they could.
“First things first. I want all the lifters ready to fly. Load them up with life support, food, water, and critical supplies. If this doesn’t work, we need to give the people left on that comet the best chance to survive.”
“Already in motion,” Lindsay said. “I did the math. I tasked one lifter for a mining setup. They can get a lot more water than they need from the comet itself. Fuel, too. If we get them all off, we’ve only lost the mining gear.”
He nodded. “Good thinking. I want Jess on the radio as soon as the first lifter gets there.”
That initial lifter broke away from Liberty Station ten minutes later. It made the trip quickly and settled down outside the base. Five minutes later, the rest were on their way with everything they could scavenge.
“Incoming transmission from Jess,” Lindsay said.
Jess appeared on the main screen. She was sitting at the co-pilot’s station on the lifter with her helmet off. “What’s wrong?”
“The comet is accelerating,” Harry said. “It has to have some kind of drive system. It’s almost outpacing us. You need to evacuate.”
“Dammit! We were looking at some equipment. We must have activated it. We can try to turn it off.”
He shook his head. “Time is very short. The lifters are on the way with consumables and critical equipment, but they can’t carry everyone.”
“That’s not a problem. The gravity here is so light that we can jump off the surface if we have to. You can use the beacons to pick people up. I’m more concerned about this thing getting away from us.”
