Huer seemed puzzled. "USOs?"
"Reports started coming in from all over the world of great, glowing discs diving into the ocean, or bursting upward from the sea and tearing out into space. There were numerous reports of huge glowing wheels racing through the ocean, passing beneath
A Life in the Future
ships or sometimes skimming the surface. Don't you see? That's what happened here on Earth. And it probably ties in with your two races on Mars."
Doc Huer leaned back and held up his goblet in a silent salute. "Buck, lad, I'm all ears."
"What was Mars like in the past? The probes, the orbiters and landers, left no doubt that water once ran freely on Mars. Deep channels, warm temperatures, the whole enchilada for people from space looking for a new home. The gravity was light, and they were fifty million miles farther out from the sun, so solar radiation was diminished—"
"Oops! Bad supposition there," Barney broke in. "Thinner atmosphere and greater distance didn't help. Because of the thin air, the surface radiation was just as bad."
"But it was warmer? And with water?" Buck persisted.
"With fauna, fertile soil, changing seasons, excellent planetary rotation for the weather engine. They simply didn't expect the place to fall apart on them," Barney finished.
"That's where your albino race has been adding the missing pieces. Even the computers say we now have a ninety-seven percent chance of knowing accurately what happened."
"Go on," Wilma urged, her own interest prompting her to join in the discussion.
"The people who came here," Huer explained carefully, "separated into two divergent groups. One remained on the surface and gambled that they could protect themselves with their science and technology. They built massive structures that blocked radiation. They even built enormous domes under which they raised their crops and kept their farm animals. We've already found remnants of such a civilization in archeological digs, although we haven't had much opportunity for any real scientific input about them. But what we did find put us on the right track."
"Then what happened to them?" Wilma asked.
"Mars lost its atmosphere, or almost all of it, so the surface people had to either stay inside their pressurized domes or wear pressure suits if they went outside. They developed pressurized surface vehicles. Then, with all their water freezing and water vapor sublimating into ice crystals, the planet rapidly lost its warmth. Dust storms raged across Mars, just as sandstorms do
Buck Rogers
on Earth. The finale was a sudden outburst of volcanic activity. Most likely some big asteroids rammed great holes through the surface right down to magma. All hell broke loose. Volcanoes ten miles high rose from the land. The buildings in which these people lived were wrecked. So were their crops and the other things they needed to survive. These were the Golden People. But they didn't die out; they wouldn't give in quite that easily.
"The solution was to try to work out a deal with that other group, the ones we now call the Tiger Men."
"The Tiger Men made it through all this?" Buck asked.
"I've spent time with those people," Huer acknowledged. "They'd built massive underground structures that rolled with the punches of quakes. Force fields around their subterranean buildings held off the lava when it splashed across the surface and down the channels. They survived in surprisingly good shape. But by now their numbers were dangerously low, so a deal was struck. The Tiger Men take in the Golden People if the Golds would agree to sustain hydroponics and other agricultural work. Funny thing about that. The Golds seemed to be more advanced than the Tiger clan."
"That they were," Barney added. "Nevertheless, as part of the agreement, they assumed the position of servants to the Tiger Men. They were completely protected that way, so there was no real enmity between them. It was something like old Rome, when the head slave often had more power than anyone except his master, usually a big landowner or a senator."
"How did they get those names—Golden People and Tiger Men?" Buck asked Doc Huer. "If you spent time with these people—"
"Normal evolutionary process for the Golds. They were sharp with biogenetics. Both groups were. The Golds engineered new outer skin, an incredible dermatological adaptation fed by genetic adaptation. Their outer skin became hard, almost like a flexible shell that protected them from the cold and unfiltered radiation. They got their name from their skin color, if you want to call it skin. It's more like an armored shell."
"And the Tiger Men?" The question came from Wilma.
Huer smiled. "A branch on the genetic highway. They knew that, in the long run, living underground could be extremely dangerous biologically, so they prepared for it. They adapted
A Life in the Future
feline genes to their systems. They grew long, thick hair, like fur; it's really the same thing, but denser and covering almost the entire body. They picked up some unexpected bonuses in the tens of thousands of years that went by. They developed—literally— tiger stripes in their fur. They're fully human—or as similar to humans as you can get when you're from outer space—except they see much better than we do in the dark. Their inbred animal senses have given them many positives. I got to know them when I was part of a military scouting expedition. We got into a fire-fight with the Tiger Men; we were faster and had better weapons. When it was over, a sandrover of the Tigers was on its side, and the crew was pretty well banged up. A couple of them were near death. I took care of them, fixed their wounds. They couldn't believe it. My group was standing guard with blaster rays and I was saving the lives of their people."
Doc put down his cigar. "It doesn't matter where you are, in one world or another, if you're a doctor. You tend to those who need you. From that day on, after the word spread, I was something of a shaman to those people. They swore they would never knowingly harm me. And they never have."
"Doc, there's a question I've got to ask," Buck put in.
"Shoot."
"If these people, here on Earth and on Mars, crossed space, did they ever expect anyone else to follow them?"
"Damned good question, son. The fact is, they did. They all got together to build some form of monolith that could be seen from many millions of miles away and could be detected even light-years away. The first thing they put up was an automatic, constant radio signal on the hydrogen band. It had all the math necessary to figure out the spatial navigation needed to find our sun, and they were able to transmit the specific spectroscopic signatures of the sun. Anybody with at least their level of science would know where to home in. They built a couple of towers, each fed by its own thermonuclear reactor and computer. Then—and I guess this was to leave a visible mark—they constructed an enormous structure on the surface. It made the Egyptian pyramids look like clay tablets in comparison."
Buck's eyes widened. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Cydonia!" he breathed very softly, almost humbly.
"That's it," Barney confirmed. "Way up there in the northern
Buck Rogers
latitudes. Your old space agency got pictures of it from the early Viking orbiters. But all they got was the face and a helmet. That alone is a mile and a half long by a mile wide. The original monument was the entire body in a pressure suit, maybe fifteen miles long, with the arms outstretched to make it just about as wide. Quakes and landslides crumpled everything but the face. You ever see those pictures?"
Buck nodded. "There was a lot of argument about the face. Scientists said it was all tricks of lighting and shadow."
"Still dumber than the south end of a mule headed north," Doc remarked. "Some things never change."
"Other people said it was a human face, and they got into fights with still more people who said the face was like that of a humanoid ape."
"A perfect description of Benjamin Black Barney," Doc laughed. "But they were all wrong. The face was that of a feline-type human, a perfect picture of a Tiger Man in his pressure suit. You'll see it yourself when you get to Mars."
<
br /> "Don't you mean when we get to Mars?" Wilma asked coyly.
"Watch out for that weak sister act, Rogers," Kane told him. "Our new colonel has been there before. She heads a division of rocket fighters that have done battle with the Mongols off Earth."
Buck turned to Wilma. "You never told me that."
She shrugged. "I told you I was a pilot. You didn't ask any more, so I didn't say anything else."
"Let's get this discussion back to an even keel, people." The serious tone of Killer Kane's voice held their attention.
"We've got a war going on across Mars," Kane said. "Some of the Martians—we may as well call them that—are allied with the Mongols. They got to that planet in force before we did, and they brought with them vast amounts of what the Tiger Men needed—food, distillation plants for fresh water, oxygen generators. . . . It's a long list. In return, the Tigers joined forces with the Mongols and presented them with new antigrav systems and, above all, a gravity-wave system that converts space-time energy into a propulsion system unlike anything we'd ever seen before. It generates a thrust on a continuous basis that's like an atomic bomb going off steadily, just like a damned nuclear piston engine. It's so big and powerful, it's not even used in their ships."
A Life in the Future
"How powerful, Admiral?" Buck broke in.
"Powerful enough to shove small moons around without any trouble. Powerful enough for you?"
Buck nodded. "I think I'm out of my league here."
"You won't be for long," Kane told him. "Tomorrow morning you go into intensive indoctrination and training. Astroscience. Spatial navigation, maneuvering with thrust systems only in zero-g, energy beam weapons that really work well in vacuum. You'll go through the direct-feed mind systems that will lock all these things into your memory. When that's done, you have two weeks of in-space flight training and mock fighting. Colonel Deering, by the way, will be your main opponent. Watch yourself, Rogers. She's very good, and we'll judge you on the basis of your performance, not your team relationship with our brand-new colonel."
"Yes, sir," Buck said. Anything else would have sounded stupid.
"You're not the only one, of course," Doc Huer added. "Dawn Noriega will be subject to the same intensive training and flight experience."
Buck and Wilma showed their surprise. "Think!" Kane almost spat the word. "She's a telepath. We don't know if her talents will work against the Mongols when we mess with those people in space. She has to learn to think in their visualizations, not her own. If she can throw those people off balance in a tight fight, it could swing a battle in our favor. Can she read the minds of the Tiger Men? That could give us one terrific jump on them. The only way we'll find out is to get out her out there on Mars and see what happens. By the way, Colonel Deering, Dawn will come under your command. It may be that your particular abilities as an empath might just produce a new wrinkle that will work to our advantage."
"Dawn Noriega and Wilma Deering in the same outfit . . ." Buck didn't realize he had spoken aloud and drew immediate critical looks from Barney and Huer.
"There's more to that than you've just said, Rogers. Let's have it," Barney ordered.
"I was thinking of an old expression, sir," Buck replied carefully
"And what that might be?"
"Oil and water, sir. They don't mix very well."
Buck Rogers
"Then you make sure it's not a problem, Brigadier. Do you read me?"
"Loud and clear, sir."
"Good."
"Question, Admiral?" Buck continued.
"Ask," Barney said.
"Have we—I mean, Amerigo—started terraforming Mars yet?"
"You mean reshaping that old world into a paradise for us?" Doc Huer interjected.
"That's the general idea. Doc."
"Keep one thing in mind, Buck."
"What's that?"
"Mars isn't our planet to play with. The real prize in all this is, first, gaining clear ascendancy over the Mongols. Second, and above all else, the planet Venus. That might well be the next home for mankind."
"Venus?" Buck asked, obviously in disbelief "That planet is like Hades—pure, unmitigated hell."
"Buck, that's just what Earth was like a very long time ago. Keep your hopes up."
Chapter 20
I hate this damn thing, Buck cursed to himself, his lips pressed tightly together as the Asp fighter made a mockery of his attempt to control the supersensitive beast. The Asp was half engine and fuel, powered with a mononuclear thrust engine and a battery of small reaction-control rocket ports for precise maneuvering. Jutting from the aft end of the barrel-shaped space fighter was an extension of the power plant, a marvelous thrust chamber with the strength of a steel girder and the flexibility of a water snake.
Buck had raced after another Asp, the latter flown by Colonel Wilma Deering. He kept thinking of Wilma in that exact way— not as the beautiful blonde over whom he had become openly enamored, but what she was at this moment—an experienced pilot who was extremely skilled at flying her space bucket in a vacuum. The Earth was far below, a sphere of gleaming blue and white thirty thousand miles away. In their testing ground in space, the Asps weighed but a fraction of their Earth weight. Buck reminded himself that was in terms of weight, not mass. Up here, once they'd achieved orbit at just under five thousand miles per hour, they were weightless.
He knew he must become as familiar with these new forces and skills as he was flying a jet fighter in the atmosphere far
Buck Rogers
below. Weight was a relative term. It existed only when superior forces acted upon a falling object. A man sitting on a chair on Earth's surface was able, through the rigidity and strength of that chair, to overcome the entire gravitational pull of the planet beneath him.
Anything and everything above the Earth always obeyed the inescapable pull of gravity. If you weren't balanced in orbit, with the proper speed, height, and altitude measured against the surface of the Earth beneath you, you could be in a crazy lopsided orbit, like a yo-yo on the end of a ridiculously long string, or you might find yourself beginning that long fall toward the theoretical center of the planet, which is how gravity drew you down. Once you slammed into the atmosphere at eighteen to twenty-three thousand miles an hour, unless your ship was in the perfect position to deflect the heat from friction away from you, you found out about gravity really fast. Hitting the atmosphere at five to seven miles a second was like driving a car into a cement wall at about four hundred miles an hour.
While you were up here, you were weightless, but you could never get rid of the mass of your ship, and that meant a real ballet of thrusters, reaction, counterreaction, and the finesse of a seal balancing a thin rubber ball on the end of its nose.
During an earthquake.
In a howling wind.
And Buck was fl3ring like a very clumsy seal.
His hands and feet moved from one side of his cockpit to the other in a blur, trying to execute the right moves at the right time. Patting your head and rubbing your stomach in a circular motion while riding a unicycle was child's play by comparison.
Buck had flown airplanes and he'd flown helicopters. The latter, he came to believe with almost religious fervor when he was still a neophyte, was like an optical illusion with sound effects. His first several times, he had flown like a drunk, trying to control his training chopper as he would an airplane. At the end of a disastrously bad training day, his instructor had approached him. "Rogers," he'd said, "you're the prince of the skies in an airplane—you know, those things with fixed wings. A chopper has wings that go round and round; we call them rotors. We also have a tail rotor to compensate for torque and the clumsiness of new chopper pilots. You are doing bad things with all of them.
A Life in the Future
You know why you'll never earn your wings in one of these things? Because you have only two hands, that's why. You need three hands, plus both feet, to fly one of these. So tomorrow morning,
when we risk our lives again, I expect to see you on the ramp with three arms, three hands, and a whole new attitude. You read me, sky chump?"
'Yes, sir. Three arms, three hands, and three feet."
"What's the extra foot for?"
"As soon as I get the hang of this, it's to kick your butt as hard as I can."
"That's something I'll never have to worry about, Rogers. You're hopeless."
It took time and it took all the stubbornness he had, which was a great deal, but in time he became very good indeed. He mastered the skittish helicopter and won those wings to go with his others. After helicopters, he flew vertical takeoff Harrier jets until he'd mastered those as well, until finally he could fly just about anything with wings, from hang gliders to immense 747 jetliners.
But that, he was being reminded every second, was another world, another time. This was battling it out with another space fighter. Fortunately for Buck, these were training sessions, in which the student was supposed to make every mistake in the book and then learn how to correct them.
He watched Wilma's Asp far ahead of him, tracked her as a target in his HUD display, and finally saw a chance to fire a photon beam that would hit the other fighter and light it up like a pinball machine but inflict no damage. He snapped off three fast shots. Each flashed briefly, aimed into empty space. Wilma's Asp was a will-o'-the-wisp. Her fighter skidded and rolled wildly and performed impossible gyrations at Wilma's hands. As fast as Buck fired his attitude thrusters, adjusting the Inertron field to tighten his turns, the stubby space fighter skidded wildly out from beneath him.
"If this were the real thing," Wilma jeered over her radio at him, "you'd be turning on a slow spit with a hot fire beneath you. Get with it. I'm going to come after you now. The book says you
Buck Rogers
can't fly a pursuit curve in zero-g and a vacuum, but the guy who wrote the book has never been up here. Keep in mind that if you overcontrol or make gross corrections, you'll be a dead duck. All right, buddy boy, here I come!"
Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Page 27
