The Lost Secret

by Vaughn Heppner

  He quit talking as he saw motion high above and behind the others. The thing had wings, great leathery things that lazily flapped up and down. It had a long narrow jaw with wicked fangs and a snake-like tail. It had six legs ending in wicked claws. The creature had evil red-glowing eyes, and it dove at the last man of the party.

  Ural twisted fully around, drew the blaster and fired at the volraptor. A beam of devouring energy struck the creature—it vanished like that.

  “What’s happening?” Strand shouted. “Why are you firing?”

  The three gunmen spun around fast, drawing blasters and beaming up at—

  “You’re shooting at nothing!” Strand shouted. “Quit firing. It’s achieving nothing.”

  Ural’s mouth opened in shock. The creature was gone as if it had never existed.

  “What did you see, Ural?” asked Strand.

  The others continued to float as they turned their mirrored visors at Ural, likely waiting for his revelation.

  Ural forced himself to chuckle as he thought quickly. “Those were good reaction times,” he told the gunmen. “I’ll give you the highest recommendation to the Emperor.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Strand asked sharply.

  Inside his helmet, Ural stared at Strand’s floating suited form. What had just happened? Had the Methuselah Man caused a holoimage to appear up there? That seemed like the easiest, most explainable answer. The rule of Occam’s Razor suggested it was the answer. If that was the case, though, Ural had two questions. One, why would Strand do such a thing? Two, why would he have felt danger as if from a real threat?

  Ural used a float-rail to slow his speed. Soon, he stopped, activated his magnetic boots and stood on the deck.

  The others soon did likewise.

  Ural approached a standing Strand.

  “Watch out,” the Methuselah Man said. “He means me harm.”

  The three gunmen quickly interposed themselves between Strand and Ural.

  Ural halted and decided the Methuselah Man’s game was deeper than he realized. If I’m going to survive this trip, I have to kill Strand. But I have to do it later, at the right time, when no one can blame me for it. Ural swallowed. What about the volraptor he’d seen gliding in an attack at them? What was the right thing to say now?

  “I thought I saw something,” Ural admitted. “I could have been mistaken. I thought you might know what I saw.”

  “Me?” Strand said. “I haven’t a clue.”

  Ural stood silently, thinking, until, “Very well. Let’s get to the thruster packs. It’s time to leave this place.”

  “You sound spooked,” Strand said. “Why is that?”

  Without answering, Ural turned away from the Methuselah Man, demagnetized his boots and grabbed a float-rail. Killing Strand was going to take some careful thinking, careful planning, and then perfect execution.

  -50-

  The space-suited party moved through the tubular section of the five-kilometer vessel, the others following Ural as he floated down the seemingly endless main corridor.

  Golden Ural was plotting, calculating and considering various facts. Strand was dangerous, had proven that throughout the years. So why had the Emperor ever agreed to let the wizened dwarf out of his cage? Yes, Ural knew what the Emperor had told him. Strand had the critical knowledge to finding the genetic information hidden inside the Library Planet. Strand could likely implement the knowledge better than anyone else could as well. Afterward, the Throne Worlders as a race would be whole, able to reproduce on their own, without any further help from the submen.

  “Ural,” the NSS regulator said over the helmet comm.

  Ural’s head jerked inside his helmet, his musings interrupted. “Yes?” he asked.

  “I…I saw movement,” the regulator said.

  “I heard that,” Strand said from his helmet comm. “What kind of movement?”

  “Slow down,” Ural said. “We’re slowing down.”

  He used his padded gloves, grabbing the float-rail, using friction resistance and then letting go. It took time, and he checked the palm of his gloves several times just in case a burn-through threatened. Visual inspection was often the best way to prevent emergencies.

  Soon, Ural, his NSS regulator, Strand and the three gunmen from the Emperor’s entourage floated stationary in the great tubular corridor. They were about halfway to the hangar bay where their thruster packs waited.

  “What did you see?” Ural asked the regulator.

  “Light, a bright light, and a flash of movement,” the NSS regulator said.

  “Was that what you thought you saw earlier?” Strand asked Ural.

  “No…” Ural said.

  “Do you even know what you saw and fired at before?” asked Strand.

  “You’re not the inquisitor here,” Ural said crossly, maybe more wound up than he’d realized.

  “No, no, of course not,” Strand said. “It’s just…two of you claimed to have seen something—”

  “I definitely saw movement,” the regulator said.

  “Yes…” Strand said. “Two of you have seen something. Maybe we should try to figure out what it was exactly.”

  Ural nodded. “You saw a light?” he asked.

  “Just a flash and then movement like a frightened lizard trying to hide,” the regulator explained.

  Ural sighed. He was beginning to dislike the derelict vessel. There was something strange going on—or an ill-timed prank. It was time to nip this or figure it out, if there was something to figure out. “Strand, are you projecting holoimages to screw with us?”

  “I see,” Strand said. “Yes, that makes sense now. You think I had something to do with what you saw. No. On my word as the father of the Throne World, I have done nothing to cause whatever you saw.”

  “Does he have secret equipment?” Ural asked the three gunmen.

  “No,” the chief said. “On my word of honor, he does not.”

  “Are you satisfied?” asked Strand.

  In fact—maybe surprisingly—Ural was. He said, “But if you didn’t cause it…?”

  “It would help if we knew what you saw,” Strand said.

  Ural frowned. The Methuselah Man had a point. “I saw…I saw a volraptor in flight.”

  “You saw a flying skeleton?”

  “No, a live one, a volraptor with skin.”

  “I don’t understand,” Strand said. “A live volraptor in vacuum would die in seconds.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I realize it makes no logical sense? Hell! I’ve never seen a living volraptor. Until today, I didn’t even know they existed. But I saw a live one gliding in an attack against us. When I fired—no, when the beam hit it, the volraptor disappeared as if it had been a holoimage.”

  “I see…” Strand said.

  “I saw a volraptor.”

  “Don’t worry. I believe you.”

  “You do?”

  “You’re Golden Ural,” Strand said. “You’re among the most honest among us, and in that I mean the entire Throne World. It has been why the Emperor has trusted you all these years.”

  Ural did not reply.

  “The question is, why would a ghostly volraptor appear like that? No. Not completely ghostly, not if your beam disrupted whatever it was. That would imply your material beam could affect or disrupt it. Do you have any idea what the volraptor was? How it could be there?”

  “Until now, I thought you were secretly projecting a holoimage.”

  “So we can scratch that idea,” Strand said. “And I have no doubt about your mental faculties. Perhaps we should we attempt to discover what your man saw, and that would help us understand what you actually saw before?”

  “Yes,” Ural said. “Before we do that, though, I’m going to contact the shuttle.” He did so, questioning the two aboard. Neither the NSS agent nor Franco had seen anything unusual about the derelict from the shuttle. There were no energy or life-sign signatures except for the sea
rch party.

  The information deflated Ural, as it didn’t match what he or the regulator had seen. Who could be playing tricks on them out here? He should have asked the shuttle team if any other ships had approached. But they would have told him if so.

  “Is everything all right?” Strand radioed Ural.

  “Yes,” Ural said. “Let’s backtrack.”

  They did, floating slowly the other way, each of them but for Strand with a ready blaster.

  “Do you remember where you saw the flash of light?” Ural asked the regulator.

  “I’ve been watching for a certain tear in the hull,” the regulator said. “There! There’s the tear.”

  They floated to it, slowing down. The tear went completely through the hull, showing stars and the main red dwarf outside.

  “Could you have seen starlight and thought it was a creature?” Strand asked the regulator.

  “I know the difference, and what I saw was considerably different from starlight.” The regulator looked around. “It went down that corridor-spoke.”

  Ural licked his lips, inhaled and used his booted feet to shove off from the bulkhead, gliding into the spoke corridor, heading toward a pod. He led the way as a Throne World dominant should. He hated to admit it even to himself, but his heart beat faster, and his mouth began to dry out. Did he sense something ahead?

  “Ah!” Strand said.

  “What’s wrong?” radioed Ural.

  “I saw a flash ahead of us. The regulator definitely saw something before. I urge caution, Ural.”

  Ural almost said, “You would,” but he bit his tongue, holding back the comment. Instead, he magnetized his boots, attaching himself to the deck plates. He began walking down the narrow spoke-corridor toward the pod.

  The others followed his example. As they moved, Strand hung back until the taller and bulkier New Men led the way.

  Ural grew warier as the open pod-hatch neared. He couldn’t see anything odd except that it was dark in there. Did that indicate no hull ruptures to let in starlight? That seemed to be the case.

  He tightened his grip on the blaster, steeled himself and clanked into the pod. Like the other one with the volraptor skeleton, this pod lacked hull breaches. The lamplight washing over the bulkheads showed painting on the walls—not separate portraits, but a weird mixture of colors in bizarre swirling patterns.

  “Look!” a man whispered.

  Ural turned, and they all must have seen it at the same time. The thing was like a floating ball of light. It pulsated sadly—yes, Ural felt sadness. Did the ball of light emanate the feeling or did it come from within himself?

  “Fire.” Strand might have said it; Ural wasn’t sure.

  Ural’s finger tightened on the trigger nonetheless. His blaster vibrated, sending a spear of energy into the ball of light. A fraction of a second later, four other beams drilled into the light.

  The fuzzy ball pulsated, creating greater light.

  “Keep firing.” That was Strand yelling the instructions.

  Ural did not intend to stop firing. It would seem the others felt the same way.

  The ball of light floated straight up, their beams pouring into it, and the beams lancing out the other side to scorch the bulkheads. The blast beams did not cause the thing to vanish, however. This image—or whatever—was different from the volraptor.

  The ball of light pulsated more brightly, and it reached the ceiling. Without a pause, it moved through the ceiling. Their beams still drilled it, burning the ceiling. Then it was gone, taking its brightness with it, but leaving all their helmet lamps focused on the burned spot.

  “Cease firing,” Ural said, as he forced his finger to release the trigger.

  The others stopped.

  Ural holstered his blaster and turned around. “What was that?”

  No one answered.

  “Strand,” Ural said, “do you have any idea what that was?”

  “A ghost,” Strand said in a hoarse voice.

  “A ghost image?” asked Ural.

  “I don’t know,” Strand said. “It’s a mystery.”

  “You’ve never heard of such a creature?”

  “No,” Strand said.

  Ural swallowed in a dry throat.

  “We should leave this place,” the chief gunman said.

  Ural was beginning to agree. This place felt…haunted, he dared think. He’d never considered himself superstitious, but there was something weird going on here.

  They left the pod, floating back to the main tubular section. Ural looked for the tear the regulator had used as a signpost to this pod. Ural searched but there was no tear, no hull rip to the stars. Yet, he’d seen one before.

  “Where’s the hull tear?” Ural forced himself to ask.

  Space-suited searchers looked left, then right and then left again.

  The regulator pointed. “It should be over there.”

  “There are only whole bulkheads over there,” Ural said.

  “I know that,” the regulator said. “But I saw a hull rip before. It was there. I swear it.”

  “Perhaps it’s time we left the ship,” Strand said in a strained voice. “The derelict overall appears to be harmless, but there are a few anomalies taking place that we can’t explain.”

  Anomalies, eh? If Ural didn’t know better, the ship was self-repairing but only doing so at “haunted” locales. “Right,” he said. “We’re leaving. Keep your blasters out. And Strand.”

  “Yes?” Strand asked.

  “Start thinking hard. I want an explanation for what’s happened. We’re from the Throne World. We use logic to solve problems, we don’t lose our heads because of a few freakish occurrences.”

  “Agreed,” Strand said.

  Once more, Ural led the way to the hangar bay. This time, he did not intend to stop until they were back in the shuttle.

  -51-

  Ural twisted back in his thruster pack as he flew out of the hangar bay. He stared at the derelict vessel. It had holes and tears all over the place. Did they seem less prominent than before? It almost seemed that way. The ship with its countless pods still seemed like space junk, just not as much of a wreck as before.

  Could that be possible? Could a dead ship repair itself, doing so after 700 years of disrepair? Were billions of nanites, for instance, working at a molecular level to fix the 700-year-old ship? Would a new sensor scan reveal an age as old as before?

  He clicked on his helmet comm. “Strand, what do you think about all this?”

  “I’m glad we’re heading back,” the Methuselah Man said.

  “You’ve had time to come up with some theories.”

  “I know,” Strand said. “But none of them make sense to me.”

  “Is the wreck haunted then?” Ural asked in a jocular tone.

  “You could use that word.”

  “The ship is supernatural?” Ural asked in surprise. “You really think there’s a supernatural explanation for what we’ve witnessed?”

  A moment passed then another. “No. I stand corrected,” Strand said. “There is a scientific explanation for all this, even if it’s exotic and strange. You’re right, Ural. I need better equipment to analyze the vessel. Perhaps after we’re done on the Library Planet, the Emperor will allow me a team to reexamine the former zoo ship.”

  “You still think that’s what it was?”

  “I do,” Strand said. “But, since it’s here, and since seeing that ball-of-light creature…I’m going to withhold further judgment. I suspect that what is about to take place at the Library Planet is going to be more important to us than what’s happening here.”

  “You think the flotilla already went there?”

  “I know you believe that,” Strand said.

  Ural nodded, and he quit twisting his neck to stare at the derelict vessel. A couple of strange events had taken place on it. The creatures had seemed ghostly. That was the best explanation that he could come up with. Would the Emperor be satisfied with that? He
didn’t think so. Thus, he would have to think of a different way of saying it. They’d seen wraiths of ancient creatures, resembling their lingering spirits or something else as farcical. Yet that could not be. The so-called supernatural was, by definition, impossible. Thus, something else must be going on.

  The derelict could not harm them, though, especially on the second planet. No one had been hurt while they explored the ship. So, these wraiths or ghosts could not affect the expedition to the Library Planet.

  Soon, the group slowed and hung in space around the shuttle. By twos, they used the airlock, entering the vessel, taking off their thruster packs, spacesuits and—

  Ural stretched. It felt good to be out of the suit. Before the others had finished, he hurried down the corridor, entering the piloting chamber.

  Franco stood near the polarized window, staring at the derelict vessel. The NSS agent was reading a pamphlet, although he lowered it to give greetings.

  Ural noticed Franco seemed glued to the polarized window. He told the NSS agent to take a break.

  The man headed for the shuttle restroom.

  Ural approached Franco. There was artificial gravity in the shuttle, so he moved normally.

  “Quite the spectacle, eh?” asked Ural.

  Franco jumped and whirled around like a guilty man. The subman was pale and looked frightened. “H-Hello,” he said.

  Franco had not said, “Hello, Master,” which was a breach of protocol. Ural considered striking the subman for it but decided against it. He pointed at the great drifting derelict in high orbit around the third planet.

  “Does the wreck bother you?” Ural asked.

  Franco swallowed audibly. “It’s…it’s wrong, somehow.” The subman shook his head. “I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  “Try,” Ural said, hoping to get more information before Strand or the regulator appeared and distracted the subman.

  “It shimmers,” Franco said. “I see…things moving outside it and then climbing back into the ship.”