by Gunn, James
Jessica stood as if poised between attack and flight. She had, apparently, never before considered either of these possibilities. “Aliens!” she said again. Then, heading for the door, she called over her shoulder, “Maybe that explains it.”
“Explains what?” Frances called after her. When Jessie didn’t reply, Frances trotted to catch up.
Jessica led the way to a meadow beyond the circle around the cabin that Frances had made before she entered. “This!” Jessica said, pointing.
Frances stood beside the young woman, panting. In front of them was a circle of burnt and blackened grass, about fifteen meters in diameter. Frances looked at it, puzzled.
“See?” Jessica said.
“You see,” Frances said, absently, “but, as Sherlock Holmes said, you don’t observe.” What she couldn’t see was the scenario this evidence fit. Oh, clearly it would fit an alien abduction category, but the questions to be asked seemed to hang in the air, unsupported, and to suggest no good answers. It was the wrong genre.
She looked up and started back toward the cabin, ignoring Jessica trotting along beside her, trying to talk about aliens, when she saw the smoke. She ran as fast as she could, but Jessica got there before her and stood looking at the flames already rising above the back of the cabin.
“My god!” Jessica said. Frances brushed past her. Jessica tried to grab her arm. “What are you doing?”
Frances ran to the front door, raised her arm across her face and over her mouth and nose, and went through the open front door. The room was filled with smoke pouring through the kitchen doorway. Frances felt her way to the desk. She grabbed for the computer. It was hot, and she almost dropped it as she picked it up, but she yanked it free from the cord plugged into a wall socket. She turned and staggered toward the front door.
As she was fumbling her way through the smoke, a hand reached out to guide her into the sunlight and the open air. She stood, shaking, gasping for breath, the laptop dangling from her right hand.
“That was crazy!” Jessica said.
“We had to have it,” Frances said. “It was our only clue. And somebody wanted it destroyed.”
“Or some thing,” Jessica said.
They stood outside the Visitor Complex, the evening sun over their left shoulders, sinking toward the remote Gulf. They knew it was the Visitor Complex because the signs along Highway 3 had announced it for the past few miles, and the sign high on the building read:
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER
and under that
VISITOR COMPLEX.
But under that someone had stenciled:
ABANDONED IN PLACE
The entrance to the facility was overgrown by vegetation and cluttered with debris. The Space Center had indeed been abandoned and apparently for several years. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire met the building on each side, and the doorway had been covered with plywood and nailed shut. Frances saw no way into the building or around it. Maybe Jessie could scale the fence, but Frances knew her limitations. And once they were inside, the Space Center was too big to cover on foot.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Jessie said.
“Clues never produce certainty,” Frances said. “The detective accumulates evidence and plays hunches based on subconscious juggling of that evidence, like Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe.”
“Who?” Jessie asked.
“Never mind. Anyway, we’ve been over this too often: Adrian was exchanging e-mails with people about alien spaceship design and petitioning the Energy Board for the resources to build one.”
“And then there were those curious messages chastising humanity for not getting construction started,” Jessie said.
“No way those could be from aliens,” Frances said decisively. “Not in English. Not from the distance of the stars. Not signed ‘KSC.’ That could stand for a lot of things, but the most obvious meaning is ‘Kennedy Space Center.’”
“Only it’s abandoned.”
“Just as the world has abandoned space,” Frances said. “This has to be the place. It just feels right.”
It had felt right all the way down from Atlanta in the rented car, to Macon on 75 and on 16 to Savannah and then down the coast on 95 to Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, and Cocoa, before switching to Highway 3 and heading back north to KSC. It had felt right when they passed a junkyard that looked like an old Emshwiller painting, with a Redstone rocket, several dilapidated rolling camera platforms, and the remains of what looked like a supersonic transport. A junkyard, that was what the space program had become, and now the facility that had made it possible had been abandoned in place.
The only thing that hadn’t felt right was Jessie Buhler beside her all the way, talking, insisting that she couldn’t go back to California without finding out what had happened to Adrian. But now here they stood, not far from what felt right, and they couldn’t get in.
Still chattering, Jessie pried at the plywood without success. Finally she gave up in frustration. “If you’re right about this place,” she said, “there must be an entrance where people can drive in and out. They would need food and other supplies, and that requires frequent and easy access.”
“They might use airplanes or helicopters,” Frances said. “Landing strips may be abandoned, but they’re still in place.”
“People would notice air traffic,” Jessie said. “But not a car or truck.”
Frances looked at Jessie with a newfound respect.
“So let’s look,” Jessie said, getting back into the car.
They drove back to the road. The Space Center was on a barrier island between the mainland and the thin strip of beach that ran from Cape Canaveral down to Melbourne, with the Banana River on the east and the Indian River and a National Wildlife Refuge and its swamp on the west. One road entrance was overgrown with vines and clearly had not been used since the station was abandoned. An alligator was sunning itself on another, and nothing could persuade Frances to disturb it. A fallen tree blocked a third entrance, and a fourth, available only from Titusville, was cluttered with debris that may have been left when the Indian River overflowed or a hurricane had passed.
The entrance from Titusville was guarded by the omnipresent chain-link fence and a sliding chain-link gate with a drab beige booth beside it. Frances edged the car up to the gate, trying to avoid the worst of the debris. The gate looked rusty and dirty as if it hadn’t been used in months or even years. “Take a look,” she told Jessie.
“Why me?” Jessie asked.
“You’re younger and quicker,” Frances said.
Carefully searching the ground before each step, Jessie finally reached the gate. She looked back. “It’s locked,” she said.
“Give it a yank anyway,” Frances said.
Jessie pulled at something Frances couldn’t see and then turned around holding something in the air. “Either it was broken or only meant to look locked.”
“The power must have been shut off long ago. Push the gate open,” Frances said.
Jessie pushed. The gate slid back smoothly as if it had been oiled recently. “Looks like you were right,” she said, as Frances rolled the car through the opened gateway and Jessie got back inside.
“Either that or someone else is holed up here,” Frances said. She stopped the car on the other side of the gate. “You’d better shut it.”
“Not me,” Jessie said, shivering. “I hate wild animals. And anyway, we may need to leave in a hurry.”
They headed across what once had been a bustling complex specializing in hurling men toward the moon. Now it was a vast, silent sea of concrete in which their car moved like a tiny bottle tossed into the ocean.
Only it wasn’t empty. Weeds, some of them as tall as bushes, had grown up in cracks. Little brown wild pigs scattered in front of them as the car approached, and here and there a wild boar snorted at them, trotting from behind a building to assert its territorial rights. Armadillos lifted their heads from their inspection of the ground and s
idled away when the car got close; alligators didn’t seem to care, although they heard a distant roar. Vines and small trees reached from the Indian River to reclaim the land from civilization’s efforts to pave it into submission. Woodpeckers pounded trees for insects. Rattlesnakes sunned themselves on ledges and in empty patches of concrete. Eagles soared overhead, and occasionally, winging through the darkening sky, a snowy egret. Insects splattered against the windshield and threatened to invade the interior through closed windows.
“When they say ‘abandoned,’” Jessie said, “they meant returned to nature and the native populations. It certainly doesn’t look as if anybody has been here.”
“Don’t forget the gate,” Frances said, but she looked lost as well. Where on these roads, among these enigmatic structures, would a band of kidnappers hide?
She felt the abandonment of this place, the loss of purpose that the buildings and the stretches of concrete had once symbolized, the bustle of people and vehicles that had expressed the human will to conquer space, the roar of massive engines that had shouted their defiance at the Earth that kept its offspring tied to its apron strings.
Over on the Cape side, a couple of hundred yards from the beach and the blue Atlantic Ocean beyond, were the remains of a launch pad. Half-a-dozen twenty-foot concrete and metal arms supported a doughnut ring of concrete and exposed metal. The metal parts wore a patina of age and despair. An “abandoned in place” sign was stenciled on one of the slabs. Another slab had a plaque attached to it. Frances didn’t get close enough to read what it said. The entire place filled her with melancholy, like a Space Age Stonehenge raised to forgotten gods, and the plaque, she had the feeling, was inscribed with the names of ancient heroes.
Frances pulled to a stop, with their backs to the ocean, facing the vast Space Center complex with its roads and runways and buildings. “I don’t know where to look,” she said. “We could spend a week here and still not exhaust the possibilities.”
“What about that place?” Jessie said, motioning toward a huge square structure that towered in the middle of the Center, dominating the entire complex. “It’s big enough to hide a small city.”
“That must be where they assembled the big rockets,” Frances said. “Well, why not?”
She headed back toward the massive building. It loomed even bigger as they approached, until the top reaches seemed to disappear into the blue sky. Most of it was white with darker panels. As they got closer, they could see some low outbuildings. On one side a gigantic American flag, perhaps two hundred feet tall, had been painted. Then came a dark panel inset with a lighter rectangle and, on the other side, a huge NASA symbol, once dark blue, now faded. Temporary structures surrounding the building had deteriorated and some had fallen apart, but the main building still seemed solid and as resistant to time as a latter-day Great Pyramid.
Another chain-link fence surrounded the building, and turnstiles guarded the entrance. One of them had broken, however, and lay on its side beside the fence, its metal pipes reaching helplessly toward the sky, the entrance it had once sealed gaping beside it.
“The Vehicle Assembly Building,” Frances said, as if that were the answer to a crossword puzzle. “The VAB. That’s what they used to call it. Shall we go in?” She got out of the car without waiting for an answer.
The doorway to the VAB had been covered by plywood, but the wood, like the turnstile, had fallen away, leaving a dark, forbidding rectangle. Frances stepped through gingerly, Jessie following closely behind.
Inside the building, rain was falling. Frances waited just inside the doorway until her vision returned. Light filtered from louvers high above, shining through the mist of descending rain and the clouds that had formed in the remote upper reaches of the vast spaces enclosed there. When the shower eased, Frances could see the inside of the building, though the far walls and the distant ceiling faded into gray nothing.
She felt again as if she were in a cathedral built for an outworn worship. She shook herself and began noticing details: a wide avenue traversed the middle and on each side platforms, catwalks, what seemed like elevators, and cranes, a lot of them, and two huge cranes high above that crossed a gulf.
“Adrian!” she called out in desperation, knowing that they could never exhaust the hiding places in this incredible structure. The name echoed back to her from near and far, rolling around the cavernous interior and returning to her moment by moment.
“Please don’t do that again,” Jessie whispered. “It sounds so mournful. Like a lament for the dead.”
Frances moved down the wide thoroughfare that ran through the middle of the building. Tools and leaves and other debris were scattered across what once must have been scrubbed as clean as her kitchen floor. In the distance loomed a tall structure. As Frances got closer, she realized that it was a rocket on a platform, solid boosters attached to an external tank. She craned her neck to look up at the top. All it needed, she realized, was a space shuttle and transportation to a launching pad and it could be launched.
“What is it?” Jessie asked.
“Either a rocket that was abandoned when the rest of the place was shut down,” Frances said, “or something that a bunch of amateurs are trying to cobble together from left-over parts. Either way, anybody would be out of their mind to trust their lives to it.”
Her words echoed less stridently from the partitions around them. For a moment they obscured the noises someone was making on a nearby catwalk. Then they heard footsteps. Coming closer. Jessie squeezed Frances’s upper arm. Frances did not turn around.
“That’s right,” someone said. “It’s an exercise in faith, like lighting a votary candle.”
“Adrian?” Frances said.
“You’ve found me,” a voice said softly.
Frances turned. Adrian looked much the same as she had seen him last—was it four years ago? Maybe a little older around the eyes, a little grayer around the edges. But his blue eyes were still as steadfast and concerned. “Adrian!” she said. “You’ve put us to a great deal of bother. Why didn’t you let us know?”
Adrian spread his hands in a universal gesture of helplessness. The gesture also happened to indicate the space around them. Occupying that space, a few paces away, were four men and a woman, dressed in white, uniform-like coveralls. Frances had been so focused on Adrian’s footsteps that the approach of the others had gone unnoticed. They looked grim and determined, a bit like Adrian himself when he was thinking about spaceships.
“They talked me out of it,” Adrian said.
“I suppose they were the ones who came and took you away,” Frances said. Adrian nodded. “Against your will?”
Adrian hesitated. “Against my better judgment.”
“Which means,” Frances said, “that they had been in touch with you earlier, and that you had disagreed about the next procedure.”
“They were—persuasive,” Adrian said. “Not that I was opposed to their goals. Only their methods.”
“They’re space-nuts, too?” Her epithet concealed a deeper pain. What was there in a few humans that yearned for liberation? Was it the eternal wanderlust or something deeper?
“Including someone I want you to meet,” Adrian said. He turned toward the steep stairs down which he had come.
Standing at their foot was a man in slacks and jacket who looked familiar. “Cavendish?” Frances said.
The man nodded.
“Last time I saw you was in Menninger’s Clinic in Topeka,” Frances said.
“I was cured,” Cavendish said simply. “With the help of some biogenetic materials.”
“But not cured, apparently, of your interest in alien spaceship designs,” Frances said.
Cavendish fidgeted. “Not of that,” he said.
“Careful, Frances,” Adrian said. “He still gets agitated.”
Cavendish held up a hand. “That’s okay.” But his head began to twitch.
“Did you figure it out?” Frances asked.
&nbs
p; “Frances!” Adrian cautioned.
“Why they sent the designs?” Frances continued.
Cavendish held out his hands to show that they were steady. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Why did they send the designs? Why didn’t they just come here? What do they want from us?”
“And the fact that there are no answers doesn’t bother you anymore?” Frances asked.
“Of course it bothers me. But I can think clearly now, and I understand that there are answers. We won’t find them, however, until we build the ship and go where the answers are. That’s the only way we can find peace.” His breath came out at the end, in an explosive rush, as if he had been holding it in all the time he spoke.
“That’s the way it is,” Frances said. She motioned toward the partially assembled rocket. “But you don’t intend to go anywhere in that, I hope.”
“That’s just for practice,” Cavendish said. “When we finally get the resources to build the ship, we’ll need experience, won’t we? So we sneak a little power, at night, when nobody’s paying attention.”
“And how is all this going to get you anywhere?” Frances asked. This time she was speaking to Adrian.
“I don’t know,” Adrian said.
“Did you know that they removed all proof of your existence?” Frances said. “ At least the electronic part.”
Adrian looked accusingly at Cavendish. “You didn’t!”
Cavendish shrugged. His head had stopped twitching. “We were practicing again. One strategy we have considered is to make ourselves sufficiently irritating that the Energy Board will protect itself.”
“With the pearl of space?” Adrian asked.
“What about the power stoppages?” Frances said. “The sabotage? The upsurge in violent crime?”
