The Last Load

by Bartholomew Thockmorton

  Hinderken tensed. It gave him goose bumps thinking of what was about to occur, if he understood McNally’s hurried explanations, not to mention such terms such as “warp-hole” and “jump.” “You sure this is going to work?”

  “Relax will you? Trust me, I’ve done this before!” McNally energized the converter that supplied the ship’s weapons. With adjustments to the controls, he redirected the power to the distortion-field generator installed by Hinderken.

  “The ship’s computer tracks our location, we program where we want to be,” said McNally as he keyed instructions. “I gave Louiston a very specific destination. Knowing the cruising speed of my ship, we can accurately judge the Starduster’s location. We’ll warp in front and let them come to us!” He activated the final circuit. “Watch this! History in the making!”

  Hinderken concentrated on the brilliant star-field beyond the ship. There were whole regions of space ablaze with iridescent clouds of starlight. Abruptly, an immense, circular hole appeared in their path. Its blackness was absolute—star shine did not blur the edges or shine through the center. He barely had time to analyze the phenomenon when the craft flew directly through it. After a moment of darkness, the stars, minus the hole, reappeared.

  Hinderken looked closer. There was something different. “I don’t believe it! The fields have changed!” He recognized the star patterns that could only have been visible on a heading very different than the one they had been on moments before. He glanced at the control panel’s readings; they confirmed what his mind found difficult to accept.

  “I know how you feel! Hard to imagine we just instantaneously traveled five light-hours!” McNally adjusted the long-range scanners. “If you ever want to visit Mars, you can be there ten seconds after you kick this baby in gear!”

  “Good Lord…it really works!”

  “Tell me about it,” replied McNally. “Let’s save any questions until we’re aboard my ship. Might as well let the others in on it too! We still need their help; your job will be elsewhere!”

  As the man began to argue, the scanners chimed a contact. McNally brought the image to the view screen. His ship appeared—cruising before its awesome cargo, two thousand meters astern.

  “They’re about fifteen light-minutes distant. Over an hour away at their speed—our’s added, thirty minutes.” McNally opened a hailing circuit. “Hey Doc. You two okay over there?”

  Almost immediately, the speaker carried the other man’s voice. “McNally? Great heavens man! How did you get ahead of us!”

  “Doc listen, power down and give the ship a rest! Lieutenant Hinderken and I will be docking within five minutes!” McNally terminated the channel in the middle of Louiston’s questions. He grinned at the young officer as he increased ship’s power.

  “Shall we do it again?”

  ***

  Louiston tried to understand how McNally expected to dock in so short a time when the proximity alarm signaled a contact. He looked up in time to see a Sector Patrol attack cruiser materialize in space and close with the Starduster.

  Three minutes later, the docking was complete.

  McNally expected questions, but the excited intensity surprised him. All talking at once, the others followed to the control room and surrounded him when he sat in the command chair. Hinderken wanted to know more about the warp drive, as did Louiston, who also worried about what was going on with this Cranston thing. Claire simply wanted to understand why she was involved in all this at all.

  McNally raised his hands as if to defend himself from the verbal onslaught. “Please folks, please! We’re completely out of danger for now, so we can take some time to catch up on what we are all doing out here! But I think we should start over dinner. With food in your mouths, you’ll be less likely to talk all at once!”

  Louiston crossed his arms and looked impatient. “With everyone from Cranston to the Sector Patrol out to bag our cans, you can think of food?”

  “It’s not the food, good Doctor. It’s where you eat it!”

  He rose and motioned for the others to follow as he headed towards the engineering section. Soon McNally had opened the doorway to the small compartment where Louiston and Claire had hidden during the Patrol inspection. He touched something unseen on the back panel and a second doorway opened to a larger, well-lit room. When the others entered, McNally followed, securing the doors behind him. He then faced them and again gestured for silence.

  “If we’re ever going to get anywhere with this mission, every one of you are going to have to get over this ‘golly gee’ reaction to what you’re about to see! Please bear with me and I’ll try to bring you up to speed on what we’re dealing with!”

  McNally turned to Claire. “Miss Murphy, do you know how a ship’s long-range scanners work?” Claire looked at Doc and the Lieutenant, bit her lip and shook her head.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of! Roy here studied at the academy, Doc has a pilot’s working knowledge. A hundred years before mankind reached the Oort cloud, astrophysicists and engineers were studying a newly discovered breed of sub-atomic particle.”

  “I never bothered to memorize all the names, what’s important is that these mysterious particles appeared to travel at hundreds of times the speed-of-light, while remaining easily detectable. The truth, when discovered, was these gravitrinos pulsed with what can only be termed ‘temporal energy’ at a fantastic rate—and with each pulse, the particle ‘warps’ through space—over tremendous distances!

  “The mathematics are confusing, but the brain-banks and super-computers back on Mars studied this phenomena extensively. One result was long-range scanners that could ‘see’ over fantastic distances by focusing and electronically interpreting the incoming waves of these warping particles.

  “Another was “hyper’ communications—‘hitching’ rides with waves of particles. Twenty years ago, a young scientist wondered what would happen if the waves were collected, funneled and focused in the opposite direction. The ‘warp hole’ was born! The Company developed it, so of course the new drive was available to the Navy!”

  Hinderken and Louiston remained silent. To Claire, the important question was obvious. “If a ship can jump to any set of coordinates, can it reach the stars?”

  “We’re already building a small fleet of ‘System Searchers’ to start the search for Earth-normal worlds! The first few ships are scheduled to launch by the end of the year! We don’t want to go public with the news until we’re ready. The colonization of the stars must be done in an orderly manner! We can’t have every political splinter group, religious faction and corporation charging out into the galaxy on their own! In a thousand years, the resulting civilizations might well collide in frictions resulting in interstellar war!”

  McNally moved to a wall and slid open a panel, revealing controls. He tapped the keys and a doorframe suddenly appeared in the wall. But there was no door.

  “The warp-hole was developed with unbelievable ease. Conversion generator technology was ready to support and supply power for just such a concept. But the obvious beauty of this new toy went unnoticed until three years ago!

  “Conversion generators power our computers, life support, ship’s weapons systems as well as the propulsion drive! Why couldn’t the warp-hole be used without the drive?”

  Claire and the men all gasped when McNally, with a final touch, activated the doorway. Where the wall had been, a dark rectangle of emptiness appeared. Hinderken approached the door. “I’m afraid to ask where the other end of this thing…is.”

  McNally closed the control panel. “If any of you have fears about coping, I can administer a tranq-injection before we go further!”

  When no one accepted the offer, McNally glanced at his timepiece. “A little early, but we can talk after we ‘transmit’ our message! Have you forgotten, Doc? This is where we present our evidence and get approval to finish what we’ve started!

  “I have to confess, working for The Company has its advantages! Even though
I left Mars in the Starduster two years ago, I’ve had the best assignment beyond the orbit of the Pluto! With a few exceptions, mostly lately, I’ve been home every night for dinner! If you visit my room on this ship, you’ll find my bed all but unused.” McNally turned and stepped through the hole.

  After a second of nervous, Hinderken followed. Louiston smiled at Claire. She took his hand…he squeezed gently to reassure. A quick hug, and they stepped into the unknown.

  ***

  Claire almost wished she had taken the tranquilizer. One moment they were aboard McNally’s ship, the next found them exiting the pantry of a quaint, farmhouse kitchen. When Claire and Doc joined them, McNally deactivated the warp door. The interior of the pantry appeared when the blackness vanished.

  “Susan!” called McNally. “Dear, I’m home!” Claire giggled at the absurdity of the situation until a beautiful woman in a flowered garden-dress entered the kitchen and ran to his side.

  Susan smiled and lifted her face for his welcome-home kiss. Only then did she turn her attention to her guests. “Hello Roy, nice to see you again. Doctor Louiston, I’m pleased to meet you. You must be Claire Murphy. Randy has told me all about you!”

  The two women were immediate friends. Claire tried to assist Susan as she fussed over her husband’s burns, but the older woman moved with practiced skill. Claire was surprised to learn McNally had a wife, but when she found there were also three children—Randal Junior, six, Sarah, four and Stevie, one and a half—playing outside, she was stunned. McNally didn’t act the type to settle on a farm with a big family.

  The ladies went in search of the children. The others followed McNally to the living room and waited while he used the communication screen to place a call. When the link was complete, McNally waited after giving his name and access code. Soon an elderly man in Naval uniform appeared on the screen.

  “Good evening, Admiral Legrand,” he said. “The group is assembled and awaiting your pleasure! When can you be here?”

  Shortly, McNally again activated the warp door. Admiral Legrand and two aids, both Captains, soon arrived.

  The evening passed in a relaxed atmosphere. McNally grilled steaks while Claire helped Susan in bathing the children. Louiston worked the kitchen. Although it looked like something built hundreds of years earlier, the appliances proved as modern as any available.

  Louiston served iced tea while the senior officers questioned all in turn. Doc found himself explaining his experiences regarding Cranston, Lieutenant Hinderken reported on corruption in the Sector’s ranks and Claire told of her stepfather’s business dealings and how her mother lost control of the family company long before her suspicious and untimely death.

  By the time dinner was ready, Claire and the others had grown accustomed to the acute awareness that they were on Mars, in New Georgia to be precise. Actually visiting McNally’s fifty-acre farm, twenty miles south of Macon.

  Louiston, born in New Florida, suspected McNally would have to be extremely wealthy to afford this much land in the country—on a world that was bursting at the seams with overpopulation. He closely observed the way McNally talked to the Admiral—as equals.

  At the end of the meal, the men in uniform thanked all and departed via the warp-hole, their destination unknown except to McNally. Later, after the children were in bed, the McNally’s joined the others on the front porch.

  Over drinks, McNally had carefully explained his plans. “As you have probably figured out by now, my role as a Company agent investigating missing haulers and their loads was a cover for an even greater mission! For almost ten years, Cranston has been mobilizing a special workforce growing to twenty thousand—all occupied on a project surpassing the Pyramids, as well as any of mankind’s marvels in its scope!

  “Rumors hinted Cranston was inspired by a four-thousand-year-old vid-cast in which the villains built a spacecraft the size of a moon! The Leviathan isn’t that large, however it is the largest ship ever built—it’s twice the size of the Madeira Colony!”

  “What does he plan to do with it?” asked Hinderken, sitting on the porch rail while he sipped his drink.

  “We weren’t sure for several years,” replied McNally, sitting with Susan on the porch swing. “That’s why The Company sent me, you and all those other advance agents out there. All that effort and work—and most of those men never saw a minute of action! Mostly information gatherers anyway.”

  Claire sat forward as she asked something that had been bothering her. “You told us how you got off the Donadio asteroid after you rescued me. You also said it had taken months to smuggle in and assemble that craft. I wasn’t there then. How did you know you might need it on that asteroid?”

  McNally chuckled and repositioned the arm laying on Susan’s shoulders. “Nothing magic! Don’t you remember why you went to work in your uncle’s club?”

  “Of course, he had convinced me it was a safe place…” Her eyes widened with understanding. “You put him up to that?”

  “Guilty, ma’am! With Louiston, it was luck. One of the agents, George in fact, contacted me regarding a certain Doctor that was hiding on New Yak. You weren’t aware Cranston’s men were near. I’d heard of you, and I’d been looking for a hauler that had also been involved with the ten-load contract. Good thing the Starduster can warp too! Had I gotten there any later, Doc might have been gone!”

  The double meaning was not lost on Louiston. He shivered at the memory. After weeks of hiding, trying to keep ahead of the killers that hunted him, Louiston had feared his time was over.

  Claire climbed out of her chair and went to stand beside Doc. He looked tense. She rubbed his shoulder for comfort.

  “It’s over,” she said as Louiston smiled, looking up into her eyes. She turned to McNally. “This is so much, so fast! Randal, who are you? Why are you involved in this? If…if I may ask.” She was glad to see that the man remained calm at the personal questions.

  “Actually, I’m a very high-ranking executive with The Company. Being born out there in the cloud, so far from Mars, you may not appreciate just what The Company is. A couple of thousand years ago it was called the Central Intelligence Agency—a covert tool belonging to the United States of America. I know…I know…ancient history! But nations and politics changed. When the World Government Council formed, just after World War VII, what remained of the U.S. slowly evolved, growing to become the Alliance of American Free States. Of course, all that was lost in the Great Disaster!

  “The old bureaucracy, what remained of it off-world anyway, survived by merging with several large, off-planet corporations. The new organization worked with the remaining political structures, but existed outside and independent of them. Employees and agents for this growing empire jokingly referred to it as ‘The Ultimate Company.’ After two centuries, just ‘The Company.’ Our connections and power are most evident when we deal with the Inner-system Navy or ISDOT.

  “I myself hold the rank of a Naval Field-Admiral. I earned it after many years with the fleet. Eight years ago I was transferred to a special project funded by both The Company and the Navy. You’ve experienced the warp-door and drive.

  “After two years of undercover work, we know that Cranston has criminal activities planned for the Leviathan. With it he hopes to carve a new empire throughout the Oort cloud. He would build more super-ships and seek total control of the system! Cranston also plans to stop shipments to the planets. Eventually, hundreds of colonies would begin to die!

  “That’s why we need your help, Claire.” She jumped at hearing her name. “Once your stepfather’s gone, control of Cranston Incorporated reverts to you. Cooperation would be nice!” McNally smiled.

  “But how can I help? What do you need?” She leaned closer to Louiston who had placed his arm around her waist.

  “We want to lease the Leviathan. A vessel that size with warp capabilities could move mass-colonization ahead a hundred years! Imagine! A million people at a time, moved to a new world, rich in resources an
d ripe for its new population!

  “Anyway, that’s what we hope will happen. Won’t know though until we warp out there. It may very well take quite a while to find some Earth-normal worlds. Did I mention your company, whatever you choose to name it, would be equal partner in all profits? Interested?”

  Claire looked downward, deep in thought. When she lifted her eyes to meet McNally’s, she had only one question. “What’s going to happen to my stepfather?”

  “Are you kidding? With the charges we have against him and some of his top men?” McNally sat forward, his gaze turning cold. “Don’t worry, Claire. One way or another, he’s history!”

  ***

  Cranston’s rage was terrible and deadly. He killed the messenger where he stood. The missing Patrol ship had been found—sans McNally. He was gone, evidently aboard the missing fighter craft, something discovered only after most of the ship’s power had been restored. Stevens being dead didn’t help matters either. And what about the second officer—Lieutenant Hinderken? Where was he? With McNally? But why?

  Cranston’s vessels had searched the last known location of the Starduster. They found no debris or wreckage of the ship or trace of the load. Cranston was certain McNally was back aboard his vessel. Where would he appear next?

  The desk speaker activated. The secretary announced Mister Burroughs’ arrival. “Send him in,” ordered Cranston, returning to his desk. He folded his hands and watched the tall, solemn man enter.

  “Burroughs, do you know how much your bungling agitates me?”

  “No. But I assume you’re going to tell me.” Burroughs dared to reveal a slight smile.

  “Not exactly,” sneered Cranston, pressing a button under the desktop.

  Burroughs had just enough time for a moment of terror before his body vaporized—washed from existence by an array of wall-mounted lasers. Ashes settled to the plush carpet where the man had stood a fraction of a second before.