Diane Hoffman actually seemed to be enjoying herself, but she saw the growing look of terror on Lucy Smith's face and realized the fun had to end. Glancing over at young LaRene with narrowed eyes and a slight frown, she said, "Ok, you've made your point. Now get us back into the dry!"
Jerking her thumb back towards Lucy, she added, "I have some training for her, and she's scared enough as it is. If she runs out of the house screaming, I'll never get her back inside!"
Instantly, all three were again seated at the empty dining room table. The changing scenes had left Lucy feeling dizzy and out of sorts. She looked at young LaRene and said in a surprisingly angry, trembling voice, "Stop doing that!"
Looking down at the table, properly chastised, LaRene said softly, "Sorry, Dr. Smith, sometimes I get carried away. I'm not known as Skullreader LaRene, Voodoo Doctor, for nothing. You know I based that illusion on your memory of a rain storm you experienced when you were 12 years old. Do you remember the storm?"
Lucy Smith looked down for just a moment, her eyes moving back and forth as she recalled details of the storm, and then she focused on LaRene. Turning her head slightly towards Diane, who was holding her hand and watching her very closely, she said, "He's right. There was a storm just like that at my home in Kentucky when I was twelve. My mother was scared our yard would flood."
Both women turned their gazes back to LaRene and saw he had again taken on the appearance of Grandfatherly LaRene. They both had to admit the grandfather look was less intimidating even with the distracting milky eye.
Speaking in a clear voice, LaRene explained, "There is one telltale, physical sign when I use my power of illusion. My left eye always turns milky looking. I have never found a way to prevent it, so I incorporate the milky eye into my Skullreader Voodoo routine. I can pick and choose strong memories from people around me and use those memories as the basis for the illusion I create for everyone."
Lucy began to feel like her feet were once again firmly planted on the ground. Her natural curiosity was stronger than her fear of the unknown, and she asked, "Can you mentally talk to people? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with another person just with your mind?"
"No." was the immediate response. "I can pull a person's memories so I know their names, where they've lived. But I can't speak to them inside their minds. I can make them see and feel almost anything based on either their memories or my own memories."
He continued, "Looking into the memories of Whatsit was similar to looking into anyone's memories until I did the illusion of refilling his empty plate. He knew I had penetrated his mind, and he shut me out by slamming his mental door tightly closed. He is scared because he knows I got into his mind without his realizing it."
Peering confidently at Diane and Lucy, LaRene said, "It is important for you to know something about the Chrysallamans. They have never encountered another race of beings with the power to mentally communicate with them. Their mental projections are generally so strong they can easily control a lesser race, such as us humans. As a result, they firmly believe their race is superior and has no equal. They don't normally shield their thoughts since their primary method of communication, and control of subject races, is via mental telepathy. The reason Whatsit fled the building is because he knew he had lost control of his mind to a human."
The scientist in Dr. Diane Hoffman was resurfacing. She explained the DNA sampling technique she had used on the Dalai Lama and why she needed LaRene's genetic structure.
Skullreader LaRene had leafed through the memories of Whatsit and had seen the basic plan of the Chrysallamans for the takeover of Earth. He was not about to refuse to provide whatever help he could to protect humanity from the Chrysallaman scourge, and he readily agreed to give the sample. Showing Lucy how to take the DNA sample with the special swab was only a matter of moments for Diane.
It was very obvious to both LaRene and Hoffman that Lucy Smith had experienced quite enough mental gymnastics for one day. She kept edging toward the door leading from the dining room to the front door, gradually, but surely widening the distance between LaRene and her.
Diane looked from Lucy back to LaRene with a twisted smile and said, "I suppose we need to leave. I think the excitement has been a bit wearing on my friend."
Grandfatherly LaRene smiled back to her and replied, "I completely understand. Seen that reaction before, believe it or not."
Laughing at the comment, Diane admitted to herself that she found both Grandfatherly LaRene and Young LaRene, charming. Smiling, she said slyly, "You know your ability to cook a delicious meal is astounding. I know I ate more than I should, but I don't feel the least bit full."
LaRene was quick. With a genuine smile brightening his face, he replied, "Thank you very much. My food always just melts in your mouth. Be sure to get a nice hamburger and fries on your way back to the airport, though, because my food is so light it's almost like eating nothing at all."
Laughing loudly, both ladies again thanked LaRene and headed to the front door. The Skullreader decided he would stay inside the building instead of escorting the ladies back to their car because he didn't want Whatsit to be further traumatized.
Exiting the building, Hoffman and Smith walked back to the car. As they rounded the building and walked from the sidewalk into the alley, they saw Private Louis Laforge stretched out on the concrete with Jim Blunt holding a damp towel over the man's forehead.
Trotting over to stand next to Blunt, they both said at the same time, "What happened to him?"
Jim looked up at them and replied in a slightly exasperated tone, "Glad you finally decided to join us. Seems our driver had an adverse reaction to meeting our little green friend in the flesh."
He continued, "When Whatsit ran out of Skullreader's house, he raced back to the car and jumped into the back seat."
Blunt began smiling as he thought about what happened. "Damn lizard is fast when he wants to be. I couldn't keep up. You should have heard Laforge howl when he opened the car door. I didn't think it was possible for a human voice to reach that high a note."
Diane was amazed the career military man, Jim Blunt, had such a deliciously twisted sense of humor. She was beginning to piece together what had happened. Apparently, the last thing on Whatsit's mind as he ran down the steps was pulling his sombrero back on his head and stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Laforge suddenly began to mumble something about a Fouke. He got very agitated, raised his head, eyes opened wide with white showing widely all the way around his corneas.
Blunt pressed his hand against the towel covering the man's forehead and said gently, "It's okay, Private, everything's okay. Just relax."
Laforge's head lowered back down and his eyes fluttered closed at the sound of Blunt's voice, but his mouth was still drawn back into a tight line.
Dr. Lucy Smith's training as a xenobiologist clicked in when she heard the word Fouke. Thinking back about the many days of study for her Master's degree, she said, "Now I remember. There is a legend of a Fouke Monster lurking in the Louisiana swamps. Part lizard and part man, it's basically the sasquatch of the bayou."
Blunt saw the puzzle pieces falling into place in his mind. He had been pondering how to explain Private Laforge's injuries when they returned to the airport base. He had it now.
Looking up at Diane and Lucy, he told them what the story would be. "Private Laforge had stayed with the car while everyone else went to meet the Voodoo Doctor. Having been raised in Metairie, listening to the tales of monsters in the bayou as a child, hearing the locals talk of the powers of Voodoo, he had a healthy respect for the mysteries of the swamp. Well you can imagine Laforge's reaction to what he thought was a giant, green skinned Fouke monster, screaming like a Banshee jumping into his car. Scared out of his mind, Laforge opened his door and tried to jump out of the car to get away from the monster and tripped over his own feet. He fell and banged his head rather soundly on the concrete. Knocked himself out. We've been tending to his head inj
ury ever since."
Both women nodded their heads in agreement, but a troubled look was evident on Lucy's face as her eyes shifted to the car. Not a sound had come from the back seat since she had been standing there looking down at Laforge.
Lucy moved over to the car and looked into the back seat. Whatsit was huddled there, his arms wrapped around himself in a protective pose, face buried against the other door and back cushion. Opening the rear door, she crawled in to sit beside the young alien, stroking his head with her hand in a motherly fashion. After a few moments, a slight shudder vibrated his green body, and he turned toward her and buried his face against her, hugging her closely.
Tears welled up in Lucy's eyes as she held Whatsit, thinking about how alone he was in a world full of humans, so far away from his own people and his own world. Deep down she knew the Earth and its people needed to be saved from the coming invasion, but it was getting harder and harder for her to see Whatsit as a deadly alien invader and not just a young teenager in need of love and understanding. She suddenly wondered if her cat would like Whatsit.
The trip back to the airport was uneventful when compared to the morning's excitement. Blunt drove with Laforge in the passenger seat holding the towel against his forehead. Laforge's head injury turned out to be the perfect explanation for his ravings about a giant Fouke monster jumping into his car. Two burly medics loaded him onto a gurney, shot him full of morphine and hoisted him into a waiting ambulance for a trip to the infirmary. They had seen head trauma before. They knew the wild talk about the Fouke was the result of the head wound and nothing more.
Chapter 7 - The Power Module
The D-Cell battery sized module that provided the power for the ray pistol proved to be frustratingly difficult to disassemble. Dr. Heinbaum and his assistant, Walter Cunningham, had tried several ways to break into the power module, but they were forced to work very, very slowly and carefully to avoid the possibility of a catastrophic mishap if they blundered. Heinbaum had calculated that it required 1 billion volts with 400 kiloamperes of direct current to power each shot from the ray pistol. That amount of energy was basically the same as your average lightning bolt. Not the kind of power you wanted to inadvertently release inside your nice, state-of-the-art laboratory.
A close examination of the pistol's power module with the lab's electron microscope had not revealed a way to take it apart. There was no visible seam, screw or hole anywhere on the device. Two small indentations or dimples in both ends of the module on either side of the pole contact points were the only markings on an otherwise completely smooth surface. The outer shell of the module appeared to be made out of a silver porcelain substance that couldn't be scratched by even a power driven diamond drill bit. Other drill bits made of exotic materials slithered off the porcelain surface as if it was greased. General Collier had arranged for them to use a top secret, hypersonic water jet with a cutting force of 100,000 psi to try slicing the top off the module. The water jet could cut through stainless steel blocks like so much warm butter, but the silvery porcelain was not even scuffed. They had tried applying powerful, military grade sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid to the module without success. A specialized cutting torch had been brought in to try and burn the module open. The carbon subnitride torch produced a burn temperature of almost 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit. They focused the bright, blue-white flame on the module for five minutes, and the silvery surface didn't even turn red.
Heinbaum was infuriated by his inability to open the module. Storming around his lab in a fit of rage, mumbling to himself like a crazy man, he swept a pile of report papers off a table and onto the floor. He wanted to take a sledge hammer and smash the module open but his fear of ruining his wonderful lab with an uncontrolled explosive release of power held him back. Instead, he kicked an offending report, sending it skittering off across the floor.
Walter Cunningham, Heinbaum's 45-year old machinist, stood off to one side, arms crossed, watching calmly as Heinbaum stormed around the big room. He knew Heinbaum was very smart, but he had no common sense about him at all. John Heinbaum could probably solve any calculus equation easily, but if you put him outside in the pouring rain, he might not figure out how to open the umbrella in his hand. It was comical to watch the dichotomy between the Scientist Heinbaum and the Child Heinbaum. Child Heinbaum would furiously walk up to an expensive piece of equipment as if he was going to sweep it to the floor, smashing it to useless junk. After a couple of seconds, Scientist Heinbaum would instead sweep a short stack of report folders sitting beside the equipment off the work bench onto the floor and stomp away, sometimes kicking a scrap of paper that dared get in his way. Walter had learned not to say anything to Heinbaum during these tirades. No use being yelled at by the supercilious scientist.
Lt. Jerome McPherson returned to the lab just as Dr. Heinbaum was acting out his latest display of pent up rage. Sensitivity and emotional understanding were not personality traits McPherson ever bothered to develop. Folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against a high work bench, the red haired Scot shouted out, "What's amatter Heiny? Lost your tuna sandwich?"
Stopping in mid-stride, Heinbaum looked around to see who had dared interrupt him. Narrowing his close set eyes as he saw McPherson lazily leaning against the work bench, he screamed at the red haired hellion, "You cretinous, slack jawed hyena! You think you can take your caveman club and bash the module open? Bah! You are useless!"
The widening smile on the face of the Scotsman served only to infuriate him further. Not only that, but his pointed insults didn't even seem to faze the big lunk. Instead of being devastated and ashamed, the idiot feigned surprise, lifting his hand to his chest in a very feminine manner and mouthing the words, "Who, me?"
Indignantly turning on his heel, Heinbaum stomped away muttering loudly, "I must get into the module. I shall get into the module. But I can't get into the module!"
Remembering what the General had said about being stationed in Antarctica, the grin on McPherson's face faltered a little. He looked over at Cunningham, still leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, and asked, "Walter, mind telling me what you've tried?"
Pushing himself away from the wall and straightened his permanently bowed back as much as he could, Walter proceeded to explain every method they had tried to open the module. Thinking quickly, McPherson tried to put himself into the mind of a military man developing a weapon as powerful as the ray pistol. First, the weapon was extremely powerful which meant it was dangerous to both the user and the enemy if not handled properly. Second, the weapon was going to be used in battlefield conditions where accidents and unforeseen mishaps always occur. It was going to get knocked around, dropped, banged, subjected to all kinds of dirt, water, and in the case of space aliens, radiation from various sources. Yet, for battlefield purposes, the module had to be reliable, easily recharged and easily repaired. Based upon his own experience with military weapon design, McPherson thought he just might have a solution.
He thought to himself, "Like any good magic trick, it looked like magic until you found out what the trick was. Then the whole thing turned out to be childishly simple."
Grabbing a note pad and pencil, McPherson jotted down a short list of items and looking at Cunningham with a wide, toothy grin, he said, "Walter, old man, why don't you round up the stuff on this list and call me when you're ready."
Peering at the list for a moment, Cunningham replied, "Shouldn't take long. Be ready in about 30 minutes," and with that he left the lab.
A short time later, hunched over a work bench littered with bits of wire and torn insulation, McPherson wrapped the last bit of 14 gauge insulated copper wire around each of the two 15 mm diameter soft iron rods Cunningham had found in base storage. Prior to wrapping the rods with the wire, McPherson had taken a pair of large, hawk billed pliers and bent each rod into a horseshoe shape. The space between the bent rod ends closely matched the configuration of the dimples at each end of the power module. Connectin
g the loose ends of the wires to terminals on a rheostat controlled generator, McPherson asked Cunningham to fetch one of the power modules.
Heinbaum had watched the two men work together with poorly hidden amusement and contempt. "Let them waste their time with their kiddy toys," he mused as he worked on his plan to force open a module. He had just decided on using focused sound waves of varying frequencies as a possible method for entry when his attention was again drawn to the yammerings at the work bench across the room. Curiosity overwhelmed him, and he rose from his stool and ambled over to observe and enjoy the coming failure. Scanning the setup of the equipment, Heinbaum grudgingly, and very silently, admitted to himself the electromagnet idea was intriguing.
Jerome McPherson took the silver module and clamped it firmly into a raised pedestal. After attaching the horseshoe shaped electromagnets to clamps at each end of the module, he aligned the ends of each magnet to the ends of the module until they were in full contact with the dimples.
After carefully making sure that all the alignments were good, McPherson looked over at Cunningham and said, "Turn up the generator power slowly."
Cunningham flipped the power switch to the 'on' position and a low electric hum emanated from the small, natural gas powered 1500 watt generator. The rheostat dial on the generator was marked from 1 to 1,500 volts. Cunningham slowly turned the rheostat dial and as it reached the 1,000 volt setting, a smell of ozone became noticeable around the work bench. The hum from the generator grew slowly to a whine as if something was opposing its power. There was still no reaction from the module. Motioning with his thumb, McPherson indicated for Cunningham to twist the dial to its maximum setting. As the dial reached 1,500 volts, the sharp smell of the ozone became distinct, almost overpowering, and the generator whined more noisily. The insulation around the copper wires began to steam, not able to withstand the magnetic resistance of the module to the amount of current being forced through the wires by the generator.
The Origin of F.O.R.C.E. Page 8
