by Angela Timms
Rennon looked up at him with a strained expression. “Ok, makes sense.” The doc ran the scanner over him and drew off the right amount of clear liquid from a bottle he had taken from the cabinet, injected him and Rennon drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
The Argo sped through space held in the tractor beam which was compensating for planets and asteroids that got in the way. They were followed by the ship which held them until they came to the edge of the territory and then the ship turned back and left them to it. The ship sped on for a month until it came into the orbit of a small green and blue planet and the proximity alarm went off to alert the passengers that they had arrived. The tractor beam disengaged and they were free to go where they wanted to.
Rennon, Kel and Kyla made their way to the cockpit. Kel sat in the pilot’s chair, Kyla in the co-pilots and they waited to be hailed. After about an hour Kel adjusted the intercom, still nothing. They looked at each other and activated the off ship scanner and waited.
The figures flashed up on the screen. There were life signs but there was no technology. It was a totally technology free planet.
Kel sat back into his chair. “Ok, so now what do we do? If we land there we could cause an absolute panic.”
Kyla thought for a moment. “I doubt we’re the first to arrive but we don’t actually need to land. There’s a moon over there, if we land on the far side of that we can probably manage to do the repairs using the gravity suits. It is a basic weld. Hold on, a weld. Dammit, we need oxygen for that. Do we have one of those bubble units, I can’t remember what they are called. You know, the ones that form around the worker and make a bubble of breathable air to work in outside.”
Kel tapped some buttons. “Hold on, I’ll check the stock list for the hold. Yes, I think we do. Good idea, at least it’s a chance to fix the hull. I’ll take us down, hold on.”
Kel took the ship off of autopilot and engaged the cloaking device. He then took the ship around the moon and took it down to land very gently. He barely kissed the moon’s surface, the lock down clamps folded out and gripped the surface, digging deep, holding the ship in place and they were landed.
Kyla smiled. “Well done, that was a beautiful landing.”
Kel smiled back. “Well thank you, one of my better ones. We’re locked down so I’ll go and get that suit on. Could you hold the fort here? I would like someone watching the controls if I’m going outside, just in case.”
Kyla looked nervous and caught his arm as he was getting up. “Be careful. Are you going to take any of the Marines with you?”
Kel smiled. “I always am careful. Well except when I’m not. No, it’s not a combat mission and it might be easier to do it on my own. It should be straightforward. See you in a while.” He left the cockpit without looking back and the door swished closed behind him. He strode down the corridor, trying to ignore the fluttery nervous feeling he had inside. The corridor seemed somehow longer and his footsteps more hollow. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to Kyla but he hadn’t done a spacewalk before and doing one on his own for the first time was not the ideal way to go about it. Then again he’d had the opportunity to read the Marines’ file with Rennon and he knew that they hadn’t either.
The store room in the hold was neatly laid out with everything on shelves and well labelled. He was able to locate the suit and instructions fairly quickly. Some of the other equipment took him a little longer. He took it out of its packaging and carefully climbed into it, checking all the pipes and running the checks that he could from what he could understand of the instructions. His mind was racing and he truly regretted now not having someone with him to double check what he was doing. He took a deep breath and walked to the airlock which was up a level. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He took a deep breath and activated the gravity unit on the suit and stood in front of the door leading out into space and tried to concentrate on what he had to do next. He took his safety line and clipped it onto the hook just beside the door. He then pressed the door open button. The air hissed as it escaped when the outer door slipped silently open and he stepped out onto the moon surface. The grey soil was dusty and he left a deep imprint as he walked. The gravity suit kept him pinned to the moon’s surface as if there was gravity on the planet. He was carrying the portable bubble as Kyla had called it and his welding tools, all carefully strapped together and he walked around the ship for a short distance until he came to the hole.
It looked much worse from the outside. The metal was peeled back like a skin and he could see the back of the table pressed up against the hole. They had been lucky as it barely fitted over the blast hole.
He could just about reach so he clamped a second safety line to the hull of the ship and took out the bubble. It had a black control box and was like a large tent when inflated. He knew that but at that point he realised he had no idea how to operate it. He had to get it to be a tent like cover first. He took it out of its bag, the bag itself began to float away and he only just caught it and tied it to his belt. He then held onto one edge of the bubble and the rest of it floated out into space. It had black sensors around its edge and when he activated it, wherever the sensors touched they stuck. He discovered this soon enough and wished he’d taken longer to read the instructions. That meant they stuck to him, the ship, the floor, his equipment and he had to turn it off and start over again. He had better luck the next time and managed to seal the bubble tent around himself and the atmosphere ran through it so he was able to work.
The welding tool flared brightly in the darkness of space. The lights on his helmet were dull in comparison but kept things illuminated when he turned the torch off to bend the next piece of metal back into place. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust each time and for the visor of his blast helmet to blacken until it was shielded enough for him to carry on but soon enough he was welding the sheets of metal that had peeled away back where they belonged. One after the other. He then put the patch on over the top. It was a cunning device which measured the hole and poured liquid metal over it which sealed like a skin, impenetrable and secure.
He was just finishing the welding when something hit the bubble from behind him. The air hissed out immediately as the bubble tore under the pressure of the gas inside which now had an escape route. As the gas escaped the bubble collapsed around him. A second missile hit him on the back of the head, hard.
Thankfully his helmet had taken the brunt of the blow but he couldn’t see what had hit him or who. The opaque bubble was now completely wrapped around him again and he lost his balance. As he fell the gravity suit tried to compensate and malfunctioned so he was flung out into space. The safety rope pulled taut but held and he was able to grab it through the cloth and pull himself back upright. The gravity suit compensated again and he was standing on the moon surface, tied to the ship, wrapped in the bubble. He was beginning to panic, his breathing was rapid and he could feel the adrenaline rushing through his veins and images came unbidden, ideas that he really didn’t need to think about. He tried to tell himself they were irrational, he had air, he was linked to the ship and the airlock. All he had to do was to unwrap himself and he needed to be calm to do that. The more the panic set in the more he wrapped himself up in the cloth.
He stood for a moment and let the cloth settle. The lack of gravity made it float away from him and the calmer he was the more he was able to let it do that. Finally he saw a gap in the cloth, grabbed it and managed to pull the cloth down over him and to stand on it even though it was still caught around his safety rope. He wasn’t taking any chances, he bundled it up and tucked it under his arm, grabbed the pack of tools and turned off the welding tool which no longer burnt due to lack of oxygen. It snaked around him.
He took a deep breath, calmed himself and unclipped the safety rope from the ship. As it floated away from the loop he had used he didn’t wait. He strode as quickly as he could to the airlock, leapt inside and when he and everything else he carried was inside he hit the door cl
osed button, just managing to pull the cloth which had drifted back through out of the way of the closing door. The airlock re-pressurized and the air was pumped back in. He hit the internal door open key and leapt inside. He didn’t wait to get back to the storeroom in the hold, he tore the suit off of himself where he stood and left it in a pile on the floor with the rest of his equipment. He leant against the closed airlock door and shut his eyes. He looked down at his hands, he was physically shaking and his head was pounding.
It took a while for his breathing to go back to normal and for him to calm down. When he was able he scooped up the equipment and returned it to the hold. He thought about putting it back on the shelves but as he had no idea where to put anything he put it all by the door. He then almost ran back to the cockpit where Kyla was waiting, her eyes were wild, her hair messed up where she had been running her hands through it.
She didn’t give him a chance to speak, she leapt towards him and hugged him so tightly he thought she was going to push the air out of his lungs. Then it hit him, he was alive, he had survived. “Hey you little one. Come on, don’t worry, I’m fine.” He cradled the back of her head with his hand and as she stepped away he bent down and tried to kiss her but she pulled back.
Kyla took a deep breath as he backed away. “I’m glad you are alive. We’re locked down for the night out there now. I’ve put the shields up and we should be ok. You got hit by a small meteor shower. The gravity on your suit must have attracted it. You were lucky, if the rocks had been any bigger you might have had your helmet cracked.”
Kel smiled back. “I just got lucky. We’ll leave it at that. Rennon suggested earlier that we go and take a look at that planet tomorrow.”
Kyla laughed. “You just can’t leave a planet alone can you?”
The next morning the shuttle hovered slightly and went into invisible stealth mode as it left the ship. Rennon and Kel were in the control seats, Kyla sat behind them. They circled the planet and hovered as closely as they could without risking being heard.
They hovered over a small town. The sun bleached wooden buildings looked weather worn and dusty though the women were out with their brooms in brightly coloured long full skirted dresses and bonnets. They brushed and brushed but however hard they worked it didn’t seem to make any difference. The school house was brimming with life, there were children playing around it, the church was neatly kept as was a small graveyard to the back of it. The main street was a corridor of shops, a saloon, whore house and livery stable with a corral at the back, as well as many other shops. Each shop had its own veranda and there were people sitting on chairs outside watching what was going on in the street.
Kyla put a hand on Rennon’s shoulder. “Now that can’t be right, look over there at that water tower. You would expect something like that but look at what it’s made of. That is stainless steel, they haven’t even made any attempt to hide it. It just looks out of place.”
Rennon began tapping keys on his scanner and then he waited. “As you have guessed, there is a pulse coming to that tower and a pulse of a different frequency leaving it and covering the whole town. It seems to be something sonic, too high pitched for us to hear.
The only transport seems to be horse and cart or horseback and the streets are busy. Time to land and take a look around I guess. I’ll find somewhere outside town. We can then get a better look.
On ground level we’ll be able to see a lot more detail. The town is teeming with people. There doesn’t seem to be any communication network with the outside worlds. No space port. Well nothing on record. Something definitely isn’t right here though. It should be a nontechnological planet. Look at the number of people, far too many for a small town like this. Where is the employment, the food source? It all looks wrong.”
Carts carrying goods pulled by farm horses trotted up and down the street until they pulled up at the store or went to the warehouse. An elegant lady was just alighting from a well-kept, polished black landau. She had a driver and a footman on the back, the footman jumped down, lifted down a step for her and helped her down onto the veranda and she disappeared into what looked like the Bank.
People seemed to know each other, they waved in a friendly way and there were groups of women deep in conversation. A group of women on one veranda were sitting together, chatting and knitting or sewing. A black dog slept at the feet of one of the women. He looked up as they flew past, tilted his head slightly as his senses told him what his eyes denied. He gave off the faintest of barks and stared into the sky. Nothing appeared but nothing happened so he put his nose back on his paws and watched just in case something turned up.
Just outside town they spotted something out of the ordinary in a clearing. It was surrounded by a small coniferous woodland. It was a covered wagon which had just pulled up. It wasn’t the wagon as such that was interesting. It was the antennae array on the roof. Anyone from the ground wouldn’t have spotted it but from above it was clearly visible. Rennon had spotted it and was hovering overhead so that they could watch what was going on. The driver got down and began to unbuckle the harness as his horse thoughtfully munched on some grass. He hobbled his horse, leaving it near a tree and went back to the wagon.
Rennon was tapping keys. “I’m getting a vague reading from that wagon, there’s technology in there alright. I can’t tell what type but there is a low residual reading and the occasional stronger pulse which links up with that tower in town. I’m analyzing the output and it looks as though it is the same. So we have our source and its destination, now all we need to do is work out what it is doing.”
Kel strained in his seat. “If he’d just open that door we might be able to get a look inside. If we can find out what sort of equipment it is and possibly sabotage it then we may be able to break their control here if this is a controlled planet.”
Rennon was working on the magnification on the lower camera. “I don’t think so, not at the angle we’d be able to get to and the trees that are in the way.”
Kyla was standing behind them out of her seat trying to get a good view. “Well, I’m for going down there and taking a good look. We don’t know what sort of equipment it is and we don’t have to assume that it’s something detrimental. It is low development around here, we are into territory that the Followers haven’t taken over yet. You said that yourself. Ok, I’d guess that he’s a Follower or something like that. If he’s not then we don’t need to worry about it or bother him.”
Rennon flicked a switch. “Now I see, take a look at that. He’s what they used to call a Snake Oil Salesman. He’s put out his board, look there and on the back of the wagon, he’s got out his bottles. That is cunning, come in selling medicines, which isn’t going to be hard on a back water planet like this and put the drug in the medicine.”
Kel sat back in his chair. “Definitely worth a look but we’ll have to do this carefully. Can we sort out a place to land?”
Rennon flipped some buttons on the console. “I can but we’ll have to look to what we’re wearing first. We can’t just walk in there as we are.
Kyla looked down at her boiler suit. “You have a good point there, let’s get back to the Argo and get something from the costume locker.”
Back on the ship they walked down the lines of outfits neatly covered in clear plastic dust covers. They were hung on rails in lines up to the ceiling controlled by a pulley system which was controlled from a keypad which would bring down the rail of the era or planet or type the enquirer was looking for. Kyla keyed in “Cowboy Earth, Mid-West” and the bars began to rotate. She watched it with a total mesmerized fascination. “It was so helpful of the people on Earth to provide us with so much costume. I suppose having contacts with those role-players really helps.”
Rennon looked along the row of the men’s outfits and ran his fingers over uniforms, suits, shirts and trousers. “Well other than the fake weaponry I suppose so. So who are we going to be then? I’d say something low key, farm hands perhaps? Maybe we shoul
d think about being prospectors?
Hold on.” He pulled his laptop out and keyed in their location and pulled up what information they had on the planet. “I should have done this first. Alright, so we have a low technology planet, the main trade is grain and lumber, silver is the main currency and most of it has been milled into coins. We have silver coins but they are minted for other planets, we don’t have any currency for this one. That planet is Xathuron. We’re in the Oberarth Galaxy just past the Exinian Nebular. Its part of the Retorian Confederation, a group of planets colonized from Earth. I’ll check the history as that seems a bit strange as Earth was not only a closed system as far as I can remember their space travel program didn’t start until a lot later. No, wait a minute, no its not. There was a group of Founding Fathers who were on a ship bound for the New World out of Southampton England. Their ship got caught in an Eion storm when a Pleasure Cruiser X Cass piloted by a bunch of drunken teenagers broke the time and space treaty and dropped out of the time corridor above them. As the cruiser had been seen and the vortex it created was sinking the ship the teenagers beamed the whole ship on board. The crew beamed them down here with the ship full of all their equipment, tools and possessions and left them believing they had found the New World by the grace of some delivering angel, which they had of course, but not in the way they meant. Apparently it caused quite a stink on the Cortex of Thelusan where they came from and was one of the instances cited when the law was passed to make it illegal to use the time corridors for anything other than essential travel. That brought on the research into Eion Star Drives rather than the Eastioninian Drives. Eion Star Drives are more controlled than the more haphazard Eastioninian Drives.”
Kel looked as though his head was going to explode. “You mean by those long words that a bunch of drunks were joyriding, nearly killed a bunch of locals who were abducted and now laws have been passed so it doesn’t happen again. As if that is going to stop a bunch of drunken thrill seekers on a joyride. Anyway, they could have technology but they have chosen not to or they haven’t developed it yet?”
