The Imprisoned Earth

by Vaughn Heppner

  I searched for lockers, soon finding an exit hatch and then the lockers. I opened the locker, finding three spacesuits. Before taking one, I carefully searched the shuttle one more time. I did not find any other suit lockers, although I did find a weapons locker. There, I appropriated a laser rifle, grabbing its energy pack and power line.

  Why had Calidore left me behind? Was I certain Calidore had forced the others to accompany him? How could I know any of those things for sure?

  I had questions and only one way of discovering the answers. Resolutely, I marched back to the suit locker and donned a spacesuit. I found a place to attach the laser energy pack and hooked the power line to both unit and rifle. I studied the rifle for a time and flicked a few switches.

  I felt the rifle vibrate, pointed it at an interior machine and pulled the trigger. The tip glowed and a red laser beamed out, beginning to melt the alloy. I released the trigger and the red beam quit.

  I found myself grinning tightly. I had a tech weapon, and now I knew it worked.

  I donned the helmet and twisted it until I heard it lock. Checking the interior displays as the authorities had taught me, I saw that I had several hours of air. As a precaution, I took more tanks, hooking them together in a sling so I could carry them over my back. This was it then. I entered the airlock and began the procedures as I’d seen others do. I worked methodically and slowly. There was no sense making a stupid mistake and dying. Space seemed horribly unforgiving. It was like hunting a grizzly alone; one wrong action could kill.

  Finally, I turned a wheel and opened the outer hatch, finding myself on the outer shell of the alien ship—if Calidore was accurate concerning that. The surface looked like moon rock, at least the moon rocks I’d viewed in ancient NASA picture books.

  I felt giddy. I was in space with the stars gleaming everywhere. Carefully, I left the shuttle airlock and stepped out onto the rocky surface. I noticed footprints on dust, many of them, and began following.

  In time, I looked back and froze. There, hanging in the heavens, was the blue Earth, my home. My breath caught in my throat. Calidore believed this alien ship represented an extinction-level threat to my homeworld. I felt anger well up along with grim determination. I was here. It was therefore my duty and privilege to fight for my people and planet.

  With that, I increased my pace, soon learning to use a gliding step. If I jumped too hard, I might reach the ship’s escape velocity and drift in space until I ran out of air and died.

  I saw no sign of Chin Corporation people or other shuttles, but soon I saw smooth alien structures like monoliths on the horizon. The sight put a lump in my throat. Alien structures logically meant aliens. Calidore had called them the Avantis.

  My skin pimpled as awe struck. Gripping my laser rifle more tightly, I hurried toward the alien structures, all the time following the mass path of footprints. The structures were huge, as big as the biggest Egyptian pyramid, at least according to the National Geographic picture books I had studied in wagon school back home.

  I glided onward, craning my neck to look up at the intimidating structures. What did they do? Would one open up like a flower and aim a killing device at me?

  I followed the footprints until I reached the biggest structure. There, at the base, I halted, for the mass of footprints simply stopped.

  I scowled inside my helmet. The footprints indicated an opening here. Yet, as Calidore had said before, I saw no seam whatsoever in the smooth metal.

  I stood there, contemplating my next move. Finally, I raised the laser rifle and used the butt to knock against the base of the structure. Nothing happened at all. I kept banging the butt on different areas. I was becoming desperate. Finally, I marched back several steps and beamed the base of the monolith.

  I jumped as a section slid open before me. Sweat pooled on my face and my breathing was ragged. Did I dare enter the darkness?

  Trembling, I glide-walked forward and entered the alien structure…

  -14-

  My odyssey inside the so-called alien ship proved lengthy, daunting and confusing in the extreme. I walked for hours down smooth corridors and would have become hopelessly lost if I hadn’t instinctively followed Wolf Clan custom, going right at each choice. By doing this, I could retrace my steps and find my way out of the ancient object.

  As I’d said earlier, I’d taken the precaution of arming myself with extra oxygen tanks. Thus, as the first one ran out, I replaced it with a fresh tank. I did this a second time, halting and deciding if now was the time to turn around. This was my last tank. If I hurried, I could likely make it back to the shuttle.

  That would be the rational course, and I was just about ready to do that when I came upon the first space-suited body.

  I hurried to the prone person and knelt. At that moment, I heard an eerie whine through my helmet. The whine—the sound struck like a mental thunderbolt. I groaned as bizarre images flashed in my mind. I “saw” giant bats swoop toward me and then acid-spewing lizards scuttled forward across the floor.

  “No!” I shouted, ducking as an acid globule hit the visor and began eating through the clear material. I heard bubbling, smelled a noxious substance. Then, I saw grasshoppers with tiny human heads laughing at me.

  I frowned. Grasshoppers with human heads seemed manifestly impossible inside an ancient ship. That would mean—

  “Delusions,” I whispered, “hallucinations.”

  I shook my head. “This is not real. This is not real.” I silently continued the litany in my head.

  Pain lanced in my mind, and abruptly, the images of spitting lizards, bubbling acid and human-headed grasshoppers ceased.

  My visor wasn’t cloudy, and I breathed normally. I turned the body over and found an intact spacesuit. I tried to revive the person inside, but she was dead.

  Fatalistically, I checked her tank and to my surprise found air. She hadn’t died from a lack of oxygen, but something else—terror from the hallucinations, I supposed.

  Feeling like a ghoul robbing the dead, I detached her tank, deciding to take it with me. The extra air would extend my life.

  I found more bodies the next several hundred yards. All of them had air in their tanks. I transferred the air until my new extra tank was full.

  At that point, I slid down to the floor and considered the situation. This seemed fantastic and hopeless. If the entire asteroid was honeycombed with corridors, I could spend a lifetime down here and find nothing. There must be tens of thousands of miles of corridors. Yet, what would going back accomplish? I had a shuttle but doubted it would have the capacity to reach Terra. And even if I could reach Terra, what would I do if the inhabitants of this alien ship had webbed the planet in some sort of crystalline substance?

  With a grunt, I struggled up to my feet and forced myself forward. Yet, as I did, feelings of uselessness and futility nearly overwhelmed my resolve.

  I found more people in spacesuits lounging against the walls and bulkheads as I’d been doing. Sadly, among them I found Lee McHenry dead against a bulkhead, with his helmet in his gloved hands, as if he’d sat here in despair until his air had run out.

  Like Lee, none of the others had any air left in their tanks.

  It occurred to me that an alien or an alien machine beamed futility rays at my mind. Ah! Hadn’t Calidore called himself a mentalist? Did that not indicate mind powers or strengths, or a scientist who studied the mind? Had Calidore known the Avantis would use mental attacks to halt any intruders inside their ship?

  I frowned. The thoughts seemed like wild leaps of logic. Were those my own thoughts or was some creature or machine inserting them into my mind?

  We of the Wolf Clan did not subscribe to psionic abilities in humans. At least, there hadn’t been any evidence in human history of genuine psionic abilities like telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance or other extrasensory perceptions. Still, couldn’t there be advanced science that would alter the mind in various ways that we did not yet understand? One could beam x-rays
at a brain and destroy it over time. Surely, other rays could do various things to a brain.

  The desire to sink down and contemplate this was nearly overpowering. Fortunately, there was something in me that refused. I had a task to perform. I wanted to find Doctor Calidore and have words with him as I aimed the laser rifle at his face. Lee McHenry was dead. I blamed Calidore for that.

  Was Hector in trouble?

  I gritted my teeth until my jaw muscles ached. Then, one slow step at a time, I moved forward. It was painful and mind-numbing, but I wasn’t going to quit. I would stop when I died, not a moment sooner.

  “Calidore,” I said, the word harsh in my ears.

  I plodded through the corridors as new terrors tried to overwhelm me. I laughed crazily. I heard women wailing. I saw strange beasts stalking me. Clouds came down as if from a different dimension, with tiny creatures in them intending to devour my suit and then my body.

  I shook my head. “It’s not real!” I shouted. “This is all illusion!”

  More strangeness attacked my mind.

  “Forget it,” I raved, and then I sprawled in the corridor, hitting the floor.

  That made me blink. Slowly, I turned around and crawled to a space-suited body lying lengthways in the corridor. I rolled it over and found myself staring at a dead and petrified Hector Trask. It took me a moment to realize that his visor was open.

  “Oh, Hector,” I said, choking up.

  I pulled his space-suited body to me, cradling my best friend. We had…

  I released my best friend and gently set him on the floor. Clumsily, I closed his eyes with a gloved hand. Then I climbed to my feet. A terrible loneliness and sadness filled me. I wanted to weep, to wail and gnash my teeth, but I would not. I was the last living Wolf Clan warrior in this monstrosity. I had a duty to my friends, my clan and to the people of Terra. I would mourn later for my good friends. Right now—I wasn’t sure.

  I walked down the corridors, still going right each time. I searched, and I switched tanks some time later. This was truly my last one. When it ran out of air…

  I began to glide forward, moving faster, deciding to risk everything. There was no going back for me. I could not go home again.

  I glided—and the floor opened under my boots. With a yell, with a flailing of my space-suited arms, I plunged into darkness, gaining velocity as I headed deeper into the so-called alien vessel of the Avantis.

  -15-

  I fell into darkness, into an abyss aboard the strange vessel in far orbit around Terra. Suddenly, I felt irresistible tugs and jerks against the laser rifle. I pulled the rifle nearer me, but the force ripped it out of my hands, separating the energy cord from the power unit. Before I could begin to worry about energy seepage, the tugs and jerks tore the spacesuit apart and I gasped a quick breath as it was yanked from my body. The protective garment flew in all directions, disappearing and leaving me defenseless against—

  I had to breathe, only able to hold out for a short time. As I gave up and inhaled, I smelled an oily machine odor and something repulsively chemical that singed my inner nostrils. And yet, it provided my body with relief from the lack of air.

  I coughed explosively, shallow-breathing several times as I choked on the harsh chemicals. I realized my face was wet and my clothes damp. As I fell, I sniffed at a sleeve, and jerked my head back. The chemical odor was stronger there. Had I entered a spray, a cloud of chemicals? Was that some form of alien decontamination?

  We in the post-nuclear-war world knew all about decontamination.

  I continued to breathe and realized that, whatever else happened, this part of the alien ship had a breathable atmosphere. Did that imply that an entity realized I needed such an atmosphere, or was this normal for this part of the ship?

  I felt my body. I had my clothes, and I still had my footwear, my knife and little else. The continuing plunge had dried my clothes. Now, the chemicals in them were a mere irritant to my nostrils.

  At that point, I realized that I was slowing—I could actually feel a force softening my fall.

  There was no returning to the shuttle. I would live or die depending on what happened down here. Could I, a mere human, a barbarian Wolf Clan warrior, stop the alien ship from exterminating humanity? For what other reason did I still live?

  The enormity of my dire situation nearly paralyzed me. Elder Paris Roan might have said I was in mental shock. But I was trained to adjust, to look for an angle. Yes, this was insane to my normal way of viewing life. Yet, it wasn’t really insane, just vastly different from anything I’d conceived ever might be happening to me. Both Hector and Lee were dead. I had seen them. I had witnessed four nuclear-tipped torpedoes destroying four mighty corporation voyagers. I had seen the smashed living quarters of the Sun Tzu. I had listened to Calidore describe a weird technological marvel, whole planets encased in a crystalline structure.

  I licked my lips. One could grow crystals. I had read that somewhere. Thus, if one could grow a thing, it wasn’t impossible to conceive a man growing crystals around a thumbnail-sized marble. It was the extent that awed me—crystals around a planet—not the actual process.

  A process did not change because it covered more mass. It was just harder to accomplish.

  I grimaced, then, as I floated softly in the darkness. I had assured myself of the reality of this event. I accepted it as real and did not let it paralyze me. I was a cog in a vast machine, but even a small cog breaking in the right place could cause a huge machine to stop working.

  That renewed my purpose and the possibility that despite my many handicaps, it was conceivable under the right circumstances that I could save Terra. I had to keep my wits. I had to maintain my courage. I had to be ready for that one moment when I could strike. If the moment never came, well, at least I would choose to be ready if it did come. At this juncture, I was not going to worry about if something could happen. I could not influence that. I would only worry about when, and being ready, about things I could influence.

  That bolstered my morale. If there was an alien, or if Calidore had gained control of this weird alien vessel, I had a chance—however slight—of stopping them or him—or her—from doing their damnest.

  I flexed my fingers as I landed on a pad of some sort. A round soft glow showed me nothing but my feet. I crouched in a fighter’s stance—and I grunted as powerful lights snapped on. They might have blinded me, but I threw up my arms, shielding myself. The lights dimmed. I lowered my arms, noticing that the bulkheads were no longer metal, but pulsated as if I were inside a heart or…or in a whale, like Pinocchio.

  I shuddered at the implications and took a step forward. My gravitational weight had increased. I almost felt normal, as if I stood on Terra.

  The lights were embedded in the pulsating substance. I advanced and dared to touch the pulsating bulkhead—and I snatched my hand back. The moving bulkhead was warm like flesh. I noticed then that the air had a moist quality, high humidity.

  If I cut the bulkhead with my knife, would that cause the entire ship to shudder?

  I waited to experiment, deciding this was a poor time to test such a hypothesis. Instead, I followed the lit path, the only path, as it turned out.

  The floor did not pulsate and it was not warm. I crouched to feel it: metal, an alloy, providing a walkway through the pulsating passage.

  I traveled down the lit path for leagues. My thighs began to burn, and weariness stole some of my former resolve. How long was this passage?

  “Hello?” I shouted.

  There was no answer, but I heard an echo.

  I continued, led by the lighted path, turning into other narrower passages until finally I reached alloy bulkheads again. I looked back, and as I did, the passage disappeared as if a sphincter had closed.

  I did not like the implications. Had I been ejected from the living area of the ship—if that was where I had been—if such a thing existed?

  The light brightened, and I wondered if an intelligent being watched me.
Did the brightening imply impatience?

  I continued down the corridors, taking the turns where the light shined. By now, my feet were dragging and I staggered. I was thirsty, and my sides ached. I did not believe that I could continue much longer.

  Just then, the lights led me to a blank wall, another bulkhead. I heard hissing from behind the bulkhead. Abruptly, a section of it slid up. Before me was a wide area with many machines and multicolored control panels. They hummed and computed, but I heard no hissing. Where had that—?

  The hissing was to my right. I went that way and halted in sick horror. I saw a giant clear cylinder that reminded me of a test tube. There were curved metal pieces on either side of the tube, and I saw the opening at the top was capped. Inside the cylinder, Doctor Calidore writhed in agony as electrical surges burst from the two curved metal pieces and struck his head, the top part where his skull encased his brain. The surges were like mini-lightning bolts. He screamed with his eyes bulging.

  Part of me thought I should rush forward. The saner, wiser part bade me to wait and watch.

  I noticed flickering to my left and turned that way. What I saw shocked me even more deeply.

  A large screen displayed flashing images. I saw men in robes standing before a spinning globe. They appeared to be chanting. That image disappeared, and now I saw a metropolis of steel plinths and pyramids flashing below me as if I were sitting in a flying car. That image also disappeared. Now, there was a beautiful woman with green skin, dancing before men lying on giant pillows while drinking cocktails. Once more, the image vanished, and now I saw what looked like a T-Rex reach down and gulp a running man whole, causing him to vanish down the dinosaur’s gullet. I saw long-fingered hands working on a computer slate. There was a reflection on the tiny screen, and I saw Doctor Calidore’s face frowning with concentration as he fixed the device.

  There were more images, each flashing onscreen for an instant before going away. A few more of them showed Calidore. I realized I was seeing images as from a man’s eyes. They flashed by so quickly—