Dragonstar Destiny

by David Bischoff

  “No, not yet,” said Barkham. “We’re out in the open, so it can’t surprise us. Where is he now, Becky?”

  “Starboard side, less than a hundred meters into those trees. He’s slowing up. Maybe he’s picked up our scent and he’s trying to recognize it.”

  Mishima slowed the OTV and peered into the copse of cycads and ginkgoes off to the right. He had very little experience roaming about in the Mesozoic Preserve, and he had a great fear of the carnosaurs. Riding about with the protective dome up seemed foolish to him. He wondered if Barkham was like a lot of guys who only wanted a chance to pull off the macho deal of bagging a dinosaur. The idea of killing living creatures just for “sport” or, worse, to prove one’s self-worth, was abhorrent to Mishima. If there was a predator out there, he would just as soon have the dome up.

  “Looks like he’s veering off a bit,” said Becky. “Still coming this way, but up ahead of us.”

  Just then, there was a burst of color and sound breaking free of the lush greens of the forest to the right. Looking that way, Mishima watched a yellow-and-brown-speckled gorgosaurus wade into the clearing. Its snout was smeared with the dark red crust of drying blood, and it had apparently just finished feeding. Less than four meters tall, the dinosaur was hunched over, its head thrust forward while it balanced powerful hind legs by keeping its thick tail rigid and parallel to the ground. Mishima stopped the OTV and watched the beast hop-skip past them, less than thirty meters distant, and hunker down by the stream bank.

  Plunging its snout into the water, it slurped water noisily and scrubbed at its blood-crusty jaws with its small foreclaws. It ignored completely the humans who watched warily.

  “Just washing up after a meal,” said Becky. “Its mom taught it well, I guess.”

  “Just keep an eye on it, anyway,” said Barkham.

  “God, that thing’s hideous!” Mishima couldn’t help feeling the fear and revulsion well up in him.

  Becky grinned. “Oh, they’re not so bad once you get used to them. Dr. Lindstrom says they’re fairly predictable.”

  “Right,” said Barkham. “Eat. Sleep. Eat. Sleep. That’s pretty easy to predict, don’t you think?”

  Becky giggled softly. “Oh, there’s more to them than that, Jim ...”

  The gorgosaur finished his drinking and washing routine, and pushed away from the bank still hunched over. It looked awkward leaning on its foreclaws as it lashed out with its heavy tail, using it as a counterweight. The practiced movement seesawed the creature’s head upward, and it attained its normal bipedal stance. The entire maneuver had occurred in an eye-blink. Mishima found the carnosaurs to be surprisingly agile, and as he stared at the gorgosaurus, he could not keep from thinking of what it would be like to be snapped up in its terrible jaws ...

  The dinosaur stood upright now, tilting its head so that it could view the OTV more squarely. Its tongue slithered in and out as though tasting the scented air.

  “Watch it now,” said Mishima.

  “I got him covered,” said Barkham, apparently in no great hurry to rip the beast’s hide with a banana clip of slugs.

  “If he’s just finished eating, we don’t have anything to worry about,” said Becky. “The only thing he probably wants right now is a place where he can flop down and go to sleep.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Mishima had pulled the OTV to a full stop. It was probably a good idea to wait until the meat-eater made his next move.

  “Don’t forget that Ian and I spent a couple of weeks running away from these boys,” said Becky. ”We learned a few things that kept us alive.”

  You know ... every time I think about what you’ve been through, I am amazed,” said Mishima.

  “I can dig it,” said Barkham. “I was only out here a couple days, and I was freaked by it. You’re one tough cookie, Dr. Thalberg.”

  Just then the gorgosaur turned his head away from the OTV, apparently not finding it very intriguing. Taking ponderously slow steps, it ambled away from the river and plopped down under a shady stand of cycads within twenty meters of the stream bank. The beast rolled over on its back and leaned against the base of the largest tree trunk. Its hooded eyes closed to slits and it was quickly torpid.

  “We can get past him,” said Becky. “He’s going to be out for a while—getting in some serious digestion.”

  Mishima looked at the dinosaur warily. It looked like a miniature tyrannosaurus, a very dangerous-looking creature. To roll the OTV so closely past its sleeping hulk seemed crazy, foolhardy. If it awakened, it could easily pounce on the vehicle before Mishima could escape. The thing’s head seemed to be more than half jaws and teeth. Just looking at it made chills race up Mishima’s spine.

  “I’ll keep it right in my sights, man,” said Barkham. “If it makes the slightest move, it’s done for ...”

  “Let’s go, Dr. Takamura,” said Becky. “It’ll be okay.”

  Mishima swallowed with some difficulty and keyed in the OTV’s forward engines. The low-mass turbines whined and the vehicle surged forward across the flat terrain. As they drew even with the torpid beast, its left eyelid fluttered and its nostrils flared instinctively, but it did not move. Mishima keyed in the highest velocity available and the OTV zipped away from the gorgosaurus. As they moved off he felt the twisted fist in his gut begin to relax.

  “Okay,” said Becky. “We’re clear ... Just keep an eye out for anything else.”

  “Yeah,” said Barkham as he wiped his high forehead again. “This water probably draws all kinds of things down for a drink.”

  “We have to follow the stream,” said. Mishima, “The scanners indicate that the water is forced through bulkheads between the inner and outer hulls. There must be pumps and reservoirs making the water run. That means there has to be access to that machinery.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Becky, “There’s no real way to figure on the logic of the aliens who built this ship. You should know that, Doctor.”

  She was right, Mishima knew. But his strongest suit was probably his unquenchable optimism, and he had vowed that he would never let the engineering mysteries of the Dragonstar defeat him.

  “I’m not betting on anything, Rebecca,” he said after a pause. “I’m just playing out a hunch. After all, we don’t have any alternatives.”

  “He’s right,” said Barkham. “There’s no way we can break through the temple hatches to the control-section.”

  “I just keep thinking that those hatches were sealed for a very good reason,” said Becky. “That maybe we shouldn’t mess around with something we don’t know anything about.”

  “Of course they were sealed for a reason,” said Mishima. “To keep us out! And that tells me the alien intelligence which is controlling this ship feels we might be able to alter its flight! That’s why they are trying to keep us out of there. And that’s why I want to get back in!”

  “But we don’t know anything about faster-than-light travel,” said Becky.

  “There are theories ... ” said Mishima. He glanced at her for all instant, then back to the ever-changing landscape ahead. As the stream wound its way through a marshy strip and shining mud flats, he guided the OTV along its banks relentlessly,

  “Theories? This ship isn’t running on any of your theories! Even if we could figure out where this ship is taking us, do you really believe you could alter its course and navigate us back to Earth?” Becky shook her head at the thought of such an improbable outcome.

  Mishima did not immediately reply, pretending to be studying the proper course ahead. As much as he would have loathed to admit it, Becky was on target. After several months of hands-on study and tinkering inside the alien control-section, Takamura and his team of engineers and physicists had been able to learn very little about alien technology, Under the harsh light of rational thought, Mishima’s plan of somehow sneaking back into the control-secti
on and jury-rigging the hyperspace navigational system with some chewing gum and bailing wire seemed pretty absurd! Maybe Becky was right: perhaps Mishima was just bullshitting himself ...

  Then why was he pursuing his hunch, his Rocky-Jones-and-the-Rocket-Rangers plan, so doggedly? The question had occurred to him more than once, and he probably didn’t want to answer it truthfully. But the motivation was actually quite simple—it gave him something to do!

  The thought of being trapped inside the giant ship, hurtling through the absolute nothingness of tau-space, and having no control, was an especially scary one for Takamura. He had lived his life by keeping things orderly and very controlled, everything planned in advance, everything functioning within well-defined parameters.

  That all went down the tubes when the Dragonstar sealed itself up and kidnapped everybody to hell-knows-where.

  “What’s that up ahead?” asked Barkham, pointing over Mishima’s shoulder.

  He had been driving in that semiconscious state where your eyes are seeing and your brain is responding but your thoughts are off in a faraway land. Barkham’s voice brought him all back to the present situation and he looked up to see a large outcropping of rocks which seemed to jut straight up out of the earth. The stream flowed into the rocks through a dark aperture which took on the familiar configuration of a cave mouth as the OTV moved even closer to it.

  “Looks like this might be something interesting,” said Mishima. In front of the entrance to the cave, spread out across a sere plain to the right to the stream, milled a small herd of triceratopses. Several of the rhino-like beasts looked up from their grazing as the OTV rumbled into their territory. Two of the larger males started to lumber up for a closer look.

  “Better put up the dome,” said Becky. “They probably won’t hurt us, but they’re going to sniff us out a little.”

  Mishima keyed in the smoked Plexiglas dome which eased up out of the body and sealed them inside the cabin. Mishima slowed the vehicle down until it matched the heavy gait of the closest ceratopsian, which was now abreast of the OTV and giving it a cursory once-over. Several times it tilted its bony, flanged head and nudged the side of the vehicle, more out of curiosity than hostility. All the same, Mishima felt uneasy with the armored dinosaur keeping pace with them as they closed in on the cave entrance.

  “He probably thinks we’re just an odd-looking cousin or something,” said Barkham.

  “They’re not that stupid, are they?” asked Mishima.

  “Hard to tell,” said Becky, “I’m no expert, but the ’tops do seem to be of the dumber beasts in this place.”

  No one spoke as Mishima guided the vehicle slowly toward the stream bank and the cave mouth. When he stopped by water’s edge, the two male triceratopses circled them several times, snuffling and snorting a bit before losing interest.

  “In a few seconds, they’ll have forgotten all about us,” said Becky.

  “If you say so,” said Mishima.

  Becky smiled, pushed an errant strand of long dark hair away from her face. She wore a headband, but in the humid, tropical atmosphere, perspiration still runneled down her cheeks, giving her whole face a vibrant, healthy shine. She was one of those people who seemed to flourish in the hot, sticky climate, who managed to look good under any conditions.

  No one spoke for another moment as they watched the two armored beasts trundle off to rejoin their herd. One of the males began snuffling about the hind legs of the closest cow and attempted to mount her several times without success.

  Barkham chuckled. “Now, that guy’s got the right idea,” he said.

  “Make love, not war, right?” asked Becky, joining in with a soft chuckle of her own. She glanced over at Mishima and smiled, and he felt a low-level electric shock course through him. This woman was causing one hell of an effect on him, that. was for certain.

  He cleared his throat and looked away with some difficulty, gesturing toward the mouth of the cave. “You think it’s safe to get out and check things out?”

  “Yeah,” said Barkham. “Looks okay to me. What about it, Dr. Thalberg?”

  “Just keep those males in your sights until we reach the cave itself,” she said. “If one of them charges us, it’s going to take a couple of shots to bring him down.”

  Mishima nodded and retracted the dome.

  “Let’s wait a few seconds to see if our scent is going to disrupt them again,” said Becky.

  The larger of the two males continued to follow one of the cows about the grazing area. He had sex on his lemon-sized brain, and the smell of a few sweaty humans wasn’t going to change things. The other male had commenced feeding and had his flanks turned away from the OTV. If they were going to move off toward the protection of the cave, this seemed like the best time to do it.

  “C’mon,” said Mishima. “Let’s go!”

  The trio gathered up their equipment and weapons and climbed down from the cab. Keeping the OTV between them and the herd, they moved to the edge of the stream and then quickly south toward the cave from which the water issued. Mishima manned a lightweight, portable holo-cam, which gave him a- visual record of their explorations, and Becky carried the. miniscanner, which would accurately map and monitor their location as they moved along. Barkham kept his Heckler & Koch ready for anything.

  As they silently approached the cave entrance, Mishima once again marveled at the utter realism, the perfect reconstruction of the environment which the builders of the Dragonstar had achieved. The bank to the stream, the flat rocks, the lazily churning water ... everything not only looked “right,” it simply was right. Unless you were to look off into the distance where the horizon should be, unless you took notice of the upward-curving inner hull, you would never imagine that everything was artifice, that it had been as carefully planned and built as a Japanese garden. He tried to imagine the kind of technology required to accomplish an engineering feat such as the Dragonstar, but it only made him feel foolish and insignificant.

  His plan was madness. He was wasting his time, and needlessly risking the lives of his colleagues with this bone-headed expedition. They were like insects thrumming about the hold of a cargo freighter, secretly plotting to take over the bridge.

  Fat chance, thought Mishima.

  “Is there something wrong?” asked Becky as she touched his arm. The warm press of her fingers jacked him back to the present, and he realized that he had been woolgathering—standing at the cave entrance, staring off into space.

  “No, Becky ... sorry, I was just thinking of something, that’s all ...”

  “I’m getting some interesting readings on the beta band,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Looks like there’s another level beneath this one once we get inside the cave.”

  Mishima paused and looked back over the terrain they had recently covered. “Makes sense. Look—we’ve been gradually following a rise in the landscape. See how it slopes down behind us, real easy-like? There should be some space beneath us at this point and the outer hull.”

  “We goin’ in?” asked Barkham,

  “You bet we are,” said Mishima, smiling, his excitement renewed in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. “You know, maybe my ideas are right, after all!”

  As if in reply, one of the female triceratopses honked loudly as she was successfully mounted and entered. Everyone laughed at the near-perfect timing.

  “Follow me,” said Mishima, turning and edging along the bank of running water, leaning into the cave’s shadowed entrance.

  “Watch out for the nests,” said Becky, “It’s just occurred to me that this might make a perfect place for something small to want to keep its eggs protected.”

  “Somethin’ small to us ... or them?” asked Barkham.

  “It’s all relative,” said Becky. “Just watch out, okay?”

  Nodding, Mishima stepped into
the shadows and allowed his eyes to adjust to the drop in light intensity. He was expecting to see the rocky path and walls of a cave, and was surprised to find that just beneath the surface the artifice had been abandoned so quickly.

  Instead of rocks and dirt, he stood on a metallic slab leading off into the darkness. Above his head, the grey cantilevered struts and supports of the cave’s interior held up the curved roof. It reminded him of a movie set on a studio’s sound stage. Incredible. And yet, not to be unexpected. For a moment, everyone stood quietly, and he could hear the hum of machinery, punctuated by a softer thumping sound.

  Barkham stepped up beside him, panning the barrel of his weapon back and forth. “Everything look okay?”

  “Yes,” said Mishima. “But let’s get a little light on the subject before we go any farther.”

  Barkham unsnapped an electric torch from his utility belt and flicked it on. Adjusting the diameter of the beam, he directed its light on the expanse ahead of them.

  “What’s that?” asked Becky as the light touched the leading edge of some superstructure in the distance.

  “Let’s take a look,” said Mishima.

  As they walked slowly and carefully through the darkness of the artificial cave, their boots slapping loudly on the metallic flooring, Mishima could hear the sounds of machinery growing more distinct, rising in volume as they obviously drew closer to it.

  “What’s that, you think?” asked Barkham.

  “Probably some kind of pumping system to keep this water flowing, to keep it recirculating.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” said the pilot.

  “Just be careful,” said Becky. “You can’t assume anything about this place. That’s when you get your worse surprises.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Mishima. He again thought of how Becky had trekked through a big piece of the vessel’s interior forests and jungle when the initial exploratory team was attacked by a pack of carnosaurs. It was Becky and Coopersmith who had actually discovered the Saurians and their walled-in culture. She was indeed a competent woman. Mishima found himself wondering how he would have handled things in the hostile terrain... if Becky would have fallen for him the way they all said she had for Coopersmith.