And to think that she had been Colonel Kemp’s lady! Mishima grinned to himself. Old Coopersmith most have been quite a guy—a thought that was doubly profound when Mishima recalled how Ian Coopersmith had sacrificed his own life so that others would survive. And he wondered if he had enough of the right stuff to ever do the same ...
“Something wrong?” asked Becky, touching his arm.
“What? No! I was just thinking about something, again, sorry ...” Woolgathering again! She was going to think he was an eccentric-old-professor stereotype ...
They walked closely together as they approached the object up ahead. It soon resolved itself into a gangway or catwalk, which appeared to be attached to the outside bulkhead of the hull itself. It ran longitudinally along the hull, headed directly toward the engines and the control-section end of the gigantic ship.
“Bingo!” said Barkham. “Looks like we found something, Doctor.”
Mishima clambered up onto the catwalk. It appeared to have been built to carry creatures wider and taller than humans. Looking off, the metallic path led off into darkness farther than the strength of the torch’s beam could penetrate.
“I wonder if this is it?” he said softly.
“Looks like it goes on forever,” said Barkham.
“It would almost have to,” said Becky. “We’re more than forty-five kays from the control-section.”
“Yes,” said Mishima. “It’s a long walk if this thing goes all the way ...”
“We gonna check it out now?” Barkham’s distressed expression belied his feelings concerning such a possibility.
“I don’t think so,” said Mishima. “We were out here just to map out the area. I think we should go back and plan this out. Get together a group of volunteers who want to make the trip.”
“You’re going to need technical people who can help you once you get in there,” said Becky.
“Hey,” said Barkham. “I just thought of somethin’. What happens if you get all the way down to the end of this thing, and there ain’t no door into the ass-end of this can?”
“I’m hoping that the gangway runs along the bulkhead right into the control-section,” said Mishima. “If it does, then there won’t be any hatches ... we’ll simply be where we want to be.”
“Are we heading back for now?” asked Becky.
“I think so,” said Mishima. “We’ve done more than I expected already.”
The trio turned and retraced their steps, back out into the artificial sunlight of the Mesozoic Preserve. The ceratopsian herd had moved off to graze farther away from the stream bank, and the area appeared to be quite safe.
Mishima watched Becky as she walked ahead and entered the OTV. She was a beautiful woman, and he wanted her. Yet it was not all that simple—he also wanted her to want him. And that might take some doing...
But there were more important things to be. thinking about, and he chided himself for letting his glandular system override his neurological one. He must compose a report to the other Ruling Council members, enlist their support, and get a team organized. Regardless of how small his chances of success might be, it felt good to be finally doing something about their plight.
As he reached the operator’s side of the vehicle, Mishima turned and looked back at the stream, the cave entrance, and the landscape in general,
“Anything wrong?” asked Becky.
“No,” he said, climbing aboard. “It just hit me all over again how incredible this whole ship actually is ... what an engineering achievement it is. I keep wondering what kind of minds could have conceived of such a thing, and to what purpose.
Barkham chuckled. “Yeah, you and everybody else, Doc.”
Becky nodded. “I have a feeling that sooner or later you’re going to have some answers to those questions,” she said.
Keying in the ignition, Mishima looked at her grimly. He knew what she meant. The Dragonstar was not passing through hyperspace on a lark, or by chance. The unspoken feeling of almost every human in the Saurian Preserve was that the ship was heading toward its destiny ...
THEY WERE on their way back when the message came over the radio.
“Takamura? Jakes here.”
Takamura took the OTV transceiver from Barkham, let the big man take the controls.
“We read you, Doctor,” Mishima Takamura said. “That other OTV party we sent out this morning:”
“Oh yes. Linden and Marshall, checking out that radiation. A minor excursion, I thought.”
“Problem. They haven’t reported back. I thought since you’re heading back that way, you might be able to stop and check to make sure they’re okay.”
“Just a second, Barkham ... take down the coordinates that Dr. Jakes gives you ... we’re going to have to make a stop.” His face assumed a serious cast. “I want everybody’s weapon out and ready by the time we get there.”
Barkham obeyed, and the others readied their weapons.
“Think there might be trouble?” asked Becky Thalberg, studying him carefully as though taking his measure.
“Linden and Marshall know enough to report back at regular intervals. There must be trouble—and we have to be ready for it.”
“In that case,” said Becky, “I think maybe we should put the dome up as we approach. That way we won’t get plucked out of our seats by strolling dinosaurs.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t look at me like that—it’s happened. And Mishima—remember, I know this place. I’ve been here far too long.” She looked away with a sigh. “And I’m probably gong to be here for a long time more, it would seem.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it, Becky,” said Mishima, quite sincerely.
“Hey, man,” said James Barkham, putting down the transceiver after recording the coordinates. “Now, that’s the kind of talk I like to hear. Don’t count me out till I’m dead! I say if this ship can get us into hyperspace or whatever, it can get out, too!”
“Well, I suppose a little positive thinking never hurt anybody,” said Becky, smiling wryly. “So okay ... how long do you figure it will be until we get to the pit stop?”
“Oh, give it an hour, hour and fifteen,” said Barkham, “unless you want me to put on the pedal, sir.”
“Yes. Do so, please. A pair of lives may be at stake.”
“That’s right, James,” said Becky. “No traffic cops here. You can go past the limit.”
The handsome black man rumbled out a laugh and stepped on the accelerator. The OTV shot forward quickly along a fairly clear path, gaining speed at a remarkable rate. “These mothers can move if you give them half a chance,” said Barkham, eyes shining with glee at the discomfort his passengers clearly were undergoing.
“Very gratifying,” was all Becky Thalberg said, while Takamura held back an order to slow down. This was, after all, an emergency, and he had just given the man leave to do all the speed he could muster. His leadership would not look good if he changed his mind, even if Barkham’s driving was rather breakneck. Doubtless, the man would slow down eventually, even if just a little.
And Barkham indeed did, as soon as they hit rougher terrain—but not by much.
So they barreled through the Mesozoic Preserve, frightening herds of iguanodons and flocks of pterodactyls, collecting a wealth of smashed insects on their windshield.
They made it to the designated coordinates in just over forty-five minutes.
“Look,” said Becky. “There’s the OTV.”
“Seems undamaged,” said Barkham. “And I don’t see any beasties about.”
“Nonetheless, I want your weapons ready for anything,” said Takamura. “Barkham, you stay here while Becky and I check this out.”
“I’ll have my motor running and my rifle cocked,” Barkham said, still excited from the ride.
“You just do
that,” said Becky, her eyes taking in the surroundings carefully.
“Let’s go check that OTV,” Takamura said.
The walk to the vehicles proved uneventful, and the OTV was quite empty.
“You say they were checking out radiation?” Becky said. “Shouldn’t we be wearing our suits?”
“Jakes says it’s not harmful radiation.” Mishima examined the interior of the car. “They’ve taken their measurement devices and their weapons. They must be in those rocks yonder. That’s consistent with the coordinates from Jakes;”
They made their way through the rocks, to a clearing. “Oh my God,” said Becky, pointing, “Look, Mishima!”
In the middle of the clearing was a large pool of blood, a smashed piece of equipment, and a severed leg.
She turned away from the sight, hiding her eyes against Takamura’s chest. He put an arm around her to comfort her.
“It looks as though we know what happened to at least, one of them,” he said, his gun raised, carefully looking about for the perpetrator of this horror. He noted the shell casings and splatters of blood all around. “Looks as though they certainly put up a fight!”
“How do we know one didn’t escape? There are plenty of hiding spots in these rocks, surely.”
Takamura nodded grimly. He released Becky and put a hand to his mouth. “Hello!” he cried. “Is anyone there?” No response.
“Linden!” called Becky. “Marshall!”
“Looks like, there’s some sort of cave over there,” said Takamura. “Cover me, Becky. I’m going to take a look at it.”
“Right,” she replied tersely.
It was a small opening, just visible between a pair of upthrust rocks. Takamura approached it with tile safety of his weapon off. It was dark inside, and he could make out nothing.
“Anybody in there?” he called.
Abruptly a shadow parted from the larger shadow and a man stepped out.
“Takamura,” said the man. “Thank. God you’ve come. I was petrified ... I couldn’t move for a while. I don’t know what came over me.”
Takamura recognized the man. It was Timothy Linden. He lowered his weapon.
“What happened?”
“An allosaurus. Sneaked up on us somehow. Grabbed Alexandra ... and—”
Linden began shuddering. “I’m sorry ... you were close, weren’t you?”
“Yes ... yes. I fired God knows how many bullets into the thing and it didn’t stop it. I fled into this cave. The creature didn’t stay long.”
Takamura nodded. “A great tragedy about Marshall, but I am glad you are still alive.” He nodded to the cave. “What is beyond there?”
“Nothing. It only goes back a few meters.”
“But this is the source of the radiation that you and Marshall were investigating?”
“I can’t say ... Marshall had the equipment. It was somewhere around here. The readings should still be -on the central memory unit of the device, I think. God, I just want to get out of here!”
“Yes. We shall go. Go and sit in the car. I will deal with the sensor- device ...”
And with what is left of your companion, he thought grimly.
* * *
Takamura drove the extra OTV back to base camp, refusing Becky Thalberg’s offer to ride with him. He wanted to be alone for a while, to think and to renew his spiritual strength. It was difficult to lose a crew member. Especially a woman. There was no telling how long this group of human beings would be out in space together. It would be necessary to start families, and women were high priority, for only they could produce children. From now on, he thought, women would go on such expeditions only when absolutely necessary.
He also had a funny feeling about Linden. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the man just didn’t ring true. Oh yes, he believed the story of the allosaurus ... There was just something else that didn’t seem quite right.
Jakes, of course, was horrified when he heard about the incident via radio. But he was also clearly eager to obtain the memory module from Marshall’s equipment. This radiation business was bizarre stuff, and it was vital that they get to the bottom of it. When they got back to the camp, Linden told his story again to Dr. Jakes, and then was dispatched to sick bay, complaining of sickness and headache. He had to be checked out, anyway, and the man certainly needed a rest.
Thalberg and Barkham went about their business, and when they were gone, Dr. Jakes spoke to Takamura.
“The reason I needed this was that this seems to be the same kind of radiation readings we were getting just before the disaster with some variations of great interest.”
“The memory module will be sufficient, then?”
“It seems intact. I’ll tell you what we find.”
“Odd. When the last recordings of this radiation were made, the natives went insane. Yet they seem quite well now ... and well behaved and cooperative.”
“What can I say? I’ll report to you as soon as possible,” said the doctor.
“Oh, and Dr. Jakes ... please keep an eye on Linden, too. I have this weird sense that he’s not telling us everything.”
Dr. Jakes nodded solemnly, then went about his business.
COLONEL PHINEAS KEMP, IASA, and formerly Chief of Deep Space Operations at Copernicus Base, entered the large tent which served as home for him and the noted paleontologist Dr. Mikaela Lindstrom. He had been in the nearby arboreal park of Hakarrh gathering wood for their cook stove, and while performing the nearly mindless task, spent the time thinking.
A dangerous habit, that.
Kemp smiled ironically as he loaded fresh wood into the stove’s open maw. Chief of Deep Space Operations. Well, they were certainly in deep space, all right, but neither Phineas nor anyone else was “chief” of any of it.
Deep space. So deep, in fact, that they had been traveling at hyper-light speeds for almost three weeks and were now incalculable light-years from the Earth’s star system. Phineas shook his head and grinned. Whenever he started feeling bad about being voted out of power, by being excluded from the survivors’ choice of Ruling Council members, he tried to remind himself that there were far worse things to fret about.
Like the number one concern on everyone’s mind: Are we ever going to get back to Earth?
Phineas Kemp, forever the optimist, believed that the surviving band of humans would indeed make it back to Earth. The means of achieving this feat, however, was a complete mystery to him. His unflagging optimism was reflected in his decision to retain living quarters in the tent which only weeks ago had been a part of the Saurians’ continuous outdoor bazaar. After the Documentary Riot (as it was now called) and the eventual realliance with the Saurians, the humans had been given the bazaar tents as temporary housing until more permanent quarters could be built by joint teams of humans and Saurians.
But Phineas Kemp wanted no part of “permanent housing.” He didn’t like the sound of those words, and so, despite the still-lingering Saurian redolence of the tent, he and Mikaela made no effort to secure more comfortable digs.
The stove’s flames accepted the new cuts with warm gratitude, and Phineas now began preparing for the evening meal. He was a member of several committees, but today was his day off, and he was playing house husband for Mikaela, who was attending a round of meetings with the Ruling Council, of which she was an elected member, and various committee chairmen and chairwomen,
Phineas frowned as he stood up and began pulling goods from their ration larder. Already the bureaucracy of their normal world was beginning to creep over their survival camp like unstoppable fungus, like Georgia kudzu, and to choke off all recognizable signs of life and accomplishment. He had never liked trying to do things by committee, but it seemed as though it was the only way to mollify some of the more liberal and idealistic factions among the Human Enclave. He believed that too many coo
ks spoiled many a stew, and that there was no replacement for singular, decisive, one-man-in-charge kind of leadership.
Phineas Kemp serving as a committee-person! The idea seemed ludicrous, and he loathed being a part of not one, but several of the damnable things! But he had no choice ...
Mikaela was always telling him that he suffered from a John Wayne complex, but he didn’t think it was very funny. Phineas had not risen through the ranks of the IASA to the rank of Colonel, before reaching the age of forty, by being a chumpy, cautious, indecisive wimp.
Hell no!
Very quickly he gained a reputation as a take-charge guy. A guy with what the Italians called cogliones—balls. In fact, he had always known that his nickname among the lASA officers was “Iron-Balls,” but he’d never let any of them know it.
Well, It would be a cold day in hell before anybody could say that Phineas Kemp threw in the towel, that was for certain. He’d never quit on anything in his life and he wasn’t about to quit now. Wherever this giant tin can was going to end up, Phineas vowed that he would be ready for it.
As he placed the rations in their cook-pak containers onto the stove, Phineas heard footsteps on the loose gravel outside the entrance to the tent. Turning, he saw Mikaela Lindstrom enter. She wore her usual loose-fitting khaki jumpsuit, with her long, sparkling blond hair piled up on her head. It was totally functional, but when errant strands started to fall out of the bun-like construction, Phineas found it sexy as hell.
“Hello, my dear,” he said with a smile. “How did it go in the office today?”
“Meetings bore me,” said Mikaela.
She moved close to him, hugging him, letting her head linger on his shoulder. Being at least ten centimeters shorter than Phineas’s less than imposing height, Mikaela always made him feel quite tall. He kissed her long, delicate neck and relished the smell of her freshly washed hair. A sudden rush of desire surged through him like an electric shock. He wanted her as strongly as he ever had.
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